Leaderboard

Or Tony could look in the mirror and realize his refusal to do something when the issues with Punk and The Elite started and deciding to ignore it and hope it went away is what led to everything going to shit. Punk doing what he did wasn't a matter of "If" but "When", if it wasn't Perry who set him off it would've been something else.

An update from Ugandan pro wrestling...

Saturday night without Collision sucks. I hate the NCAA tournament. I'm not much of a basketball fan anyway.

I’ll respectfully disagree with both points. I fairly recently re-watched every WWF PPV up to maybe 92 and I have to tell you that Warrior was awful. He had three marquee matches with Rude and two were terrible. His match with Savage was a triumph of storytelling overcoming poor work and seriously, fuck kicking out of 5 flying elbows. That’s not work, it’s spectacle. His match with Hogan was a miracle rooted in lots of planning. Hogan could and did work. I dislike the narrative that Hogan was lazy in the U.S. It’s often peddled by people amazed that Hogan did maybe three more moves when working in Japan. Yes, after 86 he transitioned into more of a routine worker but shit, Flair was a routine worker too. Hogan got by on charisma and a routine but the idea that he couldn’t or didn’t also work when he was in the ring is just wrong. I feel like a lot of wrestling criticism has its roots in Meltzer’s writing in the 80s, where guys who worked a technical style were just automatically seen as better workers. Which is pretty funny if you think about it; smart fans were getting worked and believing the “scientific wrestler” gimmick. It was shocking, rewatching all this stuff, how so many wrestlers considered “bad” by conventional wisdom (typically big guys who worked a more power or brawling style, Hercules Hernandez for example) were really competent workers.

I’m just saying Becky crediting Vince alone with all her good fortune in life is sad.

This is the Jedi Mind Trick/wrestlers are insecure thing again. That company needs to hire a cult deprogrammer.

It's like blaming the match for setting the fire and not the gas-soaked pile of kindling that's been there for a year or so and you never got around to cleaning up.

It really did feel like one of the cooler plots from an episode of the Real Ghostbusters. I have zero clue what any of the reviewers were basing their poor reviews on. I don’t know what they expected to see. I saw some say that they wanted to see more ghost busting so it could be more like the original where they're like plumbers or firemen, but for ghosts. I've seen that opinion a lot. It makes me wonder when the last time they saw the original movie was because they bust 1, ONE ghost, and it's Slimer. The rest of the time it's fucking around with a once in a generation cast, a once in a generation script, and a once in a generation job by the director, especially with letting Bill Murray say whatever he wanted. They show the montage of them around town, but that's it. I thought it was really funny and had a lot of heart. Again, this seems to come up a lot, but there's plenty of stuff I could see hitting close to home for parents or step parents or step children, not to mention what it's like to raise a young teen. I liked that it establishes what's happening with the family in NYC and what they're doing and then it pretty much moves on from there to where, without spoiling anything, it opens up the Ghostbusters universe in a way that is really fucking cool. I geek out for dumb shit like schematics that some graphic designer cooked up, but that works here because you also get to see just how it works. I think if I had any big criticism it's that the third act feels somewhat rushed. There also seemed to be a lot in the trailer that wasn't in the movie, which makes me wonder how much the strike affected things. It makes me think there was more to explore in that third act and it ends putting a really nice and neat bow on everything where... So yeah, you could flesh out that third act more, but then you're probably adding another 20 to 30 minutes to this thing and a tight 2 hours was about perfect. BTW, I loved, LOVED that callback to the shit that happens to William Atherton in real life... The reviews for this movie are about the most unfair I've seen for a movie that is, at worst, just OK, and at best, for someone that's a huge fan of the movies and lore and everything, I think it's better than 2 and I think it edges out Afterlife (I really loved the sentimentality of Afterlife). If you go off of the reviews, you'd think it was worse than Madam Web, a movie where THE VILLAIN HAS ALL OF HIS LINES ADR'd AND NONE OF IT MATCHES UP WITH THE MOVEMENTS OF HIS MOUTH and that doesn't even speak to how big of a piece of shit the rest of it was. I don't know. It's pretty fucking good. At least I thought so. And I'm happy it's making a lot of money to make a third one of these. So like, go see it. If you weary of it, again, at worst I could see someone thinking it was merely OK or passable, but if you're down for fun Ghostbusters shit, then yeah, it's going to be your jam.

