One. Day.
Yeesh. I had an 8 paragraph QOTD about the post-modern sexualization of women ready to go, with footnotes and everything, and YOU all had to drag us down through the mud of in fighting, making fun, and internet wrestling drama!
How fun!
So, I figured what we could do here is call upon our veterans to explain to us perhaps the history of the IWC, and speak to the history of the BOD, how you found it, former personalities, and past drama to the relative newbies such as myself who caught on in the 411mania era.
Thus:
Give a brief history of the IWC - What was the 'big' site when it all started? what the eff is a RSPWFAQ? Seriously! How do you feel toward the IWC 'community' in general? Is it a work?
I'll phrase it like a 5th grade reading book comprehension question.
Discuss: Summarize the history of the Internet Wrestling Community. What events, characters, and unexpected happenings deserve to be highlighted? Make a top 5 list of your favorite.
I kind of came to the whole thing through Extreme Warfare 9000 - which I think I've mentioned. I found that, found the forums, found the previews written by various "IWC" personalities, googled "Scott Keith" from there, and bam I think I'm checking this site regularly around 2005. I think.
I think a little internet drama and ballbusting can be fun. It's fun to be a bit of a dick, it's fun to troll or anti-troll or do things that are deliberately annoying but ultimately harmless, sort of like an internet whoopee cushion. See also: Otters, Blog.
Beyond that, I don't know much about the whole history, the big stories, big leaks, big writers, and so on. Naturally that probably begins and ends with the Torch or Figure 4. Whichever is the more popular one. I don't know.
I just tried to find the old EWR diaries with Bossman and I guess they're lost to the nethers. How sad.
The IWC and CM Punk have one main trait in common. An overinflated sense of it own importance in the grand scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteThat's what makes it so fun!
ReplyDeleteThat said, top 5 moments:
ReplyDelete1) The internet is created.
2) Meltzer goes online
3) The wrestling feds go online
4) Proliferation of wrestling "news" sites
5) The WWE Network goes live
5b) Skynet becomes self aware...
On the first day, user doobie69 complained about Bret Hart's five moves of doom, and the IWC saw that it was good.
ReplyDeleteWatching this show made me notice how there's hardly any signs in the crowd at wrestling shows anymore, whereas a show like this, everywhere you looked you were bombarded with thousands of signs everywhere.
ReplyDeleteA cool visual that seems to have gone the way of the XFL.
I published a ranking of my favourite Manias on the board a while back and I had WM19 as the fourth-best in history (behind 17, 3 and 24). Honestly, if Booker goes over, Rey/Matt gets five more minutes and Lesnar hits the SSP, it's right up there with 17.
ReplyDeleteScott's big problem with WM19 at the time, if I recall, was that Michaels went over Jericho. It pissed Scott off to no end that Jericho was jobbing to "part-timer" Michaels. Obviously, this criticism goes away with a decade of hindsight since we know HBK was a regular for years afterwards.
Hindsight is definitely 20-20 with this show, however, and it has aged incredibly well. I think the general internet community wasn't too keen on WM19 at the time since the build was just so lame. Hogan/Vince wasn't really a dream match, Rock/Austin (while the Hollywood Rock stuff was hilarious) was the third time we'd seen this matchup at Mania, HHH/Booker had the uncomfortable racial overtones and as for Lesnar/Angle, don't forget that Angle's neck problems made it touch and go that he'd even make it to Seattle. There were rumours that Angle would job to Brock on Smackdown two weeks before the show and that they'd do a hotshot angle to install Benoit or someone as Angle's replacement. Instead, however, they swerved us and had Angle beat Brock in a screwy 30-second result by countout or something and went ahead with the planned main.
The build was so bad that I recall one internet columnist (forget who it was) actually wondering why everyone was so down on what was such an insane card on paper. He wrote something like, "if you told someone three years ago about this Mania, they'd be going nuts with excitement."
