sek69

I'm pretty sure that Owen was winding down at the time of his accident, didn't Vince or someone in the company have to talk him into staying after the Montreal stuff? Between that and the political situation I don't see him getting a world title run.

Yeah I don't get how he thinks that it was such a slam dunk certain thing. It seems like he bases it on the idea that since the titles changed so frequently in the Russo era that he would have got it eventually, but even with all the frequent switches it was only really between a handful of guys (Rock, Austin, Foley, Taker) with guys like Kane occasionally as transition champs. Not to speak ill, but Owen was clearly pegged as midcard for life at the time of his accident. Even if there was a chance he would have been considered at any point, surely the influence of HBK and HHH would have made sure he would have never got above IC level at best.

I don't think there's a need for a debate either, I was just pointing out that Keith does not seem to see a connection between the use of steroids and the rash of injuries in WWE.

In response to someone sending a YouTube link to the Larry Z commercial for Morphoplex where he denounces steroid use: Once again all the time honored Scooter techniques are apparent: 1. Ignoring the obvious and believing John Cena is 100% clean and just a genetic freak (who happens to get the same kind of muscle tears as users of products that artificially inflate muscles). 2. Missing the forest for the trees by stating injuries are a bigger problem in wrestling than steroids. Yes, guys get hurt on bumps and falling off ladders and what have you, but most of the main eventers that have missed significant time did so because of muscle tears that are a almost always a sign of some kind of muscle enhancement. 3. He could defend it as a generic term rather than a specific name, but continually referring to "steroids" confuses the issue since most users in tested sports stopped using actual steroids in the late 80s/early 90s/whenever their sport started getting really good at testing. Most big name users switched to growth hormone, which is why no one gets caught failing for actual enhancers in baseball and why there's so many heart failure deaths in wrestling. It's also why most wrestlers can honestly say they don't do actual steroids, they just have more hormones in their medicine cabinet than a person going through gender reassignment. 4. Dismissive smarter-than-the-room comment at the the end, as if it was a waste of his time to even respond to the guy.

..... .... ..... .... ENDEAVORED...........

When people literally wait to see what Meltzer/Scooter/jdw/whoever their hero is say on something before they offer any insight, it's a problem. You're basically a parrot with no views of your own.

Not to mention the aura of 6/3/94 spread back in the days when very few people had access to Japanese wrestling, and by the time it became widely available it was already a decided fact that it is the greatest match of all time and to disagree meant you were a moron who doesn't know what you're talking about. I'm not saying it's not a good match btw, I just peg it as the start of the "people on the net base their opinions on what others say" trend.

90% of the people who trumpet 6/3/94 as the day the Lord himself smiled upon the wrestling world have no idea why they think that way other than someone told them it was a Momentous Event for wrestling. That match is nothing more than "perfectly acceptable wrestling" ( to quote a Scooter-ism) unless you understand the context of why these guys are facing each other and why it's a big deal. I think because of that lack of context, it created the mindset that straight wrestling is the end-all instead of making money. Despite the fact that there's no evidence whatsoever that classic wrestling draws money in the US, there's still people today who demand WWE go to a straight 70s wrestling style since that's the style that they are convinced will bring wrestling to the top of the ladder. Of course when ROH did that, there was much outrage, but that's smarks for you.

I only semi-follow lucha (and hardly at all now that Comcast no longer has CMLL on demand), but I just figured that the Villano-Panther match was kind of like he lucha version of something like HBK-Taker. Two guys who were really good (and are still pretty good for old dudes) putting on a great show that people like because it reminds them of when they were younger and could really rock the house.

Huh? Vince got next to nothing in return for the time he put into the Rock? How do you figure that? The moment it became evident that Rock had a future in movies he really never looked back. Sure, we got his brief (and great) run as the heel Hollywood Rock with the obnoxiously awesome overlong entrance music, but you know Vince would like to have billing on all his movies since he "created" the Rock. Remember he tried to pull rank and said he wouldn't be able to use the "Rock" name without his permission since WWE owned it? It seemed like he honestly thought that the whole reason people saw his movies was because he was that guy from wrestling, not that he has natural comic timing and boatloads of charisma. I'm not saying Vince didn't get anything in return for Rock as a wrestler, just that he seemed to think Rock was his key to get mainstream Hollywood acceptance and on that note he came up quite short.

So I'm on vacation in Panama City Beach, and the drive down here took us through Atlanta. I was hoping to see an exit for Badstreet, but no dice. I hear it might be the baddest street in the whole USA.

