Robert S

The guy he is fighting likely wouldn't even be in the UFC if he wasn't being brought in to fight Punk. He is 33 years old, and has an 0-1 MMA record. However, his loss is to the same guy that demolished Punk, and he is apparently a pretty good Muay Thai guy. So, unless Punk has improved significantly, he is probably getting knocked out to end this experiment. Punk is 39 years old and his athletic ability never was a strength in his pro wrestling career. He was a guy who made it on willpower, brains and charisma / talking skill. There is no reason to believe that he improved much since the last fight.

Of all collection themes they could think of they went with the best of Ho Train.

- Sorry, you are right, the Sunday afternoon thing was in summer of 95 (because I remember them airing some Goldust vignettes). Was it still Challenge at that point though? I thought they had switched to Action Zone (in addition to Superstars) at that point. - The last show on DSF before the hiatus was, I think, the Raw after Royal Rumble 98 (the Rumble itself was the first big-5 show for a long time not being aired on free TV). The return show was a one hour clipshow of Wrestlemania XIV plus the full version of Survivor Series 98. - What do you mean me about what I still have? Newsletters? Sorry, no, I never got any of them. If you are talking about old tapes, I suppose I have some VHS tapes with German WWF PPV (big 5 only) versions from 94 to 97, though not complete. The WCW stuff I always taped over. I have not the slightest clue in what condition these tapes are either. Regarding DF1 exclusive stuff: XWT seems to have three WCW Germany shows, so at least Alex Wright vs. Tom Gerhardt (fighting over a stolen exhaust pipe) and Axel Schulz counting a pinfall for a Scorpion Deathlock will live forever.

It's interesting because I heard an interview with Cesaro once where he talked about 1993-1994 being the glory period, which is when the bloom came off the rose in the UK, but it coincided with the WWF getting on TV in Switzerland and Austria and those kind of places. WWF actually got on TV in the German market in 1989. I don't know if dish-distribution started earlier in the UK than in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but one important factor why it took longer for US wrestling to get big here was the time slot. I cannot speak for pre-93 (though I assume the time slots were about the same), but when I started watching in 93 WWF was on at 10 pm to 11 on and WCW about the same (maybe sometimes an hour earlier). The TV stations were not allowed to air it earlier. When in the summer of 96 the then host of WWF (RTL 2) tried to put WWF on Saturday afternoon they almost lost their concession (and as a result moved wrestling to 2 am in the morning). I would say the boom period here was from 93 to 96. Besides the short shelvetime a wrestling boom usually has, there were additional factors for the end of the boom: (1) For some time there was wrestling on basically every night, so the market became oversaturated. (2) WWF lost their TV slot in early 98 (well, not lost per se, in 97 they were on the same channel as WCW and production company of the German WCW shows created a recap show where they mixed WCW and WWF programming, needless to say that WWF did not like this) and did not find a replacement until December or so. I think it took them quite some years to find a stable home / timeslot (I stopped watching the German shows by then, both the shows themselves and the commentary became unbearable). (3) I assume that attitiude programming starting in 97 put quite some people off. (4) First reducing and later completely stopping running shows in the German market (due to WWF drawing less and less over here) probably was some vicious cycle.

I remember when they had a match at a PPV - maybe KOTR? - and Jericho flipped after Wade Keller criticized it. I don't recall what I thought of the match, but I'm guessing it probably wasn't anything special in my mind since the Keller anecdote is my only lasting memory of it. Jericho was so angered at the reaction online to that match that he took down his website: http://web.archive.org/web/20021010031640/www.chrisjericho.com/commentary.htm

I was watching King of the Ring 2000 over the last week. For as much praise WWF 2000 gets this was a complete shit-show layed out like during the darkest Attitude days. The tournament itself was a complete afterthought full of 3-5 minute TV matches, most of the pairing were already done on Raw or Smackdown during the previous weeks. Additionally you had a bullshit finish opening the show. Then there was the Stooges special in a match that was booked for an audience of one. The Dudleys vs. DX match was as misogynistic as anything Vince Russo ever booked, including indicated oral rape by both D-Von and Bubba Ray and a powerbomb through a table against Tori. The six man tag main event was McMahon-tastic in the worst kind of way. The best thing on the show was the four teams elimination match.

One of the things I have on my network watch-thread is ECW TV. Currently I am somewhere in the summer of 94. What's really strange is that considering how early they put up all ECW TV (which shows that they consider ECW as higher priority) that they never bothered to put up the ECW homevideo stuff. I mean I am not really keen on watching an undercard of ECW 1994, Chad Austin vs. Don E. Allen or Hack Meyers vs. Rockin Rebel is nothing I have to see in my lifetime, but still it seems odd, especially considering that at least at that point the TV shows mostly were hype-shows for the monthly big shows that ended up on homevideo (nothing wrong with that, mind you).

I did not realize it back then but in the spots he did here Albert looked really good. He really seems like a guy who could have had a much better US career if was not stuck with horrible gimmicks early on in his career that burnt him in the long run.

This was disgusting even in FF mode. This truly was booked for an audience of one.

