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Good Morning America Reporting on Linda McMahon's Troubling WWE Past, Pending Lawsuit

I'm amused by Steve Yohe's comments over at The OtherArena, where he admitted voting for Henri Deglane and Johnny Saint, while not knowing who Kent Walton was.

I dunno if they'll do that again after the Kennedy injury mess. I dunno if they have the confidence in The Miz to be in a WrestleMania main event either.

The key difference between Sting and Jericho is a different career narrative, which the HOF voters aren't going to question much. Sting's narrative is largely "overpushed muscle man who never lived up to his potential, because he wasn't quite good enough", while Jericho's narrative is largely "ultra charismatic and talented all round performer held back by politics time and time again". Of course, at his peak Sting was hotter than Jericho ever was and got screwed worse at Starrcade '97 than he ever did, but that tends to be ignored because it doesn't fit the overarching narrative. Jericho's benefited a ton in the last couple of years from fitting the traditional Observer mold "Wrestler Of The Year", while the voters have ignored that the business has changed and the same template doesn't fit anymore. Sting's hurt a ton by his return being in a completely incompetent national promotion that no-one seriously pays attention to, so anything good he's done over the last 5 years will go completely ignored.

Dave Meltzer on Jake Shields and how UFC shouldn't let him fight on TV or live PPV: I mean WOW. Dave Meltzer on Spike TV's growing impatience with TNA: "Ruh roh".

Oh dear. Surely, if "the goal of pro wrestling is to create the illusion of an MMA fight", then the best way to work a pro wrestling match would be to make it look as close to an MMA fight as possible? But that style of working is dead. That one actually goes back at least to a Cyber Sunday event when Matt Hardy and MVP were feuding. The fans were going to get to choose between a standard wrestling match, a boxing match, and an MMA match, and Dave decried the pointlessness of the MMA choice because "a worked MMA match is just a regular wrestling match, anyway". Because, you know, it's not like there's any difference at all between how your average WWE match is worked and how your average RINGS match is worked. Nope. No siree. MMA=wrestling, just like WWE=UWFi. I did troll Dave on this point on his board. His response:

Oh dear. Surely, if "the goal of pro wrestling is to create the illusion of an MMA fight", then the best way to work a pro wrestling match would be to make it look as close to an MMA fight as possible? But that style of working is dead.

I think the John Cena fan backlash had a lot to do with certain opponents being more concerned with popping the crowd and making themselves (Angle, Trips), than making their opponent. Against heels who wanted to be booed, not cheered, like JBL and Edge, the backlash wasn't as noticeable. Loss and KrisZ are right about why WWE shouldn't do an All-Access type show. Just because people don't want their intelligence insulted while watching wrestling, doesn't mean that they want a reality based product. The appeal of wrestling has always been the over the top, larger than life characters involved.

The other thing worth remembering about Brock is that there's never going to be anyone like him again who successfully crosses over from pro wrestling to MMA, other than perhaps Bobby Lashley, but he remains untested and doesn't have Brock's charisma and presence. All the elite amateur wrestlers today are going straight into MMA, they're not going into pro wrestling anymore. Brock's an anomaly - the unique circumstances that allowed him to become UFC's biggest mainstream draw aren't going to be repeating themselves in the long term future.

I think the crux of the argument boils down to how big a difference does one being real and one being fake makes to how you should promote the sport/entertainment brand. Rather than sweep that inconvenient truth under the rug and treat them as being exactly the same, it would be nice if Dave and Bryan thought out of the box and came up with a more nuanced argument.

Regarding Jimmy Hart being the greatest manager ever, I'm not sure I'd go that far. Will's right, he's awesome, but he didn't have Heenan's longevity and his prime was in the '70s in the AWA. Maybe if we had more footage from that period, we'd be raving about Heenan in a similar manner?

This may help to explain why people keep stubbornly digging a hole for themselves, on both sides of the argument: How facts backfire

To be fair, Todd asked by far the more insightful questions and came off as a real fan of the promotion. Todd really made the interview as Bryan was pretty clueless about SMW. "I have to interrupt you talking about booking SMW to fit in a tired dig at the current WWE creative team" - Bryan Alvarez.

LOL at Jim Cornette on Figure Four Daily for saying "we never lied to the fans" in SMW when he did a Morton's hair vs. Tammy's hair match, which Morton lost, yet he didn't get his head shaved and instead Candido's hair was shaved instead, a bait and switch finish which failed to get over with the live crowd.

Baby Doll: From star attraction to single mom

Speaking of the Observer shoot series, here's Bryan having to defend the first interview with Abdullah The Butcher:

Never underestimate the ability to fleece the marks of the Wrestling Observer brand.

Well, Vince Russo is a fan of Lost too...

Dave banging the ratings are meaningless for matchmaking drum again: Dave should consider the consequence of replacing ratings with wins and losses in that paragraph, as MMA ratings are primarily based on wins and losses.

Here's more details for sek69 to mull: Chris Benoit’s Dad to Author Muchnick, Part 2: WWE/McMahon Lawyer McDevitt and the Pennsylvania Coroner

I don't think Hulk is healthy enough to run anywhere at the moment.

Brock Lesnar’s UFC 116 victory caps off a remarkable resurrection of fortunes for his mouthpiece Paul Heyman. I think Heyman was relishing the opportunity to give Vince McMahon a receipt and string his suitor Dixie Carter along.

Linda McMahon hilariously tries to paint herself as the candidate of integrity, Mike Benoit unsurprisingly is not amused

Update from Dave Meltzer: Looks like this is yet another case of WWE instinctively lying to cover their backs again, only for the doctors to expose them at a later date.

Bret Hart chimes in on Martha Hart's lawsuit. Oh Bret, you're such a sellout.