Jingus

Why is this myth still around? Go back and watch the match. They reacted just fine. It was a slightly less overwhelming reaction than some of Austin's main events got, but that's inevitable in a babyface match. They just didn't have anyone in the match whom the crowd really hated and wanted to die. Still a louder crowd than most PPV main events get now. For example, they popped LIKE THIS on the finish. If you want a genuinely quiet crowd, just check out how they sounded around the halfway point of the Cold Day In Hell match, one year prior: . I remember in an interview Russo mentioned that match was supposedly awful, and Austin and Taker were so embarassed about it that they walked around with their heads down for days. Which I call bullshit on. Austin was admittedly knocked loopy early in the match, but they still recovered and turned it into a perfectly decent match. Hell, I'd say it's probably my favorite singles match from those two men, god knows they had several that were worse.

They'd probably be more angry about Danielson "selling out" and leaving the indies for the WWEvil Empire again. I've seen plenty of comments from dumbass kiddie smarks who think Danielson was somehow sticking it to The Man or something by going on this whirlwind indy tour.

Yeah, I still fondly remember that odd little Venis/Rikishi feud. Two comedy gimmicks suddenly stopped fucking around and engaged in one of the more physically violent feuds of the era. "Hey Fatu, is it okay if I smash you right in the fucking face with a monitor, as hard as I possibly can?" "Sure bro, as long as you let me splash you off the top of a goddamn cage." How reliable is our info in terms of who booked what in the big companies? They always seem to have a committee with half a dozen guys on it, so how much of the WCW was Sullivan, and how much was the various others working at the same time?

There was one bit which seemed relevant to the Stuff To Do viewpoint. Flair admitted that he intentionally made a lot of his matches so repetitive. His reasoning was that, back when he was a kid, he'd often be disappointed when he went to go see the matches live and his favorite wrestlers for some reason didn't do the signature spots that he marked out for. He decided that he'd do all his signature spots in every match, so that people wouldn't go home feeling like Flair had shortchanged them on anything they'd come to expect from him.

Surely that match happened somewhere, even if it never made tape.

Funny that Don Owen is one of the few old territory promoters to get raped by a smartened-up athletic commission, considering his reputation of being one of the few legitimately honest men to ever run a wrestling show. Of course, Oregon's commission has long been notorious for being insanely strict. I still remember cracking up one time at a tape Bart Sawyer showed me, on a segment he booked to fuck with the commish. Some dastardly heel (might have been Borne, actually) attacked him, Bart got color, and... a giant X graphic was posted right in the middle of the scene. It completely obscured the image of a bloodied Sawyer, thus not breaking the commission's rules about what you could show the audience on televesion. Apparently, the commission's bylaws were specifically written to only apply to wrestlers who visibly had blood on their person, and not to puddles of blood left on the floor or to the announcers screaming their heads off about how horrific-looking the carnage was. That's some quality carny right there. Christ. Was Lowrance really that terrible? Having Lee Marshall help you commentate is not entirely different from having Batista teach you how to do flashy top-rope maneuvers. Is he Canadian? If so, small world, I've met that guy. (He and Trent Van Drisse were friends for years, which somehow led to him stopping by TNA one time.) As I recall, he took umbrage to something I posted on a forum when I first started in da biz and was ridiculously enthusiastic about it. He responded with something to the effect of "some veteran will eventually beat some respect into you". When I saw him years later, at least he did seem sheepishly apologetic about it.

Damn. I didn't mean to start a full-blown AJPW booking discussion with a one-word comment. (But then again, I rarely turn down a full-blown AJPW booking discussion for any reason.) I know that Kawada was very much a skinny little runt who did plenty of leg lariats back in his Footloose days, I just thought that one comments was funny in hindsight. Although admittedly he was by far the smallest top heavyweight of his generation. I never thought of Savage as small. He's, what, at least 6'2"? He's about the same size as Stone Cold, albeit a tiny bit thinner around the midsection. In any other territory in the world, Savage would never have looked small. That's more of an indictment of how ridiculously size-obsessed Vince was back in the 80s than anything else.

