sek69

Let's not forget the WWE tries very hard to appear non-partisan with things like Smackdown Your Vote, so Joey doing a AM talk show gimmick probably caused some worry that their cover would be blown.

Taker was mentioned earlier in the thread, and that made me remember how it went fairly unmentioned that he suddenly got cut as hell when he was in line to get a big title run. Suddenly every week he was taking the straps down like Jerry Lawler circa 1977 and looking like the most questionably buff 40-something since Barry Bonds.

That "offhand remark" was one of the hosts saying he'd beat his son with a shoe if he turned out to be transgendered as well as referring to said people as "idiots" and "freaks". Also that transgendered kids can be cured by either beatings or shock therapy. So yeah, sometimes advertiser pressure is what it takes to make people not act like mentally challenged inbreds. Just like in this case, WWE (even as conservative as the upper echelon tend to be) realized it's not good business to have an employee taking fringe talking point stands on a public forum with WWE's name all over it.

So don't you internet guys feel bad now? He's not a fatass, he was just slowly dying for YOU THE FANS until his innards spilled through his abdominal wall.

The more telling thing, regardless of how it ended up playing out, is that WWE thought referencing MJ would make anyone hip.

The thing about wrestling that makes it different is that the heels are supposed to provoke the crowd, so it's not surprising that sometimes that causes some people to try to run in the ring. My favorite two examples are the guy who tried to climb the cage in that Savage-DiBiase match and security (and Virgil) had to pull the guy off. I've been watching DiBiase matches on 24/7 and he gets amazing heel heat by just standing in the ring. I can see how the idea of him winning the title could drive someone who's already worked up to try to take matters into their own hands. The other example is when the nWo first formed after Hogan turned heel. That one fan made it in the ring and had to be subdued by (I think) Nash until security could take the guy away. That tended to happen a lot in WCW where fans would make it into the ring and either the wrestlers or the refs had to stop the guy until someone could get him. I'm surprised no one in WCW ever got hurt by a fan considering seemingly anyone could run into the ring for a good amount of time before anyone would stop them.

This tends to fly under the radar for the most part. They cut a bunch of guys they admittedly weren't using but don't pay a lot, then turn around and give all the executives fat raises. It's the age old business rule I guess, when there are expenses to cut always start with labor.

I know that's the normal reaction to a WWE injury (and more often than not I'd wager probably correct) but all accounts seem to have this just being a freak thing where he landed wrong and rolled his ankle, causing the tear. Not to mention Edge has been pretty lean in the Post-Wellness World so I wouldn't expect this to be enhancement related.

This was mentioned in the "Comments that don't deserve a thread" thread but I think it kind of does due to the potential ramifications. Edge was injured at a house show last night, possibly a torn Achilles tendon. WWE is looking at ways to get the tag belts on Rhodes and DiBiase, and this derails what looks like could have been a great heel combo with him and Jericho.

Most of TNA's big contracts are subsidized by Spike TV so I don't think they take that big of a hit financially. Biggest waste of money contract wise would be the 10 year deals the WWF gave to guys like Mark Henry and Big Show. Not in the smark "OMG FAT GUYZ SUX0R" way, but how there was never going to be an opportunity to make money off those deals.

Wasn't this originally supposed to be basically a Turner vs McMahon DVD and when Ted (not surprisingly) said no we ended up with this? I mean, if this set is covering Georgia Championship Wrestling it's hardly a WCW collection.

OK, that's odd. They have the show up right now where Rude and Fernandez won the belts and it is in fact the old style. What's up with that? They introduced the new belts weeks ago and now suddenly they switched back to the old ones. It's nice to know I'm not hallucinating my childhood recollections, but did they lose the new belts somewhere or what?

It must be one of those mis-mashed childhood memories, but I could have sworn that when Rick Rude and Manny Fernandez held the NWA tag titles the belts were still the late 70s-early 80s style. Watching the shows again on WWE 24/7 revealed that they already changed to the more familiar belt style during the Rock n Roll's run right before.

Also there was a particularly lol-some blurb in the WON about how most of the guys didn't like how Vickie was treated on her way out but weren't upset enough to risk saying something and/or getting fired over it.

I wonder if the top guy rumored to have failed a test was Kane. It seems like his recent vacation was just long enough to be a cover for a Wellness violation. I'd have to think one of the "top guys with exemptions" would have to be Batista. No way a guy his age can keep the physique he has in a post-Wellness world without some kind of get out of jail free card.

My first thought was that he looks like a hybrid of Nigel McGuiness and James Hetfield.

Obviously Bix hasn't met too many Irish people

Didn't Stacy claim at one point she got fired after her and Chyna had a falling out and Chyna went to management?

