Vgmastr

The one guy I think the WWF could have built up as a monster heel for Warrior was the Barbarian. The Powers of Pain had just split up and neither guy really did anything for the rest of their time in the company. Of the two, Barbarian was by far the better worker, had the better makeover with the skulls and antlers and had Heenan as a mouthpiece. I think he could have pulled a good match out of Warrior and seeing the Barbarian just squashing dudes in the buildup would have been great.

They uploaded some more Superstars a month or so ago. There's a Knuckleball match on the 10/1/94 episode. There's actually quite a few baseball spots that he adds to the match. Jumping jacks, baseball slide, arguing with the ref and pretending to kick dirt on his feet, sliding between his opponent's legs and yelling "Safe!", doing a windup when throwing a punch and yelling "He's out!" after getting the pin. Vince and Lawler are also pretending that he's an actual MLB player having to turn to wrestling during the strike and speculate on who he really is.

The best line of the night came from Jesse Ventura on commentary when he told Tony "things could be worse, you could be indicted or something." This event took place days after Vince was indicted.

It seems like the match of survival was a big missed opportunity. You could have had Slaughter go over in his match and Bret go over Dibiase in his, then in the finale you have Hogan/Warrior/Bret vs. Slaughter and the Visionaries. After a heel or two is eliminated, have some kind of schmoz where Hogan, Warrior and Slaughter are all DQed. Now Bret is down 2 vs 1 or 3 vs 1 but gets the underdog babyface push and becomes the ultimate survivor. This way you setup your next two PPV main events and give a big push to a guy who's poised to get a big singles IC run in a few months. Instead it was just another way to have Hogan and Warrior go over the entire roster.

The problem with the Raw vs Smackdown is it's the same thing every year. Heels and faces teaming together so there's always infighting. If they insist on doing the Raw vs Smackdown stuff, they should do two matches for the men and two for the women. Do Raw heels vs Smackdown faces and Raw faces vs Smackdown heels. Then you can have the two teams from the same show competing for bragging rights against each other.

So first she takes Nia Jax off TV and now Eva Marie? Shayna's going to be the biggest babyface on the roster. Of course, WWE thinks that her taking out the two most useless people on the roster make her a heel, since they piped in canned boos to try and drown out the "One more time!" chants as the crowd is literally asking Shayna to break her other arm.

The Brewers are doing a WWE Night in September and are giving a special Bob Uecker bobblehead with him in a ring in his tux and a title belt on his shoulder. The fact that it's not the scene from Wrestlemania IV with Andre choking him out back and forth is the biggest missed opportunity for a bobblehead ever.

WCW didn't have their own production crew, they always used crews from Turner Sports. They ran into a problem in the summer of '96, the Summer Olympics were in Atlanta, Turner's backyard, so all of Turner production was loaned out to broadcasters for the Olympics. Faced with having to run a month of shows with no production crew, WCW went back to Disney, who had their own house production. However, instead of going back to the stale soundstage, they built a makeshift outdoor arena in the park. What helped was the timing of the shows, they ran Nitros here for five weeks, every Nitro in between Bash at the Beach and Road Wild. That means the first Nitro here was the night after Hogan's heel turn joining the nWo. There was a sense of uneasiness throughout these shows as you were wondering when the nWo would attack next, and being outdoors in a makeshift arena helped add to that atmosphere as it would be easier for the nWo to attack here instead of a real arena. WCW even played into that with Tony announcing all the main eventers who weren't at one of the shows because they were on a Japan tour. Seems like an odd way to market the show, "Look at all the guys who you won't see tonight!" but it worked in making WCW seem even more vulnerable. Then the big attack happened, one of the most memorable angles in WCW history, with the nWo laying out a bunch of guys backstage. They made it seem so real and not scripted. The show stopped to a halt as the wounded were attended to and ambulances were called. Guys who had just been fighting in the middle of the ring were now working together, Heenan walked off the set out of fear for his safety. We were told since all of the attacked guys were scheduled to wrestle that night, the entire show had to be rebooked on the fly with who was available backstage. That led to some funky match-ups, including a main event of the Giant defended the World Title against Greg Valentine. That entire episode of Nitro was a master class in wrestling angles, and the set helped add to that.

One of the big problems of the 95 Rumble is that all the star power were in other matches, Diesel, Bret, Undertaker, Razor, Bigelow. It left the Royal Rumble guys like Mantaur, Well Dunn, Aldo Montoya and Kwang. The only other guys in the match besides Shawn and Bulldog that were near the top of the card were Luger, Backlund and Owen, and Backlund and Owen were only in the match for a few seconds each.

I'd say what really killed Luger was the finish to the Summerslam match with Yokozuna. Going into the match he knew it was his only title shot, yet he knocks Yoko out of the ring, then happily counts along with the ref for the 10 count and celebrates with all the babyfaces and balloons dropping from the ceiling. He blew his one and only title shot and is celebrating like he won the title, it made him look like a complete idiot. Even as an 11 year old mark who ate up all of the WWF's bullshit like it was ice cream, I knew the finish absolutely sucked.

Same thing happened to Jim Powers. Young Stallions were broken up and turned into enhancement talent after this PPV. Roma got a reprieve and a second chance at PPVs in 1990 with Power and Glory, but Powers stayed with the company until 1994. Just like Brunzell his last PPV was the '88 Survivor Series.

Scott Casey was actually a replacement for a replacement. JYD was originally supposed to be on the team but left the company. Muraco also left the company and was supposed to be on Warrior's team. The recently split up and turned enhancement Killer Bees were tapped as the replacements. Brunzell went to Warrior's team and Blair was supposed to be on Jake's, however, he quit the company over the Bees getting split up, so Casey got put into the match. Brunzell stayed with the WWF until 1993, but this was his last PPV.

Blather Round might be my favorite Jackbox game they've done. It's essentially a puzzle trivia game, which are my two favorite genres. My family and I legit played just that game for three straight hours over Zoom yesterday.

Nia Jax for me. Awful in the ring to the point of being dangerous, injuring countless people. Coupled with a "my shit doesn't stink" attitude because she's related to the Rock.

I called the ending to the battle royal the second Lana went through that table without being eliminated. Yet another WWE battle royal where the supposed final two end up on the apron and do a bunch of hokey spots instead of trying to get back into the ring followed by the wrestler who spent the entire match outside the ring coming in for the "shocking" final elimination while the announcers exclaim that they forgot all about them, yet no one watching is actually surprised because this awful trope has been done to death.