Classic Wrestling Discussion: Part III & Wrestler Poll

[CDJ]

Wish Piper/O’Haire got more run. Just watched Piper vs Rikishi on smackdown in 2003. If O’Haire could have cut a live promo and stop getting in bar fights he would have been a star

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

An awesome 30 minutes of Undertaker and Mick reliving and watching the Hell in a Cell match

 

[These Are The Days]

Almost done with the Raw before SummerSlam 2002. Two thoughts right now

Well lookie here, Brocky Boii got himself a nice video package to intimidate the Rock that is basically his entrance titantron. Yeah, they definitely knew by now he was getting the belt. His old tron wasn't that good

Fozzy is one of THE WORST names for a band I have ever seen. Decent music but holy shit that name is brutal

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Almost done with the Raw before SummerSlam 2002. Two thoughts right now

Well lookie here, Brocky Boii got himself a nice video package to intimidate the Rock that is basically his entrance titantron. Yeah, they definitely knew by now he was getting the belt. His old tron wasn't that good

Fozzy is one of THE WORST names for a band I have ever seen. Decent music but holy shit that name is brutal

Summerslam 02 is really good, bordering on great. A couple stinkers in there but most matches are very good to great.

 

[Megahab]

Summerslam 2002 is one of the top 3-4 WWE PPVs of all time.

 

[These Are The Days]

I gotta run to work and only got Angle vs Mysterio in. Fantastic match. **MY** Olympic Hero got that tapout baby. SummerSlam 02 is off to a banging start.


Other thoughts

The Harvard gimmick still sucks

Billy and Chuck are a rudderless ship now and it's sad

Lesnar hype rocket update: after tonight the dinosaur, remembering the suffering of his people will leave the moon to punch an asteroid because beating the Rock wasn't enough

Please give Booker and Goldy the belts... They're amazing

Please turn Jericho face. This is getting brutal

Push Benoit and Guerrero to the moon

Damn man... The Reverend D-Von gimmick is gonna end isn't it? I was coming around to it because pastor T.D Jakes all but saved my life and I genuinely love a church where the brothers are brothers so to speak

 

[Emperoreddy]

An awesome 30 minutes of Undertaker and Mick reliving and watching the Hell in a Cell match

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this match, but I will say J.R. was at his best here

 

[Unholy Diver]

This is gonna be considered blasphemy, but as I have been watching thru 1998 WWF, I am really not impressed with JR that much, he is put on a pedestal above most if not all announcers and I feel like maybe the fact that the action and storylines are so good that people just remember him being greater that he really was

He calls a lot of guys by the wrong names, he keeps repeating the same stuff over and over, like he had to say something like "These guys are out of their element" during the Brawl for it all, he made more Mark McGwire references than McGwire had homeruns that year, and he keeps trying and trying to make nicknames like the Undertaker is "the Concience" of the WWF. He also seems to be very angry and/or bitter quite a bit, with snide remarks about many things, digging at the king about Brian Christopher, or commenting about other sports or current events

 

[Unholy Diver]

never was a fan of the Headbangers, but I did appreciate them wearing out the ICP with a steel chair

 

[Bondurant]

I am watching SummerSlam '89. Miss Elizabeth was over. Bigger pops than Savage and Hogan.

 

[JackSlater]

This is gonna be considered blasphemy, but as I have been watching thru 1998 WWF, I am really not impressed with JR that much, he is put on a pedestal above most if not all announcers and I feel like maybe the fact that the action and storylines are so good that people just remember him being greater that he really was

He calls a lot of guys by the wrong names, he keeps repeating the same stuff over and over, like he had to say something like "These guys are out of their element" during the Brawl for it all, he made more Mark McGwire references than McGwire had homeruns that year, and he keeps trying and trying to make nicknames like the Undertaker is "the Concience" of the WWF. He also seems to be very angry and/or bitter quite a bit, with snide remarks about many things, digging at the king about Brian Christopher, or commenting about other sports or current events

Ross is the best ever big moment announcer. Dealing with the week to week drudgery there are better options. It would be annoying when he would fixate on something outside of wrestling, like the McGwire example, and keep talking about it.

