El-P

Exactly. Russo drove me out of WWF. Then he drove me out of WCW. Then ECW died. And WCW died. And although I watched a lot of big WWF matches from 00-04 for the GWE poll at SC, I never ever got back at watching US wrestling regularly. And I won't, I tried to watch Mania this year, and it was a chore. I tried to watch TNA PPV's over the last 3 or 4 years, but the promotion sucks too much. Bad wrestling just drove me away, and I'm not coming back.

Edge is 39. He debuted in WWF in the Summer of 1998. 13 years, and he's such a bad shape he has to retire. This is how quickly the bodies are used up now. I guess the dangerous bumping style he used to do during the attitude era, with countless ladder matches and such, contributed a lot to fuck up his neck. I don't care for the guy in the ring, but outside of hitting on his friend girl, Edge is a guy who always seemed like pretty down to earth and one who really loved wrestling. Good he's quitting before he gets really bad, although losing feeling sounds like already a bit too late. I remember he was groomed to be a big star as early as the Dory Funk camp, and he surely did great with himself for a guy who never did aything worthwhile before (he was squashed once on WCW saturday night I think).

Next year, don't miss The Rock and John Cena having a... confrontation... at the biggest.... entertainment extravaganza, EntertainmentMania 27... And don't miss the WWE Hal of Fame with old... entertainers... not athletes... nor wrestlers... just, old entertainers who... did some stuff in rings before...

Because Wrath, unlike Goldberg, actually had impressive moves to showcase, and he got over because of it. And really, these matches were not long at all, no way any of these got to seven minutes, these were still relatively short squashes. I would say 2 or 3 minutes at best. And after some point Wrath nearly only did the Meltdown. The following week, Wrath gets a super short squash, but he doesn't get the same reaction as before Nash beat him. Nice job. And surprisingly Konnan beats Jericho for the TV belt, despite the fact Jericho was in a feud with Bobby Duncum Jr. Oh, Nash, gotta love you booking for your friends.

Remember the push Wrath got from September ? He basically got the Goldberg treatment, beating guys every week, getting over quite nicely his finisher, being prepared for basically some big match down the stretch with Goldberg, I guess. So what does Kevin Nash do after winning WWIII ? He beats the guy, clean, on Nitro. End of streak. I feel this Kevin Nash booked WCW will be kinda fun for all the wrong reasons. When did Nash lost the booking power ? I think he lost it way before Russo came in, but I could be wrong.

They discussed it in the documentary. IIRC it was to make WM different in addition to being a better song. Didn't Reba McEntire sing Star Spangled Banner at WM 8 ?

What John said, why can't Jerry Lawler lay out his own match himself ? It's ridiculous. Yeah, the match went too long, but really, anyone with half a brain should have been able to get what people wanted to see : Jerry lawler kill Michael Cole, have the guy on the outside interfere so Austin could stun him, piledriver, or at least big punch from the second rope (and not a stupid ankle lock), end of the match, Jerry drinks beer with Austin, and have Austin stun Cole to boot. They just did a terrible job. Not a brain dead as with Bret vs Vince last year, but still pretty terrible.

So, Meltzer said that Dean Malenko got heat because he's the one laying down the Lawler vs Cole match. Two things : _the WWE is so micro-managed that at this point you actually have a guy to tell Jerry fucking Lawler how to work a match ? _Dean Malenko is laying down matches ? Really ? This is a guy who was never any good at laying down his own match, he was infamous for "working in a vacuum" syndrome. Dean Malenko, as much as he was a great technician, was never a particulary good worker from a how to build a match standpoint. I always thought Dean had no business being lumped into the Benoit/Guerrero category, really the only reason he was I think was because of the NJ connection. Dean was just not that great of a worker.

Superstar Graham always came off as a total dumbfuck to me. Yes, to this day he believes putting the belt on Backlund didn't draw shit and that the guy wasn't over. The numbers and the matches are out there for you to check out. Now this ? Man, what a carny old fool.

Retirement stip from WM 7 ? I don't think so. I think Savage wanted some time off with Liz as they were thinking of having a child. Then things degenerated between the two, I'm not sure when they divorced, but their relationship was probably not the best when they did the wedding angle. Savage really was phased out after Survivor Series 92, and when they began RAW. ANd it was all about Vince thinking Savage was too old, which was ridiculous, as he was a legit star at the time and could have helped a lot to build guys like Bret. His heat with Hogan culminated when Hogan came back in 93. It's amazing these two worked so much together in WCW, and that Savage ended up being Hogan's bitch again.

That's amazing. And retarded. And sad, really. Bryan wondered aloud if Lucha Libre was banned on Mexican TV too when that about Catch was mentioned. Kind of sad given Catch is/was a part of German culture. Catch is the term used in France also. Quite frankly, I do think it wasn't used as early as the mid 90's when Ray Rougeau was doing the announcing, he was only using the word "superstar". He would throw the word "lutteur", which in French means "wrestlers", but really is the french-canadian word for "pro-wrestler", as in France we say "catcheur". Anyway, WWE is simply trying to erase wrestling because Vince is in denial of what he does. It's just insane. Quite frankly, it's embarrassing because everyone else in the world refers as WWF as "pro-wrestling". They as dumb as fuck if they think one day they'll be seen as an "entertainment company".

