Naitch

Michael Hayes was BY FAR the most integral member of the Freebirds (and I'm talking by far) and most everything they ever did revolved around him and his ability to get an angle over and build heat for a feud (JYD blinding angle and the Von Erichs feud which are the two most famous things they ever did wouldn't have worked nearly as well without him involved). Roberts was pretty replaceable in the sense that they could have taken any real good solid heel and put him in there instead, Gordy was Gordy and he covered a lot of the ring work and I ain't taking away from his greatness but no Hayes and they wouldn't have been anywhere near as over or as big as they were. He was one of the top talkers and heat attractor type guys of that whole era and the whole group essentially was built in his own image with a lot of the characteristics of the group as a whole coming directly from his own personality. Without him, it'd be like the Horsemen without Ric Flair.

Or with Eddie Guerrero, Drake. Can't be forgetting that he wasn't able to have a good match with Eddie Guerrero either. The likes of Lesnar, Pillman and Eddie Gilbert count?! Really?! I thought I was pushing it including Goldberg and The Sandman. Okay, maybe Gilbert does count because not enough people have seen him therefore they can't possibly like him because they haven't seen him but then again they can't not like him because they haven't seen him and...on and on and on and round and round and round. James Storm is pretty good when it comes to Beer Money but Robert Roode is terrifically bland and completely forgettable. They're a good package together but it's just basically James Storm...and partner.

Shit, reminds me of the current Money in the Bank holder.

I dunno, a lot of people like The Miz now so I don't think he counts. But I was liking him before a lot of people liked him, back when you were accused of only liking him to be WACKY. Yep, being told why you liked a wrestler by some stranger on a wrestling forum. That actually happened and it's about the most pompous, patronising thing I've ever seen on a wrestling forum, and that covers a lot of ground. 'You're not allowed to like that wrestler because I don't like him and because I don't like him you can't possibly like him therefore you're only liking him to be different and wacky.' Ugh. I dunno, SID count? He's a big son of a bitch with a crazy amount of charisma who beat the living shit out of jobbers, dunked them on their friggin' head with a Chokeslam THEN picked them up and Jacknifed the shit out of them all the while talking directly to the camera and proclaiming that he ruled the world. What isn't there to like? It doesn't have to be about much more than just liking that. I don't give a shit if he ain't Dory Funk Jnr, SID ruled. The. World. Sandman? I guess a lot of people like him too though. Badass drunk with a beer belly who looked like he slept in the gutter and hadn't bathed in about 3 weeks and had a badass entrance involving a couple thousand fellow (probably STD ridden) drunks singing along to his entrance theme and drinking from his beer cans and then he came into the ring with a beer in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and smashed suckers upside the grill with a singapore cane. He's just like a regular guy you would see fighting outside a bar at 2am and guys like that are as much a part of professional wrestling as blowjob tag teams and superhero babyfaces. Add me to the New Jack fan club too. He's about the most underrated talker of the entire 1990s actually. Once you get past the insanity and threatening to kill some wrestler's children and wishing cancer on some other guy and threatening to tie some other guy to a tree and have a bull rape his asshole and, well, other general insane nonsense he comes out with to sell shoot interviews, and just look at the guy in, say, Smoky Mountain or ECW circa 1995, he had an insane amount of charisma and was a hell of a promo. I dunno if he could be Denzel but maybe Denzel's best friend. Goldberg, Mark Henry and Mike Knox are others. I guess they maybe count too.

That's a piece of news direct from Meltzer posted prior to Final Resolution.

Santina Marella was making her debut and she got a spot on the card. Maybe she's sleeping with one of the writers.

Last time they advertised a 'World Champion' coming in it turned out to be Al Snow because he was a World Tag Team Champion in the WWF about 200 years ago. Yeah...

Throwing this random question out there that popped into my head during Wrasslemainia. Being that Steamboat had his last match in 1994, is 15 years the longest anyone has ever gone between matches in the world of the professional wrestling? Been trying to think of any who could have even come close. Maybe Moolah; did she have any matches between 1987 or so and 1999? Maybe Mae Young if I knew when she last had a match before 1999. Get your little wrestling brains going, dammit.

Wh..what year is this? Did I fall asleep and wake up in 1952? Lou Thesz is the World's Champion, right? Jesus, maybe ROH and all of their pompous 'pure' wrestling and Code of Honour and shaking hands before and after matches nonsense they were spouting really did make some people go ga-ga (and not Lady either). I had no idea ROH had that sort of effect. I had no idea people were that easily worked.

Yeah, damn that Mark Henry for being black and antagonising Michael Hayes by being black. DAMN HIM! Staff in multi-million dollar corporations should be allowed to make bigoted remarks against their fellow employees, dammit! Did the KKK fight for nothing? Was Martin Luther King killed for nothing?

