Lee

I do post here, but not as much as I used to. You'll never take away my glorious Leicester-esque campaign.

I always called the jobbers "prelims" which I think I picked up from Superstars of Wrestling magazine (Power Slam forerunner) or some such, although I think it was Alan4L who said when he was a kid he called them "weaklings", which is a term I wholeheartedly advocate.

I don't know if this is something I came up with on my own (and it's a borrowed term anyway) or if it was already in parlance, but I've always used "weekend TV" to describe short, one-sided squashes and inconsequential throwaway bouts of questionable quality (i.e. if a match feels like it wouldn't have been out of place on Wrestling Challenge or WCW Pro). I've also fallen into the habit of describing any simple, one-dimensional "larger-than-life" style gimmick as a "Saturday morning cartoon show", in reference to how shows like Superstars in the late 80s/early-mid 90s with their colourful parade of warriors, cackling millionaires, hillbillies, race car drivers, plumbers and garbage men were never out of place as part of kid-friendly TV marathons of Raccoons, Animaniacs, Galaxy High, Real Ghostbusters and Flintstones summer re-runs.

Ah, so you're more of a Davey Richards vs. Davey Richards in a steel Davey Richards fan. Got it.

I believe there's already a Network of UK fans watching the likes of NXT without the aid of Sky Sports...

Followed by the most predictable reactionary comment imaginable. Happy End of Year List season, one and all!

The fuck is "fake MMA"? I mean, as opposed to all this real pro wrestling, obviously.

Not only that, but the Bret feud happened largely because Bret wanted it and they needed someone to put him over on his return. Bret was booked to win the Royal Rumble until Vince Russo opened his mouth on Livewire and caused Vince McMahon to change his mind, and Bret was going into a WrestleMania main event with Shawn Michaels until the fake knee injury forced them to throw Austin back into the mix at the last minute. It was only around that point that they really decided to 'go' with Austin, but yes, revisionist history likes to tell you that KOTR '96 happened and then overnight he was a megastar. Miz might have been my least-favourite thing about that first episode. I mean, I'm sure he was there for the precise description you gave, but I don't want to hear his "WOOOAH!" and "It was crazy!" platitudes presented as if he still is that snot-nosed middle schooler. At least Christian was able to give his "I was watching it as a fan" perspective like an actual adult and talk about WHY something was cool, not just that it WAS cool whilst doing an exaggerated impression of his teenage self.

What always seemed interesting to me was how those early Survivor Series shows tended to be better than most other WWF PPVs of the same timeframe on account of the fact that everyone could split the work and deliver all-action matches, yet very few of the matches actually stand out as being particularly great ('88 20-man tag aside). Plenty of those elimination matches (which I generally love on principal) are all what I'd call good, very few aren't, but I'd be pressed to put more than couple of any kind of Best of list.

I'm reminded of a guy who briefly showed up on the local indy scene for five minutes around 8-9 years ago who wanted to start a DVD/VOD service called Wrestle UK, and since the acronym would be "WUK", he kept going on about the merchandising possibilities of shirts that said "WUK OFF" and "WUK YOU". THAT's the dirt worst I ever heard. Who would even wear something like that? It didn't even make any wuking sense!

Jimmy Rave, BJ Whitmer, Jack Evans and Carnage Crew were all fast-forward material for me in the 2003-2008 ROH days. Worst indy guy I ever saw was probably General Trent Steele but I didn't follow his "home" promotion enough for him to be overbearing, he'd just show up on other local cards or DVDs. Him vs. Playboy Johnny Love was a disaster, but that was mostly down to Love forgetting to kick out, twice. I would go with Championship American Wrestling Khaos for my wrestling fed. My MMA fed would be American Shootfighting Syndicate Just don't book an invasion angle... A promotion started up around a decade ago just an hour up the road from me called Cream of Wrestling. Their logo said "COW - Putting the beef back into wrestling!" And there was me thinking TNA was the dumbest name possible for a promotion...

HONGI!

A true legend of our fair sport returned to American TV tonight: The Great Muta was also there.

How big is the ironic XFL baseball caps market?

Actually, the Real Double J had a follow up single that he debuted with a live performance at the 1997 Slammy Awards. If you'll forgive the cheap plug, here's what I wrote about it in The Complete WWF Video Guide (http://getBook.at/WWFGuide4):