El-P

One word : yawn. The tag match was okay and fun, but nowhere as good as the New Day's matches with Cesaro & Kidd. The Divas match was okay although the Triple Threat formula automatically makes it worst than it should. It's obvious it's all about Stephy though (who really looks more and more like her father, it's scary), which sucks. I also noticed how fake and robotic the entrance routine look in this setting, since basically each girl had to wait for the previous one to her little move so they could do their own. They don't work the crowd, they just do their routine because they are supposed to do it. I know it's all old problem dating back from the mid-00's, but it's so striking at times. Cena vs Owens was not even a good match to me. Self-conscious epic that wasn't epic at all. Move, kick out, move, kick out, finisher, kick out, your opponent's finisher, kick out, wash, rinse, repeat. Yeah, Cena is such a great worker, with such a great psychology... The main event… You know, suplexing a guy a hundred time was spectacular the first few times around, but when it becomes your entire gimmick, it makes you Dan Severn in 96 against Fujiwara in NJ. Bad match, and awful ending. Taker looks like he's living the gimmick. Couldn't give a flying fuck about what's coming. I should have known better. Bring Rusev & Lana back yesterday. Yeah. Yawn.

Ok. I'll watch that one, the tag match, Cena vs Owens and the main event then.

And Raven, of course.

Seconded. Hansen dropping a knee is the picture perfect joy of pro-wrestling. Matches that look like a real struggle.

Just watched this. As far as two brothers working a pure babyface struggle technical, rugged match, I thought it was actually excellent. The one thing I didn't like about Dory here was that he really didn't sold his arm after Terry worked on it for several minutes during the first third, but otherwise he was very good. I never thought it was boring. It was all about Dory the technical machine and older brother keeping his younger, more excentric brother down, and we're in 1980 working an old-school NWA style title match for 60 minutes, so of course it's gonna take its time. But everything looked like what it was supposed to, that is a struggle, they did a great use of their highspots culminating with some hot (for the time) sequences near the end, without having to resort to the expected cliché of Terry finally losing it. I loved the way Dory hold Terry to prevent him from falling through the rope head first to the floor, and took him back inside, and while he helped him, he maintained his grap right into an uppercut, which was quite neat. Dory on offense is perfectly fine.

Watched that Cesaro vs Rusev match from Smackdown. Excellent TV match, and looked like a big moment for Cesaro. Gotta love Vince's idiotic idea that this guy "doesn't connect". Yeah, right. Since I really haven't followed the product closely, I must say, after watching two Rusev matches this week, I don't get why he's settled with Summer Rae. She really brings nothing to the table apart from being a tall blonde. Wasn't she Fandango's dance partner a while back ? Displayed no personnality here. It's interesting to notice that the hottest workers in WWE right now are a French-canadian, a Bulgarian and a Swiss. And they're all legit.

I had seen the Blackhearts matche before, but I'm amazed by the Worldwide match. Even more striking, Heath really looks like Luna here.

Dixie always sounded like a mark playing pro-wrestling and was a godawful "actor". She and Russo deserve each other.

It's less about lazy booking than about Stephy being a glory whore and wanting all the attention and credit to herself. I liked the fact the girls showed up on RAW and were featured, but I hate the fact Stephy had to play Big Mama, especially since it doesn't register with the fact she's supposed to be a fucking heel. But that's the way it is. Stephy & Hunter are the only true stars of the show (and it's been ingrained in the mind of the audience so much that it's been reflected in the ratings too, now. Yay. Being pushed non-stop for 15 years will eventually submit what's left of your audience).

