sek69

Well now Vince's "OMG MEDIA OUT TO GET US" paranoia is somewhat justified. I can't wait for the 20 minute rant on RAW this week that you just know is coming.

TNA has its own viral marketing site now at http://www.11t11n07a.com/. When you put the puzzle together, you see a photo of Sting along with the words "genesis" and "November 11", along with what appears to be "Huffman" (Booker T's SHOOTNAME~!) written backwards.

The list Al posted was pretty long & suggested that porn had (has?) as big, if not bigger, problem with AIDS than wrestling does with drugs. I've seen as much porn as the next guy, but I think watching porn is a really selfish thing. Perhaps watching wrestling is too, but I think it's sleazy how every day there's hawkers in Tokyo trying to hustle girls into adult video on the promise of a gucci handbag or some shit, and I think it's stupid that some girls are dumb enough to go for it. And when these girls end up pretending to be schoolgirls abducted and raped by homeless guys or some shit, that's sleazy. And this idea that porn stars don't get psychological problems from doing porn is stupid. There was an expose on the porn industry by a British documentary filmmaker a few years back, and if you wanna see a guy who's ready to snap there was one straight guy doing gay for pay who was really hanging on by a thread. I'll just respond to these in order.... Point 1: The list Al posted dated back to the late 70s, early 80s. Do you REALLY think a similar list involving wrestlers wouldn't be at least 2-3x as long? Point 2: Japanese porn is kind of on a different scale. The whole culture is so repressed sexually that it's bound to boil over into weird shit like tentacle rape hentai and simulated rape porn. What else would you expect from a place that pixelates the genitalia in regular porn? Also how many dudes are roped into indy wrestling on the hopes of being in the WWE some day only ending up having to blow some scummy indy promoter who's only in the business just to have a steady supply of available young boys? Point 3: I don't think anyone's trying to argue that porn is some happy land of sunshine and bunny rabbits. HOWEVER, the mainstream porn business is run in a better manner in regards to treatment of employees than mainstream pro wrestling is. Yes, you can find some scummy internet porn dealer getting fresh faced farm girls hooked on crack to make them to degrading things, but you also have guys destroying their bodies on indy wrestling shows for practially no money in front of 50 people max. You have to stick with apples-to-apples comparisons here.

Man, I'm starting to thing half the people in this thread have never even watched a porn movie. The vibe of "porn is icky cause people have SEX" is equally hilarious and disturbing. Are ya'll serious in your apparent belief that the porn industry is one long train of rape and horror? The God's honest truth is that the wrestling business has a far larger trail of broken, damaged, or dead bodies. Look, porn and wrestling are both a zillion times more fucked up than your usual 9 to 5 job, but in porn the performers aren't brainwashed zombies who go around believing they're really the character they played in their last movie and encouraging their children to enter the business. In both, there's people who go in wide-eyed expecting to be superstars and end up drug addicts, but there's more of a sense of "we need to keep this shit from getting out of control" mindset in porn than in wrestling.

Mistico not being allowed time off despite being broken in a million pieces says hello. Also all the stories of training in the New Japan dojo and the extent of what the new trainees' job fully entails.

You could make the same comparison with WWE and various indy groups in the US and other countries. Some have "fetishes" of their own, if you weeeeell. I'm just saying that there's a lot of kneejerk reaction because porn = sex and a lot of people have hangups about anything sexual. Porn as an industry is probably a more healthy profession to break into than pro wrestling, not that's setting the bar especially high or anything.

Well Ric Flair runs around on airplanes with his dick waving around under his robe, so YMMV if that's better or worse.

There's a lot of people who don't really know the porn business posting in this thread. Honestly when you compare the two, the only thing where porn doesn't come out ahead is that it may be the one thing that has a lower public perception than pro wrestling. In terms of actual sleaze factor, you'd never hear the kind of stories about porn stars that you hear about wrestlers. Also, most of porn's big stars end up running their own companies and are comfortably well off, while most of wrestling's big stars end up offering handjobs for crack outside of state fairs.

Porn doesn't tend to have generations of the same family involved in the business. How many professions outside of wrestling can you have someone have more than one family member die due to conditions that exist only in wrestling and still want to take part in it? Who's the porn version of Harry Smith, someone who's father (allegedly) drugged and raped their mother and ended up dying from the effects of long term drug abuse, then end up suspended for abusing the same drugs?

