Boondocks Kernoodle

Clearly this is only being done so Jaleel White and Reginald VelJohnson can induct the 'whackers.

This week's Observer: "The 3/5 NXT show in Columbus, OH did sellout immediately, but they sold nowhere near 2,200 tickets. The place was set up for closer to 600 people."

This week's Observer: "The 3/5 NXT show in Columbus, OH did sellout immediately, but they sold nowhere near 2,200 tickets. The place was set up for closer to 600 people."

Hogan and Andre both made $750k for Mania III.

Dave says on the F4W board that the Twitter stuff with Ziggler and Bryan is "a WWE-scripted angle," so I guess that's the Mania match they have planned.

There was a Thunder in the fall of '99 that they had to cancel. What a tragedy.

He got The Dudley over as a singles star.

He has the Bret vs Tom Magee match, at least.

A gimmick that would get a lot of heat is if they introduced a military veteran character and had him cut promos about the years he spent in Iraq and all the friends he lost in war. At first he would be a face, but then he would start going over the top with it, demanding that he receive title shots without earning them in the ring simply by virtue of his military service. He could demand that everyone, from the referees to his opponents to the timekeeper, salute him and say "thank you for your service" before each match. And then maybe one of the other wrestlers does some research, or maybe an old friend or family member comes forward, but somehow it is exposed that he is a fraud and has no military record. He will deny it at first, accusing his critics of "hating freedom," but he will be forced to admit it and he will do a sanctimonious sitdown interview with Renee Young where he admits that yes, he lied but that's in the past, he's about positivity now and can't we all just forget it? And then he could still come out in his military gear and cut pre-match promos where he says that even though he never served, he's going to continue to dress in his fatigues because he just loves the military so much, and if you boo him you are DISRESPECTING EVERY MAN AND WOMAN WHO EVER GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THIS COUNTRY. I think we all know the current WWE that is trying to be politically correct less offensive would never do a gimmick like this, especially considering all the work they do with the National Guard, Tribute to the Troops, etc., but imagine the heat!

I like the idea of the wrestling feminist, but I don't see why it necessarily has to be a woman. A male social justice warrior gimmick would get the greatest heat of all. Imagine a guy coming out to cut promos on how "problematic" Cena is because of his appropriation of hip-hop culture. He complains that the divas are all cisgender. He comes out during A New Day's matches and yells at the crowd for not giving them enough heat and passive-aggresively suggests that "maybe if they were the right skin color you'd cheer louder!" He comes out at the beginning of the annual holiday Raw and gets them to remove the Christmas tree and decorations because he's an atheist and it's insensitive to non-Christians. Of course, some of his points would be valid but they wouldn't be portrayed as such within storylines. You could pair him with a female manager (NOT valet) to really piss people off. And in a perfect world, that woman would be fat.

Just speculating, but if David had won the championship he would have had to do shots in all the other NWA territories, leaving him off of some of Fritz's cards. Considering how well WCCW was drawing at the time, Fritz might have figured that losing the services of one of his top stars for certain weekends wasn't worth whatever they would gain from having David win the title. What happens when they need David for that crucial Thanksgiving or Christmas show and the NWA board wants to book the champ in Kansas City?

I can't help but be amused by the fact that a mere mention of (and a couple of mildly inaccurate statements about) Brian Pillman on the ECW special prompted Dave to write another term paper about Pillman, replete with recycled information from the 2006 issue about the Loose Cannon DVD.

As I recall the football coach came out to "I'll Be Your Hero." Between this segment and the "funeral" on Nitro it was quite a night to be a Lex Luger fan.

If I recall correctly, and this came from Herb Kunze but he got it from the Observer, Chaz "breaking character" on the air was supposed to send a subtle message to the audience that if you don't want to do an angle or a character in the WWF, you just refuse to do it and everything's fine! So Owen didn't have to do that stunt at Over the Edge - he could have said no, like Beaver Cleavage did.

I think Titan Mogan was a Billy Graham ripoff.

If Austin does come back it should be with Cena. I'm not sure if Austin would come back to lose, and ideally Cena would win, but really it doesn't matter at this point. If they want to make Roman Reigns the new top guy their best bet is to have him go over Brock. Austin vs Brock is dangerous and counterproductive.

