Bob Morris

I was thinking more about Austin's neck injury and that was what was keeping him from continuing to pursue an active career as a wrestler. If his neck is still giving him problems, I can't see him being able to do a lot in a wrestling match, regardless of other factors.

Most wrestlers are, by definition, bullshit artists, but Hogan certainly takes the cake. EDIT: Or if you Mel Brooks' fans prefer, most wrestlers are, by definition, standup philosophers.

There has been some really good information regarding Alzheimer's and dementia shared. While I would tend to agree that pro wrestling itself isn't going to get hammered for this, I do think it's worth looking closer at what can lead to a brain injury and how it might impact somebody later in life. It's interesting to note how a couple of patients brought up were former boxers, that Verne Gagne was a wrestler and that we hear about several former football players who ended up with Alzheimer's or dementia. Ronald Reagan, in fact, played football in high school and college. In looking up stuff regarding brain injuries, I ran across a very interesting article about a woman who got a brain injury from a minor auto accident. It's a long article, so I'll just provide the link and won't C&P anything. http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/health/3937.html Chris Nowinski's website also has some interesting information. It's really interesting to see how much he and others have researched the effects of brain injuries and concussions and the problems they can lead to down the road.

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/ve...ect_feb_18_2009 Anyone think we're about to get into more media stories about dementia, Alzheimer's Disease and how they are linked to concussions and the like? And how likely may it have been that Verne may have suffered from multiple concussions during his wrestling career, even when he wrestled during a time when wrestlers weren't known for taking frequent blows to the head.

There's definitely plenty of entertatining matches on the SNME DVD... but that's mostly what we remember SNME for: the entertainment value. I agree with Marty that the Hogan/Bundy match is quite good. Hogan/Funk was a fun match as well. I dug watching Roberts/Savage... clearly this was the match that indicated that the fans would be willing to cheer Jake. I believe they kicked in his face turn a couple months after this. While the Hogan/Hennig match wasn't much to write home about, I think it was good it was included because you get to compare and contrast Hogan's earlier work with the work he was doing at that point of his career. The Hennig match was the point when Hogan's match were getting too formulaic... compare that to the earlier matches in which Hogan tends to mix things up a bit, sometimes opting for a finish other than with the legdrop, and also doing more to incorporate "false comebacks" to keep the fans on their toes. The Bulldog/Michaels match is in some ways similar to the one they had on Raw a couple years later... but the Raw match was the better of the two. But it's interesting to note how the two worked in some of the same spots. I don't get the inclusion of a couple of the matches from the 2006 run... sure, it was going to be included to an extent, but Shawn/Shane is just another pointless exercise in what type of nutty stunts Shane can do and the novelty of that wore off for me a long time ago. And the DX vs. Spirit Squad match... it's clear the crowd never bought into the Squad having any chance of winning so it's mostly a heatless match with fans popping for spots. Edge/Cena was solid and I do think Cena deserves more credit than he gets for his workrate. And really, the Five Knuckle Shuffle is no worse than the People's Elbow... and if I'm not mistaken, Cena has never won a match with the Shuffle, while we all know Rock won several matches with the Elbow.

Regarding Sting, WWE indicated interest in bringing him on board at one point, but Sting wanted to work a lighter schedule than what most WWE wrestlers work. But if Sting ever did decide to go to WWE, Vince would take him without hesitation because he would believe he could make money off Sting. As far as the planned DVD that got scrapped, that probably has to do with what WWE may believe are legal issues since Sting is currently under contract to TNA. And Savage asking for a lot of money... I've heard those reports, but Hulk Hogan asks for a ton of money all the time and Vince brings him in, so I doubt money is the reason Vince wants nothing to do with Savage.

Bret Hart wrote in his book that Savage essentially bolted for WCW in the dead of night, similar to what Lex Luger did. The reason we don't see WWE go out of their way to bury Savage like they do Luger is because Savage is respected by many more wrestlers than Luger is.

Is Austin in wrestling shape? He hasn't done an actual match in about five years, if I'm not mistaken. Whenever he shows up, it's just to do an wrestling angle where he usually gives somebody the stunner. I suppose they could always try to prod Terry Funk out of retirement again, or find some other "legend" they can pull out of the woodwork to do the match with Jericho... assuming they don't get Mickey Rourke to show up.

With HHH, I wouldn't mind seeing him face Orton simply because the time has come for Orton to get his big singles win over HHH. I wouldn't mind seeing Edge face somebody else... they could do Edge/Rey to shake things up a bit and let Cena face somebody else. Not sure who he would face, though. HBK/Taker seems pretty obvious at this point.

I suspect they'll include the Savage-Santana match where he won the IC title, ditto the two matches in which Savage won the WWE title (DiBiase at WM IV and Flair at WM VIII). Savage-Warrior from WM VII is a no brainer. True, Savage lost that one, but it does include the post-match angle of him reunited with Elizabeth. I wouldn't mind seeing one of the matches from the Savage-DDP series in WCW. There was some good work there.