Well one thing you can say is the porn business (for the most part) doesn't have any pretense of what it is. Wrestling, especially WWE strives to be seen as something bigger than it is, when porn pretty much knows people just need something to crank it to on a lonely night. Not to mention the porn business does a lot better taking care of its performers than wrestling does. Then again, you can say both require performance enhancers to advance. The percentage of male porn stars using Viagra is at least equal to the amount of pro wrestlers on the gas.

Race was in the WWF by the summer, so there wasn't much time to do anything. A Race-TA feud would certainly have been awesome.

.......and much like Hogan, Bruno was stuck facing some real loads but was able to have some good-great matches when the other guy was able to carry his part of the deal.

Holy shit, Kerry is just completely drugged out in the newest WCCW episode. Like so coked I can just imagine Mike watching it on TV and being all "man, you're pretty fucked up there bro".

I know it's been mentioned in passing in a few WONs, but I'm really starting to wonder with all the Hornswoggle stuff if the whole "little people are either all children or retarded" bit is yet another level of Vince weirdness. Like does he go around for real thinking all midgets are kids who don't grow up?

November schedule (the Shorties this month are guys who used to play football):

I don't think he's too bad considering how much he spent in a Russian MMA fighter gimmick in OVW before getting a character that was probably thought up on the plane ride to Italy.

I would imagine it was Vince and his fear of sounding rural, since most people in the US associate "Birmingham" with Alabama rather than England.

The angle with Larry Z and the roll of quarters was pretty entertaining if we're going for AWA stuff.

Anything from the Billy/Fabi/Gran Apache feud maybe? I don't know if the focus is more on old school stuff but I know there's a lot of folks who'd like to see some of that (like me ). For more old school stuff, how about some Southwest stuff with Tully and Gino? More people need to see what surely inspired a young Mr. Hickenbottom.

You would think that the same arguments people made when Kurt Angle was talking about MMA would apply to Brock. In theory he'd have one of the strongest ground games around, but any good MMA fighter is going to see him going for a takedown and punt his head into the third row. I'm not saying he can't become good, but he's spent his whole life training in one segment of the skill set needed for MMA. The odds seem against him when he's up against dudes who're equally skilled in wrestling, boxing, and ju-jitsu.

There was a Superstars of Wrestling in Australia, but what happened to the WWF show is while Vince was taking over the world he forgot to actually trademark the "Superstars of Wrestling" name. It's actually copyrighted by a guy who owns or owned an indy fed in the Midwest. He ended up getting royalties from Vince and since he'd be entitled to more with DVDs and 24/7 it gets the blur-o-vision treatment. *edit* Upon checking the Trademark Office website, the WWF did actually copyright the phrase but let it expire on September 11, 1987 (NEVAR FORGET!)

It's on there, according to the liner notes, making the total 29 matches. It's not listed in the chapter menus, is it an easter egg? Really?! It's listed for me, both in the notes and the chapters menu on Disc 3. (I also looked around, but couldn't find any easter eggs, which seems common for these types of WWE sets that are a 3-disc main program.) It goes right after the Judgment Day '05 match (Rey introduces it as one of his favourite matches with Eddie) and it's followed by the Eddie Tribute match with Michaels. My bad, with all the quoting I thought you were talking about the JBL retirement match. Also, I got the set from Netflix and the disc sleeves reference Chris Benoit as one of Rey's opponents. Thought that was kind of hilarious considering the current situation. Speaking of Benoit, the mention of him that's left uncensored reminds me of what they're doing on 24/7. It seems that they're deliberately allowing a few mentions to slip by just to gauge the reaction. I bet if there's no uproar, he'll be allowed to be acknowledged within 6 months.

They can't, since they lost a lawsuit over the rights to the "SuperStars of Wrestling" name. Notice when you see 80s WWF TV matches on 24/7 the Superstars banner is blurred out.

Not that they weren't awesome, but most weeks the competition was a hot Iron Mike Sharpe vs Masked Destroyer #75 match. Then again, Prime Time was pretty much the only place you'd see someone like Lanny Poffo or Steve Lombardi actually win a match.

Also......... It's on there, according to the liner notes, making the total 29 matches. It's not listed in the chapter menus, is it an easter egg?