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I don't think WWE would touch Reid with a barge pole. Even with their family pedigree Teddy Hart and Lacey Von Erich never got past development for being headcases. Maybe he'll be given a second chance one day like Teddy Hart, but if he's still a headcase with a heroin addiction, then he still won't make TV. The problem Ric has is that he needs more money (or at least more freedom to do outside gigs to supplement his income) than WWE will ever give to him at this stage in his career. Which means we'll see more of the same, Flair milking the indy mark promoters dry, while doing an occasional WWE foray here and there, until those indy marks run dry and he's forced to consider going to TNA.

Is Marisa still involved with the company? I think she might be the sane voice encouraging Shane to leave all the wrestling insanity behind him while the going is good.

At the end of the day, Tom Cole's sexual harassment allegations against Pat Patterson were Tom's word against Pat's. Dave reported those allegations at the time and even though Tom's allegations against Terry Garvin and Mel Phillips were true, like the WWF he seems to have chosen to trust Pat's word instead of Tom's. It's certainly possible Tom was lying about Pat, but telling the truth about the others, though it should be noted that by the time Pat Patterson came back Tom Cole had been given a job by the WWF to shut him up.

Pedophile would be the wrong term, ephebophile would be the correct term. But please, this is wrestling. I'm sure Dave knew all the jokes about Mel Phillips' love for young boys feet before the sex scandals became public. Not to mention Ric Flair's love of exposing himself in public. Dave has covered for delinquent behaviour in wrestling since becoming an insider. So he's not above giving the benefit of the doubt to a long term source and childhood favorite.

Joe Babinsack gives an incomprehensible review of Irv's book.

And Irv just keeps going...

I'm sure Nova was picked more due to his OVW run, where he completely changed his style and became Corny's right hand man, than for anything he did in ECW.

Dave runs in to make the save for Todd on the Figure Four message board :

How dare these women I've never heard of, obviously completely talentless, waste my precious time by sullying the pro wrestling I held so dear until it became more profitable to report on MMA?

Most stalkers tend to fixate on people they feel they know personally, not random strangers. Flirting would have a real impact on that, because the stalker comes to believe that the Hooters waitress or stripper *really* likes him and isn't just saying nice things to him to get a bigger tip.

Wrestling history disagrees with this. Bruno didn't suffer a pinfall loss in the North East from May 17th 1963 until January 18th 1971 and the fans weren't ready for him to lose even then. Hogan didn't suffer a clean pinfall loss in the WWF from January 23rd 1984 until April 1st 1990 and with the benefit of hindsight that loss might have been a mistake. I never understood why the focus was on ending the streak; the focus should have been on how to keep Goldberg strong, as he was clearly carrying the promotion by the summer of 1998.

I called it over at the Other Arena a few weeks ago. He'll end up like Jim Barnett, being given a wage just because Vince McMahon feels sorry for him.

Irv has finished posting Jerry McDevitt's legal letter (see above) and has started posting his response to that letter:

There are plenty of World Class stories that could be included. The cover up of the circumstances around David Von Erich's death, Fritz's cover up of his sons' indiscretions, treating the fake blinding of Chris Adams to be a bigger tragedy than the real death of Gino Hernandez, Fritz's fake heart attack angle, the cover up of Kerry's amputated foot - even denying it after it came off during a match, etc. Ironically given the lengths Fritz went to protect the business and his sons, he once exposed kayfabe on TV by revealing that Lance Von Erich wasn't really related to him, because Lance had left the promotion and was working for a competitor.

To me this is complete nonsense. Most people's idea of a real fight is based on sports like boxing (Muhammad Ali was a much bigger mainstream star than any wrestler in the 1960s and 70s) not exaggerated movie fights. Most people were willing to suspend their disbelief to be entertained and weren't duped into thinking wrestling was "real". Yeah, pretty much. Of course, the Hooters girl doesn't carry on the con outside the Hooters bar, so it's no wonder wrestlers had more trouble from their patrons than the Hooters girl. If you're a hot tempered jerkoff in public, then you're inevitably going to find trouble. Another reason they got so much trouble is that the local tough guys thought that they could take the phony loudmouth heel wrestler. There are plenty of stories where a wrestler was forced to rip an eye out or use some other extreme tactic to survive the onslaught of someone who could really handle themselves. If those tough guys thought wrestling was legit, then they would have thought twice about attacking them.

