Jingus

Considering the entire gimmick of The Streak, this isn't a good example. Taker's last clean loss was to Kane last year, where they did an entire program based around the idea that washed-up old Taker wasn't strong enough to kick the crap out of TheMonsterKANE anymore. He'll do that at least once a year, random jobs in situations where you're not really expecting it out of him. And it's a different situation with Taker, since he's long been a part-time attraction who wasn't around half the time. And he's the seven-foot-tall supernatural zombie. It makes a lot more sense for him to lose less often than anyone else, just by his gimmick and position in the company. It means that on the rare occasions that he does put someone over, it actually means something. And he's one of the even rarer guys who can actually elevate their opponent through beating them; consider the ladder match with Jeff Hardy, for example. How often has Trips been able to beat a guy without making the other guy look like shit? A big difference there is that Misawa was a babyface. Much of Triple H's super-dominance of the roster came when his character was the biggest piece-of-shit heel in all of wrestling. Never before or since has the WWE pushed any heel so strong for so long, and that really stuck out as an inexplicable exception to their usual booking pattern. Nash is definitely worse, by consistently getting himself booked in a too-high position on the card where he's never an effective draw. And, also, being a horrible goddamn wrestler who rarely if ever did meaningful jobs. Hall, it's hard to say, his career was more sporadic, with him down in the midcard most of the time. He was never really a top guy, so it's hard to accuse him of keeping others down. Half his matches had an NWO run-in as a finish, he wasn't out there beating guys decisively. I'd argue that Michaels is better than Triple H at that, at least besides from his me-no-job days of '97 and thereabouts. Consider Shawn and HHH's feuds with the same guys. When Triple H "put over" Cena at Wrestlemania, it was posed as being a complete fluke where the worse competitor just happened to get lucky. Look at the "what the hell?!" expressions of the fans in the crowd afterwards. That finish was custom-designed to let HHH officially put Cena over, while not actually making Cena look like the better man. Compare that to the Cena/HBK match the next year, where Shawn (despite his usual rockstar grandstanding of lasting in a submission hold forrrrevvvverrrrrr) just had Cena cleanly, decisively, definitively beat him in the middle of the ring. There was no question about who won that, Shawn had no "but if this one thing hadn't happened..." excuse, he just went out there and made Cena look like the superior fighter. Also: Shawn once put over freakin' Kennedy in a clean match, which is something Hunter would never ever do. Then there's the Flair matches, where Michaels went out of his way to make the old man look tough, while HHH usually just pounded him into bloody submission every time. Or look at the structure of their DX tag matches in recent years, where it's almost inevitably Shawn getting the crap beat out of him until Hunter comes in on the hot tag and destroys everything in sight. The Spirit Squad could use the numbers game to kick Shawn's ass, but that generally didn't apply to Hunter. Even their double-team finisher was designed to make HHH look like the stronger guy, with Shawn's superkick suddenly getting weaker so that the guy who gets kicked just stumbles around right into a Pedigree rather than knocking him the fuck out like it's supposed to. In the past decade, the company definitely made damn sure to keep Triple H more protected than almost anyone else, including Shawn Michaels.

I thought that was a pretty common clause in longterm entertainment contracts, for things like a regular role on a television show. Along the same lines as the rules saying they can't get a new haircut or tattoos without asking permission first.

Don't the Divas have clauses in their contracts which say they're not allowed to get pregnant?

Has the claim about Silken being a creepy predator been substantiated? It's the first time I recall hearing it. Not saying I wouldn't believe it, I've known at least three or four gay indy promoters who did indeed proposition wrestlers on their rosters, but ROH would be by far the biggest and most expensive company that was run in such an inappropriate way.

The odd thing is, at a couple of other boards, I'm the crusty old guy at the ripe age of 31. I end up teaching Rassling 101 to kids so inexperienced that many of them haven't seen any of the old Wrestlemanias. So it is kinda nice to have a board where I'm the naive young punk, relatively speaking. And speaking of which, hey Bix, I saw a couple of your Cageside articles about Sinclair being linked by some of said kids on said boards. So your work is getting out there, to people who have no idea who you are.

Bix does have a hey-kids-get-off-my-lawn quality to him, so I'm surprised to find he's years younger than me.

How was Hashimoto training sambo wrestlers in the USSR and being half of a tag team in Memphis at the same time? There might have been a difference in the dates, but Dave makes it sound like both happened during the same week.

What's with Gargiulo's weird vendetta against Cornette? He actually said that James E was a worse booker than Russo. The article overall reminded me a lot of Foley's anti-PTC rant in his second book. It's all got a kernel of truth, but he just goes on and on and on about it in such a scattershot, gotta-mention-every-single-complaint manner that he lost me by the end. Especially since he spends a paragraph talking about how great DGUSA compared to ROH, which is pretty irrelevant to this story.

I'd say that Household Names list needs to be extended by one to include Andre too. Even aside from his wrestling superstardom, he made plenty of crossover media appearances. Never underestimate the impact of The Princess Bride on an entire generation of Americans. Millions of folks who've never heard of Ric Flair, Jake the Snake, John Cena, Ultimate Warrior, or even Roddy Piper will instantly recognize the name "Andre the Giant".

Looking at their Wiki profile, they're an... interesting group. Seems like it's been one long string of controversies for them in the past decade, often over retarded political bullshit. And yeah, they don't appear to own any stations in any of ROH's key towns. Nothing anywhere near NYC, Philly, Chicago, or any of their usual home turf. They mentioned Kevin Kelly will be taking over the play-by-play spot; does that mean Dave Prazak's out?

