Marty

When you think about it, Umaga was fired under pretty much the same circumstances that Kurt Angle was fired under. When Angle was fired, a lot of folks on the net - myself included - took it as evidence that Kurt wasn't long for this world. Granted, Kurt's still alive, and Umaga really wasn't the (only way to really describe it) flaming drug addict that Angle is/was, but you'd think his firing should've raised some of the same red flags that Kurt's did. That's just it. We keep waiting to hear the worst about Kurt or a guy like Rey Mysterio so much that a guy like Umaga flies under the radar, even though those who have followed his case could see the warning signs right there. I agree with Sek's last post. I understand WWE making clear that he didn't die under their watch, but using "terminated" instead of something like "Umaga was a superstar from x date to y date in the WWE" really comes across as douchey, very rushed (though they had to mention something fairly quickly) and thoughtless.

The setting for these interviews was quite different than the AWA ones, so I'd say new interviews.

Yeah, Chapman pretty much repeated that talking point in the documentary about Gotch never actually working a match. They don't during the extra, and I can't remember if it was part of the documentary. The extra is similar to all those CWF 70s clips of big matches with Solie and someone else narrating. Might have been shown in the doc, but I have my doubts. Forgot to mention that the reigns of Sid, Jarrett, Russo and Arquette all get buried and mentioned as low points. No other reign got buried.

Because Canada's assbackwards compared to the U.S. (or maybe it's the other way around!) we got this set first and the Jeff Hardy set is two weeks from now instead. Just to clear up some stuff mentioned earlier: - The Rogers title win is in full. The poster making the assumption earlier would be correct. - The Funks' wins are JIP near the end, also as mentioned. Solie on commentary. - Rhodes' win is, in fact, his first. They got that one correct. It's also heavily clipped, like his 2nd win in Atlanta. Solie and Rhodes are on commentary. - Every other match is in full, as expected. The documentary is about an hour. Presented in hilarious WWE fashion, as one might expect. Lots of stuff glossed over. Lots of the usual people interviewed, and they also dug out clips of 1994 interviews with guys like Thesz and Kiniski. Kiniski was kayfabing his loss to Dory in hilarious fashion. Also, they brought back Mike Chapman as the "historian", which JDW will LOVE. Chapman gave the old story of wrestling becoming entertainment strictly (or fake) in the 1920s due to Lewis and Stecher beating the heck out of each other and that taking their toll on them. Bix will LOVE that.

Here is Big Van Vader vs. Snake Watson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTR8RYxbCuk Maybe it's just me, but it feels like a good chunk of Watson's bumping/selling is awkward. Judge for yourselves.

It IS a low price, but I think if Alvarez factored in that there are probably a lot of structural upgrades needed at this point, and there isn't any sort of regular tenant affixed to it to pay rent that I know of, he probably wouldn't be so blown away by that number. I mean, you buy it, but what do you use it for? Probably you tear it down and use the land for some sort of shopping mall or other new project. Tearing it down would cost big bucks, too. I just found his reaction funny. Not to mention the real estate situation in Michigan (with Pontiac being no exception) as a whole. Good blog covering the sale of the Dome (including the mention of soccer possibly being there, as Boondocks mentioned) and the ugly real estate situation as a whole: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketp...than_a_hom.html

Still to this day, the most hilarious printing botch on a WWE DVD is not a date, but on the WCCW DVD when they listed David Von Erich wrestling at the David Von Erich Memorial Parade Of Champions.

Wow... http://www.wwe.com/superstars/wherearetheynow/lexluger So is he the latest that was once in the doghouse but now will no longer be buried by the company?

That's the closest I've found to a genuine explanation. I tried to sit down and think of other forms of entertainment in which half the show's goals involve deliberately pissing off the paying customers, and really there aren't many besides purorasslin. To some degree, journalism falls into this category. You'll hear more about economic downturns than economic upswings, for example. "Plane lands safely" is not a good newspaper headline. "H1N1 will affect many, many people" is a good one. I generally agree with Tom's analogy.

I doubt this answers your question but, similar to my post in the Jeff Hardy thread, not only were all young fans unaware of Hardy's arrest, as well as Rey's suspension, but it seemed most older fans didn't have a clue about it either. Some might have, but I definitely met some who considered the possibility (actually also think it was a good possibility) that Rey was wrestling that night.

He did mention this last night at the PPV, and not in the most subtle manner either. On another note, I went to the house show in Ottawa on Saturday. Lots of young fans wearing Jeff Hardy gear. None of them had any clue about his arrest.

Heel champions were only ever transitional champs back then and Vince was looking for a babyface draw. I think it was a little murkier than babyface champs for three years. Either Bret or Diesel could've turned heading into SS '95, but they both ended up as tweeners. Sid was a tweener as well. He was a heel who started getting babyface pops because Michael's face run didn't have any pre-Attitude era edge to it. UT may have been a face, but his gimmick was that he was otherwordly. Aside from the failed Diesel push, where they really put him up against some ridiculous opponents, there was one clear cut babyface run in that period (Michaels) and it sucked. I can buy the "everyone but Michaels was kind of a tweener" argument (after all, that would help Michaels' push), but when was Sid a heel in 96/97? He came back as Shawn Michaels' ally for the International Incident show as a replacement for the Warrior. I can buy him being a tweener for the Shawn feud in late 96/early 97, but at what point during that time period (again, not during 95) was he a heel?