It's a sad commentary on WWE booking when giving someone some offense before decisively beating them is considered an improvement. What bothers me about it, is this could have been Cena's chance to do what the Rock was known for and give a up and coming guy the rub. No to say Miz should have went over clean in the middle of the ring, but WWE seems to have completely forgotten how to use their top stars to get guys over without having the top guy do a clean job or make the up and coming guy look like a bitch.

Gonna need the story on this. When the company wanted to hire Zach Gowen, apparently there were two one legged wrestlers in the indies at that time. Our boy John hired the wrong one at first. I'm sure that had to be an awkward conversation: "my bad, we were looking for the other one-leg guy".

Edge and Jericho have the potential to be great as guys with the asshole-meter pegged to the max, but it seems that instead we're getting yet another version of that Russo staple "tag team partners who don't like each other". Also (and I really didn't expect it to be any other way) I was disheartened by the complete jobbing of the Miz at the ppv. They had a chance to build up a guy so maybe one day they don't have to have the same 4 people in every main event, but I guess it was more important to punish a guy for getting himself more over than he was supposed to.

Hiring random blonde bimbos to be Divas who end up getting fired because they don't know who Steph is.

I don't know about complain, but he did make comments about how Angle shouldn't be wrestling anywhere with his drug and injury issues when he started with TNA. Also during the times where Impact was the Kurt and Karen Show, he'd make comments on how it wasn't a good idea to spend so much time on them which can be taken a number of ways. Of course when talking about TNA it's easy to bash the usual suspects like Russo and their "avenging their high school traumas" booking style, but a large part of why TNA isn't any better than it is has to be due to the fact that not only are so many of their main eventers ex WWE/WCW guys, they're almost all old and/or broken down. Nash, Sting, Steiner, Angle, Foley. The only guy who isn't a complete wreck is Booker. The rest of them get mentioned in the WON, it's usually with some remark about them not being able to cut it anymore. Foley gets mentioned and it's more "well it's TNA, what can you do". Honestly I don't give a shit either way who Dave bashes and doesn't. I just threw it out there as an example that what Bix was talking about with him and Tenay is hardly the only example.

If Foley had quit WWE and gone away, or wrote books, or anything else then that would be it and it's his right to quit, etc. Once he went to TNA was was basically pushed as a main event guy from the start, that's when Dave would have said something had it been anyone else. That's one thing Dave has always been consistent on, no matter if it was Dusty in the late 80s JCP, the Big Four AJ guys still carrying on in the 2000s, or guys like Nash and Angle in TNA. It's always been something that grinds his gears when an old broken down guy gets (or stays) at the top of a promotion when it's clear he really shouldn't be anymore. Especially when one of his go-to TNA criticisms is their over reliance on ex WWE guys at the expense of their homegrown talent. As far as ROH goes, yes that is his favorite style, but most of Dave's raves on ROH were sight unseen and almost entirely based on what Gabe was telling him (with the rest being his opinion on guys like Joe and Daniels that he would have seen working in CA). ROH was almost exclusively an east cost fed and I don't think Dave was catching many cross country red-eyes just to watch an indy show. Like I said, it was a brilliant move by Gabe. He knew they shared a fan base and that the type of wrestling was right in Dave's wheelhouse, so he sent him show reviews that were basically press releases that Dave would print in the WON verbatim. Notice how once ROH was on PPV and TV and Dave was actually able to watch shows on a somewhat regular basis, a lot of his enthusiasm has worn off.

Dave was absolutely in the tank for ROH when Gabe was booking. Actually it was more Gabe being smart enough to realize most of the ROH fanbase would be WON readers or at least be aware of its existence, and using that to his advantage. It was also the first time I realized that Dave has a tendency to turn a blind eye to things involving his sources. Also him not really getting on Foley for being nearly as blatant about going to TNA for a pure paycheck grab as Kevin Nash. I don't know if Foley's a source per se, but he's definitely a Friend of Dave, and as such his TNA run (including another rehash of the tired commissioner role and a run with the promotion's top belt) has largely escaped the wrath most over the hill wrestlers using a promotion to masturbate with would be getting. In fact, I can't imagine anyone else getting a pass on the "quits a cushy announcer gig in WWE because Vince is a meanie" deal either. In fact, in his rush to justify Foley quitting rather than put up with it had the unintended consequence of making Foley look like a giant pussy who couldn't handle the same stuff guys like JR and Michael Cole deal with all the time. Besides, there really aren't any "other sites" when it comes to wrestling anymore. There's the WON, the Torch, and pretty much everyone else just cut-and-pastes from one of them.