jdw

Neilsen and the networks will adapt to try to account for people who "legally" stream: content off the network websites and/or other authorized distributors of the content. They're not wholy unaware of the issue. Where they'll never catch up are illegal distribution of the content. Which they likely know as well. So over time we'll see more content be made available on the web *at the same time* as it's available live on TV. No different from how authorized downloads of music are part of Billboard's charts now. The only way they can deal with the illegal is to make the content available legally and figure out ways to monetize it. One suspects in the long run that TV will be better at it than the music business as they're an ad driven business. John

Great quote. John

The problem is that TNA and Spike project a certain level of performance to justify the show. If it doesn't meet it, doesn't matter how many people stream it. No doubt streaming might be useful in getting people to buy the PPV. But Spike doesn't care about that. And without Spike, TNA will have massive problems. John

*laugh* John

Of course those Mike Tyson "entertainment promos" always drew. John

Hogan would get a hot poker up the ass if he did that stuff. For example, how often does Hogan get ripped when he says something about Inoki/Choshu/Fujinami? Wait... there was one in this week's WON? Seriously, it was just another one of those stupid Hogan Interviews that he's done a hundred times over the decades saying stupid stuff. Yet Dave still enjoys kicking him in the balls. It's a bit like the dogs in Up when they see a squirrel: Dave: "HOGAN!" We all agree that Hogan is a goofy, lying, egotistical piece of shit. And a lot of the ball busting Dave has done about him over the years is pretty funny. But if he can take the time to bust Hogan's balls for the 100th times (literally, and I'm being *conservative*), then perhaps when Flair's life is such a freaking trainwreck that the new low is getting drunk and slapped around by Wife #4... perhaps... maybe... Dave can actually cover him like he does *most* people in wrestling. Lots of us have pointed this out over the years. There simply are people he goes light on covering like he does other folks. It doesn't mean that Dave "never" is critical of them. It doesn't mean that Dave is a dogshit reporter. It just means that we would like to see some better coverage of certain people when they warrant it. For folks out there who think this is only something that popped up on the Internets, or that it just some jealous crackpots obsessing about Dave: it's not. This is an old issue, and one that even his friends at times scratch their heads about. John

I actually think that's probably not a bad idea. They certainly could overlap on "big" things like major news, PPV's, etc. But the run of the mill stuff like covering Raw, SmackDown, TNA on Spike, etc. could be split between the two and frankly offloaded to Bryan. Give Dave the Ultimate Fighter of there's a tv show he wants to cover. If there's something one wants to say about a TV show that the other is recapping, they both still have their "WWF" and "UFC" and "TNA" sections to toss out a comment: "Shawn vs Kurt on Raw was **** and one of the best TV matches of the year." Not saying that Dave shouldn't watch those shows. But simply free himself from the grind of having to recap them in full. When you sub to the site, you get both. And perhaps there's reasons to read both. But I skim the WON too often as it is anyway, and don't crack the Fig-4 open. They probably could work together better than they do. John

What we find interesting is the coverage by the Flair Fan elements of the Wrestling Media relative to how they would have covered something similar relating to Hulk Hogan, Kevin Von Eric, etc. Even Eddy Guerrero going through his troubles got covered differently. It's little different from how some thought Scherer and Ryder & Co. covered ECW differently from how they covered similar shit in other companies. I guess that was "creepy" to point out back then. John

I thought the nightstand post over there was by Bix, not kjh. Bruce's defenses on the Torch boards... well... Keith can sum them up. Not a highpoint for Bruce. John

I wonder if by 1996 the Ryder and Scherer even remembered what Madden did with regards to Watts a few years earlier. I don't know if Ryder ever read it back in those days. Scherer did, no doubt. But I don't think he ever would have projected onto Wade something that Madden did. Mark was his own personal jackass back when writing for the Torch. I don't think a whole lot of other people in 1996/97 gave a shit about Madden's time with the Torch either. To the online world, it just wasn't relevant at the time. Madden had been gone for a while, and there was a flood of new people online at the time who barely even knew what the WON and Torch were. What drove Ryder and Scherer was their love of ECW, and the fact that they were attached to it as a gravytrain at the time. What convinced people to believe them was similar myopic love of ECW. My recollection is that most of the folks who didn't give two shits for ECW saw through the bullshit quickly. John

http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/12507 Looks like it might be DOA. John

