Jingus

As previously mentioned, the entire angle was technically unscripted. It wasn't written down on the television format, so that it couldn't possibly leak before it happened. So there might not be any paper trail at all even if he was indeed told to go choke the guy. If this is indeed real, then just firing Danielson does make sense from WWE's corporate point of view. I imagine it could've gone something like this? Mattel: Hey, what the fuck was the deal with the attempted strangling on Raw last night? You're not supposed to do stuff like that! WWE: Yeah, we're so sorry, won't happen again. M: Did you tell that wrestler to go out and perform that hideous act, thus breaking the terms of our licensing agreement regarding what's acceptable for us to sponsor? W: Uh... no, not at all! He did that all by himself. (And please, call them "sports entertainers" or "WWE superstars".) M: Well if he did it by himself, how can you be sure he won't do something like that again? We're not going to pay money to a client which can't maintain reasonable control of its own employees. W: Yeah, sure, we'll wish him the best in his future endeavours right away. M: ...what? W: I mean, he's fired, you'll never have to worry about him again and your brand name is perfectly safe with our perfectly micromanaged programming.

Same here. People keep bringing this up, but I don't remember ever hearing about it before now. Certainly there are enough examples of various chokings occuring on WWE programming over the last three years. If they ever had such a policy, it was enforced about as fiercely as their steroid testing.

I can't seem to find which site this originated from, but it's being C&P'ed all over: Its accuracy is totally unverified, but it does sound like something that could happen. At what point does the WWE give in? Which is more important, a fat licensing contract or the eternally overprotected character of the Undertaker?

Yeah I know, it's just a handy example of the hypocracy surrounding this incident. Also, at another board someone pointed out that the finish of the main event of the Breaking Point ppv last year was Cena choking out Orton with the chain on a pair of handcuffs. This is something I'm actually surprised doesn't happen more often. I've long thought that a "the right person turned on Raw at the wrong time" problem was inevitable. It's fairly amazing when you consider the amount of stuff they've gotten away with over the years. What were the ones to cause controversy, though? Al Snow carrying a mannequin's head, the Chuckabilly wedding, and one dude choking another dude with a piece of fucking silk cloth. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. Imagine if some old-fashioned executive at the parent company which owns Spike one day turned on Impact to see if the rasslin' matches are like what he saw back in the day, only to be presented with a spectacle like two bleeding half-naked women rolling around in a giant pile of thumbtacks.

According to Meltzer, the entire NXT angle was not in the script at all for secrecy reasons. So there's no paper trail on whether Danielson was ordered to do that or not. But they've done choking angles post-Benoit that were much worse than this. Consider when Bradshaw wrapped a cable around Jericho's neck, dragged him around ringside and up the ramp, and tried to lynch him before security broke it up.

High ranking Dems were wrong on 2000 left and right. As they were in 2002 and 2004. Same jackasses who said that the Dems needed to run strong in the deep south in 2006 and 2008. Dumb fucks, and if Dave is actually beliving anything they had to say about 2000, he's naive.Whether it's true or not (I'd certainly lean towards "not", it sounds pretty silly) seems to be less important in this case than if Washington insiders believe it was true and how it might affect Lieberman's image. Probably not much, it seems like a trivial little thing compared to all the other shit he's been involved with, but ya never know. Another weird wrinkle if Lieberman backs Linda. If I remember correctly, wasn't Lieberman one of the few outspoken, well-known celebrities belonging to the Parent's Television Council? The very same group which spent years trying its damndest to financially harm World Wrestling Entertainment. I don't remember if they ended up doing any serious damage, but they did convince at least one or two sponsors to drop the WWE as a client.

From some of the wacky old stories surrounding Nick Gulas, you'd assume that one would be high on the list. Thesz even ripped up that territory in his book, while not quite explaining why he worked there for so long. I haven't. What's that? (Lou is probably number one on my list for "Wrestler Whose Matches I've Seen Incredibly Few Of, Despite Having Read His Autobiography" for obvious reasons. I've probably only caught a dozen of his bouts, at most.)

