SirSmUgly

Hogan tossing the Giant off Cobo Hall, losing the gold to him by Jimmy Hart screwjob (and only after getting a visual pinfall first), then beating him at every other turn (including that pretty good, but stupidly-booked cage match where he beat the Giant cleanly, beat up the rest of the DoD in a one-on-nine situation, only being held apart from beating up his next new feud, Loch Ness/Giant Haystacks) is probably the best example of Hogan being uncharitable to another person. It took Flair losing the gold cleanly to Giant and Giant pretty much having Macho Man beat dead to rights in another title match to really make him look like a monster (and also that awesome Giant/Luger match at GAB '96 where it was sold as Giant fixing to kill Luger, and even though Luger showed heart, Giant ended up doing exactly that). Of course, then Hogan beat the Giant again a few months later for the gold and had him selling the legdrop for like twenty minutes in the ring.

I'm sitting here watching RAW from July 31, 1995, and Hunter Hearst Helmsley comes out to face Jeff Hardy in a three-minute squash, which is of course amazing considering that they would wrestle over the WWE Championship about fourteen years later on PPV. My question is whether there are other TV matches where two guys wrestle years before they would blow up and main event against one another. I'd love to see some of them. I'm really talking more about matches where one or both of the wrestlers wasn't a guy that one would have expected to blow up and be that prominent years later.

I got The Last of Us Remastered, Far Cry Collection, and WWE 2K14 with Target's Buy 2, Get 1 free sale. I actually haven't had the chance to get far into TLoUR, which is a nice game, but hasn't grabbed me yet, and since my XBL account is having issues that need to get sorted out, I haven't done much in Far Cry 3, either. WWE 2K14 isn't much engine-wise, but it has lots of options, and I really quite enjoy the Wrestlemania legacy mode so far. Target is also doing a deal where you can trade in your 360 or PS3 copy of GTA V for a thirty-dollar coupon toward a XB1 or PS4 copy of GTA V. I was thinking about doing that, but I might just wait until a version of GTA V with all of the upcoming DLC is released instead.

Steamboat/Rude is the best Iron Man match, though the very next year, Rude and Dustin Rhodes have a kind of terrible Iron Man match together, which I still don't believe because both of those guys are amazing.

At RR '92, the crowd doesn't really HATE him until he screws the guy that they liked more in Sid Justice. They're nuts for him eliminating 'Taker in particular beforehand. The problem is that the RR '92 booking was meant to make Sid Justice a heel for being mad at Hogan somehow, which is simply stupid on the part of whoever thought that would really work effectively.

Bret/Shawn was a lot of restholds and about forty minutes that felt divorced from the last twenty-plus. It's not bad, but it's not really that great either.

Yeah, that was funny too, just because it took me a sec to realize that it was Bray and Harper rocking the pom poms.

I decided to go ahead and get 2K14 for free as part of the B2G1 at Target today and just skip 2K15 altogether. I like the idea that they're moving toward a more sim-heavy style of gameplay, but I need enough CAW space to download the better part of the 1991-1992 WCW roster alone, much less all the other characters I want. I'm looking forward to 2K16 having improved sim mechanics and fuller creation options. I will say that it made me really want to see Brock/Batista and Brock/Ryback in real life.

That list is alright considering they have to pump up the WWE matches that are typically identified as "the best" to their audience, but also offer enough variety to show off the amount of things you can catch on the Network.

I just don't think the game looks improved enough engine-wise and performance-wise to justify the cutting of all those creation options for next generation. I did have this pre-ordered, but I think I'll just get my money back. Maybe if you guys get your hands on the next-gen versions and there's a lot of great feedback about it, I'll just go buy it outright.

Wow, Beth Phoenix is super cute. Well played, Edge. I didn't even know they were married or had a kid or anything.

