Matt D

And the idea of PAYING for a WWE product? That's madness to me right now. But we used to get together and buy PPVs in high school/college and split the bill all the time. And I bought a bunch of WWE dvds up until 04 or so.

MAY? Tenta was a great (and yes, I mean great) big man. Excellent timing. Some of the most credible looking offense ever. Good at knowing when to give and when not to give. And freakish strength that was too easy to overlook.

I JUST saw the Lawler entrance vs Dream Machine at the end of 80 in his first real match back and it is tremendous.

Brandi's impression of Dusty telling him about the Johnny Gunn name is great, for what it's worth.

I third the Jake comments.

You have no idea how excited I was when I finally saw the original Austin Idol angle since I didn't realize this was a take off of it.

Part of me is a little excited for the new content, no matter how we get it. So long as the stuff exists, it'll be somehow accessible to people who want to put it online.

I WISH we'd get the other seasons. Granted, my kid loves the muppets, but that's because we showed him what episodes were available. He loves Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy stuff too. It's mainly his own folly for having a parent that's not just going to let him watch Johnny Test or whatever.

Especially when they say over and over and over again. "I didn't watch it! I'm glad! It's terrible!"

Exactly. I've been scratching my head over people looking forward to 2011 Muppets in the same way that Flair Fan looked forward to Flair going to TNA because "he could still go". I too loved the Muppets. Back when they were at their peak. I'll grant that the Top Chef spot was quite good. But look at who they brought on. It wasn't the Muppet Show muppets. It was Elmo and Cookie Monster carrying things, and the Chefs and Padma 100% selling for and enjoying them. Different beast. The Muppet Show muppets? It's like watching 60+ year old Flair get tossed off the top or take the back drop these days. Then add WWE Creative... yeah, that worked. :/ John, thinking it's like looking foward to the Original Cast of SNL doing SNL this season... I think mostly everyone I know who's a muppet fan is looking forward to the new movie with its Back to Basics approach and the amount of love from the creative team. That said, I think at best, it's going to play out like really good Muppet fan-fiction, but that's still potentially enjoyable. (Because really, in 2011, almost EVERYTHING in every medium is fan fiction).

Lawler was a face the entire decade of the 1980s. After that, I have no idea. I know he was at least a face from 1992-1996 in Memphis. Didn't he turn heel at the end of 1989? Are we counting just Memphis? He was a heel in Texas in the late 80's and in Florida I think? As for the 90s in Memphis, he turned in the summer of 1996 and turned back babyface when the Nation of Domination showed up. Then he was a heel at the start of Power Pro wrestling till Randy Hales turned into Vince mcmahon and Lawler turned into mini Austin in 1998. Yeah, he turned heel in 1989 and it is featured on the Memphis set. Still from 1980 -89, that is a pretty long face run. As a heel in other territories, that doesn't bother me at all and I can't count that against him. Watch the AWESOME WWF vs. Memphis feud and his playing both roles at the same time depending on the federation is a work of art. God damn Jerry Calhoun. The 1980 Hart/Lawler pairing was so great, especially when Valiant was there with them. They could have milked that for so long if Lawler didn't get injured. I mean obviously the Hart/Lawler FEUD was legendary but there was so much more mileage out of heel Lawler in 80. He had practically just turned when he went down.

I also sort of think that things can be argued away logically, so long as you go from the viewpoint that wrestling is real but the muppets are just puppets. It would be one thing if Santino suddenly got magical powers from the potion, but he just used it as mist. The wrestlers understand showmanship as part of what they do. They know the muppet puppeteers will get them ratings, which means more money for them, so they play along on some level (the sheamus/Morrison stuff), in skits the wrestlers(kayfabe) worked out with the puppeteers. And Vickie's character is just so delusional that she forgot she was arguing with a puppet and lost herself to the moment. I think this is easier to explain away than Robocop or Chucky. In general, the very biggest problem with 2011 WWE is that they never mention money.

I think on some level it would have bugged me more (as opposed to "not at all," which is how much it bugged me), if WWE booking has been good lately. For instance, if the follow up to the CM Punk speech or Punk winning the title at MITB was the muppets show, that would have been one thing. I'll fully admit that my tastes are very, very far away from "real sports feel!" right now. When I joked over at the DVDVR board that I would like Ascension to use the glowing ball of power from their promo as a FX energy weapon in a match, I was only half joking.

Who did Buddy and DeBeers train? 97 vs Valentine. haven't seen it yet but for shits and giggles.

Apter didn't really have a byline under any of the articles that appeared in the mags. His columns were all news bits and tidbits from around the country...."Mr. Wrestling II is headed to Georgia to battle Ken Patera", "Jim Brunzell pinned Nick Bockwinkel in a non-title match in Madison, Wisconsin", "dusty Rhodes is furious that Jos Leduc pulled a fast one on him during a tag match in Florida", and so on. Stuff like that. His columns never took on a singular theme. It was the random tidbit aspect of them, at a time when you could only read about most of these guys outside of your own area, that made his stuff appealing. That column was a good springboard into any of the articles about those same guys that might appear in other places in the magazine. There was the little weekly Apter rant on Pro Wrestling This Week, each one usually having a very specific topic and just a bit of a twist.

Actually, I'll say this too. While on the bike I'm a captive audience of sorts, but even then, if I wasn't dealing with 5 day time limits on watching the justin.tv stuff, I probably wouldn't get to it all. The time limit before it gets taken down makes everything seem more pressing and necessary (and a little more exciting too I suppose).

I'm that guy. Right now on Justin.tv I'm watching 85 Mid-South (saw all of 84), 85 NWA (WWW and WCW SN), and 80 Memphis. If I have time after that I catch what other stuff is on this other channel which usually has a lot of fairly random mid 80s Crockett and Florida. I usually watch on the exercise bike, on the laptop. It's a lot to get through but I can watch while other stuff is going on and only half pay attention unless something I'm interested is on. At this stage of my watching life I'd much rather watch whole shows in a season sort of fashion than watch random matches/moments. I'm still thinking of trying my luck with the AWA set when it comes out though.

Jimmy in Memphis is wildly different than Jimmy anywhere else, but even then, the theme input in WCW (Self High Five made DDP as much as the Diamond Cutter) and awesome running of WCW SN towards the end just should add to his accolades.

Well, because they weren't a unit for 1. Not in a kayfabe sense, sure, but in a functional sense.

If they can induct tag teams, why can't they induct the "Three Wise Men of the East" as a unit.

Vince's attitude REALLY comes through in the testimony. It's very black and white.

I think the Rey thing can't be denied. Orton's booked way higher on the card than Rey, but SD tanked after Rey left. I suppose there is the Edge factor as well to think about, though. The SD that Edge was advertised for didn't pop a number, right?

People being the general TV Audience?

Granted, I'm mostly going off of secondary information as I wasn't watching much then, but it SEEMS like Khali and Umaga were both built to some similar degree, no?

Meltz on Henry/Show: " "The two had about as good a big man's match as you're going to have."