Cox

Steve Corino's son Colby worked a tag match with his dad against Reckless Youth and Don Montoya when he was five years old, so yes, literally, in the state of New Jersey, you can put a toddler in the ring and it's perfectly legal.

This. Kane just kind of drifts between what they need him to do. If they have a top-ish heel without a program, they'll feud him with Kane, whether Kane is a babyface at that time or not. If they have a top-ish heel without a program, they'll feud him with Kane, whether Kane is a heel at that time or not. He's kind of the ultimate tweener at this point.

SLL, what do you think of my theory that WWE is booking Punk as almost an "anti-Cena," that is, a guy who will appeal to the adult men in the crowd but will be hated by kids and adults? In the next few months, I'm guessing Punk will be working primarily with Cena, and the kids/women will always go with Cena. The adult men will go with Punk, but unless Cena is being booked against a guy the crowd doesn't care about much (Big Show, for example), they won't side with Cena anyway. They have four months of Punk working with Cena to condition the kids/women to hate Punk so that by the time he faces Rock, they will side with Rock in that match (plus, as Loss said, most WWE fans simply like Rock more than Punk and will root for him regardless). I know it's not ideal to have a top babyface that 100% of fans (and maybe sometimes even less than 50%) don't support, but maybe their success with Cena in that role has given them confidence that Punk can handle the opposite of that role.

A large chunk of Ring of Hell was devoted to the Paul/Steph issues as well.

I also thought it was interesting that they booked the segment so Stephanie got to outsmart Heyman, and Heyman had to admit he was outsmarted by Stephanie, and then kinda got his ass kicked by Stephanie too. Somebody took more than a little joy in scripting that out.

Yeah, something tells me it's not exactly a stretch for Waltman to play "scuzzy, creepy, possibly stoned guy."

The segment with Trish was almost definitely a pre-tape, so I tend to think any creepiness was probably intended. Either that, or they got a kick out of Waltman acting creepy on his own and left it in there.

I don't think they would want those two guys out there. Austin is shooting a movie. They probably wouldn't, but Dave reported on it in advance that every single living wrestler not employed by TNA or in rehab would be on the show. And there weren't honestly that many cameo. I expected the wedding to be filled with them. A lot of the guys "confirmed" were nowhere to be found either. Not sure who the "shocking" person was either that MKJ was talking about. Mooney? That was shocking, but not for any particularly good reason. But yeah, obviously the idea that this was an all hands on deck episode of Raw was totally overdone, which is a shame as the random cameos were probably the best part of the show, and the best part of the build to the show was Slater vs. random guy who hasn't been on Raw in 10+ years. I wonder if they tried to get Rob Bartlett for the show. You're telling me he wasn't available?

So now Punk gets to be the anti-Cena; hated by kids and women, loved by adult men. Should be an interesting dynamic, and I think the Rock/Punk feud is going to be awesome.

Your avatar made an appearance interviewing Daniel Bryan towards the end of the show.

WHAT IS IT!? This never got answered. It will when the set comes out Exactly. Trying to keep some shit a surprise. Was hoping this would disappear in all the talk of how fat Demolition are. Speaking of which, the point was not if they could wrestle but if the two wrestlers fit the gimmick. I mean, fuck, I love Bill Eadie. I pushed for his matches on the NJ set and the Mid South set. I am hoping he will pop up on the WWF set. However, the wrestler doesn't really fit the gimmick. Darsow as demon warlord really feels out of place. For instance, if U Warrior and Sting came into the WWF as Demolition, in the same make up and outfits, it really would have been an instance of two guys filling out the gimmick of Vince's vision of his two Road Warriors. There have to be more roided dudes from the 80s who could fill the gimmick. The problem with Demolition is that when they took off the masks, they just weren't as scary. Make sure we are keeping the two arguments separate. 1. Do the two wrestlers fit the gimmick / was it a cool gimmick? 2. Were they a good team / have great matches? You can think the two wrestlers were joke in the gimmick but still think they were a good team. Or you can think they were a cool team with shit matches. Or you can think they were a shit team with a shit gimmick. Or you can think they were a great team with a great gimmick. At this point, I think the gimmick was lame / Roadie ripoffs with wrestlers that didn't fit the costumes. It has nothing to do with the quality of matches for the most part. Maybe if you want to say that when they were trying to portray themselves as badasses but didn't wrestle like badasses, it hurt the matches. This is a valid argument. For me, the jury is still out on if they were a good team. The matches I have seen so far have not blown me away. Still, between Exposer, Kris Z and myself, we will watch every handheld, tv special, commercial tape, house show and compilation to make sure they get a fair shake in the 80s process. Right now though, I want to find more Moondogs vs. Garea/Martel matches. As a person who has no dog in this fight (I have no problem with Demolition, but I have a million other things I'd rather watch than Demolition matches right now), I think the problem is your perception of Demolition as Road Warriors ripoffs. I think the only similarities between the two teams is that they were face painted tag teams who started off as heels, but got cheered enough that they became babyfaces without a real turn. Otherwise, I don't think Demolition were really that similar. Their look was more of a ripoff of KISS than the Roadies, unlike the Powers of Pain, who were a 100% ripoff of Demolition. They wrestled a different style, they cut different promos, they had a different look...I mean, I'm not going to say I don't see it on a superficial level, but on a macro level, I don't think it's there. I think they had other goals in mind with Demolition, to where I don't even know if they had real plans for the Demos when they brought them in (they were left off the WM3 card when just about every other guy in the company worked the show). While their careers followed a similar projectory, I think that was coincidental.

