El-P

Actually he would make a perfect Brother Love.

This is "The Rope" of pro-wrestling gifs.

Just saw it ! Fuck yeah !

WEEK 98 (November 13 to 18, 2000) Carry-job of the week : Lance Storm vs Booker T (Thunder). If there's one match to show that Lance Storm finally out things together, it's this one. Short Thunder style match against a rather poor and annoying worker, yet he makes it fun to watch, and it's probably the best Booker TV match of the year next to the Douglas one, although worked in a more go-go style. Big bumping, some thoughts put into counter moves, flows as well as a Booker match can (Booker is so sloppy and has a bad timing). The part part comes with the post-match, Booker T puts his finisher on Major Gunns (who's a heel now). Well, I didn't miss babyface beating on women. Nonsensical turn of the week : Major Gunns is a proud Canadian (Nitro) From nowhere, Gunns betrays Gen. Rection and costs him the title. No explanation given apart that Major Gunns is a proud Canadian now. This is absurd, amkes no sense whatsoever and looks like a very artificial way to pump in some heat back into an angle that was quickly losing the audience (really, after Rection won the title, he wasn't going anywhere against Storm, so he had to lose it again). Garbage match of the week : Crowbar vs Bam Bam Bigelow (Thunder). Yep, they put Bigelow back into that garbage match spot, where he doesn't shine. Crowbar makes up for it though, he's really makes these overdone matches rather fun to watch thanks to his willigness for crazy offense and bumps and his likeable character. Daffney is sorely missed though, they made a good duo together. Bam Bam is paired with Mike Awesome, which really doesn't work to Awesome's strenghts. Squash of the week : Goldberg vs Boogie Knights (Nitro). Honestly I'm bored with Goldberg doing squashes again. That's not what I want from him at this point. But this one is very fun, for obvious reasons, especially when the Boogie Knights don't know who they are paired against. Alex Wright gets stiff Goldie a little before getting killed, which is always fun. Stupid pinfall of the week : Sting beats Scott Steiner clean (Thunder) Whaou. Seriously ? This was the final of the Lethal Lottery tournament from Nitro for a title shot after Mayhem. Short Sting kinda match where he gets killed before making a comeback without bothering to sell. Clean pin. That was pretty stupid. Post-match sees Steiner put Sting into a straightjacket and beat him up. Not good, on any level. Really not a good week, with Nitro having a bad lethal lottery gimmick tournament to decide a N°1 challenger for after Mayhem. The issue is that both Scott Steiner and Booker T were involved in this which doesn't make any sense. Having Scott Steiner eat a clean pin from Sting didn't make sense either. Major Gunns turning was out of the blue and made no sense either. They are teasing a MIA break-up (which is good). The Cat's program with Shane Douglas seems to have vanished, as it hasn't been mentionned on TV and Douglas is nowhere to be seen. Kronik doing the Boggie Knights dirty deeds (not done cheap) is getting old, really I wish these guys would get out of my screen. Kevin Nash is getting beatdowns after beatdowns from the NBT, he needs a partner badly which I guess will be revealed just before the PPV. Anyway, pretty bad booking this week, which took part in London and Manchester (so at least they had big and hot crowds as opposed to a totally darkened and cold United Center in Chicago the previous week). On the positive side, Mark Madden wasn't there, and Stevie Ray has become a lot of fun (and it sounds like Schiavone & Tenay really have a lot of fun working with him too).

