El-P

Pretty much. This was the first weekly WWE program I have followed since I stopped watching RAW in the summer of 1999.

Ah ah, they totally buried Luke just to fuck with him. That said, he has nothing to bring to the table. Looks like a miniature Randy Orton. Andy could be your second rate Test. The final moments was so all about nostalgia and so not about Tough Enough it's funny. This show as all bullshit from the get-go, and the final really proved that. Well, at least Austin was great. I would watch another season with more Austin.

No idea why I did this. Plus I felt something wasn't right when I typed it. Blame my melted brain.

Enjoying your posts so far. But really, if Choshu & Yatsu, Jumbo & Taue, Kawada & Taue or Misawa & Kobashi don't qualify as real team, then nothing does. Agreed on Doc & Gordy being overrated, especially their work in the States, which wasn't anything special. And in Japan it was really the great Gordy with the average (at this point) Doc. Agreed on the Bulldogs being overrated because of the impact they made back then which is remembered fondly. Then again, so is Bruiser Brody. I think the Freebird unit of Hayes and Garvin is pretty underrated. That said, I'm soon going to plunge into NWA/WCW Saturday Nights, so maybe I'll revise my judgement on them soon. How would you compare PJ13 to some old school Southern team like the Pretty Young Things or the Dirty White Boys ?

SMW and USWA are probably the last lost promotions of the 90's. Not watched, not discussed.

Of course it's not all ga-ga, both were really good mechanical workers, but when I watch a PJ13 match I don't ask for a spotfest or a workrate heavy match, I *want* my Memphis ga-ga. I know I'll get some cool spots thrown in, which is a plus, but really, PJ13 is the apex of Memphis tag westling, and that's a compliment to me. That spot just never gets old. I guess those people like the comedy spots because it's only a part of über workrate matches. In Memphis you don't get the action of the MPro tags, so I can see why they wouldn't dig it.

I don't intend to rehash arguments about a guy who I think mainly suck and was a chore to watch when I did my ECW thing. Certainly in my worst 10 ECW performer list with New Jack, 911, Harris Boys, D-Von Dudley, PE... Well, not as terrible as most of these guys, as he was half fun being thrown around by Bigelow and Awesome, but he was mostly unbearable to me on every level, and if not surrounded by people I cared about, he would have been FF material most of the time. But I like the idea of pimping PJ13, hyperbole or not.

Are they booking the entire company or just the juniors ?

The tricky part is to make an outrageous statement such as "There are barely 20 teams better than PJ13 in pro-wrestling history" instead of a reasonnable statement such as "PG13 was a damn excellent team and it should be time to revisit their body of work". The second statement I totally agree with, they are criminally underrated and were a great team if you like Memphis ga-ga (which I do).

I agree with these being clearly better. I agree those are clearly worse, with the 3 early 00's WWF team (Hardys, Dudleys, E&C) being the most overrated teams in wrestling history. Faces of Fear were a super fun Nitro era team whatever that means. Harlem Heat were just shitty and were happy to have a few good matches here and there. Benoit & Malenko weren't particulary good as a team. That's not even counting the joshi teams. I like PJ13 a lot, but top 20 of all time... It's kinda like Spike Dudley top 10 ECW worker (well, not really, since Spike kinda sucked actually).

Last time I checked (like two years ago), NJ was already really quite good and fun wrestling. I'm not watching now, but I don't doubt it is still good.

I think Luger's SummerSlam "win" hurt him a lot. Yes, he was still a top babyface, but his aura was hurt after he failed once yet celebrated like he had won the title. Made him look liek a goof. And the result is they lost confidence in him, booked the double finish at the Royal Rumble, where it was obvious Bret was more over than him, hence the WM booking. I remember he was supposed to feud with Perfect, which was setting him one year back, but Perfect departed, so he ended up in that terrible feud with teh Million Dollar Corporation, Luger was not a top dog after WM. It's amazing how showing up on Nitro just made him look like a big deal once again. I agree his win on Nitro in 97 was one of the big moments of the year. Luger's got an interesting career, in that he stayed over like hell in WCW despite mostly sucking as a worker in the late 90's and not being always fed with interesting stuff. The pop he gets when he joins the Wolfpack is amazing.

