jdw

Yep. There are times to shift to a new way of saying things.

Here's one that's a bit of a surprise: Gordy List Don't 100% hate it. But there was a stretch where most of the ones I'd come across ones that were really poor, and not terribly interesting to read. The reason it pops to mind because of terrific ones like Jose's Blue Panther piece. Also, I've recently read 20+ Keltner Lists, which the Gordy List is based, and they've been difficult to read. The chap doing them has his heart in the right place and is trying to get discussion going on a variety of players, but "Yes, No, Not Really" for most doesn't make for a good read. There tend to be two extremes of weaker Gordy Lists: * Yes/No/Maybe * Data Dumps From Hell The first don't make for interesting reads. The second tend to overkill a point, or even lose a point. You toss out 50 ****1/2+ matches that Misawa was in and... eh. It's something to save for the discussion afterwards if someone asks, "Was Misawa really in a lot of terrific matches." I'd say that there's been some good Gordy List's around here that pull me back off the ledge of wishing I'd never created the thing. Daniel's one on Jim Breaks is really good, and pretty much a textbook example of why it can be a useful tool. Daniel is basically answering a lot of questions that someone would toss at him about Breaks that could/would come up in a HOF discussion, gave really thoughtful answers beyond just yes/no, and comes across as really objective given the ones where the answer is essentially "Not really". One thing I still like about the List is that there isn't a question: "Do you think he's a HOFer" Instead, you get to the end and both the person putting it together and the person reading it are left to mull over the information compiled and shared. Daniel's piece gives one a lot to think about... which is flat out a good thing. So I don't 100% hate a concept that I lifted and tweaked from Bill James. But there was a rough stretch for it, and I'm happy to come across good ones and see that it can still be useful. Daniel's is here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/21527-jim-breaks-gordy-list If you haven't read it, I can not recommend it strongly enough.

I loved the Woodpile, and for a while kept using it because I knew it annoyed some people. Given enough time, I moved onto some other way of saying it.

Logical tie ins are so easy. They also tend to be so valuable since they don't feel like a hard sell. If you plan them out well, a customer just thinks, "Hey... that's interesting... I need to check that out" rather than "ESPN is pushing the HELL out of this and it's starting to annoy me!" If a non-subscriber sees enough good tie-ins pop up over the course of a few months that he thinks would be good to check out, he starts adding that to the value of "free PPV" and you might add another sub. I still think they should do a live house show on Saturday night which is then available on-demand if people were out partying. Production costs are always a worry, but I'd low-tech it... which is likely a heck of a lot easier now than in say 1986 given all the tech advances in cameras and production equipment. An exclusive on the Network, and run enough angles and storyline per month on it that are played off on Raw (talked about without being *shown*) that it's part of the Product rather than just a stand alone thing. Though I do wonder if their contract for Raw/SD prohibits another show along those lines. Seems unlikely, but who knows. You wonder how much of it is Vince and others in the company having the intent to keep Network costs lower-than-low with the intent of using PPV as not only the driver, but also the only thing most people care about. If that's the case, they a probably making a mistake. You've got to give people who drop that money a reason to watch the show a number of times a month rather than just the PPV.

Not at all. I always thought "Baba's booking went to shit because of the cancer" was the most unintentionally ironic statements every written.

A further note here: The first time they're referred to as CSG appears to be on the first Summer Action Series, specifically in the 7/12 six man and especially the 7/17 six-man. In the 7/12 match they're called a couple of different names, but in the 7/17 match they're called CSG throughout the match. So, if the Chiba camp was of any significance whatsoever, and if the August date is correct, then it's for a different reason than those listed above. Aw heck... kind of zoned out that there even was a response in this thread. Anyway, glad to know that we've confirmed that: * Misawa's group was Misawa group before the big Chiba Camp in August * that the big Chiba Camp in August changed nothing from the prior series (a series which hadn't really changed anything about Misawa's group from the series before that other than Kikuchi's role as I mentioned earlier) * that the only change that happened after the big Chiba Camp in August is that the guy in those ugly red trunks with yellow stripes instantly left the group to team with their enemy Jumbo while Baba couldn't be bothered coming up with a major angle as a reason for it and instead just moved him over because it was needed with Kabuki skipping town And here we were worried that I missed something important by being an English language gaijin who watched the TV every week from 1989-99 while reading the WON and JWJ.

