sek69

I rarely speak of him in a positive way, but Scott Keith put it best when he said that scaffold matches suck because it's not fun to watch two guys or teams try their best to not look scared out of their minds. I don't know how the Road Warriors/Midnights match got to be so highly regarded, considering the usual limits of the gimmick were further hindered by Hawk breaking his leg in Japan right before. The most nerve wracking part for me was thinking the whole goddamn structure would collapse before the match ended.

You could make the argument that the same person is responsible for both guys' current statuses.

So one of the subplots in the whole "Brock gets shitcanned from New Japan" story was that he was in possession of the new IWGP title belt and didn't return it. Did NJ eventually get it back, or are they using the old belt again?

I think it would be safe to go to Detroit to WM, I mean shit, it's not like it's the Middle East there. They managed to pull off a Super Bowl there without anyone getting killed, I think WM could escape with no casualties. Plus, it just seems wrong for WrestleMania to be held in an arena barely bigger than your average RAW. I'm not saying they need to be running it in the Rose Bowl, but having your biggest show in a building that holds less than 20,000 and isn't MSG is lame.

WrestleMania will almost always be a sellout just for the name alone, unless WWE tries to full a 100,000 stadium again. Having said that, Vince will most likely go on a full court press to get a "big name" star to guarantee a sellout. The only problem is Austin, Rock (tore an Achilles filming a movie), and Hogan are probably not going to be able health-wise to do a WM main eventing program. Brock, along with burning his bridges and setting fire to the ashes, wants to go into MMA instead of pro wrestling. I'd be willing to bet Cena could get a lot of folks in the door on his own. The internet haters love to ignore the fact that he gets asses in the seats, even if said asses are in those seats to boo him. I'd like to see a Cena-Rock "passing the torch to the next generation" match echoing the Rock-Hogan match.

I downloaded the Russian National Anthem and all I can hear is Nikolai's baritone over the Garden PA system.

The Heyman vs old ECW guys feud is giving guys like Test and Mike Knox a chance to get the rub in the traditionally ECW hardcore environment. Other than sporting a physique that can't possibly get past the Wellness Program for very long, I see nothing wrong with pushing Test.

The diehard fans, whatever you want to call them, had unrealistic expectations and then vented on every messageboard known to man when SHOCKINGLY those expectations went unrealized. What doesn't make sense is you making such a spirited defense of a group and its fans you have no interest in. It would seem you wouldn't have much of a reason to defend them so vigorously unless it was a pretext to start some sort of interweb argument. ...and I wasn't calling all old ECW fans fake, just the ones who make it seem like it was the American equivalent to 90s AJPW, and the ones who claimed to be down since day one yet lived in an area that didn't get ECW TV until it was on TNN (and already on its last legs).

I'm no authority on "real fans", it's just tiresome to be constantly reading about how the old ECW was the best promotion that ever lived and the new incarnation is a failure because it's not being booked the way they want it to be. It's very tiring to see people bury things without even giving them a chance. "Oh Vince is running ECW, it's going to be horrible"....and yeah a few of the early shows were less than stellar, but you can't tell me last week's show (which was in front of a crowd of OMG MUTANTZ~!) was one of the best hours of WWE TV in a long time. I call them fake fans because it's very obvious by the way they talk about the product that they either weren't watching the old ECW when it was on, or they're looking at it today through some very thick rose colored glasses. So you've never seen the new ECW, and you weren't a fan of the old ECW, and you don't even like WWE. .......so that means your whole reply was pretty much a troll then?

Despite all the crying from ECW "fans" (most of whom probably never watched the original ECW) who want to dub this a failure, ECW is by far the best wrestling show on TV. Now granted, Smackdown is a bit decimated due to injuries and bad livers, but ECW is about a millon billion times better than both of the two main brands right now. Even the bad (Al Snow seemingly sandbagging Kevin Thorn and Angle hilariously avoiding contact on the Van Daminator) was better than watching the McMahon Family Theater Show that's taking over monday nights.

Just watched a 2 minute USWA jobber match that was pretty unremarkable except for the fact that it was The Punisher (Taker under a mask) squashing Chris Adams' upstart graduate from the USWA wrestling school, one Steve Williams. About ten years later, this was the biggest matchup in the WWF.

I know they have a hard job and all, but the WWE writers need to find a better transitional phrase for promos besides "As far as *name of wrestler/match/next PPV* goes". Having all this WWE programming every week is only driving the point home that everyone cuts the same promo in this company.

One thing that always puzzled me, a lot of people support the WWE buying every tape library they can find by pointing out that the previous owners weren't doing anything with them. I don't think WWE is going to do much more with a great majority of the stuff they buy. The Dusty DVD was a great opportunity to feature the Florida footage that everyone thought was purchased just for this. Turned out that they barely used any of it, despite there being some classic stuff in there. I tend to think they bought the World Class footage just so they could include Kerry vs Flair on the second volume of the Ric Flair Collection that's been rumored forever. As much as I would personally mark for it, I don't think we'll ever see a WWE produced Freebirds set since to WWF/E fans Michael Hayes is the guy who used to manage the Hardy Boys and Terry Gordy is the guy in a mask who buried Taker alive. I guess the footage is being taken care of better in the WWE Vaults than in the garages of whoever owned stuff before, but I don't see how WWE ownership of footage is going to increase it's availability. If anything, it's just giving Vince the power to crack down on tape traders who happen to offer footage that ends up being WWE owned.

How did Ivory end up owning the rights to any footage? Sexual harrassment settlement maybe?

The violence thing I get too, they don't want to scare the parents of the kids they deny they market to away. The whole "medical facility" thing always irks me, mainly because when JR says it, he always hesitates first as if to illustrate he's inserting a WWE Approved Term in his sentence. I'm just glad that "Ruthless Aggression" didn't get over like they hoped as a substitute for "violence".

The fightingest champion in WWE history was the victim of a heinous attack and has been taken to a medical facility. I understand the whole superstar/Sports Entertainment thing, but why aren't they allowed to say "hospital"?

I liked how the fans in the old Techwood studio would get behind the jobbers if a heel was having a squash match. Also, no talk of jobbers can be complete without mention of THE GAMBLER!

To be fair, Jeff had everyone thinking for a second that he might actually beat the Undertaker for the title in that ladder match. That was probably Jeff's (and JR's) last great WWF/E performance.

Wasn't the WWE trying to get Trish to re-sign recently?

There's no way this will end well, but it'll be fun until the eventual crash.

My only problem with Meltzer's wacky opinions is there's too many on the net who take every word from the Observer as gospel, even the parts that are clearly his opinon. If you ever find yourself debating someone on a messageboard (especally TSM or DVDVR) that has a completely nonsensical opinon about something, 9 times out of 10 they're parroting Big Dave.

Only counting his US work, I'd agree with this. If you include his Japan work, I wouldn't agree. He's been a top level guy over there longer than he was a star in the US.

He had an injury, and took time off. Here's some hilarity regarding Mr Burchill as well: Before his injury, Vince was all set to repackage him because Vince never saw the movie and didn't know that the pirate character was referring to Jack Sparrow. Of course, while Burchill's been out, the sequel came out and drew almost $400 mil, so it should be interesting to see if the gimmick makes a return.

Dave comes off as someone who's petty as fuck by trying to keep a feud going with someone who's been dead for a decade. I've seen this "Monsoon was overrated" stuff pop up on DVDVR, now I know where it's coming from: Meltz-sheep who have no opinions of their own.