Brock Samson

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The Eddie Gilbert topic has been rather interesting, so here's another what-if that's been brought up a lot over the years. What if Sting had jumped to the WWF or WWE? When could he conceivably have been lured away? What would have happened? As a NWA/WCW mark, I'm glad he never did jump ship. But.... the idea of Sting going to the WWF in the early 90's is intriguing. I think his value would have been highest in the early 90's. Surfer Sting was the sort of bombastic, larger-than-life character that the WWF specialized in during the 80's and early 1990's. It would have been a natural progression to amp the character up the way they did Warrior. And the idea of Sting vs. Macho King Savage or a young Undertaker is hard to resist. I'd have loved to see a Sting-Heenan family feud with Sting going through the Family one by one to get to... Rude? Bossman? Andre? Any of those work for me. Honestly, a Sting-Perfect feud sounds like fun, I can see him becoming a Hogan/Warrior/Savage level babyface. Late 90's? Sting was massively over with the NWO angle. Does Crow Sting fit in the WWE as well as Surfer Sting might have? Does Vince push him as a top guy? In the late 90's, Vince was starting to get stuck in the "my stars" rut and he already had a lot of top guys. I can kinda see Sting elbowing his way past Bret or Shawn to the top of the card, but does he get there over Undertaker? Triple H? Austin or Rock? That's harder to imagine. The scenario where he seems most likely to leave is late 98 or later, or when WCW closes up shop. But, by then, he's past his prime, not quite as over (WCW didn't seem to know what to do with him after the Hogan feud/Wolfpac stuff), and has the same problem as a few years earlier: WWF already has its megastars. Or was Sting simply too loyal and a jump to WWF/E was never in the cards. What do the rest of you think?

Back in 05 or so, some Windy City wrestlers created a side project called WORD. Something like Wrestling Organized for Religious Development. The wrestlers took on the characters of various Biblical figures and their matches somehow related to Bible stories. My favorite part was when Jesus (played by Acid Jaz of Soul Touchaz fame) got attacked midshow by Satan's Minions and got hit with a crucifix bomb and a spear. Then later on in the Jesus vs Satan main event, Jesus ended up winning with a crucifix rollup. I think I still have a picture somewhere of an old lady front row who tried to clobber Satan with her shoe. Even for pro wrestling, this sounds like a ridiculous idea.

So I haven't seen this topic done here for awhile. What promotions/eras are members' favorites? What do you follow & find yourself going back to? I've gone through phases and watched a little of everything over the years. In the early 2000's, I lived in California and followed a lot of the small SoCal indys. I used to follow puro quite in-depth and really marked for Toryumon and FMA. As the years go on, though, what I find myself going back to is the 80's (I don't even consider that old-school, really). My favorite promotions now are the dying days of the territories. Early 80's Memphis is a favorite of mine. I'm still a big fan of Mid-South, and Florida had an insane amount of talent at the time. Heh, even today, I'm as likely to watch AWA tapes as I am RAW. Yes, I am that guy. The words "Greg Gagne, Babyface Ace" do not fill me with dread. I like 80's WWF, but don't love it even though an awful lot of my favorite wrestlers ended up in the WWF. WWF, for me, had a way of taking wrestlers and gimmicks I liked and either amping them up (if they were heel) or smoothing out the edges of the character so they were more TV and lunchbox friendly. It worked a lot of times, admittedly (Ted DiBiase), but I tend to prefer the worker's earlier careers. It didn't help that 80's NWA/Memphis/etc tended to have better matches. WWF wasn't exactly a workrate promotion in the 80's (I hope I don't need to spoiler that for anyone. Your top babyfaces were Hogan and Warrior and the top heels were largely monsters that got signed in order to be fed to Hogan). Anyway, my absolute favorite promotions were/are: -- late 80's JCP (Jim Crockett Promotions). God, still my favorite stuff. The IV Horsemen will always be Flair, Arn, Tully, Ole to me. Never a big fan of Horseman Luger. Do enjoy the Windham heel work. Everything after Barry doesn't feel like "The Horsemen" to me (which isn't to say I thought it was bad. Benoit/Malenko were a very watchable tag team). Aside from that, you had a great mix of wrestlers I could watch all day. Magnum, Nikita, Dusty, the Road Warriors, Varsity Club, etc. -- WCCW (Before the decline, obviously). A lot of my favorite guys got their start here. I was a huge Chris Adams fan back in the day. WCCW One Man Gang was my definition of a monster until I started seeing Vader regularly in WCW years later. I'm still a big fan of the Freebirds and never liked those three as much afterwards (I probably was a bigger Jimmy Garvin fan later, before he started teaming with Hayes exclusively and never really had a singles push. Heck, at the time, Al Perez and Gorgeous Gary Young were two of my favorite wrestlers. I even loved Global years later because it was essentially WCCW 2.0 -- WCW. Getting into the 90's here, but the early years of WCW had mostly the same talent getting the same push and WCW was the better workrate promotion (I think) from 91-93 or 94. I was never a huge Bret/Shawn/WWF New Generation fan, so I was devoted to WCW. And they still have some of my favorite feuds. Vader-Sting, Sting being pushed as the babyface ace, the Dangerous Alliance, Rude in general, Steamboat & Flair, etc I was even a Dustin Rhodes fan. Kinda lost some interest when Hogan came in and the promotion was never the same for me after that, but the first couple years are very good (despite some terrible booking).' So that's my favorite eras. I'm basically an 80's old school fan. I've liked ECW, WWE Attitude, the NWO, ROH, etc. for what they were, but it's the territories that hold up for me. Since the Hogan era began in WCW, probably the only thing that comes close to the Memphis/Mid-South/FL era for me was JIm Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling, which wasn't entirely successful, but at least tried to recapture the territory feel and make new stars in that mold. Anyway. what'cha you got? I'm curious to what other people's favorite promotions are (were).