I have to start this post by saying that Sasha Banks is really fucking good at pro wrestling, guys. Her offense is nasty. That double-stomp in the corner always looks like it hurts, she had Alexa Bliss all wrapped up on that bow-and-arrow, and the Bank Statement is a sick finish. Also, she's pretty great with her facial expressions and shit-talking in the ring. Murphy/Blake and the Lucha Dragons have really nice chemistry together. I'd love to see them get twenty minutes on an NXT special at some point in the future. Also, Sin Cara one-arm powerbombing the fuck out of Blake (or Murphy, they look alike) was sweet as hell. At the end of Neville/Zayn, I was like C'MON, ZAYN, THIS IS CLEARLY ANALOGOUS TO BRET HART PLAYING POSSUM AGAINST DIESEL, KNOW YOUR HISTORY AND DON'T GET SUCKED IN. Also, Neville's pissed face after Zayn outsmarted him in the first few minutes and that one kid, in a sea of boos, mimicking Neville's Red Arrow signal when he came out were both awesome.

Their core fan is the long-term nerd fan who can still recite off the tops of their heads the, say, Intercontinental Champions that held the gold in 1992 (in order: Bret Hart, The Mountie, Roddy Piper, Bret Hart (2), British Bulldog, Shawn Michaels) or the billed weights and heights of wrestlers they liked as a kid (Hulk Hogan: 6'8, 303 lbs; Razor Ramon; 6'7, 287 lbs.). Those fans are the ones they need to cater to because if they can create a show that those fans would let their kids watch as parents AND that those fans also enjoy, they'd find it easier going to cultivate the next generation of fans. In fact, that's what's driving whatever Network numbers they have, I'd guess: the nostalgia lovers all the way up to the legit historian types that love to see the older and obscure stuff from numerous places are the demo that will make the Network be successful for the first few years rather than kids, pre-teens, and teens. It also probably really hurts WWE that the death of Saturday morning cartoons on network television has happened. I really became a long-term fan as a kid by sticking around to watch Superstars at 11AM after cartoons went off in my area, and I'd guess that a surprising number of us got into wrestling or kept up our interest by seeing whatever show was in our area on television after cartoons on Saturday. Now, those shows are on the Network where they won't pick up an audience that won't actively seek them out.

Speaking of Flair/Savage... What is the better use of the song "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands..." in a wrestling show: 1) Bray Wyatt singing the song to John Cena in a promo to show Cena that Bray is corrupting the audience OR 2) Ric Flair singing the song to an angry and threatening Macho Man's face with his arms around Liz and Woman and the WCW Championship around his waist. "I got the whole world in my hands, I got the whole wide world in my hands...WOO!" That's a rhetorical question because obviously the answer is number two.

I am watching this right now, actually, and I really enjoyed this as well. I loved that they started just throwing bombs in the last three or four minutes before the second-rope piledriver. The best part, though, was that after getting the pin, the Roadie does an awesome victory dance and then walks over to the stage and calmly does a mic check like he hadn't just got finished kicking the shit out of the Kid. I immediately started cheering for him after that; not only was that dance charming as fuck, but also he showed himself to be highly competent as both a wrestler and a roadie. I tend to root for competence, which also probably explains why I tended to root for an inordinate amount of heels when watching WWE as a kid.

I really like Maxx Payne/MMR. I think the gimmick was corny, or maybe it was the look, but the idea of a grunge garage-band looking dude who could actually play the guitar (which I'm pretty sure MMR did) seemed like a pretty zeitgeist-y gimmick. Plus, I enjoy Payne as a wrestler. Good garbage wrestler, and he kinda seemed to be putting it together a bit about the time he left WCW. I feel like Payne would have been great doing a less cartoony version of that gimmick in mid-'90s ECW.

Even Jim Ross on autopilot and spewing cliches can get me to care more about a match. I also much prefer English commentary that usefully adds in any necessary backstory and that tries to give context to the action through discussing/pointing out strategies, etc. I don't know if Jim Ross circa-2015 is the best guy for that (I'd prefer Jim Ross circa-1992), but it's a start.

