Bix

As far as Dave's accuracy vs Randazzo's accuracy, it's really a ridiculous argument. Both get info from wrestlers and management (current and former). Both have been accused by people in the business to be wrong, sometimes in generalities and sometimes with specifics, the latter of which includes cases where one may be more likely side w/ the accusing wrestlers at times. If they have contradicting stories, then one is wrong, but the only reason to believe Dave over Randazzo is that he's been doing it longer, during which people accused him of the same things, and honestly, Dave Meltzer seems to be worked more easily (sometimes blatantly, when it's being done by Gabe Sapolsky or Konnan, and later by Dean Malenko), ditto for Bryan Alvarez and Wade Keller. The fact that Dave doesn't refute any of the "Benoit was an evil asshole stories" while still trying to lessen their impact is pretty telling, as is the fact that it appears he and the other reporters sat on the Lagana story. Much of what's going on feels like the newsletter sources are angry about the book and Dave is writing up ridiculous criticiisms by comparing broken-necked garbage bumps to Jim Carrey being VERY DRIVEN hoping that his dimmer readers will eat it up while criticizing the book enough to satisfy his sources.

Could you C&P Mort's posts? I'm curious to see what he said.

Being that this is pro wrestling and there are plenty of terrible people (of varying degrees) in the HOF.... ...I think he has to stay even if he's the worst. I guess this is good, but does it mean that the younger voters shouldn't bother to pick them? Would I, if I had a ballot be allowed to/have any reason to vote for any of these folks?

Ballot C&Ped from a Yohe post at WC: SHOULD CHRIS BENOIT REMAIN IN THE HALL OF FAME? Yes No New rule: For wrestlers whose primes were before 1975, they only have to get 60% of the votes among those who were old enough to have been in the same era with them. PERFORMERS LIST (Maximum of 10 picks) Jun Akiyama Gene & Ole Anderson The Assassins (Joe Hamilton & Tom Renesto) Atlantis Red Bastien Carlos Colon Fit Finlay Hector Garza George Gordienko Gran Hamada Volk Han Owen Hart Curt Hennig Chris Jericho Rocky Johnson Ivan Koloff Konnan Karloff Lagarde Mark Lewin Jose Lothario Midnight Express (Dennis Condrey & Bobby Eaton & Stan Lane) Bill Miller Fabulous Moolah Dick Murdoch Rey Mysterio Blue Panther Rock & Roll Express (Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson) Rick Rude Sabu Masa Saito Seiji Sakaguchi Kensuke Sasaki Hans Schmidt Sgt. Slaughter Jimmy Snuka Wilbur Snyder Sting Kiyoshi Tamura John Tolos Enrique Torres Vampiro Villano III Dr. Wagner Sr. Johnny "Mr. Wrestling II" Walker Tim "Mr. Wrestling" Woods NON-WRESTLER LIST (Unlimited picks) Lou Albano Paco Alonso Jim Crockett Jr. Gary Hart Jerry Jarrett Gorilla Monsoon Dr. Alfonso Morales Don Owen Roy Shire Jesse Ventura

Plus he's still a remarkably fucked up person who added a new, dangerous spot to his routine (back bodydrop on the floor) right after a suffering a broken bone in his neck (or back, I forget which), has a terrible drinking problem, has terrible anger issues (beat his wife and had that road rage incident for starters), sexually harrasses every woman he meets, molests some of them, runs around hotels and airplanes naked while spinning his penis around, and spent more than he made in a pathetic attempt to live his gimmick. He's not Benoit, but he's still a nut that's dangerous to others. Also, Dave Meltzer basically ignored the more lurid stories about his hero until they became public knowledge in the "Flight From Hell" lawsuit. It's not just alarming, it's insulting that he thinks so little of his readers that he tries to feed them this stuff. I seem to remember him being pretty outspoken about Benoit's recklessness in '01 for doing all of the dangerous stuff he did on a broken neck, and now he compares it to Jim Carrey and Jack Nicholson being driven. It's would be one thing if he used a specific example of something mildly comprable, like an actor losing a dangerous amount of weight quickly for a role, method acting something dangerous, or Jackie Chan's more stupid stunts, but he didn't. He just said "THESE GUYS WERE DRIVEN HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT!!?!?!?!" He's still circling the wagons to protect his image of Chris Benoit, great worker, model employee, and dude who talked to him, in spite of all of the gruesome detail he went into while describing how Benoit lost his mind, beat his wife, killed his wife and son, and then tortured himself to death. We already saw some of this when he sort of dismissed the brain research after initially pushing for it (misunderstanding the explanation of the damage in a way that only Vince McMahon and the dumbest message board posters did) while ranting about his grandmothers' Alzheimers. He talked a good game last summer, and then he pissed all over it when the actual wrestling matches became an issue in Benoit's spiral.

