Matt D

Vader attributes the poor selling of Summerslam 96 to them having Shawn beat him clean around the country at house shows beforehand.

I made it halfway through before skipping to the end and seeing if anyone commented, because you getting in it with pro-TNA commenters would have been more interesting than reading even the best TNA review.

Someone ought to make a big infograph of dogmatic views at some point

Back and to the left.

I'm at the point where I haven't even found a need to read the spoilers for a year or two.

You should pay Johnny Sorrow a dollar for stealing his premise. More like I should go into rehab for thinking along the same lines the old cad.

Tenta is a way better pro wrestler than either Steiner. In general this was a fun read though.

i really wish they bring Sullivan in to WWE as the Chairman of the Board of the Wyatt Family

Does it really matter if they do? They're not considered valuable TV one way or the other, really.

I honestly think that's what they should have done with Bryan, or what they should do with Barrett or Sheamus. Sort of a fighting champion gimmick.

I think some of Dave's comments about women's wrestling were interesting this week. He basically, said "since I wasn't there, I have no way of knowing!" but that he read a book by someone who wasn't there and because of the information in the book, he could then know better. I know it sounds silly to break it down like that but it really did stand out to me, just the way he said it, especially relative to some of our previous discussions. I also liked the branding that Full Sail is the new ECW Arena.

Now I badly want to see a Hogan vs Mountie match (I know they had the Montreal match later on but that's not the same).

These frankly sound like cons rather than pros when evaluating WWF monster heels. Did Undertaker get over by giving a lot to his opponent and making them look good, or did he get over because he was perceived as unstoppable? Did Sid? Berzerker's way may have made for more aesthetically pleasing matches to us (though I'd love to see a Berzerker match as good as UT/Warrior or UT/Bret from MSG) but it wasn't really, as Parv put it, the "WWF way." This is fair. My counter was that Hogan would then be open to working with him if he thought he'd make him look good. I generally think that the size/look counters most of the rest. They used him as Undertaker's first real program as a babyface after the aborted Jake stuff. I was curious to see if that was main eventing the B show, but it wasn't. It was #2 on the card after Savage vs Flair on the A show (though I'll let Parv argue that Money Inc vs the Disasters was #2 on those shows). They had Warrior vs Shango and Hart vs Michaels on the B shows. I don't want to go down this road or else Shango suddenly becomes the #2 heel in the company after Flair and that's just a weird thought. I actually think it's fair to say that Money Inc was the #2 heel act in the company between Mania and Summerslam in 1992, which is something no one ever really thinks about. But yeah. Size. Look. Would make Hogan look better than Taker or Sid would. Has the MN connection with Flair. Viable big man WWF top heel vs Hogan in 1991.

Yeah, but Vince could see it as doing Brody better than Brody. The Demolition of Brodies. You get me a time machine and a nice suit and we can sell him on this. Again, I'm shooting for Survivor Series 1991/This Tuesday in Texas as my payoff here. You can even say that the real #1 heel there was Flair. I'll give you that, especially for the second match. He can't be Flair, but he could have been in that Taker spot, maybe.

He's got everything Brody has and he doesn't suck. He has size, he has look. You package him right. You pair him with the right mouthpiece, and it works out. He debuted in late January, 91. That's only a few months off Taker. Give him Heenan with the storyline that this is Heenan's last change to go after Hogan before he hangs it up and he's brought out someone so dangerous that he can barely control him, and there's no reason why he couldn't be in Taker's spot for Survivor Series 91. Go fuil on Brody with a guy like Heenan as a mouthpiece. It could have worked. Hell, I bet Hogan would have LOVED working with him since he loved working with relatively safe guys who made him look great.

We need to import Gregg and Jae from DVDVR to team up and write a 30 page essay on how that could have worked. That said, Matt Borne is not a bad choice in general, Doink aside. You'll note I said Nord and not necessarily the Berzerker. I'm sticking with Nord, and unless you want to do the legwork, then you'll just have to begrudgingly admit that based on my general track record, I MAY have something there and you just can't be sure, even if perhaps you find the notion doubtful. It's a gracious response and I will, in return, graciously accept it.

Yes. I'm sticking to everything I just said there. And you know I've watched the matches in the last few years, while I know you haven't and you're going off of your nostalgic memories of watching wrestling, with your Dibiase wrestling buddy under your arm, while eating Wheataflakes, or whatever British cereal you had in 1991. You found the Bossman > Dibiase in the WWF idea laughable too and then we made a note and people watched matches and I think there was a general feeling that Bossman had a better output. It's okay for you to disagree, but tread lightly in finding my odd-sounding ideas innately laughable.

Mean Gene : "One on one, Verne Gagne chased Nick Bockwinkel for 20 years and made all kinds of money, made huge money." That statement isn't even vaguely accurate on any metric, right?

This is my answer and I'm sticking with it: John Nord. He was a top 3 bumper in WWF in 1991. He had maybe the best offense in WWF in 1991. He was huge. He was very good at giving his opponent a lot to make them good. He was ten times the Brody that Brody ever was that year. And if he had been in that spot 5 years before (and had been that good before), he could have main evented a PPV with Hogan. Maybe not the Ace but the top heel? Absolutely.

If he goes back to doing the headbutt and the dropkick, then he's a frigging moron, no matter how they're pushing him. You're Brian fucking Danielson. You're one of the best wrestlers in the world. You've watched a shit ton of tape and wrestled everyone from KENTA to Kamala. You can figure out how to work a little smarter, to sub in some moves that aren't going to cripple you over time, and to probably be even MORE over because of it.

One thing I'll say about Orton is that sometimes he really does something I love. There's not much this year I liked more than him going off on Cleveland or wherever that he was stuck on the house mic during a commercial. It was great. Stuff like that and the crazy jumping jacks. 90% of the time he's as formulaic as you get but that 10% of the time, he shines.

I still think they could have run with Scott Hall as the top heel in 95 challenging Nash.

I honestly think one of the key goals of this is to get some real heat on HHH and Orton, who simply don't get reactions as wrestlers I suppose I get that, but my idea is better. I don't have the first idea what to do with Orton at this point except for maybe being the Wyatt family gimp.

I think the best logic is that Trips only offered the deal once he got desperate after the Shield beat them so definitively. Before that, the deal wasn't on the table. Hell, maybe even Rollins went to Hunter on his own after Sunday and Rollins' plan all along was to push him to the point where he'd TAKE the deal. I think having Rollins be the one behind it all and that he architect-ed himself a shit ton of money and the new "Face of the WWE" role would be seen as not giving Hunter enough credit (or heat) though.

I think Brad Armstrong could have been bigger than he ever got.