Wasn't he the one behind all the haircuts in 02/03 because he wanted to be the only guy on the roster with long blonde hair? Yep. Test, Christian, you name it.

Hogan comes from a different era, in which big stars didn't do jobs, and that's why they were perceived as such. Hogan didn't had to lose as long as he was super over. Hogan didn't lose. Sammartino didn't lose. Inoki didn't lose. Baba didn't lose. Then things changed. The Rock did more jobs than any big stars at his level, and it never hurt him. But Goldberg was all about him being invincible and unbeatable. The loss just killed the mystique. Was he still over after the loss ? Sure, but it was not the same thing, he was just another guy who had been screwed and beaten up by the nWo. People forget that after the Fingerpoke of Doom, Goldberg was beat down and screwed by Luger, got handcuffed to the ropes and spraypainted. Like just another guy during the past 2 years and a half. Goldberg mystique was gone. I remember Bobby Heenan saying he would have gone until 3000 - 0. Sure, why not, as long as people weren't tired of Goldy winning, there was zero reasons to beat him, zero. And the more he was invincible, the more people loved him. It killed the aura dead, right there. Another loss that killed any chance of someone being special, is Big Show jobbing clean to Austin on Raw a few weeks afetr he debuted. Stupidest decision ever. Big Show could have been special. After this, he was just another guy beig stunned by Austin. Just a big guy. Hell, I would say the Giant was a lot more special than Big Show at the beginning when he was in the Dungeon of Doom.

I thought The Narcissist was the perfect gimmick for Luger, because that's basically what he naturally projected. And really, Luger did do the Narcissist gimmick in WCW in late 99-2000 with Liz, and he was more fun than it had been since early 96 when he was heel Luger teaming with face Sting. Really worked well for him, and having a valet added to his act. The WrestleMania IX entrance was ridiculously great. (damn, I already said the same thing 3 months ago. senile me)

It doesn't make sense to want a skinny giant. But WWE harped on Big Show for years about his weight. Nothing new. "I'm a piece of shit. I'm just a fat piece of shit". 1998. Because you see, you can't have fat guys, it's not rassling anymore, we need guys who all look like Randy Orton.

Well, at least he didn't say "Let me tell you something brother" or "baby"... I guess that's a... positive ??

She's a black, fat, woman. I'm not saying anything, but still, I can't help of thinking about things, since her issues with TNA had to do with Bubba's racist remarks toward haitians. WWE have made fun of Molly Holly and Mickie James supposed "weight" and "shape". They've fired Dawn Marie while she was pregnant...

It's nothing new that Roos is obsessed by people being to fat. Even back in the days of his column in the WWF magazine, it was alla bout "X would be great if he would get in shape and loose some weight". That and "the cruiserweight division could be so good and deserves more", were the two regular bullshit lines of JR's columns. Now, that said, maybe it's just Vince fucking with him here.

Austin does it again. This show is full of bullshit but the final segment with Austin was gold. I guess they'll get Andy because he's big.

Yep. This could have been a great tag team. Since Russo booked it, it was all about Debra getting undressed.

Which really, doesn't mean much since he got in WCW two years after he debuted, and basically worked in WCW and WWE since. I think he did a tour or two with NJ before or just went he got to WCW.

I thought it was another twist in the Flair vs Highspots saga. Color me disappointed too.

When exactly did the Freebirds began to use intro music ? In his shoot interview, Buck Zumohfe pretends he was the first one, with the music directly coming off his boombox, as early as the late 70's. Didn't wrestlers in Japan used music before the Freebirds ? Inoki, Baba, Abby, the Funks ?

Of course I didn't mean that Vince *really wanted* to kill lucha, it was a figure of speach considering WWE already killed US wresting with its monopoly and vision of what wrestling should be. I guess him picking up stars from an already damaged market won't do any good. I have never seen Mistico, what is the consensus about him, what do lucha fans think about this guy ?