When you're in a career for a short time in the interest of finding yourself a better gig, you always end up pissing off the people who have devoted their lives to the company/profession/whatever. Hell, I ran into it on a smaller scale when I worked in retail and made it clear I was just doing it to pay bills until I finished school and didn't consider it my lifelong career. The store manager was the textbook definition of a lifer and I never will forget when he told me I had to get my priorities in order when I asked for less hours in order to accommodate my school schedule. The look of shock mixed with personal insult when I replied that I already did have them in order was priceless. It literally never occurred to him that anyone would put something as a higher priority than the store. Even better, just like the Rock I would sometimes return to say hi to my ex co-workers and the bosses would make half-joking attempts to get me to come back. Apparently they couldn't understand that someone could get a more satisfying (and better paying) job than retail and assumed anyone would jump at the chance to return. What must be killing Vince is that he got Rock the gig that sprung his movie career and ended up getting next to nothing in return. He's even spent millions in a film division trying to prove he could turn anyone into a movie star and it's failed spectacularly.

I honestly think it's the cage that gets people thinking negatively. You've got over 100 years of what most people considered combat sports (boxing and wrestling) taking place in a ring, and most people's only exposure to cages would be in the wrestling context where it gets hyped as the most violent thing in history. It really does look like human cockfighting if it's you're initial experience watching it. It's one of those no win situations I guess. Either you have matches in a cage and have all the violent negative connotations, or have them in a ring and have people think it's just another fake thing like wrestling.

I love how this story is forcing a lot of people to either admit Vince is actually dead-to-rights correct about something, or come up with some mental gymnastics to come up with a reason he's not.

I was never a big fan of Solie, but I realize that by the time I started watching he was half in the bag most of the time.

That reminds me, what's creepier: people who fetishize women wrestling or the people who relentlessly bash it to the point you wonder if they have some IRL issues with women? I mean, it's not breaking new ground to say women's wrestling isn't as good as men's, or that the women are hired primarily for looks and/or potential stroke material for Vince. You have to keep it in perspective I think. Women wrestling now is light years better than the 80s Moolah era atrocities. Watch a WWF show from the late 70s/early 80s and see how the typical hairpull contest between two Moolah students make any diva match on next week's Raw look like Joe vs Kobashi.

If the Western game starts at 10:30, then the network loses all the ad revenue from the east coast of the country that will go to bed before the game ends. This isn't an NBA issue, it's all about getting the maximum TV revenues possible and starting games after 10pm EST is the opposite of that.

I can see this to a degree, sometimes there's a TV show or PPV where the crowd is just blah no matter what the guys (or girls) do, but a lot of the times the wrestlers make it worse on themselves by not trying to engage the crowd more when they sense people are getting bored. That's why John Cena is really good at professional wrestling no matter what the net nerds say about his "workrate", very seldom does the crowd not care when he makes an appearance.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/19493120/detail.html This whole situation is awesome since it gives Vince a free pass to be a big a dick as he wants since he's pretty much indisputably in the right here.

His posts on his site come off like the dude on the street corner raving against whatever evils he thinks are being committed, it doesn't give me any faith his book is going to be any more coherent. Also: The book didn't seem to sell as well as he expected it to, so it must have been the fault of the Bookstore Mafia holding him down rather than people just not being interested in his book.

Not to mention it seems that at some point the wrestler ends up exactly like the character they portray (if they didn't already start out that way) all in the interest convincing people of the "realness" of it all.

It's really sad to see how far Irv has gone off the rails with this book stuff. At this point, he probably has his walls covered with Benoit related photos and newspaper clippings like Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory.

Allegedly Virgil got hired by whipping his junk out on Patterson's desk, which seems like the typical exaggerated stories pro wrestlers tell. The other part was that he was given his minor babyface push after turning on DiBiase because he allowed favors to be performed. The Hankins story could be dismissed as drunken bar posturing, but it seems odd that Pat's drunk posturing seems to match other stories/rumors/legends floating around. Unless of course Pat knew that and was just (figuratively) screwing with this guy hitting him up for work in a bar. Dave seems pretty sure about the off-the-record stories he keeps referring to in these 1992 Observers. In fact, it seems in retrospect that he was intentionally trying to not mention Patterson until the story broke nationwide.

True, but his allegations prompted several others to make similar claims. Surely they can't be dismissed as full of shit because Hodgson was. I think I have to agree somewhat with sek here. We all know the reason why the Brooklyn Brawler was employed by the WWF for so long, Sylvan Grenier too. So the chances are a few of the allegations about Patterson may have been true. The difference is Terry Garvin and Mel Phillips targeted the young ring boys, while Patterson went after the jobbers, all of whom were of age. Yeah I do believe that Pat was unfairly roped in with the pedophiles because he was gay, which is something I'd like to think even pro wrestling has evolved past at this point. Also when talking of Patterson stories, the one about how Virgil got hired was the first one that popped to mind. I also think that he's the guy Meltzer keeps talking about in these issues when he keeps mentioning a guy on the roster getting a (midcard) push beyond his abilities just because of his willingness to do favors.

True, but his allegations prompted several others to make similar claims. Surely they can't be dismissed as full of shit because Hodgson was.