Al

I thought the chiefdom was just some rumor that floated around for awhile, wasn't it?

Cool. Although for what it is worth, my post office is local and since we're a familiar name, stuff gets sorted and processed to us very quickly.

It usually arrived on a Saturday for me.

A lot of people are happy about this, but I can not celebrate a wrestler's injury, no matter what my personal opinion of him. HHH is a backstage politician and borderline cancer, but he works very hard on his craft, and no one questions his dedication.

I know some people have reservations about Angle/Benoit from the Rumble. Are you one of them, or did you legitimately overlook that match?

Shame. They'd miss out on April Flowers.

Dave covers the Indies, Japan, Mexico, and Puerto Rico as well, along with any other wrestling hotbed. So the observer is useful, particularly if they are scouting for new talent, or just trying to keep abreast of any other developments in the wrestling world. If RoH is negotiating a tv deal or what not, Dave has it covered.

Absolutely. I subscribed for several months, and I still find myself browsing the back issues once in awhile. There is an INSANE amount of information packed into every issue, and as HTQ said, no one does wrestler obituaries better.

There's some validity in that, simply because this incident occured in public. Wrestlers prefer to keep problems in house, as evidenced by the kangaroo courts.

Perhaps a comparison with Mike Tyson is applicable? Tyson's been exposed a few times now, yet he is still a huge attraction.

And oh yes, Trish is ruling it right now.

Takayama's been beaten multiple times in real fight environments, and he is still popular. Ditto Bon Sapp.

The top rope bulldog was cool. I'd hesitate to call it a match of the year candidate, but it was very good.

Didn't Starrcade also do the alternate arenas setup the year before as well?

Well, at least Raw was never pre-empted by the Westminster Dog Show, if that helps.

That honestly makes everything make sense. Too bad JR couldn't find that line of logic.

You can still make an argument that the bodyslam was special, since Andre gained considerable weight between 1980 and 1987. Of course, Andre was also beaten the year before in Japan. Still, the fact is that this was a match featuring a dominant champion unbeaten for three years against a challenger who had not lost on American soil since before anyone could remember.

This is a good point. I think Hogan's matches were generally well-paced as well. They were smart enough to keep the matches short enough that they wouldn't drag, and I think that kept Hogan's matches more exciting.

It was a unique card more than a great card. I think people expect more because of the Wrestlemania concept, but back then, it was basically taking the Mr. T crossover and forming a match, and just running a basic undercard. The Wendi Richter/Cyndi Lauper stuff was legitimately huge at the time, and Andre has his own appeal. I don't think Vince and Co. expected the rest of the card to be more than it was. He was known as Gorilla of course. But announcers did refer to Gorilla as Gino quite often, throughout the 80s.

I would like to see more tag teams. Both the WWE and WON HOF have neglected them up to this point.

It could've been clearer at the outset that Meltzer was evaluating WWE Hall of Fame candidates. It took me a few paragraphs to catch on. In any case, Yokozuna's exclusion surprises me, as WWE always spoke favorably of him, and Vince has always been on good terms with the Samoan wrestling clan.

Obviously it wouldn't be a good idea to blow off every feud in the promotion in one night. I would speculate that the WWF wanted some feuds to continue past Wrestlemania, and this was one of them.

I don't understand the hatred towards Kane in the ladder match. As far as big men go, you could do much, much worse. He's a credible wrestler, he doesn't blow many spots, and the fans respond to him.

My question is this. If Batista wins the title, where do we go after Wrestlemania?

Wow. It sounds like the crowd prefers the Undertaker.