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He didn't want to job to Sid *that night* if I recall correctly. In addition to that, he didn't want to job to Bret at Mania. John

I know there's some logic to that thought, but I'm not sure it's fully supported by what we saw in the past. The WWE and WCW gave away a lot of things for free on TV, and ran matches multiple times, and they still drew buys. Rock vs Stone Cold in 2001 at Mania wasn't a new match. It drew a ton. I would agree that there are limits something can be run, and limits to how often it can be given away for free. But in the end, if it's a product that people like, they'll pay for it and/or watch it. The bigger part of the product problem is lack of success in creating/sustaining/maximizing (i) more major stars and (ii) new franchise stars. I'm not entirely sold that having jobbers and jobber matches is a make/break on getting that done. Stone Cold and Rock weren't made via jobber matches. Regardless of what level we put Trip at, he wasn't made in the WWF by jobber matches. Neither was Foley. Cena wasn't. Brock wasn't. I'm not saying that they can't be. In a sense Goldberg was early on, though eventually he started running through lower ranked non-jobbers. And really... it's wasn't "jobber matches" that did it, but the presentation of Goldberg that kept building. John

Shawn Michaels "retired" when he lost his smile. Yeah, I know... it didn't stick. John

Yeah... good to get out before it gets even worse. John

They've gone. Have you looked at the decline in PPV buys over the past few years? If they don't like the product, they wander off. What's they've done for the most part if wander off from paying for the PPVs. They still, to a degree, tune in to watch free WWE product that they enjoy. Turn that into WWE product that they don't enjoy and they're gone. We can't be so arrogant in think that the WWE can throw any old shit on the air and folks will tune in. WCW did that in the late 90s and half the audiance said "Fuck it, we're out of here." If the WWE loses half their current ratings, they aren't going to be make $120M+ in rights fees, nor sell advertising for their new channel. John

I threw Flair in there because people would yell at me if I didn't. John

Derogatorily before? Yes. They were busting on wrestling in the 20s in the papers. Columnist were riffing on the Hippodrome of pro wrestling, and the workers being Pachyderm. There were tons of wink & nudges about it being fake in that era, along with outright calling it fake. I've seen fake comments back to the 1890s, and I suspect Yohe has come across ones even earlier than that which I'm forgetting about. It's not just the gambling aspect, but out and out comments of it being fake. There a reason wrestling matches became called "exhibitions" in the 20s (and even earlier): it's because everyone but the fans knew it was fake. Shikat/O'Mahoney wasn't all the much of a turning point to anyone paying attention. Savoldi screwed over Londos earlier in the decade. Lewis/DeGlane. Lewis/Munn/Stanislaus. What happened after all if them is what happened all the way up until wrestling openly announced it was fake: fans that wanted to pretend it was real kept prentending it was real, but the people too dumb to know better thought so as well. Pfeffer and Shikat/O'Mahoney had no long term impact on it. Out here in Los Angeles, Pfeffer had no impact. That would be the case in a lot of places, as Pfeffer was just one man working in certain places to be a pain in the ass. Guys like Superstar Graham, Hogan and the Road Warriors did more harm to wrestling than Pfeffer through the growth of juice in the business. Not that it eventually wouldn't have happened, but there are always the people who have the highest level of impact in smething. I'm not sure that Pfeffer's acts ended up with a fair number of folks dropping dead. Riods... can't say the same for their negative impact on the business. John

Wouldn't that just be Rock followed by Hogan? It would just be the four Usual Suspects: Hulk, Stone Cold, Rock and Nature Boy. Unless one is breaking down the psychology of the Personalities. The point of analyzing Ricky Morton's Personality vs Rick Steamboat's Personality? "Ricky knew how to toss his hair gently while being interviewed to pop the teenyboppers, while Steamer is better at getting angry when a heel does something mean to him." Is there anything terribly interesting about Hulk's personality? "He beats motherfuckers up, pins them clean in the end, and proves he's the greatest wrestler in the world because fans keep paying him to beat up one heel lined up after another for him." Sure, we can get deep about it: "The thing about Hogan as a face is that he's not really a face: he's willing to cheat if the heel pushes him to it. Look at those back rakes, and his willingness to choke out heels with his own t-shirt. He may talk about prayers, vitamins and what not, but when it comes down to it, the Hulkster will do anything to beat those nasty heels." Interesting? Not a fucking bit. Relevant? Who knows. The fans still pop like hell in the end when he wins and hits the posing routine. And lord knows the posing routine isn't a great Personality either, but the fans ate that shit up. I feel like we can go off on a jag like that wrestling book in the 80s that did a thesis on pro wrestling... which in the end was pretty funny reading for most of us hardcores at the time. John

