Bix

Wasn't there an episode of Worldwide devoted to the original Simmons title week in Baltimore that included the full match?

Dave has stressed that they're not getting paid.

Cobb is the one of the ultimate "you need to see him live" guys, because I had only seen him on video, and it does not come across just how massive a human being he is. As in "Oh, of course they decided to cast this dude as a monster who eats people." Here, he went from a guy I liked to a guy I'm a huge fan of, because he found that next gear and killer instinct that he's missing a lot of the time. For a guy who can be accused of being overly patterned and samey, Ishii had three really strong matches in 48 hours that were completely different, and this one was a strong candidate for best match of the weekend. Really want to see Cobb against more top international names like this so he can keep growing as a worker. This was half of the best back to back pair of matches I've ever seen live (since Rey Horus/Rey Fenix vs. Flamita/Bandido was up next) and a huge part of what made a super adrenalizing show a blast.

I probably need to see how this comes off on TV, because live it wasn't anywhere close to bad, but it did feel like an endless slog that should not have been on the show.

This was pretty fantastic. Would have been slightly better if they dropped a one count or two (since it seemed like the crowd temporarily burnt out), but Ishii's gimmick makes better use out of the fighting spirit pop-up kick out style than basically anyone else I've ever seen, so it still works. I have a new appreciation for Ishii after seeing him live three times in 48 hours in New Orleans (including the best of the 3 matches, with Jeff Cobb) at ringside, and he's every bit one of the five best wrestlers in the world in his element. I'll have to rewatch the Cobb match to compare, but I'm pretty sure this edged it slightly. Lee has grown so much as a worker in the last year, as his impressive athletic spots are work so much better when they come out of nowhere, and that added an element that the Cobb match didn't have. I was even biting on false finishes in spite of knowing Lee was gone (though I hadn't read results so the possibility of a farewell win/vacated belt was there). Only thing I really didn't like was recycling the big near fall from the Cobb match from catching the sliding lariat. But it was really nothing in the grand scheme of things. Well worth going out of your way to see.

I'm right with you on this. I'm pretty convinced this is creating a huge wall.

I think that's fair; "Moolah collected money for a retirement home for female wrestlers for years and years and then never built it or gave it back" is reason enough to not name the battle royal after her.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Maxine and Luna were talking about the same guy. Didn't we go over this earlier in the thread? I could have sworn we did. But Moolah still booked Victoria in a situation with the idea of her having sex with the guy. What clickbait? What has actually been refuted? I dunno if I'd say that, but the whole thing seems weird for someone it seems barely knew Moolah in the first place?

At the Cauliflower Alley Club panel about Moolah, Princess Victoria backed up that Moolah pressured her to sleep with a businessman (I forget if he was a promoter) in Europe. He then tried to steal her passport when she didn't. Not really all that different from the other allegations. Anyone who was taking the "pimping" stuff absolutely, 100% literally in terms of how Moolah ran her business is missing the point. Would anyone be really shocked of some of the former Moolah students are missing that, either deliberately or otherwise? Nigel isn't exactly asking "Did Moolah ever pressure you to or suggest you have sex with someone?" or any kind of legitimate follow up questions. Nobody has given any reason not to view Victoria or Mad Maxine as anything less than credible. Sweet Georgia Brown is a little more confusing because of how the article was done. But Luna's emotions about being sent to a creepy doctor to take pictures when she felt she was too young to have a day in it are being dismissed. And that's ridiculous.

Two reasons: 1. Glenn Moore sends press releases to wrestling sites with key quotes from the show each week, including the thing about the Greatest Royal Rumble payoffs for the women. 2. Dave consistently reported that none of the women on the roster had heard about that. So not only did Lawler's co-host actively campaign for wrestling news sites to report on what he said about the women and the Saudi show, but the person that Lawler went off on for reporting on it by citing what he said DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO THAT. It's ridiculous and goes way beyond "working."