That's amazing. And retarded. And sad, really.

I downloaded those two episodes as well. I'll listen to it while walking through the warm streets of Paris at night.

Not to derail this thread, but why is that? Just curious. It's been scandal after scandal for a little while now. Last year a bunch of guys got caught up in a gambling scandal including an Ozeki(2nd highest rank). The biggest scandal is match fixing via cellphones. Even though it's well known that people take pay offs to lose, the media really got a hold of it. Then because of it, the Spring tournament got cancelled and 22 guys retired. Also, within the last year, the yokozuna Asashoryu was forced to resign due to a drunken fight. The last few years had some other bad issues too with a guy in a sumo stable getting beaten to death and people getting caught with marijuana(Japan is serious about drugs). This. Since Asashoryu was forced into intai, it has been a downward spiral with new and worst scandals every months.

The guy who killed my interest in US pro-wrestling.

First time I listen to your podcast. Really fun stuff. Hero was hilarious.

In my case, blame unemployment. And torrent sites which make huge contents available for free. And of course an interest in revisiting, or in the case of ECW 1993-1995 and 99-00 visiting a product I wasn't familiar with in great details. But really, in the mid-00's, there was a point I wasn't watching wrestling at all. To the point of when I got to Japan in 2005, I didn't bother going to a wrestling show, and quite frankly I was totally disconnected from the scene even back then. I'm a much bigger sumo fan at this point, although it's probably the worst and most depressing time ever to be a sumo fan at this point, but that's another story.

No, I think either Samu or Fatu entered #2. Man, I remember way too much useless stuff. Kwang entered later and was eliminated by Diesel. Yeah, not a good gimmick at all for Savio.

Yep. Once the Diesel stuff is done, nothing happens until the end. The only cool thing was the little interaction Michaels and Jannetty had, which was neat since really Jannetty was nothing more than an afterthough JTTS at this point. I hate the overscripted version of the post 99 Rumbles, but this one takes the cake for being a huge nothing match. But hey, you got the debut of Kwang and Thurman Sparky Plugg. Ah, the 90's...

I have 500+ unwatched non-wrestling disks... and that's not an exageration. I just got the entire collection of Weeds, they're just sitting on the shelf still in the shrink wrap... and there's only a 50% change that I'll watch them before 2011 is up. The Cracker disks that I'm watching now are probably 3 years old, and I was susprised they were still in the shrink wrap when I pulled them off the shelf. I'm just now reading my birthday present from my girlfriend... from last year. My birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, the second book in the series has just been released, and she'll be getting it to me... lord knows when I'll get to it because there are another 30-50 new books on the shelf that I'm slowly working my way through. This post makes me feel good about my unwatched DVD from last Christmas, my few dozens of Go of unwatched wrestling on DVDs and hard drive, and the 60 or so unlistened CD's on my shelves. And between unwatched wrestling and Mary-Louise Parker, I choose the WeedMilf in a second.

He got a trampoline intro. A trampoline intro... Screams "high flyer" to me.

The Miz. Dear Lord...

Do you think Hogan was a hero, really ? Hogan acted like an egotistical dipshit, he was jealous of the succes of his "friends", he only cared about himself, he was acting like a heel in the ring. And from a foreigner point of view, the *uber* american patriot act mixed with bigotry looked like a perfect illustration of Reagan's america. In a way, really Hogan was everything bad about the USA's imperialistic policy. Yeah, I'm going a bit far, and I'm not saying 10 year old me hated Hogan for all these reasons, but looking back at it, it seems obvious Hogan in the 80's was the representation of something really horrible when you think of it. Luger doing the american gimmick was a lot more sympathetic actually, more blue collar in a way. Hogan's character was just unbearable to me, that's why his heel turn was so right on the money, and that's why Heenan saying Hogan has always been this way was perfect, because even in a kayfaybe way, that really was the case. Hogan was about steroid, money, manipulation, stealing his so-called best friend woman, and pretending friendship to get his belt back at any cost. Hogan a hero ? My ass.

Considering Jingus said they're down on most cruiserweight matches, no it's not. But your reply was.

Well, it's been oft-said that comedy is the most subjective thing in the world. The stuff Hirota does just looks funny to me, it's hard to explain. Yeah, Sakura was funnier (or less annoying) than most comedy workers in joshi, but that doesn't mean much to me. The fact that she is *loved* just baffles me. Then again, I always thought GAEA as a whole was the most overrated joshi promotion ever, despite being the most popular at one time. ARSION, Jd', JWP and AJW big matches smoked GAEA. That is very surprising.