I don't get that part. They thought Bossman was Hogan's replacement? Why? And what was the Hogan match? Hulk's name was never mentioned again in Dave's review of that show. Things like this are when you just wonder about a guy's sanity. Unless it's a situation where someone told him he was supposed to be getting pushed and then suddenly found out he was getting squashed, that would be understandable. But unless it was those exact circumstances, christ, Blair is a fucking moron. This illustrates how much wrestling has changed. Dusty was already on his way out here, but he received no punishment for this action iirc. People just no-showed major arena events as if they were an indy show in a national guard armory. Could you imagine the ruffled feathers if, say, Triple H pulled a stunt like that now and just vanished for a week? Father of his grandchildren or not, Vince wouldn't just take the prodigal son back home with a warm welcome. Same thing with TNA, if Jarrett just no-showed a bunch of dates where he was both booking and working the main event, even a dumbass like Dixie would do something in retaliation. That last part is a legitimate question. Even by WCW's infamously hilarious standards of bad business practices, that one makes no sense at all. Did they have some kind of ticket-buying discount with the Atlanta airport? That's the only possible explanation I can think of, otherwise it's a decision which has absolutely no upside. I've heard variants of it, "his goose is cooked" or "I'm gonna cook your goose". In my experience, it tends to be one of those goofy things that old-fashioned mothers say to little kids. Heh.

Anybody got Youtube links on these? I've heard about them, but never seen them, and my quick search of the usual places doesn't find the footage anywhere.

Yeah, but my point is that there were other guys who were just as much a public spectacle, yet strangely didn't become the level of common punchline they did. Sean Waltman is a good example. By all accounts, he was right there matching Hall drink for drink and pill for pill on a nightly basis. Yet it took him almost a decade longer to become a joke, and he's still not nearly as much of a "Last Call Hall" figure of public mockery. Most smarks act like they know which wrestlers are the worst druggies, but time and again they ignore guys who are well known by insiders to be junkies just to make the same old Jeff Hardy jokes again. (And before the arrest, not a single one of them would believe that Jeff's drugs of choice included steroids and coke.) The sheer number of guys who died by overdose yet were never held to be well-known addicts during their lives should be an indicator here.

Of course, but that still doesn't excuse some of the assumptions made. Like, how many drinking or drug jokes have you heard about Scott Hall, Jake Roberts, and Jeff Hardy? Enough to last several lifetimes, right? This despite the fact that there are plenty of other dudes who partied just as hard as those guys did, yet somehow they never managed to cross the line into being a public joke about it. Ric Flair is well known among insiders for being a falling-down drunk on a regular basis, but I guess since he was The Man and everything, nobody ever joked about him. This also overlaps with the whole steroid thing. I can't count the number of times I've had to explain to someone that practically everyone in da biz has done some hormone supplements or performance enhancers at some point or another. It's not just guys who look like Batista who were on the gas. Yet countless people still act shocked when it comes out that Dawn Marie or whomever was on the shit. Most non-drug-using civilians simply don't know jack shit about drugs and how they work.

If we're only counting PPVs, he was also in the main event title match at KOTR 2001. He had plenty of TV main events here and there, but that's the only time he was randomly put into the top spot on a Sunday night before his championship reign. EDIT: oh yeah, he was also in the 10-man-tag main events at Invasion and SurSer that year, if you're desperate enough to count that sort of thing. What's the argument for Batista being a stronger candidate than Angle? I know Dave seemed to spend a bit longer on top than Kurt did in the WWE, but it's gotta be more than that.

