Jingus

I think one big reason I'm so negative towards Vickie is that I'm beyond sick and tired of Evil Heel General Manager/Chief Executive Officer/Commissioner/Owner/So forth and so on. We've gotten these angles nonstop for the past dozen years, and they've just been done to death and there's not much new that can be done with them. Plus, as noted, the company has had a bizarre obsession over the past few years with referencing Eddy constantly. Yeah, I realize that the circumstances of his death make that a little inevitable (died young but not as a way which could be publicly proven to be WWE's fault like Owen, was a main eventer unlike Pillman, didn't strangle his family, etc) but it still causes in me a kneejerk negative reaction. After this guy dies, you honor his memory by having someone say on national TV that he's burning in hell, and then subsequently turn his entire family heel? Yeah sure "Eddie would've wanted it that way" and stuff, but it's still tacky even by WWE standards and incredibly unnecessary. Bottom line, Vickie Guerrero doesn't seem to sell tickets, draw ratings, or drive buyrates, and I don't see how she could even be capable of doing such things. Unlike most of these GM characters, she can't physically compete in the ring in order to further these storylines. She isn't even a decent talker, although I admit that's my own subjective opinion, but I think she's just a shitty actress in general. Yeah she "gets heat", but she apparently has zero ability to actually help the company make any money. So why do they spend so much television time on her, instead of on some actual wrestlers who might benefit from the exposure? And, just restating it one more time: the top heel on this show is a widow in a wheelchair. What can you do with a widow in a wheelchair as your lead villain? Answer: what they're doing right now, which is not much. Anyone here really entertained by the eternal Vickie vs. Undertaker storyline, which not only seems to never fuckin' end, but occasionally calls for the giant badass babyface to assault and injure a helpless female non-wrestler while the fans hoot and hollar? And the reason she's kept in the wheelchair is because the company thinks that she's too fat for television! She's a completely untrained and inexperienced civilian who had absolutely zero background in this sort of thing before the company decided to toss her out there, she's the ex-wife of a dead guy who maybe got that way from the steroids he took in order to maintain his wrestling career, and this company thinks her biggest liability is that she has a fairly typical body shape for a woman of her age. Like, whoa, dude.

As nonsensical as that is, the one thing that truly befuddles me is how the top heel on Smackdown is a crippled widow in a wheelchair. I mean, really, just say that over and over again. Their top heel is a crippled widow in a wheelchair. This isn't a McMahon type situation either, since it's impossible for her to ever have any kind of match like they do, so I really don't see what they expect to get out of her in the long term. Sure, she draws heat from the live crowds, but the storylines sure haven't been popping the ratings.

Even with promos which had clearly been scripted word for word, he still stumbled over his words in nearly every segment he ever did where he was required to talk for more than a few seconds at a time. You'd think that the WWE would do the tiniest bit of research into hiring a new lead announcer, to ask questions like "can he competently string together a sentence" or "does he know the names of any of the moves", but apparently they did not. The writing itself also never did Adamle's GM character any favors. They booked him in an odd tweener-leaning-heel fashion, where he'd do like 70% evil stuff and the crowd would boo, but then he'd do 30% good and then everyone was just confused.

True, but you could at least try to watch the other matches before yours to make sure you're not doing the exact same moves or sequences, as does tend to happen sometimes. Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone equally; Danielson doesn't have to watch all the flippy scramble matches, because they probably won't have anyone doing carny counters and proclaiming that they've got til 5. Also, according to this, Gabe knocked two specific things: chop exchanges and superkicks. Which sometimes do seem to happen in every damn match. Neither one is exactly a big crowd-popping highspot. If the backstage meeting did happen as reported here, I don't see the connection between every guy doing chops and superkicks, and Gabe not booking good angles.

Fuse is an odd little station; I never watch it, but skipping past it on the cable guide, it seems like they play random indy rap videos all day and then the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre every night. Weird. Which cable systems carry Fuse, and which don't? I know my Dish has it, but that ain't saying much since I also get the incredibly obscure channel that short-lived NWA show came on. At least ROH wouldn't have to worry about pulling decent ratings on a "network" like that, although I would wonder what the upside would be for the promotion. History has shown that usually whenever a wrestling company makes a deal with a network which isn't suited to its product, things don't go so well, with WSX indeed being a prime example. I wouldn't argue that simply being on the SciFi channel is the primary reason that ECW is by far the least-watched WWE primetime programming, but it might have an effect. Now this is the talent just being dumb. Yeah, Gabe often isn't a terribly innovative booker. But one of the most common complaints about the in ring workrate of ROH is that too many of the matches all look alike, and it's a complaint which has been loudly and repeatedly voiced by countless people for several years now. Even if Gabe was indeed stupid enough to literally write down shit like "nine minutes of spots" on the booking sheet, it's the fault of the workers if they're doing the exact same kind of spots as all the other matchups.

We used to have this problem all the time at the Pit too, getting a couple dozen spams each day. The CAPTCHA would indeed prevent most of it, if the software offers it.

EDIT: nevermind. Am I right in assuming that most big corporate lawsuits involve an early motion of dismissal like this? Seems like a shotgun approach where they were trying to hit every single loophole they could think of.

The spelling just reminded me of the old "You suck dick for Kraq!" from XPW. Or the "Krotchy" dolls from Uwe Boll's latest cinematic monsterpiece Postal.

