jdw

My thoughts after watching it earlier today: * "these are six minutes of my life that I'll never get back" * "will Miley ever grow up enough to grasp what an idiot she comes across as" Note: I don't think there's anything outrageous about the performance, and certain ain't offended by it. Just think that both in the video and on stage last night, she just comes across as a dumb teen. I certainly look back at my dumb teen period and drop my jaw at some of the stupidity, shake my head at some of it, felt guilty about a chunk of it, etc. Don't know if Miley will ever grow up enough to get to that point. * "when going for a skin colored bikini look, try Cloth material rather than Vinyl. You ass was warp all around by it and looked like shit a number of times. Unflattering, and you don't seem to have a bad rear end. Smack your designer around" Sorry... I confess to being a guy who will check out an ass, and it was noticeable how not-so-good it looked. * "that tongue thing isn't sexy. It's not funny. It's just stupid. At this point it's a bit like Michael Jackson grabbing his crotch. Come up with a new gimmick." * "you might want to look up Linday Lohan on Box Office Mojo. Exactly zero hits since Mean Girls, which was 9 years ago. So you can look at it one of two ways, Miley. You can still be a celeb that gets a lot of attention when you're completely washed up and zonked out on dope. Or... success can pass by fast, and no one will want anything to do with you unless you're that freak trainwreck and they can make some money off it while you spiral towards oblivion. So, um... make sure you save up a chunk of your money, and when the ride ends put some effort into that rehab thing. You might have another 50+ years which, while not in the spotlight can at least offer you other joy and comfort." Than this morning: * "I'm glad there's shit like this to force me to google twerk and ratchet"

probably Shane Douglas And ECW.

Curt Hennig... yeah, that's an interesting one from just about every direction. Kane - he's been pushed, but I'm not sure if he ever was viewed by anyone as a Big Star? Scott Hall and Kevin Nash - yeah... there's at least one bullseye. I tend to think that Hall was the level of star that he warranted as Razor and Hall. He never was pushed to the World Title level, even as a challenger like say DiBiase in the WWF. Razor certainly was over, and tended to carry his end of the bargain at that level he was pushed. When he was pushed higher as Hall & Nash, I think that had something to do with his partner. Nash... he, um... yeah... he really fits the Pitbull.

I get that. It's a bit like 1991-97 Undertaker having that great entrance, but when the lights come up you see that the building isn't packed, and when you listen to the heat a couple of minutes into the match, it's kind of dead. Taker got people jumping... except no one really wanted to pay to see him. Pitbull... we're in the era when downloads count in the charts, and the guy still isn't banging out hit singles left and right. Hell, Britney was past her peak when Pitbull came along, her career was like totally dead and she was a trainwreck in 2007. And here she's released back-to-back #1 albums since them, that have spawned three #1, a pair of #3's and a #7's. She's doing this well past her prime.

Yeah, it's not really a HOF thingy. And to a degree, Sting was a Big Star. The Flair-Sting would have been high on the charts. Perhaps it was blocked by Hogan-Bossman from getting to #1 in the first half of 1988, but then again, Flair-Lex probably was blocked from getting to #1 by Savage-Ted later in the year. But they were pretty decent #2 albums, each with at least one successful single (Sting-Flair at the Clash would have been a chart topper given its audience). Sting-Hogan clearly was a monster smash album, with a massive hit in Starcade. Long running too, since that spread across a chunk of 1997. I'd say Sting had other hits, some bombs, etc. Maybe a contrast would be Undertaker prior to his feud with Austin. A lot of not doing much business. He did pop a PPV (Taker vs Taker did better than the prior SummerSlam), and had one decent house show run (Bret vs Taker vs Nash turned around the WWF house show business before Shawn got the top spot). But there was a lot of stuff that was just there. But he got the SHIT pushed out of him. Even drawing against Hogan in the two title PPV's... they weren't exactly Hogan's biggest hits, and everyone drew against Hogan. As a worker, he was pretty uninteresting prior to Mick, then seemed to pick things up opposite Austin, and became better. But... Maybe 1991-97 he was a super pushed guy, it was due to the gimmick, and he really didn't do business. Obviously Taker isn't a Pitbull because he did take off after that. There have been some up and downs, such as the feud with Austin in 2001 with Trip and Kane involved wasn't something that anyone wanted to see and killed whatever chance Heel Austin had, if he had any. There have been other times in the past decade where he's done so-so business. But there's also plenty to point at where he did have an impact. So... was thinking of folks who were even more head scratchers than Sting and Early Taker. Example: In Japan, Sakaguchi strikes me as a Pitbull. I mean... WTF? Just a useless #2 behind Inoki. The guys who came after him (Fujinami and Choshu and Maeda), the guy in the same role in the other promotion (Jumbo), and the guy in that other company who became the #2 (Tenryu) all pretty much show up how useless Sak was without us even having to whip out the guys of the generation after that. Sak wasn't treat as a super duper big guy, because Inoki hogged the spotlight. But you're pushed as the #2 guy in a national promotion and you're that forgettable? That's kind of what I'm looking for, and possibly with even more of a push.

