C.S.

Is Big Johnny really to blame though, or was he just being a meek, mousy yes man giving the boss - Vince - what he wanted? Based on BJ's Japanese background, I find it hard to believe that he'd have a big man fetish. That's a Vince staple through and through. Yes, things are different now with H, but only because H is family and has more leeway to voice his opinions and chart his own direction.

That is a pretty sorry ass collection of trainers. Again, I realize being a top star doesn't necessarily make someone a good wrestler instructor, but Good God, could they have scraped the bottom of the barrel more with those choices?

I'm not sure, but both Goldberg (positively) and Batista (negatively) seemed to refer to Sarge as the main trainer at the Power Plant, so there's that...

With Batista being the most famous example probably. I won't sit here and claim Batista was the second coming of Lou Thesz, but that's a prime example of all the money WCW chased away - just one of the many reasons they're now out of business. Putting a total nobody like Sarge in that kind of position is another head-scratcher to me. Look, I know better than to think only headliners can be good wrestling instructors - I'm aware of many examples, such as Johnny Rodz, who were lower card wrestlers and great trainers - but I'm having a hard time figuring out anything Sarge brought to the table in the ring, as a personality, you name it. Yeah, Goldberg bends over backward to give Sarge credit, but Sarge didn't teach Goldberg's charisma and presence - and he sure as hell didn't teach Goldberg much wrestling either.

Not letting me to add to Watchlist. I hate how clunky and beta test the Network still feels after all this time.

Holy shit... What a shock.

What's wrong with the picture?

From J.R.'s latest blog post: He's not wrong.

I watched the Bloopers thing last night, based on Chief's recommendation. I had fun with it, but it would've been better if the entire show had been filled with bloopers. I don't consider stuff like GTV a blooper. Also, I find it in bad taste to make fun of Mike Adamle because the poor guy has epilepsy, which was the cause of most of his on-air slip-ups. Springer has the charisma of dry toast though, and seems overly rehearsed. Show some excitement, will you? I know he doesn't really care about wrestling, but he could at least fake it. Still, at only 29 minutes, I think it's worth watching because the Gene stuff was gold. I do agree with El-P that all of the censoring took away from the fun though. But that is what you have to expect in a PG environment. I also watched Ready to Rumble last night (not on the Network), but that's another story for another time...

Was Curtis Hughes in the Big Cat role back then or someone else?

Anyone else try watching Rey Mysterio: Life of a Masked Man? It's the newest "Beyond the Ring" on the Network - all of which come from from previous DVDs, of course. It's done in a sitdown interview style with Rey and Matt Striker. I got through about half of it before turning it off. Striker looks like he's in love with Rey for the whole thing (I'm not exaggerating), and he asks the most obvious questions (probably not his fault since this can't exactly be a "shoot interview," I guess), so we learn absolutely nothing new. With that said, I'm surprised Konnan and other people like that were spoken about so favorably on a WWE production. This is the kind of thing that demanded a documentary and footage of Rey going through Mexico and talking about all of the important landmarks in his career - childhood home, uncle's ring, arenas, etc. The sitdown interview format would be great for certain wrestlers, but it doesn't work for Rey at all. Probably doesn't help that Rey's voice is very throaty and scratchy, like a kid going through puberty. Striker is equally as annoying, going out of his way to roll his R's and pronounce the wrestlers' names the same way a native Mexican/Spanish speaker would. It's obnoxious!

I could be wrong, but I don't remember Rusev losing. I remember him squashing Breeze and someone else on the first NXT Takeover special, and then he was on the main roster. As for vacating the title and running a tournament, Vince doesn't like tournaments and WWE has never handled them well. Even the recent NXT tournament was nothing special. There's an easy way for Kevin Owens to lose the title without also losing his credibility. Cena makes a special appearance on NXT, costs Owens the belt, does the "you can't see me" hand motion, and gets booed out of the building. But even that isn't necessary. A straight-up loss to Samoa Joe wouldn't hurt him one bit. Truthfully though, I don't know if I want Joe (or Balor) to be the next champion. Zayn regaining the title would've been perfect, but I'm guessing he's too injured for that. There are no other major babyfaces I can think of, and perish the thought of a stiff like Baron Corbin getting it, but I could see that happening. :\ I'd love a Tyler Breeze reign, but not at the expense of Owens.

Surprised no one has mentioned Cena vs. Angle. Does Cena vs. Zayn count? Might be too soon to tell...

In case anyone wants to see that atrocious angle: BTW, TNA posted an update on the condition of Mickie James. Surprise Surprise, she's not dead. http://www.impactwrestling.com/news/item/6442-Update-on-the-Condition-of-Mickie-James What an embarrassment!

Yeah, that was my point... Unless Owens starts speaking French, he doesn't sound that much different from the average American vs. someone like Cocoa Beach's very own (lol) Rick "The Model" Martel, who has Quebecois stamped all over him.

I know it's a rhetorical question, but the answer is, of course, Vince Russo. :\ They've had years and plenty of opportunities to rebrand, but never did. The perfect chance fell in their laps when they made the switch to Impact Wrestling, but it was confusing and half-hearted at best. Sheer incompetence at its finest.

To the Canadian fans, yeah. But do most Americans really know the difference between, say, Toronto and Quebec? I'm not talking necessarily about the educated people on this forum, but rather the general masses who watch Raw.