"Rack him." -Jim Rome John

The "fake" comments were around long before Pfeffer. John

Yep. John

Not in a straight tag match in th tourney as that was schedule for after Ted went out. Looking at a WON: Looking at the results: 11/13 Yokosuka (All Japan - 3,300 sellout): Mitsuo Momota b Satoru Asako, Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas b Masao Inoue & Yoshinari Ogawa, Rusher Kimura & Mighty Inoue b Ryuma Izumida & Haruka Eigen, Masa Fuchi & Tamon Honda b Jun Akiyama & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, Abdullah the Butcher & Giant Kimala II b Takao Omori & Richard Slinger, Giant Baba & Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada b Stan Hansen & Ted DiBiase & Tracy Smothers, Big Bubba Rogers & Steve Williams b The Eagle & The Patriot, Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi b Johnny Ace & Danny Spivey They did work in an opening night six man, and perhaps Ted initially banged himself up in it... mentality of "work through it". He did work the next two nights: 11/14 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (All Japan - 2,100 sellout): Mitsuo Momota & Rusher Kimura b Ryuma Izumida & Haruka Eigen, Johnny Ace & Danny Spivey b Tamon Honda & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, The Eagle & The Patriot b Abdullah the Butcher & Giant Kimala II, Giant Baba & Kenta Kobashi b Masa Fuchi & Akira Taue, Steve Williams & Big Bubba Rogers b Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas, Ted DiBiase & Stan Hansen b Tracy Smothers & Richard Slinger, Mitsuharu Misawa & Satoru Asako & Jun Akiyama b Toshiaki Kawada & Yoshinari Ogawa & Takao Omori 11/15 Toda (All Japan - 3,300): The Patriot & The Eagle b Satoru Asako & Jun Akiyama, Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura & Mighty Inoue b Masa Fuchi & Haruka Eigen & Ryuma Izumida, Danny Spivey & Johnny Ace b Takao Omori & Dory Funk, Ted DiBiase & Stan Hansen b Abdullah the Butcher & Giant Kimala II, Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi b Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas, Steve Williams & Big Bubba Rogers & Richard Slinger b Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada & Yoshinari Ogawa That would be his last match before retirement. 11/16 Chiba (Al Japan - 2,800 sellout): Doug Furnas b Mighty Inoue, Dan Kroffat b Tamon Honda, The Eagle & The Patriot b Dory Funk & Yoshinari Ogawa, Rusher Kimura & Mitsuo Momota b Haruka Eigen & Ryuma Izumida, Jun Akiyama & Satoru Asako b Masa Fuchi & Takao Omori, Steve Williams & Big Bubba Rogers b Abdullah the Butcher & Giant Kimala II, Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue b Tracy Smothers & Richard Slinger, Giant Baba & Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi b Stan Hansen & Danny Spivey & Johnny Ace That might be something of a makeshift match. 11/17 Niigata (All Japan - 3,700 sellout): Masao Inoue b Satoru Asako, Tracy Smothers b Takao Omori, Rusher Kimura & Mighty Inoue b Ryuma Izumida & Haruka Eigen, Johnny Ace & Danny Spivey b Masa Fuchi & Yoshinari Ogawa, Abdullah the Butcher & Giant Kimala II b Tamon Honda & Dory Funk, Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue b Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas, Giant Baba & Stan Hansen b The Eagle & The Patriot, Steve Williams & Big Bubba Rogers & Richard Slinger b Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama And there's Baba & Hansen joining hands. Again, he may have gotten hurt on opening night and then worked the next two nights before seeing it wasn't getting any better. I recall Steamboat wrestled a few matches after the injury at the Clash, in fact I saw his last match out here in SoCal. The Korakuen Hall match was 7:11 according to the old Shinning Road subsite of PuroresuFan.com. I guess they could have hidden Ted in it. The Abby & Kimala match probably was short as well, not likely to be too bumpy and he could have been hidden as well... or have the neck/back feel even worse after working such a soft match. Suspect he talked about this in a Shoot interview or in his book? John

