sek69

The way I heard it was Anvil put his notice in (where was he going to go in 1990?) then changed his mind between the time of the taping and when the show was set to air.

This seems light years better than the inexplicably lame 10th anniversary DVD. From what I can tell, they've pretty much nailed all the major moments.

January Schedule: Jay Strongbow as the HOF'er? Isn't his claim to fame being the WWWF answer to Wahoo McDaniel? Other than that it seems like a solid month. I never thought I'd ever see "Black Saturday" on 24/7, so that's worth the price of admission. Also, there's a promotion running if you sign up for 24/7 before 1/15 you get the first 2 months free.

Right, because not being a great wrestler means you should be killed.

The rope broke during the second fall, but only on one side. The other three sides still had all the ropes, but the top rope was sagging. Between the second and third falls they replaced the ropes. It made the "official ruling" seem pretty weak in retrospect, but then since no one at the time saw the match it was a pretty unique way of getting around not acknowledging the title switch. It's also funny to hear the chatter in the ring since there's no commentary. Shawn calls spots loud as hell, and Anvil has a "GODDAMMIT! SONOFABITCH!" when the rope snaps. Ditto when Bret slides into the corner to do his trademark chest first bump to make sure he only hits the bottom two turnbuckles.

Speaking of Von Erichs and fucked up relationships with fathers, here's a tidbit from Lacey's Myspace page: Uh. Wow........was she raised by Kevin or is this just something in this family's DNA?

That was apparently his plan, but then Vince convinced him to stay.

www.thestar.com/Sports/article/288194 That link was in today's WON update and it's about an NHL enforcer who retired due to concussions and almost beat up his 4 year old daughter. Some more grist for the mill when it comes to the "do concussions make you attack your family" debate.

I knew from pics that Jimmy Garvin wears his hair short now, I wasn't expecting him to look like Bob Ryder. Those extras interviews are hardcore too. Between Gary Hart's tales of scaring some old couple shitless after a plane crash and Kevin's story of getting a hematoma and getting sent by Fritz to Japan to face some kickboxer dude despite being told another blow to the head could kill him while he's healing, there's some real fucked up moments.

You know, something just occurred to me. One of the main reasons given for why Montreal had to go down (from Vince/HBK/HHH's viewpoint) is that Bret wasn't doing business the right way by dropping the belt on the way out, or something along those lines. However, not even 6 months later, HBK was trying to weasel out of dropping the title on what what figured to be the last match he was supposed to have before leaving due to his injury. He knew he was on his way out, yet only "did business" under threat of an ass whooping from Taker.

It's really creepy how Kevin talks about his father like a wife speaking about an abusive husband. "Oh, he was just misunderstood, he was really a great father". Also, what the hell happened to Jimmy Garvin? Jesus.......... *edit* Man, Gary Hart may be the realest dude in wrestling. From telling Fritz to stick this job up his ass after getting stiffed to not being able to look at a picture of Gino because he wasn't able to save him, he seems to be the least BS guy on the DVD.

I don't get why Kobashi still has to do moonsaults at this point. I would think most fans are just happy he survived cancer, and would perhaps settle for a less than five star match just to be happy the dude's still alive. It seems like Austin was the only guy in wrestling who had a major injury and then adapted his style to do the most he could with as little strain on injured parts as possible. If he was just coming back for one or two matches just to be all "FUCK CANCER" and show the fans he's ok, it would be fine. I just get the feeling he's going to be the Japanese Shawn Michaels and do a full scale schedule until his knees explode in the ring and shower the first 5 rows like they were at a Gallagher concert.

Watching Nitro on the latest Monday Night War made me LOL @ how Jim Mitchell's baldness reversed after he left WCW.

Ironically enough, Kennedy's "gift" in the Shorties section of WWE 24/7 today was HBK-Austin from WM 14. Now maybe I'm used to the post-comeback Shawn, but my first thought was "Jesus, this is the most jacked I ever remember seeing him look" followed closely by "how in the fuck is he taking all these bumps?" Granted, he seemed to be in obvious pain from the middle of the match on, but he was doing stuff like the flip in the corner bump and flying over the top to the floor on multiple occasions. It's probably a pretty safe bet that he had some chemical assistance as well, but even with all that it was pretty crazy to see him doing all this with what was a career postponing injury.

