IMPACT WRESTLING ON SPIKE TV MAY 31, 2012 THE IMPACT ZONE - ORLANDO, FLORIDA -  Your hosts are Mike Tenay and Taz.  Live in Orlando, Florida.

The SmarK Rant for TNA Impact – 05.31.12 LIVE from Orlando, FL. Your hosts are Mike Tenay & Taz

The rant is forthcoming, but for those who are interested to let things play out and see where they go, talk about IMPACT LIVE here!

http://www.humblebundle.com/ Humble Indie Bundle is back for a fifth time, featuring PSYCHONAUTS and LIMBO, plus three other games, which is worth whatever money you throw at it right there.  Plus if you play over the average price ($7 as of this writing) you get Bastion as well.  Basically it's a pay-what-you-want system, where you give whatever amount of money you feel is fair and you get awesome games in exchange.  No DRM, plus you get the soundtracks as well!  Best deal in gaming (I paid $10 in case anyone cares) and you're bypassing all the corporate bullshit and giving to charity.  

Someone sent me a question about Erik Watts this morning, which led me to check Wikipedia to see what he was up to now (answer:  nothing in particular), and I was reminded that in fact he won the PWI Rookie of the Year award in 1992.  Now, this was interesting to me, because PWI had a few solid choices, but there’s some far more interesting misses in the list. 

I posted some thoughts on my blog that I think would mirror a lot of the posters on your blog. Basically, the product is terrible and nothing is change, so as a wrestling fan, I've resigned myself to that. And boy is that depressing. http://stholeary.blogspot.com/2012/05/wwe-example-1a-why-monopoly-is-bad.html   Yeah, but now John Cena is gonna be on Smackdown every week, too.  If that doesn't make you rethink your whole stance, I don't know what will.  Plus if UFC has taught us anything, it's that too much of a good thing can never be bad, no matter how much you oversaturate the market with the same people, because everything is forever and nothing ever ends.  

http://traffic.libsyn.com/konnan/konnanshow5.mp3 An absolutely phenomenal show from Konnan, as he's only 5 shows into his podcasting career and he's totally got it down cold.  This particular episode is an hour-long interview with Dave Meltzer, and it's just so cool to hear Konnan completely shooting from the hip about whatever's on his mind because he doesn't give a shit about burning bridges at all.  I was legitimately LOLing while listening to it, like his spot-on analysis of why UFC on FOX 3 tanked so badly ("Who the fuck wants to see Jim Miller in the main event?") and his reminiscing about becoming a giant star in his early 20s ("Bitches were all over, throwing pussy at me everywhere I went.")  He just comes across as a genuinely fun guy who has an opinion on anything you throw at him.  Dave, meanwhile, is telling crazy stories about classic wrestling promotions and his early years writing the newsletter and his contacts and such.  It's...

Monday Nitro #69 Date: January 6, 1997 Location: Monroe Civic Center, Monroe, Louisiana Commentators: Larry Zbyzsko, Mike Tenay, Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan Reviewed by Tommy Hall So as I talked about, the Youtube channel I used got shut down and I don’t have any of those shows left. That being said, it means we’ll get to the PPVs and the Raws and Nitros a lot faster now. This is the beginning of a new year and we’re beginning to build towards Souled Out with the first man thrown out of the NWO, the Giant, challenging Hogan for the title. Let’s get to it.

NXT Date: May 30, 2012 Location: Riverside Centroplex, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Commentators: Josh Matthews, William Regal Reviewed by Tommy Hall Back to what has officially become the most boring show this side of Warriors of Wrestling. We’re hopefully wrapping this season up but getting there is really dragging, as there were zero stories last week as well as no promos at all. That’s a shame as the show was starting to get good up until that point. Let’s get to it.

http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/118-daily-updates/25866-raw-rating The perfect time to go to three hours.  Obviously it'll have to be John Cena in every segment, plus commercials for his movies, and video packages about him supporting the troops and healing sick children with his magic spinner belt.   Seriously though, it's getting scary how pushing only one person as meaning anything results in no one caring about the show when he's not on it.  I know the gut reaction from WWE is going to be to re-push all the big names harder than ever, but they really need to do like 97 and go the opposite by pushing the Zigglers and new FCW geeks to hopefully create new stars without baggage and multiple drug violations.  

Source This might be a good thing for him.  He needs to be freshened up badly. Thoughts on this?

The Netcop Rant for WWF Judgment Day 2000 - As a reminder, or cheap plug depending on your point of view, there is also an AUDIO version of this currently available, featuring yours truly doing the spoken word interpretation for you illiterates out there. As a warning, I’ve been told I sound like a “soft rock DJ” by more than one person, but it’s still all good.  (With the switch to Blogger I’ve pretty much given up on my podcasting dreams.)  - Live from Louisville, KY - Your hosts are Jim Ross & Jerry Lawler.

The Masked Reviewer has been busy recently with work. Check out this second part of his on going Let's Play where he audio blogs about his life, going to Raw, and upcoming show news. Also, you can continue to see how bad he is at video games!

http://gawker.com/5913536/britney-spears-x-factor-contract-says-she-only-has-to-judge-when-she-feels-like-it You could also go for the boob joke, I suppose, but yeah, much like Brock I'd put the over/under on Britney's judging debut at less than  the full season. 

Hi Scott, In the attitude era, why did the WWF decide that Chainsaw Charlie would be a good character for Terry Funk? Wouldn't Terry Funk (as Terry Funk) have given The New Age Outlaws even more of a rub? Thanks. I think that Foley talked about it in his book and said it was Funk's idea, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment otherwise.  Anyone else remember?  

