Bob Morris

I take it Sting did not show up for the TNA tapings yesterday? If Sting is coming to WWE, it's better he not wrestle Undertaker at Wrestlemania as you are likely only going to get a short run from him and it would be dumb for either Sting to job his only WM match or to have him be the guy to break Taler's streak. So I doubt Sting/Taker takes place. And if they are planning to induct Sting into the WWE Hall of Fame and nothing more, I doubt they'd be putting a vignette together like this. So assuming this is promoting Sting's arrival, then I would suspect the plan is for him to wrestle.

One thing about the match that gets overlooked is Tony Schiavone's foreshadowing near the start of the match. He's talking to Dusty about Steve McMichael's days in the NFL, where he was with the Chicago Bears his entire career, only then to sign with the hated rival Green Bay Packers in his final years. Schiavone says he asked McMichael about why he did that, "and he said, 'Money.' He said, 'I did it for the money.'" And then, we get the payoff with Debra bringing out the attache case full of money and Steve completes his heel turn, with Schiavone making a point to note what he had earlier discussed about Steve McMichael doing it for the money. It was one of those times in which Schiavone really did shine as a commentator.

Putting the I-C title on Ahmed was the right call, even if he did have trouble staying healthy and tended to work too stiff with other wrestlers. The fans were very much into his character. Had it not been for the injuries and other issues, Ahmed might very well have been pushed to the WWF heavyweight title.

If they were really smart, they would have done it where Jim Ross says, "I have brought back Razor Ramon," and then when Rick Bogner comes out as the fake Razor, Vince McMahon confronts Ross about it, declaring it's not really Razor, and then Jim saying he just does what Vince always does: Put a gimmick on somebody and there it is. In other words, it needed to be about Jim Ross mocking Vince McMahon's propensity for putting a gimmick on a guy to make it his property, not like it really was Razor coming back. Of course, there was the whole lawsuit with WCW at the time and supposedly Vince was trying to prove the gimmick still had value to the company. Meaning the last thing Vince thought about was doing something clever with the angle.

The downfall was when Bischoff became part of the group and they kept adding guys with the idea that, at some point, the nWo would form its own promotion. The truth is, nWo was only going to work as a faction, not its own promotion. The first Souled Out should have told them that, but then later in the year, they did their test run of nWo Nitro and that was one of many costly moves WCW made that allowed WWF to close the gap in the Monday Night Wars.

One has to wonder why TNA never bothered to get Nash and Booker locked up to at least a short-team deal before they went forward with their MEM reunion plans. It would be even funnier if Vince signed Booker and Nash to make more than just one appearance, thus further screwing TNA. Otherwise, I'm sure TNA will just play up how Booker and Nash "invaded" the Royal Rumble or somethiing like that.

I can relate. When I did the Nitro recaps for Rantsylvania, it was usually by watching the show as it happened and trying to type up my report as the show progressed. As a result, my writing was rushed and the whole show was based on "instant reaction" more than anything. It's one of several reasons why, looking back on those days, that I say I did a pretty bad job of reviewing shows.

On one hand, Bruce's wild tales and his constant shifting around on which side of the fence to take could make for an entertaining read. On the other hand, I'll be interested to know if Bruce is willing to be able to paint a picture of himself in the same vein that Bret painted the picture of himself. In Bret's autobio, he made himself out to be a conflicted individual who, on one hand, tried to justify a lot of dumb stuff he did, but on the other hand, wrote it so that it seemed like there was always this nagging doubt in his mind as to whether it was justified. If Bruce can even come close to portraying himself that way, I'll be impressed.

As I recall, he was doing commentary for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers... but that he also did so when he was still working for the WWF. EDIT: Oh, and I had completely forgotten about The Grudge Match until Al brought it up.