For those registered there, is there an F4WOnline thread about this latest shit and is it as depressing as one would think?

The latest case of a random dude working a newspaper into thinking he was a big wrestling star. Do reporters not know how to use Google?

Exactly what the topic says. - It wasn't until last year that I realized that Ernie Roth, after going to the WWWF with basically the same gimmick that he was using as Abdullah Farouk, was probably given the Grand Wizard name as a rib, since it's a high KKK ranking and he was both gay and Jewish. - It took me awhile (though before he died) to realize that Curt Hennig was more grossly steroid-inflated than most of the more cut up guys. I had seen pictures of him when he was super-skinny when younger and knew he used steroids. But then it happen; I forget what the trigger was, but I think there was a moment during his WCW run where I just thought "Jesus H. Christ, he looks really scarily unhealthy" similar to the later instances where I'd be glad that Angle, Rey, and Batista were on pre-taped Smackdown so I didn't have to worry about seeing them have massive heart attacks and die on live TV.

Greatness in heeling:

Hasn't WWE used "American Made" many times before? As of right now, Cablevision stil has it.

The fact that there's a replacement coming makes me think it's a music issue.

Holy crap, the Kowalski HOF matches include a '50s Texas Rasslin match and a '66 AWA TV match that includes "Cowboy" Jack Lanza. Impressive.

Well, Kerry was a Von Erich. Hennig was a guy who didn't have such a rep at the time, but with hindsight really looked like the most disturbingly steroid bloated wrestler ever when you look at him pre and post Mr. Perfect.

...he does this.

is a fun clipped match where Graham pinballs. I need to watch the Graham-Wahoo strap match that's on one of the Luce commercial tapes.

Just curious what this is referring to It's come up online in the past that they may be a couple.

I finished the book on Thursday night. It's not a must-have, but it's an entertaining read that's different from other wrestling books (and strangely, there are a lot of timeline issues, especially for a Scott Teal book, I guess because it's post-'82 material). At times I feel really bad for him, as he's constantly in terrible pain due to a badly injured neck that he refuses to get surgery for due to his belief that he suffered the bulk of the damage taking pre-WWF apron to floor bumps and thinks that he'd be a pussy stealing from Vince McMahon if he got him to pay for it. On the other side of the coin, he's really annoying and frustrating at times, generally with his shameless WWE ass-kissing and his fixation on almost every homosexual that he worked with (as well as Jonathan Boyd's atheism). If he comes across someone in the business that's gay or bisexual, he mentions it while feverishly noting that he's not gay, wrestling is a business for manly men so it's weird that it has so many "sissies," he's offended that nobody ever hit on him after being warned that all of the gays would attack him, and then mysteriously drops it when he gets to the WWF and comes across Pat Patterson and Steve Lombardi. It would be conspicuous in any case, but given the rumors about Lauer & Lombardi (which from my own sources I believe to be true), it's even moreso and comes across as a self-loathing homosexual frantic in his attempts to act straight.

Good Heyman column on the move.

Figured this is awesome enough for its own thread. If only we had pics of Bummy Rogers and Bruno Sanmartino...

No idea, best bet would be Steve Friedlander's TV list. They released a video at one point with ads in PWI but I've never seen it around.