My list of WWECW matches for 2006 : 2006.06.11 FBI vs Tajiri & Super Crazy 2006.06.11 Rey Mysterio vs Sabu 2006.06.11 Mick Foley & Edge vs Terry Funk & Tommy Dreamer 2006.06.25 Edge vs RVD 2006.06.27 Kurt Angle vs RVD 2006.08.08 Sabu vs Kurt Angle 2006.08.15 Sabu vs RVD 2006.09.19 King Booker vs RVD 2006.09.26 Hardcore Holly vs RVD 2006.10.03 : RVD vs Test 2006.10.17 Matt Striker vs Sandman 2006.10.31 Sabu vs Kevin Thorne 2006.11.14 CM Punk vs Mike Knox 2006.11.21 RVD vs Bob Holly 2006.11.28 Sabu vs RVD 2006.12.03 : MNM vs Hardys Funny thing, when you look at this list, one could think RVD is clearly the MVP of the promotion and the best worker of the bunch. When really, he isn't, not even close. RVD's case as a worker is the most blatant exception to the "good matches theory", because he must be the crappiest worker to have so many good matches. Part of this is opportunity to work matches that get the time to ge good, part of it is the fact that despite his inherent crappiness, RVD brings some element of goodness, even some spectacular stuff (in term of spots), to his game that, if used at the right moment and in the right context (like with Holly), can negate somewhat the otherwise shittiness of his work when it comes to basics. Anyway, guys like Guido, Angle, Sabu, Holly, Striker and Punk are better then RVD (no idea how good Richards was at this point) but they didn't get the same opportunities. The Big Show was pretty horrible all year long. I was never high on Paul Wight, but this ECW stint made him drop like crazy in my eyes. This is also clearly Heyman's worst work, on all level. Mike Knox, Kelly Kelly and Ariel were the nice surprises with potential in term of work and/or characters. The announcing was decent, but Styles just isn't the same anymore (I liked it quite a bit in the mid-90's), I'd say Tazz was carrying the load here. That's all for now. It was just as bad as I was told it would be, and it felt pretty much like a mid-00's WWE TV show. Which is a pretty bad thing to me.

Episode 27 and last of the year. I feel like I'm watching the same show every week. There's no effort put into it at all, and the WWE production and robotic promos gets more and more annoying with guys liek Lashley around. So yeah, we get Lashley semi-squashing Rene Dupree after he was paying hommage to the troops in the middle-east. Feel the xenophobic undertones here, although Styles didn't go all political, thankfully. Dupree has looked better since his debut, so maybe he was worth something, but the gimmick is nothing and he's a JTTS. Hell, most everyone feels like a JTTS on this show. More Matt Striker vs Balls Mahoney, which was a fun little match and more cool argile tights by Striker. Mahoney is much more tolerable when he doesn't have a chair to swing around. More Dreamer vs Khali feud, after the monster squashed Shannon Moore. This time Khali dropped Dreamer on the steel steps, and Dreamer did the exact same "I'm very injured" routine he did at the PPV. Really Dreamer, was the office job so boring that you had to come back for this kind of stupid stuff ? Theresa must have been glad... More über short Hardcore Holly vs CM Punk match that was pretty good while it lasted, but Punk had to tap out Holly in three minutes, so that tells you how far this could go. A bad, WWE ™ promo by Mike Knox, with deliberate delivery and awkward timing before cutting to the following match. Kevin Dunn sucks. What's awful is that the production hasn't changed a bit, it's the same horrible stuff today, like it was a few years before. 15 years without one bit of evolution. As a main event, a fitting three-way between RVD, Sabu & Test, which wasn't good. The usual, same old same old stuff, really. Yep. Big Show being gone is good, but Lashley's time of being "fun" already overstayed its welcome to me, because let's be honest, he's a bad worker with zero charisma and looks like a robot. What a boring show.

I hope in comes out to the old Orient Express music. Now that would be almost cool in a ridiculous meta-self conscious way.