James Hetfield? Is that you?
ReplyDeleteI remember getting really bored at work during the summer of '95, killing time on the Internet, and stumbling onto Kevin Podsiadlik's Raw reports.
ReplyDeleteIf I'd known what I was getting myself into, I'd have just worked harder at the damn job.
And that feeling was amplified when I stumbled upon the archives on 411 with JD Dunn and Scott Keith. I just poured through those reviews to see what stuff I liked more than others. It was wild. "What the hell is a Ring of Honor?" That's also how I found the Blog of Doom. It was in 2011 and one day I just wondered "I wonder what this Scott Keith guy is doing now and if he is still angry." Turns out he's still angry and still blogging.
ReplyDeleteIt's crazy but I think the very first time I actually visited the Blog was the day after Money in the Bank 2011. What a crazy ass time to visit this place for the first time.
Godfuckingdammit, I hate living in a completely different timezone. I miss out on shit like this too often.
ReplyDelete1. Al Gore creates The Internet.
ReplyDelete2. A bored grad student creates rec.sport.pro-wrestling (RSPW) on USENET.
3. Every September, the site is bombarded by clueless new college freshmen, but the regulars put them in line. 11 months of the year sees thoughtful discussion on a variety of pro wrestling topics. Professor Herb Kunze is known the world over as the most knowledgeable wrestling fan in the world.
4. AOL introduces USENET to the unwashed masses. The site is now bombarded by even stupider people all of the time, many of whom engage in fantasy wrestling instead of thoughtful discussion.
5. A young Scott Keith tries to remedy the problem by proposing the subsite rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy (RSPWF). After several votes, the new site is born. Scott also creates a document to explain what belongs there, the RSPWFAQ.
6. This works for awhile, but then the spammers invade. The days of unfiltered communication doomed to extinction, wrestling fans and writers flee to separate corners of the World Wide Web.
Someone else can take it from here...
So THAT's what RSPW stands for! 3 years and I never had the gall to ask.
ReplyDeleteThat would have been seriously awesome.
ReplyDeleteHe was honestly one of the only good heel figureheads ever in wrestling (in fact, one of the only five good heel figureheads along with Vince McMahon, Eric Bischoff, Paul Heyman and Mike Sanders).
Every other attempt at a heel figurehead was just the wrestling version of the stereotypical angry black lieutenant that was in every 1980's action movie, only nowhere near as entertaining.
I found the IWC through ITSCWrestling.com in early 1997.
ReplyDeleteI graduated college at the end of 1996, and picked up watching watching wrestling again pretty much immediately (I can't remember watching more than an hour of TV during college, but watched plenty after starting my career).
Searching the internet for details on something, I became interested in the backstage of wrestling itself. It lent a whole new perspective to what I was seeing on my screen. As someone who had stopped watching wrestling from early-1993 until the time I graduated college, I didn't really know about the changes, and was aghast at the fact that people were now cheering the popular heels (in the NWO).
5c) It somehow still gets booked to lose to HHH.
ReplyDeleteOff a cliff
ReplyDeleteYou get an upvote for spelling his name right.
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to think Caliber is Jay Bower...
ReplyDeleteTo quote Vince Russo: "Five Star matches have never drawn ratings".
ReplyDeleteYeah Vinny Ru, let's ignore that the only time in history Smackdown regularly beat RAW in the ratings was the period where Smackdown was focused on in-ring action and you were guaranteed at least one great match per week and let's ignore that John Cena vs. CM Punk was one of RAW's highest rated segments last year and let's ignore the fact that WCW's weekend B-shows in the early 90's (which heavily emphasized in-ring wrestling, by the way) drew higher ratings than the Crash TV garbage that Vinny Ru was putting out in 2000.
But other than those minor examples...
Even with the Network, I hope WWE.com keeps cranking out quality stuff, props to Styles & co. as usual.
