Fire Ryan Poles | Fire Ben Johnson

Before I get to my list, I wanted to have a say on the career of the one and only Shawn Michaels. On Monday night when he announced he was retiring from wrestling, I about cracked a tear as well as millions of fans probably did too. If anybody were to make an argument on who is the greatest wrestler of all time, Shawn Michaels is at least in the top five. His speech was about as genuine as you could ask for. He admitted that he made a lot of dumb decisions in his life. His career was suppose to be over in 1998 after his back injury. In 2002, he made his comeback and gave it eight more years. As far as someone who would use steroids, Micahels has looked like he did it the right way. His body did not change over the years and there were no major “freak injuries”. He was one of the few guys left that could actually wrestle. He was damn good at it and for that, I am going to miss him.

Continuing with my list from a couple weeks ago are the other three most underrated wrestlers since the Attitude Era.

1. Christian

The self-proclaimed “Captain Charisma” has been wasted by WWF/WWE management for the better part of a decade. When Christian went to TNA a few years back, he won the championship and was a top star. He came back to WWE last year and won the ECW title which meant absolutely nothing. He basically has been thrown around without getting the big break. When he first started, he was a tag team champion with Edge. They won numerous titles together. They both had some hilarious segments in their “Five seconds of flash photography”. I believe he also won the Intercontinental and European titles about nine years ago.  It is such a shame how this guy in his mid-30’s now only has a few years left in him and still has not won the WWE/World title.
2. Kane

Kane made his debut in 1997 as the Undertaker’s half brother. He played the perfect bad guy. His entrance in person is loud but also pretty bad ass. He has won numerous tag team titles and even the Intercontinental title. One match that I loved was the Inferno match he had with the Undertaker. The ring was surrounded by fire and was a unique thing to see. In 2002, he lost the mask and became a more “evil” character so to speak. After that, in a storyline mode he would poor gasoline on people and try to set them on fire. If there is one thing I wish management would have done with him in his prime, it would be to make him champion. They did it in 1998 at the King of The Ring against Stone Cold, but he lost it the next night. Now, he is basically just a guy in the locker room who helps out the other young stars out. It pisses me off that in a couple years, he will be done wrestling and will have just a one day championship run to show for it.

3.  Matt Hardy

In his mid-30’s, he is still giving it a go. In the locker room according to many reports through time, he was never a guy to bitch about things. He comes to work, he does his job and doesn’t say a word about it. If I were him, I would have been bitching up a storm many years ago. He has been underused in so many occasions. Once again, a multiple time tag team champion. He was also the European, Hardcore and United States champion. Since the ECW title doesn’t count as a major title in my opinion, he is another wrestler that deserved to win the big one. He has been bullshitted on so many occasions. One particular one was in 2005 when his real life girlfriend of six years Lita cheated on him and ultimately led to his release due to differences with management and Edge off the camera. Now, he is basically doing the same thing Kane is. He is just another one of the guys now and is not in contention of a World Title. Instead, WWE decides to give retards like Sheamus and Drew McIntyre titles in such short time. What a shame.

Get use to it. This is how it’s going to be. Joel Quennville once again took his stupid pills and put in Cristobal Huet. I don’t know why. Antti Niemi records two shutouts in one week then sits for this game. A game in which if the Blackhawks could have won would have put at least an extra point in the standings away from Phoenix and put more pressure on San Jose. Instead, Cristobal Huet decided to start my Thursday night piss fest along with the Bulls losing by nearly 30 points shortly after.

Good friend of the site MadCityMac had his take in an earlier post:

“I didn’t see the game, and it doesn’t sound like it was completely his fault, but it sounds like Cristobal Huet completely shit the bed for the Hawks last night. Gives up a goal 32 seconds into the game? WTF!!??!! Can’t they trade him for a used puck bag?”

A used puck bag is asking for too much Mike. This pile of shit gave up seven goals last night. SEVEN. I don’t care if it wasn’t completely his fault. That is an awful performance. If he is the starting goalie in the playoffs, then the picture above is what it is going to look like in mid-April.

If there is one thing that I find a shame in the world of professional wrestling, it’s not using a talent to their full potential. Throughout time and even today, there have been many wrestlers who just weren’t given a great opportunity to become big stars either because of injury or lack of hard work, motivation, attitude in the locker room or due to legal troubles.

In this post, I will list some of the most underrated wrestlers since the Attitude Era (1998).

1. Val Venis

His gimmick when he was at his peak was a porn star. He usually grabbed women out of the audiences for a makeout session in the ring on live TV. The picture above was with Alicia Webb (Ryan Shamrock). Showing sex tapes of wrestlers girlfriends or wives during the show were absolutely hilarious and entertaining. He won the Intercontinental, European and Tag Team Championship all in a span of two years. During his mid-card run, he was rumored to be in the “renovated” D-Generation X along with the Godfather (More on him later) to help boost him to the main event. He joined the much hated but well done “Right To Censor”

Unfortunately after that run in 2001, he had some injury problems. Before his wrestling days, he was involved in a motorcycle accident and he had to get surgery to repair some bone spurs from those days. He attempted a comeback in 2003 and since then has been just another one of the guys. He has helped some young wrestlers since then. He was in TNA earlier in the year but asked to be released from his contract to wrestle in Mexico.