As I recall, Orton didn't actually shit in anyone's bag, he just squirted lotion in it. Which is the mature thing to do! Sable was the one who had her bag shit in.

If they do Bryan-Lesnar at the Rumble they better save that match for last and put the Rumble on before it or else the fans will shit all over Reigns winning. No matter how over Roman is, the fans aren't going to like him more than Bryan.

I didn't realize someone else had posted the Wrestler rulebook already, but here it is on eBay if anyone wants to buy it: http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Wrestler-Magazine-Shawn-Michaels-December-1995-Vader-WWF-WWE-WCW-ECW-NWO-/311063797056?pt=US_Solo_Sports_Fan_Shop&hash=item486cd8dd40

I think the dates after the match are meant to denote month/year.

In his first appearance, they called him Zebekiah Colter and referred to him as a former manager.

I remember at least one of these columns, titled something like "Now It's Our Turn" and it was a mass of text refuting the steroid and sex allegations of 1992. As a nine-year old boy reading this stuff during my lunch period at elementary school my head was spinning out of control. There never was a part 2...

They'd be well-served to start highlighting their more attractive and successful fans on television. Remember in '06 or so when USA used to run promos about the WWE Fan Nation? I remember one with Deal Or No Deal's Leyla Milani talking about why she was a WWE fan, with no mention of the fact that she was a contestant in the previous year's Diva Search, which might make her something of a ringer. But they should run bumper segments on Raw and Smackdown with "real stories from the WWE universe:" profiles of real WWE fans who just happen to be hot chicks, good-looking guys and celebrities. They exist, you just have to look a little harder for them. Most viewers will hate these segments but the real target audience is advertisers and sponsors. As hard as it might be to actually attract a more desirable-to-advertisers fanbase, I think it might be easier to increase the perception that these people are watching WWE. But WWE is going to have to lay it on real thick. Just have Michael Cole incessantly talk about how "only the hottest and most successful people watch WWE!" and "WWE is one of the most popular shows on TV with young women!" I'm being semi-facetious here but the point is that if you say total bullshit enough times people believe it. Hey, they say over and over again how popular they are with children and people believe that they have a massive audience of kids even though their average viewer is in their late 30s. OK, all that might be a little silly. But for real, I agree with Loss's suggestion of making it clear that everyone knows it's fake. If I were in charge of trying to make wrestling appeal to more upscale viewers, I'd be in way over my head, but the number one priority would be looking over every aspect of the show and asking if a casual viewer would think "that is so stupid" when watching it. I think we've all had that experience of watching with non-fans and having them comment on how dumb the show is. And the number one complaint I hear from them is "they're not even hitting each other," which they think all us fans are oblivious to. So if they got that problem out of the way, it would go a long way toward that goal, but it wouldn't completely put an end to those "that is so stupid"s. To that end, I would echo tholzerman's suggestion to get rid of the bigotry (full disclosure: I actually enjoy wrestling's tone-deaf political incorrectness a lot of the time but I recognize that this is 2014 and a lot of the stuff they do is no longer socially acceptable.) If they could come out on the right side of social issues, that would get them a lot of positive press. Like if Darren Young, the character, came out as gay on WWE TV and was totally accepted for who he was and won a lot of matches, that could do a good job of improving perception of the product. Now, in that specific case, it might be risky because there's no telling how the audience would react and if they had a negative reaction to such a character it would just reinforce negative perceptions of the fanbase. And the reaction last weekend to Michael Sam shows that a lot of America still isn't too cool with homosexuality. But if all went right, and if their audience reacted the right way, it would be a very good thing. But it all starts with how WWE portrays it. Aside from that, I think the things that could be done are things that as hardcore fans we would all hate: less violence, less fun gimmicks, more boring dudes with short hair in trunks. Make it more bland and sport-like. It would suck but it would provoke less "that is so stupid"s, and that's what could earn them respectability. Sorry, it's late, I'm rambling and this is probably a really bad post but those are my thoughts at the moment.

If you're referring to the Tiger Ali Singh segment, it was the night after Judgment Day '98.

I impressed my 6th grade French teacher by being the only student who knew Grenoble was in the French Alps.