KJH makes a really good point about the lack of top heels in the company at that time. The WWF is a company known for having transitional heel champs, but the gold went: Diesel-Hart-HBK-Sid (now a babyface)-HBK-Hart-Sid-Taker until Bret got the gold during his final run, making him the first heel champ for the company in almost three years, in spite of seven title changes during that period. I don't know if Vince lacked faith in heels at the time to even carry the gold for a brief period of time, but it was a very weird period where only the babyfaces were pushed. Even though it is a babyface promotion. So I too think Jarrett did well given the circumstances, and I also thought Roadie was a good second.

Still a great article. Thanks for posting it. Here's a complementary article to the NPR piece that appeared in Lurch Magazine which specifies Sputnik's strategies a little more, as well as tells some stories about his impact: http://www.smokebox.net/archives/sport/monroe201.html

Maybe I'm watching the wrong matches, but when has Melina screamed over the last year or so? I thought she dropped the screaming act when she went face?

Fuck, I feel bad for Miz. Being banned from this would suck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerfest

I have to throw in my love for the Edge-Hardy cage match as well. I do agree that it's the best either guy has done, although there has been a lot of singles stuff both guys have done in recent years that I really dig. To me, it would've been the perfect blow-off to that feud. Of course, in hindsight, they had plans for Edge, so it's understandable why they went in the direction they. Almost feels like Flair-Steamboat in Chi-Town Rumble. Not quite the same level of quality, but similar in such it's the first real big match between the two (the SummerSlam match was pretty much a wash, and if memory serves, the streetfight on RAW came after, but before the ladder match), it's arguably the best match of the feud, and it's the high point for the babyface.

This would be Brian Pillman's mentor Kim Wood. Was Pillman already wrestling by this point? Nope. He left the Buffalo Bills after the '85 season and went on to play in the CFL in '86.

Smackdown's been the better show as far as building up new names since the start of the brand split, aside from last year when HHH was on it. RAW might be worse off than ever for building new stars, with Cena, HHH, Orton, Batista all on top, and someone like Big Show just a notch below, even if one or some of them is injured. This isn't a "HHH will bury them all" argument either, as all of them have been established top stars for so long that it's difficult to push someone new in that category. Difficult for WWE, anyway, and likely.

I didn't mind Mizorrison not talking about every team, especially they were in heavy character mode anyway. Agreed about the finish of Outsiders/Harlem Heat. Didn't mind Parker being a chickenshit (it suits his character) but the way Sherri and Stevie Ray were standing there speechless while Hall pinned Booker really came across bad. Made Harlem Heat look dumb. I also chuckled at how the Brotherly Duos were almost all kayfabed brothers. BTW, the RnR Express-Russians match goes WELL over 30 minutes. Easily the longest match on the set.

A lot of that is often how the placement of wrestling fans is set by the promotions themselves. Wrestling fans have very often (one could argue consistently) been placed on the inside, and things have often been mentioned where the outside doesn't "get" wrestling. TomK at the time mentioned the media coverage of the Benoit stuff and how the WWE accused the media of sensationalism, with the fanbase backing the WWE quite strongly in that sense. But there's also your usual cases where someone like JR says on T.V. during a ladder match "There's probably some idiot who doesn't care for wrestling saying "They know how to fall!"" Stuff like that only strengthens the "inside" relationship between promotion and fans. However, because a lot of celebrities are placed on the outside, that inside relationship gives that sort of backlash towards celebrity involvement. There's also still a lot of fans who strongly believe that WWE can and should be all about wrestling and don't require celebrity involvement. I can't recall where I saw it, but when the Seth Green announcement was initially made, someone said, "It's officially no longer a wrestling show."

The on-again, off-again relationship between Superstar Billy Graham and Vince McMahon is off again, as Graham is selling his WWE HOF ring on eBay. UK Sun story: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport...ng-on-eBay.html eBay link (current bid at $11,500): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ME:B:EF:US:1123 Found it rather amusing, as it comes across like Vince saying to Billy: "Uhhh, Wayne...the HOF is a work, like everything else we do".

Yeah, as someone who got Stampede regularly too, I back up TTK's opinion.

Celebrity appearances on their own can only do so much, in my opinion. I guess depending on the status of the celebrity, that can vary, but Mike Tyson felt like more of an icing on the cake rather than the cake itself. Austin was getting hot, McMahon's character was rising, and the company overall was at a different interest. Perhaps Tyson contributed to the buyrate of Mania as well, but would Tyson be able to do the same thing today in the current environment? My personal take: I didn't catch all of RAW this past week, but I thought they did as good a job with Seth Green as they could, plus there was some cross-promotional benefits as well, depending on how many extra viewers Green could bring in. Plus, there's the novelty of Seth Green never having been on RAW, I guess. On the other hand, we've seen ZZ Top at WWE events, so them hosting RAW feels like nothing new. Maybe they're trying their hardest to reach out to older fans again. After all, those Starrcade and SNME DVD sales pale in comparison to WM25.

If memory serves, just the match. Too bad, I guess. I know it's a Savage set we're talking about, but the Flair/Hennig/Heenan promo is one of my favourite Flair WWF promos. Both Hennig and Heenan are ranting and raving about Savage cheating, and Flair follows up by calmly cutting a promo of what he'll do eventually.