...with lots of WrestleMania crap. They've added the brand new "Undertaker 15-0" feature, which is kinda' weird since the DVD is being marketed this week.

First big hype job for the month is WrestleMania 2, as they have the event itself, plus a house show and an SNME leading up to it. Kinda' cool, because I've never see that show...and I've been following all the hype for it on recent TNT episodes. I've been thinking "hey, I'd like to see WrestleMania 2 sometime"...and now, here it is.

"Shorties" has a "lost classics of WrestleMania" gimmick, featuring John Cena vs. Big Show and Piper vs Adonis. Ooooookay.

Raw this week has HHH talking about winning the King of the Ring by cheating to overcome McMahon's politics. Irony in action

Ha!

I take it Trips wins the 1997 KOTR? I don't remember. I could Google it... but I don't want wrestling sites popping up on my computer, today.

That's right.

:lol: That Cena/Big Show match was some boring shit.

Yeah, I kinda had a WTF look on my face when I noticed that on there. That's actually one of the main things that bothers me about 24/7, they have shitty match choices quite often.

Mostly, it's those single matches in the "Shorties" and "Legends" sections that suck hard. At most, I watch maybe two or three segments from those sections, per month. "Big Ones" and "TV Classics" are usually okay with me, though. An old house show and the serialized episodes are great.

Last month's selections of weddings was ridiculous. Some of those played into the gimmick well (like Vachon's), but the Stacy Keibler/David Flair wedding was painful to watch as its own self-contained segment (although Arn was kinda' funny and I still feel Stacy circa 2000 was the hottest rasslin' broad of all time).

Thought this was worth mentioning: I saw that "Legends" has the medium-rare Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair WWF Title match from October, 1992. It expires tonight, so hurry up.

It's not a great match, just kinda' decent. It's mostly straightforward and the ending is completely out of nowhere. Some fans are politely clapping when Hart super-plexes Flair and hooks the sharpshooter. I got the sense that they were cheering like they do when Virgil makes a mild comeback on, say, Yokozuna. But when the ref signals for the bell and Flair taps, everybody jumps out of their seat.

I can't remember "smark" reaction at the time, but I don't think anybody expected Hart to win the title, then. I was starting to ween myself off rasslin' back then, but I remember thinking that the Warrior was going to end up the champ, at that time. When Flair beat Macho Man for the title in September, I assumed he was going to be a transitional champ until dropping the belt to Macho's fellow "Ultimate Maniac", the Warrior.

I watched it, and I was amazed at how little Flair did throughout the match

I had that match on my computer at my parent's house, and I was surprised by how basic, and uninspiring it was (what did I expect from a house show match, I know). Still, it's neat for historical reasons.

I actually think it's a pretty decent match for the most part. Nothing blow away, but still decent.

I still remember sitting down one Saturday afternoon and watching Superstars. It opened with Mean Gene's "And now, the NEEEEEEEEEW World Wrestling Federation Champion, Bret.....Hitman...HART!"

I about shit myself as I NEVER fucking saw that coming.

Yeah, I remember reading the sports page, sometime in late October 1992 and saw a house show ad in the bottom corner. It advertised Flair vs Hart © for the WWFTitle. I thought it was a misprint...and that Hart had regained the IC belt. Last I had heard, had Hart dropped the IC belt to Bulldog at SummerSlam. But it had a picture of Hart with the WWF title "Eagle" belt. Found it incredibly strange, since it was frickin' October with no PPV's closeby.

One of the many goofy title switches that the WWF made in 1992. To me, that really alienated me from the product. That was their FOURTH "off-TV" title change they made that year. Hart dropped the IC belt to the Mountie in January, LOD dropped the tag belts to Money Inc in February, Money Inc dropped the tag belts to the Disasters in July...and now the World Title changes hands, "off-TV"?!

Meanwhile, "on-TV", I was seeing worthless stuff like "Comet Kid" (Max Moon), "The Clown" in the audience, and being told that Shawn Michaels had left the building.

The same year strangely enough Michaels won the IC title on Saturday Night's Main Event.

"TV Classics" updated with new World Class! Notable, because they usually wait about two weeks between World Class episodes.

It looks like CWF has disappeared. They added one episode, back in January, but it was a repeat of one they ran in 2007.

No PTW or TNT updates, either. TNT's only been good for the Muraco promos, lately (although Freddy Blassie bragging about his new $45,000 bathroom was kinda' funny). I was really getting into PTW, so I'm jonesing for that to come back. Last time it aired, they were in September 1987, with lots of Heenan, DiBiase pissing people off, the official debut of Strike Force and the "Battle for Bam Bam".

PTW should be back, but probably not until next month. That's one of my main reasons for having the channel in the first place.

The alternating pattern seemed to be one episode of PTW available for a week, then one episode of TNT for the following week. 2 PTW's a month and 2 TNT's a month.

They've kind of fallen away from that pattern, recently. PTW hasn't shown up for quite awhile, now. The TNT slot was still steady, but now it looks like they're skimping on that, as well.