Show #161 – 12 October 1998 "The one where RAW is WAR, but BISCHOFF!!! IS!!!! EXCITEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!" It’s been awhile, what with work being busy lately and 1998 feeling like a never-ending year of television. I can’t believe that I still haven’t made it through Havoc! How have I not made it through Havoc?! The show starts with Eric Bischoff telling security to bar Ric Flair from the building. It’s ineffective heeling because Bischoff stinks at heeling most of the time pre-WWE run. OOPS, WAIT, I MEAN; WOW, HOT START TO THE SHOW TONIGHT CENTERED ON THE ORIGINAL BAD BOSS OF WRESTLING (IF YOU IGNORE McMEMPHIS), ERIC BISCHOFF! We are reminded of what I can only describe as a terrible Nitro main event on last week’s show. Sting got stretchered out for some reason. I don’t know why; that was a low-energy backstage assault (ha!). Not even Chae dancing around in the ring can raise my spirits w/r/t this Nitro. Hey, Tygress seems like she's a really good dancer, which is rare for a Nitro Girl! So, after commentary introduces themselves, we get…another video package of last week’s backstage brawl. I totally forgot that Bret suplexed Sting through a table. I guess they tried! But even that table spot felt kinda soft. If your table spot feels soft, it wasn’t worth doing, because I know it shoot didn’t feel soft to Sting. Now, there's a video of the Hitman challenging Sting in what is somehow a lukewarm feud. I wanted to see Hitman/Sting for so long. How did they manage to make it feel so dreary? Actually, that’s a rhetorical question. They added Hogan into this thing for some stupid reason and put an obvious heel turn into the whole deal as the dingleberry on top of the shit sundae. Now we get another video package for the Hart/Sting feud – WTF?! – and after that, video of the WCW Mastercard stuff from Wall Street. Nine-and-a-half minutes in, and we finally get the intro to the show. I am anti-hyped. Video plays of Meng beating up Chris Adams and then facing off with Wrath from Thunder. I am not opposed to this recap in theory, but after ten minutes of nonsense? Just get a match going. Preferably one that doesn’t involve Rick Fuller. Lodi comes to the ring with his signs, but with no chance against Wrath. It is bullshit that Wrath got cut from WCW/nWo Revenge. I forgot that, so I fired up the game last week and prepared to take Wrath to TV title glory, but no dice. What an oversight on AKI’s part. Anyway, Wrath beats the piss out of Lodi and drops him with a Meltdown in about a minute. Meng walks onto the ramp to confront the victor. They meet in the aisle and brawl, but we have to ASAP go to video of Eric Bischoff talking from the previous Nitro, so we only see about five seconds of said brawl. In the recap, we see Reid hit the ol’ double-leg. I mean, it got a pop, I guess? Kendall Windham wrestles Dale Torborg in Torborg’s Nitro debut. I totally forgot that the KISS Demon existed until this moment. Can you believe that anyone thought that KISS would be relevant to a late ‘90s wrestling audience? Does Vinnie Jr. liking Kid Rock indicate an awful taste in music on his part? Yes. But also, Kid Rock was at least musically relevant in that time period! I don’t fuck with Kid Rock, Disturbed, Saliva, etc., but that stuff was 100% relevant to the twenty-somethings in the audience. KISS? Fucking KISS?! You might be thinking that maybe I should describe this match, but no, it sucks, and you’re missing nothing. A small pocket in the crowd chants BO-RING for a bit, and they are correct in their assessment. Torborg blows out his knee while hitting a big boot for the victory. Whoopsie! It’s the Nitro Girls! I’m going to be totally misogynistic here by noting that Chae, who is choosing of her own volition and through her own agency to dance while wearing sexy clothing on front of a crowd, brings me a terrible male pleasure when I watch her. It is my shame. It is my ignominy. I’m sorry if writing and sharing this with you may have exposed my searing hatred and disrespect of women, but on the flip side, at least I don’t hate or disrespect women quite enough to also screencap and share a shot of Chae grooving! Small victories. Video recap of Goldberg, Page, and Raven getting into it from an earlier show. The Wolfpac’s music hits and Sting stalks to the ring, still looking like a dingus in the red face paint. Sting speaks! I still think that’s a pretty rare thing over the past couple of years. Sting calls the Hitman out for TONIGHT. He also calls Hogan out. For TONIGHT, I guess. Then Sting’s old tag partner Warrior comes to the top of the ramp. Blade Runners reunion! Now, that’s novel. Even if the match sucks, I’ll get a kick out of WCW hosting a Blade Runners reunion in 1998 [Ed. note: I did get a kick out of it for about fifteen seconds]. Warrior plays some inside baseball by alluding to their former partnership and theorizing that maybe it’s the face paint that made them world champions. Actually, I didn’t hate this promo and kind of enjoyed it. I mean, Warrior comes out and, though he does so exceedingly cryptically, says basically this: Hey Stinger, long time, no see. We’re still painting our faces and kicking ass, huh? Anyway, I’m a WWF guy, really, but I’ve been keeping an eye on you from afar and I’m real proud of you and your success in WCW, bruh. I’m only here in WCW to face Hogan; this is your domain. On that note, and in respect to the fact that you run WCW and not me, I humbly propose the following: