artDDP

I'm surprised WWE hasn't tried this finish. Preferably with Pat Patterson announcing, "Just a reminder...!"

Wait, what? I don't remember that part at all. I haven't seen it in years, but it was widely discussed at the time as being a dick move by Shawn. I found a transcript of it online, and Shawn said this in the most obnoxious sarcastic "pro wrestling is fake and Hogan sucks" way possible: The crowd didn't really know how to react when this happened. Didn't he say somewhere in that promo that Hulk wasn't coming back until he needs another payday? I remember seeing a promo where Shawn seemed to try really hard to bury Hogan.

Fuck you, John All my experiences have been in Sacramento as WWE has made this a regular stop of theirs. I've seen a handful of WCW Nitro cards, several Raw and Smackdown tapings, two PPV cards, TNA once, and a few local indys. Nothing really exceptional stands out. I did see Scott Hall and Kevin Nash pummel a fan who ran in during a 1997 Nitro. Spike Dudley hung out in the parking lot for a while bullshitting with my friend and I that day. A spectacularly hot girl flashed Edge during a six-man tag with The Brood against Too Cool and whoever their heel partner was back then. I remember the entire match stopping dead and staring at her for a few seconds. In the parking lot I messed around a little with Teddy Long and Earl Hebner who were good sports. Nicest pro wrestlers I ever met were Bret and Owen Hart and The Rock. My brother had a PWI with Bret and Shawn on it and asked Bret to sign and he wrote, "Bret 'Hitman' Hart RULES" across Shawn's face.

I, too, remember his threat that he would "walk naked" on Raw the next week. I imagine it was something "incredibly edgy" that Russo thought up but it got dropped due to Montreal. Why I remember Michaels' threat to appear naked on Raw, of all things, is another matter...

Adding this to my signature...

Considering Triple H's undying love of pro bodybuilding he might actually put Arnie over. Maybe.

He did quite a few, both solo and with the group.

I liked the angle in WCW where they were speculating how big the fine would be for Randy Savage striking Nick Patrick. Patrick was demanding $1M and I think it went down to $5K. One thing I can't stand is how in seemingly every sport the officials are not to be fucked with but in WWE (and pro wrestling in general) it's come to a point where they just stand there and watch wrestlers break the rules at every turn and just plea "Come on! Come on!" There are so many ways you could work within your own rules and educate fans to pay attention to the matches and not just wait for someone to appear on the ramp or wait for their music to play. I guess that would require some creativity and we know matches don't matter anymore.

Flair was mooching even back then? I used to think WWE could have done something with Terrel Owens though lately his star has faded. Maybe Michael Vick? No idea who you could pair them with as WWE doesn't even seem to know who their marquee stars are besides Cena, Hunter, and Taker and only one of them seems to have some miles left on them.

Agreed. Has a pregnancy storyline ever actually resulted in a baby? Stephanie McMahon's was a quasi-storyline, right?

On some indy show I watched in 1998 or thereabouts Gordon Solie described Valentine as "not burning a calorie unless he has to."

I can't point to a single moment that caused me to drift away. Prior to 2003 I was a total die-hard fan, the kind who consumed all the news he could and could watch hours of anything online or DVD/VHS. It was during that year that I felt myself becoming less interested in the product as the characters were becoming less and less interesting and more focus seemed to be on Triple H's legacy push than anything else. I would still check in from time to time, of course, and watch what I heard was interesting online now and then. I remember being pretty turned off by a much more violent WWE style, emphasizing grotesque chair shots, gory blade jobs, and dangerous stunts. I felt uncomfortable even back then regarding the amount of trauma their brains and bodies were enduring and it was becoming all too commonplace. One thing I remember finding particularly offensive was Brock Lesnar's beating of Zach Gowen. I thought that was wholly unnecessary for Lesnar's character and Gowen's, especially for someone who wasn't going to get a serious push as a result and wound up being released sometime afterward. To this day I find so many of the current WWE wrestlers to be totally bland and dull and the entire product is so homogenized. I have seen quite a bit of TNA thanks to friends' DVRs and I have enjoyed absolutely none of it, probably because it's next to impossible to make sense of.

Holy Christ, I can't believe you actually found that!

Even the son-in-law's contract has the death clause. That's pretty cold. Which reminds me, what ever came of Sid Vicious' wanting to sue WCW/Time Warner for the top rope kick spot?

I don't think WWE looks at things like we do. To them, Kane still gets a decent crowd reaction and sells merchandise so to them a match with Orton is a pretty big deal.

Vince must be going crazy because after so many decades of trying his promotion still isn't seen as a mainstream entertainment company.

Ricky, that was likely either one of two things: One, Vince was allowing wrestlers he brought in from other territories to mention their histories because he wanted veteran fans to feel a sense of continuity. Or two, Vince didn't notice because he was too busy running other parts of the promotion and hadn't gotten into micromanaging it yet. Craig Pittman interrupting a tag match with two main-eventers to beg Steve McMichael to manage him in a storyline that goes nowhere? Who was coming up with these ideas?

I was going to write something asking when Nick Hogan will join TNA, but then I realized I don't actually watch TNA so I've never seen Garrett Bischoff. I looked him up and saw he has his family name tattooed on his chest in a fashion that looks like a Jiffy Lube attendant's uniform. I also started laughing because my immediate thought was that it looks exactly like the logo for a local business, Bischoff's Medical Supplies.

He had a push in WCW as the new star of the cruiserweight division. He was given his own entrance music and came out with the Nitro Girls to have good, lengthy matches every week. I don't remember him getting a significant angle as 3 Count broke up just two months before the final "Nitro" and I don't even think he got very much promo time.

I used to pick up whatever obscure wrestling magazines I could find as the Apter mags were in every grocery and book store at the time. I grabbed a "Wrestling All-Stars" (I think that was the title) and it had ads for the Torch and Observer. The Torch offered $5 free trial subscriptions so I chose them. I didn't understand 3/4 of what I read until I found glossaries on some old Geocities sites. Our local newspaper had one of those pre-recorded news phone lines in the 90s and there was a wrestling option updated by Blackjack Brown every Sunday and Wednesday night. It didn't go deep behind the curtain but did provide plenty of information on upcoming storylines and TV taping results.

Damn it, I have too many wrestling videos to catch up on as it is. Now Bob has talked me into buying another.

I had forgotten how much fun Tajiri was to watch doing the exaggerated facial expressions and really selling for his opponents. Thanks for the links!

John can probably help out with this but I remember Helms doing a clean job to Triple H just a few weeks later.

The Warrior is the Gary Busey of sports entertainment.

There's at least half a dozen stadiums in the USA which top out at over 100,000 capacity (mostly gargantuan football fields at Big Ten universities). I wonder why Vince has never tried to run Mania at any of those? Is he just afraid that the building might be half empty? They could always do what WCW did: Book a stadium for PPV or "Nitro" and then curtain off two-thirds of it.