Bix

Cent writes a lot of his own material. He's just devolved that much.

Still, nobody took Jericho aside to tell him what he was doing wrong until he started getting heat for it. Just tell him that he needs to bump on each punch or if you have a preference about how stiff/light he works or that you think he hasn't adjusted well to working with bigger opponents.

Digging around Bleacher Report more this is probably the easiest to read listing of my posts: http://bleacherreport.com/users/515890-dav...nspan/archives/

Thanks. Slideshows will be part of what I have to do, but I'm going to do them as organically as possible and make sure they have solid content that works in the format and don't get unwieldy. I've seen sites where I thought that the format was handled well (like Dan Feinberg's Emmy nomination submission rundowns on Hitfix) so I think there are ways it can work without being annoying. News won't be stuck there. That you don't have to worry about. I'll give an example because I'm working on it right now: With the reports that Hunico/Mystico de Juarez/Incognito will temporarily or permanently replace the former CMLL Mistico as Sin Cara, I'm doing one about similar shenanigans with masks: Dos Hombres to hide Douglas's injury in WCW, AAA fakes, Mistico's double booking with his brother's help, etc.

There will be slideshows, but I will try to make them as awesome as possible. I've seen people do enough good things with the format on non wrestling sites that I don't much of a problem there.

Question is where: http://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/8/5/2347...-cageside-seats Bleacher Report wrestling subsite. Have two stories up. Right now, I'll be most easily visible from my profile page at http://bleacherreport.com/users/515890-david-bixenspan (for now my stuff will show up there first) and the "featured columnists" bar on the right a little down the page of the wrestling/WWE sites. Next week they'll be changing from some automation as far as what's featured that will have my stuff more visible among some others.

Wait...Blitzkrieg matches age well? I found his backyardish stumbling between spots really distracting and it was disappointing to learn that he didn't have superpowers.

I haven't watched it recently but always thought this was vastly overrated and incredibly disappointing, especially since I really dug the Bigelow and Vader vs Muto and Hase tag as well as Steiners vs Vader and Hughes.

IIRC the Regal AJPW tapes story had been floating around before the murder-suicide so people in the business knew that something wasn't right with him. The Benoit segment in the London/Kendrick shoot is also well worth watching, as they discuss knowing he was "crazy.". The most infamous part is Benoit demanding that London fuck a waitress while he, Jamie Noble, and Kendrick watch from a closet and masturbate. There is a whole lot more I want to go into (Loss probably knows what it is) but I have to collapse in bed now.

How much do I have to chip in to get a copy of Professional Wrestling Intellecutual?

It probably didn't help that I found out about it in a chat with people who were even more cynical than me.

During the worst of the Sable-Sunny heat, Tammy went on Off The Record and said that the issue as far as the implants went was that she thought Sable looked ridiculous after so many surgeries and that she herself at least looked normal. IIRC she was trying to portray herself as the of the wholesome alternative to Sable so she was knocking the ridiculousness of the body image Sable was glorifying.

Honestly, show of hands: Who DIDN'T think it was most likely a murder-suicide upon hearing the whole family died, and if so, why? Even carbon monoxide poisoning, what we were all "hoping" it would be, would, in hindsight, have a strong likelihood of being a murder-suicide. When I heard Chris Benoit died, I figured he had a wrestler heart attack. When I heard his whole family died, I figured there was a small likelihood of it being CO poisoning but was most likely Chris snapping. It's a discussion we've never really had here since Loss (rightfully) restricted the discussion until the preliminary police determination came in. Watching Raw that night actually made me even more sure that it was Chris as family annihilator based on Regal and Chavo's tribute videos. I can't remember if I've ever posted this here or if it's something I've just said to Loss on IM, but I think a lot of wrestling fans just couldn't process what happened on an emotional level and at that point, either you tried to stay as coldly analytical/intellectual as possible or shut down and went into denial.

Today's daily update is paywalled. I hope that's an accident.

Years earlier, he felt he had been lowballed on a payoff and Vince blamed Ross.

I didn't know that US court standards for evidence were required on fake fighting message boards.