The only thing that worries me about giving Jeff Hardy a long-term push in the top spot is that he is one wellness policy violation away from losing his job. If I was booking WWE, I wouldn't plan a long-term run at the top for him until I was absolutely sure he had cleaned up his act.

I got the set today and watched the first disc. The gist of what Al is saying is that the commercial breaks were plopped in spots where the match slows down a bit, usually when there is a transition. Example: In the Savage-Hart match, the commercial break comes shortly after the spot where Savage injures his ankle outside the ring, and when you come back, you have Elizabeth tending to Savage and the action about to pick up again. It's pretty slick editing on the part of the WWF production team and you hardly miss anything, as compared to when shows became live and the commercial breaks would sometimes come at inopportune times.

Good to know Jim Ross said that... now we all wait for him to testify in front of Congress under oath. I look forward to it happening.

Nearly a year after the fact, Cena is still complaining about The Rock.

It's possible both Christian and Matt Hardy were discussed for the spot and, at some point, they made the nod to go with Matt. Although I would agree that Matt was the more logical choice because he was already on the WWE roster, and more importantly, a Matt/Jeff feud is at least something fresh, rather than us repeating Hardys vs. E&C all over again. People may get nostalgic for that stuff, but I'd rather it be left for WWE 24/7 or DVD sets than being revived again on the current product. I think the Christian stuff took more of a life because people watched Christian go to TNA, get pushed quickly to the top, then have his push mishandled nearly every step of the way, thus people believed that WWE would somehow "get it right" with an immediate push in a top spot. But the truth is, that wasn't going to happen because, while Christian left WWE mostly on good terms, he was never viewed by anyone in WWE as more than a midcarder. Christian made it pretty clear he left WWE because he had saved enough money to do so, go elsewhere, freshen up his act and work a lighter schedule. Now that he's done that, he's gone back to WWE so he can make more money, which no doubt he'll save again over the course of his current contract, and when it expires, he'll give notice again and either work elsewhere for a few years, or he may just opt to leave wrestling altogether. Compared to most wrestles, Christian is pretty smart with how he's handled his career.

You would think Vince would be smarter than to allow much of the nonsense that gets through WWE Creative, but it still happens.

Details about the DVD can be found here. Some of the matches are good selections, a few obviously being selected for historical importance more than anything else. Not sure if it's one to go out of your way to get, though.

Todd Martin, ladies and gentlemen: Do I even want to comment on this...

I do remember the SNME angle, but I suspect it was done just to set up a house show run. Davis just never had any lasting appeal once he did the WMIII six-man match. They tried to get programs going but he never really kept his heat. It didn't help that Steele was a novelty act and that Sam Houston (who they tried a program with against Davis) didn't get over.

Everything is purely speculative, other than I believe John is right when he says that Sting/Lex was going to be the program had Sting not injured his knee and he got the title from Flair in 2/90. I suspect, at some point, that Sid Vicious still would have been worked in as a challenger against Sting, although it wouldn't have come as soon as it did. Certainly no Black Scorpion, who was created because they didn't have a challenger lined up for Sting other than Sid. I would say Sting/Luger would have done better business than what was presented at the time, but that's mostly because the Black Scorpion was so bad that it caused more people to tune out than tune in. But I doubt it would have done huge business. Sting wasn't really drawing that much interest to begin with... he was popular, but there wasn't much to indicate he could take the ball and run with it to the level that Flair did at one point or that Hogan generally did in WWF at the time. When the steroid scandals in WWF arose, though, that was going to affect WCW as well because pro wrestling as a whole would have been tossed under the bus.

From the 1/31 F4W.com update. The folks at TNA once again prove they don't get it:

The real question to ask is whether or not Hollywood folks and the media who cover this are going to fall for it being a work. I fully expect somebody in Hollywood to leak details about Rourke still being involved in Wrestlemania and thus the talk about his Oscar chances getting hurt coming up again. It's Hollywood... gossip travels quicker there than it does in pro wrestling.

Regarding Flair, John summarized elsewhere that it really boiled down to Bret never liking Flair's in-ring style. Really, though, Bret isn't much different from most wrestlers in that he is a firm believer that his ways to go about wrestling matches were the way it should be and what made him great, and has opinions of other wrestlers and their styles that aren't gonna change no matter how much somebody else offers a counterpoint.

It's amazing to watch how Wade Keller will one moment make a good point in addressing something Matt Hardy had to say, and then turn around and tell everyone just how nice he was to Matt for so long and now Matt is dissing him.

Let us all hold a moment of silence for the end of the WWE career of Bob Holly... after which you can feel free to say good riddance to a guy who stiffed the hell out of a lot of people (or worse) on the pretext of protecting the business.