Thanks for the advices FLIK. I can't say I care about that. Although I never particulary cared for Goldberg's initial streak either. But the company is very clearly getting better. As showed by : WEEK 97 (November 6 to 10, 2000) Match of the week : 3-Count vs Jung Dragons vs Mark Jindrak & Sean O'Haire (Nitro). Fun match, as both 3-Count and the Dragons fit very well with the big studds. Lot of cool tag team dynamics, mirror spots and impressive cool stuff like a mirror double suplex as 3-Count & the Dragons are all suplexed by the champs. Karagias fucks up the match for his former partners. Comeback of the week : DDP (Nitro). Yeah ! He's back and he's jacked ! Funny how all the guys who weren't used (or used poorly) during Russo's last stint are showing up on TV again. I'm glad because DDP has been one of the best performer in the company since his heel turn in 1999, and no one is better at carrying a limited worker to a good match. Too bad Kim won't come back though (see also Luger, Lex : too bad Liz won't come back). It also brings some star power back to a roster that badly needs it. Title change of the week : Crowbar beats Reno for the hardcore title (Thunder) Hardcore matches were so overdone at this point, but this one is really good. Crowbar is my little WCW version of Sabu, I love him for that. Sadly it means taking more punishment in garbage matches, but at least those will be fun again. They put him over pretty big, talking about his connection with Gen. Rection since the beginning of his career. Where the fuck is Daphney BTW (the stupid Ozzie angle just vanished, which is good) ? Goofy angle of the week : Lance Storm has an issue with Meng (Nitro) Well, what an odd pairing, Meng & Kwee-Wee. And they are feuding with Team Canada now it seems, which leaves the Storm vs Rection PPV match with not much build thus far. Odd. The feud itself is rather fun though, in a goofy way. Storm vs Meng on Thunder was decent. Bizarre turn of the week : The NBT turn on coach Kevin Nash (Thunder) After weeks of Stasiak not fitting in and then apparently splitting from the team, now we get a really bizarre turn of event, with the entire NBT turning on Nash and beating him up. Really didn't see that one coming, and although you can say it makes sense in a way as they used him for advice before dumping him, the whole Stasiak deal leaving Palumbo alone getting beat up and such really doesn't makes logic, as Konnan would say. So, is Nash turning back babyface ? Booker T came to his aid, which is another puzzling thing since Nash turned on him like two months before. Funny segment of the week : Mark Madden interviews The Cat. (Thunder) The Cat is angry because he has to talk to Madden, who's fat and disgusting. The Cat is pretty funny here, being all confrontational and shit including saying Flair has been around for 75 years. The Cat making fun of Madden just never gets old. Miss Jones looked smoking, and I'd love to find that dress she was wearing for my girlfriend, she'd look damn good in it too (yeah, I actually have a sex life, go figure). What the future would have been moment of the week : Bob Sapp promo (Thunder) Holy shit, I never knew Sapp actually got on WCW TV. Damn, this is so frustrating when you think about it ! He already showed a lot of charisma although the promo was shaky at times, and one could only figure what the future could have been if he had debuted in WCW instead of going to Japan. Here he talks about having a boxing match with Bill Perry and training with Sam Greco, who was also signed to WCW at the time. The interviewer was another blonde girl with cleavage showing, but she was a billion times better than Paulshock (which isn't hard, but still). Damn, WCW looked like it had some fresh stuff in store. The week of TV was the best since the oddly good weeks that showed up from time to time in 1999. Really easy to watch, nothing really bad or eye-gouging, some decent enough in-ring matches (like a decent sprint involving Jarrett & Steiner vs Sting & Booker and a watchable Booker vs Awesome title defense on Thunder), some fun stuff (like Rey Mysterio Jr. vs David Flair or Konnan vs Disco on Thunder) and some solid promos (Luger, DDP, The Cat, Flair). It's obvious the company was trying to brush off the stench of Russo and going back to the basics, with more wrestling, more basic angles and logical build of feuds (for the most part). First positive trend in eons (and the first time in 2000, as Sullivan's stint was of course much better than Russo's but it was still pretty far from being good).

Well, last night Nailz find his way into my dreams. Fucking Nailz. Go figure.

