goc

TNA is never going to get it's shit together and the decision to leave the "Impact Zone" is going to be what finally kills them off. I think WWE made their plans to have a physical HoF at Universal Studios was done in large part to block TNA from being able to go back.

Because then he can say "this guy sucks even I can't work with him" kind of like how he killed Vladimir Kozlov.

I never got the impression that Taker wanted to kill him because he thought it was on purpose. Accident or not someone hitting you with a chair and costing you the title is a legit reason for a feud. Shawn being a dick about it didnt help either.

I don't really get the Alex Wright hatred, but other than that there's some funny stuff.

The problem with the Miz is that you can't buy him as tough. There's just nothing about the guy that says "this guy is tough/dangerous." For all the whining I saw on the internet about how they were making him look like the new Honky Tonk Man, I feel like he needed way more interference & gimmicks for his title run to work. They really needed to play it as "this guy is way too weak to keep the title against ___ challenger" and then have him jump through all kinds of hoops to get sneaking out wins. Even the PPV match with Lawler, he should have never won that match clean with a Skull Crushing Finale.

Actually they just did an instant replay finish in WWE at the Extreme Rules PPV with Del Rio & Swagger.

They really killed R-Truth by turning him back babyface. Horrible decision, that short heel run is by far the best he's ever been in WWE.

I don't remember anything about you in the shoot. It's fucking terrible. Sinister Minister is rated number 5 and Jimmy Hart isn't even on the list.

Maybe he had a different shoot, but in the RF shoot it's even worse. Rob is asking him about the StarCade 97 finish and Nick Patrick asks him what about it? RF is like "uhhh I think it was supposed to be controversial or something" and Nick goes "well I don't remember" and RF says "me either" and that was the whole discussion. Didn't stop him from advertising "StarCade 97 explained" as one of the selling points for the DVD though.

Gabe still reps for him hard and says Ki has been a total professional. Even DGUSA/EVOLVE's level of business Low Ki is probably a real difference maker and worth the headache. I don't know, I have a feeling he's retiring because he isn't getting the money he wants to wrestle. Like he said, he's willing to come back for something major, meaning big money, but I don't think he's going to get that from a DGUSA or EVOLVE. WWE isn't going to bring him back for big money or a major angle, TNA is supposedly going thru cost cutting due to the big increase in costs when they took iMPACT on the road, and RoH isn't going to shell out big money for ANYONE. So that pretty much leaves Japan, where apparently he's burnt his bridge with New Japan, All Japan decided not to bring him in, and then who is left that is going to pay big money to bring in a U.S. Junior Heavyweight?

Yea this is probably a "no one is offering me enough money to wrestle" retirement where he hopes by sitting out for a while he'll drive up his price, since the longer he is out the more impact a surprise return would have.

I have some doubts on just how much a top of the indy pay scale guy nets relative to what Joe nets in TNA. If it was a shitload, Joe would have left TNA and gone back to the indies making more money than Ki. Instead, Joe has stayed with TNA. Money in Japan isn't what it once was. Plus, Ki isn't a heavyweight top of the card guy there. Also doubt he worked / works as many dates there as say Hansen did in AJPW in 1996 (i.e. every card on all 8 series). Just thought I'd throw this into the discussion: Seems like he's made more money than Joe if he feels he can turn down bookings to focus on a new career. I could be wrong and the real thing is just that Low Ki can't get booked anywhere anymore.

It's pretty easy to pretend a title change happened in some podunk indy because there's probably only 50-100 people in the crowd that could have witnessed it anyway. Hell, the title change COULD have happened but in front of a group of 30 people and none of them wrote about it online. Kind of the old "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it" deal.

I still don't understand how he didn't get a spot on Aces and Eights. I'd have definitely gone for him over Mike Knox. It's not like he isn't also a big imposing dude. I don't really care to see Chris Masters work as a heel, but I'd like for the guy to get a steady job somewhere.

