Boondocks Kernoodle

WWE hopes that since Fox owns MNTV, if they get high enough ratings they can get the show on Fox. I'm sure that's not going to happen.

Haha, that IS awesome. I could totally picture "Hobo Brazil" being in one of J.R. Benson's promotions and feuding with "Harley Racist."

Despite all the talk about Michaels and Hart not being willing to job to each other in '97, they actually both pinned each other that year in non-televised matches. Both were in three-ways: Michaels pinned Hart in a three-way with Sid at the Skydome early in the year (yes, Hart jobbed to Michaels in Canada) and Hart pinned Michaels in a three-way with Undertaker at the Raw taping at MSG in September.

Only two pairings have opened a WWF/E and a WCW PPV: Austin-Mero (Slamboree '94 and KOTR '96) and Booker-Benoit (GAB '98 and Armageddon '05). Flair-Savage is, as far as I can remember, the only match to take place at Wrestlemania and Starrcade. Interestingly, Eddie & Rey would have been part of both groups had their match at Starrcade '97 taken place, but Rey was hurt, I guess, and replaced with Dean Malenko.

If Michael Cole was a writer for the Simpsons, don't you think he would have a writing credit on at least one Simpsons episode? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writers_of_The_Simpsons There's no "Michael Cole" or "Sean Coulthard" listed there.

No he doesn't.

http://mywwesearch.prodege.com/?cmd=sb-reg...r&rb=132451 WWE has this thing on their website where you can get points to buy stuff just for searching and referring people and stuff. Only 7500 points for a PS3!

1) The attitude is the same as it's always been. "Hey, steroids are bad, yeah they can kill you...but you have to sell tickets/it's their personal choice/WELL SMOKING CAN KILL YOU TOO DO YOU WANT TO BAN THAT HEALTH NAZI/Name one wrestler who you can prove died from steroids? Eddie Guerrero? Nah, you're lying/You're not in the locker room, you can't criticize us/Oh come on, nobody does that anymore. That was only in the 80s and in Ted Turner's WCW", etc. 2) "Do as many as you want, just don't show up a taping fucked up or we'll have to fire you." 3) Not much. 4) Too much. 5) Of course it's a good sign, but as always the wrestling business is a ticking time bomb waiting for another of its periodical small explosions. Given that nothing has really changed within the thought processes or behavior of those in the industry I don't think it's a sign that improvements have been made, just that certain people within wrestling who have used or do use drugs are lucky not to have had a heart attack. 6) Not pushing guys based on size, reducing the schedule, not fostering the attitude that working while injured means you're a tough guy. Of course, that's antithetical to the way WWE has promoted over the last 25 years, and as Vince goes, so goes the industry, so I don't see any of those necessary changes coming.

Hey Loss, do you have that WCW '99 fantasy booking stuff you wrote on TSM a couple of years ago saved anywhere? They did a purge of dormant accounts a few months back and your blog posts got deleted. I was interested in reading that again.

No, WOL is still on every Sunday at 8, but Dave isn't a regular host on it anymore because he's so busy with the Observer and writing MMA columns for Yahoo, so Alvarez has different co-hosts, usually Lance Storm or Dr. Keith Lipinski and/or Karl Stern from his website.

"Wrestling Observer Radio" is just the new name for shows which feature Dave and Bryan talking about stuff. It's separate from WOL. There are no guests.

You can get a whole bunch of old episodes from the message board, but there's no official archive.

Hogan should have stuck with his "HULK! HULK!" theme. How many others wrestlers have had Jim Steinman specially prepare a version of one of his songs for their use? None, that's how many! The man behind Bat out of Hell, Bat out of Hell 2 and Celine Dion's epic "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and you choose Rick freakin' Derringer over him? Poor taste, Hulkster.

Does working softer mean taking all those hard chairshots from Masato Tanaka?

If you hurt my friend, then you hurt my pride. But I guess if your son hurts his own friend (by crashing your car while speeding after drinking), "God laid some heavy shit" on him.

Didn't he claim that Bruno Sammartino actually beat Buddy Rogers' lookalike brother for the WWWF title?

I never understood why Benoit loved that move so much. Maybe he thought of it as a tribute to his hero, because I always thought the diving headbutt looked like crap. You'd figure a guy who was so bent on making his moves look realistic would have done away with a move that obviously missed every time.

That was one of Watts' hallmarks as a booker. Two singles wrestlers shouldn't be able to beat a regular tag team. Besides which, it's not like Dustin and Barry weren't established singles stars too. I don't see anything surprising about that booking decision at all.

Wasn't there some story about Lawler tricking Flair into wrestling him on TV? What's the deal with that?

How many acquisitions came out of this? I can only think of the Powers of Pain off the top of my head. Bossman, too, but I think you posed earlier that by this point he was already waiting to come in, but couldn't yet due to a no-compete clause.

Hogan has been known to get dates wrong. Ever see the episode of Hogan Knows Best where he recalls being spiked by the Undertaker in Detroit in '74?

I'm confused by the notion that Benoit was always as fucked up as he was near the end. Do you all really believe that if Eddie hadn't died, Benoit would still have killed his family? Because I'm willing to accept that he was always somewhat messed up, and that he was an asshole to a lot of people during his career, but I'm sure there are a lot of people in the wrestling business who would look at a crying referee and call him a "gay bitch", and who take part in hazing younger wrestlers, and who are stupid enough to keep doing a move that can cause severe neck damage after they were just out with a year with a broken neck. And none of them have killed their families. The fact is that there's a clear series of events that demonstrate Benoit losing nearly all of his sanity from November 2005 to June 2007. I don't think losing all his friends took a normal person and turned him into a psycho, but I do believe it took an already messed up person and made him much, much worse. I agree that all the "He was such a great person" stuff was BS when the stories of his locker-room hazing were well-known, but do you really believe that when they found out he murdered his wife and son, which you have to admit is a rare occurrence even in the messed-up world of wrestling, the other wrestlers just thought "Well, I saw that coming?" Keep in mind, I'm not trying to argue that Benoit was a good person or that HIS LAST DAYS WERE JUST AN ABERRATION WHICH CAN NOT DESTROY THE LEGACY OF FIVE STAR CLASSICS HE CREATED. I have no personal stake invested in Chris Benoit's personal character. I just think a lot of people are denying the effect that his friends' deaths had on his already fragile mental health, all for the sake of trolling those who refuse to admit that anything is wrong with wrestling.

So that includes the stuff about Konnan/Sullivan/Nancy/and which ever luchador bit Nancy on the ass? Because in the book that story was quoted directly from the sleaze thread, but I assume Matt wouldn't have put it in if he thought it was just 'net gossip.

More stuff from the book, in addition to what Bix said about the NJPW training: They would be woken up at 8AM to go for a three-to-five mile run. Then they would be forced to eat a large breakfast, after which they had an hour to perform chores for their sempai (mentor). At 10 they would start their workout, which consisted of around a thousand Hindu squats and 500 pushups. If they showed pain, they were forced to do a few hundred more squats. Then they would get into the ring and have the trainers stretch the hell out of them. At 2 they would get a few hours of "free time" (although according to Osamu Nishimura the free time is spent doing chores, cleaning, and training). Then it was back to the dojo for more working out. Then dinner and bed, although sometimes the trainers would get them up at 2 for another workout.

Cat bath! That wasn't even the sleaziest thing on the show. That would be Road Dogg and Godfather pledging to go burn one and tell some Owen stories. Touching. The prelude quotes him as saying you will "probably not" make good money. Chris Benoit was a 20-year veteran and former world champion who main evented several PPVs. He made a lot of money. Others will not.