Major Award Winner Shawn Michaels

I had forgotten this gem of the mid '90s... after closing the Barber Shop and putting it out of business on WWF Wrestling Challenge a few years before, Shawn Michaels started his own interview segment on WWF Superstars called the Heartbreak Hotel.

Forget all the accolades of being Hall of Famer, World Heavyweight Champion, WWE Champion, Intercontinental Champion, Tag Team Champion, European Champion, and whatever else... as you can see without even playing the video (there on the right), Shawn Michaels was also a coveted winner of a MAJOR AWARD.

Scheduling Note . . . DC Nation

Users of DVRs and more arcane methods . . .

Note that tomorrow marks the debut of the DC Nation programming block on Cartoon Network.  Green Lantern, Young Justice, and assorted shorts will be present.

Feel free to come back here, talk about it, and say rude things about The Russ.  (It's okay; he loves it when you call him Curtain Jerker.)

5 Things That Will Never Go Out of Style in Pro Wrestling #3

3) Attempted vehicular homicide.

I used to be on the other side of the fence with this one, especially after they blew up Vince McMahon’s limo and Chris Benoit decided to do what he did a couple of weeks later. By then, they already started overusing this gimmick (especially when running over other wrestlers), but when done right, it can be pretty cool. There have been several excellent moments with vehicular assault, battery and defacements.

Awesome:

Not awesome:

5 Things in Pro Wrestling That Need to Go Away #4

Wrong Dixie Carter

#4) Dixie Carter

Corey Henson will try to convince you that there are four reasons to watch TNA. They are:

1) Sting can imitate a guy who won an Oscar after he died. (I bet Rich Little can too.)
2) Even a blind squirrel can find Bubba Ray Dudley once in a while.
3) Dixie Carter finally figured out what half a million wrestling fans already knew.
4) TNA has consistently booked a WWE reunion tour from 5 years ago ever since Impact debuted.

Okay, so that’s out of the way.

TNA has a lot of issues in general that prevent them from succeeding, and I won’t list all of them here specifically. I can tell you that many of those issues began when Dixie Carter took control of things, even before she became the spotlight-seeking on-air character she is today.

Are You Following Team Shotgun on Twitter?

SGR: www.twitter.com/shotgunreviews

Troy: www.twitter.com/troybrownfield

Shawn: www.twitter.com/shoegazer72

The Russ: www.twitter.com/The_Russ_Says

Birdsong: www.twitter.com/grimlock74

Janelle: www.twitter.com/gimpnelly

Oseye: www.twitter.com/thequeenoseyeb

Sarah Jaffe: www.twitter.com/seasonothebitch

Lucas: www.twitter.com/LucasSiegel

Kevin: www.twitter.com/khuxford

Steve Ekstrom: www.twitter.com/steve_ekstrom

Jon Hueber: www.twitter.com/wullbinkle

Jeff: www.twitter.com/golemlord

David: www.twitter.com/peposed

Russ B.: www.twitter.com/russburlingame

George: www.twitter.com/hatetodeath

Lan: www.twitter.com/pittsed_off

Angelica LeMinh: www.twitter.com/hiphop_spinster

Vanessa: www.twitter.com/psyphichic

Vanessa and Erika: www.twitter.com/girls_gone_geek

Dirk Manning: www.twitter.com/dirkmanning

Barb: www.twitter.com/demented_pants

Matt Brady: www.twitter.com/bradywriter

Tim: www.twitter.com/tmjanson

Kimmi: www.twitter.com/kimmi_page

Joanna: www.twitter.com/Morcae

Nathan: www.twitter.com/nscranor
All right . . . who did I miss?

FINALLY . . . THE RUSS HAS COME BACK TO SHOTGUNREVIEWS.COM!

Top 5 Favorite Shotgun moments

 by Russell Ray

I'm Russ. I used to write pro wrestling articles and was the managing editor for Shotgun for a while. If you want to know more, go bug Troy. He will probably write a blurb about each of us because I am too LAZY to write my own bio.

Anyway, I think I was the third or fourth person who came on board after the site initially launched in '99, and that period to 2002 was probably my favorite time on the site and what I would consider to be my heyday. At the time, I went through 3 jobs that I hated and wrote as much as I could while on the clock just to get through the day. Here are my top 5 favorite memories of that time:

5) Free schwag. Before the internet economy tanked and then the rest of the economy afterwards, people would throw free stuff at us with just the mention of the word "press". It's only recently with the advent of social media and the resurgence of blogs that this has picked back up again, but if Troy was good at two things, they were the best things to be good at: hiding dead bodies and scoring free (fill in the blank).

In the wrestling boom, we got the trifecta: ECW, WCW Monday Nitro, and a WWE house show. The house show was my favorite wrestling experience ever. I would rather watch a house show than Raw/Smackdown.

ECW was... well, it was ECW, and I guess it's one of those things that at least I could say I did it. The Indianapolis house show was cool from a historical standpoint because it was Mike Awesome's last appearance before running off to WCW (the crowd was about to lynch the guy) and Taz came back from WWE for one night to win the ECW Championship.

WCW was where Troy got to hand a business card to the possible next future Mrs. George Clooney, Stacy Keibler. This was when they were doing Nitro Girl auditions all over the country. Who knew that he would pick the one that would become the most famous?  (Troy's Note: Yeah, I was really going out on a limb there . . .)

Also, I got a complete set of the Royal Rumble Anthology 5 years ago... I guess I still owe WWE that review.