ReplyDeleteI was raised in a cable-less bubble by my quite liberal single mother, so I really am not the person to ask about the state of women or gay rights in the late nineties. But I figured that with Seinfeld's "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" gay-bashing was on the out.
ReplyDeleteThat and HOLYFUCKLOOKATALLTHOSEFUCKINGPEOPLEINTHESTANDS
ReplyDeleteBeen around the IWC since 1995 and first discovered Scott when he first started recapping Thunder. Any old timers get nostalgic when they see old wrestling pages from the 90's? Accidentally found myself on http://www.solie.org/ a week ago and spent a long time on the site remembeing what wrestling sites use to be.
ReplyDeleteI loved it and I'm always a fan of the heel getting an intentional DQ to weaken the face for the rest of the match.
ReplyDeleteWrestlecrap when it was this new and amazing idea for nerds.
ReplyDeleteAlso, TheWrestlingFan when it was at it's peak.
I had been online off and on since about 94 but it wasn't until 97 I realized there was this whole IWC with writers specific for wrestling. The most "inside dirt" I got was from PWI or from Vince Russos pen name in WWF Magazine (can't remember the name though). Then I stumbled upon Wrestlezone/Wrestleline, one of those names is right. There I got my first taste of it all, Scott Keith wrote there, Rick Scaia (I use to love his Ask Rick) and Flea. When that shut down I went with 411wrestling with those names, Hyatte, Grut, Eric S., etc. and kept up with them when there was the split when you had two sites 411mania and InsidePulse.
ReplyDeleteBasically this is the only wrestling site I visit now and has been for a number of years. As for the "Community" in IWC, I've seen some not so pleasant sides of it through all these websites. Even today if you look at the 411 comment section, it looks kinda ugly. Here though, on Scott's blog, I really do enjoy the little community we have set up here. Some good, solid discussions and we all seem to have a good time together around here.
HHH wasn't pushed as a monster/mega heel at this point in time. Unless you can fall under that category as a midcarder.
ReplyDeleteTried to find the old EWR diaries with Bossman too. It was written by the Scotsman and I got as far as this page using wayback machine, but can't get any further than this. Maybe Scotsman still has those files http://web.archive.org/web/20020718173619/http://www.scotsmanality.com/index.php?topic=videogamereviews
ReplyDeleteAye, the early days of WrestleCrap.
ReplyDeleteDid SD actually regularly beat RAW in the ratings? I'm assuming you're referring to the 2002/2003 period when SD was great, but according to Meltzer the red brand was beating the blue brand in house shows, at least.
ReplyDeleteI think the IWC really started to come into its own when Caliber Winfield got his break as a writer.
ReplyDeleteVic Venom is the name you can't remember.
ReplyDelete"Vic Venom" what a gindaloon douche he is.
ReplyDeleteI want to say "fuck Russo", but how many times can you say that before it gets old?
ReplyDeleteMost of my early days were spent on WWF.com and random ezboards with like 15 people posting on them. Those were weird days. Moved onto WrestleCrap, and now /wooo/. /wooo/ is the shit if you've never been.
ReplyDeleteWasn't Xavier Doom's Slayground before Wrestlecrap, or did they come out around the same time?
ReplyDeleteYou can always check them out in the wayback machine at archive.org.
ReplyDeleteWM 21 is definitely a card of two halves. Apart from Trish/Christy, everything up to and including Shawn/Kurt is good to great, but then the last three matches are just bad or dull.
ReplyDeleteMmmm, the revisionist history of Triple H tastes so well.
ReplyDeletestarted with dirtsheets (yes, printed ones!) in the mid nineties, which often mentioned certain websites (Torch, Informer, Scoops, ...). but it wasn't until the beginning of the 2000's that I read my first Smark rant.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of like saying "fuck Screech"
ReplyDeleteWe didn't even get internet access at my house until 1998 when I was 16 years old, It was a few months after that I stumbled onto wrestling news websites and thought I became hip to all of this inside info even as I was the markiest mark that ever marked a mark.