Yes. Staph infections are the most common. Foley described in his first book a time when Undertaker caught a nasty case of it. Also, Teddy Hart had a brother who died from a canvas-related staph infection. There are other icky things out there as well; Ed Strangler Lewis caught an eye disease which almost totally blinded him, which was apparently not uncommon in the earlier days. You just described every Nashville indy television show from the past decade. (I once hosted a TV interview with an ambulance-chasing attorney who was also our biggest sponsor, and the interview was about him refereeing an upcoming women's mud-wrestling match, and it was all filmed in a closed-down ghetto unisex salon which was across the street from the booker's house.) SAW is just the only one in years which has managed to get syndicated in enough places for some folk to catch onto it. I worked for the company a few times when they first started, before the tapings got going. Also, it saw me possibly make history: I think I might have been the only guy in wrestling history who was in No Condition To Perform due to over-the-counter cough medicine. (Long story.) No. If Jarrett ever had any money in it, it certainly wasn't much. Riggins is a real estate investor and landlord, and has enough money to fund the promotion by himself. Jerry occasionally showed up and hung out, but his role there didn't seem to go far beyond a part-time consultant. I know Marc, and knowing him, it's entirely possible that he was actually fucking up that bar. He's the sort of guy who does occasionally say "fuck it" and does whatever he feels like, regardless of what the booker told him to do. (I once saw him throw a set of benchpress weights at someone, and he chucked about 100 pounds a good 20 feet, if that is any indication.) Considering that SAW was still taping in that building afterwards and didn't get thrown out, it was probably all a planned spot, but sometimes you do have to wonder. That's true. Most people who use the "coked out" phrase have never actually seen someone doing coke, so it's not like they can be certain what it tends to do to a person. What Ryder stuff? I'm not digging through all 500 entries to find it. (And just glancing at it reminded me of how many items on the list were clearly false.)

Now there's a show I'd like to see. Even moreso than the bizarro-world matchup of Lawler/Fujinami, I can't even imagine what a Devine/Nagayo match would look like. Candi is like the southern dollar-store version of Moolah, progessively leading the way with the laziest of hair-pulling and snapmares, while Chigusa is the prototypical Joshi superworker. Did this make tape? EDIT: also, thanks for typing up that whole steroid essay. How many of Dave's questions were eventually answered definitively, would you guys say?

I like Oliver's style too. He's better than any other shoot interviewer I can think of, although that's admittedly not unlike being the world's friendliest suicide bomber. The Youshoot gimmick is actually pretty brilliant, since it allows him to ask all the hard questions that guys like Feinstein would always puss out on, yet still allow him to stay friendly with the worker in question since it's not technically him who asked. He was nailing Dixie with some pretty fucking vicious shit in that trailer, but the way he works it makes it seem like he's not the bad guy. He can bring up the same subjects that the most bitter asshole smarks would, and phrase it as "oh, you wacky nerds with your inappropriate queries!" and a mark like Carter never knows the difference. I noticed our kind friend Hollinger was nice enough to link to a megaupload of Maria's YS video a couple threads down. Does any other generous gentlemen happen to have any of these laying around in convenient digital format? Cornette's is the one everyone would be most interested in, of course, but any of 'em would be worth a looksee. I can't speak for her house, but it was common to see Dixie double-fisting beers in the crowd at the Nashville shows. Is it strange that my first reaction to that speech was "man, Teddy Hart really let himself go"? It is among the OMEGA alumni.Code for what? Drug acronyms usually aren't very creative, and I can't offhand think of any popular pills that have an X and an M in the name. Only thing even vaguely related would be DXM, the active ingredient in cough medicine, but that stuff is legal over the counter. Not saying I don't think he wouldn't pop prescription pills like a rock star, he's 1.a wrestler and 2.a Hardy, but this particular code sounds rather tenuous.

Yeah, but Matt Hardy really was fired. They only decided to bring him back after the surprisingly large WE WANT MATT chants broke out in half their arenas afterwards.

We Americans picked up everything we know about Irish accents from Lucky Charms commercials.

Replace every iteration of the word "politics" with "wrestling" and suddenly that paragraph becomes rather funny while still remaining accurate.

He's not talking about fashion accessories. He's talking about wearing a dangling piece of metal which is attached to you in some way, while wrestling a match. Whether he's talking about the "that just looks imbecilic, you dumb kids!" aspect or the "you know, I saw Droz get one of those ripped out of his fucking face one time" aspect is up for debate.