Studd, at times, claimed he was the only legitimate giant around. It was mostly kayfabe for the tv segments, but Andre supposedly thought Studd believed that line and was disrespecting him.

I'm reasonably certain Teddy Hart will try to revive Stampede again at some point. He has to. No one else will book his cats. Edit: Jae beats me to the punch with a cat joke.

If she's that much an extemist, couldn't you simply pretend to quit your job and "starve to death"?

I led a campaign to get Sid booked on a Stampede show in like 2006ish. He got booked after I basically subjugated the whole Stampede messageboard, no showed and the card was cancelled.Whoops. Oh, please. Sid can't travel across the US without "visa" problems, and can't be trusted with sharp pointy objects. You really thought he'd manage to get into Canada?

I'm sure opinions differ on this one, but my answer is never.

Wolverine's opening weekend is being estimated at $55 million. Apparently, the prediction was that it would open with $70 or so.

Yep, Diamond was ECWA champion at one point. He never held the title in ECW. So far as I can remember, he never held any title in ECW.

I don't disagree at all that this is a wretched, wretched movie. Probably in the bottom 1% of theatrical releases. I can't argue with anyone who lists this as the worst movie they've ever seen. Having said that, it's really arguable whether or not this is even the worst movie in the franchise. I'd definitely say the fifth movie, Highlander: The Source was even worse. Eh, the fourth movie might even have been worse. Imo, Four is probably better than 2 and 5, but... well, what isn't. Highlander: the Source is just as badly written, cheaply made, looks terrible, and has no stars (Adrian Paul and a couple holdovers from the tv series are the only "name" actors. At least 2 had a better cast). Oh. and The Source is almost as thorough with it's ridiculous retcons of the original premise. I generally don't rent or see too many awful movies in theaters (it helps that I avoid low budget stuff, straight-to-dvd, and horror in general). I think the worst films I've seen have probably been the SyFy weekend creature features (which I basically channel surf through instead of watching every minute) or MST3K episodes. Most SyFy flims are at least campy and don't take themselves too seriously. There's been some dismally cheap ones that are just terrible to sit through. The first Pumpkinhead sequel SyFy did five or six years ago stands out as being dark (looked like it was shot in a cave), unpleasant, and mostly amateurish. Sharknado is great art by comparison. Space Mutiny (MST3K) is one of my favorite bad flims. Incompetent in all areas. Even the casting is bad. I've always thought the love interest could plausibly be mistaken for the hero's mother. She looks a little old to be an ingenue.

Just finished Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Strikes Again". Wow. i must not have been reading comics when this was released because I've never read it before and didn't remember it even was a thing until last week. I didn't quite hate it, but it's definitely not good either. I fairly enjoyed books 1 and 2, but, taken as a whole, it reads like Miller plotted it as he wrote the scripts. I really didn't get a sense of the world beyond Miller telling us it's a dystopia. Too many events happen without any buildup or explanation why they're happening, and a lot of plot elements seem thrown in because Miller wanted to write a scene a certain way or needed something to advance the plot in a certain direction. I still have no idea what the Joker subplot was supposed to add to the book. It seems entirely extraneous I kinda enjoy whacked-out Frank Miller, but he should probably never write super hero comics again.

Came by Volumes 1-17 of Spawn Origins cheap at a yard sale (basically, the first 100 issues or so). I'm currently partway through volume 4 (about issue. 23) and I'm not going to make it much farther. Nothing is working for me, even on a nostalgia level. I'm never been a McFarlane hater (actually, I was a big fan of his work at Marvel and his layouts on Infinity Inc. are fantastic), but it's not working for me 20 years later. And the concept & characterizations are paper thin. I'm not surprised that McFarlane isn't much of a writer. I am surprised that the scripting is boring me even with big name guest writers contributing about 1/3 of the scripts so far (Morrison wrote three issues in the teens, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, & Neil Gamain wrote an issue apiece). I assume there's a (legal) reason issue 10 (Dave Sims wrote a Cerebus crossover, irrc) isn't collected.

Lost the belt back to Inoki (IWGP League finals) after shenanigans (Choshu got involved).

I disagree. Mostly because I'd miss everyone while I was locked way.

Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I really hated Axe Cop. I want those 12 minutes back, dammit. Wasn't overly fond of High School USA either.

Someone care to fill me in? Why is Gillan bald (I assume it has something to do with the movie)? And why did she take off her wig on stage at the convention?

My question is why Vince & co believed Hogan would follow through (and put Bret over) in the first place. They should have known better. Or at least hedged their bets.

If they've already seen Man of Steel, it's not much of a stretch.

Yep. They also (allegedly) were giving plane tickets to guys who lived locally or could drive to the show. What is Evan Bourne's status these days? He hasn't wrestled a WWE show in about 18 months, has he? I remember him wrestling one or two shows in NXT about 4 months ago, but I don't think he's been active there since.

Didn't they relase some people a week or so ago, while the board was down? I seem to recall Joey Ryan, Matt Morgan, and.... a few others. I

Looks like Ron Perlman to me.

Did the teaser for next week say "season finale"? A two year wait and we get seven eps?

I had to think about it to remember any of Sheldon's finishers, so I sympathize with Jericho. I remember Bejamin using the T-Bone powerslam when he got his first singles push, and it looked like he was going to work a full program with Triple H. And he started using the jumping DDT when he turned heel and started calling himself the "Gold Standard." There are probably several years in between, What the heck did he use as a finisher until the heel turn? I don't think he used the powerslam all that time. Superkick? Jobbed out so much it didn't matter since he never hit a finisher?