Al

Ron has a podcast where he does a deep, DEEP dive on his and his family's wrestling career. A few annoyances but he's a fantastic storyteller.

He looks like someone took the Yeti and decided he needed to look more like The Juicer Art Barr.

Just spent ten minutes down a Prince Kharis wormhole

I highly recommend Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy's book, "Sisterhood of the Squared Circle." I don't remember if they covered Shade, but they wrote about many of her contemporaries like Evelyn Stevens, Ann Casey, etc. These women had real careers and fascinating stories to tell.

It seems to me that if part of your inside knowledge is having medical information about someone's close family member, that's the kind of thing you should keep to yourself. It's a massive invasion of their personal privacy.

Wrestling Mongolians are a fantastic mix of races. You’ve got Volkoff (Yugoslavian) and Newton Tattrie (French Canadian). Tattrie is later joined by Bill Eadie, from Pennsylvania. Killer Khan was Japanese, while El Mongol in Georgia was a Mexican. And yeah, it’s Genghis (and Kubla) Khan coupled with Mongolians not being prevalent enough that Americans know what they’re supposed to look like.

I would be a little surprised if she wasn't. But she was indeed married twice, once to wrestler turned promoter Buddy Lee and again to wrestler Johnny Long.

Moolah hate was around when she was alive. Check out the documentary Lipstick and Dynamite. It seemed like professional animosity though. Moolah was a spotlight hog, she dominated the scene. She garnished her trainees wages and collected high booking fees, etc. I honestly thought more women would speak out against her when she and especially Mae Young passed away, which never really happened. The sexual accusations I'm wary of because they're second hand. It's always "Moolah pimped out the girls," never "Moolah pimped me out." It absolutely could have happened, but I don't want to levy a label like that without substantial evidence. I think there are things Moolah is absolutely unfairly criticized for. She trained girls in a safe style which certainly wasn't as exciting as the Japanese girls, but knowing what we know about concussions I'm not going to criticize it by any means. She's accused of holding back womens wrestling but I don't think any US promoter was willing to push womens wrestling. Vince McMahon Jr. featured more womens wrestling than anyone else at the time, and that's freaking Vince. What happened with womens wrestling after the late 40s and early 50s mirrors society at large and women in other sports. I don't think anyone could have taken it further than a sideshow, and a national exhibition tour in the territorial era was probably the best result.

Given that at one point Richter was married to Hugo Savinovich, maybe there was some backstory there.

So Bret Hart vs Tom Magee. Good match, but three flaws stick out at me about Magee, even in his best setting. 1. He moves like a motion capture video game character. He just never looks natural moving when he's not doing a spot. 2. He blew at least one, maybe two spots taking offense from Bret. The legdrop being most notable. 3. Bret had Magee work Magee's best spots but Magee's biggest offensive moves were rollups. I don't know if I remember Magee executing a single move designed to actually hurt Bret. But all in all an interesting program, and a good match to actually study and see what makes a match work and how to work around someone's limitations. And frankly it was great to see Tom Magee now looking like he's aged well and recovered from that home invasion. He seems like a good guy.

There's a little part of me that says if I were a professional troll, I'd show up backstage at an indy show but have some schlep do the actual run in.

I bought tickets to an NXT house show next month in Bethlehem. I'm just a casual observer but I'm expecting a fun experience. It's way closer and more intimate than I would get at a Raw/Smackdown WWE show.

It was a good match. I don’t think Magee’s lack of success is anything more complicated than he was a bad wrestler though. His selling is completely off. There’s no doubt he had potential and no wonder Vince tried him out, but it never completely clicked. Given pro wrestling in 2019 though, I expect to see someone book Tom Magee vs Nick Gage or David Arquette or someone.

Agreed here. Eyewitness accounts can be notoriously hazy. You kind of need to collect everyone's stories and find the consistencies.

WWE really lucked out with the weather. Unseasonably warm today. Two days ago I drove through light sleet.

I’m not going to call Wilder a coward or anything. But I think from a practical standpoint when you’re apprehending someone it does little good to have several random people running up and taking shots. It makes the situation more dangerous.

Serious thought. I know it’s accepted wrestling protocol and all but Dash Wilder punching the trespasser after he’s been subdued is basically assault. If it turns out the person is mentally ill or something, it’s a really bad look.

I’m beginning to think I’d rather hear that guy talk than the rest of this DX performance.

For the flack Stevie Ray gets for his wrestling ability, he’s a good talker and it’s nice to see him get this moment.

Magee is interesting because there are parts of him that are impressive. Good physique guy who was acrobatic, he’s out there doing junior heavyweight spots. But in between he’s as unnatural as any wrestler I’ve ever seen.

I would go with Angle beats Corbin in 30-60 seconds, open challenge, Cena comes out.

Did Anvil ever have a singles match as high profile as Bret’s SNME match against Savage?

They found a place worse than Fernwood?!

https://twitter.com/Athletics/status/1108325589604167680

If Verne did this for Kellogg’s, can you imagine what he would do for Saudi money?