Nah, and I certainly wasn't suggesting that. Ah, I understand now. Yeah, that makes sense. Didn't realize Pierre trained Owens. That's a pretty cool fact. I'm a big Pierre fan, BTW. My point was, midcard filler matches and all that entails vs. main event matches. I like what Cena is doing now with the U.S. Title against midcarders, but he still has a ways to go (IMO) before he can reach Bret, who had to drag passable matches out of Yankem, Virgil, Skinner, etc. I'd say they're both pretty close. We can probably both churn out irrelevant minutiae like Vince Russo does to make our case for one or the other. Someone could trot out, "Well, Cena has more merchandise available than Bret did, so he sells more," but Kevin Owens probably has more merch than Bret did too. We can get into anal comparisons that ignore how many things have changed between Bret's time and now, but when it comes down to it, I don't think there's any kind of wide disparity between Cena's drawing power and Bret's. Either way, even if it's proven that Cena is a much better draw (and it's one of the talking points I care least about because neither of them are/were awesome draws), I still think Bret smokes him in many other categories. Doesn't have to be a clean sweep or anything like that for me to justify my position. Edit: Removed a point about the OP after misreading it.

Austin easily. More versatile in the ring and as a character. Good technical wrestler when he was "Stunning," great brawler as "Stone Cold," and what an amazing transition from that blond-haired robed pretty boy to the bald black boots and trunks badass.

And that's fine. I tried to stick to the facts as much as possible, and I think I made a pretty good case for Bret, but everything I posted was ultimately my opinion. Pretty much this. I'm in complete agreement. I'd say that he's better than his mentor, but it's funny that you bring this up when we just saw Cena & Kevin Owens have an MOTYC (and it minimum, a significantly better match than Bret-JPL, a match that I like a great deal). I think that Cena-Oullet would absolutely be a better match than Bret-Owens. Are you really comparing a lower midcarder like Pierre to someone like Kevin Owens who has headlined every fed he's been in? Come on... Or I misunderstanding your point completely?

Wow, that sounds pretty awful... How is the Torch's audio compared to the Observer's? The Torch site is certainly much better, although the Observer site has improved slightly while the Torch site is a little too cluttered now.

Only on this board would Cena be winning a poll against Bret, LOL. I'm no Cena hater (I respect his hard work and long list of good matches), but Bret smokes him in almost every possible way. - Bret is more believable in the ring: Everything Bret did looked crisp and realistic. Compare that to Cena's STFU, which it seems like he's barely applying. The move looks looser than Missy Hyatt or Ric Flair after a few drinks. - Bret's feuds were more heated: Shawn Michaels, Jerry Lawler, etc. You felt Bret really hated them (and in Shawn's case, he did). Even the family feuds with Owen and Bulldog were intense. Cena has rarely (rarely, not never) come close to that level of fire, passion, and emotion in any of his feuds. - Mic skills: You could make the case for Cena, and when he cuts a serious promo, I'll concede that he's better than Bret. Unfortunately, he's rarely allowed to show that side of himself. So, even with Bret not being the strongest talker, I still think he edges out Cena most of the time. You can say things are different in today's PG environment, Bret never had to be the company ace and pander to kids like Cena does, etc. Fine. All true. Circumstances favor Bret. His "victory" in this category - if you can call it that - is admittedly hollow at best. - Lesser opponents: I'm open to being proven wrong on this one, but could Cena get the most out of, say, Jean Pierre LaFitte and Isaac Yankem the way Bret did? I'm not so sure. (And yes, I'm waiting for someone to post about Cena vs. Kane now, LOL.) Then again, until recently, Cena hasn't really had much of an opportunity to show this side of himself. No petty, spoiled, insecure, drug-sniffing Kliq to bury him behind the scenes. - Drawing Power: I'll call this one a tie. Both won their first World Titles after big boom periods had ended and things were more lukewarm or downright ice cold. I'm assuming Bret ended up drawing bigger numbers with Shawn in '97 (Attitude Era), and I'll assume the same for some of Cena's bigger matches (Rock). But in general, they were the captains during down periods for the company. How much worse would it have been without them though? Who knows... - Five Moves of Doom: I'm old enough to remember where this term really originated on the internet - and it was with Bret Hart back in the '90s. At that time, the Five Moves of Doom referred to Bret's seemingly unchanging final sequence of moves: inverted atomic drop, Russian legsweep, backbreaker, elbowdrop from the second rope, and the Sharpshooter. Since then, the phrase has been butchered to mean that Cena "only has five moves" (which is not actually the case, of course). This is not a point for or against Bret or Cena, just some fun "trivia" I decided to throw into my post.

Owens. Rusev's not 'Murican. I am obviously posting in jest, but you know that's the thinking... Edit: Okay, neither is Owens, LOL, but there's a big difference between Canada and Bulgaria/Russia.

If Austin isn't coming back, I'm betting the next WWE video game will have some sort of legends vs. current roster mode, with Austin and Brock on the cover. But, man, how good was Austin's promo? He really made you believe he could whip Brock's ass. Incredible!

By 2006, Cornette himself was the "Southern 1980s rasslin' cartoon" - looked totally out of place in a modern day environment. I love Corny, but that's the truth. Heck, even in 1995 WWF, he looked like a relic from another era - even though I loved having him there for the novelty of it.