Message-ID: 

"Kevin Porter"  wrote:
| Hmm, I'm a little baffled as to your rating system.
| 
| Not sure how you can give $0.20 to Undertaker V Kane match, and over $2 for
| Goldberg V Lesner.
| I thought the Goldberg V Lesner was about the worst Wrestlemania match I've
| ever seen (And I've seen all but 1). It was awful..... and I think the
| crowds reaction in the opening 5/6 minutes told that.
| I only saw it on TV, but it seemde that both men were booed a lot.

That's what *made* that match.  If it weren't for the great crowd
reaction (and the reaction from Goldberg and Brock upon hearing how
the crowd felt), I probably would have given this match around $0.90


| The Undertaker v Kane match was pretty bad (Compasred to other wrestlemania
| matches), but I thought the atmosphere and return of Taker made up for that
| in some way.  Although that may have looked better to me as I have not
| follwed WWE for a fair few weeks and had no idea he was having an image
| change.

I was fully expecting the UT/Kane match to be bad, but I figured WWE
would try to cover up how bad it was by having some freaky
"supernatural" pyro (lightning or whatever) to "wow" the crowd.
When all they had was the lame-ass druids with torches, it made the
already bad match even worse.  Ugh.


| I didnt think the main event was worth $20.  It WAS good, but still not as
| good as previous main events.
| Then again... I am one of those that think that WWE has got a lot worse
| since the late 90's.

Is there anyone who *doesn't* think WWE has got a lot worse since
the late 90s?

I was a huge fan of Benoit in WCW, as well as a fan of the WWE
style. I'd love to get a DVD of his work in ECW and Japan.

I think part of the reason I liked the match so much was that I
fully expected Benoit to get "held down", even if they decided to
give him the belt.  I figured he'd either get the "tainted win" by
not pinning the current champ, or that HHH would let Benoit win only
after being beaten by HBK first.  The fact that the win was cleaner
than I could have ever guessed just put the match over the top.

Not one of Benoit's best matches by a long shot, I'm sure, but
easily HHH's best match since tearing his quad.


| Good summary though :o)

Thanks.

And I'll snip all parts of the original article other than the three
above-mentioned matches. :)