ReplyDeleteI think about all the wrestling sites I visited in those days, whether regularly or sparingly. WrestleZone, LWN (long since defunct, but had a small solid community), RajahWWF, 1Wrestling (never cared for that layout). Hell, I remember when ByteThis was a thing. I don't think it was until the following year in college when I stumbled upon the stylings of a certain Scott Keith (along with ScoopThis! and CRZ) thanks to WrestleLine. From there on, I found myself visiting Rantsylvania, followed by The Smarks and then 411Wrestling (now, of course, 411 mania). I can't forget about the early days of WrestleCrap, either. That has all led me up to...here...pretty much the only wrestling site I bother with nowadays.
Semi-threadjack.
ReplyDeleteI was watching WM8 (why is it I can still get super-excited over the Flair/Savage match, but the Savage/Steamboat match from WM3 feels 'm'eh' to me?), and forgot how the title transitioned from Savage through to Hart for WM9.
So, of course, I turned to Wikipedia.
After finding out that it went from Savage, through Flair, to Hart, I got interested in a strange stat.
Between November 1996 (when Sid won to title) to July 2004 (when JBL won the title), nobody held the WWE title for 6 months. In nearly 8 years, nobody held it for more than 175 days at a time.
That's one crazily craptacular stat that I found interesting.
"Scott KeitHHH"
ReplyDeletenice
Wait, other people write for this blog?
ReplyDeleteWrestlCrap in early 2000 and the WWF chatrooms were my first exposure to the IWC although I didnt know the terms at the time.
ReplyDeleteEventually Tom Zenk and the WC forums put it all together for me.
BTW, I didn't want to be an ass, but here's where I have an issue. This whole stink took place over what couldn't have taken more than 15 minutes of his (Caliber's) work:
ReplyDeleteOr I guess cutting and pasting is hard work:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dpoJ0CwwFt0/Tp63ozY_2GI/AAAAAAAABiI/uft-sEVxxn4/s1600/ec5.jpg
same for WrestleMania VIII.
ReplyDeleteI've been a Scott Keith Guy since the late 90's. Rantsylvania, Wrestlemaniacs, Wrestleline, 411 Inside Pulse. I finally jumped over to here from Inside Pulse when Scott posted a link or was talking about it or something. I was aware of "insider newz" from a radio show I used to listen to as a youngster in the early 90's. As soon as I got online in 97' I immediately found the IWC.
ReplyDeleteThe first wrestling site I found when I got internet access in the mid/late 1990s at university was Scoops. I remember going to that site all the time. I also ran a few geocities sites of my own, creating horrible desktop wallpapers and posting stupid emails I would get about people wanting to wallpaper their rooms with them.
ReplyDeleterec.sport.pro-wrestling
ReplyDeleteC'mon, where's the Hyatte love?
ReplyDeleteActually found some of my old site on the wayback machine. Here are some of the emails I used to get https://web.archive.org/web/20010405070126/http://www.geocities.com/cwhiteman/mail1.html
ReplyDeleteThis. In a normal world with only one WWE roster and one World Champion, Brock Lesnar would have been the top guy who would have maybe lost the title at the Survivor Series 02, turning then face to win the Rumble and getting a title shot at Triple H who won the title back from HBK.
ReplyDeleteLove ya miss ya Fuj.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Lcn7IFdAU
SD was a broadcast show, so when it would do (say) a 3.0 to a 3.5 for Raw, it was actually drawing significantly more viewers because the overall cable audience was that much smaller at that point.
ReplyDeleteBut the they'd have one of those shows where Austin (or someone else) would just interrupt EVERY match by stunnering everyone. And those sucked.
ReplyDeleteThis was at least semi-defensible because the audience was along for the ride. It probably wouldn't have lasted much longer after Russo left even if he'd stayed (because things were clearly starting to fall apart around that Smackdown Scott posted last week), but fans hadn't tired of this crap just yet.