The SmarK RAW Supershow Rant – 05.28.12 So 16 years ago today, Scott Hall debuted in WCW and kicked off the New World Order. Man, don’t we all feel old now. Live from New Orleans, LA Your hosts are Michael Cole & Jerry Lawler

WWF RAW IS OWEN By Rock Star Gary Live from St. Louis, MO Airdate: May 24, 1999 Hosted by Jim Ross (JR) and Jerry “the King” Lawler

It's Monday Night therefore RAW is on. I don't think I'll be watching but I welcome all of you to do it. Come out swinging but keep it clean.

Scott,   I finally got around to watching Impact today, and agreed that the reality-show type segment was a nice change of pace. And I got to thinking... what if they took it further, and turned Impact into a fake-reality show about producing Impact Wrestling?   "The show" would always be in kayfabe and never acknowledge the fake-reality stuff. And "backstage", friends are enemies and enemies are friends. The faces care about the wrestling and the company, the heels don't care if they legit hurt guys and are always checking their messages to see if "Hollywood" has called yet. We'll hear discussion about how the match we haven't we haven't seen yet is going to end.   The interesting thing of the experiment would be how the fans in the arena react... if, for example, they take the guy who's the biggest dick "backstage" and push him as the hero of The Show, would the fans boo him because they he's really a dick, or would ...

Memorial Day Memorial Day means something in our universe, but in the comic book one, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. As everyone knows, death in comics is temporary.  How many thought Batman was staying dead several years ago? How many thought Steve Rogers was gone for good? I can remember in the early 90’s when I didn’t even read DC comics that I felt something when Superman died.

by Logan Scisco - The announce crew discusses the results of last night’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view. - Vince McMahon, Jerry “the King” Lawler, and Jim Ross are in the booth and they are live from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas .

Not from me, thankfully. http://www.newsarama.com/film/avengers-xxx-porn-parody-review.html The link is totally G-rated, by the way, for those reading at work.  Chyna has just fallen so far, so fast.  It's really not even funny anymore.  

(As requested, a repost of the ECW DVD review I lost a while back.  This is originally from 2004, so for fun we’ll do some 2012 Scott sez stuff too, if warranted.)  The SmarK Rant for the Rise and Fall of ECW - And so here we are, years after the death of the little promotion that could, with the hardcore alternative ironically chronicled by the mainstream survivors of the wrestling wars. I was never a huge fan, to say the least, but they had their moments and you can't deny the impact.  (I believe this is one of the biggest-selling DVDs in WWE history, if not the biggest one outside of Wrestlemania.)  - We start with Paul Heyman coming into Eastern Championship Wrestling and helping out booker Eddie Gilbert with a show, because wrestling was becoming hair bands. So Paul invented The Public Enemy and Taz. We are also introduced to Sabu and get some comments from Heyman and Tommy Dreamer about him.

(Despite one frequent bloggie pondering whether I’d review this show for $100, it’s not actually available on video or DVD and it’s incomplete on YouTube anyway.  Morals are one thing, but I have a family to feed and it’s not a life-defining choice for me anyway. If you guys want to take up a collection for that and the Extreme Reunion show, I’m game as long as someone can find a complete copy. But here’s a compromise of sorts for the moment, as reader Rock Star Gary (of rockstargary.com according to the watermark on the Word file) offered up his review of the show and the next night’s RAW is Owen, which I will post tomorrow.) WWF Over the Edge 1999 By Rock Star Gary Live from Kansas City, MO (attendance: 18, 244) Airdate: May 23, 1999 Hosted by Jim Ross (JR) and Jerry “the King” Lawler We begin the show with a soliloquy from Undertaker professing his ministry of darkness and his mission to take Stone Cold Steve Austin’s most prized possession – the WWF title!

Hey Scott, Longtime reader, first time etc. With the aggressively absurd decision to push back GI Joe: Retaliation to March of 2013 (in order to convert it to 3D, which I can't imagine anyone anticipating the movie could possibly give a frozen shit about), what does this mean for Rock's Mania availability? He'll likely have to be making the media rounds to promote the film around that timeframe, and promoting the movie is clearly going to take precedent over promoting Mania, even if he's in a marquee match up. So is Rock off the table? Will he even be able to do Mania at all, with his schedule? I know Rock vowed to be back for Mania season in 2013, but that was obviously before this fitfully ridiculous corporate decision. So will Rock still do Mania? And if not, what could WWE start building right this moment to make up for it? I would imagine building up Brock as an animal for Cena to finally defeat for the title in the main event would be off the table, since Cena...

Waiting for the Trade By Bill Miller Avengers Assemble Vol. 1 by Kurt Busiek and George Perez collects 1-11 and Annual ’98 Why I Bought This – The Avengers is my favorite comic. When I first got into buying trades five years ago this was among the first I bought, as I’d heard very good things about this run. I loved it and immediately wanted to buy volume 2 but it was out of print and averaging about $140 at Amazon. Lo and Behold with the release of the movie volume 2 is back in print. I immediately picked it up, and I figured I’d refresh my memory with the first volume.

