Jingus

And admittedly to the larger argument, I did miss that this original meeting took place "about a decade back" and thought it was much more recent. So, okay, his WWE tenure wouldn't count, and that would of course hurt his overall recognizability. Still: he wrestled in her country, she'd never wrestled in his.

Feuds that tend to last exactly three months (or in other words, three MSG shows/three PPVs).

I don't see how one leads to the other, considering the number of wrestlers/promoters/trainers who are well known for watching a shitload of tapes. All I can say is, my own experiences with these matters were very different than yours. ECW was incredibly popular with the vast majority of wrestling fans I've ever personally known, and I'd say more of these folks remember Sandman than would recognize New Jack, Shane Douglas, or maybe even Tommy Dreamer.

I'm also giggling at how you think the fact that apparent ignorance of American wrestlers shown by one middle-aged Japanese woman who never worked in America, is somehow a stunning indictment of the level of Sandman's casual-fan fame and market penetration among American fans.

What are they talking about? I never watch the show (and I ain't gonna start), but I'm curious as to exactly what these guys are saying to earn everyone's displeasure. Especially in a world where the WWE's infamously terrible announcing would, I'd assume, make almost any indy guys sound better in comparison.

Nope. Just sitting here giggling at the mental image of the facial expressions that the fans and wrestlers I've known would make if y'all told them the same shit you're saying in here.

Watching this segment at the time, it felt really creepy in a bad way. Of course all wrestling is fundamentally based in violence; but having a man tie up a woman and then torture her with tools... that's a whole different level of violent shit. Jericho was acting like a 70s-rape-movie villain, not a wrestling heel. And I damn near stopped watching the show when somehow this turned Chris BABYFACE for their next match.

So why did Triple H wrestle "a Daniel Bryan" at Wrestlemania? Right in between his matches with Brock and Sting? Bryan is one of the biggest wrestling names in America today, and to pretend otherwise is just silly.

Every one of you is ridiculously wrong on this, and I have no idea why you're even believing this bullshit, so I quit this pointless "argument".

Not the same guys, the fat twin Headhunters debuted in 87. They mostly worked the hardcore circuit: ECW, W*ing, FMW, IWA, and some in Mexico and Puerto Rico too.

I forgot about the Bret "match", but yeah, still, that's the smallest of clubs. Daniel Bryan is a pretty huge name at this point in his career. And besides, the important connection here is that Shawn TRAINED Bryan in the first place. I can't remember a single other example of one Wrestlemania main eventer having trained another, so that would be a pretty unique story.

You can do both. Turn him heel AND stop making his matches into masochistic exhibitions of how long he can lay there and let the other guy beat on him.

Y'all are acting like this is Tony Mamaluke or Balls Mahoney we're talking about here, not THE SANDMAN. He's more famous than you're giving him credit for. He's got that Jake The Snake sort of fame, where way more fans remember him than lots of other guys who had similar careers.

Winger's too obscure. Mr. Pogo or Wing Kanemura would be better examples.

Yeah. It's like the Cena "defying the odds!" formula which got so damn stale in the late aughts, or a Randy Savage match from 1995. They've got this giant Samoan monster with a menacing look and a variety of fun movez, and they've decided that what he should really specialize in is selling. "Hey fans, you should cheer this guy, he's great at GETTING THE SHIT BEATEN OUT OF HIM!" If he was a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, this would be an excellent way to get him over. As it is, it just makes him look like an underachiever.

Everyone who knows Shawn says he's really happy being retired and has absolutely zero desire to ever lace up his boots again. A couple times per year he'll show up to superkick someone or get beaten down by a new monster heel, and I think that both scratches the in-ring itch and reminds him of why he retired in the first place. Plus, what else is left for him to achieve? He did everything in his eight-year post-comeback victory lap, including a match against Vince at Wrestlemania (which is more rare than you first think; except for Shane and Hogan, HBK is the only guy to be in that super-exclusive club). His retirement angle and matches were handled beautifully, exactly how any wrestler would dream of going out (in the main event of the biggest show in the world, against the most respected wrestler in the country). He has no more lands to conquer. He's good.

Nobody in Japan ever watched any ECW show ever? That's hard to believe, considering the number of ECW guys who were brought over to work in Japan in various different promotions. And besides, Sandman did a lot more than just ECW; hell, he worked on Wrestlemania once. He was on both Nitro and eventually Raw for several months apiece, as well as a handful of PPVs with both companies. He worked a metric fuckton of TNA shows, for whatever that's worth. So, the short version is: are you saying Japanese wrestlers don't watch American tapes or TV? Considering how obsessively American workers often regard their Japanese tape-watching, that would be an awfully one-sided double standard.

I just figured out that I know Cheeseburger, he was a dude I used to chat with on another board back when he was first training. I don't understand the hate for him, aside from the general "small guys suck!" bias that seems forever programmed into wrestling psychology. He's certainly no tinier than Spike Dudley or Mysterio. And unless you were the most-obscure-tape obsessed trader in the world, you never saw Spike or Rey when they were as green as Cheeseburger is now; he's only two years in, he's got plenty of time for improvement.

Oh yeah, of course. That's just plain old burnout, and it can happen to everyone. In my first year announcing, I would arrive hours early at the building just to hang out and talk rassling with whoever was there; by my fifth year, I barely even felt like showing up anymore, and sometimes simply didn't. (Partly because we were running most of our shows in this horrible crackhouse of a ghetto hotel; but still, simple repetition over the years had taken its toll.) Of course doing anything for long enough can suck all the joy out of it. I'm just saying, nobody but the likes of Kurt Angle actually enters professional wrestling for monetary reasons while not knowing or caring about the artistic-passion side of things.

I get the comparison. Also, I think some of the more hardcore smarks dismiss the sheer physical-stuntsmanship aspect of his appeal to more casual fans. Rather like Rob Van Dam and Goldberg, TM just moved differently than everyone else. Those spinkicks of his were often fired off at almost Bruce Lee speed. That kind of thing is way more impressive to casual fans than just being an all-around solid worker with good mechanics.

How many jobs outside of show business are THIS hard to make a decent living at? How many industries are honestly this tiny, with barely a few dozen individuals in the entire country who make a full-time living at it, yet still have thousands upon thousands of young hopefuls trying to break in? Of course, but that's not my point. Nobody in the modern age goes into wrestling because it's just a way to pay the bills. NOBODY, not for years now. Brock Lesnar is the last guy who even comes close to matching that description. (Well, aside from certain Divas who were hired out of bikini magazines, but that's a different subject.) 99.99% of wrestlers today are doing what they do because they were such huge fans of the show that they had to become a part of it. If you just need a job, there's endless other ways to make money (often, much MORE money) which won't eventually require you to get surgeries and cause brain damage due to daily physical abuse at your job.

People don't work in show business just to make a living. Not when it's so difficult to break in, so difficult to succeed once you are in, and so easy to fail and never make a dime. That's an entirely different type of living-making than just getting a regular job because you gotta pay bills.

Looked in the mirror at the exact same gear he happily wore in the ring, with total confidence, every night?

Flipping burgers at McDonalds is a job. Wrestling is something entirely different. It's something which, for the past two or three decades, is nearly impossible for most people to make a living at doing. The vast majority of wrestling trainees never ever make a full-time living in the ring. If all they wanted was a job, there's lots of jobs that are much easier to do and probably pay more too.

Is somebody just off-camera aiming a rifle at his head? Poor guy looks like he does NOT want to be there.