NXT also has some corny stuff they do all the time. Usually it's a random wrestler being interviewed by 10 smartphones before either a wrestler walks in or something happens in the background.

Will he turn up being the power who is behind the group feuding with Steve Austin's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson? "It was me Austin, it was me all along the time."

According to reports they have tried to spike their subscription numbers quite a lot offering similar deals.

Though Fujiwara is the more experienced worker (if you know what I mean).

Classic case of "if you want one guy to win but don't want the other guy to put the first guy over, don't book the match". You can get away with such things on TV but not on PPV.

This is quite a different match compared with their January outing. In January you had more an exhibition style showcase match between two guys who have trained with each other while this is more like a classic heel vs. face match. Funny considering their natural personalities that you would go with Cabana as heel and Punk as face.

There sure were a lot of wrestlers called "Daniels" in the early 2000s. Christopher Daniels, Jeff Daniels, Danny Daniels, Josh Daniels...

Meltzer listed the agents of each Backlash match in the latest Observer: Bayley vs. Riott: Tyson Kidd & Malenko Rollins vs. Miz: Tyson Kidd Jax vs. Bliss: Sarah Stock (Sarita) Hardy vs. Orton: Double A Bryan vs. Cass: Noble & Malenko Charlotte vs. Carmella: Johnny Ace Styles vs. Nakamura: Noble Braun & Lashley vs. KO & Zayn: Malenko & Rotundo Reigns vs. Joe: Michael Hayes

All that posing by Reckless Youth annoyed me to no end. Take that away and you have a perfectly fine match.

I still follow football, though to a much lesser degree than I did in the past. I mostly follow regional Austrian leagues, though I have not attended a match in 2 years or so. In the past I was attending matches of the highest or second Austrian league at least 10 times a year. The big leagues and Champions League don't interest me at all. I am usually not that guy, but this stuff has become to commercialized for me. Though I usually watch a bunch of matches of the World Cup and the European Championships on TV. Living in Austria you cannot help but follow a bunch of winter sports. Most popular on TV are alpine skiing, biathlon and skijumping. The only thing I have seen live of these is skijumping. (living in Austria I do alpine skiing personally as well, though only for leisure) For some other sports (for example handball, cycling and athletics) I read results and maybe watch a bit on TV, but I would not say that I follow them closely.

I am not an expert or fanatic for classical music, but I have been to the opera a couple of times and watched some more on TV. Mozart is a guy whose music is sometimes really hard for me to get into. I can see loving his concertos or symphonies and bits of his operas, but whole operas, which is what he is best known for, are for me a torture to get through. I think I would rather sit through a 7 hour Wrestlemania than through a 3+ hours Mozart opera. I was watching Le Nozze di Figaro (live) in school (which almost killed me) and a couple of years ago I tried to watch Die Zauberflöte a couple of years ago on TV (I had to resign half an hour in). Schubert is an interesting case to me. He is best known for his songs, especially his song cycles go into a direction that is not what you would usually think of by the term "classical music".

At least the title "Backlash" was quite fitting for this show.

Did they even do the MITB qualifying matches on Raw in 99 as that kinda annoyed me how Heat wasent available in the UK and we see odd clips of people qualifying. I suppose you mean KOTR? According to "The History of WWE" all 8 qualifying matches happened on Sunday Night Heat indeed (on May, 30th and on June, 6th).

Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I remember the finish was blown timing-wise. I think the idea was for the Rock to have some seconds left to pin HHH after the tombstone to even the score. If that's true than the WWF had two accidental title changes due to clock-missmanagement in three PPV shows (the other one being Hardcore Holly pinning Crash Holly at Wrestlemania after what was supposed to be the end of the 15 minutes hardcore batle royal).

The structure is fine and very un-Hit Squad, but the execution is really lacking. Even simple standard southern tag team spots like the hot-tag-that-the-referee-missed spots are blown (in this case partly by the referee and partly by the wrestlers themselves). I did not find a birthdate for the Metal Maniac, but KC Thunder was born in September 1965, so he was 34 here. If you would have asked me I would have guessed him to be 45 and the Metal Maniac being 50. Considering that the Metal Maniac started wrestling in 1991 and is still wrestling today he probably was in his early to mid 30ies as well.

Well, Hollywood ain't the real world either. But yeah, honestly, Randy Orton, with all the shitty tattoos, kinda looks likes some of the douchebags who do Survivor type TV shows. In all honesty, all the girls we're talking about aren't that special looking either. Some are really cute girls (although butchered by the makeup department), but plenty of them are just on the more normaly attractive side of the spectrum, really. Which is a good thing. The days of the lingerie models is over, thankfully. Alexa Bliss looks plays a part, but the fact is she's just really good at being a bitch heel. Personnality also plays a huge part into perception of attractiveness (not to state the obvious, but the same works IRL, I mean, look at Foley's wife for instance). Is Alexa Bliss pretty? She is usually wearing so much make-up that I have no idea what she really looks like (and I definitely don't feel like going on a google-pics search for private/non-work photos of her).