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Slight difference: Ric's was a "Retirement Stipulation" - in the sense that if he lost, he would retire. I wouldn't book Taker that way. I would just have him say that he's retiring after Mania 30, it will be his last match, and "I want Wrestler X to be my final opponent." If I'm Vince, I totally let him pick off the roster who he wants to go out with. I also think that does add some drama to it. My guess is that people will think he's not going to go out on a loss. But if his initial storyline is that he's broken down and has one last match in him, he wants it at Mania, and he wants it against X... then maybe you get some doubt. You also have some cover for him looking banged up and what not in there: he's admitted his tank is running low. As a selling point with one of the other top stars, I tend to think it sells tickets. Probably more than anything they could have put on.

He's a mess: http://instagram.com/p/mgReBFnj5D/#

For me, it would have been Taker's call. If he said he wanted me to end The Streak, I would be honored, but would try to talk him out of it at this point feeling he should just take it into retirement. I would rather job to him. But if he were adamant, it would in the end be his call and I would bust my ass trying to work with him to lay out as good of a send off as possible. On the flip side, if it were Shawn or Trip in a similar thing, I'd be in Hogan Mode: "Eh eh, Brother... ain't jobbing to you pricks."

He should retire. In hindsight, he and Vince should have put their heads together back in November to make this the Retirement Match. Not as a stipulation, but simply in the sense of Taker saying he has one match left in him, he wants Brock, and he's either going out with The Streak intact or Brock will beat him. It would have been a strong selling point to Mania 30: the last chance to see Taker, and the last shot at The Streak. Well... since Cena didn't have a feud that moved the dial, *if* Vince wanted Taker to go out a winner, and Taker was willing to, then they should have run Taker vs Cena with Taker going over. That would have drawn more than Taker-Brock. If Taker was adamant about doing a job on the way out to end The Streak, then flat out let Taker pick who he wanted to put over. Whoever Taker wanted to put over, book it and write a storyline. If not, let him beat Cena on the way out. I get that it doesn't make sense to have him beat the Top Guy while retiring, but it's not going to kill Cena. In fact, Cena probably would be honored, and the fans wouldn't hold it against him going down. John

As in she's good, or she's cute, or she's cute & good?

Totally disagree about doing it "Live". They're selling the network, and having a limited time in each segment to sell it. You want everything to be perfect. You don't want botched lines, you don't want someone getting nervous as they're clicking away... you want it to be perfect. As a Buyer, do you give a shit if it's live? I'm looking at that Audi commercial with the British Heels, and do you think anyone watching it goes, "I wish Loki, Gandhi and that other dude were doing this spot live." No, they don't. Tape. Take as many takes as need to be done to nail it, and edit the shit out of it. Then create another one. Take as many takes as are needed. Wash, rinse repeat. Screw feeling the need that everything needs to be Live~! Not Live, but probably the best commercial of the holidays for a product that drawfs what Vince in his wildest wet dream will ever make: :/ John