Something else I noticed on the Bulldog show: Either Conrad's research is suffering or he's feigning ignorance to make Bruce look all-knowing. It's very obvious that Conrad's timeline research (the skeleton of the sure that he fills out with newsletter and book blurbs) usually comes from going over results on Graham Cawthon's website. But this week, when they got to to the Davey-Owen dark match from the first In Your House show, Conrad was all "Why was this just a dark match?" even though it aired a few weeks later on Raw as a KOTR qualify match. Bruce then explained most of that. But this is how the pre-show dark matches for the first In Your House are listed (emphasis mine): Knowing full well how Graham's site is formatted and considering how obvious it is how much Conrad uses it, that stuck out as strange. Also, for what it's worth: When Conrad got weirdly passive aggressive with me after I tweeted that the USA Today bit was pretty unacceptable (especially clipping it for YouTube and promoting it on social media with wording that stated factually that Dave went to USA Today to expose the business), he said in DMs to me that I "don't get it" because it has their and Dave's numbers up. He basically tried to counter an argument (that I was criticizing the general anti-Dave shtick or how they deal with the entertainment/fact divide in general) that I didn't actually make. Again, even if it's "just pro wrestling," going so deep into the "we hate FAKE NEWS" gimmick in the current climate is really uncomfortable. I had been considering doing an article about how that's become the "in" thing (see also: the Lawler stuff this past week), but the stupid Twitter stuff with Conrad will lead to grief from idiots who will say that's why I wrote it.

The Cass as Trump supporter story turned out to be fake.

Am I reading way too much into things or is it starting to feel like Conrad is being deliberately vague at times while also avoiding obvious follow ups to allow Bruce to do the anti Meltzer shtick? With the former, there were moments where it was fairly clear that he was reading from Bret's book, but he didn't say it, and Bruce why off on a Meltzer rant where Conrad didn't correct him. On the latter front the new Davey Boy Smith episode, they get to the Rock Bottom in the dog poop and Conrad reads the Observer description of the match, complete with Dave noting how it evoked Bret's recent Calgary Sun column. The one where he said he saw a dog rolling around in its own filth and being too dumb not to enjoy it. So he's like "Sure seems like Meltzer nailed this, what say you?" Bruce then ignores the part about Bret having written the column, takes a shot at Dave...and then basically says that it was a Russo thing that he didn't know the exact pitch for. There's still value in the shows at times and they're still enjoyable, but I'm getting really uncomfortable with the extreme anti-truth/reality distortion field/"FAKE NEWS!!!" direction they're going in. "Working" is one thing, this (and stuff like the weird Lawler rant about Meltzer that has little to do with reality) is another.

Like what Sek said, the article has him as part of a group of guys charged with attacking a teenage girl: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19212498/mr_wrestling_ii_johnny_walker_rape/ Am I reading this right? Were there really three separate gang rapes in Honolulu in a five-day period? It would certainly appear that way.

Like what Sek said, the article has him as part of a group of guys charged with attacking a teenage girl: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19212498/mr_wrestling_ii_johnny_walker_rape/

My understanding is that he genuinely didn't know that there was a controversial figure in indie wrestling named Feinstein. I'm not saying he doesn't have room to improve but I don't really see exactly what you're saying you don't like about his work? That it's...what, exactly?

I dunno, with Nikita *knowing Mandy had cancer when he married her* and Tony presumably knowing that, the attempt at a joke makes even less sense and feels even more fucked up to me.

Worth pointing out that the comments would have come out regardless of the Enquirer story. It would have just taken almost 9 more months until the Florida 2nd District Court of Appeals unsealed a ton of stuff from the Gawker lawsuit, including partial transcripts of the racist comments and the FBI sting audio that included Hogan and his lawyer watching him make the racist comments. And yeah, it needs to be stressed that the recording included: * Hogan bragging about fleecing Cecile Barker, the "black billionaire" who thought Hogan was his best friend and was the father of Brooke's then-boyfriend, for the millions that he spent on Hogan-related projects. * Hogan is clearly pissed that his daughter is dating (and potentially "fucking") a black guy. * Hogan randomly throws out "fucking [n-words]" as an aside after "I’m a racist to a point, y’know." * Hogan appears to suggest that in the "black dudes dating Brooke" hierarchy, a basketball player would be preferable to the rapper son of a billionaire former aerospace magnate. And then that Hogan's excuse was that: * As a kid in south Tampa, the n-word was used as a term of endearment across racial lines. It wasn't, and that has nothing to do with what he said on the recording. * He had, in the words of the ABC News interviewer, "inherited a racial bias," which had nothing to do with the previous excuse moments earlier. He handled it about as badly as possible, which still worked on people who weren't aware of what he actually said.