What's the difference between a customer breaking the no-hands rule at a strip club and a wrestling fan breaking the no-jumping the guard rail and attacking the wrestlers rule at a wrestling show? Of course, strippers don't want their ugly punters copping a feel, while many old school wrestlers wanted to whip the crowd into such a frenzy that riots were expected. But apart from that, what's the difference?

Extrapolating from small unrepresentative samples leads to faulty conclusions that don't hold up in reality. You're going to find the dregs of wrestling fandom at two-bit indy shows. It doesn't follow that 20 years ago, every fan was a dumb mark who believed it was real.

I thought what we've learned is that any voter can vote for any candidate, but that some votes are counted differently than others depending on the expertise of the voter. And Dave "clearly explained" this in the email on the ballot, yet no-one understood his "clear explanation" leading to clear misconceptions about Dave's voting system. So in a sense he has told you. I don't think Dave explicitly told the Japanese voters that if they voted for Marc Rocco their votes wouldn't count to his European totals, but to a separate Japanese total. What makes you any different? I suspect Dave feels you're knowledgeable enough in all categories (except possibly Europe) that you would be considered a voter of each region, but we don't know this for certain.

Whose the fucking moron? The mark who gets so caught up in the heat of the moment that they take a pop at the heel or the heel who goaded the fans so much that they wanted to lynch him? Most old school wrestlers were insecure carnies who loved to clobber the marks who got in their way and sadistically bully young trainees to prove their toughness. It was more about conning themselves than conning the fans. The few heels who broke the mold by making sure not to push the fans too far and being nice and polite to fans outside the ring (like Killer Kowalski), weren't attacked nearly as much as the heels who were looking for trouble.

Being from the UK, I'd say that the vast majority of British fans were in on the joke regarding Big Daddy. They didn't take his obviously phony fights as real, they took it for what it was. Light hearted entertainment. I'd say this was the same everywhere. My Dad knew it wasn't real, but it still didn't stop him from getting caught up in the moment and being outraged at the heels antics. But I think we've had this debate before...

The problem is most wrestling reporters focus on one country or even one promotion (like Dan Wahlers or Sean Radican) and have little historical and international perspective. I think the stuff about a veteran's committee is Dave-speak for people he deems worthy of voting on historical candidates on the official ballot, which would obviously include Steve. I think he also has a smaller subset of historians that he goes to for a consensus on pre 1950s stars who go in via fiat like Everett Marshall. I'd imagine that includes Steve too. It's why he's hit a brick wall on Orville Brown. Obviously his fellow historians were higher on Everett Marshall as a HOF candidate than Orville Brown.

I bumped the thread with a couple of questions and Dave's already responded: I'm glad Dave is doing a more detailed breakdown of votes next year, as it will make his system a lot more transparent and make his analysis of results easier to interpret. Dave's HOF is modelled after real sports HOFs. No real sports HOF would give ballots to very knowledgeable message board posters. So Dave isn't going to start giving ballots out to the likes of Phil Schneider, tomk, Goodhelmet, Loss or Bix. Which wouldn't be a problem if the depth of wrestling reporters' knowledge wasn't so poor. But that's why he had to start strictly assigning voters to certain regions & subsets.

For some reason, doing an opinion poll about who you like best among these guys when only one wrestled after 1950 seems odd to me. Doesn't Dave do these polls every year? Go through the WON HOF candidates in aphabetical order, which inevitably ends up with the same odd polls every year where the winner is obvious.

When I said "tossed votes on the woodpile", I didn't mean Dave wasn't counting them, but if he's treating votes from some voters differently than others that essentially what he's doing. Konnan isn't going to get enough votes from American voters to get in via that route, so if Bruce isn't considered a Mexican region voter his vote is essentially wasted and as it goes unreported disappears into the ether. Still haven't read all of the Hall Of Fame issue, but Dave's write up of the Fabulous Moolah's future chances was interesting: I always thought Moolah would get in when she became considered a historical candidate, because the historical voters bucket would swell with people who only voted for Moolah due to ignorance about other historical candidates, but the bolded part in the paragraph above suggests that such votes would be treated differently. Looks like my assumption was wrong.

Listening to Dave's audio update, it sounds like The Undertaker was likely to win the title either way (though there were certainly people in WWE creative who were pushing for Punk to win, but they were losing an uphill battle), but that Punk lost in the manner he did (coming out before the Undertaker did, losing the title in the opening match) to send him a message that he wasn't that big a star. Really it's Vince's M.O. to placate the biggest stars in issues like this. That said, I agree that we shouldn't be crying any tears for Punk because WWE's dearth of fresh new stars, guarantees that any depush of Punk will only be momentary.