Last night I told my wife that I expected to feel really, really stupid this morning when they announced the subscriber number. I was worried that I had been too pessimistic and that I was going to look foolish for ever suggesting they wouldn't be near a million by Dec 2014. After all, the Wrestling Observer Radio was practically promising that numbers looked great. So, I part of this is probably just my version of a huge sigh of relief that even if I don't really just the zany stock price assumptions, at least some of this still makes sense. As for the 300K first-day(s) estimate, I am hoping we'll learn more in the next financial filing or KPI release. I still think the cancel rate was only 10-15% for the free trials, but wrestling fans can be a bitchy & stingy bunch. I thought your original 650K number was a reasonable, and none of the bullshit since them made me think it was likely the number would be off the chains larger than that. I also think that some probably overrated the conversion rather of WWE Domestic Mania PPV Buying Households to WWE Domestic Network Buying Households. I thought it unlikely that there would be an insanely massive mad dog rush to sub, and instead that we'd still see a chunk of people buying the PPV. Why? Because it's Mania, which is the biggest (and frankly only) major "house party" even of the WWE's. There's always going to be a chunk of fans who don't want to risk the network going to shit when they've got 6+ buddies coming over to what the show. It would flat out suck to host, and then not be able to hook up, and then scrambling to try to order it through your cable company. I think Mania was a terrific hook to get people to sub. 667K is a really good hook. Now they need keep hooking folks who bought Mania via PPV, and entice them with "you get these next PPV for free" when ordering the network. And of course retain subs. I don't think retention will be a massive problem unless the Product (not the network, but all of the WWE) drives fans away. It is as we've all said too good of a value. People who are of the habit of buying Mania, say the Rumble, and maybe 2 other PPV in the year now have access to All of them. They might not watch all of them live, but the ability to watch the PPV that they in the past would have skipped because the $$$ ran up pretty fast at $49.99 a pop... that's pretty alluring. If the Product stays enjoyable enough to draw the ratings that Raw and SmackDown currently do, then retention at $9.95 isn't that hard. The hard is sucking them in. They just sucked in 2/3rds of them. That's not bad at all. * * * * * On the point of taking Mania of, I tend to think it's a bad idea. PPV is slowly dying, and will eventually eat away at Mania as well. Converting traditional Mania buyers into Network buyers is a smart long term plan. There's far more money to be made long term on the Network. * * * * * On the "rise the price", this is wrong time for it. I would avoid it until forced like Netflix to pay for premium speed. The WWE will have to take a chunk of their $9.95 and hand it over to the carriers. That is the time to raise the price. They want to hold off on doing that until there's flat out the need, rather than doing it before and then having to do it again.

From Bix's piece: It's kind of funny: I don't watch WWE programing, but when I did flip over for some reason in the past week or so, I did happen to hit it during that segment. And I have to say... it was an *awful* segment in getting across the network. In fact, it probably risked turning off some fans because it wasn't easy for Cole to get stuff. What they really should so is akin to what you say: a taped segment walking through the Networks. It's freaking WWE Production, so they should be able to make a segment (or several of them) that make the Network look easy, fun, smooth, etc. The problem is that WWE Creative, and most of the folks running the company, have such a massive boner for LIVE~! So they think Cole & Co. would suck the fans in. That's dumb ass, and they need to get beyond it. Use Raw & SmackDown to market to product like you would, you know... marketing a product. John

I am less pessimistic about the number, unless the "1M" for the end of the year was a bullshit number that the WWE set that could but easily topped with a more impressive number such as 1.25M-1.5M mentioned earlier. If 1M is a real goal, then 2/3rds of them being paying customers right now is perfectly fine. That 300K estimate for initial subs isn't a valid on: that was a trial, and there likely always was going to be some who just didn't pay. There always are a chunk of people who sub to something that's "free" and then opt out before it's time to get hit on their credit cards. This is all a bit odd: I'm typically the most pessimistic jaded person on that board.