From Graham's site: Three title matches which I think we'd find main evented areas around the circuit (though obviously Hogan-Andre didn't get run much). Not a single Jobber Match on the show. I think Raw hit its ratings peak *years* after doing away with Jobber matches. Not one year, or two years... but quite a few years. Nitro also peaked in ratings several years after dropping jobber matches, since Nitro never was jobber tv anyway. If star vs star only means something relative to star vs jobber, the two shows would have peaked instantly, and never shown any ratings growth. Instead, they grew. Why? Because the stars on them became bigger stars. Austin and Rock didn't become monsters by beating up the Mulkys. Cena has drawn in his career, right? How many Mulky Brothers has he beaten? Somehow he got over, and the WWE has sold shows with him. 1987-90 ratings aren't terribly relevant because cable penetration was spotty. If we can point to something, it might be SNME which was on network TV and was noticable absent of Jobber Matches. And it drew far more eyeballs than watched WWF syndication every week at the time, and WWF cable TV on USA. I think you need to pull yourself away from this: "I love jobber matches" and again ponder this: "Is there a risk to the #1 revenue stream in the company if we go this direction?" Again, TV Rights Fees grew last year, and have for several years. There is a lot in the company that isn't growing. Smart business don't put their top revenue stream at risk. They try to improve the shakey ones, and look to develop new ones. I really don't give a shit about Vince Russo and have more than a decade track record of pointing out the he's delusional idiot. What I'm suggesting is that the WWE's #1 revenue stream is in producing Television Content. 4 major hours of programing a week in the US, 52 weeks a year, that the WWE sells to networks. The value of that programing is in the ratings. The ratings are driven by the fans sticking with the show from start to finish as much as possible, and those fans feeling like they're watching a good show. There is a lot of competion for those eyeballs, to you need to keep them entertained. I'm not an advocate of Crash TV, and have long said that I think it's utter bullshit. So that's not what I'm pushing. I am pushing that until the WWE comes up with revenue streams that are larger than TV Rights Fees that the WWF needs to continue to look at putting on good TV as a core objective of the company. This frankly gets even more important when they launch their own TV channel and eventually look to moving something like SmackDown over there if the offers for its next TV aren't up to snuff. If you're going to get eyeballs over to your channel, you've got to put on good product. Even more important in that instance since it will be the WWE back in the business of selling advertising for their programing, something they moved away from over the course of the last decade. I don't think that's the case at all. There always is a movement of fans away from the product, and new fans coming in. Look even at the small sample on this board where people say they don't watch much anymore versus those that do. Most of those that do, such a Dylan, find stuff they enjoy on the shows. Ross was a business man in the WWE. Something tells me that he'd have little desire to "grow" a $120M revenue stream into a $60M stream if it didn't work out. A key concern: if it bombs and a large chunk of the fan base wanders off, it's extremely tough to put the genie back in the bottle. John

Probably should have just let Lawler lay out the match with Cole. Give him a clock time to fit it into, including for entrances and post match. Let the two walk it through, especially the entrance part. Lawler has worked with brooms before and could do this. I'm not sure if Jerry would want to sell as long, though perhaps in the same type of match in Memphis the crowd would stick with Jerry through it. Don't know if he'd be smart enough / put aside ego enough when they tell him "your going 13:45" for him to say back, "We probably should go no longer than 7 minutes, a little longer if it goes well but not much." John

I'm surprised that no one has brought up the finances: $127.0M - TV Rights Fees $104.6M - Live Events Revenue $70.2M - PPV Revenue $51.7M - Licensing Revenue $32.1M - Home Video $19.6M - WWE Studios $18.4M - Venue Merch $14.9M - WWE.com $14.0M - WWE Shop $11.0M - Magazine $5.9M - Advertising/Sponsorship $4.6M - WWE Classics on Demand That's from the last fiscal year. TV Rights Fees are the #1 revenue generator in the company. We also need to consider that the Live Events that draw fans are the tapings: Raw, SD and PPV events along with the international shows. Any thoughts on what ratings Raw and SD would do if they're more than 50% old school jobber matches? Massive ratings drop would mean a major drop in revenue. Some of us are old school fans, some of whom didn't mind jobber matches. But there are also a lot who like their Free TV Matches. I would worry about impacting one of the revenue streams that's continues to grow. If you pull up the 10-K and look at the PPV numbers, they are jaw dropping in their decline. It's not clear that going to jobber matches will pump of those revenues, as there was plenty of growth to it even in the era of TV being filled with competative matches as it was in 2010. John

