Strummer

The shot at Angle really sticks out. Ouch.

In a cage match, you lose when your opponent escapes. How did Triple H "avoid doing a clean job?" Just because he didn't get pinned or submit? Nevertheless, it was still MOTN. Well I've always considered "jobbing" being pinned or submitting. Escaping the cage was never a "real" loss in my book. All the other guy did was climb better than you.

Faces have won every match so far, 7-0. Maybe Angle has a shot at going over in the main. EDIT: Cena goes over (Shaw did the job). Faces win every single match.

notice how Hunter got out of doing a clean job because of the cage match. He will go over Flair clean at Survivor Series

Meltzer says the voting is legit That's not to say that the WWE doesn't *manipulate* the results via their booking of certain people in the weeks leading up to the PPV. For instance, they put HBK over in a match on the RAW before the last Taboo Tuesday so that he could get the match against his buddy Trips. It would have worked out better if he hadn't gotten HURT in the RAW match though... That is why it was suprising Kane almost beat out Shawn

Meltzer says the voting is legit

Shawn got 46% of the vote, Show 16%, and Kane 38%. Kane came this close to winning even after the obvious audience swaying build. That should show the company that the fans would get behind a big Kane push even after all the damage that has been done to him. It also shows that some pundits (Keller) have been overrating Shawn's popularity.

wow, they just jobbed Conway to Jimmy Snuka. The hits keep coming.

The whole Coach/Austin/Vince/Steph/Ross angle was booked on the fly. Before Mike Goldberg backed out, the angle was that Shane was going to come back as a babyface and feud with Vince/Steph/Linda and hire back Ross and use him as an announcer on wwe.com. When Goldberg declined, they panicked and asked Austin to be in the angle the night before the October 17th Raw. The plan was changed and Ross was going to be brought back to Raw. But adding to this incompetence they can't end the angle now because Ross still has to recover from surgery and cannot travel, so thus Coach really has to go over. What a mess.

Meltzer:

Apparently Meltzer in the last couple of Observers has been pointing out that Bobby Lashley is becoming a HUGE ratings draw. The first three times that Lashley has appeared on Smackdown in matches the ratings have gone up substantially, like 450,000 viewers each time. The top guys don't even pull in those numbers most of the time. A potential new star in the making?

When I first read it I also thought it was a shot at TNA with "exciting baseball games" meaning "exciting wrestling matches". The point being that no matter how good and "exciting" the matches are people won't watch them unless they care about the participants. But then that goes against how Dave views wrestling as a fan, so who knows.

from Meltzer's Update today: Now I think I've gotten better in deciphering Meltzer's ambiguous statements but this one came out of nowhere and is kind of confusing. Is that a shot at TNA or WWE? Every comment he makes is always a subtle jab at something, anyone have any idea?

When Konnan was on a radio show recently he said that Carlito is a lot better than WWE allows him to be. He did a lot of high spots in Puerto Rico that were eliminated so he could work WWE style and so that he wouldn't get face pops.

It looked like Kane hurt himself on the attempted back suplex on Big Show. I think he was legit pissed. And you know Vince wrote that JR segment. I wish I could say I'm suprised.

Could you elaborate on this. Is it something personal between the two or Meltzer just hates Nash's work? (ie with Hogan, Dusty, Backlund, etc.)

Larry Zbyszko as AWA champ. I was a young mark and was only watching the AWA sporadically around this time and when I found out he was champ my jaw dropped. The guy looked like an accountant or a pro golfer around that time and he was champ? Never bought it. Greg Gagne of course. Verne Gagne when he would still work the occasional match in the mid 80s. Noticing a pattern here. The AWA in the 80s/early 90s was filled with guys like these, no wonder they went out of business Stevie Richards getting the big push in 97. No matter what Paul did he was still the same Stevie that got beat up by woman and had the build of Pauly Shore. I'm not saying he was a bad wrestler but just didn't buy him as a top guy that could all of a sudden go toe to toe with Terry Funk and Raven. And I was a big fan of Stevie. The WWF's attempt to make Hercules a top face in 1988 was pretty pathetic. He had the right look but looked out of place around Hogan, Savage, Dibiase, etc. Jeff Jarrett in WCW 2000. It's interesting that when this topic is brought up, Eric Embry's name is almost always mentioned. I've never really understood this but that could because I was a big fan of his as a kid and didn't know any better.

Most likely because his brother was a top guy in the company for nearly a decade. If Lanny was on his own he wouldn't have lasted into the 90s. From his run with Hennig, you knew Vince liked his charisma and character but there was no way he would push someone that size as a serious threat. With that being said he did get a countout win over Hogan on SNME and went over Hercules, Tito Santana, Jim Neidhart, etc. on the house show circuit for a time in 1990. So Vince did have somewhat of a soft spot for him.

PWI:

WWF 1986-1988 (favorite era ever, yes I know the wrestling sucked, but nostalgia rules) WWF 92 WCW late 95-96 WWF 97-2000 ECW 95-97

but the problem is that your argument to why it is better is usually met with a sarcastic non-response by the puro fan. Again I'll use Herb as an example. Whenever someone would call out Herb and give well thought out arguments that challenged his beliefs, his response was usually along the lines of " whatever, I'm not wasting my time on this drivel" and then he would move on.

I really think Herb Kunze started the puro-Elitist movement on the net. Herb not so subtly would say that you were an idiot if you thought American wrestling was better than Japanese wrestling. He was incredibly arrogant and treated his readers as if they were drooling idiots who didn't have the mental capacity to form their own opinions. There were so many Herb replicates on the net in the mid late 90s into 2000s that it was sickening. The last few years the movement has seemed to die down for whatever reason.

JBL is also captaining the SD Team at Survivor Series next month (with HBK heading Raw)

he's been playing a "I'm really still a heel but I'm pretending to be a face" character in the Batista program.

Meltzer: