sek69

So I watched Starrcade 85 last night after the Dusty special on the Network, and man is that the most Dusty Rhodes show ever. Blood in almost every match, tons of cage matches, and a (delayed) Dusty Finish in the main event. And it was great.

I don't get the Titus hate, he has great charisma and even though he's not the greatest in ring worker, he's not like a male version of Tamina out there.

Well Mero was the one trotted out on every news show post-Benoit who wasn't carrying water for WWE so I'm sure that's seen as a betrayal.

Weren't Hall and Nash the first ones to have "favored nations" contracts making sure they'd always be the highest paid guys?

I'm sure there was some exaggeration since A: It was Dusty and B: literally everyone makes shit up to some degree in shoot interviews, but I do recall Baba not being happy and Dusty booking himself those quickie NWA title reigns. The two theories I heard the most was either it was a case of Baba not getting why Dusty was popular and thinking it was just some random fat guy making himself champion or that he felt that it was devaluing the world title to have it traded like that (since that still mattered in 1986).

Every field has that to a degree though, lifers who get pissed not everyone is devoted to the cause as they are. I had a supervisor get offended when I worked in retail because I wanted to cut my hours back to accommodate my college schedule. "You need to decide which is more important" he said, and he didn't like it when I said considering I was asking to cut back on hours I already answered that question. It seems more ridiculous in wrestling when you consider very few people, motivated or not, will have the chance to be a "lifer" in the business considering the injury/politics cocktail that seems to torpedo so many careers.

WWE's methods haven't helped either. Someone mentioned that there's basically a lost generation of guys who never were even considered because they had that phase during the Big Johnny era where you had to be 6'2 250 pounds to even be noticed. Things got a little better thanks to the ROH guys who got over and changed perceptions somewhat, but then now you have the new Tough Enough where they stocked up with fitness models and bodybuilder types. Most of those kind of folks don't really have what you would call passion for wrestling, there's not much motivation for them to improve, but hey as long as they look pretty on TV that's all it seems to take to make Vince happy.

JCP 85-86 is right up there, say what you will about Dusty booking but there were strong angles up and down the card.

One of the people commenting on Deadspin's story just said "he was so pro wrestling", That just seemed like the perfect description. If professional wrestling as a whole was able to take human form, it would be Dusty Rhodes.

Just saw Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeting condolences, which is kind of mind blowing to see someone of that magnitude in their field. mention anything about pro wrestling. Of course he would have watched him growing up in North Carolina, but it was still amazing to see how many people Dusty had an impact on.

Loss mentioned it on Twitter, and I agree, that him hugging Magnum in his first appearance post-accident is one of the most emotional moments in wrestling,

Dusty is literally the reason I'm a wrestling fan today. My grandparents would spend winters in Florida, and my grandfather started watching JCP on TBS because he was a fan of Dusty from watching wrestling down there. I watched shows with him and he instantly became my favorite just based on his promos since he didn't really wrestle alot on TV at the time. Everyone loves the Hard Times promo, and it struck an extra chord with me since my dad was a steelworker and that promo was basically what happened to him at his job after he spent 36 years there, I can't imagine anyone who's had a bigger impact for a longer period of time than him, he's done pretty much every role you can do in the business and the list of people he's worked with and/or helped is like a who's who of professional wrestling.

Nothing's stopping them, but apparently WWE is worried that having another company producing figures of a guy they clearly have big plans for will piss off Mattel. Not sure when Mattel became this massive entity that must be placated at all times, but there they are.

WWE was mad ROH signed a five year deal with Figures Toy Company to make a Kevin Steen figure. WWE was worried it would piss off Mattel (who apparently is their most important sponsor) so the idea seems to be to steer potential talent away from ROH to Evolve to be their AA ball league like how NXT is their AAA ball league. So basically ROH might have royally boned themselves with this action figure deal if this scares away any future talent with WWE dreams.

The B&V(&C on Tuesdays) shows do wacky things like talk to Bryan's granny and have listeners create songs using drops from the show. Most of them usually are pretty funny, from listening to the show pre-edit, it seemed like they were afraid of the submissions going over the line so they pre-emptively pulled the plug. The way it was worded on the site made the show itself seem racist which wasn't the case.

LOL, the Tuesday Bryan & Vinny & Craig show originally started off with Craig saying the next song contest would be about Bryan's love of black women wrestlers until apparently people on the board said it was racist and the show was uploaded with an obviously added on intro and the whole opening segment dumped like a raunchy terrestrial radio bit. The funny thing was the whole bit was set up as a jab on Bryan's unexplained fandom of Naomi and how he's always saying she should win the Divas belt, and by the disclaimer that was posted on the show link you'd think there was a string of N-bombs that had to be edited out.

It's so odd that Springer has such little charisma here, considering his show is basically pro wrestling with non athletic people. I used to watch his show late at night during summer breaks from school and he was usually entertaining.

Has there ever been a more opposite display of likability between a real person and a character than John Cena? IRL Cena seems like a pretty great dude who devotes tons of time to charity without wanting any attention. TV character John Cena is becoming a pompous douchebag who has to constantly tell everyone how great he's been like the guy who's still talking about his high school football career at the 20th reunion. With anyone else i would think they were setting up a heel turn, but instead they keep trotting out this guy who despite their best efforts is still The Man at the moment and make him more and more unlikable.

I'm not the expert khawk is, but from what I've seen it seems like a little of both. They were running circles around their peers and their style was just so different for the time.

It's being mentioned how TNA is all about doing the full court press with social media pushing angles and whatnot, yet Mickie James was on twitter apparently fine after being seemingly killed by James Storm on Impact this week.

One bonus to the daily WOL shows is they've started to use the number from his syndicator as well as the WON number. That one does have a screener so it helps. Someone asked Bryan why he doesn't invest in one for his own number, and his excuse was something about how he doesn't feel he needs to have one. Then after tons of complaints about how it's a negative impression on the show having the calls being dominated by creepy women's wrestling fetishists he started caring about call quality.

The opening 20 minute promo of doom seems to be a vestigial holdover from the Monday Night Wars when they would be afraid people would change over to Nitro. Now it just seems like they're stuck in This Is How We Do Things mode, despite no one outside of the writers' room being a fan of it.

NXT is great largely because it's a one hour show like you had in the territory days with modern production. Like others have stated, it's one thing to only have to worry about 4 hours of TV a month plus a two hour special 3 or 4 times a year. WWE has 7 hours of TV a week (Raw/SD/Superstars/Main Event) plus a PPV every month. I agree the thing that will determine how the HHH Era ends up will be who he surrounds himself with. One of Vince's most glaring weaknesses is being surrounded with yes men who only end up further cementing him in his bubble. Unfortunately being the guy in charge usually means not too many people are willing to tell you things you may not want to hear.

I understand why they did it, and it was actually pulled off pretty well with the post match angle, but man there's nothing that creates a visceral feeling of "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this company" quite like a Dusty Finish. To be fair, it could be due to PTSD from growing up a Crockett fan, but there's something about a finish that gives the crowd what they are clamoring for only to pull the rug out from them just seem like a slap in the face. It just seems like a bad business move to even suggest to your customers they might get screwed over.

Regal just announced on NXT the July 4th Tokyo show will air live on the WWE Network and Brock will be there.