Hi, Scott DirtyEarsBill from the blog here. I was wondering if you might be nice enough to plug my ebay auctions that I just put up. My wife is going back to school in the fall and we're looking to raise money wherever we can, so I'm selling off my wrestling figure collection. Most of these auctions start at 5 dollars or under. Thanks, Scott! Also, congratulations on being the longest weekly, episodic smark blog in history. http://www.ebay.com/sch/martyjannetty/m.html?item=221036046194&viewitem=&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2562 RAW might have 1000 episodes, but I've got way more than 1000 posts.  So by WWE math, I win.

http://insidefights.com/2012/05/27/brock-lesnar-back-to-the-ufc-having-meeting-with-dana-white-after-ufc-146-was-in-crowd/ I think his appearance on the show last night was just a WWE publicity thing so that the next time they bring him out he can be all "Oh, I'm an OUTSIDER and I want to go back to UFC and not wrestle in your wrestling show" and HHH can be all "Grrrr, you signed this exclusive contract to wrestle in our wrestling show and I'm the COO and wrestled Undertaker two years in a row, and I'm very angry because now I'm corporate and can't wear a leather vest over a jean jacket in public anymore, grrrr."  And then they'll fight at Summerslam or something.  I will say that Brock would be, what's the word I'm looking for here, oh yeah, fucking retarded to even think of getting back into this heavyweight division, because Junior would knock him out even faster than Overeem did.  However, if they did Brock v. Fedor or some othe...

So you mentioned that Rock is more than likely coming back to take the belt at mania. That had occured to me. What hadnt until I read that was how he would lose it. Or to who. Am I the only one who sees Cena getting his win back after Mania against the Rock for the belt? Seems pretty obvious/boring. What say you? Also I can't figure out how to sign up to comment on the new blog. Any help? Given plans change daily I don't think anyone's even given to thought to what they would want to do with the belt if/when Rock wins it.  My vote would be a tournament, as noted, but then I'm a mark for tournaments in general and I don't particularly think the title has much value left to hurt anyway.  Cena-Rock II seems like too big of a match for Extreme Rematches, plus then you're changing the title not once, not twice, but THRICE in the first four months of the year and that's exactly the sort of thing people who value the title always bitch about anyway.   And sig...

(2012 Scott sez:  I’m starting to feel like I’m turning into a WWE DVD documentary, eternally doing retrospectives of my own previous work because there’s not much interesting to work with in the present.  Maybe I should turn one of these over to Steve Lombardi so he can have a talking head segment in them as well.  Nah, that joke would get old by the second 2012 Brooklyn Brawler sez comment.)  (2012 Scott also sez:  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA FUCK YOU NEW YORK RANGERS!  Not that I like the Devils or anything, in fact I’m hoping the Kings sweep them to win their inevitable first Cup, but my Facebook has been kind of swamped with insufferable Rangers fans acting like the Stanley Cup was somehow already gift-wrapped for them.)  The Netcop Rant for ECW Hardcore Heaven 1999

Holy cow, tonight's UFC was old school heavyweight beatdowns in the kind of way that people have seemingly been clamoring for in a while.  It was the all-heavyweight show, and 4 of the 5 main card fights ended in relatively quick knockouts, including Cain Velasquez beating the ever-loving FUCK out of Bigfoot Silva and splattering his blood all over the ring, and JDS kicking Frank Mir's ass and knocking him the fuck out.  Plus Roy Nelson's cartoonish knockout of Dave Herman will probably make best-of DVDs for a while.  Obviously not a great technical show, but for a "Get wasted with friends and watch guys kick the shit out of each other" show, this one was hard to beat.  Thumbs up!

We all know that Vince's ultimate goal is go put WWE over Brock Lesnar/UFC.  I think it can be done while still being captivating and elevate the WWE title.  To start, Brock has to lose to HHH in similar fashion to the Cena loss.  Have Brock dominate, lock in the kamora, and then replicate HHH v Undertaker 2, only with the sledgehammer connecting.  Then have Brock disappear. Meanwhile, come the end of December somehow vacate the WWE title and put it up for grabs via the Royal Rumble.  Have Brock show up as a surprise entrant and win the match, but with a twist: he is now wrestling a "WWE style". On Raw have Brock, still heel, explain that he toyed with Cena and HHH but lost.  So, to win in the WWE he had to embrace professional wrestling (putting WWE over UFC).  He then spends the time until Wrestlemania dominating everyone, defending the title at PPV and occasionally on Raw (using up the appearances).  He proclaims his dominance over WWE a...

Picked this one up in the bargain bin and if you can find it for $5, I will say that Disc 2 is arguably the greatest thing the guys that select the matches for these things has EVER done. Seriously you think it can't get better than the previous match...and it does. Of course Disc 3 isn't as good but there are some serious cruiserweight gems in there. So if you're home alone this weekend while Mr. Princess and the kid are on their annual fishing excursion, find this for $5 and watch it while you catch up on work. But naturally I have a question about this from the "program" portion of the set and it concerns Dusty Rhodes. Generally I'm a fan of Big Dust but I am curious of how others think of him. Is Dusty's reputation of being a visionary with occasional flaws one of fact or fiction? I know he had a role in a LOT of shit but has his role in that past success become greater through these various DVDs and WWE productions?

--Since, for whatever reason, ROH TV is running really slow and laggy on my end, I'm going to bow out for this past week's show (featuring Eddie Edwards vs. Mike Bennett and All Night Express vs. The Young Bucks) and focus on some news & views in the world of independent wrestling and WWE developmental. How about some discussion on the new ROH champion, Kevin Steen, and his possible injury, who the bookers are hot for in EVOLVE as well as FCW, plus comparing the two biggest iPPV disasters in recent history: ROH's Border Wars and Extreme Reunion. Plus the end of FCW, and an update on a possible Dean Ambrose injury....  

Smackdown Date: May 25, 2012 Location: Mohegan Sun Arena, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Commentators: Michael Cole, Booker T, Josh Matthews Reviewed by Tommy Hall It’s after Over the Limit and Sheamus is still champion after a pretty fun fatal fourway. Other than that there isn’t much to talk about other than a new Intercontinental Champion in the form of Christian. We begin the build to No Way Out tonight but since Raw was mostly a throwaway show, I’d expect about the same thing here. Hopefully it’s better than last week’s. Let’s get to it.