Two things come to mind there. 1. Can you imagine any other business on the planet where this sort of thing is tolerated, let alone encouraged? Imagine if Tom Cruise went around breaking people's thumbs if they didn't like his movies or thought Scientology was bullshit. How do you do that sort of thing "hundreds of times", presumably not in the confines of a wrestling show, and get away without being jailed for it? 2. I had no idea that Finlay is an Eddy type who can speak nearly accentless English, but racists his speech up on TV for purposes of the gimmick. I admittedly don't know many Belfastians, but his speech sounded almost like more of a Liverpool accent than an Irish one.

I can think of a few possible scenarios, most of which involve Benoit in some way. One: some Mattel executive flips on Raw. He's not a wrestling fan, so he has no history watching the show and rarely watches it now. However he does know about Chris Benoit, since that's the sort of skeleton you probably take out of the closet and give a good examination to before you commit a great deal of money on a client like the WWE. Suddenly he sees GODDAMN STRANGLING ON WWE TELEVISION, WHAT THE FUCK, FLASHBACKS FLASHBACKS! What, is this company trying to remind people of the violent choking deaths of Nancy and Daniel? An angry phone call is made, WWE denies responsibility and says the wrestler broke script and did it by himself, the sponsor furiously insists that this moron be fired Or Else. Two: the hypothetical Mattel executive doesn't watch Raw at all, but his trusted corporate assistant does. Unfortunately for everyone, when the assistant was a little boy he was repeatedly molested by a pale white dude who kept yelling "I've got til FIVE to pull out!" The assistant has been on a personal crusade for years to destroy Bryan Danielson, but all of his murder attempts have backfired in wacky manners. But finally, the assistant realizes he's in a position of power. He goes to his Dilbert-esque Pointy Haired Boss and is all, "You know, this dude on our client's television was strangling someone. That might remind everyone of when this other dude from our client's television strangled some other someones. We need to take steps." An angry phone call is made by the executive, while the assistant runs to the executive washroom in order for some privacy while he cries maniacally and masturbates furiously. ...admittedly the second one is a tiny bit less probable than the first.

They kinda have, if you count Punk mentioning Jeff Hardy's arrest. Not exactly the same thing, admittedly. Did they have any onscreen explanation at all about why Kennedy was a main eventer one week and unemployed the next? Admittedly that wasn't the same either, since Kennedy had plenty of enemies but everyone apparently loved Danielson. I still don't understand this whole "fire someone mid-week and then never mention them again" mindset. You've put plenty of time and effort into these characters; why throw that away? Why not at least have some other superstar destroy them on their way out? It would provide a double benefit: it puts over the wrestlers who still work here, and it would explain to the marks why this guy is gone instead of him just vanishing into thin air without even a token explanation.

I recall one of the Mean Street Posse had his eyebrow ring ripped out during a match in Memphis, but obviously that wasn't exactly a called spot.

With all the distraction over Danielson, it's easy to overlook another stupid future-endeavouring this weekend. TNA randomly fired Roxxi Laveaugh for no reason again. This marks the third time they've done that over the past year. Apparently when she showed up for the PPV last night, they were all like "oh btw, you're losing a retirement match, lol". Seriously, looking back over her tenure there, they couldn't have booked this woman worse if they tried. Even aside from the retardation with the head shaving, you couldn't have deliberately done a better job of having a midcarder and perennial title contender who was seen as less of a threat. They kept treating her like a jobber but pretending that she wasn't, thus ending up with a bunch of heatless matches where the audience knew that Roxxi was just gonna choke again. And ODB quit today, possibly over this. TNA keeps acting like as long as they have some sort of Diva types in some version of the Beautiful People in the center of the division, then the rest of the workers don't matter at all and they can stick any random chicks in the same spots and achieve the same results. Supposedly that's why they inevitably refuse to give any of the women raises when contract negotiations come up, which allegedly played a major part in why various folks such as Gail Kim, Awesome Kong, and Victoria are no longer there.

I don't think this is a hateful thing to say. JR is well known for being a proponent of the tights-n-boots tradition of gear, with the reasonably logical motivation that if a guy is wearing anything else then you could just yank on all that other shit at opportune times and easily win the match. I've always hated it when anyone wrestled with piercings, it looks so ridiculous.