Agreed that it does slip more Owen in that one would have thought, most likely due to Bret. One does wish that it slipped in: * one Blue Blazer match (the one with Barry is pretty damn good for an undercard match) * something from Owen & Davey as a team Owen & Anvil teams up for a while at the end of 1991 into early 1992, but Anvil got run in March. Can see ducking that, though they get to it with the 1994 match. Same with Owen & Koko, though they teams for close to a year. Dittos Owen & Yoko, though they did win the belts. But Blazer is a bit of "Owen joins the WWF". And the Owen & Davey team was a long pairing. Davey went heel back in 8/95 and paired with Owen & Yoko as early as 9/95. They teamed through 1997. John

Vicodin + Somas + Valium are, as Super Chico says, pretty much part of the standard pro wrestling cocktail. Not terribly surprising. John

So is the Dr. Death obit official DOA? It's been two full months. :/ John

I think a Flair set would drive Will nuts, and probably eat up valueable time for other stuff. 4H was massive and comprehensive, and it's just 1985-88 with 1985 being a "small" year for the 4H and 1988 ending in September when Arn & Tully left. Ric would be nuts. Frankly, I think it probably would be more interesting to split it into different chunks, similar to what Corey has done with Hogan. I suspect he'll do one on Hogan in WCW, and Hogan before 1984, then probably something on Hogan after the death of WCW. With Flair, you've got: * Crockett/WCW Flair * WWF Flair (1991-93) * WCW Flair (1993-2001) * WWE Flair (2002-2009) * Touring Flair (whatever doesn't fit in those buckets) And of course a newer on going set on whatever he's up to since leaving the WWE. The first bucket being very specifically his Mid-Atlantic/Crockett/WCW stuff, leaving what he did out of that territory/promotion for the Touring Flair set. The Touring Flair stuff is probably the most interesting. We've see the other three to death: most of us lived and watched through all or most of it, especially after Crockett went national. My guess is that a lot of us have seen a lot of the Touring stuff, but it's likely fresher than seeing Flair-Steamboat yet again. John

Discussion of Dave's coverage of Flair is something that goes back to the 90s. Hell, people in the 80s even commented on it. To Dave's defenders: Critisicm of Dave = Jealous Obessive Nutjobs Christ do I know that, because I was a defender of Dave's probably before you ever started reading him. On the other hand to Dave's readers: Dave's Nearly 30 Years of Critisicm of Hulk Hogan = Fair Reporting & Commentary I'm not saying that Dave hasn't largely been fair with Hogan, and I certainly enjoyed the stuff over the years. But there's an internal inconsistancy for Dave Fans (and Dave himself) who see mountains and decades of criticism of Hogan to be valid and warranted, but pretty much all criticism of Dave to be crackpot. Frankly most of Dave's defenders are more than willing to take shots at Wade for things that aren't far removed from the type of criticism that Dave gets. Again... I know: I've been a defender of Dave's, and was willing to be critical of Wade... even when I wrote for Wade. I've sat and listened to Dave toss some of that as well. Crackpot/Nutjob/Obsessive is an easy way to avoid thinking about the critical comments. It was a dodge when Scherer and Ryder rolled it out when people pointed out their errors (or to a greater degree their utter bullshit). It's a dodge when Wade rolls it out. It's a dodge when Dave goes to it. His defenders don't do him any favors by going to it either. John

You're not even remotely close to how many disks it would be, especially if it included interviews and angles. Someone did a "ultimate" Samoa Joe set years ago that ran 40+ discs covering just 2000 (where there weren't many matches) to the end of 2005. There's a "Sting: The Return of an Icon" set on just his TNA stuff that runs 34 discs. Corey did a Hogan in the WWF from 1984-92 that ran 31, and Hulk was wrestling short matches. Granted, Flair wasn't on TV wrestling as many matches in the 80s as Hogan (thanks to MSG/Philly/Boston/LA and other WWF house show tapings). But his matches were longer, and folks dig his interviews. I suspect an Ultimate Flair would run 200+ discs covering his career, and probably a ridiculous length more than that if the person doing it tried to get "completist" on his interviews or found several treasure troves of Local Promos to mix in. Look Will's 4H set: that's just 1985-88 and it's a monster. It does have more folks in it that just Ric, which does help expand it. But still... It would be an insane project. No doubt there already are several monster ones out there already. John

