Cross Face Chicken Wing

Don't think it has anything to do with it. Chewing a gum doens't look very good either. Well, you don't pay attention. I have been with a smoker. I don't smoke, never had. She didn't smell like tobacco smoke. Her appartement didn't either. I didn't mind her smoking around me, even after sex. There are degrees in smoking, and only hardcore smokers really smell bad. Those I couldn't bare. Now, I do agree chewing has one advantage over smoking, is that it doesn't bother the people around. It's more respectful of the surroundings. But like Loss said, Flair and chewing just don't mix. Especially the disgusting wya he was doing it during the interview. Now, he might be a shitty chewer for all I know. I'm sure you could get used to a smoker and people's tolerance levels are different. But imagine a single guy going out and trying to style and profile like Ric Flair and bring home a lady at the end of the night. Unless large amounts of alcohol are involved, smoking hurts the dude's chances of scoring. Whereas if he was an experienced chewer, the women would never even know he had a nicotine addiction.

The not living the gimmick part I can see because Flair is a terrible chewer. He looks like me when I was 16 and had my first dip. Most of my friends that chew are good at it. You never know they have one in and they don't spit into a bottle. And the chewers I know make a helluva lot more money than the smokers. Chewing is viewed as more disgusting than smoking only because society for some reason has chosen to glammorize smoking and portray chewers as uneducated rednecks. Sure, a lady smoking on our TV screen might look sexy, but that's because we don't have to go home with her and smell that shit in her house, sheets, clothes, etc.

For me too. I would have never guessed Flair had this habit. Which is, by all account, a disgusting thing. I was picturing Flair smoking cigars, not acting like Black Bart. Smoking is far more disgusting than chewing. How is Flair supposed to style and profile and bring home all the ladies when his breath, fingers, hair, clothes, car, house and bedroom all reek of nicotine and smoke? An experienced dipper can have in a chaw without anyone even knowing it. When finished, just take it out, throw in a piece of gum, and resume styling and profiling.

I could care less who ends up as the GM or Raw, but this feud has me interested, nonetheless. Long should get some credit for that. When he's on screen, there's very little wasted time. He does what needs to be done, does it reasonably well, and the story advances. It also helps that there's actual physical confrontation in the GM feud angle. Long and John L. actually put their hands on each other every now and then. The wrestlers involved actually wrestle or physically confront each other. Unlike the other big angles currently going on, the GM angle segments aren't 20-minute slam poetry battles or long-winded discussions between three guys who came up together in the 90s.

Zumhoffe ran a show featuring the Honkey Tonk Man at a tiny bar near my hometown about a year ago. I had a few beers with Zumhoffe after......strange dude.

I was going to say that this thread needs more pictures until I saw the above picture. Probably best if we just talk about the scummiest looking wrestlers

Who else is drunk on St. Patty' s Day? Better yet, who else is drunk on St. Patty's Day and positing on this website? And even better yet, who else is drunk on St. Patty's Day, posting on this site, and popping in Disc 3 of the ECW set before passing out?

Hate Pro Wrestling? Blame Rick Santorum http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/ri...wf-pro-wresting

For what it's worth, on the rare occasion that I watch Joshi or a women's match from a different promotion, I need to watch it when my wife is out of the house. She cannot stand women's wrestling. Drives her nuts. When I ask her why, she just says it's "weird," "just wrong," or "gross."

Just wonder how red faced and naked he would be at the end! The strain on his face would've caused all the blade wounds on his forehead to start gushing at about the 10-minute mark.

If Flair was cutting weekly promos that lasted over 20 minutes in 1986 (or '89, or '98, or whenever) it probably would've sucked.

Yeah, everything I read online is shitting all over the Rock. I'm enjoying his return, even if the feud has turned into some sort of slam poetry battle or sequel to 8 Mile. It's probably because I don't really watch the modern product and am feeling nostalgic about having the Rock back on my TV. Edit: Is part of the hate because the Rock's segments are so damn long? Back in the day, his promos might've had more bite because they were just that, promos. They were to the point and got across what needed getting across. Now when the Rock comes on TV it's for an entire segment, usually the longest segment of the show.

Definitiely the former, in my opinion. Especially '96-97.

Well, you must not be a very good teacher then.

Exactly. TV is the company's bread and butter. Same goes for the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL, even if sports talk radio remains fixated on live attendance.

For a lot of teams, especially in the NFL, revenue from ticket sales is the icing on the cake. They make their money through the mega TV contracts and sponsorship deals.

That's fine if WWE wants to use YouTube or other methods of online viewing to make it more convenient for people to watch. But you need to make money off of those types of viewers. The best way to do that is to try and turn them into live viewers. That audience is much more valuable if it's a live-viewing audience. Agree on this. WWE doesn't understand that long-term thinking actually helps TV ratings. This type of short-sightedness is a problem in many publicly traded companies, unfortunately. Maybe the Oscars is a bad example, but take any show. Mad Men, Walking Dead, American Idol, whatever. What's the incentive to watch those shows live? The main one is the ability to share that live experience with others and experience the buzz of something that is happening NOW. If you don't care about any of that, then you might as well just pirate the show online or DVR it. That's fine from the consumer point of view, but a problem if you're the company trying to make a buck.

