Coffey

This is something that has always somewhat perplexed me: why do some wrestling fans like having surprises spoiled for them? I can understand wanting to read about some insider stuff and feeling more in the know, or whatever. But, for me, a lot of the appeal of wrestling is the surprises. When people are uploading pictures of Kevin Nash at the airport where the Royal Rumble is being held at with newly dyed hair, that kills that surprise for you. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I would rather be legitimately surprised. Now in the day and age of Twitter and cell phones, I don't think that will happen again.

Trish Stratus might be the most overrated wrestler ever, not just female wrestler. It is almost a parody at this point. I agree with you. I could see an argument for Cena. Not the rest. Even if you exclude other countries, you still have a lot of years with a lot of great wrestlers to narrow it down to 100.

What you said. It's funny that the only "exciting" stuff in WWE these days seems to be : Kevin Nash and Booker T showing up at the Rumble. Jerry Lawler probably getting a match at Mania. Speculation about Sting showing up in WWE. Well, that's the vibe I get as someone who doesn't watch the product but kinda follows what happens. I don't know if that says more about the current crop of wrestlers or the writers. It's hard to care about someone like Kofi Kingston in regards to someone like Jerry Lawler, ya know? He's just not on the same level. Even with CURRENT Lawler, which is saying a lot. I had this conversation just this morning with my buddy John actually. We were talking about the Royal Rumble and that we were both happy Del Rio won 'cause we see potential in him. But, early in the Rumble, it was just jobber after jobber after jobber. There was a stretch where it was like Yoshi Tatsu, Husky Harris, Chavo Guerrero, JTG, Michael McGillicutty, Chris Masters, David Otunga, Tyler Reks, Vladimir Kozlov in a row. Even with the Nexus tie-in, it was just hilarious watching one jobber after the next come out. It's really hard to compare the midcard of WWE today with the greats of the midcard growing up, where people like Mr. Perfect, Rick Rude, Ted DiBiase (arguably) & Jake Roberts weren't good enough to be better than midcard. Now we got WWE Champion The Miz.

If it was Sting, I assume WWE would use the old "Crow" version of Sting? Honestly, when I saw it, I just assumed it was The Undertaker because he always comes back for Wrestlemania. What would Sting even do in WWE? I hope they use him better than Diamond Dallas Page.

I concur. That was literally the worst wrestling game that I have ever played. It felt like it was not finished. Like, not even close to being finished. An early developmental phase. About 30-40% complete game. It sure was pretty though! This was pretty much how I felt about it from watching the trailer. It felt like WWE: Jam. Which does not necessarily mean that it will not be fun. In fact, I think that would make a great XBL game. It's just that as a stand-alone release, with a retail full price, it'll be hard to justify picking the game up when it seems like it would only be fun for short periods of time with friends. Obviously it is way too early to tell if that is true or not, but I'm not a real optimistic person. So it's the TNA iMPACT! engine, produced by the NBA Jam dude and looks like it'll play like Ultimate Muscle. That's not my cup of tea, so perhaps passing judgment on it early was a bit hasty, however as a first incarnation, I definitely hold to my premature opinion that this game is going to be awful. I want substance, not pretty, shiny graphics and hard-selling using famous people from my childhood. I think Savage is awesome but he can't make a bad game good.

It's hard to deliver a promo with the same passion when you're at the top as opposed to still climbing to the top. He'll never top his promo where he was walking to the ring from backstage, making fun of how JBL used to cheese on him.

I can't tell if you're joking or not but who exactly is the audience for this game? I guess that's why they're putting random people like Kofi Kingston in it too so they can sell it to a younger audience. If it's featuring legends, like Savage, newer fans won't even know who they are. Are older fans going to want to play a wrestling video game that is more like Ultimate Muscle than it is WWF No Mercy? It's hard to say, I guess...but I'm not.

It looks like NBA Jam meets wrestling, which is not what I'm personally looking for in a video game. I mean, shit, Savage did the Macho Elbow to a standing opponent. Plus, it looks really blocky to me. Like during Savage's entrance. He looks like the character models from Legends of Wrestling and that game, too, sucked. Not my cup of tea, controls or not.

Too bad the game looks terrible. Cool about Savage though.

The first name that came to mind was The Undertaker. I always found his unhurtable zombie gimmick silly and he seems so limited that he was downright boring to me. I completely flipped opinions on him during his American Bad Ass phase. He was putting on pretty damn good matches. I remember really liking his ladder match with Jeff Hardy as an example. Now he just has like an incredible match once a year, so I don't hate the zombie so much anymore. His matches with HBK both blew me away. More recently, Dolph Ziggler has turned my opinion of him around quite a great deal because he keeps having really good matches.