ReplyDeleteIt was in WCW, when viewers were jumping ship left and right (or, worse, TNA, when there weren't viewers to lose to begin with), that the bullshit became indefensible.
1999 wrestling was REALLY bad. WHY exactly were the NAO split into singles again? You made stars out of two jobbers by putting them into a tag team and then try them in singles AGAIN.
ReplyDeleteMy college cable package didn't carry TNN, so when RAW moved there from USA in '00 I hit the 'net for RAW recaps. I ended up liking Mr. Tito at LordsofPain for his analysis (I think he was about my age and he marked for the same stuff I did) and CRZ's legendary recaps, probably at Wrestline or wherever. I still think about stuff like, "Triple H is WALKING" every time I watch the show.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, from there it was a short walk to Scott and Rick Scaia, and I followed both of them from there. I think CRZ might have written on Rick's site at one point? Man, it's all such a blur. I still hit up OnlineOnslaught from time to time, though I don't really dig The Rick anymore. I'll go to LOP for quick news tidbits, mostly because it doesn't crash my browser. And I'll go to the Torch every now and then. When I worked a job where I could listen to podcasts, I always enjoyed theirs. Other than that, I'm pretty much one-stop shopping now here at the BOD.
I think so two. That was a great match. I like KOTR 93 in general.
ReplyDeleteI think that Cena could be fine if he didn't have to pander to the kids. Put him in the Attitude Era and he would be fine.
ReplyDeleteOrton was great as the Legend Killer and in 09 during his feud with the McMahons. Since then, he's been booked to be boring or a complete loser.
Neither are in the league of Rock or Austin though.
I go back and forth on that. I still love Bret's counter to end the 91 match, even if Perfect submitted too quickly. But that opening sequence to the 93 match is so, so great, and JR / Heenan / Savage is a better commentary team than Gorilla / Heenan / Piper.
ReplyDeleteThe more interesting argument is the "which one-guy's-back-is-fucked match is better" one - SummerSlam 91 or WM14.
There was a Bryan and Vinny show a while back where Vinny actually made a great point: back then, pre-YouTube, getting your sign on the air was basically the only way for anyone to get a brush with stardom.
ReplyDeleteBecause they'd thought Billy Gunn could be a big star since 1996, and much like HHH they were going to keep trying until it was no longer feasible.
ReplyDeletePlus, Russo probably wanted the tag titles more-or-less exclusive for super-teams who didn't really get along - Kane and X-Pac here, then Big Show and Taker later in the year.
That was a dark time. Traces have been removed.
ReplyDeleteComplete misnomer. It was a Blood SHOWER, not a Blood BATH.
ReplyDeleteSounds about same timelines as me - I got internet in 97 , found RSPW, and then MiCasa , then Wrestlemanicas (that was the Micasa / OO combo, right?) then followed SK around like a little puppy. I actually stopped watching wrestling for years, but followed via recaps...
ReplyDeleteCool your jets. Almost everybody says 1999 sucked.
ReplyDeleteWhy wasn't there any mention of Daniel Bryan or CM Punk in this post? No buys.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the nearly 10 years since July 2004, five wrestlers have held the WWE for 6 months or more:
ReplyDeleteJBL (280 days)
John Cena (twice, 280 and 380)
Randy Orton (203)
Triple H (210)
CM Punk (434)
Quite a contrast, huh?
Next email: "Okay you called my bluff, please use the oiginal banner I made for you. I only asked you to take it down originally in hopes that you'd cave and bring me back, but since you've happily taken it down, I want it back up again because even though I no longer write for the site, I want my memory to live on".
ReplyDeleteWM19 is probably my favorite WM of all time. Jericho kicking Shawn in the nuts was a truly awesome moment.
ReplyDeleteWhenever people think WWE should bring back the Attitude Era, I put them to this.
ReplyDeleteNeat thread.
