SirSmUgly

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!

Yeah, he does. Really and why is that? "NOT ENOUGH FLIPZZZ" Seriously outside of the Daniel Bryan, Punk, and Rey Mysterio matches can anyone name another really good to great Henry match? I like Henry as a character, but when it's time to deliver in big matches he tends to fail a lot. You didn't like the Henry match against Cena earlier this year, the Henry/Orton series from a couple years ago, or Henry's work against Matt Hardy on ECW? That's just off the top of my head. Honestly, I watched the Undertaker WM streak DVD on Netflix a few months back, and I found Henry/Taker to be the best Taker WM match of like the last decade, too. If you're not into super-heavyweights, you're just not. I totally understand. Personally, I only watch WWE for Cena, Henry, Bryan, and Cesaro at this point. They are the only four guys that either a) kill it in big matches every time or do amazing spots that I want to see or c) both.

Giant Haystacks never bumped like Mark Henry. I've seen Henry take guardrails, barriers, and tables apart. He's an awesome big bumper for such a big guy, too. It seems like a huge thing when he actually does it.

I love heel Mark Henry in the ring. He's always looming, always stalking you in order to rip you apart, something like Jaws except instead of that "dun-nun" music, there's just a stream of shit-talking to warn you that he's coming. Face Mark Henry is fun for when he comes out smiling at the thought of murdering the cowardly heel in the ring. Then he murders the cowardly heel in the ring. What isn't fun about that?

Cageside Seats has been pretty brutal since they got the new guy Mrosko or whatever running the site. Not to be too mean or anything, but the quality of articles started to go down then along with the quality of comments. You mean that ass-clown who banned me for calling him out for putting Impact spoilers above the cut on the main page? Yeah, that sounds like something he would do, from what I have seen. I don't really read there anymore because he seems to take suggestions poorly and lashes out like your typical message board poster, which is probably one of a handful of signs that he's not the guy for the job. SB Nation is a weird beast. Some sites are fantastic posting from guys that are doing more-than-blog level work, and there are other sites that are just above some dude's Angelfire fan page from 1998. I don't really know what their goal is over there - fan-run sites or high-level analysis and journalism from bloggers that are reporters/analysts first and fans second.

Cageside Seats has been pretty brutal since they got the new guy Mrosko or whatever running the site. Not to be too mean or anything, but the quality of articles started to go down then along with the quality of comments.

I want the Slingshot Suplex and Flair delayed vertical to come back. I second the slingshot suplex, which I still think is awesome, and I wonder why more wrestlers just don't rip off the Horsemen in terms of cool signature moves. HHH is a suit and not a full-time wrestler anymore, so someone else should take Arn Anderson's spinebuster as his own as well. Also, Arn might have my favorite DDT ever. I would also buy the Savage-style double-axehandle as a finish. Just adjust it so that you really clubber the guy as you come down instead of just making contact.

Tito Santana did a spot a couple times where his opponent would give him an atomic drop, but he would "block" it somehow and turn it into a figure-four. Rick Rude did the best atomic drop sell, IMO. Speaking of Rick Rude, somebody needs to do a neckbreaker as a finisher and have the announcers sell it as death because that worked on me big time when I was a kid, and when I go back and watch late '80s WWF/early '90s WCW, it still works on me. Also, and unrelated to the topic, Rick Rude is the absolute BEST. EDIT: Oops, didn't see this before I posted. This person is sooooo right though.

For under-used moves, I sort of like ring-assisted moves as long as they aren't too contrived. I remember being a kid and totally buying the Stun Gun getting an insta-three, but maybe that's because I have a bit of a choking/suffocating phobia. Still, someone on weekly TV should be using the Stun Gun as a finisher.

Wait, can we also count the Billy and Chuck theme here and make it five? I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but "YOUUUUU LOOOOK SOOOOOO... GOOD TO ME" was almost like hearing the glass break at one point. It was an automatic insta-pop from me.

Poor Jindrak got a good push as part of the NBT in WCW, but he ended up getting overshadowed by his regular tag partner O'Haire doing a senton bomb, which actually was kind of cool to see from a bigger guy. Also he was overshadowed by Above Average Mike Sanders, who was a hell of a shit-talker and pretty entertaining in the ring, too. Going back to finishers, I love simple finishers that are just done with impact, like lariatoooos and running powerslams. I'd love to see Big E do a running powerslam if he just buries the dude on it.

Not sure how changing his name would help when everyone knows who he is anyway. And he is pretty much the spitting image of Chris too. I don't see why it matters. It's his life. Maybe he really likes wrestling. Maybe he's trying to work through some unresolved feelings about his father. Maybe it's one of a thousand other things. It just seems inappropriate to single him out for doing something that, while weird to some of us, isn't some sort of criminal profession or something.