The sabermetric mentality that sprung up in the 80s when Bill James was writing the Abstracts is largely the same as today. It really doesn't matter whether the statheads of today having read Bill and are instead influenced by Tom Tango. In the end, Tom Tango would admit being influenced directly and indirectly by Bill, even if he disagrees with Bill on a number of things.

There really wasn't a huge number of people who were interested in seeing international and territory footage. The vast majority of people wanted to watch the WWF, or WCW, or ECW, or some combo of both. Relative to the mass of people on rsp-w, there were a staggering few who ventured into the old DVDVR discussions and asked how they could get the shit. Did we get people interested to seek the stuff out, and did people seek it out because of us. Damn straight we did: we were having the best wrestling discussions on the net at the time. They were funny as shit because Dean flat out was funny as shit, and all of the rest of us loved bumping our asses off for his jokes. They were informative as hell because people were asking questions, and those of us that could were dumping as much info as possible back in response. It also was really good shit that we were talking about, so there was a ton of enthusiasm about what we were writing/talking about. But... We were a freaking drop in the rsp-w bucket, especially as AOL blew up and more people kept dropping into the rsp-w cesspool. The same thing went for AOL Grandstand. We had a corner, and we were writing some of the best shit on the net. But out corner of AOL GSW was chump change compared to the ECW folder, the WCW folder, the WWF folder. We weren't a 1% because 99% wanted to get the shit and couldn't afford it. We were a 0.5% because 99% didn't give a flying fuck about it, and we were just thrilled as hell that another 0.5% kept popping up asking questions. If we could point them to Lynch, we did. If Jewett could make a comp tape to sent out to people for free to hip them to something (like the original Jumbo vs Tenryu comp), he'd do it. If Quebrada Mike could get people to buy some stuff, great for him. But there *never* were 99% of the people... or 80%... or 50%... or 10%... or even 5% of the people who gave a shit about what we were up to. Unless it was to say that we were puro snobs. Territories is a different beast as a pretty fair number of fans were old enough to remember wrestling in the 80s, have thoughts about it, and would kind of be interested in seeing old Flair if they could get their hands on it. But were there a lot of people interested in going back to watch 80s WWF in the late 90s / early 00s? Not really at all. It's more a post DVDVR 80s WWF set thing. Has access to matches gotten easier, and does it make more people go check it out? Sure. I could swear I said that above. But it's also just the next generation of what started with guys like Lynch who made loads of Japanese wrestling available to people in a way that had been hard a decade before. But still... 4M+ people watched Raw on Monday. Almost all of those people are online. Lots of those people visit wrestling sites, even if it's just WWF.com. The number of them that want to watch Memphis wrestling is a fly on an elephant's rear. We are the 1%. We've never changed in that regard. We were when it was Meltzer writing the WON in the 80s. We were it on rsp-w. We were it on tOA, DVDVR, A1, Highspots, etc. We're it on PWO. I mean... if you went to next week's Raw and tried to interesting *everyone* in attendance to buy the 80s AJPW set, do you really think you'd sell sets to more than 1% of the audience? We're hardcore wrestling fans. Same as there were hardcore wrestling fans in the 80s.