Speaking of 9/11, there's Stephanie McMahon comparing the anger people felt after the 9/11 attacks to how angry her family was about Vince McMahon getting indicted for steroid distribution. That's certainly right up there with everything Fritz did. As for the Melanie Pillman deal, she does say on the DVD that she wasn't forced into it and claims she wanted to dispel rumors about Brian's death being due to a drug overdoes. When you consider that she was a participant in the Austin/Pillman gun angle, I'm not surprised she'd claim she never felt forced to do anything after her husband's death. That being said, Bruce Pritchard's remarks on the Pillman DVD about what guts Melanie showed is one of the most shameless things to ever come out of his mouth.

I can't speak much to what the WON line was, but I remember when Keith's Rantsylvania site was just his own site in which he accepted writing from anyone, I wrote about the lack of good heels in the summer of 1999 and mentioned that HHH just wasn't catching on. That pretty much held true until the angle with Stephanie McMahon, at which point HHH finally got over as a top guy. I will say that, had Vince Russo not left when he did, I doubt HHH would ever have gotten over. A big reason why there weren't that many good heels was because the booking didn't help their cause (Undertaker being a big example) or they just didn't click (Jeff Jarrett and Billy Gunn are the two that come to mind). HHH was a combination of the two... once Russo was gone and the booking became better, HHH was able to hone his character in a better direction and, once the Steph angle kicked in, he got over as a top heel.

While I haven't seen a lot of Edge's recent work, I will say that, in watching the Jericho DVD, I far more enjoyed Jericho's matches with Cena, Michaels and Rey than I did his match with Edge. The Edge match just left me underwhelmed... not to mention I hated the finish.

Watching the Chris Jericho DVD got me thinking about those wrestlers who had the most memorable debuts in a wrestling promtoion. I know a lot of people put Jericho's first ever WWF appearance among those and it was certainly well done... and it does hold up pretty nicely over time, although Jericho said on the DVD he thinks his spiel and his reactions to Rock's rebuttal come off a bit cartoony. I would think another debut that would rank up there would be Scott Hall showing up on Nitro... true, he had been in WCW prior to that, but upon his return, it was a completely different persona and one that really got the ball rolling on the Outsiders/nWo angle. Ric Flair's first appearance on WWF Superstars is another one that comes to mind, in which he doesn't even go down to the ring for his match but immediately confronts Roddy Piper and gets into a brawl with him, with the end result being Vince McMahon taking a chairshot to the back as Piper was just swinging at anything that moved. Although I'm not certain if that would count as Flair's first TV appearance, but it was still a memorable way to kick off his run. Any other debuts that come to mind?

In watching some old WCW matches, I was pretty impressed with Dustin Rhodes' work. He seems to get this rap of being a guy who sucks just because he was Dusty Rhodes' son and was pushed during a time when Dusty was booking WCW. But in Dustin's case, I'd argue he deserved the push. He was over and worked some smart matches.

I suspect Dave's remarks have to do with the fact that the blindfold match that concluded the feud wasn't particularly good... that type of match really limits what you can do because you have to get the gimmick over. Also, I wonder if Dave was never a fan of Rick Martel's Model gimmick. But the blindfold match aside, it's definitely one of the better feuds of that era. The majority of the feuds Jake had during that period, in fact, were very good... Rude, Honky, DiBiase, Andre and Martel were all strong feuds that kept Jake going strong. The only feud that didn't really work in that run was the Bad News Brown feud.

Regarding Iron Shiek, I do know Gorillia Monsoon identified him as such when he debuted with the Col. Mustafa character. Honestly, I don't think there is any way Vince McMahon could have prevented fans from knowing it was the Iron Shiek, because everyone knew darn well who Hulk Hogan won the title from and would immediately recognize him, unless they had Shiek shave his mustache and wear a wig. When Barry Windham returned as The Widow Maker, he looked somewhat different, and with Tony Atlas, he was somebody that WWF fans likely wouldn't have remembered as well. But no way was Vince going to get away with that with Iron Shiek barring him getting a complete appearance makeover. If Vince really thought he could pretend it wasn't Iron Shiek, he was incredibly dumb.

