El-P

Which is also why it was an awesome promo.

It seems like they don't want stars anymore, they believe the WWE brand is the star. Then Rock shows up on Raw, and you see the difference it makes.

The rush? The fans? The love of the business? You could make the same argument for making movies. The love of the business would require a whole lot of money from Vince to get The Rock back on the road and bumping again after years in Hollywood. Making movies and working WWE is not exactly the same thing. And like Loss said, really, the only new guy he could work with would be Cena. He would dwarf anyone else and make them look like a bunch of jobbers. The only other match I can think of is a Rock vs Taker, but really, who want to see that in 2011 ?

The Rock has zero reasons to work even one match with WWE. He doesn't need the money at all. Returning full-time is not happening.

Great angle and great promos all around. "Goodbye Flash."

Just watched it. Amazing promo, just amazing. He *killed* Cena and had me rolling with the U can't C me part. Always thought it was cheesy as hell. Gotta love how he talked about Austin and himself, but no mention of HHH as an iconic star... Well, I don't know where they will go, but it's obvious The Rock is a much bigger star than anyone on the roster, even Cena who's been head and shoulders abover the rest for years (as much as I know from watching WM only every year). That's kind of a big problem...

Tell me if I'm wrong, but thus far the two most important things at WM seems to be The Rock showing up and 61 year old Jerry lawler vs anouncer Michael Cole. Wow.

Well, that was deserved.

March 98 : _the build to Uncensored was pretty bad, with the focus on Hogan vs Savage and the World title clearly secondary business. Everything that touches the nWo is dull at this point, and it doesn't help that useless, heatless, talentless hacks like Brian Adams and Brutus Beefcake get some TV time. _the Scott Steiner heel turn was good. Too bad they did nothing of note with him. And I don't get why nobody told Steiner that if you can't make a hold look good, you shouldn't use it, as his Steiner Recliner looks like it couldn't hurt a kid. _Nash & Hall show up totally wasted on the Spring Break episode, and get thrown in a 4 feet deep pool by the Giant, resulting in them both hitting the bottom of the pool. _Ric Flair is nowhere to be seen. Hall quickly disappears too. As noted in a semi-shoot comment by Nash on Thunder, Syxx has been fired and Hall is "too dangerous" for TV. _The way they handled Bret is absolutely pathetic. They put him with Curt Hennig who is either the laziest wrestler on the roster at this point or is totally washed up, and they have a match that get showed up by Sting vs Hall on PPV. Bret gets less TV that the Bulldog and Neidhart and when he does, after 4 months in the company, he makes references to Montreal and how he won't let people get screwed like he has been. In the span of a few month, Bret turned from a legit star with ton of heat to a guy working mid-card every now and then with less direction than Chavo Guerrero Jr. Good job. _The Goldberg machine has launched, complete with a bogus number of victory and the infamous "who's next". By the end of the month he's beating guys like Ray Traylor now and he's clearly the most over guy in the company. They're gearing toward him vs Saturn, which was very smart as Saturn could seem like a legit threat and could work within his style. _They're doing a very good job with keeping the undercard fluid and interesting, not going into dull rematch with different stips at every PPV, but shuffling the opponents. Benoit goes from Raven and DDP to a feud with Booker T since he couldn't get the US, he's targetting the TV, and they're doing a good, no bullshit build of the feud with two "10 minutes" (more like 7-8 minutes) draw on Nitro. DDP vs Raven works really well too, and Raven is so hated that he turns Buff Bagwell into a face. In each promos they allude to the fact their mentor is Jake Roberts, without mentionning him by his whole name, I remember he was supposed to come at some point. Jericho "retires" Dean, with the infamous interview where Okerlund tells Malenko he's a loser, then moves toward Prince Iaukea for a transitionnal feud to build him even more. They do a good job giving Iaukea some wins before he even gets into an argument with Jericho. And the great Eddie mentors Chavo storyline begins, with the "Eddie Guerrero is my favourite wrestler / Cheat to won" T-shirt that Chavo is forced to wear. Add a nice push for Juvy in exchange for losing his mask, with a PPV victory over Konnan, and some good matches with Disco and Psychosis as usual. _Oh man, they brought Piper back. Well, he's over and it freshens things for a week or two. But as much as it was fun in 1996, Piper had already overstayed his welcome in 1997, and this reeks of desperation while WWF was getting hotter and hotter. _The tag-team title is dead by this point. _Brian Adams is the worthless addition to the WCW roster. Curt Hennig on my TV = bad heatless match. _The Flock was a good vehicule to establish Saturn and Kidman, who gets over despite never winning a match. _Kaz Hayashi is debuting, I liked how they would bring those random japanse guys. _Not much glamour anymore in WCW at this point, Liz is the only valet/manager left. Like tag-team wrestling, this is something lacking.

