Yo-Yo's Roomie

Scholes is my favourite non-Ram. I always liked goal-scoring midfielders and Scandinavians, so I liked guys like Allan Nielsen, Oyvind Leonhardsen and, more obviously, Ljundberg. Davor Suker. Henry. Delvecchio, Montella and Buffon are my Italians of choice. I loved 'front-five' era Spurs, so am fond of a lot of those guys, Klinsmann and Ilie Dumitrescu in particular. Dan Petrescu. Weird guys.

Michael Cole, you have caused confusion and delay.

Why does Michael Cole talking to Vince sound the same as Mr Perkins talking on the phone to Sir Topham Hatt?

Sent.

I will be sending mine later today.

I thought the miscommunication spots looked a bit choreographed, like the timing wasn't quite right, but everything else in this was just amazing, and this is probably my favourite trios on the set so far. Can't believe this cut out right at the death.

Cool, cool. I'm done watching stuff (unless I can track down a couple of white whales), so two weeks gives me a nice bit of time to work on my ballot.

Yes, I'm a Derby fan.

I'm already working my way through the Survivor Series, although it might be a while before I finish that one. I still have the Mania and Summerslam rankings, so when I get a minute I might throw them back up. And Punk/Rock was a choice match. Didn't see it at the time, and wasn't aware of any kind of critical consensus of the match, so I went into it with no preconceptions, which is always nice. Made my case for the match above, and stand by it. I never got the sense it was a Punk carry-job either, although, as I mentioned, I thought his performance was excellent, and he certainly dictated the tempo of the match. But Rock held up his end well, I thought. Thanks for taking the time to read and give feedback.

I think the WCW fans would have embraced Bret fully as a top face. He had a rep as a good worker, which seemed to mean something to those fans (and was one reason Hogan wasn't well-received), but more than that, the fact that he was double crossed by Vince, the owner of the enemy, would surely have seen the WCW fans rally around him. My enemy's enemy is my friend, and all that. Don't see any way, after the way Bret left WWF, that he would have been rejected by the WCW fans as a 'WWF guy'.

Top 50:

Some may recall me doing this on the old board for WrestleMania and Summerslam. Basically, I watched every Royal Rumble pay-per-view, and then attempted to rank the matches. This was probably harder than those other two to do, because it can be difficult comparing a royal rumble match, designed to go about an hour, to a regular singles or tag match. I tried my best, but I dare say if I did this all over again, the rankings might come out fairly different. For this one I also did mini-reviews for each match, explaining what I did or didn't like about it. I wanted to post two separate lists (one with the reviews and one without, so the people who didn't want to read the reviews didn't have to scroll through them all), but I'm lazy, and that would be too time consuming. As always, I invite criticism and (if you feel you must) ridicule, and I hope some of you share your own top whatever rumble matches too. Here we go then (in 2 parts):

I think they should have started Bret off in a programme with Nash, based off the subtext that Nash and Shawn are best buds. Bret and Nash always had good chemistry, and it's a big name for Bret to go through before doing the Bret/Hogan match, which surely should have been the main objective.

Derby were a little fortunate to come away with the win, but I'll certainly take it, and we look in good shape to progress to the final now. That could be another story though.

That dive by Dandy is a thing of beauty. Almost completely vertical. I liked this match a lot.

Man, I howled laughing when I first saw that. That was such a perfect little touch from Kurt.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with it, but I love the idea of Sting being Dancin' Homer to 'Taker's Capital City Goofball.

Don't you think it would set up the cage match better if we didn't know that Cena could beat all three members of the family at once on his own? Why should I think Bray stands a chance one on one if he can't get the job done with his two goons beside him? Poor booking, in my opinion. I would enjoy this whole feud in general a lot more (and that isn't to say that I'm totally down on it, as I enjoy almost everything Bray does to some extent) if we hadn't seem a similar storyline regarding Cena before (Kane and the 'rise above hate' stuff), and if a large section of the fanbase didn't support Cena's opponent in every single match he's in. If the plan is to have Cena lose, then Cena beating them (by DQ, we must admit) would make the ending of the PPV match more shocking. Maybe Cena-Wyatt is just the backdrop for Harper/Rowan vs a steel cage. Or maybe a new fourth Wyatt family member pops out from under the ring. I suppose those things could happen. There are certainly different things they could do. It just seems really backwards to have Cena vs Bray in the cage (theoretically to keep Rowan and Harper out) after Cena has already shown he can not only beat Bray with Harper and Rowan around, but beat all three of them in a handicap match. It reminds me of Cena handling The Awesome Truth on his own, then turning around and saying he needs The Rock as his partner to conquer them.

So, you hate it when people cheer the good guy? Aren't you a normal person. No and no.

Don't you think it would set up the cage match better if we didn't know that Cena could beat all three members of the family at once on his own? Why should I think Bray stands a chance one on one if he can't get the job done with his two goons beside him? Poor booking, in my opinion. I would enjoy this whole feud in general a lot more (and that isn't to say that I'm totally down on it, as I enjoy almost everything Bray does to some extent) if we hadn't seem a similar storyline regarding Cena before (Kane and the 'rise above hate' stuff), and if a large section of the fanbase didn't support Cena's opponent in every single match he's in.

Didn't the Boogeyman do that one once? Wyatt shouldn't be cribbing from the Boogeyman.

I think Rumble 97 was heavily papered. I want to say the paid attendance was more like 48k, which is still a good gate, mind you.

I still think Ryder's best spot would be in a social media-obsessed heel tag team with The Miz. They could probably be annoyingly fun together.

Still with this? Dude, don't you see the distinction between the Rock situation and the Hunter situation? Don't you see how they're not analogous? You can say both are as bad as each other if you want, but at least admit that they're not the same thing. The same thing would be Sam's Rock/Hardys hypothetical. Or, say, Triple H beating Cade and Murdoch during that same period in a handicap match. Which actually DID happen. And no-one harps on about what a burial that was because they understand that the main event babyface beating the heel tag team in a handicap match is an (unfortunate) WWE booking trope. The Londrick situation gets harped on because it was something completely different and completely unnecessary.

I came up with kind of a dream match a little while ago, and haven't been able to stop thinking about how awesome it would have been had we got to see it. The match in question is Steve Austin, at the height of his anti-authority run, versus 1993-era Matt Borne as heel Doink. The premise for the match is that Mr. McMahon, frustrated after constantly being thwarted by Austin, vows to bring in a wrestler who truly captures his vision of pro-wrestling. It's heavily implied that we're going to get some kind of corporate champion, but it ends up being Doink, because what sums up Vince's vision of pro wrestling better than a clown, right? Austin and Borne were so good, such great characters, and so diametrically opposed, that I think they could have done some great stuff together, and it would have made for a great visual seeing them square up. I imagined on the last Raw or whatever before their big match, after weeks of getting attacked by Doink, Austin comes out and vows that tonight he's going to stunner the clown. They play this up big on commentary throughout the night, but Vince comes out and says that Austin can't stunner the clown, because Doink isn't in the building. Cue Austin coming out, fighting off Vince's minions, and then giving Vince a stunner and claiming "I told you I was going to stunner the clown tonight, and you are, without a doubt, the single biggest clown in the WWF". Then Doink comes through the crowd and lays Austin out with his unicycle or something. Man, that would have been a great feud. Anyway, really I just wanted to share the idea, but to turn it into a topic of discussion, who (and bear in mind you can have anyone from the history of wrestling) do you think would have made a great Austin opponent during the Attitude Era? The more creative and left-field the suggestions, the better.