People should definitely check out the article on WWE's tape library. http://www.wwe.com/classics/inside-video-vault-26125073

Bryan went into Wrestlemania 28 as WHC. It sucks that he got pinned in 18 seconds, but he had a decent reign from December to April. Punk has always been treated pretty well. When has he ever been buried? People always seem to cry burial whenever a guy isn't being pushed at the time. Burial is something that happened to Paul Burchill. He went from having a pretty over pirate gimmick to randomly being stuck on Velocity jobbing to Road Warrior Animal and feuding with Simon Dean. Punk has always been a featured part of whatever brand he's on. Neither Bryan or Punk have come anywhere close to being "buried" in WWE. Neither of them has gotten the Vito treatment, where they want to embarrass you and make you wrestle in a dress. The closest they've come is that Bryan went on a little bit of a losing streak after winning MITB and Punk wasn't booked very well during the latter stages of S.E.S. or during the terrible Nexus stint. But that's not going from being the Chosen One to off TV to being a part of 3MB. It's not "let's make Mark Henry kiss trannies and Mae Young because we're mad we gave him a big contract" level stuff. They suffered from bad booking. Everyone in WWE suffers from bad booking, even guys like Cena and HHH.

Probably had a couple minutes left to fill out a DVD and thought "hey why not" since it fits a "before they were stars" theme.

Fuck. I was just looking at the website charging $5 per DIGITAL issue and thinking that was way too much.

I would guess Low Ki. I bet he's near the top of the indy pay scale for U.S. indy dates, without having to give a cut to TNA, and probably makes decent money in Japan. I really doubt Joe is making the kind of money that a Kurt Angle or Jeff Hardy is making in TNA.

And then (weirdly) takes credit for that product. I like the snide shot about Christian being cleared to come back for a while. Like it was so hard for the creative team to come up with a way to bring him back. "Uh let's just have Vickie bring him out as a surprise opponent."

As far as The Wall goes, I thought he'd really improved by the time he showed up in early days TNA as Malice. His look was completely different too. So there you go, some motivation for you to seek out TNA once you're finished with this.

That's great.

Giant was dead the moment they had him join the nWo after losing the title to Hogan. He could have been the pre-Goldberg version of Golberg, running through all the new scrubs the nWo was picking up like Wallstreet and Big Bubba while Hogan, Hall & Nash desperately avoided him. He could have still been salvaged after his first turn against the nWo but WCW did seemingly everything to ruin what they had with him. I agree that he probably had to leave WCW before he could be a main event threat again, but they never needed it to come to that. The nWo needed a big threat at the end of 1996 a lot more than they needed a new member. As far as Rey goes, I don't think they could have pushed him to the main event without the mask. They would have had to find some way to put it back on him. It worked better in the WWF where he just showed up with the mask again and no one ever talked about it.

I don't care for this Punk/Lesnar feud we are about to get. I know I'm just going to get bashed, but I don't buy Punk as a credible opponent against Lesnar. I don't care if he just had the title for 400+ days, I don't care if he's one of the most protected guys in the WWE, I don't buy it. I've seen Lesnar end Heath Herring's fighting career with one punch that broke his orbital bone. At least Cena & Triple H don't look like scrawny kids when they get in the ring with Lesnar. And the "well Eddie wrestled him" comparison doesn't work for me either. Eddie might have been shorter than Punk but he also was muscular and ripped. And his offense wasn't built around fake MMA strikes.

At this point, people can say what they want about a good booker coming in, but it would have taken YEARS to rebuild WCW to the point of really competing again. They had no one fresh that was ready to move into the main events, so you were pretty much stuck with rotating line-ups of Hogan, Luger, Sting, Sid, Nash, Flair, etc. I guess you could try to build around Goldberg again when he comes back from injury, and maybe try to build a new monster heel while he's out for him to slay on return but I don't think they could have ever got him back to his peak. Losing Eddie & Benoit really hurt. Along with losing Jericho & The Giant earlier. They'd lost 4 guys that had potential to be true main eventers. The Giant could have been one through his whole stint there but they killed him to make him an nWo member. They only really had Booker T & Scott Steiner left as fresh guys to move up, but they could have had a lot more.