El-P

11 hours of shitty TV is a walk in the park : http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19237-wcws-highway-to-hell/ And I've heard that "this is where it gets good" before anyway… But yeah, thus far, it's just as bad as it's been pimped to me. Even worse actually, since I had heard good things about the Big Show and (gasp) "Ric Flair doing Onita" for years.

Episode 11. Same stuff, more or less. Bikini contest so we get to see Torrie Wilson strut her stuff. Had no idea she was still around. Mike Knox and Test run-in, Sandman & Dreamer run-in, "6" person-tag match (but really, Kelly doesn't even get off her high heels), okay finishing stretch by the Sandman and Knox. CM Punk vs Christopher .W. Anderson (why not C.W. ?) was the best match of the show, again a semi-competitive squash for Punk. He badly needs to get pushed already, as he's a breath of fresh air. Kevin the Twilight fan vs Balls Mahoney was actually decent for what it was, which doesn't say much, but they kinda made it look rough a bit. Ariel is the greatest slutty valet since Francine in 96 (okay, she doesn't do much yet, but she has a style of her own). Hardcore Holly debuted by running-in on RVD. Can't say I'm thrilled, but it's better than Test or Rene Dupree. That Shannon Moore "Reject" gimmick was a parody, right ? The vignettes are really terrible. And speaking of "so bad it may be good", Matt Striker is apparently doing an Eric Bishoff does Dean Douglas gimmick. Okay, time for the bad Big Show match of the week, again against Sabu. Sabu gets killed until the ref bump, then he can use gimmicks (since it's not an extreme rule match, depsite being an ECW title match, yeah, go figure), and still get DQ'd at the end. A bloodied Big Show falls through a table. Didn't we get through see already two weeks before ? What, you can feel I'm losing interest (rather, losing patience) ?

PPV 10 had probably the best match TNA has delivered thus far. AJ Styles v Jerry Lynn in a 2/3 falls, each fall being a gimmick match of his own. The first one being a falls count anywhere match, the second a no-DQ match and the last one a 10 minutes iron man match. Not a fan of this übergimmicky stipulation, but it worked. The first fall was at the beginning of the show, and the last two at the end. Odd choice, but it gave them a fresh start for the no-DQ match. Made the most out of the stips, worked well in a brawling style around the building, then did a good use of the no DQ sipt without going ridiculous with gimmicks (although AJ's comeback after that insane bump from the top rope through a table outside kinda came from nowhere, but they usually sold the damages well). Since they were already selling, it was believable that they could get some pinfalls in the remaining 10 minutes (although again, the Eddielenko routine at the very end, worked like it was the beginning of the match, including kicking out of your own pinfall, wasn't the best idea). All in all, it's obvious Lynn and AJ are TNA's VIP's at this point. In a poor booking idea, Sonny Siaki faced Jimmy Yang in a 2/3 falls match also. Yeah, nothing better than to make a gimmick match unique than to have two of them in the same show, although this one was a straight 2/3. Good stuff too, with Yang playing the babyface. Kinda sloppy action at times, but they sold more than I expected and didn't work a crazy clusterfuck, like Low-Ki vs Joel Maximo vs Jose Maximo vs Amazing Red did. This one was a bit ridiculous at times, but still enjoyable, although the indierrific nonsense quickly gets old with me. The show needs some changed of pace, and by that I don't mean bad matches with AMW (not yet named like this) vs Ron Harris & Brian Lee. Lee looks in the best shape of his life, but it's still a DOA match in 2002. The title match between Monty Brown & The Truth just couldn't be too good, and Brian Lawler vs Slash didn't look like an USWA match at all, sadly, way too spotty again. Final angle with Jeff Jarrett facing a fake Bullet Bob looked like something out of a tired SMW. Well, I wish it was Jeff Jarrett in SMW, honestly. 2002.08.21 AJ Styles vs Jerry Lynn 2002.08.21 Sonny Siaki vs Jimmy Yang

The Raven Timeline was enjoyable, but Raven has done so many interviews on that matter that there's really nothing new to learn. Still always interesting to listen to him though, and he had some funny answers as always.

Could have been. If everything wasn't censured.

I begin to see a pattern here.

13 years old me would have totally bought Magee as a future megastar, the way Eddie & Guy put him over. But come on, *Arné* Anderson ? I fell over. (so odd to watch a match announced by Carpentier & Hauray in 2015)

Since I had that SummerSlam 06 file to watch the ECW stuff, I watched the Cena vs Edge main event hoping that would wash the bad taste out of my mouth, and it did. Edge is kinda goofy at times, and Cena clearly isn't versatile in term of offense, but they had a very good main event match without the finishers/kickout spamming annoyance. It's fascinating to hear the crowd reaction to Cena in 2006 and in Boston ! That in itself makes the match fun to watch, and Cena is kinda like a 90's Tokyo Dome-like worker : the simpler he works, the best it is. That was the case here, so. Pretty clever finish too. It's really hard to compare him with Bret actually, as the context and way of working are so different. I guess he's kinda like Bruno in a way.