Thoughts... Tag Title Match Clusterfuck early with eight in there. Took forever to set up the early dives. But it got good as they settled down into working a match rather than just spotbu. Tricky finish since Cesaro was clearly over with the fans, while the belts are on faces as well. They thread that needle just about perfectly with keeping the belts on Usos while giving Claudio his spot at the end. Part of me wished they would have saved the "split up" to be a storyline in the Battle Royal, which usually need something mid-match as a hook. On the other hand, the way the battle royal played out, this primed the pump better for Claudio. Opening 20 Minute Mic Spot One gets the sense of Hulk aging, since even in the prime of Austin & Rock in the late 90s, Hulk could carry a long mic sequence on WCW that was a match to their work in the WWF. Here... he was the flatter one. Perhaps part of that was being the set up guy for a long segment, while Austin then Rock got to come out to carry it on. Still, while this wasn't close to peak Austin, he still picked up a segment that was kind of dragging. Rock was a bit more in form, closer to work as he had last year. All in all, not bad and certainly got the crowd going. Basically another match on the card from the time it ate up. Two side notes: They pretty much blew off the "Host Hogan" concept. This was it for the night for him, other than the backstage moment. That was kind of odd. The absence of Vince at WM *30* felt... kind of... wrong... okay... a lot wrong. I get that in a sense it was Trip's night, which he in turn made Bryan's. But... this really needed a moment where Vince came out, even for 5 minutes, to thank the fans over the years... or something along those lines. Hall of Fame time would have been probably the right moment, or right before the Battle Royal. I wasn't the only one in the room thinking that: two of the other adults thought and said the same thing. Just odd not to have him there. HHH vs Bryan This was much better than any of us expected. Very good match. I could quibble with things, and probably would on a rematch. But it was a fitting WM co-main event spectacle, and there it was stuck down in the opener spot, delivering the right finish. If it were a one match card, that would have been perfectly fine as the one match that made the card. Shield vs Old Age Outlaws & Kane Eh. Squash. Don't care for the NAO or Kane, though the Shield never have done much for me. Glad this wasn't longer. Battle Royal Clusterfuck early with just way too many people. They eventually cleared enough of it out of the way for some decent spots, then cleared more out to get down to a useful final 6 or so before a decent final four. Show-Claudio was a good final two, and worked pretty decent together. I actually would have been fine with Show since it was Andre's memorial battle royal, and that's not a bad person to win it. But they actually booked it right, the fans dug Claudio winning, and Show put it over nicely. This thing was pretty well booked through this point, the crowd was digging it in the Silverdome, and pretty much 6-0 in Casa del Hoback were digging it at this point. About as "right" of a feeling to the undercard of a Mania as any of us could recall. Cena vs Wyatt Alright... then things went off the rails. The room was just like the Super Dome: everyone thought this was awful. It's not like there was a lot of love for Cena in the room, but I have to say that Wyatt wasn't working for anyone. No one gave a shit about his clubbering or pretty much any of his offense. There was no real sense of drama coming off the match. The pretty regular comment was that they needed to be "brawling" or "kicking the hell out of each other", and that it "was too long" and "this needed to be a shorter war". It was just as flat as a turd on the front doorstep. I don't really know who laid this one out, or who really thought it through. Someone thought it was a good idea to go with another long, slow epic on a night of longer, largely slower epics: 25:58 - HHH vs Bryan 22:25 - Cena vs Wyatt 25:12 - Undertaker vs Lesnar 23:20 - Orton vs Batista vs Bryan Those are Caldwell's times since I haven't found others. They're pretty consistent with how the "felt" in terms of length. Anyway, Cena-Wyatt frankly needed to be 8-10 minutes shorter, and just kicked the living shit out of each other all over the building up onto the stage and back. Something that even if Cena won, it was such an ass kicker of a violent match that people wanted to see them again. After this, even if Wyatt won... who would have given a shit after that turd of a match. Ugh. Undertaker vs Lesnar This was a sad match. It felt like an old Pre-Austin Taker match, where the high point is the entrance, the crowd pops for that, and then zones out during the match because the match is shitty relative to Taker's entrance. We kept waiting for it to pick up with some stretch of spots. Even the methodical match with Trip, that frankly weren't heated non-stop from start to finish, did pick up business as they burned towards the finish. This... not really. It could have had 8 minutes chopped off. I don't think anyone would have felt ripped off if it was 17 minutes long, but if they also fought it more like a "war" from start to finish. You had the old negative: no one expected Taker to lose. This isn't new, and has been going on for years since the Streak started getting pimped. Yet they were able to get Taker eventually into some peril / danger / damage where folks at least once in the match thought, "Oh shit... maybe?" And also popped when the match kept going when it looked like Taker would win. This... not really. I've never been a big Taker Fan. I've respected him working hard for the past 5 or so Mania's when it's clear his body was a trainwreck of a mess. His opponents obviously have worked hard as well, but I really don't think it was Shawn who made those two matches against him (he frankly was annoying as shit), it certainly wasn't Trip in their two, and while Punk busted his ass it was Taker's goodwill with the fans that elevated up a match that they had zero doubt in the finish. Taker certainly carried his end of the work, and also brought the crowd for those matches. This year... neither. On the flip side, it was a pretty pedestrian Brock. Another match where folks in the company, along with the workers, should have planned things out better rather than trying to bite off more than they could chew at this point. Oh wait... the Finish. Yeah, that was odd. I think most of us were like the fans in the building. Didn't expect it. Wildly surprised. I think the biggest reason is that it didn't seem built towards in the fashion you'd think Taker would go out. On a level, if he had been destroyed, got up, destroyed again, got up, destroyed again... you'd be prepped that maybe this was it. I'm thinking Hash-Choshu at the 1996 G1. Or in a WWF sense, Rock-Mick with all the annoying chair shots. You just felt that if the Streak was going down, Taker would be completely laid out by the end in a dramatic fashion. This wasn't that. It was strange. I think that's as much the reaction of the crowd: not that he lost, but that it hadn't quite been prepped. Divas What one would expect. Far from the worst Diva buffer match. Orton vs Batista vs Bryan This is one that I need to re-watch with James one of the next times I'm over there. Late on Mania day is always tough because of the length of the card and usually what's come on before. I wouldn't say we were burned out, but from the hot opening parts to the turd laying of Cena-Wyatt and the combo of mediocre match + odd finish of Taker-Brock to none of the six of us giving a crap about Orton and Big Dave anymore, there was a flat sense heading into this. I don't think any of really paid serious attention to the first half or so of this, instead still bouncing around what the Taker-Brock meant, and where the company would be booking Brock and Bryan heading forward. We focused more once they started working towards the finish, but that's a bit of a JIP vibe there. We of course enjoyed the finish, and enjoyed Bryan winning... though we were all worried about Big Dave jobbing rather than Orton for fear of more Bryan-Orton matches. I'm guessing this is a better match if we'd actually paid more attention to the whole of it, and that something James and I can do down the road. Overall Odd. Quite a good start through the Battle Royal. Then just about the worst back-to-back Big Match pairing that I can recall at a Mania in the past decade. Less in terms of work (though that wasn't any great shakes), but more in terms of just laying there flat as hell capped by a finish that the crowd didn't at all want. They finished the PPV with one the fans did want, and it certainly got a good pop and the post match was well done. But the show ended up feeling like it had a donut hole. A very fun day overall, though.

