SirSmUgly

Not about the city of Seattle. Fuckers.

Tag match was awesome and Cena was awesome. The show was typical of WWE; if you can block out the uninspiring storylines and booking, the wrestling was very good.

Whenever people wonder why Kofi Kingston is still employed because he's awful, midcard fodder, etc., I think we can point to this video as Exhibit A for why he's got a job with WWE. Actually, the kids that I know love Kofi. I think WWE kinda missed the ball not pushing him to be more than what he is.

Hayashi splattering onto the outside of the ring was just nasty. I miss WCW B-Shows. No one cared what the wrestlers did, so you would get gems like this on random Saturday Nights or Worldwides on a surprisingly decent basis.

I don't know if I have anything constructive to say about Ryback's push, but I see people say Goldberg wasn't a good wrestler and was worthless after his streak died, and that is just wrong, damn it. First of all, Goldberg got really good at one point and was having good matches. Everyone points to the Havoc match against DDP, but he had good matches against Scott Steiner too, and he was a legitimately awesome big match worker on a consistent basis by the time he got to WWE. He got better pretty quickly. People always say things like "But, but, but the Lesnar match" when the crowd was the reason that it sucked and "But, but, but Regal made him look terrible in a random Nitro match" when that isn't the case at all and it was a legitimately awesome competitive six-minute match before Spear, Jackhammer, Splat. It's like people are desperate to paint Goldberg as sucky in the ring when he was absolutely not. He was green at one point, but he never flat out sucked. Second of all, Goldberg was rendered worthless by WCW's (mostly Russo and Nash's) stupid booking. He was still amazingly over, but he was made to look like an ass by the nWo numerous times (see: Fingerpoke of Doom, where how Goldberg is treated ended up as the very worst thing about that angle), ended up turning heel for some bizarre reason when the fans still wanted to see him destroy the nWo for good, and then ended up stuck in a feud with Totally Buff which he lost and was then taken off TV and pretty much killed dead at a time when the fans obviously wanted Goldberg/Booker T for the title and would have been open to Goldberg/Steiner for another round of matches, too. WCW tried to kill his heat about a billion times and then finally, when they couldn't do that, they simply took him off TV. He was absolutely not worthless inherently; he was just made so by every booker that he came across from the time that Nash started booking the shows.

True. That lack of patriotism got me choosing Muggsy Bogues instead in NBA Jam.

Yeah, it was Tatanka(Altough he did attempt to slam him, and fail). Here's the longer version cut of that video. My God, not only was "America's pride at stake", but also a Chevy Silverado. After Luger's blatant racism, I was kinda rooting for Yokozuna there.

It was an interesting show, but being in a live audience for three hours of RAW is tiring. I can do that for a PPV if it's well-booked, but a regular RAW? Not so much.

Bryan's character is that he's weird and small and the jock bully assholes in corporate hate on him for that reason, except that he can kick dudes in the face and make them feel it unlike most weird nerds. He's a granola-eating geeky Austin. I think he can pull it off being a slightly-unhinged nerd if asked to do so. Heyman and Axel poking at Bryan the nerd until he snaps and starts kneeing people in the face sounds like a whole lot of fun for four straight months, but then again, so does Mark Henry throwing Axel off of and into various things for four months, so my threshold for being entertained might just be really low.

And the guitar riff on that entrance music! The. Best. I ended up actually not being a fan because of how he was booked. Doink straight up made an ass out of him for about a whole year, it seemed like. Did Crush EVER get one over on Doink? I was one of those kids in school that did homework before it was due on a regular basis and who really valued intelligence and craftiness in my wrestlers (big Bret Hart fan as a kid, in other words), so as soon as Crush got exposed as a "big dummy," as Bobby Heenan put it, I lost my support for him. On the other hand, I really appreciated Doink for being smart as hell, even with the yellow teeth and the painted face and the general douchebaggery.

I don't like Richards or Eddie Edwards at all in terms of their wrestling matches, but I guess those convoluted spots are what the ROH fans enjoy, right? It's not for me, but maybe those spots make sense in terms of popping the crowds they were working in front of. Of course a fan of JCP, WCW, or AWA in the foremost won't like them, but current ROH fans probably loved that stuff.

I also have to mention that if they really are planning to bring back Goldberg, I might be the only person that wants to see Goldberg/Undertaker. Instead of a thirty-minute WWE-epic-style match, I want like an eight minute match with powerbombs and Jackhammers and tombstones all over the place.

I have less than zero interest in Austin-Punk. To be honest, I don't really have a desire to see Austin wrestle anyone currently on the roster other than John Cena, which they would never do since Cena would get booed out of the building for sure.

JCTN had one of these as well. The "reporter's" name was something like Cody Boink/Boyd or something entirely different. There'd often be some real newsbit that would pan out as truth, but then there was the occasional wayward misfire, like a verification off of a Schiavone one-off on-air comment that WCW was going to implement a martial arts title (I personally used to hope that Schiavone was speaking mad truisms when he once claimed that WCW was going to make a hardcore title that would have fold-out gimmicks, like a Swiss army knife). Yes, that was him! Cody Boyd! Yep! Thanks, guys. He was fairly accurate, as Nate points out, with the occasional Vic Venom-like rumor that didn't pan out.