Yeah, at the same time WCW was running Hogan vs Warrior which may be the worst major program the promotion ever did until this point. So the fact that über hot Austin was still on TV went unnoticed as far as stupid angle went. More bizarre is the fact that the Vickie stuff is second in the poll.

Well, it was pretty stupid too though, and it was really from that point on that the booking fell apart and became unbearably Russoesque, with shitty card after shitty card.

Yes and a Tables, Ladders & Chairs Pay-Per-View. I'm not really sure what they were trying to accomplish. They got rid of King of the Ring, they got rid of Survivor Series (or wanted to) but they keep making gimmick shows, so I'm not sure what the point is. Way to make these gimmick matches not special at all.

They do a Money in the Bank PPV, a Hell in a Cell PPV and an Elimination Chamber PPV ? Is this TNA ? Anyway, I'll try not to think to hard about it, since I really want to watch the card with a fresh mind.

People have turned on MITB already? Seriously? It's usually one of the best matches on the card, the only downside has been how they've kind of booked themselves into a corner with the winner getting the title every time, so it's going to end up like the Rumble where only certain guys logically can win it. I remember watching a WM some years ago, maybe the the one Flair retired, and though this match was just a stunt show with guys thrown together for the sake of it. Really, this kind of stuff for fun in ECW in 96 when it was really chaotic and messy and dangerous, and not carefully preplanned and looking like it. As a yearly gimmick in a WM card, yeah, yawner from me. I had no idea they would still do this to this day.

They still do MITB ? Seriously ? *yawn already*

I would love to see HHH break the streak. Only for the reactions afterward.

I will probably watch WM this year in an effort to see what's the WWE product is like these days. HHH vs Taker streak vs career would have been a terrible match, as they already stunk up the joint in 2001 so it couldn't have been better 10 years later, but at least it would have been interesting to see the result.

Well, in that case, it failed.

Yeah, really good video. Funk is so lovable even as a crazy heel.

I recommended this match. Haven't seen it in years though. I do remember them packing up thos damn japanese chairs. It's much better than the Sasuke match it was building to. TAKA also had a nice match with WIN*G Kanemura at the same period.

I loved the Pulp Fiction videos, it was a great way to wrap all the angles and promos at the same time in a cool video package. Much better than the hideous invisible camera backstage skits. The Double Cross Ranch phone call was great.

So while WCW was soon getting into the hottest angle of the decade, WWF had *this* on RAW ? Fascinating.

WWF getting desperate, not understanding what WCW was doing at the time and why they were hot. Plus Pillman wasn't able to work yet, so it led absolutely nowhere. Did Russo write this ? Was he already in the "booking commity" at the time ?

They did a great job building DDP, and the guy got over like crazy. Now, are the rumours true about DDP and Bischoff and the reasons why DDP finally got his push, no ideas, but you can't deny how over DDP got. Since we're talking about HHH in the other thread, here's the difference, DDP just clicked with the crowd after years of being a lower mid-card heel. His finisher which looked great was a big part why it worked so great. Not since Jake's DDT had a finisher been so sudden. The stunner wasn't over yet at this point in the WWF I believe.

It is god awful.