Cox

Dave from today's WON update: Yeah, Mark Henry is much, much better than Mr. Anderson.

Actually, they are saying that Hardy isn't under a TNA contract, which is why he hasn't made an appearance since the first show.

From this week's Figure Four Weekly review on the Royal Rumble: (for those who didn't watch, Punk started off the Rumble by eliminating everybody in the ring and cutting his usual Straight Edge promo during the downtime) Then a little bit later: So Punk being eliminated right away by Jeff Hardy is awesome, but Punk fighting HHH for a bit before getting dumped makes him look like a dork?

Am I wrong for thinking it's weird that Stan Hansen is inducting Inoki? It's like if Vader inducted Giant Baba into the WWE Hall of Fame.

I'm reading the WON Awards issue right now, and even though I sporadically watch WWE enough to know what's going on, and read the WON every week, I'm still surprised by these awards. Really, Chris Jericho was Wrestler of the Year? The American Wolves were tag team of the year? Yet when I try to think of who was actually better, I'm at a loss. I guess Punk's summer was more interesting than anything Jericho did, even if I liked the Jericho/Big Show tag team, but that was only really a 4-5 month run. What a nothing happening year 2009 was.

I thought it was bumped for Chris the Babykiller?

Todd Martin is obnoxiously bad. I can't imagine people reading him for any other reason than to marvel at both how obnoxious and how terrible his writing is.

How long until Linda comes up with some crazy reason for dropping out of the race? You know there's no way a McMahon would want to be publicly humiliated in a race like this.

You mean, before he worked with DX? Funny how that happens.

Meltzer said she debuted in 1939, so she's already at 8, so she would be going for 9 if WWE gave her an easy enough match.

Here's what I don't get - has the Raw set really changed all that much in the past 13 years? I know there have been some cosmetic changes, but the same basic set of big screen/stage/ramp has pretty much stayed static since they changed around 1997. Did the TNT set in 1985 look the same as the Prime Time Wrestling set in 1988? Did the Prime Time set in 1988 look the same as 1991 (when they went to the studio audience setup)? Did the Prime Time set in 1991 look the same as the Raw set in 1993? Did the Raw set look the same in 1993 as it did in 1997? The look of the set used to evolve, and after the Monday Night Wars, that evolution pretty much stopped. I think that's led to the feeling of staleness as anything, although it doesn't help that they have the same guys on top (HBK, HHH, Undertaker) and even some of the same announcers (Ross, Lawler, Cole have all been around). It says something where a lot of fans preferred an abhorrant TNA show to WWE simply because it was different than the usual WWE show (even if it was the equivalent to an old Thunder, not even Nitro, in quality). WWE programming needs a serious change, a shock to the system, because as a show, it just hasn't evolved at all in a long time, and the old WWF used to constantly evolve and reinvent itself.

Reading the Tokyo Dome results, it sure seemed weird to see Terry Funk and Abdullah the Butcher working for New Japan in any decade, let alone in 2010.

From Todd Martin's Raw recap last night: Don't the WON types always give TNA shit for making things too complicated? By having Bret and Shawn make up before the Vince stuff, it kept the Bret/Vince storyline focused on Bret and Vince. Adding Michaels to the mix just complicates things, especially when he's going to be programmed with Undertaker at Wrestlemania and staying face. Plus, by Shawn and Bret burying the hatchet early in the show, it makes Vince look like more of an asshole for turning on Bret later, whereas if Shawn had turned on Bret or fought with him or whatever, nobody would have cared about Bret and Vince at the end of the show, and that was the main event.

Yeah, actually in a way, Bret not saying anything about Montreal was the perfect thing his character could have done. It shows that he has moved past Montreal, even if Shawn and Vince have not. He came to Raw to forgive and move on, and by not insisting on telling his side of the story, it showed his sincerity. I'm not sure if that was a planned nuance by the writing team or if it was just a by-product of Vince's ego not giving Bret fair time, but it actually kind of worked.

It's like both WWE and TNA wanted to relive 1997 tonight for some reason.