Jericho posted a link to the classic Raw tag match with him/Benoit vs. HHH/Austin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-SomfgOE0E&feature=youtube_gdata_player .  As I was watching, I just couldn't believe how fast paced it was compared to any style match these days.  Then I realized that because Vince hates tag teams, they haven't really put on a proper tag match in so long that they forgot why the formula has worked (and always will).  That the matches can be worked at a much higher pace where you can either hide the shortcomings of out of shape guys and still have fun matches that plays to each wrestler's strengths, or stick 4 talented guys in there and just light the building on fire like these guys did back in the day. Evidence item # 4,278,321 as to how clueless Vince is in regards to product quality these days.   Well, there was the period a few years ago with Jericho/Show v. Batista/Rey that was really great precisely because they worked the formula like you...

http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/24/chris-jericho-wwe-suspended-desecrating-brazilian-flag/ Sounds like a temporary thing to keep him out of legal trouble for the rest of the tour. However this would be the more appropriate ending to a fairly disastrous run.

The SmarK Rant for TNA Impact Wrestling – 05.24.12 This trainwreck at least HAS to be more interesting than Smackdown these days. Taped from Orlando, FL Your hosts are Mike Tenay & Taz

Hello again, Scott Since the first entry went so well, I figured I'd peddle along the rest of the information that the writing assistant on GameFAQs.com spilled in the rest of his topic. My bank account thanks you. --

(No mean-spirited trick post this time around, fear not.  I only like to screw with my audience’s heads once or twice a year at most.)  What if they gave a PPV and nobody cared? The Netcop Rant for WCW Slamboree 1999 - Live from St. Louis, Missouri. - Your hosts are Tony, Bobby and Mike.

IMPACT WRESTLING ON SPIKE TV OPEN FIGHT NIGHT #2 MAY 24, 2012 THE IMPACT ZONE - ORLANDO, FLORIDA -  Your hosts are Mike Tenay and Taz.

http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/118-daily-updates/25776-tna-files-lawsuit-against-wwe-and-former-employee Not sure why WWE would be so hot to get Flair back that they'd risk contract tampering charges.  Obviously the writing was on the wall as far as Flair's TNA involvement when he appeared at the Hall of Fame and Wrestlemania, and boy does TNA have some damning evidence in their favor from all that silliness, too.  I kind of hope that TNA takes them to the cleaners just to finally teach Vince a lesson, but I feel like he'd just raid the shit out of TNA in retaliation.   I know that there's no way he'd want to, but I think that Flair going down to Florida to train their FCW geeks would be 100 times more valuable than putting him on RAW to pop a rating and hit on Vickie or whatever stupid thing they'd have for him after going to all this trouble.  Or even managing the Rex/Hawkins Dynamic Dorks team or something along those lines to find SOMEONE...

The SmarK Retro Rant for WWF Over The Edge 99 Live from Kansas City, MO Your hosts are Jim Ross & Jerry Lawler

This week with Caliber, now presented to you in left-alignment! Last week, I talked about my favorite memories as a kid, and this week I thought I'd go with live events. In some cases, the holy grail of being a wrestling fan.

Now HERE’S an interesting discussion-starter for people.  Glad it’s from someone who was already fired because whenever I’m contacted by WWE people it’s always “Don’t print this and don’t mention my name or even read it really or I’ll get fired.”  Hey Scott, So on the WWE board at GameFaqs.com, there’s a poster who worked as an assistant for the writing team from September to December last year and is giving away some neat insights about the day-to-day workings of the writing process and some tidbits on some of the stars and personalities. It seems legit; the detail of his work was pretty, uh, detailed, and he posted a pic of the office he worked out of and a couple of the one-sheets from the shows. Some of the information is obvious (Cena and Orton have backstage pull on their angles, etc.) but there have some some interesting things he’s revealed (Sheamus was the planned Rumble winner since the previous summer and not a last-second swerve as a result of Chris Jericho, D-...

The Netcop Rant for WCW/nWo Slamboree 98 Live from Worcester, Massachusetts (Oh man, just reading this one over makes me think it’s LONG overdue for a re-rant, given all the historic stuff and interesting tidbits that I wish I would have known about 14 years ago.)  Your hosts are Veni, Viti and Vici.

have you seen the new masked man article on grantland? wanted to get your take on his opinion: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7964226/indie-wrestling-coming-age-cm-punk-daniel-bryan-wwe-new-bipolar-universe I mainly want to address his last point, which is about Hulk Hogan dominating everything in the 80s while the IC champion had the leftover scraps.  Hulk Hogan was WWF champion for that entire period, because he was the focus of the promotion and thus the CHAMPION.  If they're gonna have Cena be the new Hulk Hogan, then they should put the title on him and let Punk and Bryan fight for the worthless Smackdown title instead because no one gives a shit about it anyway.  Having the #1 belt on a guy who is clearly the #2 guy does no favors for the guy or the belt.  Either they need to get Punk away from Cena and have him be the undisputed TIPPY TOP GUY on Smackdown, or they need to stop pretending that the WWE title is the most important thing when clearly the John Cena Champ...

http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/118-daily-updates/25765-lesnar-vs-cena-buys 147K domestic, 109K international, for a total of 257K.  Last year's show did 210K total, so Brock = 50,000 buys or about 2 million dollars in added revenue give or take.  Everyone involved should be VERY happy with that result. On the flipside, the Wrestlemania buys continue to trickle in, and WWE very quietly revised their initial count of 1.3 million nearly 100,000 buys downwards, to 1.2 million instead.  So they don't break the record, and in this case 100,000 buys is basically an entire B-show's worth of revenue, so that's a pretty major adjustment down. Could go lower when the official numbers come out next month, too.  

