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I have a friend named Chris who is still somewhat of a mark. Hasn't paid much attention to wrestling since 2001 or so but now watches TNA regularly because they have Hall, Nash, Waltman, and Hogan. He asks me at least once a month why TNA won't sign Disco Inferno, Marcus Bagwell, Rick Steiner, and Randy Savage. He thinks signing them would put TNA over the top. He does not seem willing to accept that 1998 was twelve years ago.

Bret said in his book that Lawler really layed into him with the crutches back at SummerSlam '93. Wouldn't surprise me to find Lawler intentionally stiffed Dreamer.

This from a guy who lists Taboo 2 as one of his favorite porn movies.

My initial exposure to ECW came in 1995 via the America One network. I stumbled upon the program while channel surfing and was very familiar with it based on write-ups in the Apter mags. It was hard not to be hooked when one is thirteen years old and testosterone is surging. The MTV-style editing was hypnotic when compared with the ten-minute plus Bob Holly matches airing on Raw. By 1997 I was way more interested in the "Big Two", WCW much more than the WWF. I wasn't a hardcore Internet fan yet, still primarily relying on the magazines and it started to seem I had to be a regular hotline caller and order everything from RF video to really understand what was going on in the promotion. I paid attention but wasn't enthralled with much that went on. Admittedly, I have very strong feelings regarding ECW, which I won't share here. Suffice it to say I agree with John Layfield's promo from One Night Stand 2005.

Watching this week's Smackdown I couldn't help but wonder, wouldn't Triple-H look much better with a textured, messy cut? I'm at a loss as to what could be done with Shawn Michaels' tresses, out of fear he'd look like late-90's Jerry Flynn.

I guess a fair explanation is that when Hardy left he was still a hot act and Hunter just does this sort of thing every time someone new gets over.

The crowd's reactions seem to say they've figured out Hunter's strategy, which he hasn't altered since 2002. He thinks he's keeping himself relevant by inserting himself into feuds with hot acts, all the while he's killing the undercard. You'd think he'd figure out what made Flair, Rock, and Jericho so viable for so long was that they weren't afraid to look vulnerable.

Flair didn't retire. He was back working for Hogan by the fall of 2009.

Based on the booking lately I get a feeling the Royal Rumble will come down to Shawn Michaels and Triple-H.

Maybe a little off-topic, but reading the most recent posts made me think of this: Why does it appear WWE wants to only have five or six credible wrestlers and everyone else is booked like Disco Inferno?

I usually don't like reading long, detailed PPV recaps though I do enjoy reading Keller's reviews when a promotion is either dying or in total disarray. His TNA reviews are beginning to read a lot like his year 2000 WCW reviews.

Who: My entire family, it seemed. My dad grew up in Boston as a huge fan of Bruno Sammartino. My mom was from Tennessee and had been exposed by osmosis due to her immediate family. The family moved out to Sacramento in the '70s and she started watching the bay area wrestling and became a huge fan of Peter Maivia. By the time I was born they hadn't paid much attention but one of my uncles who babysat me a lot was a big WWF fan and ordered WrestleMania III. As I grew older I came to find that almost every wrestling fan I knew was pretty much hooked by that card. What: I loved just about everything "macho" marketed to boys at the time. The theatricality of wrestling just hooked me. The costumes, the action, the storylines, the older kids in the neighborhood showing me matches with guys like The Rockers and Rick & Scott Steiner that blew my mind. It was a hell of a lot of fun, like so much of the stuff from the '80s. When: 1987 or so is when I really remember paying attention. I wasn't yet five years old. Where: Sacramento, California. During the '80s the WWF ran a lot of shows in the then-new ARCO Arena, including quite a few Saturday Night's Main Event tapings. My parents didn't think I could quite handle sitting in a fixed location for hours of TV tapings back then so I never got to attend a live card until WCW Monday Nitro on February 24, 1997. I paid $18.00 for a lower-level seat. Since then I've been to quite a few WWF, WCW, and WWE cards as well as numerous independent shows. I even worked a few dozen of those cards from 1999-2001. Why: As I grew older I started getting into the NWA more as it seemed more serious. I started buying up all the Apter mags as they came across as more "serious journalism" though once Sunny debuted I started paying much more attention to the glossy, full-color WWF Magazine. My dad, whose interest I had rekindled, started picking up really old tapes and such for me and we'd watch them together. He explained to me what "curfew" meant and taught me why wrestling was such a staple of TV in the '50s. I got him a copy of Bruno's autobiography. We watched almost everything together, cracking each other up. He'd hate it when someone would knock their opponent down and then turn to the crowd, bellowing in his thick Boston accent, "Pin the sonofabitch!" My mom started browsing my copy of the Torch when she collected the mail one Saturday and suddenly found the backstage drama more compelling. To this day I'll still tune in, though I haven't been a regular watcher since about 2004. I usually will only go out of my way to watch a show if I hear there's a really good match. Same for my brother. My girlfriend got me the Shawn Michaels Heartbreak & Triumph DVD set and found that she kind of likes this stuff, too. I took her to the 2009 Bash PPV card and she wound up loving every minute of it. She really wants to see Shawn Michaels wrestle in person. I'll never really lose interest in the business though I just don't find anyone terribly interesting anymore.

Has Dave compared the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien dispute to pro wrestling yet?

Sorry, Bix, misunderstood your earlier comment about the music being left as-is on the WM video. The larger question is why did WWE edit out the snazzy-jazzy intro to WrestleMania III? The card immediately opens with the panoramic view of the Silverdome. Also, Hogan's post-match posing is cut out. There also seem to be a few clippings here and there in between matches.

In all seriousness, is Jericho being punished for weight gain or for getting over last year?

I have an original VHS copy of WrestleMania I I found at a thrift store. It has no entrances and generic music for the opening and closing videos.

They'll just say that Linda earned so much percent of the vote despite only spending so much money, spinning it as a major gain for an "outsider" candidate.

TNA hopes to capture casual fans with a show that would only make sense to the most die-hard Internet-savvy fans? Isn't their entire fan base Internet fans who already knew all the big surprises were coming a day ago thanks to Twitter?

Dave's MMA coverage gets annoying really quickly when he starts detailing how the crowd reacted to everything from the ring girls to the cotton candy vendors.

Why is Jesse Ventura edited out of so many DVDs but not all? I figure WWE would pay whatever it took to keep Jesse's commentary in the SNME DVD set yet he's also in the Starrcade set but not the WCW one. Also, why is he the only talent supposedly owed royalties for WWE tapes? I thought Vince was pretty good about getting iron-clad "I own everything" contracts?

When WWE did finally get all those stars they didn't do too good a job booking them. I doubt they would have booked the invasion any differently if they had Hall, Nash, Goldberg, Bischoff, etc. Though reading about the ego clashes would have been a lot of fun.

Dave wants his newest obsession to be as big as football or baseball and he really thinks Lesnar is going to be the one to take it there.

Strange, too, when you consider how complete the SNME set was and none of the matches were clipped.

I stand corrected, then.

The set I'm referring to has the grey boxes. I guess that would be the legacy set? It appears to be every WrestleMania in their original form as opposed to the edited Coliseum Video releases, yet the introduction to WM III with the cheesy talk-show music is missing and they edit out Hogan's post-match posing.