jdw

Looking at the book Bix cited: Ric Flair: To be the Man, by Ric Flair, Keith Elliot Greenberg, Mark Madden (page 427) "Through my many years of partying, I also developed something called "alcoholic cardiomyopathy", a weakening of the heart muscles. [...] Initially, I thought that steroids might be responsible, but the doctor dismissed this theory. My heart was fluttering from thirty-five years of hitting it hard." -Ric Flair Ric may want to tell his reps about this. John

DVDVR used to be huge pro Daniels place. Among other things, reading all his hype on the board thear and in the the video reviews & work rate reports is what first got me into the guy and other indy wrestling to begin with. Like other people have mentioned, he USED to be a guy who was well loved and he still is among some circles. I still like the guy a lot myself. Around here and DVDVR and such it's def more that people's taste have just changed. Well, I should have taken a look at the DVDVR 500: Version 1.0 - November 1999 22 Michael Modest 34 Christopher Daniels Version 2.0 - May 2000 21 Michael Modest 33 Christopher Daniels Version 3.0 - November 2000 19 Christopher Daniels 31 Michael Modest This would be the period where they had the match: Version 4.0 - May 2001 1 Toshiaki Kawada 2 Chris Benoit 3 El Hijo del Santo 4 Yuji Nagata 5 Minoru Tanaka 6 Blue Panther 7 Shinya Hashimoto 8 Yuki Ishikawa 9 SUWA 10 Tiger Mask IV 11 Silver King 12 Alexander Otsuka 13 Jun Akiyama 14 Naohiro Hoshikawa 15 William Regal 16 Dick Togo 17 Carl Malenko 18 Michael Modest 19 Shinjiro Ohtani 20 Christopher Daniels 21 Mitsuharu Misawa 22 Kurt Angle 23 Jushin Lyger 24 Magnum Tokyo 25 Takuma Sano 26 Great Sasuke 27 Akira Taue 28 Daisuke Ikeda 29 Ikuto Hidaka 30 CIMA Um... that would get a Holy Shit out of me. Version 5.0 - November 2001 22 Christopher Daniels 24 Mike Modest That wuld be Chris after King of Indies. Version 6.0 - May 2002 30 Christopher Daniels 81 Mike Modest Version 7.0 - November 2002 52 Christopher Daniels (Curry Man) 94 Mike Modest Version 8.0 - May 2003 74 Christopher Daniels (Curry Man) 134 Mike Modest And that's sort of when the bloom was off the rose. Wow... at the time of the match, Daniels and Modest were two top 20 workers. Okay, he was Much Loved in DVDVR-land. I stand corrected. On the other hand, I'm pretty confident that there's no incriminating evidence that I liked Mr. My Turn, Your Turn when that match happened. John

Persecution complex has been alive forever. John

And the old board is gone. No doubt that some people like Hyatte loved it. It's possible that was also in the phase of the DVDVR where they loved Spotbu, as I recall Phil liked King of Indies a heck of a lot more than the rest of us, and hadn't gone all MOVES! by that point. I very much was in my grumpy phase at that point... I mean, I even hated Misawa-Kobashi MOTY Winners by then. So maybe there was a chunk of DVDVR fans who loved it as a Great Free TV Match. John

That would be about as horrible as I remember it. There have to be some posters here who remember what folks on DVDVR thought of this. I can't imagine it was well liked there. I'm really doubt that Frank or me or other folks on tOA dug it. John

I'd forgotten Hyatte after all these years. What's somewhat funny about it is that Hyatte lumped Keller into the 99% of the Internet Smarts that suck. Wade wasn't an internet smark. He was writing about wrestling before there were internet smarts. Hyatte is the one who was an internet smart, doing what a lot of us at the time (and since) did: use our own little spots of the internet to pontificate about pro wrestling. Hyatte was one of the more prolific. John

I think if Team Piper was winning, it would have been Piper rather than Benoit as the fleshed out the plans. Chris just didn't have a lot of shit going on at the time that made you think he would get a main eventish push as a singles (which Lex did get). John