Okay... that's some holy shit stuff. High on the list. Way up their with the worst of Hogan's "Choshu/Fujinami tried to shoot on me and I straightened him out" bullshit. I mean... fucking YOW!

I think because Linda was carved out of the Graziano settlement, leaving him on the hook for it. Could be wrong on that, but when you lose HALF and that Half isn't on the hook for the settlement (or bought out cheaply), you're getting a double whammy. One could also argue that the show did to the idiot son, and how that might have indirectly contributed to the accident (a lot of stupid shit in it)... show was a giant negative.

For the life of me I can't figure out why Pitbull is a Big Star. His albums have peaked at #14-15-50-8-65-7-14, which is staggeringly bad given how few albums it takes to hit the upper reaches of the charts now. Look... Springsteen has been a washed up album seller in Pitbull's era of releasing stuff, and has still done this: New Studio Records: #1-3-1-1-1 Boxed Sets: #18-27 (on the same Album 200 charts) Compilations / Unreleased Vault Material: #43-16 Live: #93-23 Bruce's best Box/Comp/Vault/Live albums as #16-18-23-27 would damn near fit in well with Pitbull's stuff... and Bruce is washed up in terms of moving records compared to 1975-85. Okay... so Pitbull is a great singles performer. Really? He's release something like 30 singles, of which one went to #1, another went to #2, along with a #7 and two a #8. I don't think we need to look hard to find a lot of people squashing that. So... WTF? * * * * * Anyway, I was wonder who are the folks in pro wrestling history that are along those lines. Guys who are thought of our pushed as Super Big Stars, but when you look at it deeper, you wonder what in the heck is there? Not really the Triple H types. For whatever we want to say about Trip getting over pushed, there is some substance to where he drew well as an opponent, or held up his end of the bargain on some important stuff. I think he's a jackass, but I'm willing to admit that he held up his end of the bargain in that run where Vince and Mick and Rock and Steph made him. But say the reverse of say Hans Schmidt, who was a guy when you looked more at him, you kind of wonder how we missed how strong he was. Anyway...

Or... Pancho & Lefty: The Sting & Lex Luger Friendship And Rivalry

Wait... nothing on her today? Nothing?!?! John

And that cost him a lot of cash. And while Hulk was able to get a younger hottie, none of us are naive enough to not think Hulk was banging younger hotties throughout his marriage while on the road. Whatever the show made Hogan, it probably cost him as much if not more.

Arn for Tully

And yes... it's on topic with the thread.

Simmons love of Shawn is fairly well known. Nothing terribly surprising in his comments.

He might have gotten upfront about it after that airport bust. That kind of broke PED-fabe for him, so he could talk about it afterwards.

It's not a surprise, and has been talked about for years. But the Hollywood Reporter running a piece on it... it's basically like PWI breaking Kayfabe in the 80s to talk about blading.

This is so PWO: Hollywood and Steroids: When A-List Actors Go the A-Rod Route

Not really... doesn't strike me in that way. We do have our resident shrinks on the board. Perhaps their thoughts.

As I was saying...

I have to laugh at Trip ripping Keller over Page. I bet if you ran that by Wade that his memory would be considerably better than Trip's on it, including stuff like... well... knowing Page back when Page was managing in the AWA. I'd hazzard a guess that Wade didn't rip Wade as much as Trip claims, nor was page as annoyed by it as much as Trip claims. John

Good question. I appear not to have used it in any of my posts in this thread...