I guess I just don't care about the story, then, and it's really on me that I'm not enjoying this. I have no desire to see more Bryan vs. The Authority. No offense to HHH or anything, but I'm not particularly interested in him wrestling Bryan, or, for that matter, HBK wrestling Bryan. People will love it, though, so I can't say that it's a bad move for everyone. I'd rather that Bryan just kept the belt back at the last PPV he won it at, defended over Orton despite all the machinations, and then had HHH send guys at him to take him down. I like Show, but Show/Orton just seems like a match they probably ran ten thousand times before on random Smackdowns three years ago or something. I don't need to see Bryan win all the time, but I do like to see the belt used as a prop to signify the top wrestler and for HHH to treat it as something he has to get back. Maybe it's just my preference. Plus, when Titus O'Neil eventually beats Bryan in a tournament for the vacated belt after raising the Titus eyebrow and putting Bryan in the sharpshooter so HHH can screw Bryan, we'll have TWO new awesome stars!

I'm rooting for WWE, but they just have a tendency at this point, for whatever reason, to start angles hot and then have them peter out into convoluted terribleness. It's what they do with big angles almost every year. I blame the 50/50 booking and need to keep everyone strong. When everyone is strong, no one is. Sometimes, angles just need to end with a clear winner standing tall.

My guess is that tomorrow, ADR destroys Cena's arm in anger, Sandow cashes in and wins the WHC, and then he doesn't win another match for about five months.

A returning Ken Kennedy who HHH introduces as Mr. McMahon's bastard son and rightful heir to the company and then is installed as HHH's right-hand-man and CEO-in-waiting?

Well, that's oversimplified. I think that there is an effective way to put over what we're watching as an amazing spectacle, and that way does not involve the announcers continually stating "Wow, what an amazing spectacle that only we can give you on this show that is also an amazing spectacle every year! Spectacle!" I could be watching with more of a jaded eye, but I feel like current-gen WWE matches really try to underscore how dramatic and amazing these matches are a bit too much. I'm also not against overacting necessarily. Pro wrestling is a stage play and wrestlers have to overact for the crowd in attendance. But come on, Michaels' "I have a hard decision to make" or his "Oh no, I pissed off the wrong guy!" faces are SO BAD. On the "effective cartoonish overacting scale," they are less "Matt Bourne laughing maniacally and then grimacing evilly into the camera as Doink the Clown" and more "Cheatum rubbing his hands together and MUAHAHA-ing."

I would not say that, but I would say that he was a less effective TV wrestler than he ever had been overall. That Cena match is a definite outlier. I can't think of many great TV matches he had once he came back beyond that. One hour match versus Cena aside, does post-2002 Michaels have anything on par with that hot match with Marty Jannetty where Jannetty wins the IC belt off of him? Just as one example.Heck, I remember Michaels having solid TV matches pinballing around for dudes like Jim Duggan back in the early RAW days that, at least for me, were more memorable than most of his TV stuff. His PPV stuff is hit or miss. I actually am not a big fan of those HBK/Taker matches at WM. Too much melodrama and almost contrived "This is epic, see how epic we are being" stuff that honestly might have been better without the announcers talking about how amazing what we are seeing is so constantly. Geez, I would say that my favorite post-comeback Michaels PPV performance is...geez, maybe his performance in the '07(?) Rumble in the finishing run that set up his feud with 'Taker down the road? That or his work in the '02 Elimination Chamber. I have to be honest, a lot of his big matches (vs. HHH @ Summerslam '02, the Taker WM matches, vs. Hogan, series with Kurt Angle) just don't really do anything for me, unlike most of his big matches pre-first-retirement. I can't put my finger quite on why, though. Maybe it's because those matches depend on finisher-mania and Michaels' goofy-looking facials over stuff that would make a match dramatic in JCP or early '90s WCW (blood, weapon shots, dudes selling limbs and fatigue more consistently). The thing that I liked the most about Michaels' comeback was actually his storyline involvement, which I would wager he had a huge say in. In an era where storylines tended to be unmemorable, he had that great set of transitions from feuding with Flair to feuding with Batista over retiring Flair to feuding with Jericho that I thought really told a strong narrative and gave me a sense of what sort of year HBK the character had dealing with a ton of drama all springing out of the Flair challenge. I went back and watched all that stuff a few months ago, and while the matches in isolation didn't age well for me, the matches and segments all together told a really fun, seamless story.

I used to lurk here before I could sign up, and I remember all the issues that people have with Michaels' work, and honestly, I totally see those arguments. I wonder if it's because I have bias toward him as a former five-year-old Rockers fan, or if I subconsciously buy into the WWE's hype machine, but man, it doesn't matter so much to me. I mean, his post-2002-comeback work typically doesn't do much for me, and the super-melodramatic stuff he likes to do is definitely awful (as is the nu-DX stuff). At the same time, he was the best thing about WWE TV matches for two or three years to me back in the '92-'94 WWF era, and his 1997 is still one of my favorite wrestler years ever taking into account promos, skits, and matches. I'm not saying it's objectively one of the best, but it definitely is one of my favorites. I don't want to rehash too much, but I guess Michaels is one of those guys with clear flaws that I am fully able to overlook for whatever reason. Probably in large part to nostalgia, to be honest.

You know, hire Dee Bradley Baker to reprise Olmec and hire Kirk Fogg too. Have them replace Tenay and Taz at the booth. And hell, throw in a "pendant of life" that the holder can use to re-start a title match immediately after they have lost. Boom, I just made TNA something that I would actually seek out to watch.