Flawed story: * lacking the Context of the reasons of all of Ric's fuck ups * lacking Balance on Ric being the GOAT beloved by Millions Ric's not really broke (or at least at times Bruce seems to be saying that). Ric's life has issues, but not really a trainwreck. And on and on. Someone else can drag it over, but it doesn't quote well (Torch board is set to only quote new comments in a post, removing all prior quotes). It's really nothing fresh in Bruce's defense of Ric: same arguments, same digging in, etc. I made the comment that he had an easy first response handed to him when the story was dragged over: "This is a devastating piece. Ric really needs to get his life in order." And left it at that. Instead, it's instantly and continually on the defensive. I like Bruce a lot. Flair is just his soft underbelly and he tends to turtle up when Ric is criticized. John

TORCH #433: WCW NEWSWIRE Yikes! I'm thinking that someone on the booking committe (or someone else who heard) was passing along an early, early, early draft of the finish... and Wade kinda bought it as being a finish that stuck around for a while. It's pretty much impossible to believe given how Benoit was being pushed, and how the rest of them were being pushed. John

God... don't make me go back through the Torch archives to find it. John

Yikes... Bruce is really digging in. John

I remember the heart issues, didn't remember the alcoholic part being directly tied to the heart, though probably should have. I think a lot of us know that Ric is an alcoholic. I do recall that when people have pointed out that Ric is an addict of booze (at the very least), there was some resistance: That was about a year and a half ago. John

I highly doubt it. Ring of Hell says the same thing, so it's not something that SKeith came up with. But, Dave has debunked some of the stories in Ring of Hell before. That one sounds really odd, and perhaps more wishful thinking since they were in Horsemen Country and it's not like Eric would want to show up the Horsemen (a/k/a Team Piper) in Horsemen Country. I don't know who on the booking committe even in the early stages would suggest Benoit win it given the "talent" level in the rest of the match. Benoit simply wasn't pushed at that level. John

I thought he was annoying in the ring even back then. John

In the book, was it clear that the Doctors said the heart problems were due to alcoholic cardiomyopathy? Did Dave ever report that on the WON? I'm just not remembering either. John

That would be fucking awesome. John

Or dead. I suspect that's long been Ric's plan: death makes him judgement proof and means no one can come after him for money. Of course he could end up leaving his spouse and kids (i.e. the Estate) with loads of debt. But I think we all would agree that deep down, Ric doesn't give two shits about his wives and kids, and instead cares only about Ric Flair. That's really cold to say, but do Ric's actions suggest anything other than living a life that entirely revolves around his living the Ric Flair life? :/ He hands out cash and stuff to the wives and kids because it's part of the Ric Flair Lifestyle, and he really has very little other way to connect with them. It's really a shallow, pathetic life when you peel it all back. John

He's a con man and a grifter. John

CRZ ran circles around SKeith. In a way, CRZ was a bit too ahead of his time. His stuff would fit in perfectly over at Grantland, he'd have fun with the footnotes, and he'd probably make some coin off it. SKeith's recaps just sucked. John

That means it's the average of the PPV held during that quarter. Only one event was held in Q3 at the time of the report (through the end of July): MITB. The upper left hand chart helps as well: "includes [events held in a] prior period" FWIW, I do scratch my head at the Line Graph on page 4 as well. It would be interesting to try to tie that into Dave's PPV buy reporting to see if it's generally consistent with it.

Bruce's criticism of Flair has usually been similar to what he wrote above: bad with his money, GOAT, made some mistakes, GOAT, two side to every bad Flair story, GOAT, living life to the fullest. He wrote one short piece in the Torch several years back when one of the local papers had an article of the trainwreck. It was as close to real critical as Bruce got, and even then a bit tempered. Things have gotten much worse for Ric since. Bruce isn't a news reporter. But he's written a ton on Ric over the years, the majority of it going down the path of The Greatness Of Flair. That's the irony of Bruce talking about Context and wanting Balance out of reporters pointing out that Ric is an utter fuck up out of the ring: Bruce's writing on Ric haven't been balanced through the years. They largely follow the path of Our Hero Ric. Pretty much why I poke him on it. The contrast to his writing on say Hogan is pretty wide. John