WHAT ?!! Holly shit, I don't even want to think about that !

ECW matches at SummerSlam 06 Sabu vs Big Show Really, Sabu does his best to get something semi-interesting from the Big Show, but at this point Wight is so fucking slow and does nothing that looks any good, with the exception of that fallaway slam which looked immense. For a few minutes it's the "best" mach I've seen involving Big Slow (sorry, but there's no alternative), but then you get to a point Show takes like five minutes to set up the shittiest table spot ever, while Sabu has to sell forever. And they don't even do it right because the set up of the table on the ringsteps isn't stable. No, really, Big Show is as close as a useless worker you can find at this point. His ECW stint puts him right at the very bottom of superheavyweights. Ric Flair vs Mick Foley Not an ECW match per say, but it was set up partly on WWECW TV and the match itself is complete garbage, so. And by complete garbage, I do mean complete garbage. Foley destroys Flair was the best part of the match, using barb wire boards, thumbtacks and barb wire bat. Flair bleeds like a pig and doesn't do shit except awful looking chops with his hands covered with barb wire. He takes a bumps in the tacks without them even teasing it once. At this point, I've seen both Shoji Nakamaki and Axel Rotten work better garbage matches. Really, what did Flair do that warrant any positive criticism here ? He runs head first into a barb wire board ? Clap clap clap. Half of his offense is about low-blows. Foley has to take some brutal bumps, including an insane nestea plunge so Flair can get some serious "offense", which consist on rubbing a barb wire bat on Foley's head and arm. So now Foley is bleeding like a pig. That's really a tribute to mediocre IWA Japan bloodletting, but I'd rather have the Head Hunters and Tarzan Goto, at least they actually worked around the gimmicks a bit. Melina, and I have no idea why she was involved with Foley, throws the towel (it was an I quit match). Ok. I found that match not only bad as a garbage match (and I'm an FMW / 90's japanese sleaze fan), but watching 50 something Ric Flair do that kind of shit, in a WWE ring no less, was pathetic as hell. His work was the shits, and Foley had to overwork himself and take absolutely unnecessary bumps to give him somehwat of a credible upper hand. So yeah, blame Foley too for that complacent stuff at this point of his career. And after watching the Big Show debacle and this shit, the whole "Flair reinvented himself as Onita" talking point sounds like one the most most ridiculous bullshit point ever to me. Flair's garbage work was a poor version of Shoji Nakamaki. Or, to use a more current reference, an old version of Abyss. How the might had fallen. I still don't get why he felt the need to do that either. Ugly stuff...

99 : Mariko Yoshida.

Episode 10 has been the most enjoyable thus far. Not hard, of course. Mick Foley cut quite the promo building to his match against Ric Flair at SummerSlam, and even then it's obvious Mick was head and shoulder above most of them, as it's the closest thing from an old-school promo you'd get on a WWE TV show. In an absurd moment of cheesiness though, he invited Kelly Kelly and Melina to the ring to do a three way dance, litteraly. Okay, I have nothing against two hot girls dancing (Melina has the moves, Kelly, not that much), but it made no sense for Kelly to be up there after 10 weeks of Mike Knox preventing her from dancing in front of people. So lazy. Ric Flair run-in and beatdown on Foley, good stuff. I'll consider Flair vs Foley an ECW match. The rest of the card, well, a semi-competitive squash for CM Punk, again beating Justin Credible, who didn't look good this time. A sad moment of the FBI bumping around in a total squash for Mike Knox and mostly Test. Sandman & Dreamer run-in, nothing new here. A little backstage nonsense with I guess the last appearance of Kurt Angle on WWE TV, beat up by Heyman's security. Bye bye Angle, TNA's waiting for you. The main event was pretty much old-school ECW as you can get, with RVD vs Sabu in a ladder match for the contract to face Big Show at SummerSlam. In a pretty funny moment for me, not only do they fuck up the very first spot they try, but RVD immediately goes for the cover. And the ref counts. In a ladder match. Exactly like the Sabu vs Shamrock match from TNA I watched lately. Anyway, the match was a clusterfuck of course, but in a good way, as it's really what it's supposed to be, with Sabu attempting stuff you know can't end up well. Him trying to use the ladder as a springboard was brutal, he could have shattered his ankle, but I don't consider that a blown spot, rather it's the perfect illustration of what his character is supposed to be. "Character work", if you will. RVD's rolling thunder on the ladder is cringeworthy too. Too bad the Big Show had to do a shitty slow-mo run-in to ruin the match which ended up in a predictable way, with Sabu grabbing the contract while on the shoulders of Show. Still, fun clusterfuck, brings me back to 1996. The booking still sucks though. 2006.08.15 Sabu vs RVD

I was not blown away by the Hennig matches at all. Very good stuff, yes, and I love Buddy in AWA with Sommers, but it will take a lot more to convince me he's a top 20-15 workers. Way too much people over there already.