The key thing to remember: they haven't killed off all of their PPV business with this, not have they launched the Network globally yet. So it's not really a matter of this: PPV: $82M --> $0M Network: $0M --> $40M They are still pulling in PPV money, and they still have markets to roll the network out on. All that said, I would look for: * major PPV pushes this year I would expect them to try to use SummerSlam and Survivors to spike up Network buys. Those two aren't going to be treated like "just another PPV" this year. They've floated that 1M number for the Year end, and they're going to probably use SummerSlam to try to lock in Renewals early, and then Survivors to both (i) get renewal of those who lapsed after the first six months, (ii) hit the year end number, and (iii) try to avoid having people sit the Network out until the next cycle to Mania probably starting with Rumble. * massive pushes of the Network on Raw & SmackDown Granted, we saw a big push to try to spike Mania buys. I suspect we'll see that for all the PPV's now. But what I mean is more in the sense that the Network is going to be constantly pushed on Raw & SmackDown similar to how the annoying Twitter hashtag shit is. We'll likely see more integration of the Network into Raw and SmackDown, and them experiment on how to push the Network without annoying the shit out of the viewers. If 1M truly was the goal for 2014 rather than a low ball number tossed out that the WWE thought would be an easy layup to hit, then getting 2/3rds of the way there on what was effectively "opening night" of the Network is actually pretty good. If people internally truly were unhappy with this number, I would read that to mean that the 1M was a bullshit number, something that they were hoping to hit well before the end of the year and more likely want to reach 1.25M-1.5M as their real goal.