Saying he's not any good implies that there's recent bookers or promoters who are better. To find anyone who accomplished more than Sapolsky, you'd have to go all the way up to Vince himself. And I'd find it weird to say that McMahon is the only guy in all of wrestling who is any good at it. Hell, in a few small ways Gabe was better than Heyman. You didn't hear stories about ROH being held together with duct tape and bounced checks like ECW often was. Gabe didn't seem to have Heyman's ambition, which in financial terms for an indy wrestling company is actually a good thing. While countless other promoters spent themselves into bankruptcy, Sapolsky maintained a relatively conservative business model and at least broke even often enough to keep going. The TV thing is a stumbling block, and it's true that nobody out there seems to know how to do this shit. Heyman is indeed the closest candidate, but it's a big jump between Hardcore TV in 1996 and Impact in 2010. TNA's problems now are so awful that it would take a truly great booker to turn them around. They seem to be operating under the same old WCW delusion that if they can find the magical combination of exactly what the fans want to see, then suddenly their ratings will double or some shit like that. Yet they never really try to change said combination. "If we keep twirling the numbers to 3, 14, and 27, I'm sure that it'll unlock eventually! Never mind the fact that we've been trying every different variant of those numbers for years and it's never worked yet!" It's often been said that the definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same actions and expecting different outcomes, and TNA is completely certifiable. And besides that, Dixie would have to suddenly get a hell of a lot smarter in terms of who she listens to. There are rumors of heavy budget cuts in the future; does anyone doubt that it will probably be a bunch of X division kids, Knockouts, and midcarders whom creative has nothing for that wind up getting cut? I.E., the exact people who cost them the least money? Even if they did bring in a Heyman, he'd have to be much more politically savvy at working in this backstabbing corporate environment than he ever was in the past. Despite his reputation as an unrepentant con man, Paul E seemed to spend most of his WCW and WWE tenure with little if any real backstage power, so clearly his work wasn't working those he needed to work the most.

The only guy who really comes to mind is Sapolsky. Maybe Quackenbush, depending on how far you want to stretch the definition of "financially successful". Beyond that, yeah, wrestling today is like you have nothing but high school football, a big empty space, and then the NFL.

Nobody is a draw in TNA. Heck, Angle is the closest they've had to a draw, since their record-best PPV buyrates have featured him in the main events. Yet they were still only, what, around 60,000 buys or so? What is a "draw" now? The WWE has few, if any at all. Cena is the only one is said to truly matter, yet the company doesn't seem to take any sharp down-turns in business when he's on the shelf for injuries. Is anyone really a draw now? I wonder if the whole business model of the industry has changed so much that only brands matter. WWE has their brand over with the fans, and TNA clearly doesn't, and that seems to be the immovable constant.

Can you imagine how this would go today? They'd have some diva claiming on Raw for weeks that she'd be disrobing at the PPV, and then on the night it would end up being Mae Young in a thong. Neat, this confirms something I'd wondered about for a long time. Tony claimed to have been there when Brody was killed, albeit not in the same locker room. I know that 99.9999% of the time you hear something like "I was there the night Brody died" you should automatically dismiss it as bullshit, but Tony's not a great liar and he told the story with tremendous detail, so I was never sure either way.

Most people in my age range have seen Fight Club, and if not that they've seen Rocky Horror Picture Show, and if not that... shit, maybe they saw Spice World. Also, Michael Bay got his start directing some of Loaf's epic music videos. Point is, he's not some nobody.

I would. But I'm hardly a good representation of common male mating traits. I think Awesome Kong is cuter than, say, Ashley Massaro. (Admittedly, I did have to go pretty deep into the "unattractive skinny white girls" pool to an example that worked, but still.) RE's scientific theories do have some tiny kernels of truth to them, but those are only tendencies and inclinations. Individual human personalities trample over natural tendencies all the time.

So, how 'bout that Meltzer? He thinks MMA is rassling, lol.

The new TSM is pointing and laughing at this as well.

Your "I know how women's minds work down to a mathematical certainity" boasts certainly do remind me of something. "RESPECT THE COCK!"