Speaking of "newz" lines, when I lived in San Antonio in the mid-'90s, there was a free phone service that was promoted and maybe run by the San Antonio Express News that offered everything from recipes to news to games. You would call in and then choose a four-digit extension, and that extension would connect you to a pre-recorded bit of news/game/etc. I vividly remember that there were four Choose Your Own Adventure-style games with three choices and only one way to win. One was called Wizard's World, there was another one set in space, and there might have been a cop/detective one. It updated every Sunday, so you could get new games and news weekly just by calling this number. Anyway, this long bit of text is to say that this service also had pro wrestling news and rumors, and it was how I knew about Hall and Nash leaving for WCW months before it happened, and even that Hall was suspended for a marijuana test as a cover for Vince McMahon being upset enough that he wanted to keep Hall from a WrestleMania payday. This stuff was pretty surprising for a thirteen-year-old kid at the time. Does anyone who lived in the area remember this service and know who was the person/organization giving those rumors/news bits?

I am beginning to feel like WWE staying in the PPV business is slowly starting not to make sense. I may be dead wrong as I have not looked at any numbers, but if WWE teams with MLBtv or Netflix to cut costs on infrastructure and just has fans sub at 29.95 a year (for example), they could float all their current PPVs on the WWE Network and probably come out better than they do right now, if not immediately, in years down the road as the sub base for the network grows. Heck, they could tier subs like so: 29.95/yr for WWE Classics/RAW and Smackdown replays 39.95/yr for above tier + B-level PPV shows 49.95/yr for above tier + Road to Wrestlemania shows and Summerslam This could be a dumb idea, but that seems better than only corralling substantial PPV buys for the Rumble and Mania.

Thank you kindly for the info a few pages ago, Victator. I thought that I was running two (or more) different incidents together.

Who's Paul Roma?Some ungrateful idiot who performed at Wrestlemania and was a member of the Four Horsemen and still some how is bitter. It's not his fault Flair and Anderson were jealous of his body. They should've just paid Tully what he wanted I can't believe it was THAT unreasonable of a price that you replace him with Paul fucking Roma I thought that Tully failed a drug test and that's why he didn't come back to be a Horseman. Or am I mixing this up with something else/getting my info wrong?

I feel like Orton is fine as a heel. He definitely has a "backwoods redneck who likes torturing raccoons for fun" sort of look to him, I think, when he gets all sleepy-eyed before he goes all sadistic on someone. As a face, he had a really fun 2011, especially those matches with Mark Henry. Their match at Vengeance was super-awesome, maybe one of my favorite WWE matches of the past five or six years because it had a story that was followed through on. Henry was of course great, but Orton did his part, as he sold like crazy and then just came off as completely desperate to try and put Henry away before succumbing to what really was inevitable to anyone paying attention to the developing narrative. As awesome as Henry shoving off that second RKO was and then talking shit before hitting the World's Strongest Slam was, the visual was helped by Orton, unable to stand, trying to pull himself upward pathetically as Henry glared down at him. Probably, this is one of my favorite WWE moments ever, and Orton had his part in it. I get the sense that he is harmed by what most WWE guys are harmed by - the bad booking - more than he is the issue himself.

Obviously Johnny Gargano doesn't apply the Pedigree one-one-hundredth as well as the master, Triple H, who has spent years perfecting it as a finisher, improving it from an ineffective maneuver that couldn't keep the Ultimate Warrior down for one to a move that signals the end for anyone who he hits with it. I applaud Triple H for honing his craft in this way, and I would advise Johnny Gargano not to think that he can just start doing double-underhook facebusters overnight with the same devastating impact as a multiple-time world champion.

He's right there on the spine. So it's not like they forgot about him. Man, that's a lot of space to give a guy who bombed so hard as a main eventer. On the other hand, the WWE keeps employed a tattooed little skinny-fat guy with a terrible Macho Man elbow who was the worst bomb as WWE Champion since Diesel, so truly we can see that this company is supportive even of its failures. Orton doesn't do an elbow drop. I know that I "liked" it, but I think this deserves a "touche, Vietnow" anyway.

He's right there on the spine. So it's not like they forgot about him. Man, that's a lot of space to give a guy who bombed so hard as a main eventer. On the other hand, the WWE keeps employed a tattooed little skinny-fat guy with a terrible Macho Man elbow who was the worst bomb as WWE Champion since Diesel, so truly we can see that this company is supportive even of its failures.

Actually, if he turns heel. I'd prefer that he never cuts a promo about the fans shitting on him and just turns up his John Cena-ness to eleven. Cena the glad-handing, corporate, Make-a-Wish Foundation visiting teller of goofy jokes would be great. Hell, have him start doing freestyles again except make them like Will Smith during the Big Willie Style era. HHH can present him with some fine Cuban cigars for being their new centerpiece, and he can put one in his mouth and rap about how they're for the look and he doesn't light them.

At one point, Matt Hardy catching a beatdown from MVP was causing people in the crowd to cry, so yeah, they really missed a chance to make him champ on that show. He might not be good at cutting a traditional promo, but as a traditional babyface, he was awesome at getting the crowd to really care about and root for him.

This made my day, especially the first minute or so where he was tombstoning fools to "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which should be the official music for finisher montages from here on forward.