PPV 9 The first hour or so just was crap. More stupidity with Jarrett and the NWA authority, and it seems Steamboat is out, replaced by Bullet Bob Armstrong, which I can live with since Bullet was so good in the role in SMW. But the, some indy clusterfuck with SAT vs Kid Kash (who looked the best of all, unsurprisingly), Shark Boy and some 17 year old kid doing a terrible Eminem gimmick and flippy floppy stuff. Dupps, Bruce as Miss TNA, the last Jive Talking, all of this is ff material. Then, you get two brawls in a row, always a sign of bad booking, the first of which involving Malice vs Don Harris. Like the previous week, it was watchable, which is more than I can say for most Harris match, but the main thing here is good old Donny wearing a nazi T-shirt, with the SS symbol. That company is run by dumbfucks. Was Jerry Jarrett already gone by this point ? When did Dixie Carter got involved ? A mean, they let this guy wear a NAZI T-shirt on TV. Not that we didn't remember the nazi tattoos him and his brothers proudly wore in the mid 90's, before they drowned it under other tattoos. The second garbage brawl was Elix Skipper vs Monty Brown, and it wasn't bad either. For the X-division title, Low-Ki vs Sonny Siaki vs Jimmy Yang vs Jose Estrada in a four corners elimination match. Ok, this is more like it, as I enjoy the Elvis' antics (depsite the low rate gimmick and Rock's impersonation by Siaki on promos), and the format of the match keep things way more logical and simple. Low-Ki fights against all olds before we get Yang vs Estrada for a while. Siaki plays his egoistical self, to the point of betraying his own partners. Good stuff here. Main event of Jarrett & Truth vs Lynn & Styles was pretty good too. Interesting to see Lynn & Styles working against non X division guys. Lynn kinda shows his limitations as he doesn't have much in term of low grade offense to make his comebacks, and his punches don't look too good. AJ Styles shines against Jarrett, but he also badly blows one tag team spot. Truth basically does his stuff and gets out of the way. Bad finish *again* with the old "two referees count a different guy for the pinfall" with the added shitty bonus of the belt being held up. Damn, they are doing every bad old-school finishes to add with the modern Russoesque shitty booking. I should add that the announcing is really exhausting. Just cut Don West's mic, please. 2002.08.14 Low-Ki vs Sonny Siaki vs Jimmy Yang vs Jose Estrada 2002.08.14 Jeff Jarrett & Ron Killings vs Jerry Lynn & AJ Styles

I actually almost went into an WWECW watch a few weeks ago, beginning with this show. The Angle vs Orton match was so everything I hate about mid-00's modern WWE style, with Orton being a fucking black hole of dullness and boredom already and Angle being all about stupid anklelock reversals and shitty suplexes, that I stopped my WWECW watch right there. Well, and I'm at this point where Angle has actually been the best worker on WWECW TV thus far. Well, maybe not, I'd probably say Sabu has been, but I certainly warmed up a lot on Angle just by the virtue of him delivering those rare worthwhile wrestling moment on this awful TV show.

Konnan was hanging around in WWF then?! Max Moon was designed for him.

Episode 9 finally has a really good match. And no surprise to me, it's Sabu vs Kurt Angle. It's too bad Angle is leaving, as I really learned to enjoy him again here. Sabu is always fascinating to me, as he does so much little things right, like throwing a good looking punch just to fill space and time like Hansen would, or his facials when he's throwing elbows on Angle who's on his back, or selling a bodypart just to make things looks better when a transition is coming. Plus this was work non-extreme rule, and Sabu is absolutely not hurt by this. He doesn't need any gimmick. And he busts out a 2 Cold Scorpio like reverse splash from the tope rope which I don't thin I've seen him do before. I love Sabu. His stock is still rising with me. However, I don't like RVD, and he ruins the match with a shitty run-in (worst looking Vandaminator ever) where he attacks both guys. Still, very good match until then. The rest of the show was garbage. A three minute match between Dreamer and Knox, ending with Heyman, his security guards, Sandman and Test all showing up. Okay, can we get Kelly's exposé back, please ? A boring WWE promo by Big Show. Kevin Thorne looking like the least freakish vampire ever. The jury's out on his in-ring talent, but he doesn't show me much thus far. Ariel's bat rope routine and slutty gothic behaviour is easily the only worthy thing in this outfit. And then, more promising debut, with Rene Dupree, doing some sort of self-absorbed bodybuilder-like gimmick. I have no idea what those "french" words he uttered were BTW. Made no sense to me. Yawn. Well, CM Punk dropped a quote by Voltaire, so I guess French culture was well represented after all. 2006.08.08 Sabu vs Kurt Angle

Windham.

