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Bob Morris

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  1. Well, kind of. I believe he first showed up in WCW under the Nightstalker gimmick, then went to WWF as Adam Bomb, before going back to WCW as Wrath. Wrath was arguably his most successful gimmick.
  2. I like Bret Hart but don't care for him varying his elbow from the second rope where you always know when he'll hit it or miss it... or when he just jumps off the ropes and catches a foot to the face. The "you can't powerbomb Kidman" spot was when I started not liking Kidman as much as I used to.
  3. I recently bought the nWo DVD and thought a good point was raised about the nWo, which I think nicely explains the biggest problem of the Attitude Era. With the nWo, the whole point of the angle was to see how many times people could be "shocked" as to what was happening on Nitro. The introduction of new members, the backstage attacks, the way the vignettes and promos were presented -- all of it was about showing stuff that people had not been used to seeing before. But then it got to the point that all the bookers could figure out is "how can we top what we did last time?" In the nWo's case, it was all about who they could roll out as a new member and what they could do for their next backstage attack. When it got to that point, the intrigue started to fade. So it was with the Attitude Era. It was too much about "what can we do to top this?" and soon the intrigue started to wear off. Russo's departure allowed a new team to take over and inject some new life into the product, but that soon wore off as well, in large part because they fucked up the Trip/Steph/Angle love triangle storyline. There has always been a pile of crap to go alongside the truly enjoyable material that pro wrestling rolled out. But when it becomes too much about how a promotion can keep topping what it did the last time, the intrigue wears off and people see it more as a cliche than can't miss TV. Also, most pro wrestling bookers and writers these days don't understand what complex characters are all about. I'll put it to you this way: There may be "shades of gray" with complex characters, but that's more in the sense of what is the difference between the Superfriends show of the 1970's and 1980's and the DC Animated Universe. Had Vince Russo, for example really understood what "shades of gray" was really all about, he would have been a far better writer and booker than he was.
  4. Certainly not the news I wanted to hear about this morning. Best wishes to Lawler for a speedy recovery. Sounds like Cole did a heck of a job keeping people informed and I certainly understand why he would not do commentary the rest of the night. Let's hope this is the last time we see Lawler wrestle again. That isn't the type of thing a 62-year-old man should be doing, even if it's just once in a while.
  5. So let's talk about the Bushwhackers instead of Demolition in terms of "tag teams that got over" and Rikishi instead of Kane in terms of "strengths as a draw" instead.
  6. Well, let me see if I can put the Luger saga together, sticking with JCP, WCW and WWF (although I'm missing some dates, just counting the number of turns). Debuts as heel in JCP with Four Horsemen. Turns face after being kicked out of Horsemen. Turns heel to kick off feud with Ricky Steamboat (summer 1989). Turns face to save Sting from Horsemen beatdown (spring 1990). Turns heel out of nowhere at GAB 1991. Debuts as heel in WWF under The Narcissist gimmick (early 1993). Turns face after bodyslamming Yokozuna (summer 1993). Returns to WCW as a quasi-face (fall 1995 return), before turning heel at Halloween Havoc 1995. Remains heel until Hall and Nash arrive and turns face (summer 1996). Remains face until nWo Black and White-Wolfpack reunion, then turns heel on Goldberg (January 1999). Remains heel until New Blood-Millionaire's Club angle begins, then turns face (spring 2000). Disappears from TV then returns as heel (late summer 2000). I think that covers everything.
  7. I've covered our state high school wrestling tournament for the last 12 years for a newspaper that used to employ me. It's a goddam nightmare. The kids are nuts. The coaches are nuts. The parents are nuts and the fans are nuts. These kids starve themselves during wrestling season so they can make weight and crawl all over some other kid for five minutes, crossing their fingers that they won't get any kind of skin disease. Amateur wrestlers are totally insane. But I bet it'd be cool to see at an Olympic level. You'll probably enjoy it. But don't go in expecting it to be anything like pro wrestling. It's two TOTALLY different things. Re: the bolded part -- just about every high school sport has nutty people out there, from parents who think their kid needs more playing time or that their kid is destined to be a superstar, to coaches who shout too much for their own good, to kids who truly do crazy things. Granted, amateur wrestling is one of the few sports in which you have to maintain a certain weight at all times, but there's plenty of lunacy in high school sports in general.