While injuries turned the KotR '95 tournament itself into a mess, I really like Diesel/Bigelow vs. Tatanka/Sid. The way they structured the FIP part of the match was pretty cool - Diesel has a hurt elbow that Sid caused at the last PPV, so the idea is that Bam Bam is purposely being judicious with his tag outs and taking chances himself where he might otherwise tag out in a normal match. This turns what looks like it should be a fairly comfortable win for Diesel/Bam Bam into a dogfight where Bam Bam is trying to hit home runs early (and he got an early visual pin off of a flying headbutt except that DiBiase distracted the ref) and then once he gets inevitably overrun by the fresher team, trying to survive long enough to let Diesel rest his elbow. There's even a nice spot where Bam Bam gets a needed tag, but then is immediately tagged back in after Diesel tweaks his elbow, putting Bam Bam right back into danger. The only thing that I didn't like was that Tatanka had to lay around for like a minute after the powerbomb from Diesel so that the latter could jaw with Sid. It would have been nice for Diesel to tag Bam Bam back in after Sid left and let Bam Bam hit the headbutt and get three to let him have the pinfall over Tatanka and close their little feud. This was surprisingly good and actually worth seeing, IMO.

Let's assume the characters in this universe believe that the devil exists and people can be possessed. Why wouldn't one be freaked out by a sign that the devil him/her/itself is powering his or her opponent? I don't care how big you are, if you believe that a powerful evil presence has taken over the body of your opponent, you're probably freaking out a bit. Austin wouldn't care, probably, because his philosophy in life is punching his way through all of his problems. I've seen The Rock back off after an Undertaker sit up, though (and to be fair, I've also seen him kick the Undertaker about the head repeatedly after doing it).

Because that's what people do when possessed by the devil, reportedly. I guess someone working a Richard Dawkins gimmick might just kick him in the face, but otherwise, it makes sense why wrestlers are too freaked out to capitalize. Mind games, man, mind games.

This is the only time in his career that I have ever cared about him. He has such a good hangdog look on his face when a heel craps on him. He was great at garnering sympathy.

The point about David Flair not getting training is definitely valid, but to me, Charlotte has clear charismatic appeal that David definitely doesn't have anyway.

Charlotte is the Flair who got any of dad's talent passed down to her. Cody Rhodes comes off as more of a slightly-awkward and goofy nerd, which makes this Stardust thing perfect for him, actually. I enjoy watching him ham it up, but I get why people might want to change the channel when he comes on.

I think Flair/Savage is one of my four or five favorite feuds ever in wrestling, and oddly, it's not because I enjoy most of the matches (my favorite is probably their match at WM VIII, but I don't particularly love anything else they did together). Actually, it's because unhinged nutbar Savage and unhinged nutbar Flair against one another makes for amazing television every time. On Nitro #24 (I think), there's a Arn Anderson/Hulk Hogan main event that ends with a rat poison -----> heel to the eye so that Anderson gets the win. Good match, but the aftermath, with Savage swinging a chair wildly after coming down to help Hogan get revenge, followed by Flair ripping off Eric Bischoff's headset over at the commentary desk and then yelling "HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!" before ranting that Hogan was going to get his ass kicked yet again by the Four Horsemen, was an amazing sequence. It was capped off perfectly by Flair's ridiculous hyperventilating into the mic after he spied Hogan and Savage coming over to re-start the fight and tried to get away with his headset still on. I could watch those two cut crazy old man promos on each other and attack each other with chairs all day.

Finn Balor and Hideo Itami looked pretty badass there at the end. Zayn/Breeze was solid, tag match was solid, Kidd is always entertaining. Even Marcus Louis doing his best crazy bald Kane impression was so ridiculous that it was funny. This was another nice show. I did love Zayn comparing his redemption tour to the Count of Monte Cristo and awkwardly assuring Renee that it was okay that she hadn't read it. I was hoping Zayn would be challenging Cardinal Richelieu on his road to redemption, but I guess he's just going to face Neville for the gold instead.