Al

Great stuff. It occurs to me that David Von Erich was the "first" major wrestling death of the era. Did anyone pass previously?

Probably late 1994. WCW lent ECW a boatload of talent at this time. Cactus Jack, Bobby Eaton, Arn Anderson, Brian Pillman among others all wrestled in WCW in '94. You will remember the big controversy when Cactus Jack spit on the WCW tag belt after losing to Sabu. At November to Remember '94, Douglas gave an interview stating Austin would come in to team with him against Ron Simmons and 2 Cold Scorpio. For some reason (possibly injuries?), Austin never came in.

That's never a good sign, right? Then again, they're holding this show in the middle of nowhere in north Jersey, about 2 hours from Philadelphia and not really close to New York City either, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. Too bad I already have plans next weekend. I live a little over an hour from Dover, that's pretty tempting and as close as RoH comes to here. Dover is accessible to NYC via the NJ train system at least.

"Too Tall" Jones was advertised to wrestle in the event right to the end, but ended up refereeing with no explanation given. Heenan had a reason. Mr. Fuji had the flu! Someone really needs to get a screencap of Fuji with two ice packs now that this event is currently airing on 24/7.

Bulldogs/Dream Team is well covered with matches on the MSG show, Wrestlemania 2 and Saturday Night's Main Event. I dare say it was one of the best tag feuds WWF ever produced. No true classic match but lots of very good ones, and some unique finishes and matches particularly by WWF standards.

It amazes me how many athletes try that brave denial nonsense. Kennedy fell into it. Roger Clemens digs himself deeper in a hole by the week. It only leads to an ironic downfall in the future.

Hyper-editing is a sports problem in general. Anyone who's attempted to watch MLB on Fox can relate.

No, there is a conscious effort, and I don't think it's a conspiracy issue. Now if they continue to have "recording issues" on future episodes, yeah.

The problem with the Benoit conspiracy issue here is that the problem of him showing up on Nitro is going to get worse, not better. If they want to avoid showing him they are going to need a better solution than that.

No wonder Keomuka got a match on the World Class dvd. The Honky Tonk Man stuff is interesting. It amazes me that Vince let him hold the title until Summerslam when he pulled that nonsense. Anyone else and Vince would've gotten the title off them post-haste and made them persona non grata for the rest of their professional career. Honky Tonk Man vs. Spider Lady for the Intercontinental Title. What might have been.

I could make a good list of things said on TNT that would cause a major PR controversy today. On another note, it gets kind of annoying that whenever any type of editing occurs, someone suggests maybe it has to do with Chris Benoit, and that IMMEDIATELY becomes fact, to the point where Meltzer reports it. Considering they claimed recording errors when TNT showed replays of the shows the same evening, somebody's kayfabing somebody somewhere. Do you have a better explanation? I don't, and it may very well be true in this situation. But people make grand statements about WWE's policy when they have never made a single statement about editing Benoit whatsoever.

I could make a good list of things said on TNT that would cause a major PR controversy today. On another note, it gets kind of annoying that whenever any type of editing occurs, someone suggests maybe it has to do with Chris Benoit, and that IMMEDIATELY becomes fact, to the point where Meltzer reports it.

It's low overhead. Does it really cost RoH anything to put tapes of the shows on Pay Per View? Seriously, right now my cable company's three InDemand channels are running two airings of some Howard Stern special and something called the "Vegas Amateur Strip-Off." Ring of Honor probably isn't doing much, but does it do harm to be on there at all? I doubt it.

My instinct is last match on the card, unless it is blatantly obvious. Otherwise it takes a great deal of time to try and figure out who gets credit for what. It's sloppy but at least it is objective. For the Royal Rumbles, I think the easiest thing is to count the winner. Your other option is to give each wrestler credit, but that gives an unfair advantage to Shawn Michaels for appearing twice as a Rocker, Bret Hart as a tag wrestler, etc.

I took an informal count. Hulk Hogan has a clear lead yet when you count up both his WWF and WCW PPV main events. Remember he got to headline about 80% of WCW's shows from 1994-99. The Undertaker comes in second followed by Triple H, then Austin and Michaels. I assume you wouldn't count TNA's weekly shows.

Could you clarify your second sentence? I'm not quite sure what it means.

Sek, I'm talking dvd releases of shows, not just full shows on 24/7. One problem with compilations is that it really exposes how Jim Ross would say the same thing every month. "This looks like a car wreck on [local interstate]". "Some idiot will say they know how to fall." Etc.

Amend that to say compilation. They don't go out of their way to edit him off full shows, but don't feel compelled to include him where they don't need to. That's a wise decision, IMO.

The Yokozuna match was two minutes, so it makes a suitable extra.

Tyson at this point is a person whose celebrity goes beyond boxing. Almost like a Paris Hilton or someone of that nature. America has a certain group of quasi-celebrities that seem to exist solely for shows like TMZ.

There's no way that any current boxer touches Tyson in name recognition, but I think Mayweather is probably about as well known as any current boxer outside of Oscar De La Hoya.

Some reporter likely called and they gave the company line. Do you expect them to give a different answer naming the concussions in the face of a million dollar lawsuit? Companies in WWE's position are legally compelled to avoid making incriminating statements, less it comes back to bite them. You can't take anything they say seriously.

It may be a fair point. I have a problem these days with Triple H matches in that they always seem to go 16-25 minutes. You can safely ignore the first ten minutes because they're just killing time until the finish, or at least that's the impression I have. It is interesting that Dave was so high on the business aspect, because I don't recall WWE having a huge year. Hogan/Andre popped a big rating but otherwise there doesn't seem to be anything remarkable.

The preshow clip for the '97 MSG show is Jumbo Tsuruta winning the AWA World title.

Quick google search shows no solid source. The record appears to be Lewis-Tyson, with 1.95 million buys.