You want to fuc blow Hulk’s world up and so do I, so how about we tag up tonight for old time’s sake against those two chumps you don’t like? Of course, he says it in an impenetrable way that gets him booed by the end of it, LOL. That’s the end of the first hour, by the way. We have two more hours to go. Look at the recap – video packages and promos galore, one fun Wrath squash that took a minute and another match that stunk and took five minutes. What a dumpster fire of an hour. Hour number two starts as hour number one established: Here comes Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, and the Giant. I guess the Giant’s wrestling Goldberg for the big gold tonight…again. They could have had this match at Road Wild, but they’ve had them confront one another and have one match on Nitro that was unfulfilling. Going back to this again, after having teased it and failed to deliver it since August, is dumb. Hogan cuts what I can only describe as a diabolical promo. He keeps calling himself “’Wood” and “Woody” and generally is a detriment to pro wrestling. Anyway, he accepts that tag match challenge. DO YOU WANT EXCITEMENT?! I SAID, DO YOU WANT EXCITEMENT?!?!?! LET'S WATCH ERIC BISCHOFF RUN THROUGH THE BACK OF THE UNITED CENTER TO POINT AT A LIMO THAT HE THINKS MIGHT HAVE RIC FLAIR IN IT!!!!!! OH YEAH, I’M POPPING HUGE!!!!!!! (They dragged the United Center’s owner down here to give safe passage to Flair and the Horsemen into the arena and the owner’s skybox.) YOU CAN KEEP YOUR STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN AND THE ROCK, WWF!!! BISCHOFF YELLING “I’LL SUE YOU” AT THE OWNER OF THE UNITED CENTER IS WHERE IT’S AT, BABY!!!!!! This is scintillating television! No wonder this Nitro drew a 4.6! It’s not because the wrestling audience was significantly expanded from where it was even a year ago! It’s not true that, as a result of a run of terrible shows, including this show, WCW would shed a ton of that expanded audience in 1999! No, Eric Bischoff walking around backstage is great television, that’s what that 4.6 means! Holy shit, is there going to be any more wrestling on this show? Now we get a shortened version of Warrior’s promo from the previous Nitro and, for reasons which I cannot fathom, a replay of the “Warrior in the mirror” spot that they should have had the sense to pretend never happened. I hope that “Warrior in the mirror” spot gives a greater appreciation to Vinnie Jr. and the bookers who figured out how to make half of the supernatural shit the Undertaker did come off decently enough to avoid completely breaking immersion. I mean, don’t appreciate Vinnie Jr. for anything else because he’s a complete piece of shit, but the Undertaker’s supernatural shit being booked reasonably well, yeah. Fit Finlay faces Alex Wright in Wright’s quest to embarrass every other European wrestler in the company. Wright does some pre-match promo stuff in which he blames Finlay for ending his dad’s career. Should I track down Finlay/Steve Wright on Youtube? I say this as someone who thinks Finlay sucked for sizable stretches of his career and peaked when he was in his forties and wrestling in Ruthless Aggression-era WWE. Finlay doesn’t suck tonight, though. He dominates the younger Wright and hits some cool offense early on, then shakes off a missed shoulderblock that takes him into the post before eating boot on a dive. Wright tries to follow up, but eats a knee on a corner charge, and hey, this match is intense as fuck, but it ends almost immediately after Wright launches Finlay into the top rope on a Finlay leapover and then rolls him up with leverage on the ropes for three. Bulldog runs down and attacks Wright; Finlay helps Bulldog, then attacks Bulldog after Wright escapes. Huh, that was really fun, if a bit short. See, pre-WWF Finlay well might be worth watching! La Parka, Ciclope, and Villano IV face Chavo Jr., Psicosis, and Super Calo in six-man action, and while this show desperately needs some more action, I assume that this will all end with some nonsense lWo crap and Eddy Guerrero desperately trying to cut shoot promos that don’t stink. There are lots of dives, and I welcome them because guys are out here trying to wrestle. Chavo springboards onto like four dudes at one point. Calo wipes himself on a corkscrew splash, and Psicosis mistimes his guillotine legdrop on a covering opponent, so Billy Silverman stops counting a pinfall for no reason except to wait for Psicosis to land the move. Oh well, look, this match is just here so we can get a decent bout. A little later on, Chavo and Calo clear out Parka and IV with suicide dives; Psicosis manages to land a senton splash from the top to the floor on Ciclope…and hey, here’s the lWo. They come out as Chavo Jr. lands a tornado DDT on Ciclope for the victory. There’s a tiny EDDY chant, which is especially cool because it happens in spite of the fact that they’re booking my boy into the ground. Eddy’s basically like Yo, we’re underpaid and disrespected and recruits Psicosis and Chavo. I guess everyone’s on some FUCK SUPER CALO time because the poor bastard isn’t included. I mean, neither are the heels, but that’s understandable. Poor Calo; no one wants to hang out with him. They give Chae a solo. I always assumed Chae was a Korean-American born on the West Coast, knowing many Korean-Americans who were born out here, but she’s a Korean-American born in Seoul and (somewhat obviously in retrospect, considering the company she works for) raised in