Yow. John

Ric's such a trainwreck that this story didn't have legs on PWO: his fucked up nature is "expected" these days. John

Completely agree on the season. Simply tying into the HBO thing: their focus on him led to nothing at 'tona. I don't think they're going to be following him through the entire Cup, are they? John

* very selectively watch current stuff, and largely "keep up" by skimming the WON Time constraints and just don't have massive interest. Haven't cared for the promos or storylines for much of the past decade. Match style... just rarely found things that hit the spot for me. It's a bad sign when I can watch a Tito-Rude match and have it keep my attention more than the last few itterations of Misawa-Kobashi, or most anything the WWE has done in the past 6-7 years. * it's pretty easy to find older stuff that I like Ironically, it's not even my "sweet spot" of 1989-96 All Japan. It's bizzaro, but I can watch Hogan-Rude, be bored by what an early mess it iss, yawn at the arm wrestling subplot, then suddenly when the go to fake-Hogan Comebacks with Rude cutting Hogan off, I'm pulled back in by how they're doing a decent job of getting the fans expectations headed one direction before pulling out the rug. Then when the eventual Hulking Up comes, they've actually laid out a decent stretch... and I'm wishing they had a match on tape from 1989 or 1990 when Rude was a heck of a lot better worker. Or having long lusted after Grails like the Jumbo-Murdoch title changes turn up. That they did long after seeing enough Dick matches that left me cold (when he's in there with someone who can go, I like his comedy quite a bit less than most people do), I started to worry about them not being any good. Then getting to watch them for the first time with my longtime wrestling running budies and they each, in turn, ending up being very satisfying good/fun matches... it reminds me why I'm a wrestling fan. There is a ridiculous amount of stuff out there. When I was joking with Hoback that I probably picked up a thousand disks in the past couple of months, I was only half joking. I don't actually know how many there are... but it's pretty close to that. When will I watch all of it? Who knows. Don't have a ton of time, and there's a variety of things like Mythbusters, Castle, BBQ Pittmasters, Leverage, CSI, today's ManU vs AC Milan match, the latest Duke game, the Daytona 500 and other things on the tube that end up on the DVR that I end up watching to clear off space. But I am trying to build up my AJPW 80s collection with everything that's available while also getting back to my 80s WWF viewing. I've built up a big chunk of both batches of that nosense, and am starting to work my way through it. Things like hooking up with the gang on Saturday does remind me that I love good wrestling. My advise always is: Watch collect what you like. Collect what you like. Then watch and collect more of what you like. If you're newer to what's available out there, then take some tastes around of different things until you find the scope of what you like. But when you hit the wall of time and stuff, with too much stuff and too little time, settle on what you like. There are periods of your life where forcing yourself to "watch everything" (on some relative level) just to "keep up" are doable. I think a lot of us spent a chunk of the 90s doing that, and lord knows how much utter shit we watched from the WWF, WCW and ECW for the occassional (and at times regular) "good stuff". But you also reach a point where there's plenty of other "good stuff" in life, and wasting time on the bad stuff is a waste of part of your life. John

Jimmy didn't win 'tona. The race had a horrendous pair of deadspots due to a freaking pothole. The finish was "great" until you slow down to remember the last 10 laps were re-start-o-rama that was getting painfully annoying by the last one, and was only saved because fans gto fired up by Junior coming out of nowhere to challenge. Hell... the live coverage couldn't get touch on the best part of the "great": Junior got beat while driving the best equipment in the field by someone driving for what's left of his Step Mom's (and his own) old team. It's 'tona so people will oversell the "greatness" of the finish, both because it's Freaking 'Tona and also (which folks usually forget) it's the first race of the year and NASCAR Fan is all geeked up after not having any racing for several months. By April fans will remember that far too many races end in freaking re-start-o-ramas. By June, they'll be banging their heads against the wall over it. By August they'll be slowly clicking away to other things as Football starts up. Note: I'm a NASCAR Fan going back to when Cale Yarborough was driving for Junior Johnson. So I'm being critical of something that I've enjoyed for 30+ years. John

I don't recall 1988 or 1989 doing "great business". Did they draw well at their bigger arenas like they did in 1983-85? Or was "great business" just having good Sportatorium gates? John