 

[These Are The Days]

This is gonna be considered blasphemy, but as I have been watching thru 1998 WWF, I am really not impressed with JR that much, he is put on a pedestal above most if not all announcers and I feel like maybe the fact that the action and storylines are so good that people just remember him being greater that he really was

He calls a lot of guys by the wrong names, he keeps repeating the same stuff over and over, like he had to say something like "These guys are out of their element" during the Brawl for it all, he made more Mark McGwire references than McGwire had homeruns that year, and he keeps trying and trying to make nicknames like the Undertaker is "the Concience" of the WWF. He also seems to be very angry and/or bitter quite a bit, with snide remarks about many things, digging at the king about Brian Christopher, or commenting about other sports or current events

I think he was put up to a lot of those nicknames. Imagine 3 months of Chyna getting called a cyborg woman. It's stupid as hell.

 

[These Are The Days]

I finished SummerSlam 2002 last night. A few thoughts

I wasn't expecting Shawn Michaels to go over. Very good match. I wish we had more surprise endings like that

Can someone please put Jericho out of his misery? Jesus Christ is he being punished or something? I'm about ready to start skipping his matches and his segments all together. It literally never amounts to anything and I can only hear "KINGOFTHEW000RLD!!" so many times. This is fast becoming the pinnacle of unwatchable shitty heel work because they have no plan for him and there's only so much Chris Irvine can do with it. I feel sorry for him

Stop. Putting. Finkel. Into. Storylines

I like the Eric Bischoff character but moving the Raw desk even on PPV is stupid as hell. I get it was one of his idiosyncrasies but it's pretentious


I wish I didn't know RVD was going to win. It hindered the match with Benoit for me because it was otherwise good

Man they really stopped at nothing to put Lesnar over. I gotta give Dwayne Johnson the man credit. He did what Austin wouldn't. Lost clean as whistle.

I forgot how the arena was split between Rock and Lesnar. I wonder if they knew Rock was leaving and weren't just bitter

Angle you magnificent SOB. Another victim taps out

Getting heat is the one opponent Test will never beat in the ring. He was hot for just a minute after his breakup with Stephanie and that was it. I don't get it man.

Unrelated: How the f*** is Jerry Lawler not cancelled yet. I miss Paul Heyman




Outstanding PPV. God I love WWE 2002

 

[Voight]

 

[Megahab]

Can someone please put Jericho out of his misery? Jesus Christ is he being punished or something? I'm about ready to start skipping his matches and his segments all together. It literally never amounts to anything and I can only hear "KINGOFTHEW000RLD!!" so many times. This is fast becoming the pinnacle of unwatchable shitty heel work because they have no plan for him and there's only so much Chris Irvine can do with it. I feel sorry for him

Jericho lost so much steam as champion and the HHH-Stephanie feud. I don't know if anyone has ever lost so much appeal during a world title reign. He didn't really recover properly until 2008.

 

[These Are The Days]

Jericho lost so much steam as champion and the HHH-Stephanie feud. I don't know if anyone has ever lost so much appeal during a world title reign. He didn't really recover properly until 2008.

Well he was gone for a good while. That had a lot to do with it. And he came back about as white hot as you could possibly get having a feud with Orton right from the jump. Then about 4 months after his feud with Shawn Michaels it just became the same speech week after week about "lying, filthy, disgusting, gelatinous, parasitic hypocrites" watching $1 million of talent spewing a dime's worth of cheap heat material. Same thing happened to CM Punk during the Straight Edge Society. The system is dramatically failing Jericho right now in the exact same way as it did then. Even his feud with HHH was subpar at best.