At this point, really, it's not even that he said it. It's the degree to which he attempted to bullshit his way out of it, which he hasn't owned up to or made good on.

So what are the odds that WWE pulled some strings to get Hogan that award from the Boys and Girls Clubs of America?

Lots of different stuff to address so I'm not gonna bother quoting any specific posts: Bruce is a charming guy when you talk to him, and in private he has zero problem admitting that the Dave stuff is 100% gimmick. Is calling him a con man fair? Well, the CV on his old website did say that he created the American Idol concept with Simon Cowell. It's usually pretty easy to tell when he's spinning a yarn, but where it gets weird is that it feels like some false stories are things he was told and took at face value. The XFL making a profit is one of them, because he's not so brazen as to tell everyone to look up the SEC filings even though they would prove him wrong. This USA Today/Meltzer thing feels like it could be another because it was so oddly specific that it didn't sound like something he pulled out of thin air. Bischoff is NOT a charming guy, and will threaten to shoot interviews down over the smallest perceived slight. I haven't listened to the new show yet, but I don't see it clicking for a number of reasons. The key with Bischoff is getting access that you are genuinely interested in his side, and the newsletter notes format could easily complicate that. Cornette, for all of the faults he does have, really does not have a rep as a bullshitter, and rightfully so. Yeah, his collection of personal documentation helps, but it's not JUST that. I do agree that Dave's writing and reporting style opened him up to much more criticism than he ever really needed. That "people familiar with the matter" or anything like it isn't really an Observer staple tells you all you need to know. It's also a huge complaint of Bischoff that Dave doesn't usually do any kind of attribution, even to "a WWE creative source" or whatever. When Dave acts like this is a ridiculous criticism on my part, I can't tell if he's doing his Twitter/board gimmick or genuinely doesn't get the distinction that Torch and Matwatch were eaten much more like mainstream news reporting. Nobody's asking for names unless they're particularly dense. I definitely have concerns over Bruce going so hard in the "FAKE NEWS!" direction, too, but R*sso makes him look like Brian Stelter. Thankfully, he has a much smaller fanbase, albeit one that's all improbably large.

Around when Earl showed up, albeit while being billed as Dave.

Isn't that the exact same price Amazon charges for Verbatim AZO blanks?

Yes, Nigel is the guy posting the videos.

I don't think the guy Lady Maxine is talking about is the same person as the doctor that Luna once mentioned who would pay to take pictures of the female wrestlers. Nothing in the interviews that Nigel has done has debunked the key specific allegations. Until someone talks to Susie Mae McCoy's daughter and the Free Times reporter, I don't think it matters in and of itself what the son says. Her son was not the source of those allegations for the article. Her daughter was. Let's not pretend that the McCoy telling her daughter about repeated rapes and not telling her son, especially in the '70s or '80s, is any kind of stretch. The neglect case with Moolah's daughter was also brushed off quickly by the daughter with no follow up by Nigel. It completely contradicted the newspaper articles and he clearly doesn't care. The one thing that I've been annoyed got misrepresented once was the "Moolah was a pimp" letter purportedly from Penny Banner that was floating around. It was written by some guy on RSPW and I have no idea when it first got attributed to Banner, who wrote a completely different letter about Moolah to the Observer. Now, is it possible that a news story from 1956 had a bunch of errors? Sure. And that something weird happened with McCoy's daughter and/or the reporter that led to a misleading article? Maybe. But Nigel is just running around like a chicken with his head cut off to try to get a bunch of mostly irrelevant window dressing instead of pursuing anything substantive.