Yeah... there were some pretty strong dividing lines. Were the DVDVR crew, the tOA crew and the Quebrada crew (I want to say headquartered over on the Highspots board or something related to it) all generally spawned out of rsp-w and AOL Grandstand? Sure. Did we all have a lot more in common in terms of what we generally liked as opposed to what the Bob.com Crew liked? Sure. As opposed to what the SKeith related websites liked? Sure. But on the flip side, the DVDVR crew and Quebrada crew didn't agree with us hyper critical assholes on tOA about a lot of things. The DVDVR guys luv-luv-loved Jerry Lawler long before there was the Jerry Lawler movement that there is today. The Quebrada crew loved joshi love after a lot of people abandoned ship on it. The tOA crew loved Backlund ahead of the curve of other folks, generally have been blamed over pimping The Destroyer, and folks would be surprised to recall that we turned on work in All Japan before pretty much 100% of the rest of the puro loving internet. One could claim, and I wouldn't argue too heavily, that DVDVR and Quebrada and tOA were in the same general section of the Internet Pool relative to areas that were more WWF-centric or WCW-centric or WWF/WCW-centric and didn't know who in the hell those puro guys that we talked about. I wouldn't argue it... but I also don't think I'd call us a single "community" within a much larger "community". There were people who bounced around places, and there were also people who never ventured into the other boards (let alone the SC/SM sites or A1, etc). To a degree it was more the feudal era, sites being little castles, and some people who were sought out adventure popped up in a lot of places. Others were just stuck to their own home sites, and that was it. Perhaps those three sites and a couple of others were California. But... Could I tell you what was going on over on the Bob.com boards? Not really. What was going on over at the site SKeith anchored? Nope. LordsOfPaste? Nope. The rest of the USofA of wrestling sites and boards? Clueless. After probably the early days of rsp-w, there never was one homogenous wrestling internet. As soon as AOL GS and the Prodigy wrestling sites popped up, things started to get spread out. But even within rsp-w back in 1990-92, there wasn't a consensus. There were the same type of arguments popping up there that we have here: Flair rules/sucks Shawn is awesome/what a dick WCW is best / WWF is best Etc.

You're making more out of this then there is... The odd thing is that people, including me, have pointed to the influence of Meltzer. Even in this very tangent about the IWC, we've talking about how SKeith was directly/indirectly influenced by Dave. So you're pretty much crafting a nice big strawman of something that people have not said. You have spent roughly 3 years trying to claim you know what "jdw's world" is, and you've been wrong every time you've tried to do it. Just give up trying: you'll never be right because you're looking at things far too narrowly within your own box. I always liked cross comparisons of Hart vs Hart as perfect examples of hive mentalities. The majority Hardcore Fans hated Hogan long before there was an RSPW, Online Onslaught, CRZ's recaped, etc. This isn't something that was invented on the Internet. On the flip side, people online eventually got around to reconsidering Hogan's work, and funny enough some of those folks at the forefront of it were people who long hated him. *raises hand* That would be odd since there always had been hardcore fans who thought Lex was pretty darn decent in 1989 into 1990. So I think you're being unfair to hardcore fans, both online and offline, by claiming that all of them always thought Lex had always been shitty. There never was a consensus about that, either online or offline. In fact... there never was anything close to a consensus about that. On the other hand, there were Hardcore WWF Fans online and offline who thought Shawn and/or Bret were the best workers. But everyone thinking that? Never happened. I'm trying to figure out which of these you happened to be right on that I'm suppose to deny. You're not going to find any of the folks here who've been online for 15+ years and around in a number of areas who would agree with stuff like "Everyone thought Bret and Shawn were the greatest of all-time. Earth. The irony is the PWO is an elite circle of the internet. This place isn't representative. You aren't representative, Jerry. On the other hand, I've never claimed I'm representative. My claim was that I've seen hardcores both offline and online, both "fans" and "writers/reporters". I've watched the growth of hardcore wrestling fandom on the internet from its infancy to today, and have pretty similarly understand the growth of hardcore wrestling fandom offline prior to that from having lived a chunk of it while talking about its history back then with people who had been at ground zero of it or come to it very shortly thereafter. I don't claim "representation". I claim "perspective", both online and offline. That's a very different claim. John

