jdw

The other entity doesn't "own" anything. They applied for a registration, which only got assigned to an examining attorney at the USPTO last Tuesday. It's extremely early in the process, not anywhere close to registration yet. The WWE is sitting on no less than seven registrations of ECW marks. They let one lapse. Three of the remaining ones are in Class 41 like the new one. They also have a fresh 2009 registration of Extreme Championship Wrestling in Class 41, and an application of it late in the process (recently published for opposition... and it won't be opposed) in Class 28 for toys. My general thought on this Urban Wrestling Federation yahoo is: Good fucking luck in getting that registered! The only thing that this likely does is wake up the WWE to firm up registrations to cover their continuing use of the mark. And of course swat this fucker down. Unless the WWE is much dumber about their IP rights than I think... but that historically hasn't been the case. Please don't tell me that one of the major Sheets/Newzies ran mindlessly with this while not knowing a fucking thing about trademarks? John

The Boston match went 16:44. Not off the charts, but it's a good solid match.

JoePa isn't Benoit. That would be Sandusky. Dave is probaby correct on Vince.

WTF? Always thought this was a dogshit burial of a match. There are plenty of good Rockers matches out there, and lots of good Arn & Tully matches out there. "This is nothing more than a Nitro match booked by Vince Russo." Not a match that I would hold up as an example of The Greatness of Shawn. John

I agree with that. I think having *both* would be useful. The "buyrate" for Mania III, Mania IV and Mania V are monstrous relative to later buyrates. It just happened to be a small universe. But still, having both the Buys and the Buyrates are useful to see where changes have happened. John

I think those wink-winks were happening in the WWF before Ross got there. Pretty common in the 80s, especially comments about wrestlers relating to Pat. Lombardi got it a fair amount. John

This would be interesting to check. Also: was Foley around at the time of any Anony GM stuff?

I tend to think both are useful. For example, lets take this wild hypothetical: 126M final American Idol Ever! 125M Mash Finale Ergo, the final of American Idol was wildly more popular than the final of Mash! Except... One was 1983. The other would be 30+ years later. There are 80M+ more people in the country. 1983: 233,791,994 2012: 313,924,728 125M/234M > 126M/314M John Rockefeller was richer when he was a billionaire than Vince was when he was a billionaire, even if the "raw numbers" were remotely close. $1B when a hell of a lot further in 1916 than 2010. So "rates" do have value over raw numbers. John

Eric first. The 11/16/96 episode of Nitro made it official, though they had been hinting something was wrong with Eric back to around Havoc. On the 11/16/96 show he went full heel Authority Figure. Vince was after Montreal in November 1997, but really didn't become clearly Mr. McMahon until after Mania. Yeah, I know there were earlier Authority Figures, and on occasion heel ones, including even Vince down in USWA. But I think we all would agree that the Modern Authority Figure role was locked in by (i) Eric going clear heel on the 11/16/96 Nitro, and (ii) Vince going clear heel on the 03/30/98 Raw. Those would be the starting points, for better or worse, of the Authority Figure being a regular (as in pretty much weekly) often Leading character in pro wrestling that was one of the primary tools to further the promotion's storylines along. To a degree he replaced the old Managers, but also assumed the old President / Commissioner / "Match Maker" / Owner roles as well. John

I'm not suggesting that Foley would have been the perfect Anonymous GM, but he would have meant something more than Hornswoggle. The contradictory nature of the Anony GM? "Well... sometimes Cactus Jack was sending in the messages, sometimes Mankind. Sometimes it was The Dudester, and sometimes it was just little old Mick Foley himself. Look... I've taken a lot of chairs upside the head over the years, and fallen off of tall places... you can't expect me keep track of what I'm doing from week-to-week and have it all make sense." *flashes a goofy Foley smile and a thumbs up* Or some such nonsense. Hell, he was just back last month as the Temp GM. If they were going to blow it off, blow it off then and have it lead to at least *something*. Send someone back to research the rulings of the Anony GM, bounce stuff around the Creative Table and see if they can pull out several strands that Production can string together into a "theme" of the Anony GM that can have a payoff: it's Foley, and his reason for returning now is to do X with the GM power. Hell, I suspect that some regular viewers of Raw in that period in less than a week could come up with something that could be crafted into "making sense", including some humor spots where it "doesn't make sense" that Foley can explain was The Dudester just fucking with people so it wasn't obvious it was Foley. Again, not saying that Foley is the perfect resolution of the Anony GM and using it to put together a multi month arc (say from here to Survivors) with a payoff. But... he'd fit, and he is frankly better on the mic that most of the crap the WWE could run out there.

And yes: I don't know why I give a shit. It's one of many dumb GM ideas the WWE has had, and one that had no pay off at the time. You just sorta thought that it ever was brought back for a payoff, the payoff would mean something of slightly more significance.

Just that it's a week payoff. I mean... someone had to "empower" him to be the GM. Vince doing it for his "son" Hornswoggle? Except that storyline was completed with him being Fit's son, not Vince's. Yeah, it's the WWE, Jake. John

My love for professional wrestling slowly dying in roughly 5 minutes Well, he couldn't make it to 5 minutes before bailing. So all this time and the Anony GM was Hornswoggle? WTF? Wait... why is that annoying me more than the rest of the shitty show?

ROH makes announcement regarding tag titles "Yippy~!" -A. Skywalker

Scott "Gator" Hall My lord... what the fuck where they thinking?

