Al

I'll echo the Shane Douglas appreciation. Met him at a show a few months back. Super nice guy.

The sound effect was way too quick for them to have fallen all the way off the roof.

This is the It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World or wrestling matches.

There's a show called Penn & Teller's Fool Us, where comedians come on and Penn and Teller have to figure out how they did the trick. There's every acknowledgement that magic is not real, people can not read minds, etc. But they won't reveal to the audience exactly how a trick was done. I think magic is extremely similar to wrestling in that the average viewer knows something is a work. But they are generally ignorant as to how it is performed. BTW, as far as that 33% believing wrestling is real, I've seen a depressingly high percentage of people buy into mediums. It would not tremendously surprise me.

Every time I read up on Lucha I come across the Santo/Shadow mask vs mask match. And in that vein, Murcielago Velazquez vs Octavio Gaona being the first mask bet match.

I was intrigued by this. Is the match 10/06/89? And is there anything besides the fan cam?

I would also note that Yankee Stadium in the ‘70s probably would not have been a desirable venue. Despite the history the stadium itself was in bad condition pre-renovation and the Bronx at the time had a real crime problem. (Not that Queens was great, but Shea is near an airport). Today is better, but MetLife is probably more desirable than any other stadium for wrestling.

You wanted guys to be legit. Not just for the NWA title but there's also a bunch of small scale promotional wars flaring up here and there. But certain wrestlers/promoters, especially Eddie Graham in Florida, took delight in bringing rubes into their facilities and flat out torturing them.

One of those unfortunate wrestlers who had his prime years in the '60s when no one was taping or preserving footage. His team with (the original) Doug Gilbert was a big deal.

Wasn't Bo Dallas already cut?

And Mike Bennett, finally (for his sake)

No doubt they're going to cut talent. The traveling crew though, people that put together the stage, production, moving the equipment, etc., those employees will really get pinched. I wonder if there's less fear of AEW since they're not in a great position to capitalize on talent. A boom market for wrestlers has completely dried up in a span of six weeks.

The greatest irony is that Kong’s comment could’ve been avoided if the show was taped.

Instinctively, I think Slasher is right here. Vince's obligation is to deliver accurate financial information to his investors. Beyond that, he's the largest stakeholder and (nominal) owner of both companies. His duty is whatever he sees fit. If he didn't misrepresent his company to gain investors, then I think he's on ethically firm ground. Legally is another matter, but I am nowhere near qualified to see how that shakes out.

Gunn’s hope would’ve been to take Bean off his feet. You got points for takedowns. I don’t think you could gas Bean in that environment. Bean could box four rounds, the Brawl For All didn’t even schedule fights that long.

I don't think it's a secret that the idea of live sports is extremely pessimistic at least the rest of the year. The XFL probably lost a huge chunk of ticket revenue this year and selling season tickets into next season is impossible. Vince isn't much of a sympathetic figure. But to build something like this, plan it out only to have it ripped out through no fault of your own must be extraordinarily frustrating. But then quite a few people in our country are facing difficulties at the moment.

JBL compared him to Ivan Putski. The Mighty Igor is a good comparison as well. Otis is a better wrestler than both. Like you said, he’s super charismatic. His downside is popular gatekeeper face. And he could be much more.

It’s probable we don’t see a live crowd again for months. When it comes to McIntyre and frankly anyone else, we’re in uncharted waters.

A closed set. All you need to do to defend the 24/7 title is not show up to an empty building. I guess that fits Rawley’s character.

"Sixteen seconds" "Do we have to start over?" " Hell no"

Funny, I was thinking about female HOF candidates just a couple days ago. There are eleven women in the WON HOF. Ten of those are joshi, the other is Mildred Burke. The last woman elected was Aja Kong in 2006. It has struck me as odd that while nearly all the women in are joshi, there hasn't been any others seriously considered. Logic would suggest that if there were ten deserving inductees, surely there were a bunch more on the cusp? So to tie this in with Elliott's post. Regardless of whether they're actually deserving of induction, who would you rate as the five best candidates not yet in the WON HOF? If you don't think Kandori and Kudo are HOFers, are they still your one and two? And a second side question. If no American women are in your top five, who is your best candidate? So you don't need to open a tab and double check. Currently In: Akira Hokuto, Dump Matsumoto, Chigusa Nagayo, Lioness Asuka, Bull Nakano, Aja Kong, Devil Masami, Jaguar Yokota, Manami Toyota, Jackie Sato, Mildred Burke

I imagine most of the talent is losing a huge chunk of money by the show not being rescheduled instead. Honestly though, the way the winds are blowing they will be lucky to get Summerslam.

The one saving grace for WWE is that for all I know they could have WrestleMania in the can already.

We'll never know, but I'm amazed when I go through Lou Thesz's matches and not only see him wrestling in a different city, but wrestling a different opponent almost every single night. Given what we've seen of Thesz if he's getting good matches out of most of these guys, it's a heck of an accomplishment.

Oil prices have tanked. A possible long term effect on this. Saudi Arabia is cutting government spending by 5%. A twice a year wrestling extravaganza looks far less attractive on the balance sheet.