Quite the opposite. I'm probably one of the best placed because I've seen the Internet (Hardcore) Wrestling Community, the Non-Interent (Hardcore) Wrestling Community, have witnesses the massive growth of both, and have been around various key people who have (allegedly and non-allegedly) driven both. Rather than just seeing the Forrest or the Trees, I can see both. And... They really aren't wildly different. And most of the differences are things that are just part of the continuum of the growth of hardcore wrestling fandom over the past 30 years. Rapid and instant communication? That was already starting without the net, and at times was faster than the net. Mass availability and sharing of matches from around the world? Happened in the 80s, and was continuing to grow all through the 90s even as the net grew. Things like Youtube and file sharing make it easier, but guys like Lynch made it easier in 1992 compared to trying to have a source in every territory that you wanted something out of. In 20 years someone will think they are wildly different from us because they have some Smart Glasses that's feeding their wrestling content to them with great ease, thinking they've reinvented Wrestling Fandom... while those of us who are around for 50 years buy that point will pat them on the head while knowing it's just another in a long line of steps in hardcore wrestling fandom. Alright... let's take a look at some examples you give... When Chris was in ECW, the WWF and WCW diehards online didn't give a shit about him. ECW Fans loved him, and Puro Fans who had been following him for years loved him, along with fans of WWF and WCW who also crossed over into other promotions. When he went to WCW, eventually WCW diehards online loved him... but your WWF diehards didn't give a shit about him because he wasn't on Raw, and Bret and/or Shawn were The Shit! Again, you'd have people who crossed over and liked him. When he went to the WWF, not the WWF diehards loved him, and laughed in the general direction of WCW fans for stealing him. But here's the thing: Chris was over in Japan even to the fans who weren't on the Internet. When he went to ECW, Chris was over with the ECW Fans who weren't on the Internet. When he went to WCW, Chris was over with the WCW Fans who weren't on the Internet. Listen to his Starcade match with Jarrett, or the war all over the building with Sullivan. He was over. Then listen to WWF fans when he showed up in the WWF. He got over. Now... did they think he was a Great Worker? Mainstream Fans in the era didn't use that term, or know what it was. Of course they weren't Hardcores. So did the non-Internet Hardcore Fans think Benoit was a great worker? Fuck yeah. All the way back to 1990 at the latest. Readers of the WON who weren't online thought he was great. A lot of readers of the Torch thought he was great. Friends of mine who weren't online thought he was great. So... It's a Hardcore Fan thing, not an Internet Fan thing. That's why I've been trying to get across. See above. That's a Hardcore Fan thing, not an "IWC" thing. Workrate existed in the WON long before rsp-w was created and online wrestling started. It's a Hardcore Fan thing, not an IWC thing. No different from the people who said they were influenced by Meltzer... except that Meltzer's influence was first, and pretty much all of the basic concepts that flow through SKeith flow out of Dave, even if indirectly. There's a big different between Hardcore Fans and non-Hardcore Fans. That's always been the case. When I say that I'm a Wrestling Fan rather than some such IWC Members, it's always with the implied or explicit idea that I'm a Hardcore Wrestling Fan. It really isn't any different than fans of other forms of entertainment or of sports. You have your fans, and you have your hardcore fans. You get that online and offline. I think pretty much anyone who can see outside of the bubble can see that the hardcores on the internet are simply an extension of hardcore wrestling fans that have been around for 30+ years. In turn, there are non-hardcore fans on the internet who just want to get some basic info, similar to non-hardcore fans of sports/entertainment who use the internet to get basic info (like movie times for Planet of the Apes when it opens on Friday). The internet isn't really different from what came before it, just gives one easier access to information, especially a wide amount of info. But the info was there long before something like Wikipedia came along. Anyway... we've had discussions like this before. Folks think there's a revolution with a definitive starting date, after which everything changed. My thought is that's usually based on when one came along in the revolution, and whether they have the ability to look backwards and break through their own bubbled. The Hardcore Wrestling Revolution didn't start with the Internet, and really didn't change in insanely revolutionary ways with the internet other than the ability to Get More Faster. Even that harkens back to pre-internet days, and is constantly evolving as Get More Faster in 2014 is nothing like it was in 1999 and is nothing like it will be in 2029. The revolution that we're a part of started no later than 1983, and had elements we can dig up prior to that. In turn, it's constantly moving along and forward. Less revolutionary now than we tend to think, but still moving forward, evolving, expanding, etc.

