El-P

Not exactly true. I remember tons of matches being uploaded during this time, fort months, and matches being talked bout. It was because of this poll that I basically catch up the missing years of WWF peak (00 & 01), and most every big match from the following years. For instance I changed my mind about The Rock thanks to this poll, as I couldn't stand his matches back in 98/99.

Come on. Douglas was hated because he was a terrific heel. The scene where he shooked Pitbull #1's halo turned into a near riot, the heat was nuclear. From supposed smart marks to boot, which made the thing even more fun to watch. People just hated his guts. Him & Francine were awesome during that time.

Agreed, they didn't blatantly ignored the crowd, but they played to a crowd who didn't want to play with them, resulting in working the match in a vacuum. Benoit vs Malenko was a total "ignore the crowd" deal though.

The dead crowd kinda ruins it for me. Super match in theory, but worked in a vacuum. I don't think "the crowds shit over them but they ignore it and hit their best spots" is the best definition of great work. I do blame the crowd a lot more in this case since it's clearly a WWF ignorant crowd, but still. Reminds me of the Benoit vs Malenko 30 minutes draw at Hogg Wild, which would have been probably awesome at Korakuen Hall but didn't work at all for this audience.

Hogan at the beginning of the nWo era was getting serious heat.

I don't see how Kudo failed to deliver either. The Kong match is amazing. Plus Kudo at this time hadn't reached her peak yet as a worker. To me she peaked in 1996. Kudo is a massive overachiever considering where she came from (good looking girl not good enough to make it into the Zenjo camp and recruited by FMW to be their idol style wrestler). Great great worker.

I see what you mean, and I agree. The Benoit tragedy and Misawa's death changed things. The 10 years + monopoly of the WWE changed things also.

I wouldn't really describe 1999 WWF as kid-unfriendly. It had breasts and lots of swearing. Kids want to see that kind of stuff. I feel like Vince Russo's sense of humor would appeal more to kids than it would to adults.1999 WWF was more parent-unfriendly than kid-unfriendly, and I don't know how many parents barred their kids from watching. It was appealing to young teenagers and young immature adults, but I don't think an 8 years old would get a kick out of saying "suck it" while pointing to his crotch, or would want to see Debra's "puppies". Russo's booking was juvenile, but had nothing appealing to childhood, at least from my standpoint.

I wouldn't touch HHH's overcooked shit for anything. The only reason he got his *** on the famous Red Book is because he fucked the Michelin Man.

Of course. I was guilty of it with lucha at the time, and would probably still be guilty of the same blank spot if a new poll was conducted tomorrow. I did vote for a few great luchadors I had watched thanks to some guy (who disapeared)'s pimping, complete with download links at the time. But it was really a scattered vision to say the very least.

Amazing analogy Loss.

Takada would still be ranked very high by yours truly, and not just from memories, but from watching quite a bit of UWF a few months ago. The girls would suffer the most from a new poll because no one watches joshi anymore. Of course Lawler and Fujiwara would benefit the most. I don't remember my list, but guys like Tracy Smothers, Bobby Eaton & Ricky Morton would be much higher than they were. Ditto Fujiwara (well, I hadn't ranked him at all back then). Benoit, I dunno. I was already a bit tired of Benoit by the time we ran the poll, and his stock dropped a bit with me already. I don't think I would even take in account the murders though. I could live without watching another Benoit match for sure but I never had any problem watching him again during my ECW or WCW 98 watch. I do think he would take a pretty hard nosedive in the final results.

Stumbled onto this, and thought it was pretty hysterical. Corino is a great storyteller.

I was gonna ask about RVD. To me, RVD is a shitty worker who could have really good matches in two occurences : _facing a guy who could get into his little game of awkward spotfest : Sabu (in 2000, not in 96), Jerry Lynn (the best at it since he had this great quickness, execution and vista which allow him to play along RVD's silly game), Tracy Smothers (great old-school worker who couldn't do the great spots but rolled around them and built a superb match for RVD) _facing a guy who could beat the shit out of him, even if he's not necesseraly good (Doug Furnas, Balls Mahoney) When you get out of these schemes, RVD can't have a good match to save his life. To me HHH, as much as I find him dull and limited, is much more solid than this. As a worker I would trust HHH to lead a simple, not too long, good solid match, and not get hurt in the process. RVD is out of control and can't do anything outside of his routine. He's also the responsible for the "million counters opening sequences" crap that has spread (way before the Lynn matches). I enjoyed the best RVD matches better, obviously, and the bad matches annoy me as much as HHH's, but I would put HHH above him solely because he's more solid. Kinda the same case as Mike Awesome (although Awesome is a whole lot better than RVD).

