SirSmUgly

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.

I suspect many of us will like WWE Davey alot more than we like indy Davey. If anyone could ever benefit from being handcuffed, it's him. At worst, he turns out like Kurt Angle circa-2005 in the ring, which will get over with the crowd. There are worse fates and worse wrestlers.

Thanks for the correction. I have had this in my Netflix queue for months now. I suppose I should watch it, but I actually saw all those Nitros up to mid-1997 a little while ago, so I haven't had the desire to see it again in doc form.

I wonder what everyone thinks of Magnum T.A. as a worker and talker. I ask this because I have been watching quite a bit of him on weekly shows from 85-87, and I totally love this dude. I am not able to articulate what I like about him in the ring. Maybe it's just that he has that no nonsense, blue collar shitkicker sort of thing going on. When he talks, though, man, he sounds like a shining beacon of justice. Someone mentioned, in an earlier conversation, that one of their favorite babyface reactions was Magnum standing over a bloody, begging Tully after the I Quit match ready to beat him senseless before walking off and leaving a sniveling Tully to think about his actions over the past few months. That sort of encapsulates it for me. I would love to have a beer with a guy like this and talk about honesty, justice, and college football. And I say this as a black dude from the PNW. Somehow, he just connects with me in a way that most wrestlers in this vein do not. I would love to see T.A. in current WWE. Cena and T.A. against the Authority would be awesome. Lex Luger?

To be fair, (mostly inconsequential) people troll other inconsequential people all the time on the internet, so I don't know if that really proves anything.

Watching Baby Doll be forced to be Dusty Rhodes' valet for thirty days makes me think: How awesome would it be if Daniel Bryan beat Triple H in a "winner gets the other person's wife/fiance as a valet for thirty days" stipulation? I want to see Stephanie trying to cut logs with an axe in the middle of the forest somewhere and then making her escape by stealing DB's Prius. "Stephanie, this isn't how you make steel cut oatmeal with organic banana slices. Do it again."

Re: Barrett, I honestly always thought that he should steal as directly from Dudley in Street Fighter 3 as he possibly could - take most of the moveset, maybe do a rising European uppercut as a finisher. Heck, even steal some taunts from that character. Every time he beats a dude, he throws a single rose on him and calls him "gutter trash."

I can only offer my perspective. What I have seen of Davey Richards in the ring reminds me of Benoit on steroids. Look, I love Daniel Bryan, but I have a hard time watching him do some of the stuff he does in the ring. Davey Richards is almost impossible for me to watch considering his style and the pace at which he wrestles that style. I'm not against stiff wrestling - I spent thirty minutes last week watching Kevin Sullivan jobber squashes on DailyMotion - but something about Richards' style does bother me. Gonzales might have a good point about it being a bit too reminiscent of Benoit, at least for me. Beyond that, I'm just not a fan of workrate-style matches. I like the occasional match like this, but those are few and far between for me, and they typically don't age well. For example, I enjoyed that Benoit/Angle match at the 2003 Royal Rumble the first couple of times around, and at the time it happened, it stood out as a really go-go-go match for someone like me that doesn't watch lots of Japan or workrate-style indies. But it sort of wears off after awhile as overkill for me. I tried watching some Tanahashi matches from the past couple of years after reading lots of stuff about how awesome a worker he is, and I think that he's really great at the style he wrestles, but it isn't for me.

Also, Hogan was TOTALLY macking on Savage's woman. I thought so when I was five, and I still think so now. He was way out of line. If Hulk wanted Liz, he would have taken her. Now Bill Apter put across the theory that Hogan was using Liz to provoke Savage into attacking him. So when Hogan took his title back, he could claim self defense. Even worse if Apter was right, then! I could forgive Hogan for having a lapse in moral judgment because he was mesmerized by Miss Elizabeth's wholesome beauty. However, driving a wedge between a couple just to make it look like he isn't the aggressor and so that he can get a shot at the belt? For shame if that is true! This sounds like the type of thing that a man who showed poor sportsmanship at the end of the 1992 Royal Rumble and that joined the Outsiders to rip apart WCW would do, however. You would think that Hogan would at least just ask Savage for a shot at the belt straight up since they were friends, but then again, we see how he reacted when Andre the Giant did the same thing to him. Shameful.

Also, Hogan was TOTALLY macking on Savage's woman. I thought so when I was five, and I still think so now. He was way out of line.

And it being Vince Russo, Nikki Bella will get physically attacked by a male wrestler, sometimes unprovoked, once a week. Then eventually her implied rapist stalker will piledrive her in the ring to a huge pop, and I'll die a little inside. Actually, no one type his name a third time because I hear that if you do that, he pops up on your favorite wrestling show and starts wreaking havoc Beetlejuice-style

Man, Cena is so good at the pro wrestling.

I disagree a bit, actually. Hogan's WWE return in 2002 was the best he ever was. His old vet character made his matches amazing. He was worn down and old, and you could physically beat him down and do things like get him to tap out now where that was completely unheard of when he was in his prime. However, he was still Hulk Hogan, and if you weren't careful, 47-year-old Hogan would channel up 30-year-old Hogan and then it was all HULK UP, FINGER WAG, YOOOUUUUUU, BIG BOOT, LEGDROP and it would be like eight-year-old me watching him come back against some monster of the month all over again. It was glorious. He was like an old QB with a dying arm and lessening mobility that has one more four-hundred-yard, five TD game somewhere inside him for the prime-time audience at home. It was great. I actually wanted to see him recapture that greatness, if only for the five minutes that it would take for him to sneak out a victory.

I typically enjoy Hogan, but I have to comment on Brian Fowler's post and state that 1994-95 Hogan is downright AWFUL. He just kills everything that he's involved in. At one point, he's gone from TV in some sort of worked suspension, and the shows that are headed up by Savage trying to end Flair as a living being and Luger and Sting having their "will he turn or won't he" angle, with The Giant and Dungeon of Doom sprinkled in there are just AMAZING. Like, astoundingly good, fast-paced television. Then Hogan comes back and is annoying and shitty doing his '80s schtick, taking up too much time and heat from a bunch of performers that were gold otherwise.

And the first ten thousand of those reasons are that glorious mullet. I think the Eaton/Lane/Cornette version of MX is my favorite. Their feud with The Fantastics ----> short feud with Arn and Tully ------> murder at the hands of the newly-turned Road Warriors is one of my favorite things that I have ever seen out of one team. They were just so awesome and this is my favorite Cornette work on the mic ever.

You know what random thing I miss about WWF/E wrestling? That giant, partitioned off video board that they used to use pre-Titantron. I'm watching a random Superstars from 1992, and I love how they would zoom in on a still-shot from the match that just ended as Vince talked us to another segment of the show (this time it was Fatu trying to eat a dude's face after hitting him with an awesome splash). Also, I want more cutaway segments to Josh Matthews in the "control center" to have wrestlers hype house shows by cutting those little sixty-second interviews in front of their green-screened logos. Watching now, it's amazing to see how the really good talkers get their point across in just sixty-seconds. My respect for Ric Flair's talking ability just somehow went even higher than it already was. EDIT: And I know there's a thread for this now, but I just had to mention here: Marty Jannetty just used a diving fistdrop as his finish. Quick, somebody in current WWE steal that!