| "Hack-Man"  wrote in message
| news:gifa509huss966sun8s2f6j8pg38v9op0r{at}4ax.com...
| > Here's my review of the latest outing from WWE, based on "how much
| > money was this match worth?"  At the end, I add it all up and see if
| > the PPV as a whole was worth the sum of its matches.
| >
| >
| > 7.  Goldberg over Brock in 13:48
| >
| > Wow.  Vince believes that only a very small fraction of the
| > viewership reads the internet, but somehow, everyone in attendance
| > must have heard the news of Brock leaving.  There was a deafening
| > "you sold out" chant filling MSG.  Brock looked legit irate at the
| > response from the fans.  I'll bet if he sees any of them on the
| > internet he'll kill them.  Goldberg smirked at the fans getting
| > under Brock's skin.  As the "you sold out" chant started to die
| > down, the fans came right back with the old standby "na na na na, na
| > na na na, hey hey, goodbye".  Ross couldn't just ignore the fan
| > reaction, so he mentioned that Brock's fans in Minnesota must be
| > disappointed and then brought up the "rumors" that Brock might leave
| > WWE to try out for the NFL.  The crowd went back and forth between
| > cheering for Goldberg (because they were pissed at Brock) and booing
| > Goldberg.  The backstage politics made this match much more
| > interesting than it had any right to be.  You could tell that Steve
| > Austin wanted nothing to do with the match at all, and wanted to
| > disassociate from two wrestlers who fans had turned on.  Everyone
| > was (legit) amazed that I called Austin's post-match stunner on
| > Lesnar, Goldberg's return to the ring, and Austin's stunner on
| > Goldberg after drinking beer together.  WTF?  Are online people the
| > only ones who thought that was obvious?  Before the stunner on
| > Brock, he again looked genuinely pissed at the fans (who went into
| > yet another round of "you sold out" chants and "hey
hey goodbye"),
| > gave the MSG crowd a (probably unscripted) double bird, then gave
| > Austin a (probably scripted) double bird before eating the stunner.
| > I laughed out loud when one of the cans of beer that Austin called
| > to be thrown to him hit him right in the head.  This might be my
| > third favorite Goldberg match of all time.  Raven carried him to his
| > best match.  DDP carried him to his second best match.  This is
| > third mainly because of the crowd getting under Brock's skin.  If
| > anyone had told me a week ago that Vince would put Goldberg over
| > Brock even though it was Goldberg's last match, I would have told
| > them they were crazy.  Even *after* the news that Lesnar was
| > leaving, I still expected Goldberg to put him over, since Brock will
| > probably come crawling back when he realizes he can't get a tenth as
| > much income by doing anything else he's qualified for.  I pondered
| > whether enough time had passed to make a joke about Brock flying his
| > new plane into the WTC (since this PPV was from NYC).  Yeah,
| > probably too soon...
| >
| > MATCH RATING: $2.90 (expected value was $0.75 so this turned out to
| > be a lot more interesting than it had any right to be)
| >
| >
| >
| > 11.  Undertaker over Kane in 6:56
| >
| > The entrance was no doubt longer than the match, but in this case,
| > that's not a bad thing--that'sa good thing.  The video entrance for
| > Kane was nice, as up til now it had been a dot matrix of the New
| > York skyline, but now changed to the New York skyline with all the
| > buildings on fire.  I'll also point out now that at the top of the
| > ramp where the wrestlers stand on the platform, they walked across a
| > giant dot matrix screen.  Cool effect.  It'll be interesting to see
| > if this is something that WWE rented for one night or if it'll be a
| > new part of the Raw set from now on.  Anyway, I was apparently the
| > only one who knew that Paul Bearer all but confirmed that he would
| > be at Mania by canceling all his indy bookings.  Mark wrestled
| > without hair extensions, wore a cowboy hat to the ring, and didn't
| > *totally* go into no-sell mode for the first half of the match.  The
| > crowd popped for the sit-up, and called Taker's tombstone spot for
| > him ahead of time so he wouldn't forget.  I was thankful that they
| > kept the match as short as they did and that Taker only
| > half-heartedly no sold for the first few minutes before going into
| > full no-sell mode.  There was an unintentional shoot comment by one
| > of the announcers talking about Undertaker burying all of his
| > opponents (or something like that).  I expected a bit more pyro in
| > Taker's entrance instead of simply Bearer walking to the ring and a
| > few druids holding torches.  I laughed at how it would suck if the
| > torches burned down MSG since then Benoit would be robbed of his
| > world title victory.
| >
| > MATCH RATING: $0.20 (expected value was $0.20)
| >
| >
| > 12.  Benoit over HHH and HBK
| >
| > They did a better job than I expected in coming up with reasons for
| > one person to be "knocked out" while the other two fought.  While I
| > still would have preferred a clean win of Benoit over HHH without
| > HBK being inserted in the match, this exceeded all expectations I
| > had for the match given the three men involved.  While I was 60%
| > sure Benoit would win, I had the nagging suspicion it would be over
| > HBK or a lot more tainted than it was.  To start out the match,
| > Hebner checked all three men for foreign objects.  I wondered out
| > loud how he missed HHH's and HBK's blades.  This had perfect
| > build-up throughout the match, perfect psychology, a gusher of a
| > blade job by HBK (he legit looked like he was out of it at the end,
| > which worked perfectly why he wouldn't be involved when Benoit got
| > the win over HHH) and a blade job from HHH as well (the only two
| > blade jobs of the night).  They also did a nice spot with Benoit
| > going through the Smackdown announce table.  They teased a lot of
| > false finishes, including a perfect spot where Benoit had HHH in the
| > crossface and HHH was tapping but his hand never touched the mat
| > (plus another one where Benoit had HBK in the crossface, HBK wanted
| > to tap, but HHH grabbed HBK's hand to keep him from tapping).
| >
| > MATCH RATING: $20.00 (expected rating was $2.00)


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