Library Dude

Blackman vs. Rock from 1999. I hate Blackman's short little kicks to the gut but most "martial arts" wresters use them and they always stink. A lot of his strikes have a good snap though, his punches look good even compared to Rock, who had great fucking haymaker punches. Blackman sells a DDT at light speed, it looks great. Blackman's comeback is good, and he comes out looking good in what is pretty much a squash.

The two interviews WWE.com has up with Triple H are fantastic. He's really into the "heels do things they believe are right" thing. I think it will be a slow burn to him being a full on tyrant (like Vince was). Probably Daniel Bryan winning the title will be the thing that sends him completely crazy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6CTvR-33pU

At least for 8 months if not longer. They've done that spot for awhile . Jimmy's the one who does the Samoan Drop and he's done it like that for a few years (if the opponent is small enough to throw and catch. He can't do it to guys like Sandow or Tensai). They did a double team one for a while where Jey threw the other guy into the Drop. That's at least two years old.

It's a shame they already turned Mark face because they could have re-done this (probably one of my top ten Raw moments of the last ten years) http://youtu.be/PzyMc16x1OU Mark Henry trained a Bulgarian and did a promo for his fans saying that he was going to WWE... on Raw? Goddamn, I've changed the link now (embedding still isn't working for me though)-

It's a shame they already turned Mark face because they could have re-done this (probably one of my top ten Raw moments of the last ten years) http://youtu.be/RTcWdrcJsIE

Came here to post pretty much the same thing.I loved the wheel kick and when he cranked that Camel Clutch... Awesome stuff. I just watched some FCW stuff of his and he's come on a lot since then. This might explain a lot (he went to Rikishi's school) http://youtu.be/PzyMc16x1OU

Heel authority figures are the new devious managers, so can you see him being put in that role? I see him as a manager of a tag team that never ever wins on Smackdown, then he goes back to developmental for another six years. Probably managing whoever the current Aaron "The Idol" Stevens is. Meanwhile Conor O'Brien pins Daniel Bryan clean for the WWE Championship, ends the Streak, gets a DUI and ends up being repacked intentionally as a raver from the future, only this time with Santino as his partner.

Alexander Rusev is AMAZING. He seems like he was born to be a crazy pro wrestling monster. His spinning heel kick ruled, great headbutts, and his mannerisms are fantastic. I was getting a serious Umaga vibe. Dude is money. I like Sylvester LeFort (and Dawson) but then I thought both Armando Estrada and Abraham Washington should have been around in the WWE as managers for a long time (as many have said on this board, Cena always needed a never ending stream of villains sent at him from a devious manager type). I guess Washington was a good fit with the PTPs till he got himself fired. Can't see LeFort working in WWE as the only manager they seem keen on is Heyman (and Vickie a while back).

I've been meaning to listen to these for ages and started with the Nash ones this morning. Great stuff. If guys under WWE contract like Lawler and Regal are getting the ok, what's the odds on there being a Taker one in future? Because that would be awesome.

Cheers for the heads up that NXT is on Hulu now. Awesome. About half way through this week and damn, it's really fun wrestling TV. Sami Zayn is a complete natural. Though I wish after he had asked the crowd if they were saying BOOOOOO or BO-OOOOO, he'd said "Oh, you were saying BOO-URNS".

While it took a while for HHH to feel like a proper main eventer around 1999, he was trying to get into a pretty exclusive club. Austin and Taker were a huge deal. Foley had ridden a huge crest and had a completely different angle to his success to anyone else (everyman who finally realised his dream....through being a psychotic maniac). Rock was a total phenomenon. Big Show is Big Show. Back when HHH and Rock were feuding over the IC title you always felt these guys were going to be at the top soon, just Rock got there quicker because he was the bigger character. HHH was probably the least over person in the post-Shawn Michaels DX (he worked well as Shawn's goofy stooge, didn't work as the cool badass leading the group. Jesus, Road Dogg seemed cooler.) They didn't really find the right character for HHH until he was already being treated as a main event guy ("The Cerebral Assassin" - and yeah, yeah, that's pretty flimsy because his diabolic plan usually involved the same old hokey sledgehammer shit. But it stuck, and he got real heat until those 20 minute Evolution promos every week, made him a total GO AWAY guy.). I don't think he got more breaks, rather he was clearly a really good talent but hadn't found his niche yet. Edge is a similar guy. The persona that finally made him work as a main event dude didn't really come around till he was already there. From what HHH says in the interview with guys like Sandow, he's really aware that people need to find that hook that's going to get them over. It would be interesting to find out if the whole blue blood gimmick from earlier in HHH's career was just something that WCW gave him, so when he came to WWF he got the same thing. Because it's clearly very different from what ultimately suited him best. Is there any footage of HHH pre-WCW, like when he was at Kowalski's school? Hearing what HHH says about getting Vince's ear and how he got into helping with the creative direction just chimes with a lot of things you hear other people say. Who was it who said that Zach Ryder never approached Vince about the stuff he was doing on youtube? (Foley, I'm thinking?) And if he had, Vince might have said "No, we won't put it on TV" but at least then he'd know Ryder's a guy with ideas. I'm pretty sure Vince is too busy to keep up with all the stuff his employees are doing on social media. Then there's JR's constant "too busy playing video games" jibes. I'd imagine that a lot of younger guys are totally intimidated by Vince, and the people who've been there for a long time, whereas guys who were there in mid-90's, when stuff was in the shits, basically felt freer to contribute. Unrelated, but I love that story about Vince going off on creative about not being able to find anything for a guy like Jimmy Wang Yang to do. It would be really interesting to find out the relationship between Daniel Bryan and HHH, Vince and everyone else because they are obviously super high on him.

YES. It looked like Erick Rowan did the POUUUUNCCCEEE on Brodus Clay a few weeks back (and legit knocked him a bit loopy). Someone needs to be doing it though, especially for when guys like Zayn and Neville get called up. Big E would also be a good choice, though he has the Vader chest block thing down great.