Here's what I don't understand. His profile says he has 3 posts, but if you click on his post history it only comes up with this one. Jesus, can we not think of any new names, people? Seems like every state in the union has at least one team going by some variation of those. Especially "Standards and Practices", considering it was a WCW gimmick on national television and all. Then again, sometimes indy innovation is not the most admirable attribute.

There is some truth to that. All the contemporary tribute shows of the past decade have been for someone who was, relatively speaking, a beloved veteran. What would be their response if Snitsky dropped dead tomorrow?

Good to know that she stayed proportionate over the years. That girl is huge.

My question would be, what benefit would Stephanie get from a sham marriage? It's obvious what Paul gets out of it, but I don't see the incentive for vice-versa. Personally, I think you can at least partially blame Benoit and to a lesser extent Angle for that one. Once the Rolling Germans became a commonplace move you saw on TV every week, who gives a crap about just one German suplex when you're used to seeing at least three in a row? Not to mention the insanity around 2001 when they ramped it up to doing a dozen or more of the damn things in every match.

The biggest problem with Martin is just that he rarely strays beyond playing captain obvious in most of his work. He tends to recite the exact same opinions as any thousand other smarks without much of his own original thought. Which is why I enjoyed guys like, say, Chris Hyatte; no matter how arrogantly pretentious and batshit insane he was, at least it was his pretension and insanity and not just something he was copying from the forums. Heh, Coey's board, been a little while since I thought about that. He and I had some dumb arguments over at TSM when I was a young noob, and he was a dick to me ever since, not like that's much different from how he treated most everyone else. I saw the Spidertwist boards, saw some good discussion, and just signed up under my shoot name instead of the same stupid moniker I use everywhere else. I just participated calmly in the topics at hand, so it took him like a year and a half to figure out it was me. And when he did, he instantly IP banned me for no reason whatsoever except we'd had ill words like two years prior.

It's just forgettable. It's meant to be sort of a beginner's primer for wrestling. Let's say that the kindest praise I can give it is that it's not worse than Lou Albano's contribution with Idiot's Guide To Pro Wrestling. It's a very general overview and history thing which has been done a hundred times. The editors also tarted it up with a bunch of annoying illustrations which look like something out of a children's magazine.

Supposedly it's going to be the War & Peace of shoot interviews, ridiculously long, which could help explain the massive price they paid. I assume they're either going to charge a high price for it, or break it up into several different volumes. They could make their money back if they're selling like a six-disk monstrosity for $100 or more total, it probably shouldn't be that hard to get a thousand people to order one.

I was actually trying to think of a comparison kinda like that. I suppose Chono would be Austin? But if you keep extrapolating it, it gets rather funny: Undertaker = Choshu, Hogan = Inoki, and so on.

Nothing about that movie was good. Nothing. When the Day of Judgement arrives, St. Peter will use this as part of his criteria to determine where a soul goes. "Well, you did visit a bunch of sick children in the hospital, so that's obviously a boost in your favor. But... you were in Ready to Rumble... sorry, it's hellfire and damnation for you."

Yeah, but neither one broke kayfabe or treated it realistically. I've never seen Night and the City, but have gathered the impression that it's a standard noir boxing flick but with wrestling taking the place of boxing. And it would really be a stretch to call Barton Fink a "wrestling movie"; it's a minor subplot at best with John Turturro's character being hired to write a crappy wrestling flick, and the only actual wrestling is an amateur-style bout which happens in a hotel room and lasts about two seconds. I've thought for years that you could make a fun backstage mockumentary type movie out of wrestling, along the lines of Spinal Tap and the Christopher Guest flicks. In that kind of film, you can be true to the realities of the industry, but just exaggerate the characters a little bit for the laughs, and you can poke fun at it while still not insulting the intelligence of people who know how it really works. Unfortunately, we keep getting shit like Ready to Rumble instead.

Sounds to me like we've just got people using the same phrase to describe different things. Heck, this is the first time I'd ever seen that "brain dead" is supposed to definitively mean that you're incapable of breathing on your own. I always thought it just meant that you were in a permanent coma with no higher brain functions. I don't think anyone's trying to work anyone here, just sounds like a mixup in semantics.

Variety has got a review so positive it borders on fellatio. I never would've believed it, but we might actually have the world's first-ever fictional movie about wrestling which is actually good.

Arrgh, I'm annoyed with myself now. I have a vague recollection of Tony Falk telling me some odd backstage story about this match, since he was backstage that night (they used him in a couple of cameos as Jeff's chauffer, iirc) and now I can't remember what the hell he told me. All I can remember is... uh... it was something memorable. Something about Jarrett and Roadie walking out of the company after the match? But I think I've seen everyone from Scott Keith on up mention that, so I'm not sure. Damn all that partying I did, now my brain don't work right.

That's my situation. We've got Dish, and while I would love to have 24/7, it's just not available. So I'd be all for a move such as the one discussed here.

I still have no idea how those guys worked those insane schedules. Yeah, a lot of drug use to keep up was probably involved, and to be a successful wrestler in the first place you've usually got to have a high natural level of energy. But still, sheesh, four shows in one day? My record was doing four shows within one 48-hour time period, and I was just announcing and refereeing, not wrestling, and I was still pretty wiped out by the end.

Several guys have done whispery promos at some point or another. HHH and Foley come to mind. But they never made a consistent habit of it.

Yeah, she's Nicole Matthews of Shimmer and elsewhere. She never told people about it back when she was training and first starting out, and basically stopped posting once her career picked up a bit.