I liked the Bret segments with Shawn and Vince, and the DX tag match with Show and Jericho was good, and Kofi/Orton was decent. The rest of the show was kind of boring, and as much as I liked the Bret/Vince stuff, it still felt a little anti-climatic, although I guess they were limited in what they could do with Bret. Impact, however, was actively horrible. That cage match was the shits. Why did they pick poor Homicide to be the guy to go through the hole? Jeff Hardy debuting should be good for them, but they'll probably make him just another guy within 6 months. Angle/Styles was horrible, I didn't realize how much I don't like Angle until tonight. He just doesn't know how to build drama in what he does, all he can do is exchange moves, but he can't tell a storyline with moves and doesn't know how to do the little things to build drama in a match, like make a nearfall look important. Of course, none of that should be a surprise to anybody here. Hebner is also an amazingly shitty ref after all of these years too. I like Styles, but not against Angle. The nWo vs. Jarrett/Foley is going to be terrible. I mean, Waltman and Hall were shitty enough that WWE fired them both eight years ago, and never once tried to bring them back. Nash has been gone about seven years himself. Meanwhile, nobody gives a shit about Jarrett as a face, and TNA has pretty much used up Foley after a year where he's turned like five times, so nobody gives a shit about him either. Can't wait until they add Russo as the third member of their team! The Dudleys vs. the Nasty Boys, that's going to get fans flocking to TNA! The only thing about TNA I liked was Pope D'Angelo Dinero, TNA has something in that guy. WWE made a huge mistake wasting him and firing him, he's really talented. He's also probably a week or two away from being just another guy. They already tried damn hard by inserting Orlando Jordan into that interview for some reason, I guess because they're both black? Poor Nigel, he's going to be the fourth member of British Invasion before too long, doing 10 minute Explosion tags with the Young Bucks. Why did TNA even advertise Abyss/Rhino or Beer Money/British Invasion if they weren't going to deliver either match? P.S. Abyss is fucking terrible. Overall, I'm kind of glad I watched TNA, because I won't feel tempted to watch it again anytime soon. Raw might have been boring, but TNA was flat out awful.

So we can assume Rey will miss Mania due to surgery? Or will he be in MITB? Or Punk's opponent if they can't use Hardy? That would be wild for a former IWA Mid South main event to be a mid-card Mania match.

Meltzer in the WON was saying Bret/Vince, UT/Michaels, HHH/Sheamus (so I guess Cena isn't getting the belt back right away), Edge/Jericho, Orton/DiBiase, Cena/Rock or Cena/Batista (WWE wants Rock, but that's probably a loooooooong shot), Punk/Hardy if Hardy's legal issues are cleared up, and MITB.

He quit WWE over the weekend, and at one time it was rumored so he could go to TNA in a few months. I don't think WWE would have given him such a nice sendoff last night if it was to go to TNA, though I guess he could have taken a backstage job there.

It really shouldn't come as a huge surprise that the folks in the Observer clique aren't hip to anything remotely pop culture related, if you remember Dave and Bryan getting completely worked about Bret Hart buying Montgomery Burns' mansion. I think those folks tend to be in something of a wrestling/MMA bubble, so I can't say it's a huge surprise.

Here's a What-If I've often wondered about, what if WCW hadn't given up on Sting so quickly in 1990-1991? I know he wasn't doing great business, but I always thought that taking the title off of Sting so quickly killed his business potential. This was something Vince seemed to get early on, that while running a national promotion, you have to have a franchise babyface that the people believe in, and that the "chase" storyline doesn't work when the top babyface gets beat time and time again (SLL has touched on this in the past). By only holding the title for six months or so, it made Sting look impotent, something Vince never let happen to Hogan. While he always remained popular, I don't think Sting ever really reached his potential, and one of the reasons is because his first reign was handled so poorly, particularly with his first big PPV main event as champion being against Sid instead of a Flair rematch that could have made him, and would have done good business to boot. The Sid match followed by the Black Scorpion fiasco really left that title reign stillborn, and I think was a bigger factor than many people realize in Sting failing to achieve franchise babyface status in 1990 WCW.

It's probably bugged Bret for years that he went off on such a low note, basically he suffered the head injury in WCW, got fired, and that was that, never to be seen again. The combination of a nice payday and the chance to finally go out on a high note was probably the impetus behind this. I do think it says something about Vince that he's been working so hard to get Bret back. Bret is probably forgotten at this point, it's been 12 years since Montreal, and the business potential probably isn't there. Heck, they aren't even doing any TV in Canada between now and Mania. I think on Vince's end, it's more the chance of bringing Bret back means, in his mind, that he no longer did anything wrong and can absolve himself of any guilt, because hey, if Bret came back, then it must not have been that bad. Probably why he keeps trying to get Bruno to come back, only to be rebuffed time and time again; Bruno is more stubborn than Bret or Vince.

Even if it wasn't one of Vince's weird personal messages, can we at least agree that this is a pretty rude thing to do to a woman? I know it falls under the category of drawing heat or whatever, but it's still pretty demeaning. Plus, all it does is give ammunition to Linda's challengers in the Senate campaign that WWE disrespects women, even if Linda is no longer associated with the company directly.

The obvious example being Paul DePodesta being run out of Los Angeles by Bill Plaschke and the LA media because Frank McCourt would not fully commit to a more advanced statistical approach.

Mass Transit.