Actually I already went through 1998 some time ago, I was posting my thoughts on the "WCW watching" thread. I have put aside the glory days of Nitro (from the start to the end of 1997), so maybe I will come back to this stuff one day, but I'm not sure. I have spent the last few years going through ECW, SMW, WCW 1989-1995 (until Nitro) and 1998-2001 (I plan to finish this project in November or so if all goes well), with just a slight japanese pause watching UWF 1 & 2 shows. Watched more wrestling these last few years than I ever did. Maybe I will go through the glory days of the MNW some day and post comments in the Yearbook threads like I used to do, but I may need a serious break too. Plus I'm not sure how motivated I would be to watch this stuff again, as I know this era pretty well now. And then there's the Benoit thing. It hasn't been an issue to watch Benoit matches, but I honestly can't watch without thinking about the murders, and in 1996/97 Benoit and Nancy were a lot together on TV, which may be a little bit more difficult to "enjoy" than just watching Benoit alone. I dunno. This. I have been a long time Jeff defender, but going through his WCW stint just shot that notion down. I's funny to re-read my comments when Jarrett showed up and had this excellent matches with Benoit and Dustin in late 99, because at the point I'm at now Jarrett really doesn't deliver for shit in the ring (I blame laziness, not lack of talent, as he still shows up from time to time) and has been plainly *unbearable* as a character. The two guys I would watch TNA for eventually are Shane Douglas and Raven, maybe I would be interested to see how their career went down there. Strictly to keep on with their career arc maybe I would check out this period of TNA one day, as a fan of both guys, but that would be it. The Jarrett bullshit, the Abyss garbage and the X-division spot-monkeys I have no will to go through. And really I think I won't watch anything remotely associated with Vince Russo ever again. That shit is poisonous.

No fucking chance. I may be stupid and masochistic, but there's no way I'm getting into fucking TNA. WEEK 96 (October 30 to November 04, 2000) Match of the week : Boogie Knights vs Rey Mysterio Jr. & Kidman (Thunder). This tag team feud is the best in-ring thing going on in the company. I would prefer to still have Juvy instead of Kidman, but this flows really well once again, and Rey Jr. & Wright are the two standouts. The Boogie Knights are my favourite tag team I never knew about now. The Filthy Animals also had a good little match on Nitro with Jindrak & O'Haire again. These three teams are saving the tag-team division. Split of the week : 3-Count & Jung Dragons lose a member each (Thunder) Evan Karagias the glory whore and Jamie San who fucks things up are booted out of their respective team. Hey, Jamie San without his mask doesn't look like an asian guy at all, what a shocker. I had no idea they had split the teams this early, I thought it happened just before Starrcade. In a sense it's a bit early to me, as we never really got the most out of a Dragons vs 3-Count feud. New authority figure of the week : Ric Flair the new CEO (Nitro) Ric looks fat. He's retired, he's the new CEO, he's cutting a serious promo without going into crazy-old Flair. This was all good as long as he was in the ring with Mike Sanders. It also felt like a reset, as Flair was talking about building the company back. Now, the bad part began when Jeff Jarrett jumped in to cut yet another dull, boring, shitty promo. Why does this guy still refers to himself as the Chosen One anyway ? This makes no fucking sense whatsoever, like carrying a guitar. Damn, I'm dreading a Flair vs Jarrett feud. Infact I'm dreading anything involving Jarrett at this point, that's how bad the guy's stock has dropped with me. Cruiserweight match of the week : Elix Skipper vs Lt. Loco (Thunder) Some sloppiness at times, but it was fine overall. Major Gunns is back with the MIA now, but here she's clearly the reason why Chavo lost the match, distracting the ref at the bad times. So, whe was penalizing Team Canada when they got her hostage, and now she's penalizing her own partners by being a tool. This girl really benefited from her huge fake boobs, because I don't see the point of having her around. Overdone feel-good segment of the week : Gen. Rection gets the standing ovation from the locker room (Nitro) Okay, I understand the idea, to validate Rection as a guy everybody respects a lot and give him a superstar treatment, but it feels really overdone and overacted. I'm sure the backstage sentiment was genuine, as Demott was a good hand to make people look good, but having the entire locker room paying hommage to Gen. Rection winning the US belt was really coming off them trying way too hard to create a "moment". Goldberg showing respect to Hugh Morrus by saying "The streak had to start somewhere, and it started with you." was a nice "shoot" touch though. So yeah, it was nice, but it didn't accomplished its goal to me. Didn't help that the Nitro crowd was pretty dead. The show is so much easier to watch now it's not even funny. They are putting together the pieces toward the next PPV in a logical, solid way from to to bottom. They are obviously going for Booker vs Steiner round 2, Lance vs Rection for the US belt (as Rection really didn't beat Storm), The Cat vs Shane Douglas (with a little woman abuse from Douglas on Miss Jones, but at least it was a dick heel move and sold as such) in what could be another fun promo/angle little feud, Goldberg vs Lex Luger (very obvious way to feed Goldie with a name he hasn't worked before, I have nothing against that one), and some tag-team match between Filthy Animals/Boogie Knights/NBT/ They broke away Sean Stasiak from the Thrillers, but he's still a heel apparently. Bam Bam is back, and I don't care very much since he's gonna be programmed with The Wall. Crowbar has been split from Mike Awesome and back to his old crazy personna. Not sure how I feel about that one since I was enjoying Awesome/Crowbar as a team and Awesome is not gonna recieve a main event push. Buff Bagwell wasn't the father of Stacy's child, mmmkay.

