Pro Wrestling

WWE.com lists its Greatest SummerSlam Moments and # 7 is Randy Orton becoming the youngest World Champion by beating an Unnamed Opponent in 2004. There's the clue that the Canadian crowd was 100% against Orton, but other than that, its not nearly as awkward as you'd imagine. However the results page lists both participants as well as the photo gallery showing a certain T-rex armed former champion from behind being bodypressed by young Randall.

In talking about MVP's heart condition, Dave mentions one of WWE's biggest stars has a medical condition that the company wanted to keep under wraps due to the timing of when they found out (right in the middle of all the Benoit stuff) and the gimmick of said star. It's apparently nothing serious as it's being controlled by medication, but the only top guy I can think of who's that protective of his gimmick is Taker, since you can't have it get out that the undead monster has a very human medical problem. Maybe he got hep from Cowboy Bob after all?

I just read this in the latest Observer. Meltzer says she has a striking resemblence to EcW Kelly.

Dustin Rhodes turns down the chance to return to WWE as a top heel, ends up in another Wrestlecrap-ian TNA gimmick: So WWE was all ready to bring Dustin back as Goldust in the original incarnation as top heel (possibly to be fed to HHH, but still), but he decided to pass on that and sign with TNA where they can't even do a proper Goldust ripoff like they planned because some random indy dude had the name they wanted to use trademarked already. Black Reign Dustin Rhodes? I wonder how soon after the PPV did he call his dad asking if he can rethink his decision. It's a shame, since Dustin is a talented guy who can get over when given a chance, even if the booking isn't…

from WO.com:

So at the July 27/28 ROH shows, there were flyers left on the seats and messages written on the bathroom mirrors telling people to go to a website called Abused Society which featured a photo of the Statue of Liberty that had blood coming from its eyes similar to Jimmy Jacobs' eye makeup. It also had the words PROJECT 161 repeating across the bottom. Over the next few days the web site was changed to show pictures relating to Chicago, and people started putting things together and realized the 161rst show will be in September in Chicago, and also will be the third PPV taping. It's also suggested that it's somehow related to the awesome yet vague promo done by Adam Pe…

Pre-Blonds "Stunning" Steve Austin Hollywood Blonds Post-Blonds "Stunning" Steve Austin Steve Austin in ECW The Ringmaster "Stone Cold" Steve Austin "Stone Cold" Steve Austin post-retirement Austin is a good guy to try this with, since his career has taken so many drastic turns. This is motivated by watching him on the Dangerous Alliance set.

I was watching a clip of the Team 3D shoot on Youtube, and when they got talking of Bubba's rep as a bully, he started talking about how he could put a match together better than an agent who was never anything special and never drew a dime. Does anyone know offhand whom he's referring to? I was thinking Johnny Ace at first, but I don't think he had a hand in putting matches together. And the only other agents I know of (AA, Steamboat, and Hayes) all were something special and did put asses in seats.

http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/3962/105/ Lowest non-holiday rating in almost 10 years.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175782.html The price point is rumored to be $19.99, which would be awesome. If you've played any other Fire Pro games, that's pretty much all you need to hear. If you've never played, GO OUT AND GET THIS GAME! Fire Pro, IMO, is the greatest series of wrestling games ever produced. Even the two games for GBA are worth the effort to track down (the first one might be hard to get thanks to the UFC though).

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2003560...7340225,00.html

http://www.pwtorch.com/artman/publish/article_21092.shtml This may or may not mean anything, but it certainly doesn't look that good.

From his review of a match involving Tugboat on the Hulkamania Forever! video: Now I admit that the Vince angle did come to an abrupt end, but did I miss this in all the Benoit stuff or is Scooter getting his HAWT GRAPZ N00Z from crackheads again?

Credit to Zach Arnold at Puroresu Power: http://www.hcso.tampa.fl.us/pub/default.as...isp/bn=07045320 Click on the enlarged image if you dare? Per the wikipedia entry, the birth month and day are the same, just different year. Is this actually _the_ Dangerous Dan? If so, WHAT has he been doing for the past 12 years?

So as someone who works for a cable company, I'm on a mailing list for WWE' promotions people. I got this in my inbox today: The current promotional material involved Umaga and the Jackass crew. Is the big angle already scrapped?

Read in the latest WON that Sid wants to return to WWE. He's still in shape and with the rash of injuries in WWE I'm sure they'd be open to it. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN. Especially if they bring back the sparklers spelling out SID above the ring. I'd pretty much mail my wallet to Titan Towers if during a Cena promo he got powerbombed out of his camo shorts by the Master and Ruler of the World.

WWE is really having a horrible year.

Watching Tuesday Night Titans on 24/7, they showed a hype video for a gal named Lisa Sliwa, a model turned professional wrestler. I had never even heard of her before. Graham Cawthon has one match documented, on May 12, 1986. The show aired in December '85 so she likely wrestled other matches. A google search shows she's made some self-defense videos and written books with help from WWE ghostwriter Keith Eliot Greenberg. So what was the deal with her, and why did she seemingly fall off the map so soon?

Greg Valentine - Was never high on him before, but he comes off as much less methodical and just flat out nasty and stiff at all times now. In some ways he seems like a precurser to Finlay in that he sort of eats bumps the same way, works with a nice tight array of strikes as his base offense though he is comfortable mixing it up on the ground, and is really good at pacing a match around solid exchanges and good transition "restholds". Also even post prime working shitty Ntiro era tv matches he shows flashes sometimes that your rarely saw from the old guys that were just trying to score easy money at that point. Mike Enos - Guy was awesome during the Nitro era as a…

I'd like to try to save what we can manage to save of the good Smarkschoice threads. I haven't checked any of these yet to see if any of them work, but maybe we can salvage some of the stuff here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sm...hoice.com/forum Mainly the GWE countdown thread (whatever can be salvaged of it), KCook's lucha talk and a few other match reviews. Copy/paste whatever you find that is worth keeping into this thread, and maybe we can at least access that.

I really thought this show deserved a thread of its own. I will say WWE came off very well here. A lot of the media coverage has been unfair, but they really came across even better than they deserved. As far as media coverage, my instincts tell me in the long run, this will be the most significant. I do think it would have been nice to have Marc Mero and/or Konnan on the show as well to provide a little balance. King took everything all the guests said at face value, and it's understandable why he'd do that, considering that the guests all seemed intelligent and charming. I also think that if Bret really thought there was a big drug problem in today's wrestli…

From today's WO update: I say we start a betting pool on how long before he gets himself fired again.

Because I was admittedly banned at another board earlier today for suggesting (granted, more derisively and curt) that it was a bit histrionic for select members of the IWC to throw out or perhaps solemnly burn their Benoit DVDs, I figured I might try and test the waters here. This is not meant as a work-rate, blind mark loving bullshit survey. It could feasibly be paired with any wrestler or with the business as a complete entity (KCook style, I suppose). And I realize Scott Keith put forward a more smug and grotesque version of something similar, which was mocked by folks at OLC (the same people who are excited over Photoshopping a pale, bruised childcorpse.) Even…

I was reading in the WON that NJ was threatening to sue if Inoki used the IWGP belt Lesnar kept as the title of his new IGF fed. Well not only did Inoki use that belt, Angle won it in the match they had and went on TV with the TNA and IWGP/IGF belt. So would this have any effect on the talent exchange TNA had with NJ?