A_K

Yeah, that was very disingenuous quoting. The poster literally cut out a part where another said he personally does not like the guys work, totally omitting the part where he noted others may, then tried to paint a picture of irrationality. Not cool. Anyway, Cody Rhodes. He won’t have the entourage here. He’ll do exactly what creative tell him to do, because that’s how it is over there. He’ll probably - nigh on certainly - be better for it. The reality is he was basically driven out of town in AEW. The fans were heckling him at every turn. There’s enough subtext out there that he was not on great working-terms with numerous significant colleagues. They didn’t take up their own legally binding option. Happens. I don’t think his babyface act will work any better over there if they do trade his image in that way, he’s just so unbelievably insincere and arrogant on the microphone it comes across as very flat even when he SHOUTS. Maybe the kids will like it, but he’s running around with the neck dat and blonde hair, so hardly peak kid friendly Cena. Not really sure who his demographic is. Guess all will be revealed.

Depends how you define it .. more profitable & epoch defining? Definitely. He wasn’t a bad singles star per se, just the violent or character-driven gimmick bouts he did do at peak (3 stages of hell, HITC, numerous no holds barred / last man standing etc) were either more common of the period or more suited to his cerebral assassin phase.

Singles or gimmicks? If both - not remotely. If singles vs singles on an equivalent basis?

Great promo package for Austin / Owens: some v nostalgic footage in there for Austin. Austin generally looking in incredible shape for someone away for 19 (??!!) years. That number is just nuts - where did the time go.

Did he talk about Rock? Austin? His late 90s PPVs with those guys was just as defining as the earlier Mankind stuff. I mean - yawn - what is he going to do, reel off a hundred names he worked with during 30 years of angles? Weird the KroniK angle in WWF stunk so much if he got on well with Brian Adams. Loved KroniK in WCW.

It is Cody without a shadow of a doubt.

Booker was, unfortunately, a joke in 2002/3. He had a bit of a shine when he joined as one of the very few legit WCW stars carried over, but they very quickly dragged him down into the gutter with the rest of the WCW bunch and fed him to Rock/Austin .. then Crash Holly and Stevie Richards took pins on him before the Goldust stuff kicked in. The turn of the year and ‘Mania angle was really the start of his rehabilitation .. that slot at WM kind of came out of nowhere (battle royal win I think?) then while he lost there, he’d go on to win a host of other singles belts (IC / US) shortly after before eventually winning the big one.

It looked like he was laughing at the previous Bardem joke re him wanting Smith to win Oscar then didn’t quite get the Jada joke until he was off-screen (presumably saw her reaction). To be honest I didn’t understand the joke either until it was explained online: quite insidious & cowardly one.

Eh, you do you. She certainly didn't look very amused by the joke. Smith did what he did and he bears the consequences. You make your own decisions as to how you respond around interactions concerning your family.

Yes. Bryan had won the belt in the promotion already & held for a third of a year. Booker brought his belt over to the promotion, promptly dropped it, was chased around a grocery store and bingo hall, covered with food then kidded around with Golddust doing Star Wars and sex jokes. Not similar (& I liked WCW Booker .. but WWF Booker at that time wasn’t it). He was a placeholder at that point in time for a reason.

Yeah, you watch too much wrestling. The guy made fun of his wife’s alopecia.

Taking Booker from a novelty tag team and putting him in main event was never going to be plan A, esp as they knew Goldberg was on the way (debut next night). So this makes sense. The whole feud was a mid card WM event as noted above: would have been midcard had it been Booker or Steiner vs HHH. Simply wasn’t an important feature of the event that year.

Eh .. the Raw belt was not a centrepiece at the event. Lesnar/Angle, Austin/Rock .. even Jericho/Michaels & McMahon/Hogan (which literally capped the end of the WWF era, and had enormous sentimentality stakes) justifiably much bigger bouts. So by no means was the talent in that position (whoever it happened to be) the "top talent". Context, as ever, is key. Triple H/Booker T were both basically mid-card / placeholders for that event .. neither remotely top heel or top face. That's likely also the reason why Booker was even in the event position to begin with, coming from his performance-to-date in the company: in a normal year, with the title normally the most important aspect of the event, he wouldnt have been near that match. Triple H won what was 4-bouts removed from the top of the evening: hardly huge fireworks-top of the card finish.

The Booker stuff is way, way overdone. It was a very poor taste angle (who’d have thought the carny world of pro-wrestling would indulge in poor, gutter taste sporadically) but as a talent he’d fallen pretty flat after the Invasion stuff and got a bit of steam going only as part of a novelty tag team. Not really sufficient material to merit the Title being strapped to him given the roster they had at the time. Besides, over the next 12 months he’d wear basically every other title in the company and eventually take the world title too. Hardly a total burial. The very next quarter they ran the H/Goldberg program (which 100% will have been in the booking pipeline anyway during the H/Booker program), which wouldn’t have worked with Booker at head. H then also dropped the title very next WM to Benoit. So, yeah, all a bit smarky conspiracy theorist territory.

