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Thanks for transcribing the riods piece, Loss. Keith or Bix should probably drag that over to the WON boards because it would be interesting to see what Dave's thoughts on it looking back would be. John

A slight problem that they didn't file until earlier this year. I wonder how long Dawn has been "collection donations"? John

I agree with the notion that Irv wouldn't be worried. In fact, he'd invite the lawsuit. The last thing Dawn wants is the discovery requests that Irv's lawyer would send her. In fact, he likely could find a lawyer in the jurisdiction who like Barnett would take it on just to fuck with Dawn and her attorney. The instant discovery would be filed you'd see Dawn and her attorney vannish. John

Is that for Networks, or is it the same from Networks to USA/Spike in 2000? That seems to be Bryan's point. John

What in the heck could Naylor of all people don't to get banned?

Francine... you're right. My error. I always remember Beulah and Stick Girl, and forget which one was Stick Girl. John

So she put weight on relative to the famed Stick Girl of ECW? I confess to completely zoning out on her in the WWE. John

Juice before the WWE? During? After? Did she suddenly look bigger in the WWE than in ECW? Strange... she always looked like Walking Death in ECW. Roids weren't the injectables folks joked about with her. John

I don't think Dave's pays attention to any of that stuff. It sounds like Bryan just lets the Fig-4 board be the wild west. That's certainly one way to manage a board: let most anything go and not worry about it. John

Georgianne had a hotline segment. I tend to think that's a work. Dave never gave *me* the code, and I got along very well with Dave and Bruce in the prime years of the WON Hotline. I never asked, but Dave was very giving with me. My first trip to Japan: sent him a fax asking advice on what hotels to stay at and how to go about getting tickets. Five minutes later the phone rang: "I was thinking about going to those shows. Want to go with me?" Probably hundreds of things similar to that large and small. That's just Dave: if you're a friend, he's pretty damn giving... very good, very nice person in that regards. Probably too nice if someone wants to exploit that. So I tend to think that if he were passing it around like candy, he would have tossed it to me at some point. We talked about his headaches with the Hotline on more than a few occassions. Though I think I had more fun talking to Bruce about the goofiness of the Hotline. If he gave it out, he likely was very select. Georgianne, on the other hand... my recollection is that she gave it out a bit. And that may be where the "stories" came from: folks covering for Georgie. Dittos other people on the Hotline giving it out to people they knew in the business. John

18 months. John

But does he really need to? If you or Keith rip Dave, how soon before you get stomped down by posters? Unless it cuts too closely for Bryan or Dave, they don't really need to even weigh in. John

I think it was around the time of the launch of the webpage. Possibly a bit after. Don't know if business was dropping a ton: wasn't talking to Dave much when it was shut down. Don't recall it ever being a it cash cow for Dave, but it did okay business. Don't think Dave ever had big issues with phone charge disputes. One of the funny inside things was the giving out of the backdoor code by Georgie, who was calling in, and how it would magically appear on a certain website the next day. "People tell me..." John

Possible. I doubt Dave even pays much attention to saying what plays to the board. Bryan... seems unlikely. My guess is that 90%+ are Bryan Fans who are more than willing to stomp on the 10% who aren't. When you have that, what Bryan writes is already over with them. John