The last issue of Irredeemable was of course the one I was most excited to get this week, and I can't help but feel a tad disappointed in the wrap-up, even if the ending itself was pretty well done and moving.  I think Waid was actually referencing an issue of Action Comics from the early 80s (I'll avoid spoilers for those who haven't read it yet), and it was a nice finish, but there was so much stuff left unresolved and unanswered that I don't know if it justified the whole serial format.  Especially when so much of the middle of the run was a such a slog with Tony stuck on the prison planet and basically doing nothing to advance the story.  It was still an awesome series, but I can't help but feel a little bit of Lost syndrome from the finale, with expectations that were probably ridiculously high and a story that was just really good to wrap it all up.   I'll definitely miss it and I might go back and start again from the beginning now that we've got th...

Monday Nitro #68 Date: December 30, 1996 Location: Knoxville Civic Auditorium, Knoxville, Tennessee Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay, Bobby Heenan, Larry Zbyszko Reviewed by Tommy Hall We close out the 1996 series with this. It’s the night after Starrcade and the NWO is about the same. Piper beat Hogan via sleeper but the title wasn’t on the line after Piper GOT TO WRITE THE CONTRACT HIMSELF. Eddie won the US Title and that’s about it. The idea here is to set up the main event of Souled Out. Now the logical idea would be to have Hogan vs. Piper II but that would be insane in WCW. Let’s get to it.

NXT Date: May 23, 2012 Location: Mohegan Sun Arena, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Commentators: Josh Matthews, William Regal Reviewed by Tommy Hall OH COME ON! Apparently they’re going to wrap up this season instead of going straight to the new stuff. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think I’d prefer it that way. I’ve spent over a year on this awful show and I need to get to the end of it for my own sanity’s sake. Hopefully they wrap it up soon though. Let’s get to it.

Scott, So after a month or so, I'm still scratching my head over the Brock Lesnar thing.  Cena beats him in his return match, shrugs off the beating in an inexplicable post-match promo, Lesnar breaks HHH's arm, and there is hardly any mention of any of it as we slog forward thru Cena vs. Ace/Big Show stuff?  Was the Brock thing just a one-off match and we were making too much of a long-term contract?  We have "waited to see" and I'm still not getting it. Just wait until HHH goes over at Summerslam, and then you'll finally see the big picture and understand their brilliant plan.  

Call this one a win for the WWE since now they can just hop onboard Paramount's advertising bandwagon to further push the Rock's WM appearance. Just over a month before its original premiere date of June 29, Paramount Pictures has pushed G.I. Joe: Retaliation to March 29, 2013, in order to convert the film into 3-D. http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/05/23/g-i-joe-retaliation-pushed-2013/ Yeah, although generally when a movie has trailers all over for a summer release and then suddenly gets pushed back to the next year, there's more than a 3D conversion going on.  It's not like it would be difficult to top the quality of the first one, so this doesn't bode well for the film.  That being said, definitely great timing to have Rock in the main event of Wrestlemania again.  Maybe John Cena can play The Marine and they can have a HOLLYWOOD SHOWDOWN where they do battle in character.  They'll make MILLIONS!

goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2012/05/22/comic-book-easter-eggs-marvels-subliminal-advertising/ Sure, Kurt Busiek might be posting here, but check out my contribution to Brian Cronin's Easter egg column.   Advantage:  ME. Although I loved Untold Tales of Spiderman, so I guess it's still advantage to Kurt.  FOR NOW!

"It's a bad, bad time to be a fan in a lot of ways." That was your quote from the blog today and it ties into something I've been kicking around in my head for awhile now  - it's not going to change. I feel like we (and by "we" I mean the "in our late 20's or early to mid 30's; formerly hardcore, lapsed to semi-lapsed, got smart to the business in the late 80's or early 90's" fans) are waiting around for something that's just never going to happen again. Allow me to elaborate.     It seems that every boom period in wrestling is triggered by the emergence of a break-out main eventer or angle. I grew up a WWF guy, so my example from the 80's is obviously Hogan, but I guess Flair would be his counterpart on the other side of the fence. In the 90's it was Stone Cold for the WWF (followed very quickly by Rocky); and the nWo and Goldberg for WCW. I think this ebb and flow leads to the myth (or self-fulfilling prophecy ...

The SmarK Retro Rant for ECW Wrestlepalooza 98 (I almost forgot that ECW had a few entries in the May PPV archives, so given that I’ve resigned myself to not finishing this project by May 31 anyway, we might as well stretch things out a bit more) - Back in the day, ECW's PPVs didn't air in Canada, so we had to depend on tape dealers to get copies of them, sometimes weeks later. In the case of this show, it took a long time for me to finally see the show, and by then my comments wouldn't have been timely or original anyway. But four years later, I think I'm finally ready to sit down and rant on it.  (And 10 years after that I’m ready to rant on my rant, although 2002 is pretty much my cut-off point for when my style becomes the modern one, so there’s probably not much to bitch about.)  - Live from (If You Ever Take Take a Trip Down To) Cobb Country, GA. - Your host is Jo-Jo.