The rules the commission want to put in place seem to be designed to unlawfully restrict the pro wrestling industry. WWE, for all intents and purposes, pretty much *is* the pro wrestling industry in the US. The argument could be made that Ichter is using his position on the commission to punish a company he's obviously planning to mount a large lawsuit against. Just the fact that he's been involved in pro wrestling related cases before and yet doesn't seem to want to hip the rest of the commission to the idea that it's all a work seems pretty suspect IMO.

Ichter is starting to look more and more like someone out to get WWE (which of course will only fuel their paranoia) instead of someone looking to make wrestling safer. Being on the commission and being a lawyer for the Benoit family is a ridiculous conflict that will only make WWE seem sympathetic.

Armageddon was pretty fun, I don't know how it translated on TV but the crowd was pretty hot for the whole show. There was a big fight in the crowd behind the announce tables during Finlay-Khali, and that was the only time the crowd wasn't really up for anything. I gotta say, Jericho still has it. He wasn't over at all when the match started but people were marking hard for him to win by the end. Also at the end of the women's match, Lilian got up to hand the belt to the ref, apparently got her boot caught on something, and took a header on the floor in front of the announce table. Don't know if anyone saw it on TV, but the mic was on and the whole arena heard the splat.

It's never been tested in terms of guys in their prime, but I think it's a safe assumption that someone skilled in one discipline (no matter how good they are at it) is probably going to be owned by someone who's skilled in many. Are other fighters as shook over MMA as boxers? Is there a hate building among amateur wrestlers or judoka over MMA fighters? I'd wager probably not, which is why a lot of the talk from boxers/promoters/writers comes off as whistling past the graveyard.

There's also stories of Yakuza guys being huge marks for heels, especially when New Japan was doing their nWo faction.

Wasn't the "Onita baits Invader I to Japan" angle a setup for a potential Yakuza hit? I've always found it such a uniquely Japanese thing that promotions always seem to like having Yakuza dudes attend their shows, but any actual involvement in a company is scandal of epic proportions.

My point was while Meltzer was wrong about this particular article, that doesn't mean there isn't a tinge of "MMA fans are all tatted up white trash dudes" in a lot of the articles written about MMA events. It's like MMA fans are the new pro wrestling fans in terms of stereotyping, and part of me wonders if that isn't deliberate so boxing dudes can be all "see, they take fans from wrestling, not us". Upon reading that article, it doesn't seem to be the fair piece you seem to think it is. I mean, they establish that UFC is really the only major game in town then infer they have paper champions because they don't fight non UFC guys. Then later he lists one of boxing's flaws is having multiple champions in the same weight class, which happens when you have 3 main sanctioning bodies (and scores of minor ones) that have title matches with the same pool of fighters. He is pretty honest going over boxing's faults and shortcomings, but then asserts that boxing would still be in the shape it's in even without MMA. I would argue that without MMA to give it some motivation, boxing might be worse off than it is now. The article also seems to smack of the sense of superiority that boxing in general seems to feel is warranted for no apparent reason. Rather than address the real problems of gross mismanagement and refusing to keep the product up with the times, boxing seems willing to just keep hoping people will just start watching boxing because their fathers/grandfathers did. The whole "it's boxing, of course people will watch it no matter what stiffs we throw out" mentality is what will turn the major sanctioning bodies into boxing's version of the current NWA.

Man, watching Maria intro her gift in the Shorties made me sad to see how far she's progressing to the typical hardened WWE diva look. You can almost see the life being sucked out.

This article may not say it, but I've definitely heard variations on the "MMA is for low class white people" bash in many other articles. A lot of them seem to think UFC is the same as fat, untrained dudes having a "Toughman" tourney at the local bar. Also it seems equally racist when the decline in boxing gets subtlety blamed on white people not wanting to watch negroes/hispanics fighting all the time. Hell it seems to me that the most devoted boxing fans are crusty old white dudes.

Oh man, the new NWA episode up has the promo from Ric Flair that was the bulk of the famous "I can't help it" Youtube clip from a while back. You just can't ask for anything more than that. *edit* I found a link to the clip here:

Well they almost caused riots with the false finishes they did with Hogan-Bockwinkel.