Matt D

Darsow claims that it probably wasn't bad drawing which did Graham in since the territory was starting to pick up again a little when it happened.

The Creative Recall guy claims that Taker vs HHH was on the books since last August. I am skeptical of that.

Sunny JUST had a "Where are they now?" feature on WWE, so they've at least had contact with her in the last month or two. She said she wanted to do an angle with Vickie, for what it's worth.

You obviously forget about this: part 1: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8j843_te...erts_shortfilms part 2: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8j939_te...erts_shortfilms

It amazes me a little more everyday how little I actually know about the history of pro wrestling in the 80s. I grew up with it in MA starting in 90 and by then there really was just WWF and WCW and a hint of GWF for me and later on ECW. I've been going through old observers and listening to a lot of shoots lately and one thing has come up a few times and I'm curious just how much we know about it. Eddie Graham's Florida Championship Wrestling was one of the top territories in the early 80s. They had a big show at the Orange Bowl. Dusty felt like he got screwed on the house/payoff. He went to a two-bit Crockett promotion that had been barely drawing, taking a big chunk of the Florida talent with him and shortly thereafter raiding some of the Mid-South talent. Florida Championship Wrestling withers. Eddie Graham kills himself. Various owners/bookers come out of the woodwork, including Dusty and take charge of the company/booking. JCP prospers. I've pulled this together from Barry Windham, Bill Dundee, and Billy Jack Haynes shoots, mainly. I would not call this the best oral history of wrestling I could possibly get. Do we know much more of the puzzle?

I agree as much as ANYONE that they shouldn't have had Rocky demolish him last week though. Not unless they have an actual plan and I am extremely skeptical of that. I think they're just trying to pop a buyrate.

You really think a bunch a third grade gay jokes kept Cena's head out of the water ? Rocky killed him dead last week, and this makes him look as lame as he's been depicted to be. He was getting a noticeable reaction from a crowd that had been skeptical at the beginning of the promo. That counts for something.

They seriously need to reeducate the audience in what is acceptable, yes, just like they did with the in-ring work x amount of years ago. From a business sense, however, the time to do that is not right before a Mania. Cena needed any tool at his disposal just to keep his head above water after what Rocky did to him last week and these are normative tools in the WWE UNIVERSE. I guess a valid worry is that Cena is going to get more over if he keeps going down this path and they will notice and push further in that direction. (that said, he reiterated a few times last night that it was a one-off deal and he just had to get past it). Of course, Linda was just talking about running again in 2012, but then I have no idea how the CT republican base might feel about this sort of thing.

Well, to be fair, I'll admit that over at DVDVR I lauded Cena for mounting a comeback, ANY sort of comeback that made this into a less one-sided affair, if only because I had my doubts he'd be able to pull it off at all. And I'm probably a little bit guilty of shrugging the negative connotations off as "just the way WWE is." There were tools that he could have used as a WWE SUPERSTAR and, good or ill, that's one of the tools and he used it pretty effectively. So I was looking at things from, I don't know, a business sense? Or with a sense of the business, if that's not too slight a distinction. I realize that wrestling is a pretty scummy business, and the biggest heroes are very often the worst scumbags, but I always get the impression that Cena is a pretty good guy and a relatively caring one. I wonder if it's just a case that no one's called him to his face on this stuff in any meaningful way. Maybe that's way too naive of me. It sure sounds naive. Cena seems pretty isolated to me in general. I think back to some of his ridiculous company line media appearances and he comes off as an earnest and clueless schmuck on this sort of thing.

I'm not entirely sure what sort of discussion there is to have, to be honest. Yes, it's wrong. Yes, no one's surprised, including you and myself. I guess a line of discussion would be this: Would it be alright for him to have done it in any other form of entertainment? If he was a football player making such insinuations even in a joking way... but then that's real and this isn't. A sitcom wouldn't have the sort of adversarial nature that we deal with here. There really isn't anything that we can compare to wrestling (except for Madonna of course), so I guess that's not a line of discussion either. So sure, I am quite happy to shake my head with you and say, shame on them and hope that in ten years or some other logically derived amount of time, it will be so socially unacceptable to say such things that even pro wrestling, and Vince's pro wrestling which is specifically always either ten years behind the curve or utterly unaware of what they have (see: Zach Ryder/Usos), will refrain. But in the here and now it popped the crowd and put Cena back into fight, as it was, with the audience that matters to WWE. That he had to stoop to that level to do so either says something about his talent or the audience or both, I guess, but I don't think it's anything we didn't already know. Where's the discussion here?

It sure made the crowd happy. There's something to knowing your audience and giving them something they want. I mean, this is pro wrestling. When has it ever taken the high ground about anything at all? Forget Cena. WRESTLING isn't better than that. And hey, those are news stories had nothing to do with wrestling or Linda. I doubt the insulated WWE's higher ups even know anything about them. In general I do think that Cena was better off focusing on the fact that Rock left for greener pastures though. He had enough material there without going for the lowest common denominator. I also think that if anyone in the company should be a role model, yeah, it should be the guy who has all the fans under 12 and does the charity work. That said, I do think the crowd actually responded far, far better to making fun of Rock's movies and the gay stuff. They seemed a little wary when Cena was talking about Rock abandoning them.

