Loss

I remember asking FLIK in a thread when Hokuto became the Dangerous Queen and he seemed to indicate that it was sooner than that. So it happened in summer of 1992?

I think their point was that a six-month commitment for new sign-ups now will result in getting every show the rest of the year. I don't think there was anything to it beyond that.

Yes.

I still think Cena is dropping the belt to Brock at Summerslam and Brock is holding it all the way to WM and rarely appearing on TV before dropping it to Roman Reigns. Giving Reigns his big moment in a forgettable four-way seems silly.

Good call. Pro Wrestling Only.

In Bill's defense, the political dynamic of situations was like that was that they'd run it by the guy first, usually in front of a group of people, and he would have to say yes or risk being branded someone who couldn't take a joke and get all sorts of ribs off camera. But at the same time, I'm not going to criticize someone too much for something they said years ago that they probably wouldn't say today. Jim Ross has come out in support of gay marriage at this point. HHH did an entire segment suggesting Kurt Angle was gay and got the entire audience to start a "Faggot!" chant. In 2013, he and Stephanie did photos for the No H8 campaign. People change, and on top of that, morality in wrestling has ALWAYS been relative.

Not to defend it, but it was a very different time.

Solie was also drunk.

I will be surprised if - for better or worse - Jericho doesn't have this overwrought three-month program laid out. He seems aware of that perception because he's always defensive about it in interviews, which is why I think he might win tonight.

Let's try to stay Pro Wrestling Only if we can.

Because "$59.94 for six months" isn't as catchy as a marketing slogan, and some people may not have $60 in their bank account to buy six months of WWE Network access at once.

It was in the most recent WON that he was treated as a huge babyface by the Madison Square Garden crowd at last weekend's house show.

I just wanted to start a thread about this. I see from Google that it looks like episode 100 was on 9/24/04, so I'm guessing this started around 2002. Is that correct? What kind of stuff was featured here that might be hard to find elsewhere? What stands out about this show to anyone who watched it? I'm interested in learning more, so feel free to discuss whatever you want about it in this thread.

I can't wait until Dave gets to that issue in his classic WON. I really want to read what was reported about that meeting at the time.

I had thoughts as a ten-year-old of creating an independent company as an adult that did scouting reports for wrestlers, where payment would be dependent upon beating their opponent.

I liked the matches where my favorites won and didn't like the ones where they didn't. Beyond that, I really didn't have matches I liked versus matches I didn't. It didn't enter my thought process. Wrestlers who won were my favorites because winning meant they were good. My thought process was more "Ok, this strategy worked in the last match, so here's what the guy who lost needs to do differently this time and here's what the guy who won may need to consider doing differently." I was very into the mental aspect of it all. It sounds ridiculous now, but until 1997 or so, I really watched it like a sporting event, to the point that I thought stuff like heel turns were a distraction from the sport. We don't know these people personally, and it really doesn't matter when it comes to how good they are at winning matches anyway, so who are we to judge them?

If we are going to discuss WM30, let us forever immortalize this video.

I will agree that the Internet changed wrestling in the sense that kayfabe is broken and insider terms are used on WWE.com and official WWE DVD releases, and I'm not sure that would have happened without the Internet. Yes, Vince admitted wrestling was fake in 1989 and it's not like he went out of his way to present the WWF as something real, but you will notice he stopped short of using the word "fake". Whether the majority of fans were going online to find out more about Montreal in late 1997 or not, the framework in which it was discussed on WWE television would have been very different had it happened ten years earlier. We saw fake shoots in 1988 with Paul E. and the Original Midnights showing up in the NWA, and again in 1990 with the Jerry Lawler-Snowman feud. But those looked very different than Vince Russo booking Hulk Hogan to literally lay down and do a job because of BACKSTAGE POLITICZ in 1999 and 2000, or from Kevin Nash being booked to "save" a match after Goldberg acted unprofessionally. There is a reason magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated didn't thrive in the late 90s/early 2000s wrestling boom and it was not just that technology was changing, although admittedly that was part of it. I agree that what we are arguing here is ratios of fans. I think most people have always known it was fake. I think because wrestling is more open now, people understand (or think they understand) more about its inner workings now - meaning that I think the number of fans who know what a babyface and heel are, and what doing a job means, is higher now than it was thirty years ago, even if it's still not the majority of fans. Still, WWE will never quite go all the way. Yes, they admitted wrestling was fake in 1989 (something which the vast majority of wrestling fans never knew he did, by the way - I'm convinced that was a bigger deal to hardcore fans than mainstream fans), but they also rejected merchandising proposals for Dolph Ziggler a couple of years ago that would include insider terms.

It never occurred to me before going online that matches could be either good or bad, but I would appear to be in the minority on that one. It wasn't that thinking about wrestling in that framework didn't appeal to me, it was that it didn't occur to me. I mean, I realized that Renegade and Erik Watts couldn't throw dropkicks and saw them as poorly trained wrestlers, but more in a kayfabe sense of that giving their opponents a huge advantage in matches.

I keep wanting to make the point about how fans have changed and that hi-jacking wasn't really something that happened in previous eras like it does now. Then I realized that it did. Remember babyface Honky Tonk Man? Or Freebirds vs Dynamic Dudes at Halloween Havoc '89? Or Jeff Jarrett reading that poem? Stepping outside of U.S. wrestling, there was even the late 1987 thing where Sumo Hall fans turned on the angle that led to Vader beating Inoki in three minutes or whatever it was -- not because there was a strong heel involved, but because they rejected the promotional direction. "Boring" chants used to be really common too. Flair would get cheered and Garvin would get booed. Fans would show their support for heels like Cornette and the Horsemen in the front rows of TV tapings. We don't have as much footage from before the 1980s, but I'm sure that sort of thing happened then too. "Match of the Year" and "This is awesome" chants are new, but cheering actual matches of the year and things that were awesome is not new at all.

I would like a Brody fan to sort of expand on what Dave's talked about where he would throw a shoot kick in the middle of a bunch of worked ones to really grab everyone's attention. Are there matches where it's evident that is even happening? And is that even a good thing?

Their Russo addiction is hilarious. They can't quit him and his very employment is enough to prevent them from making some international deals. So instead of severing ties, they employ him under the table. Just rich.