They don't even try anymore, as showed by Episode 26, which was a complete nothing. RVD vs Test was the best match on the match (gasp), rushed and obviously pre-planned, but they kept things moving so it never dragged. Spotty but for what it is and for a RVD TV match, that was fine. Of course CM Punk vs Hardcore Holly was better for the time it lasted, which was too short to amount into anything and had a stupid finish with Holly getting DQed because he wouldn't stop hitting Punk in the corner. Really ? The booking is lame as fuck most of the time. And then, a one minute match between Dreamer and Daivari, which is too long already. How many weeks has this stuff been going on ? A Matt Striker segment with him luring Balls Mahoney in and kicking him in the balls. And yes, Bobby Lashley vs …. Heyman's security. I have no idea who played the part, but like I say, I hate that kind of stuff. This show was about 100% filler. Maybe after firing Heyman they still didn't know where to go, but it felt formulaic and tired like never before.

Episode 25. Okay, I said Lashley was bad but rather fun to watch, but I really don't need to see a 15 minutes match against the Big Show. Of course, it was terrible. Like much of this show was BTW, with yet another Dreamer vs Daivari match. This is the useless feud that won't end. Hardcore Holly & Test vs RVD & CM Punk was pretty decent for the time it went, but it all ended with a shit finish, as Heyman's security jumped on the babyface. Do I need to say again how much I hate non-wrestlers/non characters like these getting so much importance on any wrestling show ? Hopefully we won't get a match with those guys…. hopefully… The best part of the show was the angle following Kelly Kelly vs Ariel, which Kelly won via flash pin. Mike Knox kneels down before Kelly with a bouquet of flowers and begs her to forgive him. I thought that was well done, until the cliché transition of "I'm sorry… I didn't do it sooner.", which was kinda lame, although Knox I thought was quite good here. Throwing the bouquet right in Kelly's face was terrific, and should have been enough, but of course we need some violence against women, so he puts his finisher on her. Remember when Jake Roberts simply slapping Liz got nuclear heat ? Anyway, apart from the rather cliché revelation that he was infact not apologizing, I thought this was pretty well done. Kelly is truly a likeable figure, and Knox is a good psycho boyfriend. (this is everything Brian Lawler and April was not)

Taker "getting his win back" ™ on Brock would be such a stupid idea anyway. There's absolutely no point in doing this.

It is. Pretty iconic of that time period actually. Black Reign however, seems to be forgotten by everyone.

Rusev. (hey, he's better than a bunch of guys nominated already)

Agree on that point, I was actually thinking the exact same thing when I was typing my post. Then again, was Liz that interesting alongside Savage when they were both babyfaces ? To me, Liz's best work came in WCW when she was a heel with Flair, then with Savage in the nWo and mostly later on with Luger in 99/00. I guess Lana, who's hotter than Liz, can find a way to make her interesting as a babyface, although the WWE production and writing style probably would prevent that anyway.

Okay, after his performance on last RAW, can we all agree that if WWE were not complete dumbfucks, they would find a way to turn him babyface and reunite him with Lana and they'll have a superstar couple akin to Savage & Liz ?

This thread will probably seem pretty interesting in one year from now, one way or another.

Or maybe, just maybe, that was Rick Rubin in his hears.

I still enjoyed Windham as a New Blakcjack. Hell, I though he was still a really good worker in 99 in WCW when he was carrying those tag matches and working super well with Malenko & Benoit. That's how much I love WIndham. Hard to get an average placement for him though, but at his peak, he was better than Flair.

I'm a big Valentine fan, and I never understood the hype behind those WWF Garvin vs Valentine matches at all. Yeah, they hit each other really hard. No idea about Garvin, I've not seen nearly enough to have an educated opinion. Better than Jimmy.

Ah Meiko… Back in the late 90's-early 00's I thought she was quite overrated and clearly not as good as Sonoko Kato (pre-injury) and Chikayo Nagashima (for ever). Ah, those debates about *that* Akira Hokuto match (which was not great at all, people)... The good old times. Or not, depending on your point of view. Anyway, I've lost tracks with joshi puro about 12 years ago, so I'll never know how good she has been since, but I wasn't the biggest fan of flailing-arms-Meiko back then, she really beneficiated of being put in big matches with Aja. But like I said, I'm 12-13 years behind on things.

I guess they're dragging Taker's carcass up until Mania, since they won't have Austin.