Naw. Just take a look at the crowd shots from late(ish) 90s - early 00s F/E & compare to now. Pictures tell a thousand words. There’s a reason they bring back broken old men year after year to rescue events of any commercial merit. As for HHH, he was part of a scorching hot run during that late 90s - early 00s period but resolutely boring for nigh on 20 years thereafter. He was a great accessory .. but that’s really all he ever was, an accessory. Pretty bland, overly-intense guy. Never mastered humour (as heel or face) in the way that Rock, Austin did. If Scott Hall epitomised effortless cool, then HHH was his try-hard opposite.

From the Sasha Banks comments to pulling his fiancée up on stage then jilting her to talking in company of the 8 year old kid about rumours he's "screwing" Tay to this stuff .. Guevara is one weirdly & uncomfortably over-sexualised dude.

He's an incredibly insincere/self-serving individual it seems, so if the $$$ lines up he'll be saying anything they want and of course pandering to the fans. Makes sense they couldn't put him on TV until his TNT TV show finished. Coming in as a babyface would be .. weird .. but given his situation prior presumably that's what he'll be. If he tries the same 'white meat' schtick he started AEW as (let alone finished) then no doubt he'll flop. A more Machiavellian 'outsider' heel (pun intended) could be interesting, but let's see if they're clever enough to go that route

Good post. Yes time plays tricks on the mind; for the past decade almost it feels like they've had the same guys front and centre in the company (I mean Lesnar's been presented the same way for basically 10 years straight now), whereas back then they had a ton of different talent-epochs compressed within a very small amount of time. The booking was bad for sure, but even so it seemed very few of them could get any reaction outside of Hogan. Peak-WCW did always seem to have a harder party crowd than WWF to me (all those big spring break events), and maybe that cool off contributed to it too. Maybe also the fatigue from the prior Invasion storyline contributed. Either way, it was a lethargic program for what should have been a really special return on Hogan/Hall/Nash who not even WCW could put in the same room together during their final years.

Should have poked in him the eye with the tooth pick then for good measure ?

Great gif to share. His fallaway slam was a thing of beauty. I think he got surprisingly little "pop" when returning to WWF in 2002. I mean, that was only a few years after his height in WCW (I assume that gif may be 98?) but next to nothing of that rabid elation from the late 90s fans was left over. Was it simply because WCW fans didnt carry over to WWF? Because they were not filming shows in WCW territory arenas? Would love to know the mechanics for that falling so flat. Well to be fair, somewhat of a line between pulling a tablecloth off and committing murder out at sea.

Is he actually having a match there? With a 2-week build, or even no build? Weird.

Britt should have come out dressed up like Floyd Mayweather headed to the De La Hoya fight. No one did heel against Mexican/Latin opponents like mid-00s Floyd.

I think he's fairly inoffensive. The Broken Hardy stuff was pretty bad but they departed from that v. quickly. Some of his Family Office schtick was amusing and was a nice mini-feud w/ Hangman (although Family Office latterly became a mess with too many different people involved) .. but probs. not sufficient to merit as much attention as he has. Feels like a classic Sunday Night Heat act .. so really he should prob. be in QT Marshall place in the pecking order topping out with occasional Rampage appearances .. instead he has routinely taken up Dynamite time. That's really the crux of it for me rather than any inherent dislike of the guy/act. He seems like a nice enough guy so no slight on him personally (and my bad if it comes across that way) but I think there are a ton of managers and some probably have more persona to transition into that role than he does.

Yeah I get that - but Jericho (or at least, 2019 Jericho) + JR are a world removed from Matt Hardy. I can't imagine anyone, ever, has sat down and thought "Matt Hardy is the marquee name we need to build around" .. and he has had a lot of TV time dedicated to him at AEW with v/ little to show for it. Maxing out at WWF/E with 1 US title run in like 18 years is a pretty damning indictment (esp given how weak roster was for a number of those years). Some value in the tag stuff but as a singles guy .. yeah .. weird one.

Problem is .. Matt was always a mid-carder in his absolute prime. I don't at all understand the motivation in focusing time/effort on almost-50 year old talents who were only ever mid-card at best. I mean, this isn't Sting we're talking about. There's like, literally no upside to the guy beyond a Hardy Boyz nostalgia reunion. Acclaimed have been spinning wheels doing basically nothing of any narrative substance while this guy has been through numerous fully-fleshed programs and personas (none of which have worked).