Georgia. Well, I was going to dunk on Larry Z. for saying she was a mysterious lady from the Far East, but I guess I can’t dunk on the “Far East” part. The weird racialization of Asian women being uniquely mysterious, I can still dunk on, though. Scott Steiner comes out, declares that he can physically pleasure every woman in the audience, disses brother Rick, and craps on Buff Bagwell and Buff’s loyal mother Judy. Scott says he worked their issues out and got Buff to put Judy back in the kitchen, but Buff and his loyal (and unamused) mother Judy storm out to the ring. Buff says he’s got beef with Scott, who threatens to break Buff’s neck. They threaten one another. I assume this is yet another ruse, so it means nothing to me from a dramatic standpoint. Scotty insults Judy and calls her an “old bag” and then, in my favorite insult of anyone maybe ever, an “old scallywag.” HAHAHAHA, I am calling anyone I don’t like an old scallywag. Tremendous. Scott forearms Buff in the balls, but I’m sure Buff’s just wearing a cup in kayfabe (and maybe IRL?!). Scott crows about forearming Buff in the balls and challenges all of Chicago to a fight as we go to break. Juventud Guerrera comes to the ring to face Prince Iaukea. Poor Iaukea gets a jobber entrance. Disco runs out with a mic to declare that the fans want to see him dance rather than seeing them wrestle. I mean, seeing both would be cool with me. Disco tries to dance on the apron, so Iaukea slugs him and the match starts instead. Aw. Kidman comes out, grabs a chair, and chases Disco away while Juvi boots Iaukea in the corner. Iaukea turns it around, gets two on a sunset flip, and gets another two on a side kick. Iaukea hits a legdrop and tries another cover, only gets two, and then follows up with a chinlock. That doesn’t last long; Juvi gets back to standing and eventually scores a Rocker Dropper for two. Juvi tries a dropkick, but misses, and Iaukea lays in the boots. Er, the feet. Iaukea gets two on a snap suplex, and as he follows up, Disco sneaks back to ringside in the style of Repo Man. Juvi uses Iaukea’s top knot to pull the Prince to the mat and take control. Juvi tries a 450, but Disco shoves him off the ropes. Juvi is able to roll through as Iaukea punches Disco again; Iaukea turns around into a Juvi Driver that gets three while Kidman runs back out and beats up Disco. There was a lot going on there! It was perfectly fine television. Kevin Nash comes to the ring dressed like, well, me at the time of this show's original airing, with the FUBU baseball jersey on. He gets a call-and-response on BIG SEXY’S IN THE HOUSE. How does a near-forty-year-old white guy pull this off? He then says that Scott Hall has touched his “last nerve.” Come on, are you kidding me? Well,now that I think about it, maybe he heard this phrase from an angry woman in his time at Tennessee. I think saying that someone is on your “last nerve” is more a Southern thing and a gendered thing than a racial thing. I had a lady teacher who would tell students they had gone past touching her last nerve and were now on her “reserved nerve.” It was a pretty clever play on that phrase! Anyway, Nash says that he’s a former bouncer who is used to beating up drunks, so Hall comes out and drunkenly crotch chops Nash before fleeing with Nash in tow. We follow them backstage, where Nash chases ghosts. He runs outside, where we finally spot Hall in the nWo limo. As the limo drives off Nash slowly chases it in his rented Cadillac. Chris Jericho is still the TV champ. He comes to the ring to defend it against Raven in a match that I am totally interested in. I also expect WCW to screw it up and destroy my interest. Jericho flings Raven into the rail and yells THOSE ARE JERICHO’S RULES into the camera. Jericho grabs a chair, but it’s got a cable wrapped around it, which is good reason for Jericho to struggle with it and allow Raven to dropkick it into his face. Raven sets up the chair in the corner, but his Irish whip is reversed, and he takes a wild bump into the chair and through the ropes. Jericho eats a post charging at Raven shortly after, though. Back in the ring. Raven drop toeholds Jericho into the chair, then tries an Evenflow that gets quickly reversed into a Lion Tamer for the tap out. Huh. That was fun, but way too short. I sure wish they got ten or fifteen instead of three or four. The desk sells that Raven is totally lost without his Flock as part of the post-match gaga. LOL, Gene Okerlund interviews Rick Steiner, but Chucky, the Living Doll of Terror cuts in. Chucky starts by saying, and I swear this is an accurate paraphrase, I GET TO SIMULATE SEX WITH JENNIFER TILLY ON A MOVIE SET TO GET PAID WHILE YOU STAND THERE AND TALK TO RICK STEINER FOR YOUR BREAD. Then, holy shit, Chucky says “Shut the hell up” to Okerlund, and the crowd pops, and Rick says, “Don’t let him talk to you like that.