Bix

"I don't need you to love me, respect me, or even know where I live and what I'm about. But there are thirty million wrestling fans out there who pay to see me BLEED, SWEAT, AND PAY THE PRICE!"

I prefer Shin Nihon Pro Wres Strong Style.

I feel like HHH is, at this point, is a justified exception (if he's an exception, I agree that smarky gratuitous real name use is annoying) . HHH is the character on WWE TV, Paul Levesque is the real WWE executive.

It was a Dennis Coraluzzo show in Cherry Hill, NJ (suburban Philly). Dennis was good friends with Cornette and used SMW guys a lot.

I was referring more to people who use it to refer to crowd reactions that way (misappropriating the other definition of "heat"), but yeah, that too.

It's not that, I hated "control segment" before I ever starting referring to "[getting] the heat." It's one of those things that sounds too overly analytical and smarky nowadays, like "the body of the match." Can we at least agree that people who talk about "babyface heat" should stop?

*Melts down the end of a toothbrush*

Next person who says "control segment" gets shanked.

Whoever has the PM Film library (whether it's Ron Martinez's family or Todd Okerlund's company or both somehow) has the surviving Southwest footage. No idea if Fred Behrend or anyone else kept the Texas All-Star stuff.

FWIW, Dundee being a mid-carder while booking Mid-South was mandated by Watts since they felt that otherwise he would've booked himself on top in ridiculous situations. It's really the only territory he booked where him being on top wouldn't have made sense, though. He was already on top in Memphis, he needed to be a top guy in Chattanooga/GCW Superstars, he was the best worker in Kansas City during his run there and a good pick to groom Sam Houston, and in Knoxville/USACW he didn't book himself on top, IIRC.

Meltzer has strongly implied in the past that Stephanie is a Laurinaitis booster so I'm not so sure about that, especially since he's outright said they'll fire Kevin Dunn as soon as they get full control.

Has anyone ever explained why Russo seemingly got a lot more control than he had before around the end of '98? Just Vince being deluged with IPO stuff? Patterson was still around and had the power to serve as a filter, didn't he?

I remember "Senior Adviser" now that you mention it...

Huh, how about that: http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displa...cik%253d1091907 Wonder why it took them so long to change the WWE Corporate website. And what HHH's official corporate role was before the August 2011 promotion (he has a salary listed for 2010, but not 2009, so it's not referring to his talent contract).

John, I know that Levesque has been "EVP, Talent" since last year. He had the title concurrently with Laurinaitis being "EVP of Talent Relations." Levesque being "EVP, Talent and Live Events" with Levesque officially being demoted from executive officer status is what's new. It's been known for a while that Laurinaitis was reporting to Levesque and that the talent relations department would become Levesque's, but I don't remember any speculation about Laurinaitis losing his executive officer status or maybe being fired as an office worker, which is a pretty big deal.

I remembered having a discussion on the F4W board about the difference between HHH and Laurinaitis's titles when HHH had the more generic "EVP, Talent" title, so I looked it up and it was from the beginning of March. That was a couple weeks before Ty Bailey was fired. Googling around, the earliest mention of the expansion of HHH's title to include the live events department is the press release about the Full Sail U partnership a month ago. I'm pretty sure that Laurinaitis reporting to HHH goes back to HHH getting the "EVP, Talent" title, which happened last year. HHH taking over the department completely was inevitable but Laurinaitis officially getting demoted (and possibly fired from the office job since he's suddenly working a lot of house shows) feels like a bigger story than how it's being reported.

Are you sure? I don't remember HHH having "and Live Events" added to his title or Laurinaitis losing Executive Officer status.

Well, and it's all VHS (or Quasar Time Machine tapes that got moldy) sourced. The only broadcast quality tape Rich Patterson found (which he hasn't converted) in Buddy's garage was a 2" reel of the angle where he threw his title belt off a bridge. They don't own Memphis, and likely never will, as most of those tapes are gone. They also don't own smaller territories like Continental or Portland. But they do own all of the major ones, and even some not-so-major ones like Smoky Mountain. I thought the biggest obstacle to Memphis was that no one really knows who owns what anymore. A little of column A, a little of column B. Cornette easily has the best collection but little is broadcast quality. He has a lot recorded off TV or dubbed from broadcast masters, though.

Put me down as one of the people who sees this as a good thing. Traders purchased basically everything the Watts site sold, so it's all available. The Watts family didn't have the resources to convert everything that wasn't on 3/4" UMatic tape, though, so if they were close to telling the truth about what else they have (and I'm guessing they were for various reasons), this is for the best. Now we will finally be able to see the older JYD footage like the Freebirds feud, more than just a a few segments of KTBS studio stuff, hopefully some McGuirk stuff before Watts bought his part of the territory, etc. I have my fingers crossed on local promos since the stuff sold by the Watts site didn't have them, but hopefully WWE finds some on separate reels and is able to put things together, especially since they're doing a JYD DVD and there are pretty much zero prime JYD promos around. The only domestic libraries of note left are PM Film and whatever Mario & Angelo Savoldi have, and even then, WWE appears to have some overlap there, as USWA Texas and Dumont Network stuff have shown up on Classics on Demand. I'd say maybe both quietly sold to WWE, but VCI started putting out PM Film sourced stuff on DVD again (a recent Einhorn IWA release) and the Savoldis are still using their stuff for PPVs and the classic match of the week on NWA On Fire's TV show.

I don't know, Stann vs. Lombard was a much easier fight to hype to the public with Stann's military background and Lombard's undefeated streak. Shogun vs. Vera has nothing going for it. I know people would have complained about it, but they would have been much better doing Shogun vs. Machida III and Bader vs. Vera on the undercard. They need to make Stann and I trust UFC to know how to push his background, but he needs a name opponent to pop a rating, and none of the name Middleweights or former Middleweights are available. Franklin and Wanderlei are booked, Leben is suspended, Hendo is booked for a title shot at 205...Bisping would've worked well but he was booked on another show and then got injured.

...which he was paying out the ass for in a bunch of key markets. Remember, the reason everyone after Vince had to pay for good slots was because he made deals like the famous one in St. Louis. I agree that the company wouldn't have died but a lot would've changed. Dropping pay for play syndication in markets where it didn't make financial sense would've been part of that.

Putting Shogun on a network show is smart since he has some name value. They're still being ridiculously dense by not using Griffin-Ortiz for Fox (and they really should be reserving the LHWs with name value but who won't sell PPVs as Fox main eventers in general), but Shogun vs someone is much better than Stann vs Lombard. Brandon Vera, though? Really?