I guess the WWF Fans and the WCW Fans and the ECW Cuckoo Birds fighting with each other was just much more noticeable to me. I mean... people were literally rooting for the other promotion to die. That was a bit more obvious in rsp-w and places like AOL Grandstand. It was perhaps a bit less obvious on Message Boards because those tended to open up around a group of fans. tOA were a bunch of people who left AOL Grandstand, with a few rsp-w folks migrating as rsp-w went to hell. DVDVR were folks in Dean's circle initially. For the life of me I can't remember where A1 came from, as I don't remember Gerry and his bother posting to tOA or DVDVR a ton *before* they opened up A1. There were other boards popping up... but they usually came from a group of fans moving to it, rather than a big massive pool like rsp-w or AOL GS that people jump into. When you get a bunch of people opening up and moving over to a place like SmarksChoice or TheSmartMarks, you're going to get a lot more commonality of thought than wider, broader places. In turn, I don't think a heck of a lot of us spent years in say a WWF Official Message Board. We generally stayed in our various (i.e. several) circles, or moved onto a new one / new ones that caught out eye. What we might think of as "The IWC" is really just a fraction of a giant swamp out there. It's another reason why I think "The IWC" is generally a silly term. Wrestling Classics has had over the decade pretty decent traffic, a regular flow of people joining it as others get bored and move on. But how many here really feel much of a sense of "community" with it relative to what you have on your chosen Home Boards? Aren't they a bit like Chicago to say the New York or Los Angeles that we're in here? We have commonality with elements of the WO-4 boards, but when you look at it, WC and us here... is that really one big happy melting pot community that agrees on a hell of a lot? Not really. And my point would be that it's always been like that. Take Dylan and me, for example. Despite all the things that we tend to share on how we look at wrestling, you and I & Jewett banged heads over the years. In turn, the three of us would go over to and REALLY BANG HEADS with some of the folks there. The three of us, and people that we tended to feel more of a sense of community with, couldn't have rational fact-based discussions with a lot of folks over there, or even share much in common on the opinion level. That's pretty much why I've always thought "The IWC" was pretty silly. I've seen far too much over the years where there is less community and instead just a bunch of wrestling fans like there are a bunch of baseball fans online and a bunch of soccer fans online, etc. Having spent stretches over the past two decades where I've spent more time on sports forums/boards/blogs than wrestling ones, wrestling fans really aren't any different from fans of other things, be it online or offline.

Yep... it's just a continuation of tech evolving and making it easier for people to "talk about wrestling".

It's kind of like Second Baseman, Third Baseman, Quarterback, Striker, Center, Goalie. Good Guy and Bad Guy are pretty much the Positions of Pro Wrestling. Technico and Rudo are what they are called on the air in Lucha, so it's hard to argue that's not correct for a fan to use. Babyface and Heel are/were more inside the business terms. But they slipped out to hardcore fans 30+ years ago, and are pretty much how smart/hardcore fans having been talking for 30+ years... along with bumping, selling, high spots, etc. Has and does the lingo grow over the years? Sure. Properly? Usually, though not always. We've talked about hardcores being confused over Strong Style back in the 80s and thinking it was UWF-style rather than New Japan-style. On the other hand, sometimes some are ahead of the curve in picking up stuff like "puroresu" and "puro", and online fans did in the 90s from Hisa Tanabe. Even in the circles that we've run in over the past two decades, we've seen stuff come and go, some stick and be regularly used, and other fall out of favor.