PPV 22 : Halloween Havoc 2000 Match of the night : Scott Steiner vs Booker T. Steiner is awesome. Total maniac heel, going berzerk with the audience, going into Stevie Ray's face, intimidating the ref. Just an all-around great heel. And he brings the heavy offense too, isn't afraid to bump, and contrary to the popular belief, was still smooth and quick, as showed by the greatest spot that I thought I would never see : as Booker was taking his sweet time to set up his ax kick, Steiner got up at the last moment and lariated him into oblivion. I popped. Finally !!! This is Booker's best main event match, and since Goldberg had his best main event match against Steiner at the last PPV, I think it's safe to say there's a trend here. Match ends with complete chaos as Steiner snaps, kills Booker and the ref (and the refs and officials who jumped in the ring) with the lead pipe, confronts Stevie Ray. I can't wait until he wins the belt, he's totally makes the main event scene worthwhile. Surprisingly fun bullshit match of the night : Shane Douglas & Torrie Wilson vs Konnan & Tygress. I won't call Douglas a miracle worker at this point yet, but damn if he's not delivering way above any expectations despite being served crap matches on paper. He's such a solid worker & promo and he's also a trooper as seen how he can make Tygress look somewhat credible. Really, except for a few obligaory awful spots by the ladies, this match was really fun, well built and ended on a satisfaying note. And Torrie Wilson looked smoking hot dressed as Wonder Woman (which was also totally bitching for a heel). Douglas & Steiner are the 1-2 punch heel characters & workers who carry this company on their back, really. Meanwhile... Godawful bullshit match of the night : Sting vs Jeff Jarrett. Okay, is Russo still booking Jarrett's matches ? Is Jarrett now officially a Russoesque worker who can't do without idiotic bullshit ? My goodwill for this guy has just taken a nosedive like I never thought it would. So, the "idea" here is that a bunch of old-school Sting look-alike (from early 90's to nWo Wölfpack-crab Sting) interfere in the match until Jarrett wins with a guitar shot. It's as awful and terrible as it sounds, and the work sucks to boot. Complete garbage. Hot opener of the night : Boogie Knights vs Mark Jindrak & Sean O'Haire vs Rey Mysterio Jr. & Kidman. Not a fan of three-ways at all, but this one was pretty fun. Jindrak & O'Haire paired up with the right people are really watchable at this point, and their athletic and power spot finally get a solid base to work from. Can I say again how happy I am with Alex Wright being back ? This had some cool triple-threat spots and some nice tag-team dynamic at some points, Mysterio being the obvious stand-out. I still don't understand how the swanton bomb is suposed to hurt anyone, but O'Haire doing it is much more impressive than Jeff Hardy. Heated match of the night : Gen. Rection vs Lance Storm & Jim Duggan. Incredible heat for an undercard match, there's nothing better than a jingoist angle I guess. Jim Duggan is actually fine in this, but he overstayed its welcome for me already. Since he's the one eating the pinfall, hence losing a title he doesn't own, he should be gone from this angle, as he doesn't have much more to bring to the table. Lance's bumping really made this match to be honest, as Demott is good for hitting a few spots and that's it, he's not much of a worker. He totally overshot his moonsault at the end too. So there it is, the US title changes hand without the champ actually losing it, which always sucks. Got a great reaction, was decent for what it was. Martial-arts match of the night : The Cat vs Mike Sanders. Basically, The Cat beat Sander's ass until Shane Douglas showed up and used his chain to KO the Cat and give Sanders the win. Not as fun as it could have been, but the beatdown on Sanders during the first three rounds (mercyfully only 2 minutes long each) was still nice. Sloppy match of the night : Vampiro vs Mike Awesome. This was bad. Vampiro looks roided as all hell and blows up even quicker than normal now. This was more a spot match than a garbage brawl, so Vamp sucked at it, and it got really ugly at different points. Awesome gave Vamp his super Awesome bomb from the top rope, and I guess Vamp's sloppy bump gave him a concussion as he was still attented in the ring way after the match ended. Well, there was also a bad garbage match between Reno & A-Woll, in which being dropped through two tables didn't mean shit, a bad Buff Bagwell vs David Flair DNA match, which was a first blood match of sort and a decent Perfect Event vs Loco & Cajun match carried by Palumbo & Chavo basically. The Goldie vs Kronik main event was a 5 minutes Nitro Goldberg competitive squash, which is totally stupid to end a major PPV. Kronik looked like jabronies, which they are. Not a good PPV, way to much crap or flat stuff with the nadir being that awful Sting vs Jarrett match. It's like Jarrett is carrying the Russo stench all over all his matches and angles. Scary to think the entire TNA promotion was built around *this*.