I really liked ECW on TNN. Almost all of it. In fact, it might be my favorite wrestling television show ever. Granted I was a huge ECW mark. I remember really disliking Da Baldies. One episode was like "Will New Jack find the Baldies!?" or maybe it was the other way around, hell it might have carried on for a couple of shows, but it could not have been anymore boring. I also never liked Tommy Dreamer. I could go either way with the whole Network angle. I really liked Cyrus, but that was about the end of it. Dude definitely had a ton of charisma. Is he actually doing anything wrestling related anymore? Same with Jim Mitchell. One of the things that I always enjoyed about ECW was that they used real songs, not songs they created for their wrestlers. I remember Mike Awesome coming out to The Zoo which was a Scorpions song but not sure if that was the same version he used or not. Mike Awesome (and Tanaka) were both great. I remember setting my VCR to record the show because it was on Friday nights and I was never home but I don't think that I missed a single episode. I liked both Tajiri and Super Crazy quite a bit. Little Guido too. Those guys were always wrestling one another with a Jerry Lynn or Mikey Whipwreck thrown in. I was a huge Steve Corino fan for a long time too because of that era of ECW. I remember really liking a few of the Justin Credible TV title matches against Tajiri and I think Kid Kash. Who was the dude that did the Confederate Crunch super Alabama Jam as a finish? That finish was awesome. Oh, I liked C.W. Anderson as well.

I really liked the match. The hot crowd helped it a lot as did the storyline of Austin "making a deal with the devil" to be world champion. Although it is a tired cliché nowadays, back then the finisher-finisher-finisher ending to matches made for a lot of dramatic near falls. At least for me. It is a lot better than the Finisher = 3-Count formula that you see on lesser shows. Plus, Wrestlemania X-7 as a whole was great, so it being the nightcap at the end of the show helped it a lot in my mind. Just watching that match by itself outside of the moment, it just feels different. Also, thankfully they excluded Debra from the storyline. The highly rated match that I never saw eye-to-eye with was Savage/Steamboat at III. The Animal just kills that shit for me.

Yeah, no question about that. I think the biggest problem I have with WWE as a whole right now is there's just no emotion. I do not have any vested interest in any of the matches. Where is the emotion? Vickie Guerrero is probably the biggest heel on the roster. The person I want to see get beat-up the most is Michael Cole. It's just weird to be so apathetic about so many wrestlers. I hate to be "that guy" but I used to care about the characters. I wanted to see people like Ultimate Warrior get his revenge on Rick Rude. Then I would be pissed if Warrior lost by Rude cheating. I don't think it's just because I'm older. The roster just lacks character. Everything feels the same. Look at Smackdown. It's still Edge/Kane and Del Rio/Mysterio. How long has it been those exact two matches? I swear Mysterio/Del Rio has happened fifteen times and I've not given a fuck about it a single time...and I like Del Rio! The winners and losers don't matter, the content of the match doesn't matter...what's the point? Just guys wrestling aimlessly. No reason to care. Fuckin' Randy Orton is #1 contender again. To The Miz. So we have the cash-in match (I guess if you count that), the tables match, the live Smackdown match and now a Royal Rumble match? It's only been like a month! EDIT: I hate the whole "I get a rematch!" thing. It got really out of hand with Batista but it's just something I do not like. I don't want the same matches two PPVs in a row. WWE do it all the damn time.

Eh, a commercial break mid-match hurt it a lot to me. I'm just not a fan of the whole WWE way of "making a match good." Ya know what I mean? Throw in a table spot, a lot of 2-counts and give it twenty minutes instead of ten and people will call it good. I really hate the Starship Pain.

Ruined by Canadian mullets and Millpark drawings.

Wrestlinggames.com, Dragonlair.org aka The Wall (if that counts), TheSmartMarts, DVDVR, Wrestlehut (Something Awful forums), WrestlingForum.com, Crossfire, Wrestling Classics...what was the old yellow board before TSM? That one too. There was also another forum I posted at shorty with artDDP, Sek, Loss and some other TSM guys but I got banned from there pretty quick. I can't remember the name. I remember it was red & black.