ReplyDeleteWe got our first family computer for Christmas 1997 (I was 10 and a half). When we got hooked up to The Internet, I'm pretty sure the first thing I did was use the AOL Keyword WWF.
Prior to getting a home computer, I hadn't really ever used one before except at school and that was primitive at best since it was elementary school and all you could do was pretty much use education programs/games, namely Oregon Trail. I would say that by 2000 is when I started learning insider terms and NEWZ. My website of choice was PureWWFRage.
I can't remember how I found Scott. It was probably when I was either a freshman or sophmore in high school. I'd say either 2002 or 2003. It might have been through EWR. I remember during the Katie Vick angle, my friend showed me a hilarious piece that R.D. Reynolds wrote on WrestleCrap and I read that site for a while.
In a way, I wish I had been older in the 90's and could have seen the IWC when it first started. Now, it seems like everyone is an internet fan. Whenever WWE runs a show in a major market, you know they're gonna be all smarky and stuff. I think it'd be cool to be apart of something like the IWC back when it was even more of a niche thing than now and you were able to read all of the writers that you guys have mentioned.
I think the plan was for a Billy Gunn singles push. Hindsight being 20/20... they shouldn't have split.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, 1999 hasn't aged well. I loved it was an 11-12 year old, but it's just not very good. A lot of 1998 and 2000 have aged fine, and 1997 aged really well, but 1999 is kinda terrible.
I loved Micasa and Scoops. Likewise I always followed the newz and SK even not regularly watching.
ReplyDeleteI could read the newsgroup from about 94 through a local BBS. I rarely posted though and mainly just lurked. I was online through AOL in late 95 I think it was and on the WWF areas there.
ReplyDeleteThere were a million geocities pages at that point and those would be the first websites that I read probably. Scoops, Micasa, NFD, John Petrie, Sean Shannon, and Herb Kunze were some of the more well done ones that I remember, and they were mostly all vets of the newsgroup. Read Hyatte's mop ups on Scoops and thought that they were the funniest shit for a long time. Keith was maintaining the FAQ then and hosted in on a geocities page or something. Maybe one hosted by his ISP, I can't remember. He was the FAQ guy though, not a news guy, and he called himself the Netcop.
Then WresleManiacs / WrestleLine happened and all of a sudden wrestling sites were big, professional operations.
..and then a bunch of other crap happened and all of those sites went down, Rantsylvania happened. Sean Shannon had the nWWWo for a while and I read that stuff, and then he started wearing breasts and had his meltdown. Hyatte feuded with everyone. 411 was a big deal, Inside Pulse started. I hung around some other sites, then I was off the internet for a little while completely, and now we're here. I'm late for work.
yeah the "Big Splash" for Warrior was an awful finisher. Especially when using it to finish somebody bigger than he was.
ReplyDeleteDecided to have a bit of fun with the emails from the other thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaIKv8oHCOA
ReplyDeleteTJ: The entire match where Ric Flair regains the NWA World Title from Kerry Von Erich.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk3-KAUOXAA
Kerry comes out to Hulk Hogan's music! Don't know what the hell Flair comes out to, but he leaves with his wife, the belt, and a big ass trophy.
I don't remember exact details or something key that got me into the IWC scene. I think it was around '97 or so because I remember coming home after Kane's debut wanting to know who it was. I also remember being totally glued to every and any website I could find after the Montreal incident because I was a HUGE Bret fan, like Scott.
ReplyDeleteI remember being a particular fan of Online Onslaught for quite a long time. And some of the names mentioned below, like MIcasa. I think it was through Micasa that I started reading Scott's stuff, but I can't honestly remember.
I don't know if this counts, but I did spend a good deal of time with e-wrestling around that time. I know it's generally laughed at by many on here, but it was a fun time for me and gave me a chance to practice my writing. Honestly, there are times I wish I could find a good e-fed to join again because it's still good writing practice and just general fun.