Add to that the Chyna/HHH double turn on the show that was so complicated I don't remember it. But it made no sense either. WM15 was a godawful show with a godawful build. The build to the main event was better than good, and that was the only thing I was personally referencing since we were talking about the main event matches at Mania this year. (Keep in mind, I'm also not in the camp that thinks that Lawler should have won so I'm probably having different arguments than anyone else here).

That made no sense and shat on months of build. Absolutely. But the Main event stuff with Austin at that point was all hands on by Vince and can't be judged against the undercard. Maybe more so as 99 goes on.

There's also a difference between the undercard and a lot of what was on top during the Attitude era, and there's also a difference between Mania 98-Mania 99 year and the 99-00 year. To me Mania 98-99 was a pretty good build. Vince tried to get the belt off of Austin. Vince finally manages it by stacking the deck so far against him with Taker and Kane. Foley gets screwed after being unable to do the job with Austin. Vince ends up with his corporate champion in Rock. Austin has to go through more hoops than you can imagine to get his title shot (including Taker, the Rumble, and Vince). He does. Rock and Foley trade the belt around. Austin finally faces Rock for the title with Foley in the mix as the ref. It might have been shuffled around when various things happened (like Steve Williams' injury) but it all FELT long-form and epic. And it's not like there were a ton of surprises along the way. Survivor Series (albeit the biggest plot-driven PPV ever but it's self-contained) and Big Show's debut. That's about it. I don't feel like there's any real build to Cena/Miz. That's my problem. I look back and I don't see the path. Del Rio/Edge isn't any better, though them adding Christian to the mix helps a lot there, if he's not just a mini feud for Del Rio over the next few weeks.

I actually think Del Rio vs Big Show would have been an interesting program and hyped the DVD. Granted, you don't use Mania to hype the DVD. But Del Rio going over huge at Mania vs Big Show seems like a bigger deal to me for some reason.

It's Mania. They're going to micromanage the matches and dust Patterson off to put them together. I'd rather have a long-ranging well plotted epic story than just about anything else. It's Mania, the greatest celebration of sports entertainment there is.

Lawler shouldn't have won, Miz needed the win and a chance to look good, especially with a Wrestlemania match with Cena coming back. Who should have won instead of Edge to face Del Rio? Rey v. Del Rio was already blown off. The booking was predictable because it was the right booking to set up the matches for Wrestlemania. They should be praised for it, and not doing the stupid stuff they've done the past few years where they kept changing the title at the Chamber Honestly, the right booking for Mania should have either been having Orton having to go through a bunch of hoops over a number of months to get a title rematch with Miz (the first or second since Miz won the title) or Barrett winning the belt in Sept and Cena finally going through a bunch of hoops to get his revenge against him at Mania. There's no weight to Cena/Miz. They have six weeks to build it but they shouldn't have to at this point, not for Mania. I guess I'd call this PPV the best they could do considering the bed they made.

That would take getting some fat guys with actual characters and not cookie cutter well built guys with short tights and crew cuts. It won't happen in the current environment. Back to Vickie, this is actually the one way I think she'd work as Bobby Heenan. Give her all the cookie cutter well built guys with short tights and crew cuts. Give her four or five of these guys and have it look like she's trying to turn the WWE into this drab kingdom of these guys for her own personal reasons.

I tend to see her more with one guy than with a whole stable (Though I know she was with Chavo, Edge, Ryder/Hawkins at one point but did she actually come out with the Edgeheads for their matches?). I also think Cole would be somehow fresher and it'd get him out of the booth which is desperately needed.

Well the the problem becomes a reluctance to use managers, no? 2011 could be centered around Cena vs Cole and his stable of disposable heels, but I feel like they'll never pull the trigger on that and take him out of the booth.

I'm dubious about this. Rock'll be gone in a month and Cena will still be here to carry the company, albeit in a terribly damaged form. If this is the way they finally turn him (or really create a Bret situation where he's a heel to any male over 14 and a face to anyone under, explicitly), then that's one thing, but it's like bringing in the travelling NWA champ in the 70s-80s and having him make all your local guys look like worthless chumps instead of contenders that JUST missed the goal.

That's why I like my explanation better. It hurts my head less. The Bischoff turn was over Piper and just a short while away, right?

He's also a guy who put a TON of work into his craft. That was obvious. I think Randy "30 page faxes to Steamboat and the Ultimate Warrior" Savage was in some ways the PERFECT opponent for him. I also love the idea that the Outsiders were the MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTOR.

I thought this made sense storyline wise as Bischoff, secretly part of the NWO, wanting to make Piper look like an ass.

Dave made a typo, it was UFO. Thanks. There are obviously mysterious hints to the future in Dave's Observer typos.