That's amazing. Hopefully it won't give WWE any bad ideas...

I think HHH/Rock 60 minutes smoked Hart/Michaels 60 minutes. That doesn't mean I think either are better workers than Hart or Michaels. Plus one reason this match was as good as it was is creative booking, from Patterson I guess. It was really tons of smokes and mirrors, but it worked wonders when you think about the atrocious 30 min match they had in 98. Anyway, whatever you think of the match itself, Fuyuki was better in this than HHH ever was in a long match. And although I haven't seen a lot of his WAR matches (hello Phil, still around ?), there are some really good stuff there too. Between AJPW, WAR and FMW, Fuyuki really blows HHH away.

Well, if that's a case then it's a shame. The only thing I'm willing to give New Jack in ECW is that during the first stint at least, before he went insane, the Gangsta style brawling was nowhere near as violent as it looked to be if you pay attention. Not that it was any more watchable, but at least they weren't killing people brain cells like Balls. I think the only Gangsta match I ever enjoyed was the FBI title win, thanks to you know who.

Oh, WEW. One day I'll get back to those tapes. Well, maybe not. Yep, I can't think of any pregnancy angle that ended up with something positive. The most ridiculous one was Beulah's in ECW. Yeah, I'm a Raven fan, but that one was retarded. The "It's not yours, it's Tommy's" line was great, but the way the angle turned out was jaw dropping stupid. Beulah wasn't pregnant, but she was cheating on both Raven and Tommy with... Kimona ? That said, "I'm hardcore, I'll take both" was kinda hilarious in its grand stupidity. I guess one of the stupid angles that influenced Russo (along with the Pillman bookerman promo which was also very stupid and counterproductive).

Awesome was much better at working his style of match than HHH was at working his style of match. If you want to put it that way "He played his role better". That said, Awesome needed a guy to bump huge for him. He was a great base to bump from, and with the right guys he could have spectacular matches. That being said, and despite being a huge FMW fan, HHH is a more solid wrestler. With the wrong opponents, Awesome really isn't doing much good. Awesome's best matches are much better and more fun than HHH's best matches though. But he can thank Hayabusa, Tanaka and Kanemura for playing along.

Actually Fuyuki smokes HHH based on his FMW run alone. HHH never had as great of a performance Fuyuki had going with Hayabusa for one hour.

You still can't take sarcasm. Chill out a bit. I'll get back to you on this as soon as I get through SMW TV, which may be sooner than later. I may or may not agree with you on this. Needless to say I would be shocked to see New Jack being actually good, but I don't think I could be blamed for this.

Got a major kick out of this : Palais de l'Elysée is the French equivalent to the White House. Nicolas Sarkozy is obviously the current president. François Hollande is the guy who will (hopefully) kick him out. El Flaco is a reference to the fact Hollande used to be fat and dropped a lot of weight the past year, and really looks different now and more "credible" as a presidential candidate in his current shape. There were other posters with minor candidates too. Great stuff.

And as far as miscarriage goes, a friend of my girlfriend went through this shit a few months ago, and yeah, it's pretty terrible. Thankfully Russo isn't around anymore. I thought Terri Runnels having a "miscarriage" was one of the most offensive and disgusting stuff on WWF TV during the Attitude days. Hopefully they don't do any distasteful stuff with Kharma... (not that they ever would : cf Kanyon, Eddie in Hell etc...)

You obviously haven't read many posts I've done in the last few years. Which is totally fine with me, since I probably haven't read anything you wrote about wrestling since about... 2001 or so. How time flies.

Nice to see you're still acting like a dickhead after all these years Schneider. Don't grow up, stay the same, it's perfectly fine with me. For all I care... To Dylan : yes, I haven't seen his SMW days, that's why I mentionned it to make it perfectly clear I'm basing my opinion of Jack's most famous ECW years. Yet, we're still talking about New Jack people. *New Jack*. If we have reached the point where we can say "Hey, he's dissing New Jack, he's a snobish fucker with dated opinions" when one has a hard time even considering the eventuality that New Jack may be a better worker that HHH, keep me posted. Hopefully New Jack will be the great find of the SMW set. Gotta have one I guess.