X-Pac Heat was great in the day because it did work up a really good image in people's minds. But it's also 15 years old, and that's another lifetime in wrestling. Though... Hulking Up does still work all these years later. But Hogan is a Wrestling God, and Pac was about a dozen levels below Hogan.

That never was the case. In RSPW, you had WCW Fans who hated the WWF, WWF Fans who hated WCW, and ECW Fans who hated the other two. There were puro fans who liked garbage, there were ones who liked All Japan, there were those who liked joshi, there were those who liked Juniors. Folks don't want to believe that, but my girlfriend never cared much for All Japan, never really cared for joshi but loved the Juniors in New Japan and MPro. My friend Scott Lacy was more a Juniors and Joshi guy, and not so high on All Japan. There never was one big group of hippy IWC folks who loved everything and all got along. It was exactly like the real world of fandom: different people liked different things, while some liked a lot of things. John, I get that it may not be historically accurate. I do think that it works as a useful term to describe some broad trends that a lot of people did have back then. Maybe there's no need for a phrase like that, even if it's not necessarily historically accurate, but I can think of situations where it'd be useful. The symbol means more than the actual truth in this case? There really weren't broad trends beyond: People watched wrestling and people talked about wrestling. Which is the same thing folks were doing who weren't on the net. Trust me on that: I was on the net, and had quite a few friends who weren't on the net who talked about wrestling, be they Meltzer, Keller and Mitchell or Yohe and Hoback. My conversations with Dave in 1996 on the phone and on trips weren't on any different topics than my conversations with Dean Rasmussen on rps-w. That's why I see things probably differently than some. I was online in 1996-99 watching the alleged IWC grow, and dealt with and/or read all of the major players other than probably Al Issacs and the Lords of Paste guys. In turn, I had dealings with most of the major newsletter guys. Then I had dealings with a number of the bigger hardcore fans who weren't online. The "IWC" really wasn't any different, other than being less connected than Dave and Wade, and rather quick and prolific in tossing out what they thought about wrestling... which actually was the same thing if I picked up the phone and talked to Steve or James or one of the sheet guys after Raw/Nitro. The IWC really has always been just a bunch of fans. All this file sharing and linking to video and then talking about it that we think is the greatest thing ever? I use to eat shit a decade ago for getting together with Yohe and Hoback to watch tapes/dvds, and jokingly dubbing it King of Chicken when writing up what we thought about the stuff... you know... kind of like people are changing the world now with podcasts. Someone on here gets together with folks in a chatroom to watch matches and talk about them? Jewett and I just to do the same thing on the phone, and ate shit for jokingly calling that Syncovision then talking about it on the boards... and I'm about 99.99% sure that Dean and DVDVR guys would do the same shit and write about it. IWC? Nah... just fans doing fan stuff, and using evolving tech to communicate about it. Tape get togethers with people in your area went back to the 80s, which really are little more than a newer version of going to the matches with your buddies... except that here you're able to watch shit that happened in another city, or country, or year. But at the time it would have sucked to try to pull off synchovision because long distance costs were high. By the mid-to-late 90s? Free long distance plans, and I could hook up with someone for 2-3 hours of wrestling watching on phone... someone in a different city, or state. Which in turn was little different that hooking up with someone on a message board, writing up a match, them then tossing in what they thought of it, someone else getting excited to watch it, and then writing something about it after they were done. Which... Isn't that different from the old Letters Pages in the Newsletters where people would write in what they thought about shit after Dave wrote what he thought about something. Just fan stuff. Folks either use IWC to put down wrestling fans if they feel outside the "IWC", or they're people who want to feel warm and fuzzy about themselves because they feel a part of a "IWC". In the end, we're just fans. There really is no reason to waste a good deal of time trying to find or justify additional labels.