Still have no idea how Jerry Lynn managed to convince people he was any good. HEADLOCK TAKEDOWN! LEG SCISSORS! CLICHED MALENKO/EDDIE ROLL UP SEQUENCE! INDY STANDOFF OF DOOM! IDIOTS IN THE AUDIENCE WHO CARRY STOP WATCHES TO WRESTLING MATCHES AND WEAR SUPERHERO T-SHIRTS CLAPPING LIKE SHEEP LIKE THEY JUST WITNESSED THE INVENTION OF WRESTLING ITSELF! And so on and so forth. He's also possibly the most dull professional wrestler of the last decade and makes Billy Kidman look like the spawn of Ric Flair and Superstar Billy Graham. Regardless of any ickle, tiny, miniscule name value the guy has, man is not the guy to either make your Champion or build your promotion around in 2009. Or 1999. But especially in 2009. But, there we go, horse for courses and all that jazz.

Vince Russo sure does love title tournaments. Almost as much as poles, huge fake titties and hating foreigners.

Yeah, it's (at least more than likely. Never know with Funk) a big work on the part of The Funker, based on a 30 year old off-and-on feud. Whenever Dusty's name is brought up in shoot interviews or whatever, Funk will go on a hilarious tirade against him, calling him fat and calling his fat ass out and whatnot and going completely nuts and, according to Dusty during, I think, one of those Legends Roundtable things (and Dusty was giggling like a schoolgirl when telling the story), the crazy bastard will start on another loud tirade and challenge Dusty to fights if he ever sees him in airports or hotel lobbies even though they're both in their 60s. I just want them to continue said feud at the Hall of Fame.

I hate April Fool's Day.

People you know in, you know, 'real life' (me, I know maybe one person in 'real life' who - and whisper it quietly - even likes wrestling. Well, one that'll talk about it out loud anyway. It's almost akin to being into ritual killings or microwaving babies in your spare time) or people you know on the internet? Because look around, you'll find them.

I wouldn't exactly say most of these were 'facts.' Rumours at the time were that Show/Austin was a certainty for Wrestlemania 2000 but they were just that - 'rumours' - and that's without even going into the fact that they did a Show/Austin match anyway about 14 minutes after Big Show debuted. Mr. Perfect/Hogan thing I've always heard was a bullshit Scott Keith story that he pulled out of his ample ass like another story which was attributed to him, that being the story of Luger getting drunk and telling people the night before Wrestlemania 10 he was going to win the belt so Vince changed the plans last minute and went with Bret. Meltzer has rubbished it and said that Bret had always been scheduled to win the belt. Michaels one, by all accounts, is probably true. Plans had been Triple H vs. Michaels from what I heard but Michaels was off his tits after Triple H went to bat for him so they went with Taker/Triple H instead and Trips did the J-O-B. Random ass ones pulled from the air are that The Undertaker has a deathly phobia of cucumbers and the wrestlers used to rib him by putting bits of cucumber in the gloves he used to wear. The WWF also had no idea Paul Bearer used to be a real life pallbearer when they brought him in to be Paul Bearer. Hornswoggle has a 14 inch mickey. Maybe I made that last one up but, then again, maybe I didn't.

Heard a bit of news that WWE are close to doing a deal for the Mid-South/UWF tape library (which, outside of Memphis, is the only major territory they don't yet own the tape library to) which is mostly owned by Bill Watts' ex-wife. Murdoch/DiBiase double turn, Watts buried under the Russian flag, DiBiase/Duggan Best Dressed Man angle et al in pristine DVD quality? Yes please.

What the hell makes Shawn Michaels assume he'll even get into the Hall of Fame in the first place? He ain't no Koko B. Ware.

Racists.

Matt Borne was fired over his drug abuse, he didn't quit because they turned Doink babyface. That would have been a silly reason to walk out on a guaranteed contract anyway. But, yeah, a heel clown giving little kids balloons and them popping them with a pin was one of the greatest gimmicks of all the times.

They'll Iron Sheik/Wrestlemania 17 it and have Mae Young win because she cannot physically take the bump over (or through) the ropes to the outside. EDIT - Beaten to it with the obvious answer.

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv195/DCFC_2009/FrankGrimes.jpg FU*K Homer Simpson.

Never before has 'Get off my lawn' sounded so Goddamn menacing.

Man, we haven't been watching the same films. I mean he's made some stinkers but I'd say the good outweighs the bad and when you throw in an 'Unforgiven' which is, in my (albeit biased) view, possibly the greatest film of the 1990s and one of the greatest of all time and you have an old, crotchety son of a bitch who knows what he's doing with that whole filmmaking melarkey. Not that his viewpoint means more or less than anyone else's (well, okay, I mean he did make 'Citizen Kane'), I'm just throwing it out there but Orson Welles remarked how 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' was one of the best directed films in history and had it been directed by anyone other than Clint Eastwood would have been held up as a masterpiece. Paul Newman is also a pretty darn viable answer to this particular question. I've yet to come across anyone who said 'Man, that Paul Newman with his classic films and entrepreneurial skills in making millions for charity really got on my fu*king goat. F*ck Cool Hand Luke.'

Maybe he doesn't actually watch TNA.