Jimmy Snuka also used to beat his girlfriend, with the results we know. A real badass indeed.

WEEK 95 (October 23 to 28, 2000) Match of the week : Scott Steiner vs Mike Awesome (Nitro). The two big guys beat the shit out of each other for my enjoyment. Awesome would be such a better champion than Booker T, apart from his bad promo skills. The announcers talk about Yokozuna's passing and say some nices things about him, which is a rather classy move especially when Yoko really never was a part of WCW. Midajah gets involved, Steiner looks like a monster. Best part, Steiner came to the ring with a freaking tiger (no idea why they didn't save this intro for the PPV though) ! He's the coolest heel since Steve Austin in 96, easily. Goofy angle of the week : Mike Sanders beats the Jung Dragons (Nitro) This is supposed to be some sort of kickboxing match, as a training for his match against The Cat at the PPV, but Sanders drowns his boxing gloves with some sort of liquid which makes his opponent feel ill or something, so he can beat them up. This was not very well executed at all. The Cat KO's him afterward with one kick. The PPV match could be fun if well layed out, as these two are cool characters. It's obvious Sanders is going to win though, as he's been a complete bitch during this whole build, including on the next Thunder as he ended up with Lea Meow on his back riding him like a horse. Brawl of the week : Vampiro vs Crowbar (Nitro). Stiff ECW like brawl which suits the poor worker Vampiro well, and since Crowbar is willing to do anything it's pretty watchable if not exactly good. They get more time than your usual Nitro match, and the announcers put over Crowbar's tolerance to pain quite strongly. Vampiro on the other hand is still a third rate Raven/Mankind character who "likes pain", and when they fight toward the Nitro Girls cages I have a flash forward to early TNA setting : Vamp is Abyss I guess. Druids bullshit setting two tables so Crowbar can take the huge bump (who else ?) like he's Tommy Dreamer in 1997. This kind of stuff really isn't fresh anymore, especially when Crowbar takes these ridiculous bumps every two weeks. At least the booking makes sense since Vampiro did that to Crowbar as a receit to Awesome who powerbombed him through a table on September 18. Stupid line of the week : Vampiro says he had two months to think about it (Nitro) We're October 23. You were powerbombed by Awesome on September 18. You're an idiot. Classic angle of the week : Shane Douglas can't wrestle because he's injured (Nitro) Shane is in a cast, again. His right elbow really is fucked up, it's been in a cast on and off regularly since 1998. So he cuts a good string serious promo about how he never is afraid to fight injured, but this time he's not allowed to. Konnan doesn't trust him and when Shane tries to jump him this turns into a match, cast and all. Konnan beats the shit out of Shane for a while until Torrie gets a chain out of her cleavage, passes it to the Franchise who knocks Konnan out then applies his new finisher (which looks like a better version of Danny Doring's finisher). This was good, solid promos for everyone involved, nice execution. Torrie is slowly improving too, she's become a nice bitchy heel valet. Nice touch of the week : Kwee-Wee goes into a hardcore match with pink garbage cans (Thunder). That was visually interesting. As was Paisley's outfit. Match against Reno was run of the mill hardcore match, and Paisley actually got served with the roll of teh dice, which looked terrific. Woman abuse, but at least he's a dirty heel and he's not doing it every damn week. A-Woll shows up afterward, yawn. The PPV is looking at least decent on paper, and the build since Russo has been gone is at least logical in term of booking. We got a classic 6-men tag on Thunder between Jarrett & Kronik and Goldie, Sting & Booker, simple stuff to get guys together and have themselves a tag match before their individual bout at the PPV. Halloween Havoc has always been a fixture of WCW since the early 90's, it's sad this one was gonna end up the last one.