There's a possibility. But there's no probability.

Oh yeah, that was brutal. In matches he usually hits them pretty damn good, but this one just was totally off.

I could get someone taping out with PPV 8. Much more problematic stuff here, and quite a bit of crap too. I never cared much for triple threat matches, especially without elimination. It always makes everything convoluted, and that was the case here with Low-Ki vs AJ Styles vs Jerry Lynn, a total spotfest match with some spots that were kinda cool but also kinda ridiculous, with one body triggering the move that the other two would normally do on their own. Plus the match can only be about breaking pinfall attempts all the time, which really prevents any build of any sort. It's a spotfu. Okay. A pretty good one of course with these three, and AJ acting clearly heelish now. So problem is that it really became way too cute at the end, especially when each would use another guy's finisher, with the requisite kickout, of course. Then it got really stupid when the ref counted two for Low-Ki on Lynn, then AJ fell straight on the top of them, rolled around, and the ref still counted the three to give Ki the win. No idea if that was a timing fuck-up, but it was a completely absurd finish which pretty much negated the entire match too, which already had a million break-ups by that point. So yeah, awful title change for a decent but way too cutesy match overall. I think that I actually enjoyed Jeff Jarrett vs Apolo more than the triple threat, as it was a pretty solid match overall. Better than some vaunted Jarrett vs Booker T stuff from late WCW. Well, this one got a bad finish too, the classic "one guy lifted his shoulder during a double pin", but at least that was not totally illogical. Jarret worked his unspectacular self and Apolo was decent in an agile power kinda guy, bleeding of course since he's puerto-rican. The post match had a swerve aspect to it, as Steamboat would give The Truth to Jarrett, but only as his tag team partner. Okay. Yeah, because The Truth won NWA title from faceless champion Ken Shamrock, who I'm glad is going away from my TV, as he's really been bland and not good in the ring. I'm curious to see how they manage this Truth title reign, but at least they put it on a guy with heat. The Flying Elvis' vs Amazing Red & SAT was a pretty good opener, and probably the best match of the night after all. Very indy-like, especially with SAT whose team name and outfits scream INDY. The Spanish Announce Team, come on. I guess it's funny in a meta kind of way, but they look like a bunch of Amazing Red minions. The storyline was that Siaki wanted to work the match alone, so his partners finally abandonned him for a while. Fun opener with in retrospect much less cuteness than in the main event, and I enjoy the Elvis' dynamics. Apart from a good interview segment with Monty Brown, who got attacked by Skipper (and yellow paint), Malice vs Don Harris was actually quite watchable, although I have no idea how Don got blood. Didn't make sense either. But there was an awful and long segment with Gilberti and the Dupps (and Ed Ferrara) and another embarrassing Bruce vs Miss TNA match. Add to that the retarded ending of the main event and you got the most unsatisfying PPV since the very earliest ones. 2002.08.07 Flying Elvis' vs Amazing Red & SAT

Rick "The Model" Martel hailed from Cocoa Beach, Fl.

To the Canadian fans, yeah. But do most Americans really know the difference between, say, Toronto and Quebec? I'm not talking necessarily about the educated people on this forum, but rather the general masses who watch Raw. Absolutely. Anglophone Canadians can easily pass for Americans (recall the hilarious "USA" chants during the Bret/Yoko match at WM9). Francophone Canadians are more clearly foreign. Yep. Rick Martel. Dino Bravo. The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers. The Quebecers. La Resistance (ok, this gimmick was dumb as fuck). The thing is, Kevin Steen isn't presented as a Quebecer per say like Dino or the Rougeaus were. But at some point, Steen could very weel speak french just to draw heat. Hell, picture a PPV main event in Montreal between Steen & Zayn (although I do think Zayn is part of the anglophone community of Montreal). Could they could do a Mania over there in a few years, with the induction of Carpentier, the Rougeaus and Martel ?

Yeah, but he's not only from Canada. He's from Quebec. That's different...

It gets some buzz. That's all they want at this point.