jdw

Talk to Dan. He's got all that IWE stuff, and I think direct. John

Spike is Viacom. Showtime and CBS Sports are CBS channels. Viacom and CBS are split, but common majority shareholder. If Spike rebrands into Non Guy, Non Sports, they probably could spin Bellator over to CBS... *if* anyone in the two companies cared enough about it. Would be interesting to know how deep Strikeforce/UFC's deal with Showtime/CBS is, and if it prevents another CBS company from having competing product. Would be surprising if it would be able to hold up in court given UFC's FOX deal. John

It's sounded more like Spike would toss them if they rebranded the network as something other than a Guy Network. John

That's been around since Aug/Sep. Is there anything new on it? I mean... I don't mind seeing TNA get tossed off Spike. John

WWF production was also good in making them seem good at their jobs and a Big Deal. John

Jeff is wrong on the date. It was the 74 bout. I think this is stuff from Dan and the recent IWE dvd releases. John

WWE contracts up in September? TNA's? John

Paul was a con man. Why would anyone wish that upon Jerome? John

? Cryptic Dave, or did he clarify? John

Dave pretty much has always gotten stuff from Ross. The WON is getting close to its 30th anniversary. I suspect that Dave has gotten stuff from Ross for 28 of those years. It's never been hard to guess. Hence us publically joking about it. We joked about Paul E being one of the sources for the anti-Kevin Dunn stuff. Konnan being a sources is an old joke. Tenay is an old joke, since their friendship before Mike went to WCW wasn't a secret. Waltman being a source for Keller is an old joke. There are lots of them. Not really. WON Readers/Voters loved Ross. WON Readers/Voters thought Gorilla sucked hard. It might have been by default as it's possible that all pbp men sucked that year. I probably voted for Fukuzawa, and Daniel will swear up and down that Fukuzawa sucked donkey balls while my friend in Japan who first got me into puroresu LOVED Fukuzawa in 1993: "All the other announcers love Misawa. Fukuzawa likes Kawada." -jdw's Kawada loving Japanese friend People like different things for different reasons. We have Demolition fans on this site, and no doubt other people who read the Demo Luv and kind of scratch their hard. There isn't exactly a #42 in pro wrestling than sums everything up. Vince probably won a lot of other awards. John

I'm pretty sure I said in another thread that I thought Mooney sucked as much at Todd P (another fine example of Vince keeping shitty guys for a while). I disagree that Gorilla was on autopilot. I think he knew what he wanted to do, and did it. Drunk Heenan during stretches of Nitro was autopilot: just a fat paycheck calling stuff he thought sucked. John

Kobashi was the only person of note who did it in All Japan. I can tolerate one person in a fed doing a goofy spot. It actually was a ton of fun when he put Baba in it. Don't recall anyone in NJPW using it in the same timeframe. Might have been, but it didn't stand point like Kobashi. If one person of note is going it in the two major feds in a country, I can tolerate it. Joshi is a different beast, but I bet we can think of other spots that got run into the ground worse in joshi. Think dropkicks. John

We joked about proecting Ross back in the late 90s and early 00s. It's an old rip. Hell, the later concept of protecting Tenay is just an extension of it. John

Vince kept any number of people who sucked around. Your icon picture is one example. No one ever said that Vince had 100% perfect taste in what does and does not suck in pro wrestling. John

Good Jim Ross = Pretty Damn Good Bad Jim Ross = Pretty Damn Bad You could get them both on the same show... in the same fucking match. You could have him "on" some times, and in turn just mediocre. What was annoying was that Jim was a sacred cow that you could never point out an error without hear all the defenses for how great he is. You'd go a year in the WON without reading something bad on him, while you'd rarely go a few weeks without a knock at Tony (who I don't like anyway) or Bobby (who reached a point of sucking in WCW as well) or Lawler or eventually Cole. I wasn't a fan of any of them in the Monday Night Wars era, but Jim was the bullet proof one. John

I'm pretty sure this has been explained to you in the past: Vince was backstage running those live shows and making sure they didn't completely blow up. SNME was taped. Superstars was taped. Vince could be "on the air" and still actually run the shows, and also have the knowledge that if anything got screwed up they could redo it and/or edit it. Christ... I was at a TV taping with a rather famous screw up where they simply told the guys to do it over again. On TV there was no screw up. Gorilla doing pbp on the PPV's didn't mean that he was the #1 announcer in the WWF. Vince was. John

