The Chief

I might be a rare example in that I've never had a complete tune out phase, I love it too much. I started watching around 1990-1991 as a WWF fan. There are a few times where I really felt like tuning out, but I never did completely. The Benoit murders for obvious reasons. 2003 was a truly horrid year. I was seriously considering dropping completely but the build to WrestleMania XX brought me back. When they tried to position Randy Orton as the companies top babyface after SummerSlam 2004 and JBL was the champ on the other show I almost quit. The end of 1996 into 1997 I wasn't paying as much attention but that was just due to my age and other things going on in my life.

kofi kingston.

because? Well, to me part of the appeal of this podcast is how analytical it is. I'm all for differing opinions, but implying Ricky Morton is terrible without really giving any reasons other than "I hate him" and turning everything into a WWF discussion really turned me off. I like how laid back and relaxed this podcast usually is, this was just different than what I'm used to. YMMV, I guess I'm just spoiled by some of the previous guests. I did enjoy the rest of the show. We're getting into the period where I was finally able to catch WCW on a consistent basis, so this will be very fun for me to follow.

I love your show guys, but this guest is really derailing things, sorry...

Fan? He's Doink the Clown's half-brother. Not Doink, Krusty! Interesting to see these two mentioned together after listening to Austin's podcast today. Apparently Road Warrior Hawk saw a lot of Krusty the Clown in Borne and suggested the Doink gimmick to Vince. With the cigarette smoking, surly attitude, disheveled look, I can totally see it now and I'm surprised it took me this long to connect the two. Not sure how this would work timeframe wise unless Borne had a tryout somewhere before Summer Slam, but an interesting story regardless.

last I heard Jericho was still married

I may be alone in thinking this, but I don't think they needed to do an invasion at all. I would be fine with them just filtering in talent over time. If Vince purchased them in 1999, that's a different story.

Oh boy, the "Magnificent Seven." I really hate factions like this where there's no real reason for them to be together, no individual motivations, it's just "let's throw these guys into a group." See also TNA's Main Event Mafia. You're also limiting what kind of stories you can tell by putting all of your eggs in one basket like this. One thing I did like about this time was that Jimmy Hart was cranking out a lot of new tunes. I loved the theme he gave Dusty, it was a cheesy ripoff of his WWF theme, but Jimmy was always good with that. Chavo also had a really cool guitar variation of the theme Eddie and the LWO used. Too bad WWE saddled most of the guys with generic music upon arrival, all Jimmy's work towards the end has been forgotten since it was so short-lived. And I haven't seen Vampiro mentioned in a while, was he gone by this point? What were the circumstances surrounding his departure? And if I'm not mistaken, Sting doesn't show up anymore either except for the final Nitro. These last couple months are pretty hard to watch, the talent pool just keeps getting thinner by the day.

I just watched Greed the other day and Buffer was still used there. Amazing that with all the cost cutting you would think they would be doing at this point, they're still throwing so much cash at somebody who added so little.

nope not dull at all. I was wondering the same thing.

I can't wait to see where Roman Reigns is in a year or two. For somebody so new to the business, it's amazing how good he is at the subtle little details. He is very good at placing himself in the right spots in these multi man matches without it looking contrived. The stuff with calling out Goldust for leaving a chair in the ring was great. The average wrestling message boards see him as the weakest member of the group because he wasn't an Indy sensation, but I think he's miles ahead of the other two.

So I'm watching the Bret/Shawn rivalries Bluray and it has an interview segment from the February 3rd 1997 SkyDome Raw. I noticed Jim Ross keeps calling it "Royal Rumble Raw." Now I may be imagining things, but I vaguely remember them hyping that they would show the 1997 RoyalRumble match on or after the show. I'm not really sure why else they would call it Royal Rumble Raw in February. I do remember being pretty pissed off that they didn't show the match. Am I just imagining things or does anyone else remember this?

Also, in the Ray Rougeau "doesn't look like he's tough mode but absolutely is" camp, Norman Smiley. All-around nice guy who doesn't cause trouble, but not somebody you would mess around with.

Least toughest is an interesting discussion. When you hear somebody call someone a puss in a shoot, a lot of it stems from jealousy of their spot, etc. Also, some guys just didn't get into fights. Reminds me of some stories Bob Holly told. He called Kevin Nash "the biggest seven foot tall pussy he ever met" because he was always talking about kicking everyones ass but never lifted a finger to anyone. I'm sure Nash is no pussy based on size alone, but listening to hundreds of Nash shoots about how he WAS gonna kick so and so's ass, and WAS gonna threaten so and so, there is a point to be made. Nash is all talk. Also Tazz. There's numerous stories out there about how he believed his gimmick in ECW. One of the reasons they supposedly replaced him with Holly on Tough Enough was because if one of those kids decided to shoot on him he would be made to look like a joke. According to Bob.