Looking at the quality issues being discussed, some of the things we were seeing over at Hoback's were similar: * "repeats" The feed repeating what just happened. This wasn't happening all the time, but you'd get one every match or so, and sometimes two repeats of the same thing. But the end of the show, we were quite a ways behind the "real time" of the show... maybe 10+ minutes. This wasn't a massive issue since we were avoiding checking online for the most part, but Hoback tended to notice on occasion when he went to check Dave's comments on a match an saw Dave already was posting into the next match. If someone is a big twitter or FB junking, and follows people who post stuff all the time... yeah, that could be a pain in the ass. We also had some fun joking around with it when it happened and we noticed it. * picture quality It tended to go back and forth. There were times when the quality was exceptional, and then others when it felt like watching 240p on Youtube... except blown up to a 44+ inch TV. It wasn't consistently in the bad range, and usually only for a short time. It did seem like a lot of the weaker quality was when the giant video board at the entrance was overly active/intense. The seemed to screw things up most often. Other times when there was a bit too much activity going on in the match, such as in the battle royal or the 8-man tag. With the room (four adults + two 13-16 year olds), this didn't get anyone pissed off. On the other hand, it is something over time they need to work out. When people pay for stuff, even when it's a "great deal" at $10 a month, they expect it to be of the quality of Raw and without glitches. It appears that MLB Network is having some other issues, but they also have a massive amount of money invested in this, so we probably should all have some faith they'll work it out. John

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2014/04/07/world-wrestling-gets-wall-street-style-take-down/7418043 An estimate of 667,287 subscribers, which isn't bad at all. I doubt their global PPV number is that terrible either when one combines it with the Network number. The stock is taking a pretty big hit, though it already was in a bit of a "correction" in the past couple of weeks.

My thought would be to count up the number of times "technical" were mentioned. Given that, it's not at all hard to say "excellent bumper", and "underrated seller when he needed to", etc. It's akin to a Buddy bio where all Dave talks about is Buddy's bumping, stooging and selling while not talking about his ability to work a crowd. Seriously, he could have gotten it across in a single sentence if he were lazy about it. With three sentences, one could have gotten across that Billy was at his best a total package. I'm sure a number of us could write three sentences to do that. On the dragging part... I thought the piece dragged. It ended up being the typical Match List Drop Of Doom, without a lot of insight to them after a point.

As someone above pointed to, a one year non-compete isn't going to be enforceable unless the wrestling is getting some consideration for that one year of not working. It would be laughed out of court. That's not to say a shorter non-compete being specified wouldn't survive, with the WWE's argument being that a certain part of what the wrestler had been paid as a base over the course of the contract was with the understanding that the wrestling wouldn't work elsewhere for 30 days after the contract terminated. It's a small enough time that a wrestle is unlikely to fight it, unless the 30 days are critical to the jump. For example if a WWF contract expired on 11/30 and WCW was shoveling a ton of money to him with the specific intent to have him work at Starcade later in December, and to start working TV instantly at the start of December for the build. In which case... it's a game of chicken. WCW could simply tell the WWF to fuck off, force them to try to get a TRO, and eventually the WWF would have to show damages... all of the while running up a bill. It's always been a dumb ass clause, though wrestling promotions and wrestlers alike are dumb asses when it comes to contracts.