I actually don't think Bryan is a bad influence, or does much towards making Dave look bad. Overall he's likely been a very big positive for Dave. We may not enjoy Bryan's stuff, but take a step back: how many of us bother reading what Bryan writes? Or listen to the WO.Show religiously? People who don't care for Bryan's stuff but still like reading Dave tend to do just that: read Dave. Bryan tends not to hit their radar. I know that's the case for Yohe, and I rarely read the Fig-4 despite it being free with the WON. I suspect that's the case for a lot of older WON readers who can be tossed off as "current wrestling passed them by". In turn, people who like Dave *and* Bryan probably read both, and listen to the WO.Show. The positives are pretty obvious. Dave was pretty shitty on the Web going back to the crappy one Alverez hooked him up with, and really didn't get any better with those LAW idiots. Bad website, poor delivery of the newsletter, and a piss poor job of integrating his audio content into the newsletter business. With Bryan, Dave now "owns" all that, though obviously merged in with Bryan's in whatever business deal they have. I suspect Dave's business deal with Bryan is mutually far more beneficial in the long run than Dave's prior ones. The WO-4 web isn't the best, but for the most part it gets done the primary things it should to be viable: sells the newsletters, provides live updates to key events, does modest "updates" infront of the curtain, and provides a fair amount of updates / news / opinion behind the curtain on the WO.Show. That an older sub like me doesn't get a ton out of it other than ease of reading the newsletter doesn't really matter: it's not designed for someone like me whose interest in the current product is light. Overall, I tend to think the direction he finally moved in the web is a positive even if not fully perfected. From a "friend" standpoint, I tend to think Bryan's been a pretty good friend for Dave. I don't recall ever hearing him lead Dave into a dumbass business decision. Dave's always spoken fondly/highly of him being a good guy. It's Dave, and he's not without his blindspots as we all are... but I don't think he's been wrong on Bryan. On being a jackass, has anyone ever heard anything remotely close to the level of shittiness that's been associated with say Scherer or Ryder? We tend to bust Bryan's balls, and I don't think folks have been off base in pointing out that he doesn't take criticism very well... but then again, how many of us do? I think the biggest moments of "Bryan's being a prick" that anyone has pointed to are extremely mild, especially on the scale of Scherer. I'm pretty confident that more than one poster here can point to times when I've been a far bigger asshole than Bryan, while also admitting that I don't hit high on the Scherer scale. Dave could associate with true scumbuckets, and it's a business filled with them both on the inside and in fandom. Bryan's pretty human, and we all have moments of being abrassive. I don't think it's really a problem, especially for Dave. Lastly, if you look at the majority of Dave's "wrestling friends" over the years of the WON, their fandom has ebbed and flowed. His ones from the 70s like Dobratz (sp?) were there at the launch of the WON, but gone by the mid-80s for the most part. There was a large group of 80s friends that a decade later we referred to as The Class of 89: their fandom peak with the run of WCW in 1989, and by the mid-90s a lot of them moved onto other interests or lesser interest in pro wrestling. A fair number of the ones from the mid-90s like myself started checking out in the early 00's. We had shared interest in the 80s that Dave had, but also enjoyed the wide variety of things that bubbled up in the 90s. By the early part of the 00s, a good deal of what we enjoyed was dead or declining, and we started losing interest. Call us the Class of 95. Dave, in contrast, has typically found stuff to enjoy even while ripping the crap out of the product. This pretty much has alway been the case. Dave would say that his tastes have evolved as wrestling has, and that he's "kept up". Bryan's tastes pretty much line up with Dave's on the current product. Bryan finds plenty to enjoy, again even while ripping the product. In a sense he's similar to what some of us had been in the 90s: Bryan shared a fair amount of Dave's interest in the mid-to-late 90s, especially in the US product. And he's been a big fan of the product of 00's relatively speaking, lining up with Dave's interests. Mix in the UFC fandom as well. I think that's a positive for Dave currently, as has been his other friendships over the years. I'm not sure what common things in the late 80s Dave would have had with Dobratz. On the other hand, Bowdren and others had very similar views to Dave on wrestling at that point, with a wide variety of interests. By the mid 90s, a lot of what Bowdren liked transitioned to a new generation and he had largely moved on. My interests at that point were very similar to Dave's, even if my opinions weren't always. In turn Bryan's have been pretty similar to Dave's in say the last decade. One could probably ask Kurt Brown about what his common wrestling interests with Dave are now. Very good friend of Dave's for a hell of a long time. But I'm not sure that Dave could call up Kurt to go over the latest things going on backstage and on camera for TNA and Kurt would really care all that much. In contrast, that's stuff that Bryan eats up right now. That's a good thing. It tends to help keep Dave's juices flowing on where ever wrestling at a given time. Which is important if you're going to hawk a newsletter covering an industry: if you utterly hate the product on a whole and stay stuck in what you enjoyed 20 years ago, you aren't going to find enough people *paying* to read you to make a living. Dave's pretty much kept up with what current wrestling fans enjoy, even if it's not always what we enjoy. Bruce has been a friend of Dave's longer, and also tends to keep up. But he's also quite a bit more cynical and jaded on elements of the business than Bryan, so you get a balance in having both. Anyway... long response. Overall and given other options, Bryan's almost certainly been a positive as a friend for Dave. He also isn't a bad guy. John

