Death From Above

Dibiase being #1 was a callback to him having "purchased" #30 the previous Rumble and people enjoying his character getting what he had coming. I think they also wanted Dibiase out of the way before Flair gets there so Flair is the heel that has all of the spotlight for virtually the whole match. Dibiase being eliminated almost instantly gives Flair a platform to be the one heel drawing all the focus virtually the whole way through. Bulldog was #2 I guess because they'd run a previously televised Battle Royal that he'd won and they wanted him hyped as another possible red herring marathon man. If I remember right he lasts a long time in this too and it's played up as a big deal when he gets eliminated. Bulldog elminating Dibiase right off establishes him as a threat and makes the next few minutes far more dramatic than they have any real right to be given that in hindsight we know Flair is going to the finish. I think Flair not being 1 or 2 adds ever so slightly to the impression that the Rumble was something totally random and not just taking the easiest pre-determined route. Heenan's reaction on commentary is so priceless, his man dodged being 1 or 2 but then he's just apoplectic that Hogan, Tunney and that evil WWF are out to get his client. To me that's one thing the 92 rumble does so well in that you have several possible red herring marathon guys, several great "this could be the real champion" moments, the middle of the match OH NO moment when Piper has Flair alone etc. It's all playing out as it should but often it did so (other than Piper, who HAS to come in right when he does) in the second most obvious moment instead of the first, which gives it a wilder feel. There's even the great sequence where Greg Valentine goes after Flair which is an old rivalry and although the announcers don't play it up because it happened in OTHER PLACES, the crowd is clearly with it. I think it's perfect just the way it is.

I can only speak to the original incarnations and not the mid-2000's one. I was VERY pro-Triple H during the period where The Rock got really big but was literally doing the same promo every fucking show and all of his matches were nothing but punching, a body slam, the People's Elbow, and the Rock Bottom. At that point Rock was hotter than anyone in the business and was basically the most sub-par 80's Hogan possible. Triple H seemed like a far more interesting wrestler to me at the time. Oh, how that pendulum has swung about over the years. I never thought Triple H was worth a shit on the mic, and that has never changed. Shawn Michaels isn't a favourite wrestler of mine but he's so much better as a heel than a face. I despise him as a face, enjoyed him (relatively) as a heel. So in the original run it works in the context that you really get the feeling Shawn Michaels got paid to play Shawn Michaels. Never minded Road Dogg. Good tag wrestler, had his silly little harmless shtick on the mic, decent when asked to work singles matches. Tapped out on watching WWE before "X-Pac heat" became an IWC meme, so never really had a problem with him other than the bronco buster sucking ass. Hated Billy Gunn. Useless in the ring and had no promo skills whatsoever. Was clearly only there because he took the right chemicals. Chyna was Chyna. Not sure what to say about that. ASCII shrug here. The juvenile comedy was always pretty bad, but that's Attitude Era in general. I think the whole period is trash, DX are just part of a larger whole.

By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Worvan, you shall be avenged.

I'm a horrible person for laughing at that. Goddamn.

I asked in multiple places if I missed something with her just disappearing off TV and absolutely no one seems to have a clue why. It's very odd because they were building an angle there and it just got dropped with no explanation. Even when the Del Rio/Zeb Mexiamerica thing bombed they blew it off with a Del Rio promo where he fired the guy.

Aw, bullshit.

It's a bad stable. But I actually agree that when you look back on it... it's 100% pro wrestling, warts and all. Having said that I will say I find Curtis Iaukea completely fucking terrifying no matter what rambling gibberish he spit out. That dude looked like some sort of goddamn movie monster who eats people.

Great Kalisto/Del Rio match. Nice to see them go off the board and reward a guy that has been on fire for weeks. Kalisto is really good at working big man vs. little man and I really don't mind his theme of working underdog but winning because he's so solid at it.

I wouldn't go quite that far but it's pretty close. Anyone having to sell fear of Jericho is completely ridiculous. Jericho assaulting a musical instrument while A BAND NERD CRIES is the worst kind of high school fanfiction.

Vince saying BOOTY made me laugh, I mean, I'll give it that much. Sheamus juicing hardway for pretty much no good reason was a little weird. Stardust doing a Bowie tribute facepaint was pretty cool.

Also, I get that Angle is no better than any other old timer at this point because I realize I'm walking both sides of the fence here. But at least he's a new-old timer. So I mean, that's something, I guess. And no matter what he does in the ring I have a hard time believing the crowd would turn on him in three months the way they did, say, with the big Bautista return push.

The WWF didn't bring back legends in '97/'98 because everyone they thought they could make money with were under contract to WCW. Does anyone seriously think making new stars the hard way was their first choice then? After WCW died (and Time-Warner's contracts had run their course) they were happy to bring back Hogan, Hall, Nash, Piper. They brought back Backlund after Hogan and company had left despite him being a kind of unseen entitiy in the business for a decade and stuck the belt on him. This has always been on the table and if they see it as the path of least resistance, they are going to take it. Yes, they do it more now. But they've never had a period where they were opposed to it. I don't disagree that the over-reliance on legends is hurting them, mind you. I'm not going to lie, Rock coming out of nowhere and being put in a top slot at Wrestlemania didn't exactly make me want to watch more. I'm fine with them being involved in sort of their own self contained thing (it's a main reason I'm least offended by Triple H as a possible opponent for an Undertaker match), but I don't like them going into big slots that should be going to other people. I think they have plenty of talent and they really shouldn't need to do this sort of thing, but as long as it's seen as the easiest path to making a short term buck I'm not sure how you convince them to change. This is one of the biggest problems with them having no competition. Nobody can force them to change and take a different path.