Yep, double round robin. I don't think the number of teams drove it. They had one less (8) back in 1993 and went single, and 7-8 often between 1978-85. They also could have easily slapped a team together. Smith was on the tour, and had been in four RWTL before 1996, including 1994-95. Fuchi was in the one the year before. Kikuchi had been in two before. Ogawa never got in one before teaming with Misawa, but they probably could have paired him with Fuchi. Honda had been in the year before pairing with Baba, and actually finished reasonably high in the table because of Baba. They also had given Mossman a bit of a midcard push. What it really was about was that the Tag League hadn't been drawing well outside of Tokyo. What the double round robin let them do was rather than just have these big matches (in addition to the Final): Kawada & Taue vs Misawa & Akiyama Kawada & Taue vs Kobashi & Patriot Kawada & Taue vs Williams & Ace Misawa & Akiyama vs Kobashi & Patriot Misawa & Akiyama vs Williams & Ace Kobashi & Patriot vs Williams & Ace Was to double that number from 6 to 12. For the most part, even in the better years of the Tag League, there simply what I called "four across". Which means four big teams that had a chance to win, which meant that the matches between those teams were the ones that mattered. You also had 2 of those matches going on at Budokan. So taking 1990 & 1991 which were identical at the real top: Tsuruta & Taue Misawa & Kawada Hansen & Spivey Williams & Gordy With the Natives vs Natives and Gaijin vs Gaijin at Budokan in 1990, and then Native vs Gaijin and Native vs Gaijin in 1991. 1992 the plan was the same, except Jumbo got sick (Akiyama in) and Ace replaced Spivey. That went with Native vs Native and Gaijin vs Gaijin, with Tsuruta & Taue vs Misawa & Kawada being held out all year for the Final... and then Jumbo's illness spoiling that. 1993 was same, except the native teams split and reformed (Misawa & Kobashi and Kawada & Taue), while Gordy overdosed (Bubba subbing) and DiBiase replacing Spivey/Ace only to get hurt (Baba subbing). Again the plan was Native vs Native and Gaijin vs Gaijin at Budokan. 1994 was the same, with Ace moving over to Doc, and the Baba & Hansen team getting a pairing. This time the Native teams were split, with Misawa & Kobashi getting Doc & Ace while Kawada & Taue got Hansen & Baba. 1995 was a trainwreck as the only teams that matter were Kawada & Taue and Misawa & Kobashi. It also was the only thing that really was going to draw, so the went to a Final for the first time so they could run it twice: once in the round robin, and again at Budokan in the Final. In 1996 with Doc back, and splitting Kobashi away from Misawa, they were able to get back to "four across"... but also want to try to get attendance up with 12 "big" matches across the series.

New Japan and All Japan didn't make the mistake on the time slots: the networks bounced them to different hours, especially All Japan eventually to late night. It really wasn't an idea about video tapes. All Japan didn't get strongly into the video business until their time slot was cut to a half hour, long after they had been placed into late night. Even then, their efforts in the video business were rather lazy. It really never seemed like Baba gave much thought to it. New Japan was far more prolific with video, but it also wasn't tied to television: the bigger stuff was almost always given away for free on their hour TV. In fact, the move to a later slot meant they had more stuff on TV and at a regular time after getting pre-empted a ton in 1991-92. Recruitment... eh. All Japan had "problems" recruiting due to their own choice. Baba was pretty selective and spotty on it, even before 1988. If you look at the "next generation" natives who debuted Kawada (1982) and Kobashi/Taue (1988), it's pretty telling. Baba long held onto the mindset that a chunk of the roster would be gaijin, which likely made him think he didn't need a ton of natives. He also was perhaps overly loyal to keeping slots on the roster for older guys, which evolved into the comedy match. As far as New Japan, they actually had a spurt of recruitment in the early-to-mid 90s after their earlier spurt had crapped out in the mid-80s. Television viewership even in good time slots was wildly lower for both promotions in the late 80s compared to the early 80s, not even to mention the 70s and 60s. I think what we actually saw was a large amount of recruitment in pro wrestling from the late 80s into the early 90s. Some of it shows up in New Japan. Less in All Japan. The rest... well... The reason for the large amount of recruiting? It's rather obvious, and TV had very little to do with it. In fact, the irony is that it was quite the opposite.