I'm pretty confident that Dave would have put him in the original class without the Million Dollar Man gimmick. He could have gone to the WWF and just been another Greg Valentine and Dave would have put him in. Or he could have stayed in Crockett and Japan. Dave thought he was one of the best workers of the era... as in very best. I doubt that Dave thought there were 5 better workers in the 80s than Ted, and that's even considering that he wasn't ga-ga over Ted's WWF work in the ring. John

Hulk Hogan is an all-time great becasue he drew. We can debate whether he had "great" matches rather than a number of "great" ones. So if that's what you're really getting at, then Yes, someone can be an all-time great without having a number of great matches. But I don't really think that's what you're talking about. You're kind of edging around Performer. I really don't see why we can't talk about Worker (in the ring), Mic, etc as seperate things. We've been doing that for several decades already. People have talked about Lawler's mic work, his ring work and his drawing ability. People have talked about Hogan's mic work, his ring work, his drawing ability, his influence and his impact. When people talk about GOAT (Which you referenced in your intial post), they're talking Work in the ring. How do we know this? Go back to the GOAT thread and see how many times Hulk Hogan is offered up as GOAT. I love Jumbo. But if GOAT expands beyond just ring work, than Hulk Hogan >>>> Jumbo. And frankly over everyone else mentioned in the GOAT thread. Hulk is the post-WWII GOAT unless we narrow it down to just In Ring Work. John

I think some folks aren't asking for "bevy" but for "some". Set aside Ted, since folks seem to disagree whether the Mid South matches hit the spot. Take Wrestler X: Can Wrestler X be considered an all-time great worker if there isn't a single "great" matches that folks can point to that not only he was in, but that he was a pretty big reason it was great? Or moving beyond *one* to "several" or "a handful"? I tend to think within the context of WWF 80s Matches (faint praise indeed), Rude vs Warrior is a "great" match. I also think that it wasn't just because of Rude (and whoever laid it out for them), as Warrior had a very good performance in it. One match doesn't make Warrior great worker. But if we're talking about Arn Anderson, you kind of would like a few great singles matches to take him from being what we'd consider a great tag team worker into being a great worker overall. You would like to see his Rude-Warrior matches. There is nothing wrong with being a "good worker" or a "solid worker". Great is pretty elite, and you'd like to see it supported by some great matches where the worker wasn't just along for the ride. Thing of great bands. You'd like some great songs, right? Eight Days A Week is a solid enough pop song. It went #1, has a hook, works for the fans. Not one of my favorite Beatles songs, but I'm not going to argue that it wasn't effective. If the Beatles career was made up of 20 Eight Days A Week, some of which went #1 and some of which went #20 for being repetative/derivative of the original, then you'd probably say that the Beatles were a solid/good pop band. They're "great" because of She Loves You, Revolver, Pepper, side 2 of Abbey Road, Hey Jude, etc. (give one's own taste of what was truly great Beatles). With a worker... you kind of want to know what his Hey Jude is. Where's the Day Tripper + We Can Work It Out + Rubber Soul --> Paperback Writer + Rain + Revolver --> Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields --> Pepper peak run of his career? Where's the "hidden gem" Yesterday of his career, a song that was on the B non-soundtrack side of an album that you look at and think, "Wait a minute... they're treated *this* fucker like album Filler? Holy shit?!?!" A great worker doesn't have to do all that shit to be great. But if someone asks what his great matches are, and you're stuck tossing out the equiv of Eight Days A Week and Do You Want To Know A Secret (which went to #2 in the US) as the great matches, folks are going to wonder WTF. That's an example... if you don't like The Beatles, pick your own. If Wrestler X (or Band Y or Director Z) is an all-time great, you really need some examples of Greatness. Otherwise, you're an All-Time Good. Which really isn't that bad. John