2. D-Lo Brown

D-Lo Brown was one of my favorite wrestlers growing up. His character was one of a kind. He became a popular figure when he was with The Rock and Godfather in the Nation of Domination. In the summer of 1998, he won the European Championship. His finishing move, the Low Down was executed to perfection. It was cool seeing him wear a chest protector so he could perform his finishing move. During his European Championship run, he would have the ring announcer announce a different European city and country that he would hail from. He like Val Venis who he had a rivalry with during those two years also won the Intercontinental and Tag Team Championship. At one point, he held both the European and Intercontinental titles.

Brown was off TV for part of 2000 and most of 2001 for reasons unknown although it had been rumored he was in the doghouse for the major injury caused to Droz. He botched a powerbomb and Droz slammed his neck right into the mat causing him to be paralyzed. In 2002, he was sent down to WWE’s developmental territories to work on his wrestling moves. He attempted a comeback in 2002, 2003 and 2008 but it just wasn’t the same. These days, he is a road agent for TNA. What a waste of talent.

3. The Godfather

Another wasted talent by part of the WWF/WWE. He won all major titles except for the big one. He would walk out with a few different ho’s every show. The funny part of this was, that these ladies were actual strippers. WWF asked these local strip clubs if they could use some of their employees on their shows. The Ho-Train was a finisher that everyone loved. All three wrestlers (Godfather, Brown and Venis) were suppose to be the next big three to take WWF to the top along with Stone Cold, Rock and Triple H.

He had a great run from 1998-2001 when he was the Godfather as well as the Goodfather in Right To Censor. Since that run almost a decade ago, he wrestled only a few times. Right now, he is managing a few clubs out in Vegas. What could have become of this great talent was very unfortunate.

– This completes the first part of this article. I will have the second and final part on another three talents coming up in the next week or so. Stay tuned.

It’s that time of year again. Leave some of your picks in this thread. I have Cornell beating Temple then Wisconsin (Sorry Mac). Siena beats Purdue and Murray State takes down Vanderbilt.

I also have West Virginia beating Kansas in the championship game.

Discuss.

Well isn’t this just excellent.

1. How about the Blackhawks forgetting how to play hockey this past week? Stupid turnovers. Dumb penalties. Sound like another team in town? Oh don’t forget the odd-man rushes. For one weekend, the goalies were not to blame completely.

2. Chicago Bulls – Suck. Moving on.

3. Fighting Illini basketball – This is exactly what I expected. This is what has been going on for the last four, five years. Blown leads, missed opportunities and missed free throws. They can beat teams like Wisconsin twice, Michigan State and Clemson but lose to the teams like Bradley, Utah and Georgia. They take Ohio State to the limit and then piss all over themselves in the final seconds. Enjoy the NIT. Turds.

I’ll have a March Madness thread before the games on Thursday. Feel free to talk about what upsets you may have. I plan on working on a bracket when I finally get all my work done at my real job.

I have been finding it very hard to get excited about this teams chances of  doing well and making the playoffs. The window for the Cubs was 2008, but they couldn’t get it done. The window is closed. I am just hoping that Ricketts has enough sense to see Hendry for what he is, and fire him.

Hendry has spent countless of millions on players that haven’t produced to expectation. He has a fetish for signing players that have  injury issues, and try to rehabilitate them to where there were. The newest victim is Nady. Hendry shelled out over 3 mil for a player that might not see the field until June.

What. The. Fuck.

On Sunday, I decided to go to the Blackhawks game. As soon as I heard on the radio that Cristobal Huet was starting, I should have done the right thing and turn the car around to save a trip. But then again, I figured I got lucky enough to get tickets three rows back behind the net at face value. So then that way, I could get a clear view of the Blackhawks lighting the lamp. Well, there was plenty of that. However…

The lamp was going off quite a bit in the 2nd period. Four goals in just over 10 minutes by the phenomenal Cristobal Huet. I’ll cut him slack on I believe the second goal because he was screened. However the other three were his fault. But no excuses. Not even the best of goalies will have an excuse for such a piss poor performance. And as I mentioned, I was sitting in the 3rd fucking row and I happened to catch the highlights when I got back home so I have a pretty damn good reason for going on this rant.

It sure beats me why Joel Quenneville continues to put this bag of shit out in net. How bad does this guy have to be to lose his job? I have been screaming for Antti Niemi to be the starter all year. Is he awesome? Who knows. Will he kick ass in the playoffs? I don’t have an answer for that either. But what I do know is that Huet is NOT the answer. He will never be the answer. And let’s not get on the discussion of “Huet needs to be the goalie because of his experience”. Experience of what? Being bad? What a bucket of bullshit. Experience means nothing. You are either good at what you do or you suck.

So ahead other fans. Call me a meatball. Go ahead and tell me that Huet is the best option. We’ll find out come playoff time if your guy puts his foot up all of our asses.

Even Jeremy Roenick says the Blackhawks probably won’t win because of Huet. He isn’t the best analysis out there but he knows a lot more about hockey than I do. I just don’t want this season to go in the shitter in the early rounds of the playoffs because this team is really good. One of the top five teams in the league. Maybe the Blackhawks best chance to win the cup because of all the salary issues they will encounter in the next couple years. Quenneville has just over a month to fix this problem. It’s simple: Bench Huet.

Oh and getting off the topic of hockey, after the game we went to Texas Roadhouse for a nice dinner. Don’t ever go there.

Fire away.

Illini slipping…

Bulls charging…

And I am not sure about anyone else, but I am really enjoying watching the Olympics mainly curling and hockey. What a game Sunday night between USA and Canada. Our good friend Nemo is probably liking this outcome.