Well... there's a lot of "technical" tossed around. Flair and Larry take backhanded compliments (credit to Stevens & Bock and Harley). There's no discussion of his bumping, which was exceptional for the era. Nothing on his ability to sell, facials, his ability to work as a heel in a slow burner. Frankly, one wishes Dave actually watched that first Baba-Robinson match to see Billy as a total pack of a worker. It's not like it's an overly long match, and broken across three falls they keep it moving along... besides it being an exceptional match. That's not even getting into wishing he'd pop in the Funks vs Billy & Horst from the 1977 tag league. Granted, at 45:00 that's maybe eating too much into his time. But it would give him a sense of Billy actually being closer to Terry as a total package than Dory. Anyway... yeah... the Japan stuff is kind of there.

Was this ever actually a concern?! Rovert kind of explained it above - he recalls seeing some talk/concern about it at the time. Rovert tends to have a good memory on things like that, so I believe his memory on it. My comment after it was simply that it doesn't appear to have had any impact, and I have heard that it has. I think one of Wade's other long term strengths has been getting other voices into the Torch. It's not a catch-22 because people don't need the sheets to get their voice out there... I mean you can look at this site, though admittedly it's small. There have been loads of forums and sites and groups like this over the past two decades, so that diminishes it to a degree. But... Wade got Bruce's voice into the Torch. He got Madden's, which even if you think Mark is an asshat like I do, it was another voice for fans to read back in the early 90s. He got Zavisa to talk about Japan... Bowden before that... me as well. Guys like Kunkel. Guys now like Pat. They're all voices different from Wade's. Dave wasn't against other's views being in the WON. He had a number of people do things in the early WON's, and of course Bowden the Booker for more than a year. The Letters Page was a core feature for more than a decade, and with various "regulars" coming and going from it. But that is a bit different than having several regular writers riffing on topics. Wade had a pretty decent skill in being able to identify folks who could write a bit. A few in the 90s perhaps didn't have legs beyond their first few pieces. On the flip, some like Bruce and Mark could write and hit their point, and do it for quite a while. Some of us either burned out, or in my case got distracted easily by the net not long after starting to write for the Torch: it was easy to "talk" or "shot the shit" or post a massive response to something... or just have a good old flame war argument with an asshole like Mr. Schemer. Feedback and response were instant, as where finding people interested in what you liked and talked about. So... The net has changed it. I read stuff that Chris Harrington does and it strikes me as something that Wade would have loved to have Chris write as a regular column in the Torch since it's something above and beyond what Wade does, and from a different direction. Hell... I suspect that it would still be something that Wade would love to have if Chris didn't have an existing home base, or was looking for somewhere to move. But the point is: Chris has ways to get his voice out. That goofy Masked Man does. Jerry Von Kramer does. Etc. Anyway... it was, and probably still is one of his strengths. The online wrestling world is so diverse and spread out, and everyone wants to do their own thing, that it's less of a thing to get across now.

Did Dave roll out the old meme about Billy being semi-boring and technical? Or was there the sense that he'd now seen enough of the Japan stuff to get that was bullshit?

He must have corrected it since it's now "the amazing, Italian-steeped Swiss".

http://grantland.com/features/wrestlemania-preview-2014-triple-h-the-booker I'm thinking people are going to enjoy this one...

Does look pretty complete, and one assumes a DVD release in Japan since there are no network logos. I assume that's a listing from Dan? Looks a bit like his styling. Anyway, we're now up to about 21:45 of the "22:11", and it does look a bit like the timer guy was off on one end of the bells.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/wrestlings-greatest-shoots-wrestlemania-edition-hulk-hogan-vs-richard-belzer

That was 08/18/85. Was it taped?