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Chucky just shits on poor dumb Rick and then declares that he’s shooting a movie with Scott Steiner in the lead and won’t countenance any threats against Scotty’s health. Yes, the fictional murderous doll is casting Scott Steiner in an IRL movie. This is a confounding segment, baffling in every way if you think about it for just two seconds. Remember my remark about the WWF pulling off half the Undertaker fuckery that it did being a credit to the creative of Vinnie and company? See this segment as another point in my favor. DDP cuts a QVC spot for a WCW/nWo shopping segment. I need to see if that segment is on the ol’ YouTube because I want to see what sort of crap they sold. OH YEAH, RAMP UP THE EXCITEMENT, ERIC BISCHOFF IS OUT HERE IN THE RING AGAIN!!!!!! BISCH SAYS HE’LL KEEP IT REAL SHORT, BUT PLEASE, NO, DON’T DO THAT, WE WANT MORE OF YOU ON SCREEN CUTTING SCINTILLATING PROMOS!!!!!! (Bisch yells at Dillon and Dellinger for awhile about Flair being in the luxury box, then demands to be led to said box by these two dopes.) WOW, FIVE STAR PROMO!!!!!! WOW, ALSO FIVE STAR TRACKING SHOT OF BISCH GOING INTO THE CROWD!!!!! NOW BISCH IS AT THE DOOR OF THE SKYBOX, AND IT’S SOME WILD TELEVISION!!!!!! HE REALLY LAYS DOWN THE LAW!!!!! OH, NOW HE SHOVES THE NEPO BABY WHO OWNS THE ARENA EVEN THOUGH THE MUNICIPAL, COUNTY, AND STATE GOVERNMENTS AND THEIR TAXPAYERS PROBABLY PAID FOR MOST OF IT!!!!!! AND NOW SECURITY IS ON HIM, WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! BISCHOFF, WOW, WHAT A SEGMENT, HE’S FIGHTING SECURITY AND AS TONY S. SAYS, THIS IS GREAT TV!!!!!!!! FLAIR CELEBRATES AS BISCH IS LED AWAY!!!!!!! OH WOW, THAT’S HOW YOU BE A CORRUPT EXECUTIVE ON A WRESTLING SHOW RIGHT THERE! BISCH IS SUCH A HUMBLE PERFORMER THAT HE ONLY GAVE HIMSELF ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES OF TELEVISION TONIGHT AND WAS THE ONE TO GET EMBARRASSED AT THE END OF HIS MANY, MANY SEGMENTS!!!!!!! THAT’S TRUE GENEROSITY!!!!!! THE DESK FAKE LAUGHING ABOUT THIS ARREST ANGLE IS TRULY THE CAPPER OF WHAT IS A MONUMENT TO PRO WRESTLING ANGLES AND PRESTIGE TELEVISION IN GENERAL!!!!!!! OH, NO, WAIT, YOU THOUGHT WE WERE DONE?!?!?!?! NO, WE’RE NEVER DONE!!!!!! BISCHOFF = RATINGS!!!!!! AND BISCHOFF BEING FROG-MARCHED OUT OF THE ARENA = MEGA RATINGS!!!!!!!! Aw, I guess now we’re going to be forced to watch a Goldberg match. I don’t know why; we need some more star power on this show. Can we find a way for Bischoff to escape security and then come back to confront Ric Flair? The Giant got a fucking jobber entrance because, of course, we needed more time to see Eric Bischoff stalk around backstage. So, you know, it was time well used. The Giant hits a dropkick as I think about Bischoff saying that he let the Giant leave WCW because he couldn’t figure out what else to do with him. Then, he intimated that Vince booking Big Show idiotically over the years proves that he was right about Giant having limited utility because he's too big to be sympathetic. So, yeah, Goldberg comes back, body slams Giant – it rules – and then for some fucking stupid-ass reason, we have Stevie Ray run down and clock Goldberg with a chair. This is a no DQ match, Tony S. helpfully informs me, so Giant follows up with a Goozle, but DDP runs down, breaks it up, hits Stevie with a Diamond Cutter, and then Giant leaves and loses by count-out. Well, if you think Giant doesn’t have enough utility to keep, maybe, IDK, what do y’all think, feed him to Goldberg for the clean loss, you magnificent performer, but lousy goddam booker Eric Bischoff. So, the main event is here. It’s Hogan and Hart against the Blade Runners, the latter of which Buffer says have never teamed together before tonight. See, we’re sliding into enshittification here in WCW, and Buffer is following right along in his ring announcing. That mistake is made funnier because Tenay has made a point of referencing the Blade Runners and talking about how this is their first tag match together in over a decade all night. Tony S. notes that Mortal Kombat: Conquest is premiering after Nitro, and I think that Warrior’s goofy ass would have made a great guest Kombatant in one of the new MK games. Warrior’s jacket design desecrates the American flag. Desecrating the American flag: Now, that’s edgy! We begin with Hogan and Sting in the ring. Hogan comes out of a lockup and hits a few punches, but Sting ducks under a lariat and clobbers Hogan, then hits an inverted atomic drop. Sting throws a few more punches, so Hogan scrambles over and tags Hart. They lock up, and Sting wins a battle of strikes with the Hitman next. He scores ten punches in the corner, so Hogan interferes, which draws Warrior, which distracts the ref, which allows the Hitman to hammer Sting in his nether regions. Hogan and Hart control Sting with the occasional nut punch and, depending on who is in the ring, either quite crisp or kinda shitty offense. This is a sped-up tag match because there were only about eight minutes left in the show when it started. Finally, after one minute of domination and six of getting killed, Sting gets a hot tag to Warrior, who didn’t even take off his longcoat before getting in and beating down the Hitman. Hogan jumps Warrior from behind, and Warrior no-sells it, and now here comes the rest of nWo Hollywood to incite the schmozz and the end of the match. The beatdown doesn’t last long, as the ring fills with smoke and then Sting gets a baseball bat and hits a few underlings while Warrior punches Hogan at ringside. So, what was the point of the smoke, then? It served no purpose here, as it didn’t help the babyfaces escape or serve as a distraction. Everyone just stopped working for a few seconds while it dissipated, and then Sting grabbed a bat and came back into the ring. Look, this doesn’t deserve any more of my thought, so I’ll let it rest. WOW, A SHOW WITH THIS MUCH BISCHOFF ON IT OBVIOUSLY SHOULD GET SIX OUT OF FIVE STINGER SPLASHES!!!! HOW DID IT END UP GETTING -3 OUT OF 5 STINGER SPLASHES?!?!?!?!!! NO ONE MAY EVER SOLVE THIS STRANGE AND INEXPLICABLE SCORING MYSTERY!!!!!!!