It's breaking my heart thinking this poor guy's career projection is to turn into Booker T and RVD's bitch for the next 2 years. I have no idea what is going to happen but that's where my gut is going. This is so bad and none of it is his fault. You have guys like Test who fail no matter what they give him and then there's a guy failing because it's impossible to make good. I'd give anything for Jericho to talk about being a bad mamma jamma again

 

[These Are The Days]

I finished the Raw and Smackdown after SummerSlam 2002 and there's just no comparison. Raw is simply the "older brother" in comparison to the "younger brother" because there's nothing "little brother" about the blue show

I got Howard freaking Finkel getting undressed on one show and then Stephanie giving me Rikishi, Benoit and Guerrero twice in one night with Kurt Angle as the cherry on top in a triple threat match for the #1 contender because now Taker is there

Raw turns around with Bischoff doing what I feared most. Dude just hands HHH the big gold belt. I gotta go back to work so I'm only a few minutes in.

Get out with that nonsense. I'm going to temporarily trust the process because if I gotta do a Year 2000 HHH reign of terror despite his feud with HBK I'm probably only going to watch the PPV's and simply watch Smackdown until I figure out when Evolution started. I genuinely don't know if I can do this again despite my curiosity

I guess at least I can look forward to the first of what will probably be 50 matches between Jericho and RVD for the IC title


Edit: I'm 99% sure Brock is going to kill Bob Holly in the next episode of Smackdown because he demanded match "last week"

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I finished the Raw and Smackdown after SummerSlam 2002 and there's just no comparison. Raw is simply the "older brother" in comparison to the "younger brother" because there's nothing "little brother" about the blue show

I got Howard freaking Finkel getting undressed on one show and then Stephanie giving me Rikishi, Benoit and Guerrero twice in one night with Kurt Angle as the cherry on top in a triple threat match for the #1 contender because now Taker is there

Raw turns around with Bischoff doing what I feared most. Dude just hands HHH the big gold belt. I gotta go back to work so I'm only a few minutes in.

Get out with that nonsense. I'm going to temporarily trust the process because if I gotta do a Year 2000 HHH reign of terror despite his feud with HBK I'm probably only going to watch the PPV's and simply watch Smackdown until I figure out when Evolution started. I genuinely don't know if I can do this again despite my curiosity

I guess at least I can look forward to the first of what will probably be 50 matches between Jericho and RVD for the IC title


Edit: I'm 99% sure Brock is going to kill Bob Holly in the next episode of Smackdown because he demanded match "last week"

Trust the process.

 

[Megahab]

Get out with that nonsense. I'm going to temporarily trust the process because if I gotta do a Year 2000 HHH reign of terror despite his feud with HBK I'm probably only going to watch the PPV's and simply watch Smackdown until I figure out when Evolution started. I genuinely don't know if I can do this again despite my curiosity

If you thought HHH's year 2000 reigns were reigns of terror, you are not going to like Raw from 2002-2005.

 

[These Are The Days]

If you thought HHH's year 2000 reigns were reigns of terror, you are not going to like Raw from 2002-2005.

Here's the thing, I can deal with Evolution because the entire point of any and every given stable is to promote 1 or 2 guys out of it and build them up to the big time. Yeah there's a head honcho but he's the distraction while the magician does the magic trick. I'll be excited to see Orton and Batista. I could even deal with HHH coming 4 times a night complete with 20 minute soliloquy about either how great he is or freaking out he's not champion as long as it wasn't so predictable. That's why I hated 2000 so much. If it's as predictable, I'm not going to be happy.