Waiting for the Trade By Bill Miller Aquaman Sword of Atlantis: Once and Future by Kurt Busiek and Butch Guice Collects Aquaman Sword of Atlantis 40-45. Why I bought this: I don’t recall whether I was looking up Aquaman or Kurt Busiek when I came across this—either is equally probable as Aquaman is my favorite of DC’s top tier heroes but I own little of his stuff as I own little DC relatively speaking; while Busiek is in my view the finest Avengers writer ever and thus I’d like to read more of his stuff. Regardless when I discovered there was an Aquaman series written by Busiek my interest was piqued. That it has a name straight out pulp serials like “Sword of Atlantis” attached to it only intrigued me more. And once I saw the name of the first volume was an Arthurian reference I knew had to own it as there a few things in the world that fascinate me more than Arthurian literature. A quick trip to Amazon later and it was mine.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Samuel Hough" Scott,          How much of the WWE's problems stem from being a publicly traded company? I know that there are some posters (flair4dagold jumps to mind) with more knowledge of business than I but it seems like some of the stagnation stems from that. The WWE is still turning a profit (?) and in a distressed economy I assume that's enough to keep them from taking chances. My thinking is that before it was only the McMahon family that the WWE had to answer to, now there are shareholders. Any truth to this? --------------------------- I never thought anyone thought otherwise, in fact.  Obviously it's 100% the reason for the state of affairs today. 

by Logan Scisco - Vince McMahon, Jerry “the King” Lawler, and Jim Ross are in the booth and Ross is sporting the black cowboy hat that will become his trademark for the first time.  Lawler tells McMahon that he’s in the Royal Rumble, but McMahon doesn’t believe him.

Scott, JR recently told a bunch of disillusioned fans that the titles don't mean anything. This was nothing people who regularly pay attention to WWE did not know already, but it had me wondering just what, exactly, is supposed to be the thing (or things) we root for? I know the company has tried to distance itself from the rassling reputation and they want it to be seen as a loose collection of soap opera, comedy and competition elements, but wouldn't you agree that this kind of format lends itself to horrible, disjointed television? None of the regulars outside of John Cena ever have a distinct purpose. They just randomly float in and out of segments, have unmemorable feuds then move on to the next random guy. Nothing of consequence ever happens so it's no different than "Saved by the Bell" without the campy and unintentional humor. Maybe I'm over thinking it and maybe I'm wrong, too, but since I started watching regularly again last summer, it just fe...

How is it that ESPN Classic can show reruns of AWA without having to pay WWE any money?  I understand that it aired on their network, but if you use that theory the TNT and TBS can show reruns of Nitro and Thunder without Vince's permission? Why hasn't ESPN Classic shown WCCW? Because it's not a "theory"; ESPN signed a very specific deal with the AWA when they aired that show, basically giving them rights to show it in perpetuity because they were taking such a big risk by buying into the company and wanted some way to recoup their money.  I don't know of any other deal structured like that, actually, and TNT definitely can't show reruns of Nitro.  

The SmarK RAW Supershow Rant – 05.21.12 Live from Richmond, VA Your hosts are Michael Cole & Jerry Lawler

Well I will have to adjust my open threads from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m. soon. In general I'm with the majority in thinking a three-hour permanent RAW is a bad idea. Three hours over the summer to counter TNA going live? Not as bad of an idea. But otherwise it's a lot of wrestling. There could be some positives like if they make the first hour a pre-show or if it means letting the glob of mid-carders do more tag team stuff like it was mentioned in a previous thread as any mixture of those 8-10 guys for a 15-minute match should be fun enough. Otherwise I miss the days of my Saturday morning hour-long show. It left me wanting more. After watching Challenge at 10 a.m., I had to be home to catch Superstars at 5 p.m. and NWA/WCW Saturday Night from 6-8 (or 7...fucking Atlanta Braves). Now I feel like they are giving away too much. Bitching aside, come out swinging and keep it clean! :)

Seems like a pretty fair list if we're going by WCW era rather than NWA.  ---------- Forwarded message --------- Stumbled upon this list on WWE.com - thoughts on it?  I think given reputation of the WWE revisionist history they did a pretty good job for guys based only on their WCW time... Sid and Malenko higher than Eddie... that's a bit odd... and obviously you know who isn't on this list - i would probably put him around 13-15ish... Top 50 WCW Superstars as told by WWE: 50. Jeff Jarrett 49. Juventud Guerrera 48. Dennis Rodman 47. Meng 46. Larry Zbyszko 45. Kanyon 44. Bobby Eaton 43. Saturn 42. Dustin Rhodes 41. Bret Hart 40. Kevin Sullivan 39. Curt Hennig 38. Michael Hayes 37. Cactus Jack 36. Ultimo Dragon 35. Lord Steven Regal 34. Konnan 33. Terry Funk 32. Lance Storm 31. Great Muta 30. Raven 29. Kidman 28. Buff Bagwell 27. Chris Jericho 26. Rick Rude 25. Eric Bischoff 24. Ricky Steamboat 23. Barry Wi...

Michael realized that it made little sense for me to review most of the WWE TV shows and do TNA PPVs and vice versa, so we've swapped PPVs.  I'll be doing WWE PPVs from now on and he'll be doing TNA's. Over The Limit 2012 Date: May 20, 2012 Location: PNC Arena, Raleigh, North Carolina Commentators: Michael Cole, Booker T, Jerry Lawler Reviewed by Tommy Hall Well we have to get this one over with I guess. This is the least interesting and probably least built up show I can remember in years. As of 5:05 PM on the day of the show, we have five matches scheduled for the show, not counting the pre-show match. There are bound to be some matches added, which have to help this show. This is one of the PPVs I’m going into with zero expectations which usually helps a show a lot. That being said, I’m not sure if it works if you plan that way in advance. Let’s get to it.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Joe Gagne" At last!  Hopefully Youtube doesn't randomly wipe out my video footage... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETGebCC9nSs —--------------- Best day ever!