Seeing some people on Bluesky advocating for AEW to sign Motor City Machine Guns. I’ve liked their work that I’ve seen over the years (hate their theme song though). But also I feel like the fact I’ve been seeing their work since the early 2000s is a big point against them, especially with the style they wrestle. Then again, they’re both in their very early 40s. Given the already very full roster, I’m not sure if I’d sign them.

Cut to Gordon Solie as the guest in a Black church hearing about the evils of alcohol

this was awesome. Ep1 was a perfect primer to set up the series and status quo. it was like fitting into an old jacket. Ep2 was amazing. the trial. storm's going away letter. the cliffhanger. holy shit, i am 100% on board this train. i would also be down with a continuation of Spider-Man TAS. besides ending the series on a cliffhanger, they could bridge the gap and morph the series into Spider-Man Unlimited (which i never quite figured out if it was supposed to be a continuation or not.)

Actually if there's a match from WM30 that was era defining it was probably Taker/Lesnar more than the main event. As much as I want Danielson's win to be what set the table for the past decade of WWE, really it was Brock ending the streak leading to squashing Cena for the belt and becoming an absentee champion while they tried to build up the Shield guys. I've sometimes called it the Fuck You Era of WWE since Lesnar, HHH, and Roman seemed like personifications of Vince's middle finger to the fans And maybe Hart/Michaels Survivor Series 97 should be in a top 5 for importance, it's hard to argue it wasn't a turning point for the company

I'd sign the MCMG in a heartbeat. If I were TK, I'd have them show up at Dynasty to confront whomever wins the tag titles, most likely FTR or the Bucks. I enjoyed their match with Jay Lethal against Wardlow & FTR. I think working with the MCMG could do wonders for teams like Private Party or Top Flight.

So much of the last 20 years runs together, honestly the last real “important” match I can think of is Cena winning the title for the 1st as it’s the start of his era

Ultimate Warrior: The most positive representation of Polytheism in mainstream American media ever.

The Porkchop Cash squash where Porkchop punches the Intercontinental belt and hurts his hand. (Which is more due to Porkchop than Warrior, admittedly.)

The question is what is Warrior's best non-Rude/Savage/Hogan singles match? He's got the HTM and HHH squashes, both awesome and hilarious for totally different reasons. Then, uh, I'm drawing a blank. Nothing from Dallas, nothing else from WWF, and I don't think my upcoming re-watch of Hogan/Warrior at Havoc '98 is going to sway me to thinking that match will be any good. What people said about Goldberg back in the day is actually true of Warrior. He's completely, 100% presentation and spectacle. Which works sometimes! Spectacle is not the same as needing smoke-and-mirrors, IMO. Spectacle comes from within, and Warrior was good at spectacle. Warrior/Savage WM VII doesn't work unless Warrior shows that self-doubt and has to consult with the heavens to see if the warrior gods have spurned him. That is the sort of dumb shit that few wrestlers can pull off, but Warrior did it.