One of the interesting things about doing a search on Shine here is: 2007: 0.5 uses of it like it's being used now (Loss... sort of... close call) 2008: 1 uses of it like it's being used now ("guest" robgomm) 2009: 0 uses of it like it's being used now 2010: 1 use of it like it's being used now (by MJH) 2011: year starts with only MJH using it... then Matt once in April... Shoe once in May... Dylan joins in June... starts getting more common after that Perhaps it was used quite a bit on other boards earlier than that and more regularly. It's rather amazing that it was so little used in 2007-2010, and even into early 2011. It's not like the posters here didn't talk about matches in a different way back then compared to now (i.e. "smart" or "analytical"), or didn't talk about matches a lot.

I do use the word "control", but don't think I use the phrase "control segment" a lot. I tended to use the word Control interchangeably with Top. If I was trying to get across how a match was structured, I might lay out the Segments such as Backlund-Muraco going 60 or Rude-Warrior. With Backlund-Muraco, I might tag them as: x minutes: Muraco controlled working the arm y minutes: Backlund worked the leg z minutes: Muraco on top working the neck Etc. But I don't doubt that there were times control+segment popped up.

That never was the case. In RSPW, you had WCW Fans who hated the WWF, WWF Fans who hated WCW, and ECW Fans who hated the other two. There were puro fans who liked garbage, there were ones who liked All Japan, there were those who liked joshi, there were those who liked Juniors. Folks don't want to believe that, but my girlfriend never cared much for All Japan, never really cared for joshi but loved the Juniors in New Japan and MPro. My friend Scott Lacy was more a Juniors and Joshi guy, and not so high on All Japan. There never was one big group of hippy IWC folks who loved everything and all got along. It was exactly like the real world of fandom: different people liked different things, while some liked a lot of things.

Nah. We're just wrestling fans. Dave is a "wrestling journalist". I don't read Bryan enough to put something on him... but probably "wrestling writer/podcaster". Whether we're on the Interwebs or not doesn't matter at all. I don't "talk" any differently about wrestling now than I did in 1994 before getting online, nor is my fandom any different. Other than being burned out now, and actually enthusiastic then. The internet had nothing to do with that: I would have gotten pissed off at wrestling by the later 90s / early 00s anyway.

"Shine"

Everyone has the internet now. My 81 year old father today at lunch was talking about an article he saw on Jayski... so is he part of the INC (Internet NASCAR Community)? By this point we're what I've always said we were: Fans. It's just jerking off at this point to go to the IWC toolbox.

Free trials aren't uncommon for cable networks. HBO, Showtime, even some of the sports tier channels do it from time to time to try to spike up new subs. They also tend to do it at times when they think they'll get viewers, and in turn potential subs. So say Fox Soccer back in the day might do it on opening weekend of the EPL season. If you dig it, you'll sub. Or HBO might do it a weekend a new season of a series starts, or some other eventish thing that might get people to buy. Not going to say this is a good sign, and it quite possible is poor. But you probably would have wanted to do a freebie sometime prior to SummerSlam. I also probably would want to do one prior to Survivor Series. That's on the assumption that those shows will be loaded up, and that they'll be keys to renewals and hitting the year end target. I don't watch the shows regularly at all, so I have no idea how hard they're pushing the Network. If they had any brain, they would be pushing it in non-hard sell every week (i.e. ads that regularly change, and tie ins when logical ones come up). Then of course hard sell it leading into each PPV with a good ad putting over the value of the Network. Frankly someone there should be spending a couple of weeks watching nothing but ESPN and ESPN2 to see how the ESPN boys sell their content/shows. It's annoying as all hell for those of us who often get annoyed by the World Wide Leader... but they're also very good at what they do in turning out numbers.