If they gave a PPV and no one watched, would that make it a TNA show by default?  Well, if you're watching tonight, feel free to discuss it here. My picks:  Big Johnny over John Cena thanks to the expected Big Show interference, D-Bry wins the WWE title from Punk to set up some rematches on the next few PPVs, and Trofi retains the tag titles because there's no babyfaces for Zig-Swag to face if they win.

http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/118-daily-updates/25714-chyna-passes-out-a-third-time Amazingly, two pieces of stupidity this morning, as Chyna is found passed out the SAME PORN CONVENTION…AGAIN.  To paraphrase Boogie Nights, you think this might mean she should get some better shit?  But really, when you pass out at a porn convention twice, there’s obviously a more innocent and career-friendly explanation that we just haven’t heard yet, so we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.  And then… http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/118-daily-updates/25710-jones-arrested-on-dwi-charge-earlier-today Turns out that Rashad was right and Jon Jones and his Bible thumping might have just been a put-on after all.  Rough week for Dana White, although this picture kind of sums it up: I’m pretty sure Jones wasn’t doing Bud Lights at 4:00 AM when he wrapped his $250,000 Bentley around a pole, though. 

Hey Scott Noticed you re-posted Slam 97 recently. I actually did a review of this back in Feb 2007. If you want, you could post this on the blog. It goes into a bit more detail and has match ratings. All the best Mikey From the UK: WCW Slamborree 97 There’s actually a back story to this review. Basically, I’m waiting for some Wrestlemania videos to come through the post and was looking for something to review. I was shuffling through my DVD collection to find something and I saw this show. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been pestering Scott Keith to do this one for years, seeing as it’s the only old WCW rant he’s not redone since his format change, and I felt I might as well bite the bullet and do this one myself. Scott absolutely tore it apart back in 97 but let’s see if it’s aged well.

The SmarK Retro Rant for WWF Over the Edge 98 - This is another one of my patented do-overs, as the original was of course done in 1998 and doesn't hold up well as a review. Plus I always felt that I overrated a lot of the matches at the time. So let's see what 4 years of perspective accomplishes, shall we?  (And then let’s see what another 10 years of perspective accomplishes.)  - Live from Milwaukee, WI - Your hosts are JR & King.

Well we're going to have to fill up three hours somehow. Who from the current roster, would you like to see built into a Tag Team. Dolph and Swagger already are primed for it, though I think it'd be more fun to put Zack Ryder into Swagger's role, as Dolph and Zack seem to get along fairly well. Cody could desperately use some time off the singles roster. Perhaps he and the Miz? I'd be interested to hear everyone else's thoughts. OK, that's a fun game. Cody Rhodes & Drew McIntyre was actually a perfectly good team, as was Cody & Dibiase, and I don't really know why they broke either one up so abruptly.  I think Miz & Zack Ryder would be a perfect odd couple team.  Zack would also work well as the Ricky Morton portion of a David & Goliath team, like if you had him get beat up for 10 minutes and make the hot tag to Mason Ryan, that might work.  Really, you can mix and match almost anyone in that Miz/Ryder/Swagger/Ziggler/McIntyre/Cody/Kofi midc...

Coming off the heels of the controversial and problematic Border Wars iPPV, ROH is at yet another turning point. Kevin Steen is the new heavyweight champion, so now the question of whether he delivers on his threats to hold ROH hostage like a French Canadian version of Ben Chang or whether he embraces the fact that he's become the biggest anti-hero in Ring of Honor remains to be seen. How ROH handles the fallout of the transmission problems with Border Wars, and their possible lawsuit against their former booker Gabe Sapolsky, also remains to be seen. With so many feuds having been blown off going into the summer, and Best In The World still a ways away, the next TV tapings (which took place this weekend in Baltimore) should lay some new cards on the table. Until then, we have last weekend's show, which aired the same night as Border Wars but is still reflective of the last taping schedule, as Davey Richards is still the champion and Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team are not y...

(I could have sworn I did a redo of this show that wasn’t terrible, but I can’t find anything, so we’re stuck with the 1997 original rant.  Prepare yourself.)  William Shakespeare once wrote of sound and fury signifying nothing. Those were eloquent words. Slamboree was a three hour waste of time that didn't even have sound and fury to keep the viewer's interest. I'm not one to toss around phrases like "boring pile of shit" and "total waste of airtime" and "worst PPV of the year" but I think, realistically speaking, that all three apply quite nicely to this insult to the intelligence that was masquerading as a PPV. (Yeah, but Starrcade 97 was still to come.)  Even discounting for the moment the fact that I'm a WWF fan more than anything, I can still watch a show objectively, and this was a really, really, bad show. (My vitriol has died off a lot in the years since, given that I don’t remember a single thing about this show.)  How bad? W...

Hey Scott, I know you were a big poster on RSPW back in the day, if you're interested in getting back in the posting game, I'd like to suggest 420Chan's /wooo/ board. I've seen enough posts from RSPW that I think this is pretty similar in general atmosphere, don't let the "chan" or "420" part of the name scare you away, /wooo/ is by far the most active board on the site and the vast majority of the population cares little about stoner activities and the like. Stop on by and have a look, we'd love to have you as a regular!! The mods are pretty fantastic at cleaning up the crap and the userbase isn't awful stereotypical Youtube smarks, we also have streams almost every day for general old wrassling (I watched a stream of Wrestle War 89 with about 20 others just the other day, shit was awesome) and an IRC to have live chats during PPVs and shows. http://boards.420chan.org/wooo/index.php Not to cast aspersions on the quality of the forums...

The SmarKdown Rant – 05.18.12 Taped from Hershey, PA Your hosts are Michael Cole, Booker T & Josh Matthews

http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/118-daily-updates/25697-former-wwf-star-rushed-to-hospital-after-passing-out-at-porn-convention Yeah, that career seems to be working out real well for her.  Kind of sad when it was easy to guess which former WWF star would possibly be at a porn convention in the first place.  