I believe T&A were the Dudleys' first feud after their face turn. As for X-Pac and Road Dogg, I'll never forget them going over the Dudleys in a tables match, then humiliating them pushing them off the stage in a dumpster, which set up a dumpster match for the Dudleys to get their revenge...and then DX won again. I remember the Dudleys/T&A feud well and Jim Ross was constantly trying to make it like Trish Stratus was a sympathetic character, even though the booking didn't make it the case. It seemed more like WWF was waffling on what to do with the Dudleys, because they never turned face outright... they just got face pops because they put Mae Young through a table when fans were getting tired of Mae Young and the stuff she was doing. The Dudleys-DX match at KOTR was certainly annoying, especially when you consider that they put Tori into the match, which I suspect was a way for the Dudleys to win the match without Road Dogg or X-Pac taking the "tables" fall. And, of course, we never even got that ending, just Tori going through the table after the match was already over. In fact, KOTR that year was annoying in general, certainly one of the low points for booking as far as the creative team that year was concerned. The Hardcore evening gown title match was a bad idea, the six-man main event essentially allowed HHH to drop the title without eating a pin from The Rock, and the KOTR tournament itself was poorly booked. Angle-Rikishi might have worked as the final, but the problem was Rikishi had won the I-C title prior and thus fans immediately knew Rikishi wasn't going to win the tourney. On top of that, you had a pretty bad idea for a first-round match in Crash Holly-Bull Buchanan, featuring two wrestlers who no fan believed would win the thing, and while Angle-Jericho was certainly the best option for the final, I would have been OK with it being a semifinal match. Instead, it was a quarterfinal match and putting it there immediately took away any suspicion regarding who would win. Some fans may have thought maybe Benoit or Eddie could be a potential winnner, but realistically, Angle and Jericho were the top candidates.

I think a better way to describe what happened after Russo left the WWF was characters who just never had a concrete direction got a better direction after he left. Edge and Christian just seemed to bounce around all over the place, but when Russo left, they were eventually groomed into the top heel team using comedy properly to get over. Too Cool was treated as the allegedly gay couple, then turned into white guys can't rap, then after Russo left, became the fun-loving guys who befriend Rikishi by putting shades on him, thus putting him into a trance, then doing a dance number that the fans loved. Rikishi, BTW, was being tried as a sumo character in dark matches when Russo was there, but when Russo was gone, they changed plans. And on it goes from there... characters mostly had a better direction. Not everything was perfect, though. Aside from them dropping the ball on finding ways to wrap up a potential angle with HHH and Test, they screwed up the Dudleys heel push and were forced to make them faces as a result and the stuff they did with Mae Young (one which led to the problems with the Dudleys) was pretty bad. But, for the most part, the creative team had the right ideas.