I never saw his Wildside stuff, I think WCW forbid them from showing him on television. And I dunno what WCCW you're referring to. I can only remember two examples of David's mic work. The first was when he was the crowbar-wielding psychopath character. It was a step up for him, but it was still cartoonish as hell and not anything you'd want to build a serious angle on. The other was when TNA tried to run a Legacy angle, but had the brilliant idea of using Erik Watts, Brian Christopher, and David as their second-generation superstars. David was just bland and forgettable there, no fire, not even a spark. Bobby's kind of infamous for being a lousy talker. Even just speaking with him about inconsequential shit backstage, he tends to talk slow and stumble over his words. If you were going to make WCW the bumbling joke heels, perhaps. But this was a time when the fans were spoiled by the likes of Rock, Foley, and others giving really great interviews on a weekly basis. If WCW's mouthpiece couldn't cut a compelling promo, I can't see the fans at the time getting behind it. For the same reason I wouldn't have put Goldberg in that spot, despite him being the only real home-grown superstar that WCW had left by that point. You needed someone like Flair or Arn or at least Bisch who could go out there and deliver on the stick.

Holy FUCK. Where were these originally published? Especially weird since Memphis had the only wrestling show I've ever attended with a majority black audience. It probably wasn't that way back in '77, but still. Goddamn that was unbelievably racist. Like, "blackmail material now that Jerry works for a publicly traded corporation" level of racist.

Upon doing a bit of research, yeah, my memory might be a bit foggy on eight-year-old details. This GLAAD statement doesn't mention kayfabe one way or another, whether recognizing "Billy" and "Chuck" as fictional characters or thinking Monty and Charles were actual homosexuals. But it does clearly show that GLAAD representatives either 1.never watched wrestling, or 2.were blind and deaf, since Chuckabilly were doing the exact same Gorgeous George heel schtick that every gay-baiting gimmick of the past century has done. This line especially: There may have been a few scattered cheers here and there, but I certainly don't remember any kind of widespread acceptance. 21st century or not, these are still wrestling fans we're talking about, and I'm pretty sure they booed B&C out of the building every night.

Do you suppose Lynch actually watches everything in his collection? If so, he's got even Will beat.

I think I remember that. You mean the Torch article Mitchell wrote after Fall Brawl 96? Yeah, reading it years after the fact, I was struck by how prescient some of his guesses were. I loved one line which went something like "The nWo destroyed its WCW opponents in the Wargames match. They did so without breaking a sweat, or, more tellingly, taking a bump." ...what? No. No they could not.

The gay marriage thing, yeah he did, at least a little bit. GLAAD was rather vocal about being unhappy with the way that went. Although a lot of that was due to GLAAD apparently being staffed by total idiots since they thought that Billy & Chuck were both actually gay, didn't seem to notice that they were mincing heels, and believed that they really were going to be married right there on camera. I can see the specifics with Cryme Time being a little different too. They were basically just your standard black thug stereotypes which you can see on practically any television show. (And in fact they're the first standard black thug gimmicks that the company has ever really used, despite having saggy-pantsed white rappers around since 1996 or so.) Hauling out an old Jim Crow standard like the watermelon would probably be seen as a whole different level of offensive.

It's interesting looking at the list of little southern territories and noting how much of their talent overlapped. I counted Lawler working for at least four different companies. I'd love to know more of the story here. Who the hell was running shows in South Africa, why the hell were they doing it in 1988 during one of that country's most turbulent times ever, and what the hell made them think that any foreign black wrestlers would be happy to come participate?

Honkeytonk Man calls out SKeith, literally: EDIT: is there a code on this board to imbed a Youtube link onto the page here? Most other forums have that, weird if this one didn't.

Goldberg's looked good mostly because it seemed like he really was hitting the other guy as hard as he possibly could. I don't think there was much work to that one. One might argue that it's not terribly professional of Dave or Bryan to word it like that, but good on them for doing it. I can't imagine how hard it must be for those people who aren't members of the right clique in TNA to have had that scumbag around, lording it over them all.If someone argued that was unprofessional of Melverez, then they should listen to what got Bubba fired: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnBlG-hmf3I...player_embedded I haven't been able to find out whether that was a podcast or broadcast over the public airwaves. The latter would obviously be worse. But either way, calling her "a stupid black bitch" where anyone can hear him do it is a tremendously douchebaggy thing to do. ...hey, could anyone save this audio file and send it to whoever owns the station that Bubba broadcasts on? Y'know, just for shits 'n giggles. Would be interesting to hear them defend blatant racism from a radio broadcaster. "Stupid black bitch" is way stronger than the "nappy-headed hoes" line that got Don Imus canned.