I liked Extreme Warfare Revenge better because it was simpler, and I've probably picked it up and dropped it again every couple years since it came out. Still, I'm glad the series is still going. It's really great that it still has a fanbase supporting it after all these years. I remember playing versions as far back as the old VBasic version where you couldn't even pick match winners yourself. I remember Al Snow beat Triple H for the WWF title once. Good times.

Bret's a really weird case because I think he has all the components but he's so clearly a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Frankly he'd be so much better if he had the current WWE roster to work with than pretty much any period he had a large push in his real career. Bret vs. Rusev would have ruled. Bret vs. Cessaro would have ruled. He had so few guys that had that kind of skillset to play off of for large periods of time. There are so many guys there now that if Brett could have worked with them, I could see his case being a lot stronger. Other than Owen and Shawn (and one match with the British Bulldog) just too often he lacked an opponent capable of getting to the next level. And you can argue he's not even really that great a Shawn opponent. I don't think the whole history of wrestling TV being so much better cataloged now than it was a decade ago does anyone that worked in the WWF in the early 1990's any favours at all to be honest. It's just impossible to get around the fact that such a glaringly high percentage of their wrestling is filler and not even particularly good filler. For a guy that was on TV every week for a million years his catalog of legitimately high end matches is incredibly weak. There are Mexican workers where we're missing a decade of their career that can easily match his accepted "high end" output. There are just so many guys that worked All and New Japan TV in the first half of the 90's that can blow his catalog away just on that alone. Pre-neck injury Chono probably has as many if not more high end TV matches then a career of Bret Hart when in the early 90's he was almost a weekly anchor sent out there to guarantee a solid TV match, and nobody even takes Chono seriously as a candidate in the big picture because the back end of his career is what it is (even though the back end of his career is still worlds above Bret's WCW run). Again I think in a sense this is not entirely Bret's fault, but it is what it is. Too often he was stuck working Kamala or whatever. I think he actually does a good job getting matches out of guys that were 80% gimmick but there's only so far that can take you in a GOAT poll. I think his Wrestlemania match with Austin is a contender for best match ever in the Vince-run "WWF years". It's just a shame there isn't so much more like it we can compare it to. It's eternally frustrating that Bret/Austin and the Canada/USA thing was en fuego but it happens just before Bret really vanishes as a meaningful force in wrestling due to, again, a lot of things that aren't really Bret's fault. His WCW run is a disaster. I didn't mind his dream match with Sting but I've never heard anyone bring it up as some kind of all time classic. WCW bought into the theory that Bret was a superworker that couldn't talk and they miscast him almost from the moment he arrived. Between that and some not-very-subtle politics from OTHER PEOPLE, Bret's WCW run is just fucked all round. I would question the traditional logic that Bret lacked the charisma of some other stars. Bret was the only good serious promo in the WWF for a really long stretch where he was surrounded by cartoons and I agree that was absolutely part of his appeal. He absolutely sold wrestling to a lot of kids and teenagers, maybe I'm skewed on this being a Canadian. But I don't get this one on Bret. I actually think a lot of people have him kind of backwards, overrating his catalog of work in the ring and underrating him as a promo. His promos were a huge part of carrying WWF TV in a period where there's almost no high end MOTYC kind of wrestling to be found anywhere in the company. I don't dislike Bret; I'm from Alberta, he was probably my favourite wrestler in the world before THE INTERNET, but I find his GOAT case to be built around a lot of asterisked things that don't really hold up very well. I just don't understand a case for him near the top of the ballot. He's a very good wrestler stuck in a company that hated very good wrestling for far too long.

Angle would be an awesome surprise Rumble entrant.

This is the one thing about him that really bugs me. It's so bad. Nothing else about his ring work stands out more than a hundred other things guys do in WWE. His character strikes me as a PG Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's fine for the tribute gimmick it is. "Guy that wears a leather jacket to be an outlaw" is sort of a timeless wrestling staple I would be sad if it totally died. And not to take it off topic but I agree Rusev's selling rules. I love when he does his staggering, he's like a big wobbly jello man. But he also has some great offense. I'm sad I missed his whole super-push because I watch the League of Nations and constantly think this should be the focus guy in this group. Rusev does some of everything, I really like him.

As far as I can see in the last few months they are picking up mainstream sponsors, not losing them.

I don't want to see Taker vs Finn mainly because I feel like another Finn vs. Joe match guarantees you at least one good match at Wrestlemania that you can send out there to drive the crowd wild. I could totally see them opening the show with the NXT title.

Even in the few months I've been back watching WWE the women's booking has been quite confusing. Paige called out Charlotte's brother for being dead and Charlotte turns heel within 2 weeks and Paige was essentially the de facto babyface. Now the Charlotte/Becky Lynch angle. It's very strange.

Here's the thing. Triple H is noted as a really good corporate guy behind the scenes. A guy that can talk with the media, non-wrestling people etc. And is really good at coming across as professional in his manner. Even if he wanted to manipulate things this blatantly, I legitimately believe he'd be more subtle about it than this based on what we know about him.

I loved Greed. It was a great example of what might have been but never was.

Here's what I think of Triple H: I voted no without reading it, then read the thread and I felt fine.

I also feel like I should have about 30 Ian Rotten stories, but they have all blended together in my head into just saying "Ian Rotten".

In hindsight, NOAH's first ever show where in the main event they faked Misawa's death/recovery as part of a match is something I don't think I could ever watch again, and it was pretty bizarre and distasteful to begin with.

I could see them doing an all star match with something like Taker/Austin vs. Rock/Cena or something, but I honestly don't see them doing anything like that using most of the main roster. I don't know why people always get hung up on old guys putting a bunch of young guys over when we all know that isn't going to happen and it's not how wrestling has ever worked.