I would say that Austin was in an odd spot as the Ace. We had decades of the WWF having dynastic champions who held the belt for years, then close to a year as late as Shawn's first run (broken up briefly by Sid to set up a rematch). When Austin finally got the belt, we had the duel shorting of booking cycles caused by (i) the increase to 12 PPV a year, and (ii) Monday Night Wars booking for TV. Austin's prime as ace (3/98 - 8/99) came right at the peak of that. It meant he didn't really get the runs as Champion Ace that those before him did, or as we saw starting to pop up again in the next decade. He was a different type of Ace, which was even more clear when they took the belt off him later in 1998 to set up a chase to Mania... and made the actually championship part of that chase only start after the last PPV prior to Mania. Then he got hurt, went out for a long stretch, and by the time he was back they wanted to generally keep him away from the Belt to save that once again for Mania. It's surprising how little Austin had the Belt in that period of being the Face Ace of the promotion between the Manias of 1998 and 2001. But the injury was a big part of that, and the view of keeping him away from the belt except when he was ready to take it back. The Cena period you point to is pretty much the 180 of Austin's period. Austin hit the culmination of an evolution where title runs were shorter, and Vince figured out how to book an Ace without having the belt on him. Cena 2006/07 was the culmination of a period that started in 2002 with the belt-split. You had the Triple H dynastic run with Big Goldie, and the WWE having the long "share" runs of Brock & Kurt (511 of 539 days), then the long run of Bradshaw (longest since Diesel). The pump was primed for those long runs Batista and Cena got starting and Mania 21. Cena basically ended up with the belt for two and a half years before his first injury vacate job. Just not something that could have been in the stars for Austin in his prime. We also need to consider that by this point the WWE had a decade of experience in booking weekly TV where the point was just as much Drawing Viewers as it was Selling PPV & House Shows. They also had the decade under their belt of monthly PPV. And that true competition (WCW in the mid/late 90s) was gone. So we have a few other things that had changed from Austin Prime. I think Austin was exceptional as his type of Ace. Fans like his matches just as they liked Hogan's. He was pretty terrific in carrying the TV product, which was increasingly important as a revenue stream and as a focus of the promotion. He was a strong PPV anchor. It just all was different from classical WWF Ace's, and from what the WWE was able to do in Cena's prime. Makes for different beasts. * * * * * On the original question, I don't think Austin has ever been slighted when people talk about his role as an Ace. Quite the opposite: there are folks who raise him up to Hogan levels. That was one of the reasons we have that Vince & Hulk vs The World thread: trying to remind people of the context of Hogan's run when people are claiming Austin's was "bigger". So... Austin has been treated pretty well.

1984ish wasn't just a change of Hogan getting the belt and the WWF going national. It also was a change of Vince freezing out the magazines from their old ring side access and the office cooperating with the mags. Vince was launching his own mag/mags, wanting not only to make money with them, but control storyline treatment and also eliminate coverage of others promotions. A true house organ, as opposed to the old mags being a house organ for everyone. So you saw companies like London stuck in a tough spot: * crap access from the WWF * the WWF competing with them and taking market share * WWF wrestlers (specifically Hogan) still selling tons of mags The WWF very literally became their enemy, with Vince perfect happy if London died off just like the AWA so he could take their business. But WWF wrestlers also drove buyers for London's mags. So you had this strange dichotomy where they pushed the non-WWF rather hard while also having to use the WWF to sell mags. Flair was pushed as #1, topping their rankings for ages of months (or weeks if you got all the mags and actively tracked it). JCP was pushed hard. Lex was pushed as the Next Big Thing, with London trying to position themselves with a hit either way: if he went to JCP as a savior or went to Vince and got over huge. But they also had to put Hogan on the cover a ton, cover all his stuff, and give every reason for a potential Hogan Fan to buy the mag. They'd even cover Hogan's minor feuds like Hogan vs Adonis. It's the period where I read the London mags. I was 20+ at the time, and could pretty much read all that into it at the time. It was really trippy, but kind of fun. And yeah... it was quite different from the vibe I got from reading pre-1984 London mags. You could get in the 1984-88 stuff that they didn't really like the WWF. I can't think of any promotion prior to that which had the same vibe in coverage.