Stuttsy

I think the one that annoys me the most is that no one in WWE gets beaten up. The person doing the beating is "taking his frustrations out" on the victim of the beating.

Ah, my bad for misunderstanding.

Yeah, they were putting their own spin on it. Muta was billed as Kabuki's son initially on TV:

yeah, I mean, that's cool that he corrected himself, but, I just felt it was a pretty lame mistake to make to begin with. Alfonzo never managed in WWF, was a referee until ECW, Gonzalez was with Whippleman from day one on camera... he covered all this stuff while it was happening. Maybe I am jumping to a conclusion but it just screams to me how little he cares about wrestling these days to screw up stuff like that, that everybody saw, ya know? Its not like we're talking about random Knoxville TV from 1982 that there's little record of. Its like when people ask about the wrong shows on shoot interviews, like "what are your memories of wrestling Jeff Jarrett at Summerslam 98" when they wrestled Val Venis at Summerslam 98. I get very frustrated because it's 2010. Google takes 5 seconds to check facts. It just makes the operation seem unprofessional to me. Or I may be overreacting.

In the El Gigante biography, Dave makes several references to Bill Alfonzo being the manager of Giant Gonzalez for the first several months of his WWF tenure, and after Gonzalez turned on Alfonzo at WrestleMania in Las Vegas, Gonzalez takes Harvey Whippleman as his new manager. I am preeeetty sure this NEVER happened. A mistake from Meltzer that would have been THAT easy to correct just really rubs me the wrong way for some reason. Seriously, just pull up the clip of Gonzalez's debut at the Royal Rumble on YouTube, watch it for 5 seconds and see Whippleman RIGHT THERE WITH HIM. And this guy is the best wrestling journalist we have? Could he possibly give a fuck less about wrestling at this point?

"Reporter" is being really generous, that dork came off as about the least credible so-called reporter I've ever seen.

That reminds me of the Billy Jack Haynes turn in Portland. "I opened a gym, you didn't come to it, you fat pigs"

Elaborate?

The heat for not-thanking-Shawn thing isn't so outrageous. Wrestling types have always been very finicky.

Truth.

I personally don't see how the two things are mutually exclusive. Who says an aw shucks everyman can't also be a huge mark for himself? Just like you said, he never really hid it.

This seems like a good thread to ask about something I am unclear on: What was the actual cause of death for Brian Pillman? And what, if any, is the discrepancy between what he actually died from and what has been reported/speculated over the years?

I'd say that the Val Venis gimmick hurt Morley as much as it helped him, as the gimmick ran its course rather quickly. After it did, WWE would try to push him under new gimmicks (RTC, Chief Morely, etc.) and when they didn't get over, he'd be right back to being Val Venis again within a few months. Morley was a talented wrestler who deserved a better run, but never rose past the midcard in part because of the Val Venis gimmick. It definitely did help him gain recognition faster than he might have otherwise, but it also doomed him to never get past a certain level. Val Venis was a rather shortlived gimmick, but why didn't anyone after Russo come up with anything better than generic RTC villain? Or Bischoff's assistant? I don't know if I would say that Val Venis doomed him, the fact that no one else in the company was creative enough to give him something he could pull off as well as he pulled off Val Venis is what doomed him. Issac Yankem and Fake Diesel were both horrible short lived gimmicks, but Glen Jacobs the performer must have impressed someone enough in working with those gimmicks that down the line they gave him the big push as Kane. It's unfortunate that there was never that next level gimmick change to push Morley over the top, but I can't fault Russo for that. I completely agree with this. In particular, when JBL debuted in 2004, I couldn't get past my own notion that Morely would have been better in the role. We had already established that he was a political zealot (Chief Morely) with a self-righteous sense of morality (RTC) and for the first several months, every time I saw JBL on screen doing these self-righteous, clearly Republican promos, I thought about how much better Morely would have played the part. Once I got used to Bradshaw in the role I still thought about the possibility of the powers that be eventually coming up with some breakout gimmick like that for Morely, but clearly it was not meant to be. I was always a really big fan of the guy's work though, and always felt he had it in him to do more.

What are some particularly bad things Patterson was responsible for?

Can I just say I think this is hilarious, sad and true.

Douglas wanted to bring in Pillman to wrestle him at November to Remember '97, but Heyman told him Brian wouldn't be alive by then, and he was right. Interesting. What's the source on this?

Freddy's Final Revenge?! Anyone know anything about this?

Wasn't Norton a hunting buddy of Bischoff's that he knew from his AWA days? That, I think, would explain the 800 k/per year more than anything.

Nah, they spend more than that every week on things we hardly even notice like pyro and rental cars. I thought about ways WWE wastes money while watching WrestleMania 26. How expensive is it to have jets flying over the WrestleMania stadium and taking over head camera shots, especially when it's barely even worth it. I mean its cool to have but if they didn't have them, no one would be sitting there going "Mania was a good show, but I wish they had a jet flying over head with an aerial cam." I thought about it again watching Monday's Raw when they utilized what had to be mighty expensive satellite time to show Cena, Orton and Sheamus via satellite... to basically say nothing. Its not like any of them had particularly strong, money promos they had to cut. They all did very generic plugs for the PPV that a talking head announcer could have just as easily said. To me it came off like a huge waste of cash. Is that some euphemism for wasting money or did Russo really have some reason for wanting to do this particular stunt multiple times? I have not heard this story.

Kamala was tentatively slated to wrestle Duggan at WM 3, as Duggan's very first TV promos are about Kamala, then one week he quickly shifts to talking about Iron Sheik. Meltzer mentioned Kamala/Duggan as a WM match in a pre-WM 3 archived WON someone posed. He also said something about Ventura allegedly wrestling on the show but clearly that didnt happen either.

Pretty sure he was just called "The King" to explain why such an old dude had a chance against Hogan and others..."King of Wrestling", in terms of him being a wrestling Grandmaster. If that makes sense. Actually no, Race won the KOTR tournament, beating Pedro Morales in the final. It was a non televised event in 1986. Not only did they acknowledge Race winning that tournament but they credit him with winning two other (presumably phantom) King of the Ring tournaments too. The exact quote is with Ventura and McMahon from a late 86 episode of Superstars, Ventura mentions Race winning "every" king of the ring tournament they've ever had and McMahon replies "well there were only three of them." Ventura wisely replies with "how many do you need?" This isn't true, as Muraco won the first one in '85, but, that's what they said.

I agree, Mimi was ridiculously hot. Here's the match in question, I believe. 1:30-1:50 or so is all you need to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z9ISVZyB14

Not to mention I know where I lived in the Raleigh-Durham NC market that the A-Team ran in a decent time slot (usually 4 PM) in syndication for YEARS- I'd say well into 1991 or '92. It's not like some show that was on a year or two and then never heard of again.

Interested - would like more info including full listings for #4. Thanks!

Does anyone else remember the week after this In Your House in the control center on Superstars they actually announced Jarrett vs. Roadie for Summerslam? I distinctly remember it but havent seen the episode in years.