Matt D

it's not about money at all anymore.

1.) Eat German Suplex Cleanly 2.) Roll Back to Your Feet as if Nothing Happened. 3.) Hit Superkick. 4.) Have Matt Hate You Forever. No way has HHH ever done something that stupid

He probably doesn't know either. His former line of defense was "Oh, I wasn't even the booker when it happened." Which is of course, total bullshit too. I swear I read him say, years ago, that he did it because it was the only way he was ever going to get the belt and it mattered so much to be both WWF and WCW champs. Which is somewhere between possibly true and hilariously not even vaguely possible.

I thought the story was that Austin had INSISTED to Owen that they do a normal pile driver and not the reverse sit out one.

He main evented in Florida though, for a while too, right? at least a half a year? You think that'd be good comparison fodder. Even if he feuded with Jesse Barr most of that time.

Surprised you left out Butch Reed.... Racist. And I think the whole "replace JYD "thing is true, but Watts wasn't going to just put the belt on his "newest" black star. He probably wanted to get a guy over first and it just wasn't happening with Wells, Jack, etc. They pushed Master G huge. That much I can tell you from having watched the TV. And in some ways they pushed Snowman even higher.

Goulet vs Bret from 1/85: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jleneY2D64Y No idea why I'm linking it.

He was a guy who loved to be there and it showed. Flair loved Mongo.

I can't access the last page at work for some reason. There has to be some dubious content there. I knew I wanted to talk about Volkoff a little but there was someone else I wanted to as well when I read it before I left this morning. Wait, it was Warrior! Volkoff, first. I like him quite a bit in mid-south. There was an air of athletic legitimacy to him that the WWF never played up but that fit right in in Watts' country. I think he and Darsow had good feuds with Magnum and Wrestling II and the RnRs. I loathe 1985 NWA Russians squashes. They're the most long and tedious things ever, which made no sense with the gimmick. I much prefer Volkoff and Darsow mid south squashes. (Long-form matches are probably another story). The press slam into the back breaker was actually a pretty huge move for 1984. The spin-kick was awesome and I think we just haven't seen enough stuff of his from the 70s. Also, it always amazes me how over he was in 1990 WWF as a face after the turn. I swear he was the #3 or #4 face during that summer. Ok Warrior. I think there's an argument here. I think HHH GETS IT better than Warrior does. He instinctively understands wrestling on a higher level, even if I think his ego drives him to ignore a lot of what he probably knows. He probably does little things better. Warrior, however, is so underrated at taking direction. A lot of his big matches were either super scripted or he was led by the nose in them, but they stand out as being pretty good. It comes back to one of those more fundamental issues we deal with all the time: Do you judge the match or do you judge the wrestler? By being so well-managed Warrior ends up having a number of good matches. By not managing himself well, HHH has a ton of stinkers. In this situation, having less talent almost works in Warrior's favor.

Would I undo any possible good being done in this note by suggesting people were cheering the Kat as Gabrielle to Chyna's Xena?

Hennig really had a great 92 as Superstars co-host. I don't think he was a great color commentator in getting over the matches but they were simply squashes, so he didn't have to be. He made a really good foil to Vince and the fact that he was in the central role at Summerslam meant that they could play it up all the time. Amusingly, the one time he got annoyed by it was when Scott Hall was wrestling. "Watch the match, Vince!"

http://youtu.be/dHkrySwZrAc This is the start to the feud, a week or so before Summerslam. I found it by accident. Shango is demolishing a jobber post match and Hart makes the save.

I kind of want to make an argument for Mike Shaw based on his Makhan Singh run. I won't, but I kind of want to. And I think Ron Bass is fairly underrated too. That might be a better argument.

I'm not sure I believe that. I used to. But I think WWE main event style is FAR easier to have good matches in than any other main event style. I am more impressed by a guy who can work ten good tv matches, with ten different guys, none of them getting more than ten minutes than I am by a guy that goes 1/4 or even 2/4 in terms of delivering quality, lengthy, "big show" matches. Especially if some of those matches have different basic structures?

It's largely because there are fewer quality roles for Women. If they weren't split, you'd have men dominate the nominations. Don't think so? Sample the last 20 years of Best Picture nominees. Split them into categories by Man Is The Lead, Woman Is The Lead, Tweener. Even the Tweener part is tricky, because as much as there's Johnny & June in I Walk The Line, it is more about Johnny than June. It just happens to have a strong woman role. You might even need to have Tweener Lean Man, Tweener Lean Woman and True Tweener. Why is this the case? As truly compelling as June's life is relative to Johnny's (and it's arguable even more compelling), Men for the most part Write / Direct / Produce / Greenlight movies. Even major indy houses are... The House Of Weinstein. It kind of sucks that they're split. But I'd rather see 5 women get the nod than 1. Or worse, they expand the field to 10 and 7 end up men on average, and 3 women. It sucks, but it's the reality of US movie making. John I don't want to do it right now, but if you were to look not at the best Picture nominees, but the best Actress Nominees and see they are Man is the Lead, Woman is the Lead, Tweener. Then... I had an argument in there but it fell apart. But do that anyway! or something.

Did Savage vs Flair draw in 92? Did Crush vs Savage headline any shows? I guess I can research that. #3 would be, did Hogan's exit (and how difficult Warrior was to deal with, perhaps) have something to do with Vince wanting to tone down the importance of Savage? Or what about how unstable he apparently was in 92 when the Liz break up happened?

Due to the scathing cooking analogy we can't really compare them.

Would Wrestlicious be okay then?

Wrestling is about symbolism and perception. If you train the audience to buy into something (see: People's Elbow, Cobra) they will. Sometimes it takes time; sometimes it doesn't, but I think you can train the WWE audience into almost anything, really if you're smart and persistent enough. What's the last thing that they tried to do, that they stuck with for MONTHS, and executed at least moderately well that really bombed? The Lashley push?

Rey is pretty much ready to come back, right? Is he being kept off the Mania card due to the injury still or some other punishment? I really hope they feud him with DB.

It's funny but never in my entire life did I question why there are separate best actor and best actress awards. I should nudge Fowler and see if there are scores of articles on this or whatever. Then have him read them for me and sum up.

Neither here nor there but the Nord shoot interview is one of the very best I ever heard.

I fully believe that Lanny Poffo almost caused riots in Texas. (I may be getting my facts wrong there)

I've seen a lot of 85 Nord and I've seen a lot of 91-2 Nord and he had it way more together in 91.

Nord/Bulldog from one of the 1991 WWF UK shows is WELL worth watching. The thing with Nord is that he had a pretty amazing offense (both in variety and believability) for a WWF heel at the time. I bet there are some really good Nord/Hart matches too.