Timeline I wrote up on another board during a previous argument about this: Between what Michael Benoit told Irv Muchnick, what Dave Meltzer reported, and message board posts from that night, it looks like this: 5:30 PM ET: WWE Canada President Carl DeMarco calls Benoit's parents. His mother, Margaret home alone, answers. DeMarco says “I considered Chris one of my best friends…” only to get a response of “Why are you telling me this?” before realizing they hadn't been notified and saying he'd call back. DeMarco calls the detective in charge of the notifications, who called Benoit's mother. DeMarco then called Scott Zerr, an Edmonton report of friend of Chris who was helping with his autobiography, and told him to go to the parents' house and lend his support. Margaret calls her husband/Chris's father Michael and tells him to come home. Around 6:00 PM ET: The deaths are reported on WWE.com. 6:05 PM ET: Dave Meltzer receives a call from a WWE source who tells him that Chris was the killer. 6:36 PM ET: Constable Rob Morris of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was dispatched to the Benoit home. He assisted Emergency Medical Services in “a complaint of a distraught female [who] was just informed that her son, who lives in the United States, had passed away.” His report documents that he “called Detective TURNER to confirm details. Detective TURNER had already spoken with Chris’s Mother, Margaret BENOIT, and informed her of Chris’s passing. The incident was being investigated as an alleged murder-suicide.” 6:45 PM ET: Michael gets home. Zerr meets him in the driveway and tells him he was told by WWE that Chris killed Nancy and Daniel before killing himself. Between 6:00 and 7:00 PM ET: Police tell a local reporter that Chris was the killer. The reporter mentioned this the next day on MSNBC. Presumably some point before 8:00 PM ET: JBL asked Regal if he thought Chris had anything to do with killing Daniel right before Regal taped his tribute, rattling Regal (who knew that Chris had been losing it to some degree) enough to make sure he didn't praise Chris as a person. Chavo Guerrero, who (along with Scott Armstrong) got the text messages from Chris, tapes a tribute that goes overboard in talking about how he trusted his kids with Chris and makes it clear he knew what happened. 8:00 PM ET: Raw goes on the air on the East Coast. 10:00 PM ET: The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that it's a murder-suicide. 10:30 PM ET: Rich Tate reports that Chris was the killer. 11:00 PM ET: WAGA TV reports that Chris was the killer as Raw goes on the air on the West Coast. Around 12:00 AM ET: WWE.com reported that Chris was the killer.

What's the hard evidence in support of this? Aside from Mushnick-style theorizing, I mean. I don't recall ever reading any concrete proof which definitively showed that they 100% knew that Benoit was the killer. There's a report about the 911 call made when Chris's mom went into hysterics after Scott Zerr (a journalist friend of Chris who was going to ghostwrite his WWE book) told her and his dad that the family was dead and it was a murder-suicide committed by Chris. A local reporter said on MSNBC that she found out from a cop while on her way to the crime scene. Dave Meltzer heard it from someone who heard it from a top WWE exec. All hours before the show.

The best part was that he vehemently hated the book but was encouraging everyone to buy it so they understood.

They (Vince and some other top execs) did know. They still did the show in spite of that. The prevailing theories: 1. They absolutely refused to believe it. 2. They thought Nancy actually did it because the most famous celebrity murder-suicide was committed by the wife (Brynn Hartman). This is backed up by them billing the show as a tribute to all three but not featuring her at all, to the point Lawler chimed in late in the show to mention her, as well as Mike Benoit saying Jerry McDevitt Came to him saying they knew she really did it. 3. They wanted to do a tribute show to pop the ratings (Mike Benoit's theory, which I think has at least some merit)

Because he was unconscious after getting pedigreed? Especially if the rest of the show stayed mostly the same and Del Rio had already failed to cash in on a prone Rey who recovered too quickly? If I have to choose between cashing in on the conscious, recognized but less legitimate champion or the unconscious, not quite as recognized but more legitimate one, I'd probably choose the latter if I was a heel? Because he has a very real chance of not actually being the champion and having wasted his contract. Plus, the implication was that HHH would do it so that Del Rio could cash in, when he had no reason to need Del Rio to cash in,

The point of the tournament, like Del Rio cashing in, would be to bring the title back to WWE. What does Triple H care? They crowned a new champion. Job done. Why would this be happening?

It's not the Triple H part that is so illogical we're not believing it, it's that Del Rio would cash in against Punk. Why would he cash in for what was effectively a shot at the tournament winner or whoever beat him instead of waiting for the title situation to be resolved before cashing in? They had given no legitimacy to Punk's title claim. Even by the standards of bad WWE booking it makes no sense.

I was thinking the same thing. It makes no sense unless Del Rio replaces Punk as the lineal champion to Cena or Rey's interim champion for Summerslam, but even then, why cash in on Punk instead of the other champion? It sounds like the idea was floated between Raws, which means after the tournament started. I can't see how that could've been a legitimately planned angle.

Do we have enough proof that CM Punk is now a big draw for WWE?