I just finished listening to the latest Wrestling Culture podcast and I gotta disagree with Dylan on the importance of TV ratings. In my opinion, TV ratings matter. Big time. And as long as wrestling is on major cable networks, ratings will matter for the foreseeable future. Yes, it's easy to just DVR the weekly TV or watch it somewhere online. But from both the company and fan perspective, it's much better when people watch the product live. It makes the product more valuable, both for the immediate bottom line and the product's long-term viability. Of course there's the usual arguments about higher ratings resulting in more ad revenue and overall revenue. I don't need to get into that. To me, TV ratings mean more people talking about your product and making the live version of your product sort of a family or communal experience. You want people watching your product live, tweeting about it, talking about it, and creating buzz. The more people that join this unique live experience, the more likely it is they'll plunk down money for a PPV so they can experience that version of the product live also. Ditto for attending live shows, buying merch, or subscribing to a wrestling on-demand service or television network. The "I can just DVR it or watch it online" (legally or illegally) argument applies to basically anything on television. The programming that still gets ratings for its live products is the programming that will continue making money and survive long term. Take the Oscars or any live sporting event, for example. It'd be easy to just DVR these events and watch them later so you can fast forward the commercials and other boring parts. But people still want to watch it live. They want to share their thoughts on Twitter after a huge Blake Griffin dunk or rant on a live blog when when some actress drags out her acceptance speech too long. They want to go to work the next day and complain about the coach's playcalling in the final two minutes of a football game. That's part of the live communal experience and there's still a lot of value in that. It's not fun to hear those types of conversations and turn away because you haven't watched it on DVR or downloaded it from some torrent site yet. Having people sporadically watch your programming over the course of a few days/weeks/months is much less valuable than having those people watch it live. I'm rambling a bit now, so I'll end with a question: If TV ratings are not (or one day, will not be) the correct metric to measure the success of televised wrestling, what is?

I probably should have been a little more clear..... I didn't stop watching wrestling, period, because of the Dungeon of Doom, but I quit following it week to week. The NWO roped me back into week-to-week viewing for a while (around the Sting/Hogan stuff) but that faded quickly. I still am, and always will be, a wrestling fan. I don't think anything will ever cause me to stop watching all my old footage and DVDs. As far as following the modern product week to week, those days are done and I don't see myself getting sucked back in any time soon. And I hold the Dungeon of Doom responsible.

You're really going to make me go in-depth on the Dungeon of Doom? I love gimmicks also, but there's a fine line between a gimmick and just plain stupid. Obviously, everyone's line is different and the Dungeon of Doom crossed my line. Why? I think because even though I enjoy gimmicks, I still need the gimmick to be somewhat beileveable. Casting spells on people and having mummies wander into the ring isn't remotely believeable and, to me, was just stupid. As stupid as gimmicks like American-hating Sgt. Slaughter or Brutus the Barber Beefcake might have been, they didn't bother me because they were somewhat believeable. In my young brain, an Iraqi-sympathizer trying to beat up Hulk Hogan or some juiced up dude in mesh pants cutting a guy's hair after he beats him up made sense to me, at least a little bit. When the Dungeon of Doom came around, nothing made sense and all I saw was stupidity. But like I said in my original post, I'm sure there were other factors. I was getting older, wrestling wasn't "cool" at the time, etc. I'm still a huge wrestling fan -- my closet is full of 80s and early 90s footage -- but ever since the Dungeon, I haven't paid much attention to the modern product. Maybe it's not completely fair to blame most of my disinterest in modern wrestling on the Dungeon of Doom, but that's the time period and storyline that stick in my head as the one that drove me away.

I'm taking Loss's advice and starting a thread instead of continuing this discussion in the large general comments thread...... In that aforementioned thread, I made a comment about spotting only three females in the audience through the first disc of an ECW comp. This eventually led to a few posts about silliness/crudeness in wrestling, and what angles/gimmicks eventually drove people away from caring about wrestling. I threw in the towel when the Dungeon of Doom came along. I was about 15 years old, so perhaps I was naturally growing out of wrestling because it wasn't "cool" at the time, but the Dungeon of Doom definitely put me over the edge. I tried, tried and tried to tell myself that the whole schtick was so bad, it was good, but I just couldn't do it. I was done, and haven't cared about the modern product all that much since. I came back for a bit when the NWO was formed, and stuck around for a while because of the cruiserweights on Nitro, but bored quickly of the NWO and their rambling, pointless promos/angles. I watched a few PPVs during the Attitude era because my friends enjoyed wrestling once it became cool again, but never did follow it on a weekly basis. I'm giving the WWE another try, mostly because I went to Raw a few weeks back and am intrigued by Rock/Cena, Taker/HHH and anything CM Punk does. I don't see my interest lasting much longer, though. Unless Rock, Taker, or Punk is on the screen, the WWE is barely watchable. Is it fair to blame my apathy toward modern wrestling solely on the Dungeon of Doom? No. If the Dungeon of Doom was the ONLY horrible thing in wrestling back then, I'm sure I could look past it and enjoy the other stuff. But I distinctly remember watching Kevin Sullivan dissapear into a mist or some other bullshit, turning off the TV, and never enjoying wrestling the same way again.

I just finished the first disc in Will's ECW set. I think there was something like 12 matches on disc 1 and, by my count, I spotted a total of three females in the audience. If I set the over/under at 99.5 for total number of females in the audience throughout the entire set, which side is everyone taking? It looks bleak now, but I'd still take the over. I'm guessing we get more ladies in the stands as we get deeper into the 90s.

I am not Dylan. But I would rate every single one of those guys above Triple H.