You said it all right there. The Attitude era peaked with SummerSlam 98. I loved the whole Austin vs McMahon feud with the involvment of Mick Foley as the henchman. I enjoyed the build to Asutin vs Taker a lot, to me SummerSlam 98 was the apex of this era in term of expectations. Then with the fall, things started to slowly degrade, there was less and less wrestling and more and more bullshit, Survivor Series was the first WWF show I really didn't enjoy at all as it was all about the infamous swerve. Then Royal Rumble 99 ended my ten years relationship with the company that had made me a wrestling fan to begin with. Sad days, really. Ruso fucking up the company then fucking up WCW even worse drove me out of US wrestling.

Damn !

That would be Headhunter B for you, sir. B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! B !

I find it fascinating that in 2013, when kayfabe has been buried a long long time ago and everything is sold as "entertainment", the true selling point of a hot angle still remains "well, I know wrestling is fake, but these two truly hate each other for real.". It's pretty cool I think, because it's truly the essence of pro-wrestling in its carny old self, and that it's still alive in some form today makes me smile.

The download is $9.99 with 4 matches: http://www.highspots.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?...e=VD_dd_mia_yim Well, now I'm browing through their stuff : 3 hours shoot interview with Ivelisse Velez Mmkay.... (what the hell happened with the guy who actually won the thing BTW ?)

Yes. Because all the big time long-ass shoots with big time veterans have already been done. Good for her. You are right on that. One of the most interesting shoot interviews I've heard is Ranger Ross. I'm serious. Hum... You seemed to take umbridge that I said "Who the fuck ?", replying with "Seriously ?". Well, yes, seriously. Who the fuck. And then you added "She works pretty much everywhere." So either working "everywhere" made her ultra well-known and in that case my "Who the fuck ?" warranted a "Seriously ?" reply, either working "everywhere" means shit in term of visibility to a guy like me who doesn't know shit about the indies, therefore my "Who the fuck ?" comment was very justified and didn't warranted a "Seriously ?" reply form you. Well, if working "everywhere" means I should know her, then "everywhere" should be places like WWE and TNA. If working "everywhere" means the indies like ROH, SHIMMER, CHIKARA and even smaller indy feds, then "everywhere" means zilch in term of visibility to a guy who doesn't follow the indies, therefore my "Who the fuck ?" comment was very justified. Hey, you said "Seriously ?" like she was an obvious name to know. She isn't. And like I said, maybe she's indeed very smart and talented and a very interesting interview to boot and that's all good for her. Don't take it too seriously. I sure as hell don't