I think we're talking about the same thing. Herd was the business guy behind launching the wrestling hotline, with Dave and the Mat Reports guy (after he left the WCW hotline) as the lead draws. I morphed overtime into being the WON Hotline. At some point, Dave bought out / took over from Herd... though my recollection was that Mat Reports guy effectively had a piece as well. I wouldn't exactly say it was an unofficial predecessor. Probably close to the Minneapolis Lakers prior to the Los Angeles Lakers. One became the other. John

The WON Hotline. Herd set up the business deal, and may have had a piece at the start. My recollection is that Dave eventually owned all of it, or the Mat Reports guy had a piece as well. John

Scherer complaining that someone called him a pedo? Of all the ironic, two faced and unintentionally funny things he's ever said, that one shoots to #1. Whenever I start to wonder if it's time to put away thinking that Scherer is an evil, vile human being with a special place in hell reserved for him, something like this pops up to remind me that yes, he still is that scumbucket that I remember. John

The second one is more effective. The first one will likely get shrugged off by most voters. John

Most of us have done that for more than a decade. We also talk about what sucks, and have forever as well. Really no different from Dave or Bryan. I'm sure we can point to negative, critical, bitter comments they made in their early newsletters, and right up to even now when they're talking about a TNA led by Eric and Hulk. You're really not even trying very hard to come across as anything more than a troll of the posters on this board. John

High for balls and tastelessness. Balance that a bit with it being unlikely she got much money, so probably not Top 10. John

Wonder if Mattel cut a separate deal with Savage in addition to the deal with WWE. It's pretty clear from the pictures that it's part of the "WWE Defining Moments" series of figures, not just from the text but from the packaging picture down the second link. So the WWE had to sign off in some fashion, unless the contract with the WWE gives Mattel broad freedom to sign people up (such as Bruno). Pretty interesting, and Mattel thought enough of Savage in being one of the anchors for the series that they paid him to do a promo. It's a cheap video message, but still... pretty interesting. John

I must have missed Ronnie serving in war. Ditto's W. Civil Rights Act vote: The Senate version: Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%-31%) Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%) The Senate version, voted on by the House: Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%) Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%) It was a Democratic bill, and more Dems voted for it. Obviously there were more Dems in Congress at the time. Who didn't vote for it? Senate: Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%) Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) Same type of split in the House on their original version: Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%) Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%) Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%) Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%) The "Southern" vote was against it, to an even higher % among GOP southerns. And of course the Southern Strategy was all about drawing White Southerns away from the Democratic Party into the GOP with Civil Rights as the wedge. It's explicitly documented in GOP memos and papers from the era, right down to the concept of trying to attract "Negrophobe" white folks to the GOP. Only someone ignorant of the facts would try to claim otherwise, or someone trying to hide reality because it sheds light on their own feelings on the topic that they'd just as soon keep hidden. Among the first to bail were leading Dixiecrats like Thurmond. Those that stayed like Byrd came to see the error of their ways and rather publicly come to Jesus on it. And of course plenty got voted out and replaced by Southern GOPers like Jesse Helms. John

It *might* get someone fired today, but only because Linda is running and the Matel thing... and only if it happened while the person worked for the WWF. If it happened 2 years before they got hired, it wouldn't matter. This was also before Jim went off on Bruce and Wade, which was a result of the famed "Onward Cornette's Soldiers" in Torch #293. John