Pillman and Mero being told they were going 25+ The Baba & Hansen team in the 1993 Tag League. To a lesser degree, the Williams & Bubba team in the same tag league, though they at least knew they would be together by the time they were flying in. It might be worth watching Akiyama's 1992 Tag League performances and consider the context. He debuted on 09/17/92. This is two series later. He's stepping into Jumbo's spot as Taue's partner, which is beyond impossible to do. It's not like he had MOTYC, but the Taue & Jun vs Gordy & Williams, Baba & Kobashi and Misawa & Kawada are all watching on various levels. Pretty brutal for someone less than three months to step into that. He doesn't exactly fall flat on his face.

It's a damn fun read. That's where one gets into (i) what's the overall objective, and (ii) what are the general criteria of the Levels/Tiers. Bill's was Hall of Fame caliber talent. So we can take a guy like Michael Cooper or Derek Fisher (to name a pair of Laker Dynasty supporting players) and go, "Is he even at the Level 1 level?" and when the answer is "No", then just move onto someone else. In wrestling, let's say Marty Jannetty. He had a career. In some good matches. But in the end, the closest he'd get to any wrestling HOF is buying a ticket to it. So if the overall objective is HOF level wrestlers, by whatever criteria, then you're chopping off a whole bunch of the guys who don't warrant any thought beyond "no". But if the point is to come up with a Pyramid where Everyone fits onto one level or another, and you really want to figure out where Sid fits into it... then that's something to hash out on the Overall Objective: slot Everyone, or Slot folks above a certain level (strictly HOF, or "near-HOF" as the base level, etc). Beyond that, then it's criteria. We always have this in the GOAT discussion. The first is the most basic one: for the most part when you get in hardcore joints like this, where people are talking about when they say GOAT is "work" either as 100% or as an overwhelming majority of it. How do we know this? Go back to the first page, do a little Ctrl+F, type in Hogan, hit enter. Then got to page 2 and do the same thing. Then to page 3. How many times did you find a match? Naoki Sano shows up more times in the thread than Hulk. That tends to indicate that all the non-work criteria that make Hogan a GOAT candidate count for 0.00%. Which is fine if it's a work thingy. But if you look at Ditch's recent post on Tenryu as a GOAT candidate, those first 3 out of the 4 things that Ditch listed are kinda-sorta Hogan things. Then there's the Great Matches one, which isn't a Hogan thing (even for those of us who find him perfectly acceptable). Then there's probably a half dozen other things we could think up in 30 minutes, at least two of which probably would be pretty major for a GOAT... If it wasn't based 95% to 100% on Work. So those kind of the things to hit first. Then it's taking a swing at what types of things are we looking at in each different level/tier.

I'd have to go pull how Bill defined each Level and the Pantheon, but he did have a good general rule for each, and how the cut things off. The Pantheon was pretty much the group that if you surrounded him with a reasonable cast, you were locked into winning at least a Title, and not a flukey one where the rest of the league took a dump. Big O was the exception to this, but his cast can be debated, it was a much smaller league, and you look at what he had to get through (Celtics) and they had a Pantheon guy as an anchor along with studs like Sam Jones and Hondo. He defines it better than that, and it makes sense that there are 12 (or 13 now since clearly Lebron would be in it if he wrote it up now). I don't think he'd put Dirk in there to make it 14, especially now two years removed from Dirk's title and being able to put it in better perspective. The other ones make relative sense as well. You can always believe you're going to come up with a perfect pyramid, but in the end if you have a definition that's based on conceptual criteria (guys who did these types of things) rather than a fixed number (5 guys and fuck it if #6 has more in common with #'s 3-5 than #15, I'm sticking to my number even if it doesn't make a bit of conceptual sense!). I tend to lean more to conceptual criteria, since Shaq and Moses have far more in common with the guys up at #6-10 (and Kobe) than anyone on Level 4 (sans Kobe who has moved up). That even included Hondo, who I love... but Shaq and the Pantheon guys were just something entirely different. As far as a GOAT List, if you try to apply it to what Bill was doing... you basically have two people: Jordan and Russell. I know there are arguments for others (basically Wilt), but Bill in his own comp shreds that in a way that's compelling to himself (and not without compelling aspects to me). So you'd have a Pantheon of 2, and a Level 4 of the rest of the Pantheon guys... and then to match a true pyramid shape you'd have to combine the current Level 4 + Level 3 guys... and It would be a nice "shape", but it would lose the point of how Bill was trying to group them. I'd also add that Bill wasn't exactly trying to be Jamesian in putting this together. Much more a "well educated fan" list and organization of it than a sabermetric type attempt. Anyway...