I was there!!! What a night - me and five of my high school buddies, aka 6 of the biggest Rock marks in the world. A couple fun tidbits for the night:
ReplyDelete1) When the Rock came out to start the show, he was already the biggest face that ever faced. My friend literally turned to me and said, "I think I'm going to jizz myself."
2) The biggest heel of the night was Owen Hart on Heat. Hartford's an old-school WWF town and we fucking loved Owen.
3) I am 89% sure my "No Fat Chicks" sign made it on TV.
4) People in my section were laughing during the Undertaker garbage. Like we were really not sure if they were playing it for camp or for drama. Then Stephanie came out like that and it was all so weird.
5) To Scott's last point, the WWF could do literally no wrong in 1999 because they had The Rock & Stone Cold. It's almost unfair in retrospect to have 2 of the biggest draws of all-time, in their prime, in the same company.
'99 was the year Russo went off his meds, and it shows.
ReplyDeleteand the day after the tapings Scoops.com headline was something to the effect of "Huge Mick Foley News!" and knowing that the tapings had happened and what the story was at the time (as well as online sentiment about Foley) it was incredibly easy to figure out what happened without even clicking it.
ReplyDeleteAt Fully Loaded 99, Austin won a match that meant Vince would never, ever be seen on television again.
ReplyDeleteThat has to be my favorite stipulation ever, along with Kane having to burn himself alive at KotR 1998 in terms of stupid shit that wasn't going to happen.
Extreme Warfare? PROMOTION WARS FOREVER!
ReplyDeleteI didn't discover the IWC until summer 2001, when I was home for college and found the greatest old-school video store that had an entire shelf of old Coliseum videos. I was pretty much in heaven.
ReplyDeleteI started searching around to answer some questions I had, found reviewers like Scott, found the IWC and...yeah, that's that. Ended up writing for 411mania.com on and off for a years until the Benoit thing and I was done w/ wrestling for a while.
I did tons of efeds in the 90s. I ran one for a while.
ReplyDeleteI stopped paying attention to this guy after he openly ripped off that cracked article and tried to pass it off as his own. Since I never read any reviews other than the ones Scott posts, I never realized he was gone in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSo...about last night...
ReplyDeleteThis Caliber guy sounds like he has some growing up to do. Now if you'll excuse me I have to drink a litre of chocolate milk from the carton while I watch the movie "Hackers" while playing video games.
ReplyDeleteI'd offer to take his place but I can't even tell a back suplex from a belly-to-back suplex. Which is sad for someone who's been watching wrestling for 30 years...
ReplyDeleteI was at this mania in person and it will always be my favorite mania. My friends and I were seniors in high school and we all cut class and drove the 13 hours from California to Seattle for mania. One of the best weekends of my life and it was capped off by a stellar card top to bottom. I think one of the reasons wwe buried it for so many years is that a lot of the key performers left the company in the years that followed. Brock, Angle, Hogan, Rock and Austin all left within the next few years, so it was rare that we ever saw any xix highlights outside of the occasional hbk/Jericho clip. That said, the show is totally stacked and very watchable. Worth a look for those of you who haven't seen it in a while.
ReplyDeleteWe got the internet in 1995 and I searched WWF the first night just for the fuck of it. First thing I found was something about mark Henry negotiating a 10 year contract and a possible gimmick change for kama. I found scoops and micasa later that night and was all in.
ReplyDeleteI just watched their SummerSlam 2003 match last night. That match is AWESOME. Sure, the Vince drama at the end was a little unnecessary, but I LOVED that feud and that match was better than I remembered it being.
ReplyDeleteAustin seemed so depressed on that documentary. The fact that he had a panic attack mixed with dehydration and high blood pressure and wasn't released from the hospital until that morning, that must have been scary as hell.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Vince was all over Smackdown on a weekly basis during this time, and remained that way until 2003, really.