Considering the amount of shit he put his body through, I'd say living as long as he did was a fairly happy ending. TMZ says he was only 58; can that be true? You'd think he was at least Hogan's age.

Heck, all the cool kids already did it, might as well toss mine in. Must see cage match: I think I'd go with Hell In A Cell here. The first one, natch. Even with the goofy ending, "the best-ever Shawn Michaels vs Undertaker match" is a pretty strong contender. Must see high flyers match: I dunno, high flying has never been my favorite style. Sasuke vs Pegasus, for lack of a real answer. Must see match with blood: I've been trying and failing to think of a better one than Hokuto/Kandori. Not really firm on that one, since the blood was just one small part of the match and not the primary focus, but I can't think of a better match with a crimson mask. Must see mat work: Volk Han vs Fujiwara in that little exhibition match they had was an amazing amount of fun crammed into a short period of time. For some reason, that was always my favorite Volk Han bout. Must see gimmick match: Kudo/Toyoda go boom. Even people who hate regular hardcore, let alone deathmatches, are still entranced by this one. (Although Dibiase/Duggan was awfully hard to pass up.) Must see world title bout: Flair/Steamboat, but I've always been partial to their Chi-Town Rumble match the most. I like the finish, which was like a definitive statement of "no more goddamn Dusty finishes" Must see 1970s match: Funks vs Sheik/Abby, probably liked the 79 edition best. Must see 1980s match: uh... can I just pick another Flair/Steamboat? Must see 1990s match: Hansen vs Kobashi is a pretty easy go-to (aside from the next match, which makes me glad for multiple categories) Must see tag match: 6/9/95, still the best tag psychology I've ever seen.

...apparently living in this state has caused me to hate it so much, my eyes automatically skip over its very name in any written medium.

The Memphis television rights is apparently a legal nightmare and nobody's really sure exactly who owns what.

I feel pretty silly for not taking the looping deal into consideration. You're right, of course that's what they'll do.

If this is a true 24-hour network we're talking about here, they'd run out of current programming so fast that I think they'd be forced to use older material. Unless they were literally replaying basically the exact same stuff every day, they just don't generate enough footage to fill up the time. In a single day you could probably air everything they produced from a month's worth of television. So either they're gonna be airing quite a bit of old rassling, or they're gonna have the suckiest cable channel this side of current-day MTV. By my very rough calculations, I think the WWE generates approximately 400 hours of new programming per year. It might be a little off, that's including commercials, but that's a decent ballpark estimate for their modern business model from the last dozen years (basically, ever since Smackdown debuted). So yeah, their own in-house programming from the day Vince Jr took over still constitutes a small fraction of their overall tape library.

Hey, that brings up a point: what's the current consensus on Shane Douglas's ECW run? (Aside from that Hollywood Hogan-esque period where he was injured for like a year straight and hardly ever defended the belt, anyway.) A few years back, people had thoroughly soured on the Franchise, and it was hard to find anyone who admitted to liking him. I've seen countless people complaining loudly that they hated the belly-to-belly suplex as a finish, which always struck me as an odd thing to get hung up on, it's no worse than any other random move. He's been out of sight for a while now, so I wonder if it's time yet for a reevaluation of his work.

I don't often say the words "I agree with Victator", but I do here. That particular edition of Hogan/Andre wasn't even close to being their worst match; check out the match at next year's Wrestlemania, for example. The Mania III match did its job just fine, hell I'd say it was a better match than Hogan/Bundy from the year prior. The whole "Hogan/Andre was historically significant, but one of the worst matches ever" talking point has been greatly overstated as the years go by. I'd much rather watch that one than, say, Taker/Sid from Mania XIII.

It depends on lots of variables. I'm from the same hometown as Jeff Jarrett, but sound nothing remotely like that hick. Page has a Jersey accent, but not a really thick one; compare him to Tony Soprano, for example.

If he's providing not only transportation for the workers but also a distribution outlet for their product, they probably shouldn't be charging him a fucking dime. Your friend sounds like he's being exploited. Of course it depends on plenty of variables, like how much in-ring training time he's getting and the credentials of his trainers and stuff like that, but it sounds like he's going way above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to doing extra favors for the promotion.

What do you mean, gets them on UStream? Is this an online wrestling school? If so, that's the most hilarious thing I've heard in a while. But even beside that, it sounds like a scam. If they're making you transport employees to the show in your own car, you shouldn't be paying them money for that "privilege".

It varies from place to place. Some barely even halfway train you how to do basic moves right before you "graduate". Others will teach you psychology, give you advice on business practices, help you get your first bookings, etcetera. Depends on the individual trainer.

I saw Bo play live once. He... did not have a good day. The White Sox got MURDERED twelve to zip. I mean, jesus, this was like watching dozens of Goldberg clones beat up an entire roomful of Mulkeys. All I remember afterwards is that none of the players were in the mood to sign autographs, they all stormed past the children in such pissed-off moods that some of the kids were crying. ...I have no idea what the point of that story was, but I'm sure it was pertinent somehow.

Even still, let's say you go into the music/video section of your local Sam Goodys or Best Buy or Barnes & Noble or whatever. You'd easily, easily find a shitload of stuff involving the Beatles and other famous musicians. Would you find more than one or two DVDs devoted to Jordan or Gretzky or Ali or Ruth or any other super-famous sports star? Those just seem like there's not many of them. Hell, it's easier to buy an old Wrestlemania than it is to get your hands on an old Super Bowl.

I think part of it is due to the different availabilities of different pop culture heroes. You can go into pretty much any music store in the world and easily pick up all of the Beatles' biggest records. Where would you need to go to find all of Bo Jackson's greatest performances? Aside from Youtube, I don't know where I'd even start looking.