I can't tell you how much content from 2000 I skipped. "DX wins" or "HHH wins" was probably even more Teflon than Austin in 1998. It got to the point where at some point before a HHH/DX match I would guess how it ended. I would skip to the end of whatever McMahon/Helmsley/DX main event and watch about the last 10 seconds of the end. I think my final tally for "The Era" was batting something like 80% in correctly the outcome and I think just about 12% in guessing PRECISELY how the match ended. This is such as who distracted who, grabbing what weapon, who scored the fall, who took the fall. I always got one detail or two wrong but generally was able to correctly say something like "X-Pac scores the pin fall after Road Dogg does something while the ref can't see it" and it would simply be the other way around. I have never seen a product so lackluster in imagination as it was at that time. Just selling out for "gotcha" moments even if they made no sense. Weeks of feuding just for it to go nowhere. I always knew it was coming. I **LITERALLY** skipped to the end of Mania 2000 because I knew in the pit of my stomach Vince was going to screw The Rock because it was so on par with what I had come to expect. It was over indulgent and disgusting

I'm hoping we can do a little better than that from 2002-2005 here

 

[These Are The Days]

Whelp.... We not only see HHH 3 times (including getting handed the big gold belt) with 2 matches, he demands to change the first Jericho match in over a month I have interest in watching (a match with RVD for the IC title) because HE wants to face RVD. And he eats a 5 star frog splash for an "L" its already an improvement over 2000. Back then HHH would have either kicked out clean or DX would have charged the ring. Either way it would have been "HHH wins lol"

 

[These Are The Days]

Alright so I'm 2 weeks removed from SummerSlam here and on Smackdown. Given the benefit of hindsight it makes so much sense to put Lesnar in a program with Taker.

- Taker himself loved working with the new guys and showing them how it's done
- Vince has to make his new monster credible
- Smackdown gets a star to help carry the brand

Meanwhile I'm being given one bloodbath after another every time Brock is in the ring. Every week is this vicious, monster heel being controlled by Dr. Frankenstein himself going over clean as a whistle in pure dominance no matter who he faces. This most recent match Lesnar had with Orton was nothing short of a bloodletting. It's amazing the heat this guy has gotten in about the last 3 weeks. He went from mild/moderate to roaring boos overnight. I'm shivering thinking about watching their HIAC match again

I'm absolutely in love. I'm about as lovesick as a teenager passing "Do you like me" notes in the classroom. Smackdown is flawless

 

[These Are The Days]

Not yet done with the September 9th 2002 Raw. About 45 minutes in and just yet and a few thoughts

- Eric Bischoff said "hot lesbian action" one time and King won't shut up about it. He's remarked at least a dozen times. I am about ready to mute my phone. They couldn't think of better? I'm skipping this all together. I legitimately don't care.

- Is Jerry Lawler seriously this bad in real life or is this just his character? I don't know how in God's name he made it as long as 2002. I swear to God I'd give anything for Paul Heyman right now

- There's a fatal 4 way for the #1 contender between Jericho, Big Show, RVD and Jeff Hardy. Sweet God I am begging, BEGGING for Jericho to win this so it forces a face turn. I know no one is going to win vs HHH. But "IMTHEKINGOFTHEW0000RRRLLLLDDD" Jericho has run his course. I can't take it anymore

- I did not realize the Un-Americans lasted this long. I saw it for a few weeks in 2002 and then it just sort of disappeared on me because they all went to Raw. I'm crossing my fingers this goes on for just a little while longer.

- Bringing up burning the American flag was not the best idea less than a year from 9/11. WWF legit asked Sgt. Slaughter to burn the American flag in his feud with Hogan in the midst of the Gulf War. He burned a Hogan shirt instead and again, that would not have been a good idea at the time. Even bringing up Test lighting up Old Glory at the time was not a good idea in my opinion. You really need to be careful about that one.

 

[These Are The Days]

Gonna watch the Raw before Unforgiven 2002

I completely forgot that Taker's pregnant wife got involved in his feud with Brock. I really hope it's just this one episode

Thank God Vince is not on 100 times a night right now

Lol at Bischoff crashing Billy and Chuck's wedding. I vaguely recall it from the time

I feel like I'm going to be severely let down by Jamal and Rosey. The last guy to get this much hype before a proper match was Lesnar

 

[GKJ]