MCMG could also potentially help out the younger teams in AEW and ROH. I would think there's a place for them on almost any roster right now. Veterans who can still tear it up in the ring.

The thing is, Rick Rude was awesome. Rude could have a great match with a plank of wood. If Warrior's "he could have a good match if he wanted" evidence consists entirely of Rick Rude matches, that says nothing for Warrior Warrior.

So, clearly none of you have actually watched any MCMG matches recently. Neither of them has lost a step at all. If anything, Shelley is in better shape now than he was 10 years ago. They'd be a good get now. They absolutely still have it.

You'd think that were older given their longevity.

My favorite match of the Warrior/Rude trilogy is SummerSlam ‘89. Rude just absolutely bumps his ass off and the crowd is just molten hot.

Imagine you were doing this and knocked over the singers mic stand. And all 17 band members came after you

Do you just have a dislike of Mick Foley? Or a dislike of Elsalvajeloc? Because what you've been posting kind of comes off as someone with an axe to grind and really shoe-horning that opinion into a situation that doesn't fit. Mick complimented how kind he was. And that somehow crosses a line? Or is what crossed a line him complimenting a man for something that happened in the 80s while also talking bad of something that happened 10 years later in the 90s? I kind of can't follow what the gripe even is here. Terry Gordy was a great worker before the OD. Terry Gordy was not a great worker after the OD. A man putting over how kind someone was and then saying a negative thing he did like EIGHT years later doesn't make him fake or phony of passive aggressive. To me, it shows a man that hates that the narrative is so negative about Gordy. And that he wanted to balance it by talking about something nice he did. You may have some legitimate Foley issues you've heard or seen before. But this wasn't one.

Hogan could definitely work. As late as 1996, when he was revitalized by the heel turn, he could still turn it up and go on PPV. I think Hogan/Piper at Starrcade, while not quite a miracle match, is a very good match, and that's heavily down to Hogan's performance. While I liked the Rude/Warrior trilogy much more than Technico, I do think he's spot on with his assessment of Warrior and Hogan.

For me, it was one of the first pre-Hulkamania matches of the WWF that made me genuinely want to see it. I don't remember how I first heard about it (probably from a magazine or something) but hearing about the violence and brutality of it was something that made me want to track it down. I'm kind of a novice on early 80s WWF but from what I can figure out is that WWF (or WWWF) didn't exactly do violent and bloody matches on the regular, which made the Alley Fight stand out even more.

Coming at this with the full disclaimer that most anything pre-1980 is a blind spot for me but I'd say: Sgt Slaughter vs. Pat Patterson (Alley Fight, MSG) Hulk Hogan vs. Iron Sheik (MSG Jan 84) Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant (WrestleMania 3) Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin (WrestleMania 13) Steve Austin vs. The Rock (WrestleMania 17) Other matches I thought about were Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker (Hell in a Cell), John Cena vs. JBL (WrestleMania 21), Shawn Michaels vs. Ric Flair (WrestleMania 24), Bruno Sammartino vs. Larry Zbyszko (Shea Stadium), Hulk Hogan vs Ultimate Warrior (WrestleMania 6), Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart (Survivor Series 97)

When Tony signed him, he knew This Fire Burns.

Gordon was two steps from cracking at the end and still lays down a classically Gordon-esque last line ("from a man who is very, uh, emotionally charged at this moment"). What a pro.

Thinking of a wrestler doing a Thunderbolt tribute shtick of “consistently having to restrain himself from swearing in public”. Might stick out even more now when people pretty much swear in public whenever. Also Gordon reacting to Jimmy Hart like a cat reacting to a kitten with the “what the fuck are you doing” kind of response

I liked Frozen Empire. My biggest issue was it felt a bit unfocused since it’s practically an Altmanesque large ensemble piece. On the other hand, I wasn’t crazy about spending the entire film with the sitcom family dynamic set up early on, so I’m glad they opened the world up. It felt like the script needed another pass, but the last act is a hoot. Cool creature design, fun support from Nanjiami, Oswalt, and the legacy actors, plus it’s a tent pole movie clocking in at a merciful two hours.

I like that more companies are forcing captions on their commercials. Accessibility is great! I especially love when those companies misspell their own name, like Applebee's does (as "Appebee's") when claiming they have the best boneless wings.

