El-P

Yes, it was Benoit's debut. Pretty much what's been said previously. Terrific TV match. The difference between Dean vs Eddie is so stricking, as the Dean matches looked like souless exhibitions. This was a wrestling match with incredible speed, intensity, cristal clear execution and actual selling. Awesome match.

Yes, when I was doing my ECW watch a few years ago. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Messy of course but in a fun way.

Yep. And Ricky is turning into Greg Valentine.

And he's sucked for twenty years. Kane was the first name that came to mind when I thought "If I could get rid of anyone, one single person, who would it be?" Mask, no mask, heel, face, serious, comedic...it doesn't matter. He's done it all & it's all tired at this point. We've seen him shock Shane McMahon's testicles with a car battery, set Jim Ross on fire, use a voice box to tell people to "suck it!", cut a "Kanenites" Hulk Hogan promo, wrestle a technical match with Big Show for some reason, do the Hell No therapy comedy skits & "hug it out." His entire career is ridiculous. He's always just been a second-rate Undertaker at best & an unfunny, lumbering goof at worst. Thank you.

Any double footstomp move makes me cringe since there doesn't really seem to be any way to minimize the impact. It looks easier with a simple footstomp though. A tope rope move already gets much trickier. But with the added momentum of a a moonsault, forget it, there's just no way. I cringed every time Fukuoka hit a poor girl with this. Still the coolest finisher ever though : "I'll do a moonsault and land on your ribs you poor fucker." Holy shit.

Chris Benoit's fucked up brain disagrees. When did Harley Race adviced Benoit to stop doing it ? Around 2000 ? Later ?

I like that match quite a bit too. And yeah, Douglas said that coming off of it, he thought the match sucked and he was very surprised that the audience reacted in a positive way. And credited Funk for whatever made it work.

Hikari Fukuoka's moonsault footstomp. Utterly brutal.

And that's what the wonderful WWE monopoly did for pro-wrestling. Long-time staleness and workers paralysed because they have basically nowhere else to work. No wonder things are fucked up.

So Hogan >> Hogan ? This thread has turned into complete absurdity. A few years ago, my two nephews (10 & 7) were into wrestling (= WWE). They sure knew who Taker was, but probably had no fucking idea who Hulk Hogan was. They also lost interest pretty quickly after their father took them to a live show. Go figure.

The crowd shits on Hogan hard here. Loud "Hogan sucks" chant during the first match too. I wonder if they were actually testing waters for an eventual heel-turn down the road, as Hogan is an even bigger jerk here than he usually is.

What an odd career arc for Jarrett at this point : _jumps back to WWF : shoot promo. Doesn't get over. _NWA champ : doesn't get over. _Double J gimmick again : doesn't get over. _Short hair and "pissed off gimmick" : doesn't get over. _Gets Debra : puppies get over. _hits women (Russo booking) : gets a reaction, but is he really over ? _jumps back to WCW : shoot promo. Doesn't get over. _hits women (Russo booking) : gets a reaction, but is still not over.

I just realized I typed Greenwald because of Molly. Molly Holly = Nora Greenwald. Fascinating how the brain works. Julia Roberts is a huge freaking star. And Demi Moore used to be quite a big name too. Not even in the same boat.

The real question is Undertaker > Greenwald ?

No one mentionned Dean Malenko yet ? Technically proficient, but man was he a boring worker most of the time. Those "***** classics" with Eddie Guerrero litteraly put me to sleep.

I liked Los Boricuas, and really, they were all solid workers at worst (at least Savio, Perez & Castillo). Really missed the opportunity to do something with them. They needed a hot latino valet and more elaborate production. And a push of course. D.O.A on the other hand sucked dick. When Brian Lee is the workhorse of the bunch by far, you're in deep trouble.

The funny thing is Ringwald was famous for leaving the U.S. and moving to France as her career cooled off in the early 90's. The couple of French films she made must not have done well. I checked. Hey, she was in "Enfants de salauds" ! So I actually saw her in a movie.

I had to check out Wiki to know who Ellen Page is. I maybe not the best one to gauge pop-culture relevance, I still haven't seen Inception BTW, and I didn't remember who was the girl in Juno.

Maybe it's because I'm French but… who the fuck is Molly Greenwald anyway ? If she's a "cultural pop icon", it's most probably strictly an English speaking deal. On the other hand, I know who Emma Watson is, and I never cared one way or another for Harry Potters movies.

This. I have never read any comics whatsoever. Yet I always knew about Batman, Superman and Spiderman.

WWF week to week watcher from late 89 to 96 in French, then switched to English as I was getting WCW in French, so I could get heavily into the MNW stuff. Also got older ECW stuff on some satellite English TV and WCW in English too at that point. Got into tape buying in 1999 when I got sick of US wrestling thanks to you-know-who, stopped watching week-to-week pro-wrestling during the first WCW Russo stint, never ever got back. Watched lot of puroresu, older (any style) and current (joshi mostly) from 1999 to 2003, then I think my pro-wrestling watch went nosedive for a few years, as I stopped buying and downloading stuff wasn't as easy as it is now. I did watch quite a batch of matches for the Smarkchoice GOAT poll, and slowly got back on watching old stuff exclusively (although I did watch some current puro in the late 00's and got back to watch WM every year probably at the same time). Never watched more wrestling than during the last three or four years I guess, for various reasons, one being that it's never been easier to get stuff. I do think that in the next year or so I'll be watching a lot less once again eventually.

I find it somewhat comforting that Randy Orton has been mentionned a whole lot in this thread. As it's been said, this guy embodies everything I hate about what has become the in-house WWE style. Totally manufactured from A to Z, absolutely soulless, nothing remotely believable (his "Viper" act and maneurisms are the most robotic fake-ass shit I've ever seen). This WWE-bred style is the Autotune of pro-wrestling.

Heenan going crazy is the highlight. What was this fascination of guys dressing up like women to attack Hogan ? On the same show, the debut match of Eddie vs Dean was interrupted so we can watch Hogan arrive in the building and cut a shitty "dude, brotha" promo with Jimmy Hart. Ah, WCW...

Hey ! What should *I* say ?!!

DDP vs Mero. The little undercard feud that could. In hindsight I wish Mero had stayed with WCW, he would have been tons of fun working with the NJ3, the luchadors and the nWo guys. And would have spared us Sable as a WWF drawing card too.