It's actually not socialist. It's a great boondoggle by the owners to control costs and pocket more $$$. It's closer to robber baron capitalism. John

Kane is fab. I love GF1 & GF2. Of course GF3 is down there with The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and "Peter Jackson Rapes The Lord Of The Rings" as my all-time most painful movie going experiences. John

Edgar Martinez... Edgar was a great player. If not for the DH, someone would have made him 1B in 1995 when he couldn't play 3B anymore. .343/.404/.544 in 1992? After the two injury seasons, if the M's decided that Tino was their guy at 1B, Tino would have gone somewhere else. Sticking with Tino would be ironic since they traded him after 1995 and signed Sorrento as a FA. But anyway... All the DH has largely done is open a spot for guys that teams would have otherwise played at 1B/LF/RF is they hit well enough and there was no DH. Cecil Fielder was a shitty 1B. Luzinski was the worst LF that I've ever seen, but was getting MVP votes in Philly... and given how well he hit in his best years, those weren't unreasonable votes. By 1995 there were enough sabermetric minded teams in the game that at least one of them would have taken him and dropped him at 1B. And he would have knocked the crap out of the ball. Probably not as long or high end successful of a career, but my guess is that he would have popped out a fair number of years like 1990-91, adjusted for the change in era (1989-92 were low offense, while offense took off from 1995 on when he was healthy again). John

I would say Lenny Harris, as his (admittedly bad) numbers are inflated by platooning: .272/.321/.355/.676 vs RHP .244/.297/.298/.595 vs LHP The number of PA's against LHP were massively limited: 3790 RHP vs 499 LHP. So he actually was a much worse player than he looked, but his managers pretty wisely didn't let him hit against LHP. Shawon Dunston was a pretty shitty player, and got 1000 more PA's than Womack. He also was a harder guy to get rid off than Womack because folks in Chicago (along with his managers) thought he was better than he really was. If you put a gun to my head, I'd probably rather have Womack because I could simply get rid of him with no controversy. Dante Bichette was a pretty horrible player considering he was a corner OF, and his inflated numbers earned him $42M in his career, a lot of those years when he was making very good money. As bad as Womack... no. More damaging to a team? Yes. Scott Brosius was a weird cat. Take his best three years from 1995-2001, and he was useful-to-good. His other four years in that run? Mediocre to awful. Corner position at a time of good offense out of 3B. Perhaps not as bad as Womack, but the net of his career was a bad player. 1996 and 1998 deluded people into thinking he wasn't a bad player for most of his career. Bobby Witt? 400 starts... overall, a bad starter. Pretty damaging to the Rangers... kind of a rotation killer because they pinned so much hope and effort on him. To a degree, I'd rather have him as a draft pick than Womack because you'd hope with the right early coaching you could teach him to Throw Strikes. But a bad player. Ozzie Guillen was a FUCKING HORRIBLE PLAYER!!! 7100+ PA's to Womack's 5400. An even worse hitter, though (allegedly) a better fielder. Dear god... give me Womack because it's easier to get rid of him, and Ozzie was/is such a prick. Walt Weiss... never had a 100+ OPS+ and a 78 overall for his career. Surprised me a bit since he had a good eye and wasn't a .220 hitter. But zero power and his good eye wasn't a great eye overall. Of course I'd rather have Weiss than Womack. Gary Disarcina got on the ballot. Another good defensive player, bad hitter. As bad as Womack? Eh... we're down there in the same range, with Womack bottoming out in WAR due to WAR rating his defense as horrid. Mark Davis... 2 good years, a lot of shit, and a monster contract. Yikes! Vince Coleman was a pretty bad player. Corner OF, and damaging because people thought he was better than he was. I'd actually rather have Womack, again because you could dump him. That's going back 10 years. There are a lot of other guys on the ballot that we could point to as "these guys have no business being on it" like Mitch Williams or Dan Plesac. John

That's a good one. Though he probably wasn't the only source for the stuff. Hogan, for example, was juiced long before he came to the WWF. John

90s Fuchi as part of Jumbo's group opposite Misawa & Co. John