  8. On the subject of guys winning titles cleanly, when it comes to heels, there's always going to be a certain amount of cheating done by the heels to get the title because that's what heels do. The problem comes when overbooking comes into play. It's one thing to have the heel to use a foreign object, it's another thing when there is a ref bump and multiple people interfering that determines the outcome. I think the real issue that comes into play is that poor booking in general. I've already mentioned how WWE Creative isn't good at booking a storyline from start to finish, so when you aren't able to do that, you aren't going to be able to make the belts meaningful and thus truly put over somebody as being the top guy and stressing the importance of the belt. While the base of the storyline should be regarding "Wrestler A has the belt, Wrestler B wants it," you have to be able to put the details together to truly make it work.
  9. Texas. It's not literally for every application, but essentially every time she gets hired anywhere, regardless if she's just been fingerprinted yesterday for a different job. Ah, Texas, the same state that has a history curriculum in which certain politicians decided they know more about the Founding Fathers' religious beliefs than anybody else does. Hey, if we are turning this into a discussion about the education system, may as well keep it going.
  10. The real problem with trying to put Studd over at the Rumble was that, when Hogan and Savage were gone, the crowd wasn't really into the match until it came down to Studd and DiBiase, and then it was more based on the fact that DiBiase had bribed his way into getting No. 30. I don't know if it would have helped to have Studd be the guy to come out when Hogan was getting double teamed by the Twin Towers to generate a little more heat for him, but regardless, they were clearly building to Brutus Beefcake being the guy taking Savage's spot as close friend and associate of Hogan.
  11. Have to agree with the remarks about Heenan in WCW: He was a fish out of water there. In WWF, he worked well alongside Gorilla, Vince, Piper, Savage and even Jim Ross. During KOTR 93, Ross and Heenan were quickly able to work off each other. I'd absolutely put Cornette at the top of my color commentator list. Cornette could get over the match, the participants and everything else while still dropping in enough one-liners to crack you up. Heck, he even worked well as a face commentator for the brief period he and the Midnights were faces in WCW. Haven't seen Terry Funk mentioned -- I thought he was pretty solid with his run as a commentator during early 90s WCW. I can remember him being pretty effective calling alongside Chris Cruise on the syndicated WCW shows.
  12. The 1998 to 2001 Angle run is what really makes clear why so many here say Angle went downhill as a worker. He went from being a guy who generally knew how to put it all together to a guy who was just a spot machine. I really want to know what happened there. I know his body was really banged up but I don't think that's the reason why. All I can figure out was that he got addicted to the crowd popping for his high spots and that's all he wanted to do.
  13. Catching up on topics... * Regarding Russo: I think the best way to describe him is Homer Simpson in the episode "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" in which Herb lets Homer design a car his own way, with the end result being an embarrassment. In other words, Russo is fine to contribute some ideas but you don't want him overseeing the entire process. * Regarding Hogan: It's been detailed in the thread about Dave Meltzer writings that Hogan's creative control only applied to the finishes of his matches, but then Dave goes on to basically say, "Stars have power." So it wouldn't have mattered what creative control was in Hogan's contract... because he's a star, and given Bischoff not being a proper "boss," Hogan would have gained power anyway. Stars have power and that's the nature of the business. * I don't think Vince McMahon being involved with the IPO or anything else had anything to do with Russo gaining power. I think it had everything to do with Vince McMahon being a mark for the entertainment side of the business. So when Russo kept giving him that, he gained influence and Pat Patterson lost some of it. Once Russo left, you could tell Patterson's influence was returning -- it wasn't simply "more time for matches" but "matches flowed better." Plus the writers who took over generally did a better job with storylines being built instead of the "short-attention span theater" Russo was notorious for. * Kevin Sullivan actually did a good job with booking the midcard early on. One thing people need to remember is that, while guys like Benoit, Malenko and Eddy were familiar to hardcore wrestling fans, the average WCW fan who started tuning it wasn't as familiar with them. They each got over at some point, but it wasn't immediately upon arrival. The problem with Sullivan was, after all his work with Brian Pillman just led to Pillman getting his release and going elsewhere, he was desperate to recreate the magic and everything backfired on him, from Nancy and Chris truly becoming romantically involved to the whole Sullivan/Benoit angle just taking too long to wrap up. I agree that the Radicalz were likely just using Sullivan's appointment as the main booker as their reason to get out of WCW because they were just tired of the backstage issues. And, yes, much of the Sullivan stuff in 2000 was pretty dull, but that's in part because of those talent defections, in part because Sullivan really wasn't in touch with what the audience wanted, and in part because I think Sullivan was one of many in WCW who truly didn't care any more.
  14. Regarding Jim Cornette: They've added brief segments from a past interview he did for them for DVDs when he was still with the company. It wouldn't surprise me if Cornette was talking up Mid-South during that interview and they'll just throw in clips of that for any planned DVD.
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