ReplyDeleteJericho is one of the greatest heels of all time, and the way he does the little things like that are a big reason why. Jericho went from CRYING fter the loss (classic wimpy heel move), to a tearful hug as a sign of respect, to then KICKING MICHAELS IN THE NUTS (that dastardly double-crossing heel!), sums up everything perfect about Jericho at the time.
ReplyDeleteScott wasn't the only one pissed off that Shawn went over - EVERYONE was pissed that Shawn went over. However, with Shawn going on to have a complete career rebirth/renaissance, Jericho stating that he happily volunteered to job (instead of being told to), and all of the love that both Shawn and Jericho heap upon the match, it's just one of those instances where time healed the wound and everything worked out for the best anyway.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it really is amazing how bad the buy-rate was. The build was pretty bad, and 2002 as a whole was pretty awful (minus "Summerslam" and the "Smackdown Six", of course, but virtually every angle was either bland or outright bad, specifically Trips' "Reign of Terror") and left a lasting stink on the product, but the card looked absolutely FANTASTIC on paper, I was just never able to comprehend how it could have basically tanked so badly. It was only a few days ago, during discussions on this board, that I found out about a conversion of the way PPVs were carried (resulting in less people actually able to order it) and some new way of counting international buys. The build certainly did it no favors, but I'm now inclined to believe that the poor buy-rate was due to other factors. Who wouldn't want watch this show?
Anyway, yeah, I love this show, and it's absolutely my favorite "WM" of all time. Besides just being a great card, I also loved how it really seemed to showcase "wrestling" more than any other "WM" - the whole thing felt more like an actual sporting event than an "entertainment" event or a "spectacle", with the simple-yet-effective stage design, the great look of the arena, no big crazy "car crash" match (like a multi-man ladder-match), and much of the focus being on Angle/Lesnar, Shawn/Jericho, Rey/Matt, Eddie, Benoit... this was like the IWC's wet dream.
Except Limp Bizkit. Fuck Limp Bizkit.
It's my favorite WM ever, but I can see Scott's view-point - it was a very good card from top to bottom, but didn't have that one mind-blowing match like Savage/Steamboat, Shawn/Razor, or Austin/Rock to put it over the top.
ReplyDeleteYeah Jericho's heel run against HBK a few years back was one of the best of all time.
ReplyDeleteYep. Looks so much cleaner and fresh.
ReplyDeleteI'll get you some numbers when I get home, but off the top of my head the PPV addressable universe was much too small for some of those numbers to be anywhere near accurate. Also the numbers for Wrestlemania IV and V are much closer together in terms of buys. Some of them are near dead on though (13 for example) and were reported by multiple sources -- I'm not really sure what "reliable" places this guy was getting his numbers and math from however.
ReplyDeleteI liked 19, but the whole HHH/Booker T match left a bad taste in my mouth. I get that they wanted to keep HHH strong; he was headed for Evolution, and needed WM Momentum. My problem is that you don't set up the racist storyline and not pay it off for the face. Any other buildup would have been better.
ReplyDeleteI really haven't liked the overdone gaudy lightbright lighting of arenas or stadiums the last 7 or so years. It doesn't show the crowd properly and its distracting--sometimes minimal is best for things.
ReplyDeleteAnd he STILL delivers a great match.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right... Booker won a raw battle royal for number one contender, last eliminating the rock. Rock was given entrance into the battle royal because he cooperated in screwing hogan at no way out.
ReplyDeleteWM19 could of been even better had they got Goldberg signed in time to take part.
I know Austin wanted to put Rock over but they could of had Austin challenge HHH for the belt and have Goldberg debut vs rock. Would of been historic. Austin could of even won than bischoff strip him due to not being medically cleared to compete. Austin stuns everyone, drops the belt on bischoff and toasts to the crowd saying goodbye.
What are the odds that "the WWE's favorite band in the whole world" line was specifically requested word for word in Fred Durst's contract?
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