If I remember correctly last year during Mania month that the same thing happened. I'm pretty sure that for the last week or so that the Raw from 02 was taking the PTW slot.

I think you're right. I just see any RAW with a 1998 or later date and immediately think: "skip it". Then it's out of sight, out of mind to me.

On the last ECW (3/5/96), I noticed that it had about 10-12 minutes of Joey Styles and Tazz (who is apparently The Funniest Human Being on the Planet Who Deserves Shitloads of Screen Time. Who knew?)... and about 35-40 minutes of the actual show. All the host segments are just fluff, but the ECW ones are root-canal-levels of pain.

sample dialgoue:
Tazz: "...then he had a change of art.. err, heart"
Joey: "*snicker* Change of ART? Who's Art?!! "
Tazz: "hey, I dunno...Art..that guy over there..*snicker*"

That's not funny at all and these dorks carry on like it's vital information.


ECW-style chant: "You can't host! You can't host!"

Tazz's dialogue is the WORST thing on 24/7. I wish they would have let someone like Tommy Dreamer do the intros, or Joey Styles by himself.

I'd much rather have Styles do them by himself. Tazz is seriously fucking unbearable.

But one interesting thing about the last ECW: they showed where that wacky "Brian Pillman vs. a Giant Frickin' Pencil" clip came from (someone posted it over in our "Wrestling Media" section). It was later followed up with a buck nekkid Pillman... which I could have done without.

That was me...

Whoa..the 6/16/97 RAW has a match between Jackie Fulton and Tommy Rogers (Fantastics). Fulton has short, dark hair and only half a pair of pants. Weird.

There's another legends roundtable up about Wrestlemania with Mean Gene, Foley, PS, Dusty, and Patterson. Not good, but far from the worst I've seen from them.

I hate to say it, but Mean Gene is not a good moderator for this. JR's not much better, but they need someone else

Michale Cole to the rescue!




Check out Nitro from 3/16/97. La Parka and Super Calo have a somewhat noteworthy match. Calo does a flying somersault and lands about two rows deep in the audience. I think this is the move that got him fired.

Afterwards, La Parka picks up a molded plastic chair..and BREAKS it over Calo's head with one blow. The chair actually splits apart, so it had to have been stiff on some level. Yup, I also think this match started La Parka's affection for chairs and his eventual title as "the Chair-man of WCW".

Plus Dean Malenko is on the card. Damn if Malenko in 1997 wasn't all kinds of awesome.

Totally agree, I actually remember the Calo/Parka match from when it originally aired. Good stuff.

Also Deano the Machino was indeed the awesomeness in 97. I remember marking out when he was #1 in the PWI 500 one year because of said awesomeness.

I'll go so far as to say that Deano's entire WCW stint, wrestling-wise, was solid, if not great. Even when he was doing stuff as a militant "revolutionary" in late 1999. His 1998 feud with Jericho was good on so many levels.

I missed a lot of his matches, back in the day, though. He usually wrestled luchadors and my dad would always yell out: "I hate Mexicans!" everytime one came out. So we'd flip the channel and watch a shitty Rockies game for 15 minutes. Which made me yell out "I hate Rockies" whenever one of those turds would screw up.

Except for Rey. Even the old man dug Rey. Simply for the "dart" spot.

Which reminds me: the same Nitro also has another installment in the long-simmering Kevin Nash vs. Rey Mysterio feud. Hall and Nash mess with Rey and cause him to lose his crusierweight title match against Syxx. Followed by a post-match beatdown.

I think Rey formally challenges Nash to a 1-on-1 match on Nitro, sometime in August. With help from Konnan (who joins the nWo at that point), Nash wins again. Which made it all the better when Rey finally pinned Nash, on Nitro, in May 1999. Things got stupid with the whole No Limit Soldiers crap in June 1999, but Rey vs. Nash was a great recurring feud that they would play up, over the years.

Finally watched WrestleMania IX last night. Scrooge is right: "fuck this show!"

The booking is questionable and the entire thing just seems too cartoony. Most of that's due to the ridiculous Roman Coliseum gimmick. It's like they weren't even trying to have ANY sense of "realism" throughout the show.

Not to mention Macho man keeps wanting to "Do the THING!!!"

Ha! Yeah, that cracked me up, too. "He's in there, in the ring! Doing the THING!"

Some of Heenan's slams on Jim Ross and Oklahoma were kinda' funny, though. "I thought that was the waitress at the Tip-Top Cafe in downtown Tulsa".

Ross screams: "never in my career have I seen the Undertaker manhandled this way" To which Heenan replies: "yeah, but your career spans maybe three hours". Having some fun with the McMahon/Mooney rule of "no wrestling exists outside of the WWF".

The funny thing is that Mania IX is one of the worst ones they've ever put on, but it's easily one of the most entertaining PPVs of all time considering the commentary.

It's overrated as far as how bad it is. I, II, IV and XV are all worse.