Further adding to what has already been said about the NFL and its scheduling, the process works like this. First, everybody in each division plays each other twice. Since I'm a Broncos fan, I'll use the AFC West as an example: Denver must play San Diego, Oakland and Kansas City twice. Then comes the pairing of the AFC West with another AFC division. This year, it was the AFC South, meaning Denver gets to play Indy, Tennessee, Jacksonville and Houston. Then comes the pairing with an NFC division. This year, it was the NFC West, so Denver gets Seattle, St. Louis, Arizona and San Francisco. Every other AFC West team plays these teams as well. Then comes the final pairing... whatever place the team finishes in a division, it plays the two teams in the other divisions in the same conference who placed at the same spot within the division. So Denver drew the Jets and Baltimore, San Diego got Cincy and the Pats, Oakland got Pittsburgh and Miami and KC played Buffalo and Cleveland. After that is all set, then they go forward with the schedule. The only games in which there is any "flexibility" allowed are the Sunday night games down the stretch. The Thursday and Monday games are all set in stone, although they try to pick marquee matchups based on what happened last year. As for the Dallas-Minnesota example mentioned, Dallas still draws by name so people will watch it, even if Dallas isn't doing very well. At the same time, the NFL does not just specifically put Dallas into every prime time slot it can... the slots are divided among many teams, not just looking at marquee matchups, but also what are expected to be key divisional contests. And then there's the London game... I don't know the process for choosing that, but it certainly wasn't a headliner that got it this year. Denver vs. the Niners wasn't looked at as a marquee matchup even before the season started. The NFL does promote teams that have a national following (Dallas being a prime example) and players who are hot commodities, but that's for marketing purposes, not the purpose of determining who will be in everybody's lineup and who will be the chosen ones to get to the Super Bowl. And the NFL certainly doesn't try to schedule things or manipulate referees to ensure the chosen ones make it. All you have to do is look at this year's season... certainly the NFL would love for the Dallas Cowboys to make it to the Super Bowl because it will be held in their stadium, but anyone who follows the NFL knows that's not going to happen. As far as why the NFL chose that site, they chose it because it's a modern facility, not solely because they hoped that the Cowboys would get there. Certainly the NFL would like it to happen, but they weren't hellbent on it happening either. At any rate... Dave really needs to quit trying to compare the marketing side of NFL, NBA, MMA, etc., to the WWE or any pro wrestling promotion. With pro wrestling, the most marketable guys are the ones that the promotions makes damn well sure win on a regular basis and beat the opponents they are supposed to beat. With the NFL, jobber Buffalo nearly beat main eventer Pittsburgh and only failed to do so because Steve Johnson dropped a pass. And no, the NFL didn't secretly whisper to Johnson to drop that pass so proper booking would be achieved.

I can remember back in 1999 when I thought (and wrote) that perhaps Russo's problem was needing a change of scenery. I was wrong about that... he pretty much took the material he used in WWF and recycled it into new forms. The Goldberg heel turn in WCW, for example, bore some similarities to the Rock heel turn in terms of the build. It's too bad things in WWF 2000 went the wrong direction as the year progressed. Characters were better developed and storylines were more effective to start the year, but by the end of the year, it was back to the same problems as in 1999, just with a different creative team.

Whenever "top X" lists come out, the natural response from people is to overanalyze them. I see this happen all the time with the various lists done on VH1, whether it's done through random personalities, online polls or just updating a previous list to get some recent development on it. I know there were also plenty of choices on the recent NFL Top 100 Players that raised eyebrows, and in some cases, people clearly pushing for their favorites when criticizing the placement of certain players. It happens all the time with such lists. Everyone has an opinion about who was really the best, so regardless of who puts the list together or how biased the list compilers are, they get picked apart. As far as the list itself goes, I just shrug it off for the most part as I've seen enough such lists compiled with head-scratching choices that I know it wouldn't matter who WWE likes or doesn't like at the moment. That being said, I agree that Curt Hennig gets vastly overrated.

With Kerry, I suspect it was because he was so coked up. Not that the other Von Erich boys were innocent as far as using some type of drug (steroids and painkillers are the obvious ones), but Kerry was definitely the one Von Erich boy who abused cocaine the most.

Nash is correct to a point, but he's also notorious for manipulating that point. While it shouldn't be "heel wins one week, face the next," it should be that, at some point before the blowoff, the face gets "one up" on the heel that keeps the heel on his toes, rather than the heel prevailing every time until the blowoff match.

I picked up a DVD set of Smoky Mountain Wrestling recently and it includes the Night of Legends show, the same one on which Chris Jericho wrestled with a broken arm, then proceeded to do a massive blade job. Blood was all over the canvas. Referee Mark Curtis was grabbing Jericho's blood-soake head and he had blood all over his shirt. That's not what you call sanitary... true, such blade jobs don't happen often, but that's an example of what wouldn't be considered safe.

How prophetic.