Jingus

Not always. He had a decent feud against Dustin Rhodes, and a great one with Steamboat before Rick went down with injury. He was US champion, and until the Duggan bullshit and his injury soon after he was doing okay. Sorry Loss, not trying to derail the thread further, but: Austin I can see being an embarassment, his appearance not really spiking ratings and his movie bombing. But Foley? He's continued to make money writing books, spent some time in ROH helping the talent develop, and has had a few awesome PPV matches. How is that embarassing?

In a year filled with absolute atrocities in wrestling, that one might be the most quietly horrifying of all.

Oh, they've been doing that since the company first went public. During the quarterly conference calls, it's become standard practice to try and screen out any "smart mark" types who actually have an idea of what's going on behind the scenes.

Well, Regal 1.received at least one of the infamous text messages, so he had more time to think about it than most, and 2.always comes off as a real pessimist who is quite willing to believe the worst about people. I could tell something was bothering him badly even when I saw it live.

The difference is, Flair's on paper. All an opponent would have to do is wave those mug shots from when he got popped for road rage, and it'd be over. Not to mention the recent divorce.

Despite doing it as basically a publicity stunt, and doing literally no campaigning. He didn't raise funds, he didn't advertise, he did jack shit besides keep going to his day job. And still got 12%. I'd say that's pretty impressive for a civilian with absolutely no official political experience.

Besides, inventing 5000 fans is nothing compared to the numerical shenanigans they pulled the last time they ran Wrestlemania in Detroit.

It's an easy cheap joke, but seriously, I couldn't imagine getting a job in America that both required security clearance and didn't require a drug test. In the private world it's pretty random, about half of all jobs don't require them, the other half do.

Well, if his stubble is naturally like the rest of his hair, then he shaved it because he didn't want his cheeks to shine like silver. As to your question, yes, PR is very much in-bounds for US copywright. Remember when the WWF legal team nixed that tag-team that one company had (in fact, I think it was WWC) that had two guys in Kane outfits except they were blue instead of red?

Yeah, I was going to ask if his columns looked like this to everyone else, too?

Okay, so far so good. Now subpeona TNA too.

...and I was right, the judge ruled in Lawler's favor. (Of course, how many times have we now heard the words "We find for the defendent, Jerry Lawler"...)

Good. How long has the WWE been coasting on name recognition and industrial monopoly? Maybe if the ratings start to tank again, Vince will wake up and realize, ala 1997, that the product he's currently presenting just isn't good enough.

If I had magick genie powers? Create a federal wrestling athletic commission. Put someone like Meltzer in charge of it, someone who knows all the details about all the problems but has no personal stake in the business itself. But... suggesting something more realistic? Hope that Earth enters an alternate-dimensional wormhole where HHH snapped and murdered his family instead of Benoit. (You know that's gotta be what the Scott Keiths of the world dream about these days.)

And except for Khali, how many of them have gotten to hold a world belt for even one second? (Morrison don't count, as I really can't take the ECW championship seriously.) Don't ruin my snarky gloating with semi-pertinent facts!

One year ago... "Hey Vince, should we elevate anyone to make new stars?" "Are you fucking kidding me? We've got Triple H, Shawn Michaels, the Undertaker, Edge, Bobby Lashley, Rey Misterio, RVD, Sabu, Test, Bob Holly, Joey Mercury, Jeff Hardy, and Chris Benoit! We don't need any new stars. And you're fired for asking!" Now... "If only we could've done something to prevent this! Hey, you, shred those Aegis documents faster..."

Here's a new one: Pac-Man Jones cons TNA into signing him. I guess someone's favorite Mania event ever was LT vs BBB.

About the "personal choice" theory: I wouldn't mind a study or reporter to ask some wrestlers about what they felt/knew about steroids right when they first got in the business. How many didn't do them, didn't want to do them, didn't ever expect to do them, but ultimately felt that they needed to in order to pay the bills? Once they were already set in their career of course, complete with lingering injuries and no other job skills.

1. I think it's pretty well established that the WWE as a whole is incapable of feeling shame. 2. The same stockholders who are routinely lied to and no-sold at the quarterly press conferences? I'm amazed Linda's nose didn't turn into a broomstick with some of the bullshit she's peddled to the people who literally own her company. And they have that distressing tendency of hanging up on smark stockholders who are actually informed about the bad stuff. Clearly, this company doesn't give a fuck about the stock or its owners.

I think that's beautifully proven true by this: how many times have you heard a non-wrestling-fan refer to something as "just like something out of the WWF", despite the fact that the company hasn't been called that in years? (Whether that says more about their previous marketing skills or their current abysmal brand-building ability is up for debate.)

Yeah, I've complained a lot about that on ROH(and other feds)'s commentary. Hey guys, we've already bought your damn show, you don't need to keep yammering about how your company is the best in the world and celebrates real wrestling and sports entertaiment sucks and yadda yadda yadda SHUT UP AND CALL THE FUCKING MATCH. Huh? WWE ring is a 24-footer, one of the biggest in the world. It's probably more that the ROH roster is just that loaded with small guys. Yep. My theory: he wanted to become a worker after playing as King Slender in NES Pro Wrestling. Yeah, and the worst part is, it's not something you can do anything about. Like, Tony Schiavone still sounds like he might be 20, while Jim Ross always sounded like a middle-aged guy. It does change a little bit over the years: when I started announcing in 2002 I sounded so painfully young and smarky that I really can't listen to the old tapes of myself, but five years of yelling and chain smoking did fix that slightly. Personally, I think Prazack's as good as an announcer as you'll find anywhere on the indies (now that Dan Wilson is semi-retired anyway), but I liked him a lot better when he was yucking it up as the foul-mouthed hipster in IWA than his kinda generic, standard play-by-play guy version that he employs in ROH and SHIMMER.

RIP Tor Kamata. Sadly, this is the only board I bothered to post this at, cuz I think it's the only one (besides your WrestlingClassics of the world) where anyone would've even heard of him.

Admittedly, he does actually bring up some decent points. But, kinda like with Ann Coulter, those true facts are quickly buried like tiny raisins in a massive oatmeal cookie of exagerrations, irrelevent character assasinations, and hidden agendas. You know what the funniest thing in the world is? Watching Bob Ryder try to convince people he's not gay. If you've ever been around him much, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It was in Terry Funk's book, and I was about to reference it before you beat me to it. I also know that a lot of wrestlers lean hard on using any random con they can whenever eating out: it's their birthday, they found a hair/bug/piece of broken glass in their food, whatever. Sir Mo of Men on a Mission is infamous for it.

I've lived in Savannah near Ted Turner's private family home, and now in Dallas... MAN it's tempting to go banging on doors and pleading for them to restart the wrestling war or some similar bullshit. (And yes, put me in charge. I want a "Jingus cons a millionaire into letting him run a big wrestling corporation" entry in this thread someday.)