Granted, those outfits didn't exactly do them any favors, but Eadie has a very noticeable gut while in Demolition, which you can see even while wearing a belt. I like Eadie, but by the end of his career, dude was fat.

C'mon Victator. I'm willing to listen to most of the arguments for and against Demolition in this thread, but Eadie and Darsow were indisputably fat.

During Wrestlemania weekend this past year, my friend came over the night before and we got drunk and watched part of Will's SMW set, which led to us searching YouTube for Dennis Coralluzzo promos. I don't know how they are sober, but Dennis Coralluzzo promos are AMAZING while drunk, especially all of the crazy racist stuff he was doing in Memphis with Koko Ware.

I think you'd see an inverse of this vote at places like the F4W board, but I think the vast majority of other places would prefer Cena to Angle at this point.

They've worked with Barry Darsow a few times after the lawsuit, so I think most of the bad blood is on the Bill Eadie side.

Yeah, Haku selling for literally anybody on the Chikara roster would be the most unrealistic thing in wrestling ever.

Gorilla used to list Pat Patterson as "the master of the go-behind" on commentary often, and would refer to the "Terry Garvin School of Self-Defense" as well. Those jokes were in no way new.

In other words, he's Vince McMahon.

I think Maria had planned to get out of wrestling but her follow up to her appearance on Celebrity Apprentice was botched horribly and she wound up back in wrestling. And yeah, it was only Celebrity Apprentice, but that show is watched by a decent-sized audience and you'd think she could have wound up as a C-list celebrity on shows on VH1 or Bravo or whatever and carved out a decent career.

I'm guessing that Hero and Claudio got Del Ray in. She's based out of Tampa, so I'm guessing she lives with one of them and they were able to get her a contract.

He banned the piledriver too. There's definitely some elements used in ROH that were used in old southern territories, but to say that ROH is being booked like a southern territory is a whole different matter and is pretty false. Southern territories were generally booked well.

To be fair, there's clearly wrestlers who are buying into that MMA garbage, like Richards and O'Reilly.

I think it's time people stopped talking about Cornette like he's a wrestling genius. Truth is, he's really not. Having watched a lot of SMW, his strengths as booker were rerunning old Mid South and Memphis stuff that did get over, and using a crew of strong workers. But he also did a LOT of stupid shit. Stipulations didn't mean anything because they were regularly broken (Bob Armstrong comes back under a mask, Ricky Morton doesn't get his hair cut, etc). Cornette felt that if he screwed the fans out of something they didn't want to see, they would think it was OK, but the truth is, eventually the fans got tired of being promised something and not delivering. He also didn't know how to book a top babyface to save his life. Brian Lee wasn't ideal as a top babyface to begin with, but Cornette did him no favors. Smothers was a great top babyface, and the booking constantly dicked around with him. Fact is, in four years, the only babyfaces that weren't hurt by the booking were the Dirty White Boy (and his turn was admittedly pretty great), the Rock 'n' Roll Express, and Bob Armstrong. Based on his track record, Cornette is not nearly as smart as people think he is. He is buying right into the Dave Meltzer "pro wrestling is MMA" talking point BS and trying to attract an MMA audience for pro wrestling. That's not going to work, because MMA fans don't want to watch a fake version of a real sport, when the real thing is already horribly overexposed in this country. The whole game plan just isn't going to work, and I'm sure five years from now, Cornette will have all sorts of excuses as to why it didn't work, but the fact is, it's not a good plan and the proof is right there in the open with ROH's poor gates outside of a few markets.

Not sure how far along this is, but I just watched a fun Enforcers/Young Pistols match from the Power Hour on 10/12 that might be worth a look if you have room. Fun little sprint. I really liked Larry Zbyszko as Arn Anderson's tag team partner and wish they had stayed together longer, rather than Arn moving on to team with Eaton.