Well, okay, any other non shoot style setting I should say. But then really what's the point? Misawa and Kawada and Onita couldn't have worked in the WWF or WCW in the 90s. Onita wouldn't have been able to work in All Japan in the 90s. Does it mean they weren't great at what they did within the style they excelled? Han did certain things great in UWF-style work. Who really cares if he could have worked Starcade '96 with Hogan. I mean... Kawada couldn't have either. On the other points: I think by watching largely just Opponents vs Han, you're not getting a good idea of the quality of the Opponents, especially the lesser one. On the time, I still go back to: Rings variation UWF-style tended to be shorter than say UWFi and certainly UWF 2.0 and UWF 1.0. That was up and down the card. I think if we took a yearly average of the promotions, and ran Fujiwara, Yamazaki, Takada, Maeda and Han vs the annual average * 100 (where over 100 is Above Average and below 100 would be below average), Han probably could come out very well. Toss out the gimmick matches, and run Rings through say 1996 because 1997 starts getting hard to track. John

That was the general impression that Yohe got, and he watched all those 1991-98 Rings cards top to bottom. So he's see someone having mediocre matches for several cards before having an entertaining one with Han. Not sure if Best Of or just watching the Han Matches gets that across.

He could have fit into UWF 2.0, UWFi or PWFG equally as well... given some of his theatricality, perhaps even better. I also could swear I've seen him in with lesser workers and made them look great. Like the Ilioukhine match to set Ilioukhine up for Tamura. The stamina comment is interesting since I never really noticed it. I think if you go here: http://prowrestlinghistory.com/shoot/rings/ringsindex.html And start with 1992 (when Volk debuted), you'll find three things: * 97% is too high, especially early when Rings still worked some longer matches * Rings didn't work as long of matches up and down the cards in Han's prime as other UWF-style promotions * Han typically worked in the longest or one of the longest matches on the cards By 1997 it gets a little hard to track as they'd have "vale tudo" matches on the undercards, and also some shooty/sparing/shoot things where you'd need to watch the whole cards to figure out what was standard Rings variation UWF-style, and what was other stuff. They did go into a stretch with the Tamura-Yamamoto draw being well received that they rolled out others like it. But the promotion was morphing a bit by then. From the most part from 1992-96, Han didn't work short in the promotion relative to others. John

fWo was really cool and fun and challenging at it's peak. Lots of folks contributing, and Travis was Travis in making things great for people. John

Suspect since it's the WWE, the pressure will be there for Sara to drop weight / muscle up / get a more "fit" look. I.E. the PED's that the rest of the fitness model Divas take to look cut. John

The progression on TV is this: June 20th 1993 (taped 6/1 Nippon Budokan, Tokyo) 3. Stan Hansen vs. Terry Gordy (19:42) Hansen pins Gordy in the semifinal at Budokan underneath the first Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue match. June 27th 1993 (taped 6/3 Sendai) 1. Terry Gordy & Steve Williams vs Stan Hansen & Joel Deaton (6:47) Back in the days when Budokan wasn't always the series ender, they had one more tv taping two days later. Gordy & Williams get their "revenge" on Hansen by generally kicking the living shit out of Hansen & Deaton. July 4th 1993 (taped 7/2 Korakuen Hall, Tokyo) 2. Stan Hansen & Johnny Ace vs. Mark & Chris Youngblood (5:05) First taping of the next series, Hansen shows up "in a bad mood" still pissed off over how the last series ended. He's like a caged animal stalking outside the ring, at times just losing his head to get mixed up in the action. Generally thought of as one of the more entertaining squashes of the era, though the context of having seen the prior two weeks shows help a bit. I can't go to ****1/4 on a 6:47 match that's largely just a beat down, Hansen's brief comeback notwithstanding. But it's an interesting, very different match from the usual TV matches. John

What Jingus says. If a heel gets over with the crowd cheering for him, turn him. Stone Cold at the end of 1996 heading into 1997? No reaction is a problem. It's rare to turn a no reaction wrestler / character into one who gets heat by flipping him. Honkytonk Man is something of an exception. But there have been loads of "cool heels" who turned well. Savage, Jake, Razor, Shawn, Diesel (granted, he didn't draw big... but to the fans who stuck around, they liked him), Stone Cold, Rock, etc. That's just one company, and leaving out a lot of other guys who did well on a lower level (Piper for example was a lower level because he didn't really work fulltime after going face, nor get a truly massive push since he was heading back out). John

I know. And my point earlier on Cornette and Heyman being influenced by MMA being funny is that... it's funny and stupid. John

It was total fluke. John

That there's no market for it now that the real thing is readily available. There never was a market for it in the US. No shoot style promotion has ever been successful in the US on a large scale, unless one wants to pretend that pro wrestling in the 30s or 20s was shoot style (even though it had been exposed as fake regularly by that point). In the TV era, it just hasn't been the case. MMA really didn't matter. The majority of the country knew wrestling was fake. The majority of the non-kid fans who attended it knew it was fake, and just played along. I agree with the earlier posters: if MMA fans want to watch MMA, they'll watch MMA rather than Fake MMA Pro Wrestling In ROH. There's so much free MMA on TV, along with loads of MMA PPV, that who would even care to seek out Fake MMA. It's just delusional nonsense of guys like Heyman and Cornette, who have probably been listening too much to Dave, to think Fake MMA Influenced Pro Wrestling is going to draw big. Christ... MMA is having it's issues drawing right now.