I really think to get back in *and* stay in after playing you need a team to pull you in. I had the opportunity (not sleeping) and the entry level fandom (played and watched as a kid). But without a team to hold the attention and make you want to see what happened next, I probably would have wandered off. Great story of 1993 winning the title. 1994 was the Double. 1995 they didn't win, which meant 1996 had a comeback storyline to it (on more levels than one). The big move towards younger players as well. Came back in 1996 and 1997, by then a storyline developing on the failure to win the Champions League. Then everything of that era peaked in 1999 in a way that frankly was over-the-top. My fandom went backwards after that. You just couldn't have written a better climax to the 1993-99 storyline than that, and returning to even the "normal great" of 1993-98 was anti-climactic. I enjoyed and followed the 2000 through 2006 ManU seasons in an increasingly casual way... even the pretty decent amount of hardware the team picked up didn't have the cha-ching of prior ones. A dream season like 1999 can really screw up a fan. What actually pulled me back into major following was the 2006 World Cup, and then my hate of Chelsea and not wanting to see them three-peat in 2006/07. So watching the 2006/07 in the hopes that ManU could keep the Blues from three-peating was my viewing goal... and that turned out very good. Excellent time to get pulled back into being a big fan as that was a pretty fab era of ManU, and the 2008 team was pretty fab to watch (while love to have a Season Set of that club). I suspect my current level of fandom will peak again and decline. Hasn't yet, but I tend to ebb & flow over time, so it will happen. John

The 70s were the wave of soccer play growth in the US among, and I was in that wave. Took it up at 8 (1974) and played it through the high school team (1984). We got a Division 1 game each week on local PBS (KCET). Part of my dad teaching me baseball and football and basketball was by watching it: the pros, or good college (USC football / UCLA basketball). You learn by watching how good players do things. So when I took up soccer and KCET started carrying Division 1 games, he'd have me watch them. So I saw games during Pools glory days. Stopped with Heysel, which was a good break: was in college, wasn't playing anymore, booze & dope & babes were better uses of my time, and Heysel was extremely depressing to a pretty depressive kid. Got back in while going through with insomnia in the early 90s. EPL was on local cable, often as late nigh filler. Couldn't bring myself to be a fan of Pool with Heysel still in my memory. The story of the season was ManU's quest for the first championship since the late 60s. Eric came over from Leeds and was the coolest motherfucker on the planet. Pulled me in. Then they sustained it, then the generation of kids game in to watch develop... they were a fab team to watch get shaped. I don't know if I'd go so narrow. I do know a lot of "team fans" who will watch some of the games of their rival just to root for them to lose. There are a lot of Duke Haters out there who watch Duke games. I have had stretches where I'm really narrow because it's all that I have time for, and times in the 90s when I watched a ton of Serie A as well. There was less EPL on TV back them, so it was probably easier to "follow" both leagues: 1-2 EPL games, 1 Serie A game, the assorted CL / CWC / UEFA Cup games of interest, and a highlight show or two. Now... there's a hell of a lot of futbol on the air. I tend to follow the top of the EPL... don't have a lot of time to track what the news of Blackpool is... have no time to worry about Serie. If I get GolTV next year, about as much La Liga as I'll follow is Barca. Just don't have the time to add Barca + Real to my viewing schedule. When I was a kid in the 70s, I could give the name and number for every position on every team in the NFL. Probably could have named all the position players in MLB along with the top startes as well, though not the numbers. Just useless information. I think you get some of that today with Fantasy Players, especially in baseball where you need to know everyone as a potential member of "your" team. Might also get some of that from gamers, such as people who play Championship Manager / Football Manager. When I played that in the later 90s it really expanded the useless info I had, especially in leagues or national teams that I didn't follow. John

When I started watching in the 1992/93 season it was Parker on the right with Irwin on the left with Bruce & Pallister in the middle. John

Bingo. The labeling just doesn't strike me as very useful. As I said in my first post: it's usually just a bunch of bullshit, and has always been going back when Scherer & Co. were trying to play Us ("We're real wrestling fans") vs Them ("Those folks think too much"). There are things of much more value: "Will is a big wrestling fan." "Will is a helluva collector and great at making sets." "Will is a helluva a nice guy." "Ditch is a big wrestling fan." "Ditch is a big puroresu fan." "Ditch does a great job making matches available to folks." There's some useful stuff in there, but it the"wrestling fan" part is really just a small thing in there. "Ditch and Will are smarks." WTF? What value is that. It tells us nothing beyond what we already know: they're big wrestling fans. "Phil is a Fujiwara Fan." Okay... that tells us one wrestler that Phil likes. It tells is what beyond that? It doesn't even tell us why Phil likes about Fujiwara. We'd need to go beyond the label to actually reading what he's said about Fujiwara to find that out. Labels along these lines are just a bunch of bullshit. John