I don't really have any complaints, nor do I think my opinion really matters much. My big thing is around these parts, despite watching wrestling for ~25 years, I kinda feel like I don't know shit. Ha! The big posts about potential Sen. McMahon or Lucha or even Indies, I just can't really contribute anymore, either due to underexposure or apathy. Stuff like RAW convo, or TNA clowning...it doesn't really happen. I guess no one really cares about or watches either anymore. I've been banned from pretty much every wrestling forum I've been on, including TSM and DVDVR, mostly because I take things way too seriously and when I argue with people, I tend to get overly heated. So, I know about the "negative content" stuff as I've heard that a lot. There's also not a ton of activity, really. Which, hopefully the request to make more threads and cut back on the comment thread will help remedy that. I watch RAW still, I watch TNA occasionally (or parts of it) but I still catch PPV of both. I work the rest of the time and no longer buy DVDs or hunt for stuff on-line, so that's really all I know anymore. Talking about AAA or CMLL or NOAH, I just do not know anything and can't contribute.

One of my biggest pet peeves is typing "loose" instead of "lose." Stop it! That being said, first of all, Happy New Year to everyone. Secondly, any predictions for the upcoming Royal Rumble? Also, is this C.M. Punk/Nexus feud going to build all the way to a Wrestlemania match, or just simply be blown off in the matter of a couple weeks? I think Punk/Cena could be huge.

Quite a bit of news lately that no one has said anything about. Cena is hurt, although day-to-day so I doubt he'll miss any shows, WWE apparently signed Awesome Kong, which I never thought would happen, and Spike TV cancelled TNA ReAction. Thoughts on any of that? Well, Mysterio is a 2x former champion, although I didn't buy him as credible. I think Miz is fine, myself. He's got himself into really good shape, he's getting better in the ring, he's good on the mic and he cheats anyway, so he doesn't need to be booked as a tough guy. If anything, WWE needs a Honky Tonk type heel on top for a change. BTW, Loss, if you ever wrote a blog or anything about wrestling, I would read it. I love reading your opinions on shit.

I really do think that it simply comes down to this. It's not just the lack of a good, strong compelling storyline. During the "boom" you had both the nWo and Austin/McMahon, plus some other stuff that people were interested in like D-Generation X or whatever. The big storyline that just happened was John Cena was "fired" by Nexus and yet he didn't miss a single show because what would WWE RAW be without John Cena on it? I'm not sure if I would go so far as to say that the crop of talent today "sucks" but they are definitely a different breed for sure. There are a lot less charismatic people that can give you a great promo, and even if they could, it would be scripted and they would be told what to say. The days of practicing a promo in your bathroom mirror with a hairbrush have been replaced by working your 7 minute TV match and then going to play video games. I like John Cena, as an example. I think he's a great man (can't deny his Make-A-Wish stuff) and when he is actually allowed to act natural, he can be pretty funny. However he is never going to be perceived in the same way that someone like Austin or The Rock were, which is unfair to him as they were so high up the ladder. But you put someone in that role, anyone, and they're going to be compared to them and in that regard, I think he has done pretty O.K. How long has he been carrying WWE now?

I really like Low Ki but if there ever was a wrestler that did not fit into what WWE is trying to do, it is him. He's small, never really works a lot of short matches and is stiff a lot of the time. Plus he is not a great talker. I like to think that WWE is getting away from their stigma of wrestlers being used based on size but then I think of a Chris Masters de-push and mocking in a promo here or a signing/pushing of an Ezekial Jackson there and the U.S. Champion Daniel Bryan's seem a lot more few and far between. I'm sure Low Ki will not be short for work as he can just go back to Japan or whatever, but as long as he was down in FCW, and winning NXT, it seems odd that they would just up and cut him NOW.

I finally got around to watching Ring Roasts III with Jim Cornette. Just as a warning, do not watch it. It is not good. It is not funny. It is terrible and pathetic. I genuinely felt bad for damn near everyone there as they were bombing so hard. Plus Amy Lee I guess in the Lisa Lampanelli role, just kept cussing and trying to cut people off. It was excruciatingly painful. ABORT!

I really think that WWE struck gold with Alberto Del Rio. Good thinking on Vince's part to not actually give him the mask that he was rumored to debut with. The guy has amazing facial expressions. If the future of WWE is people like C.M. Punk and Alberto Del Rio, there is a reason to be excited! Now if only this feud with Rey Mysterio would finally end!

A reply on the YouTube comments about that Vader squash: "It was originally set up to be a competitive match as booked in the locker room, but as soon as Zenk started his come back, Ole told the ref to call for the pin. It was reported that the wrestlers in the back were pretty pissed off at Ole for this." Know anything about that?

I'm not positive it's Baby Doll, but toward the end of the video, Jim Cornette calls her Baby Doll and she was blond, so I thought it might be...