What is everywhere ? Every indies ? Ok. So she's a girl who has work every 2010's indies for the last few years. That makes for a fascinating interview, I'm sure. Sorry to sound condescending to some extent, but really, I don't see what the point is of doing shoot interviews with indy workers who've been in the business for a couple of years and haven't worked one bit in the major leagues either. When you think shoot interviews with actual relevant guys almost always end up being one good half of bullshit anyway... What difference does it make ? Interviewing people who have worked a bunch of years on the indies is okay for digital downloads I guess. Really, everyone that was anyone is the grand scheme of pro-wrestling history has already been interviewed. The only company that's doing a different job is KC, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but at least they still try to do some relevant stuff. I guess fans of the indy scene are interested about shoot interviews from indy workers of today. I really don't see the point myself, but maybe I'm wrong and she has tons of fascinating stuff to say about wrestling history (well, from 2009 to today on the US indy scene that is...). Hey, a girl piledriven through a table, with ECW chants to boot. How fresh. She sure as hell doesn't. (hey, nothing against the girl actually, and she may be really smart and talented for all I know. I'm just fooling around the fact she's supposed to be that ultra-known worker when in fact, well, she isn't really, unless you follow indy wrestling. Hell, maybe I'll check that Shoot Interview now, just out of curiosity, ah !)

The idea that an average indy wrestler who I guess hasn't worked more than a few years gets a Shoot Interview deal shows how desperate these guys are at this point. Most everyone of interest has already be done, in most case pretty badly by the RF crew. BTW, the Timeline WWF 1993 with Lex is pretty good. Nothing real in depth, but it's cool to see Lex in such good spirits after all he went through. He also shows no mercy about his old-self, admitting he was not the best worker around and that he was infact pretty arrogant back then. Gives major props to some guys including Bret and Hennig and says a lot of nice things about Yoko. Really positive, enjoyable stuff.

Who the fuck ?

Well, this is pretty much the story of Jake's career. The only time I thought he was really solid in teh ring was in Mid-South. After that... Same story in SMW. Awesome promos and terrific angles. Matches were dull, well, until he no-showed that is. What is great watching Tuesday in Texas, is to see how much heat a simple slap on Liz got, and how it was sold like a huge deal. Fast forward to the late 90's : people cheered for the Dudleys (heels) putting Terri Runnels through a table. Something got very wrong at some point. And although I still define myself as an ECW fan, violence against women is one of the really terrible thing this promotion made "cool", although it didn't always looked *that* terrible in its own deranged settings. The transition to the major leagues on the other hand really bothered me. Once again, Russo was a big reason why it happened, and he went totally crazy with it in WCW. Sorry for sidetracking the thread.

Wonder why he left wwf back then. He wanted to wrestle. WWF would not let him do that. He was working at production and pbp only.

The issue with Savage vs Jake is that it really never got resolved, they just transitionned it toward Taker. Jake's drug issue really ruined his heel career at this point, because he was awesome in the role, and had the best music theme ever to boot.

The problem is those days is that being over often meant having a catchphrase people liked to chant along with. The NOA got tremendous reactions during their intros, but the matches usualy got zero heat. The Attitude crowds didn't care about wrestling nor most of the characters. They cared about the catchphrases, the puppies, retarded signature spots (the worst of all being the WORM) and people being put through tables. Oh, and be seen on TV with their signs, of course. Very few workers on the undercard really were "over" in the sense that the audience cared for them like in the 80's. That's also why the Attitude era was such a horrible product, no matter how much money it made. Things only got better once Russo left and the WCW crew and Angle got on board.

Good question. I think she played a part as a novelty act in 1997, then was effectively more over in her role than HHH was during the early DX days. I don't think Huter with Mr. Hughes would have garnered the same reactions. Huge amazonian Chyna brutalizing petite Marlena was a big part of HHH vs Goldust, then HHH had his first feud with Foley when he was getting over strong as a babyface after the Ross interviews. By then Chyna was established, the nolvelty was wearing of but I'd say she still got HHH more heat than he would have got on his own. Hell, HHH cracking jokes behind Shawn in late 1997 got crickets.