I'm pretty sure Hogan made more money in WCW in the salad days than Sting. Hogan had cuts of the PPV revenue, a more direct cut of the merchandise (and not doubt was smart enough to get a large chunk of the nWo stuff covered by his merch deal), had a chunk of his money paid "off the WCW books" by Turner Home Entertainment (and lord knows what other Turner / Time Warner entities), etc., etc., etc. My recollection is that at some point in the late 90s / early 00s, Dave made an almost off hand comment in the WON that at the peak of WCW revenue stream, no wrestler in the business ever made as much money as Hogan did. He was a genius of keeping himself on top in WCW, playing every angle perfectly, setting up all his contract negotiations so it looked like the company was ready to move beyond him... but positioning himself as too valueable not to get another massive deal. Look at the big WCW PPV main events when they were high on the hog, and how *few* of them that Sting really was in. Side tangent now that it's coming back to me: I recall that Hogan's original contract had a limited number of TV dates and a limited number of house show dates, and that for TV especially he got a silly $$$ amount. Anyone here think Terry wasn't smart enough to work a great per-TV appearance deal into his contract when Nitro went through the roof, and that he's wasn't smart enough to be available for TV a heck of a lot more than he had been in 1994 and early 1995? Sting made good money. Way up there. Hogan was on another planet. John

Not really "historic" in the sense of big impact, but pretty cool: 4/16 Tokyo Sumo Hall (New Japan - 11,500 sellout): One night Super Junior Cup tournament--Gedo (WAR) b Dean Malenko (New Japan), Super Delfin (Michinoku Pro) b Shinjiro Ohtani (New Japan), Black Tiger (AAA) b Taka Michinoku (Michinoku Pro), El Samurai (New Japan) b Masayoshi Motegi (Social Pro Wrestling Federation), Ricky Fuji (FMW) b Negro Casas (EMLL), Jushin Liger (New Japan) b Hayabusa (AAA), Gedo b Delfin, Wild Pegasus (New Japan) b Tiger, Great Sasuke (Michinoku Pro) b Samurai, Liger b Fuji, Pegasus b Gedo, Sasuke b Liger, Pegasus b Sasuke to win tournament 4/16 Tokyo Budokan Hall (All Japan - 16,300 sellout): Satoru Asako b Kentaro Shiga, Yoshinari Ogawa b Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, Rusher Kimura & Mighty Inoue & Mitsuo Momota b Masao Inoue & Haruka Eigen & Masa Fuchi, Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas b John Nord & The Eagle, Johnny Ace b Tamon Honda, Akira Taue b Johnny Smith, Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama b Giant Baba & Stan Hansen & Takao Omori 24:19, Champion Carnival tournament final: Toshiaki Kawada b Steve Williams 25:48 ECW Arena show that night, and Spring Stampede the next night. John

One longtime observer of Flair's thoughts on the piece:

I vaugely remember something along those lines buried in a list of abusive stuff. I think most of us treat the very most extreme of it as he-said-she-said stuff that gets tossed out in divorces. The busting open old cuts to self juice for sympathy from the cops when domestic dispute calls out to the Flair house... that is so *Ric* that I think we all thought that was something more credible. It just doesn't sound like something Beth would make up. Rape... you know I've been on the far end of critical of Ric in all this stuff, but that one reads like a stretch. The Flair Show stuff of wagging the cock around friends... that comes across as a bit of a stretch, and perhaps taking some liberties with his recent plane incident. You look for stuff to throw, and that's not a bad one. I really think the bottom line on all of this stuff is two part: * Ric has spent three decades as a con man intentionally defrauding people and entities out of money. When laid out like this, it's frankly criminal. The IRS and State kind of let him off the hook for his crimes with back taxes, but he instantly when back to not paying his taxes (either in full or in part) and making them chase him. Then all the loans and purchases and services he entered into and didn't pay back / pay for, it's really clear that his intent on so much of "living his lifestyle" was to no pay for shit / rip people off. It's really stunning, and I doubt his piece has everything: it's just what he got sued for. Lord knows how many other "friends" of Ric simply wrote off money that he ripped off from them at lower amounts. * at 62, his three decades of running the cons have left his life a total trainwreck The financial ones are obvious. But running cons on and with Beth, running a con of being any kind of a father, running cons on the first and now 3rd & 4th wives along with everyone else in his life has left his life a complete trainwreck. But WTF... he's still Ric Flair living the "good life", every day like it's his life. Death will make him judgement prove, though may suck down which ever woman at that point he's conned into being his wife. John