Not much at all. It goes from him winning the title from Jericho to resurrecting Flair's career to him and Flair seeing something in Orton & Batista. No mention of the actual heel turn with Shawn, feuds with Kane, Booker, Goldberg, etc. Now that I think about it the only actual feuds they cover are Rock & Orton. Which reminds me of another great line - Rock and HHH were having such amazing matches in 1998 that the main eventers at the time had to up their game to keep up. And he also "passed the torch" to John Cena at WrestleMania.

Congratulations El P! It really takes a special kind of awful for me to get mad at stuff that happened over ten years ago, but I was legitimately pissed reading a lot of this stuff. Talking about scripts on TV, no face/heel dynamic, nothing ever making sense, endless swerves. I dare somebody to defend this shit. I can't believe TNA would want to have anything to do with this guy. I actually think Vince Russo may have done more long term damage to wrestling than anyone in history. I'm struggling to come up with anybody else who even comes close.

Yeah I'm curious to know more about exactly how and when he departed. I was just starting to go online at that time and I remember reading almost every other day that somebody left or was leaving WCW. I'm pretty sure that I read that about Russo alone about twenty times so when it actually did happen I just ignored it. That whole period of late 2000 to the end was so chaotic and depressing.

Oh geez, wait until you get to 1999 or so. The RVD TV title defenses against random dudes are long and unbearable. I really enjoyed the TV title defense RVD had against Mikey in early 2000, its on the ECW Unreleased Vol 2 set. Rob gave Mike quite a bit in that match, definitely followed a different formula than most RVD matches from that time.

Both guys are similar in that I really started to appreciate them in their later years. I had to go with Taker based on consistency alone. Early Taker I give a pass to because of the gimmick constrictions, although I don't think Mean Mark was very good. 99-01 Taker I do not enjoy watching at all. But post American Bad Ass Taker is at the least mediocre with some really great stuff in there. Dustin has tons of great WCW stuff in his first run. His second WCW run with the red leather pants was pretty putrid. TNA Dustin was unwatchable. 2006 WWE Goldust was quite bad. 2009 WWE Goldust was great. 1999 Goldust was not. I almost feel like you can flip a coin to determine if Dustin had a good year or not, its that random. Taker has far more good years than bad. Its close but I'll give it to Taker based on reliability.

I LOVED Sabu's WWE run for those reasons. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say his 2006 was friggin' awesome. And not in a "guilty pleasure" way (a term I hate). He had some legit good matches with Show, Cena, Rey, and some tags with RVD. He also had a bit of a career renaissance in TNA before the ECW revival. I'm fully aware I'm probably in the minority on that one.

Sabu for me. Both guys have their faults, but Sabu's tend to annoy me less. I like my wrestlers to have legit looking offense, and RVD's horrible punches and clotheslines almost always take me out of the match. Both guys have their annoying "grind the match to a halt" habits. RVD does it when he stops to gain approval from the crowd or do gymnastics, Sabu does it to set up contrived furniture spots. I think it works better for Sabu because the blown spots and awkward moments almost fit with his characters mentality. Sabu is willing to invent new ways to maim himself to kill his opponent. I do get the feeling that he's trying to win a match. With RVD, I don't feel like he's trying to win, I feel like he's trying to inflate his * ratings. Neither guy is a promo, but Sabu is silent so he doesn't have to be. I might take RVD's 2001 over any stretch in Sabu's career, but I would much rather watch a single Sabu match in isolation than an RVD match. Sabu for me.

Whenever I see a wrestling article from Bleecher, Grantland, etc. passed around social media circles I cringe.

I agree. I'm not gonna say those people weren't at WWE shows, but their production crew would stay away from them. WCW would find the most backwoods hillbillies and ZOOM IN for what seemed like an eternity. This happened every Nitro when they were hot.

And there's also "I knew Stone Cold was going to be a star before anyone else saw it"

That doesn't surprise me about DiBiase. I've heard from his dad in quite a few interviews that he doesn't want to be on the road now that he's a father. He never struck me as anything special, but he looked to be improving towards the end. He had a really nice series with Hunico of all people on Smackdown.