We had a discussion on this not too long ago when it came that it might not be the best match. IIRC I think I said something to effect of it being a good match that's elevated to a great match purely on the storyline having rewatched at the time the discussion happened. It's kinda hard to transport yourself back to 1991, but there is a reason why multiple promotions try to recreate the two guys need to go forever and do multiple nearfalls template. Steamboat/Savage is just a game of let's have fun and do as many quick nearfalls as possible. Warrior/Savage is trying to play out the drama. I mean I understand why people would feel Hogan vs. Warrior at VI is Warrior's best match, but goddamn if that isn't by far Warrior's best individual performance that made you believe ok say what you will about Jim Hellwig as a person and worker but his WWF title run wouldn't have been a flop if he could be that type of storyteller he was against Savage that night.

checking in. i've been using this handle for ~20 years. I tried to dredge through the wayback machine to find when i originally registered, and could only get as far back as 2006. I know i lurked here for a long time before signing up. not DVDVR related, but on another board, a couple other guys and I used to "raid" different wrestling boards. signing up, spamming the shit out of them, and getting ourselves banned. Only to repeat the process again and again. most places obviously weren't IP banning at that point obviously. I tended to use variations of my name: rotziwt, TWI2TOR, "the twiz", etc. such good times. that was probably my first favorite match that i would watch and rewatch constantly. my two favorites from when i was a kid. Savage, who is larger than life and has the best voice of all time, and Warrior, who at the time was a superhero come to life.

At the time those Acclaim Iguana games came out on PS1, I had just started watching wrestling in earnest, was playing a lot of mediocre fighting games in the campus arcade, and so they were great first wrestling games for me at the time. I had no fucking taste, of course, they're basically unplayable. But until I was able to get an N64 and play WM2K, they were what I thought I wanted: WCW Vs the World, which I came around on later, just felt so slow (I hated having to hold down the grapple button for seconds at a time) and didn't have any of the presentation flourishes I wanted. So I played probably hundreds of hours of Attitude, then got really into WM2K and Fire Pro (first thru a copy of X Premium obtained thru Nefarious Means, then a legit copy of G) and so when Hardcore Revolution came out i bought it and hated it. I am aware that the PS1 owners got by far the best versions of these; the N64 ones were missing most of the presentation stuff and the Dreamcast ones (which may have just been the ECW games) sucked because of the lack of enough buttons for the controls the games were meant to have. I have a lot fewer memories of WCW Nitro and Thunder, for whatever reason those absolutely did not work for me. I do remember cheating to unlock the deeper hidden characters; there was a disco-themed arena where if you hit the taunt button, both wrestlers would freeze and do the YMCA. So you could throw somebody out of the ring and just taunt a few times in a row and guarantee a count out win.

Since today is the anniversary of the show, posting one of my favorite spots ever. The Free for All version with Farooq shouting, "THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MESS WITH FAROOOOOOOOOQQQQ!" is the absolute best.

They wanted to be in the tournament but Jon Moxley is still struggling with all the championship paperwork

Hogan/Andre WM3 Rock/Austin WM17 Austin/Bret WM13 Not sure after those. Those are all important as beginnings or end of eras. Honestly, its probably should be Bruno's and Backlund's title wins or losses alongside those, but they aren't pushed as important as the reigns themselves.

I did some of the Technico Special today for incline. But only 3 sets and only 150 lbs. I think I'm going to keep doing it for a while instead of dumbbells. A couple of years ago, I got up to 200 on the pin press version of that; wouldn't mind pushing closer to that number again with proper ROM. Did some of Arnold's old lateral raises where you lay on an incline bench and swing the weight in front of you, too, and those felt a bit better today than the behind-the-back cable raises I'd been doing lately.

I read this as "John Waters" and was highly confused for a minute.

OMG Dave and Bryan going round and round about that yesterday made me dumber for having heard it. 10 Print "Bryan says: it was fucking dumb to put them clean over FTR and then keep them out of the tournament" 20 Print "Dave says: lots of promotions throughout history have done things like that. It's about making money, not logical booking" 30 GOTO 10 Dave, who has made a career calling out bad, illogical booking, reversing to say that if it makes dollars, it doesn't need to make sense, is certainly something.

You could argue him beating Bruno, but I'd say Koloffs win over Bruno is more important historically. That said, Bruno v Pedro could be worth discussing, since it soured Vince Sr on doing face v face matchups.

At SunnO)))? Didn't they know they're supposed to stand motionless, fall down on the ground, or if they're really smart, just leave?

"HEY GARFIELD! Up yours Garfield" I've been using variations of that for the last 20 years

Don't people know it's skanking at ska shows?

Ive said the disclaimer in gambling ads seem longer than the commercial itself. And 1 800 GAMBLER always be think of Gamblor

FTR is made for life, winning or losing a feud to BCC makes no difference to their status. They could win the tag titles at any time and be credible doing it, nothing wrong with gate-keeping for a bit. If anything, out of the 4, Claudio needed the win the most.

it would almost be preferable if we found out Angel Hernandez was fixing games all this time instead of actually legitimately being this incompetent.