Yeah... I really need to pull those DVDs off the shelf and start watching them. John

Just as an aside personally I think there's a huge difference between being fans of a club that plays a sport, and being a fan of a sport. In soccer: * I watch the FA Cup Final even when ManU is bounced * I watch the Champions League Final even when ManU is bounced * earlier this year, I watched the Carling Cup Final even though ManU wasn't in it * Scott and I watched the World Cup Final (and a crapload of other matches) even though our teams weren't in it I'm a Futbol fan. ManU has been my team since 1992/93, but I watch more than just ManU games. In basketball: * I pretty much always watch the NBA Finals even if the Lakers aren't in it * I watch a pretty fair amount of non-Lakers playoff games prior to the Finals * I probably watch 50-100 non-Lakers regular season games, depending on the year I'm a pro basketball fan. The Lakers are my team, so they draw most of my attention. But Clippers-Celts a recently got my attention as well. Celts-Heat gets me attention. Checked out the Knicks after the Lebron trade. Spurs against a quality team can get my attention if nothing else is on and I want to get a feel for a potential opponent of the Lakers. Same generally with College Basketball, though I spent much less time watching non-Duke games because time has been chewed up with other stuff (including futbol and the NBA). When I'm in College Hoops Fan Mode, I'll watch a couple non-Duke games a week. College football is pretty nuts. I'm a USC Fan, so of course I watch their games. But during football season, Scott and I typically start with the 12:30 pm PT games and watch through at least the 5 pm PT games that end about 8/8:30. If USC is in the evening Pac 10 game, that starts around 7 to 8, and we watch that. We both have the ESPN Package, so we're flipping all over the place: CBS SEC game, ESPN's coverage of everything, ND on NBC, Pac 10 on Fox Sports. It gets really bad if there's an upset brewing in one of the early Big 10 games as I'll be getting a call from Scott between 11-11:30 telling me to tune into a game. We then can go from 11 am PT until 11 PM PT flipping between roughly a dozen games. Scott's an Auburn Fan. I'm a USC Fan. But we're both big College Football Fans, so we'll check out Bama vs LSU because it could be a good/interesting game that impacts the season. I watched vastly more college football from September to the first week in January this past season than I have watched wrestling in the past four years *combined*. And we watched the same amount of football in 2009 and 2008. When I was a bigger baseball fan back in the 90s into the early 00s, it was the same. Any Braves game when it was on. Giants to check out Bonds. Red Sox when I got a chance. Yanks. Dodgers. Even if it was background TV while working on something, which baseball is great for because you can look up for the money moments of an at bat. What I'm trying to get at is that College Football Fans, Baseball Fans, NBA Fans, NFL Fans (which I didn't even tough on), College Hoops fans... those folks don't go running around with some nonsensical Marks / Smart / Smarks / IWC tag that they toss around at each other, or proudly wrap around themselves. They are Fans. Some of them are Big Fans. Am I a Big Lakers Fan? Perhaps, but not a major one. Yohe, Jag and I don't take the day off to go to those 10 Championship Parades that have happened since 1980... though I work with one woman who does. I don't go to many Lakers home games: simply can't afford to given how they price the tickets (and parking and food and drinks). I simply watch the games, but a few dvds, and might have two Lakers t-shirts in the cribs... one that goes back to the three-peat and is a bit worn. Big Duke Fan? People who see me post about them might think so, but I'm nothing compared to Bruce. And Bruce is nothing compared to the people who go to the Arena. I'm a Duke fan... not a casual one, but a serious one. ManU? Never gone to one of the pubs around here that air the games to hang out with the hardcore fans. But I do get up at 4:30 am in the morning to watch a game when needed. I'm a serious ManU game. That's what I'm trying to get at. We are just wrestling fans. We're not groupies. I don't think many of us want to hang out with wrestlers, or be in the business. We like watching our wrestling. Just as serious/big sports fans like watching their sports. We like talking about it, just as serious/big sports fans do. We're modern fans in terms of comminucations: we do a lot of our "talk" online, our "friends" that we talk to are online. Old school sports fans would talk at a bar, or with buddies while watching games, or call into sports radio. We know that we can pop open a browser and find some folks to talk to about wrestling... or if we're on sports boards, about sports. We are all just fans. I suspect the folks here that go to Comic Con or other fan conventions can tell you that we all fit somewhere on the 1-100 scale. Some higher, some lower. And no... Will and Lynch aren't 100. That would be Dave, Wade