Smackdown Date: May 18, 2012 Location: Giant Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania Commentators: Michael Cole, Josh Matthews, Booker T Reviewed by Tommy Hall Time for another edition of that show on Fridays that doesn’t mean a thing because everything happens on Raw now. The main event tonight is Orton vs. Sheamus which is the big PPV match they’re waiting for the right time to have. This is the go home show for Over the Limit which is the least interesting PPV I can think of in years. Maybe we’ll actually have Punk and Bryan talk. Let’s get to it.

(Spoilers for final season, not including the series finale episode) Scott, I know you (at least used to) watch House, and if you still do I was wondering what you thought of the show the last few years as well as the upcoming series finale next week. Personally, I stopped watching the show about a year or two back and came back this season once I found out they were finally calling it quits. I don't think the show got "bad" in the traditional sense, but damned if it didn't get formulaic and tedious after so many seasons. I really believe it was one of those examples of a show outstaying its welcome due to still-solid-but-nowhere-near-peak level ratings for the network. I do, however, have a bit of a problem with this final plotline they are going out with, Wilson having cancer. I don't know if they were trying to mimic real life (typically when someone gets cancer, it just sort of happens, right?), but to me it reeked of desperate/burned out writers grasping ...

http://bluebarcage.blogspot.com/2012/05/remembering-davey-boy-smith.html Hard to believe it's been ten years. I don't think he ever truly got the appreciation he deserves.  I think he got a lot of appreciation, actually, given how terrible he became after the drugs and injuries took their toll on him.  He was a great worker for a while, but I wouldn't call him underrated or anything.  

The Netcop Retro Rant for IYH: A Cold Day In Hell. With Summerslam 98 a mere two days hence, I thought it apropos to go back to the last time Steve Austin fought the Undertaker for the WWF title. (So that nails down the exact date this was written, at least.)  Live from Richmond, Virginia. Your hosts are Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler.

Scott! Not sure if you're an Apple guy, but I discovered tonight that UFC and WWE sell individual PPV matches in the Canadian iTunes store. These have been available in the US for a while, but now us Canucks can get in on the action. So instead of buying an entire DVD or BluRay, you can cherry-pick the best matches from PPVs for a few dollars. Sweet deal. I'm just downloading the two title matches from Elimination Chamber. Shame Amazon just shipped my Mania BluRay or I would have forgone the entire show to buy the top few matches individually for a third of the total price. It's a neat idea, but $3.00 a match!?  I thought iTunes was supposed to be all about the $0.99 price point?   

I'm away from my computer for 8 hours and here's what happened: Raw is going to 3 hours now Raw will be more interactive (so somehow it will be more Twitter friendly AWESOME) Brooke Hogan signed with TNA (AWESOME, just what TNA needed) TNA Botchpact will be live all summer. WHAT THE FUCK!!! I WAS GONE FOR 8 HOURS!!!! Rob I know how you feel.  I was at work and I hate trying to do blog updates from my phone, so thankfully Tommy Hall was all over this one.  Personally, I feel like Impact going live is a good move, although putting Brooke on TV is retarded, so it somewhat tempers that good news.  RAW adding a third hour is ridiculous, and it's just a move to artificially prop up TV rights fees and provide excuses for ratings at next year's investor's conference.  Think about this:  They now have 3 hours of RAW, 2 hours of Smackdown, 3 hours of PPV a month, an hour of Superstars, an hour of NXT...and they want to add a NETWORK?!?  It's a chore to get through S...

Was wondering if you could plug our podcast this week - I managed to land an interview with the editor of PWI magazine on the PWI 500.  I don't know how many of these he's done so far but a lot of ground was covered in this one which went an hour and a half -- This week on the Nose Bleed Seats Podcast we feature a rare national guest, the editor in chief of Pro Wrestling Illustrated Frank Krewda. We discuss the PWI 500, its history, requirements, misconceptions, possible #1 candidates, the infamous $50 bribe question, but also look at how social media has influenced the business, who past the big three promotions are #4-#10 in the country and much much more. Hosted by the Mad Conservative and MOAV5706. Listen online or download to your MP3 player or PC! http://thenbs.podomatic.com/entry/2012-05-16T17_46_35-07_00 ( homepage - http://centralillinoisprowrestling.com ) Sounds interesting!

IMPACT WRESTLING ON SPIKE TV MAY 17, 2012 THE IMPACT ZONE - ORLANDO, FLORIDA -  Your hosts are Mike Tenay and Taz.  

Source The news keeps coming today.  This is one of the things that people have wanted for years so maybe this can help. Thoughts?

Source I REALLY hope this is the preshow they've been talking about.  Three hour shows are always a stretch for them and making it a regular deal would be a very bad idea to me. Thoughts on this?

Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk “Can’t we all just get along?” In the spirit of the summer blockbusters that will be battling it out for your hard earned money I decided to do this post on a little known gem from the 70’s. The Hulk and the rest of the Avengers are making a great showing at the box office, but Batman is coming in as a sequel to an already successful franchise.  I myself go back and forth on which publisher I like the best. It’s like music, sometimes I want metal and sometimes I want some classical. While I am usually of the opinion that DC has the better more iconic characters, the Uncanny X-Men is my favorite franchise.  My first interest in comics came with the Uncanny X-Men. Then I hit High School and girls became my number one priority. Comics slid out of my life for three years.  Then in my senior year something brought me back. Of all the events to suck me back in, Superman getting new energy powers was the one that drove me back into th...