and Alverez... guys like Madden and Scherer who took their fandom and got *inside* the business. Will and Lynch might be making some coin off the business, but until they get hired by the WWE to run the tape library, they're short of 100. The rest of us... we're down the scale. We are Big Fans, or in some cases *were* big fans and now are pretty damn casual even about things we like. My dad has been watching baseball longer than I have, has gone to more games, was a Dodgers season ticket co-holder for about 15 years, played it at a far higher level than I ever did... but when I was at the peak of my baseball fandom (80s through 90s) he'd admit that I was a bigger fan than he was. Probably would admit that even as a kid I was a bigger fan. He'd say it wasn't even close, either. There is no easy formula to determine bigger fan. It's actually really narrow: All Japan TV in the 80s and 90s, more than half of years was stuff that I watched at the time. My contribution is really very little on that early 80s AJPW stuff other than curiousity of what aired, what's available, what might be missing, and whether there are any avenues to collect it. Dylan (and Jerome?) watched everything that ECW ever kicked out. *That* is beyond the scope of my fandom. I look at Alan 4L's list of 2010 matches that he rated ****+, and it's laughable to think I'll ever again remotely be at that level of caring about wrestling, let alone watching all of those. There are people sifting through all of the WAR and SWS matches available... and god bless them for their efforts. Me? I haven't even popped in a disk from a set on my favorite wrestler of all-time that a friend got me for Christmas. I will eventually, but there's no clearer sign of my "enthusiasm" than that: my Kawada set is sitting on the corner of my desk, I see it every night, and instead I'm currently watching Cracker dvds, getting caught up on the first two seasons of The Mentalist, finishing off this season of Top Chef so I have space for Masters that just started up, am eyeballing those Justified episodes on the bedroom dvr knowing that I have to watch the Season 1 dvd first while trying to resist the temption to pop back in the Firefly disks I finished recently that were so much fun... I'm not even a wrestling enthusiast anymore. This thread is about how we define ourselves? I said what it was: I'm a wrestling fan. Want more? A big one, bigger in the past than now. Currently a rather lazy, unethused one who finds it easier to watch probably 50 things *other than* wrestling. It's a bad sign when I'd rather watch a UNC vs UK game... the two college hoops programs I hate the most. Not much anymore. Not even close. In 1995 and 1996. I did a shitload of drugs and booze in college. It was 1984-1987, and even earlier in high school. I haven't had anything to drink since the end of 1987, and no drugs since then other than painkillers after surgery. I'm not the drunk dopehead I was in college. I'm not the fan I was in 1995-96. The irony is that I think everyone knows the second part of that. It's well known that I'm not especially relevant anymore, and don't attempt or try to be. Just a wrestling fan. Someone who has watched more 80s WWF in the past four years than All Japan is little more than "just a fan". A big one in one sense: I still like to talk about it a bit, and collect stuff that I don't always watch. But not terribly enthusiastic, and rather narrow. Which again... I think *everyone* knows. It's not the late 90s anymore, and we all are well aware of that. John

I have 500+ unwatched non-wrestling disks... and that's not an exageration. I just got the entire collection of Weeds, they're just sitting on the shelf still in the shrink wrap... and there's only a 50% change that I'll watch them before 2011 is up. The Cracker disks that I'm watching now are probably 3 years old, and I was susprised they were still in the shrink wrap when I pulled them off the shelf. I'm just now reading my birthday present from my girlfriend... from last year. My birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, the second book in the series has just been released, and she'll be getting it to me... lord knows when I'll get to it because there are another 30-50 new books on the shelf that I'm slowly working my way through. I picked up my sub to the WON when Misawa died. I *just now* referenced the Thanksgiving Shows story over in another thread here because I just now clicked on that issue. The Mania issue that someone referenced in a response? Haven't even clicked on it. Probably skim a couple issues every other month. Yes, a total waste of money when you read something that little. I own a wrestling site where we talking about sports just about every day, and wrestling as a side item. Those 500 disks? They've been picked up over 5 years... probably more. Again, people seem to think there are only Casual Fans and Batshit Crazy Hardcore Fans. No, there aren't. There's a wide range of fans, from casual fans who really aren't much of wrestling fans to guys like you and Alan 4L who are wrestling fans 24/7. John