tomk

eh.. It was a different time then, a much more top heavy WWE with fewer real spots. Ban Neely was a Midwest indy guy who had a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as Claudio. At the time he got a Bam Neely push, not an Antonio Cesaro one. Chris Benoit killed his family which led to the WWE needing to put drug free jr heavyweight in a more prominent role (where he didn't fail)...and that kind of opened "maybe what these indy guys can do will translate to big stage" doors. Benoit killing his family wasn't going to lead to a bigger push for a heavy drinking Samoan small heavyweight. For a guy legit over 230, I don't see any reason to believe that Joe would have been booked better than Brad Allen, Bam Neely, James Curtis or Braden Walker. He probably would have been more effective at carrying Ricky Ortiz...but so what? So acute toxicity is less crippling and stupid than drop kick to concrete stairs? Multiple HHH reckless chairshots to head in handicapped match, more or less crippling and dangerous? I hardly watch anyone wrestle in TNA. But memory is people liked him last year in sprint tag match opposite Akiyama/Saito with the endless series of Magnus elbowdrops , and I've enjoyed his other indy stuff in UWF , N.EW, etc. I'm curious why this question always comes up with Joe and never AJ Styles who turned down a developmental contract for TNA.

Cause that good wrestling money will keep ex-football players from going broke

Yeah that's kind of what I was picturing too.

I think jdw's Supremes idea is the best. But I keep on expecting them to be "elevated" by being made henchmen to someone else (maybe Jericho, Orton, maybe HHH heel turn) and then being thought to be a failure in that "higher" position.

This isn't about Ross meeting with the NFL about funneling players into the WWE. The story (as reported) is that Ross is meeting with the NFLPA about funneling members into the WWE. That seems completely insane. Does anyone believe that the WWE is interested in recruiting future wrestlers by working through a union who are as knowledgeable about collective contract bargaining and advocating for its members as the NFLPA? The WWE may want to do something with football players but negotiating contracts through a union doesn't seem like one of them.

This was shared mostly since WildPegasus has written in the past about the symbolism in boots and well Chris Benoit wore scarlet boots with white laces in Stampede, blue with white laces in New Japan and black boots with white laces in the U.S.A.

So a week ago or so I read this list of different types of prostitutes in Weimar Berlin and it has made it almost impossible for me to watch pro-wrestling. To celebrate the return of Resident Evil I post the types of dominatrices here: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/32/gordon.php

Kid Romeo had a WCWSN series with Allan Funk and I want to say a SN match with Tommy Rogers before he started working rest of the Powerplanters (Noble, Elix Skipper, Mike Sanders, Reno, etc). He ended up going to NJ ( I want to say worked with Usuda, Shibetta and Dr Wagner and teamed with Tanahashi) and then came back to WCW when they ran the cruiserweight tag tourney.

In theory they would have also matched up nicely with the Southern Rockers and Destruction Crew if they were in the WWF 93-95. That said are there any memorable good Southern Rockers, Destruction Crew, Bodydonnas or New Rockers matches? I don't think people think of those teams as ones that got over successfully. Not sure why one would think that Furnas/Lafon would have been more successful if they were working as foils to Bodydonnas, and NEw Rockers or Southern Rockers, Destruction Crew than they were opposite New Rockers, Bulldog/Owen.

Was just happy to see that fire extinguisher.

1) Esquire Interview with Breastaurant Hostess Nicole Bass (not that one): http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/...-chains-5999331 2) "Out of this world" is superior to "Small Wonder" 3) Of all the complaints to make about Babinsack, "he slightly objectifies the Shimmer women in his DVD reviews (which are really dated)" seems like a really weak complaint.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00jpw7j The BBC aired Hulk Hogan's thoughts on the UK riots.

As an evangelist of true and good wrestling, I don't worry too much about the great mass of people who will be damned to never see it. Do less and less missionary work looking for mass conversions. Instead I try to focus more on immersing myself and better understanding the gospels, and it is through that immersion that I think you have a better chance of creating converts and fighting off false prophets.

Faces of Fear in WCw do have the problem of WCW getting rid of its secondary tag belts and still having as many tag teams so a bunch of guys who could've been better protected end up being portrayed as just fodder. I really liked both the FOF v the Rock n Roll Express and against the Fantastics and you have the announcers pretty much treating the face teams like jobbers while the FOF are working competitive enough squashes that the audience is chanting Rock n Roll or buying the Fantastics quick tag near falls. Unfortunately instead of working those guys the FOF were in extended programs with Public Enemy. Still I remember Meltzer giving their Nitro match with Eddie/Jericho a whole bunch of stars. I remember liking Meng/Hashimoto team in New Japan and remember wanting to see the PPV where him and Barbarian worked Blue Wolf and Blue Wolfs brother, but never got around to it. Not sure what else he did in NJ. I can't remember anything from him in AJ. I've enjoyed his stuff in both SWS and WAR. I have only seen one or two of his Arena Mexico Cmll matches, where he was workrate face no selling clotheslines. Only singles matches of his I can remember from WWF run are (1) the heel v heel match with Race, which while I remember liking is all fucked up in terms of heat as crowd has no idea how to treat it and WWF not really good at building heel v heel stuff, and (2) the snme opposite Ultimate Warrior. But the Islanders are one of the best WWF tag style babyface teams and the Barbarian team while short lived in WWF feels like a high end WWF heel team. I would love to see Matt D do a real indepth look at the Colossal Connection stuff ( I think a Matt D does the Machines would be even cooler). And if someone argued that Haku was the GOAT WWF tag worker, I wouldn't be able to argue against that claim.

On his youtube feed, Rip Rogers claims that this gimmick was something that he had proposed but since Eaton was under contract they gave it to him instead.

When people talk about racism, and coded language and race baiting they are not talking about appealing to Rahowa skinheads. Those guys don't need coded language. No one is saying that Sonnen was calling for "genocide of the mud peoples"...but that the stuff he says (using Snowden's words)"He has a single idea and a single target—the "other." would get you fined in MLB, NBA or NFL. This is the deadspin article which is probably the best article to start with as I think deadspin is the most mainstream site: http://deadspin.com/chael-sonnen-the-ufcs-...is-wa-474796344 Snowden's article which I think came first and is far far gentler is here: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1617086...ng-act-gone-bad The Pacific Standard article is I think the least of the articles, as Sonnen is far more Jeff Dunham than Lee Atwater. Also with Howard University being in the news recently for Rand Paul going there to tell the students "did you know that the Republican party was the party of abolition to slavery and reconstruction?" and then driving to Baltimore and telling a bar "did you know the Colts won Baltimore the NFL Championship in 1958 and 1959 and then won them the Superbowl in 1971?", I would have put more emphasis on Atwater being on the Howard board and less on his love of the blues.: http://www.psmag.com/culture/the-great-white-hoax-56404/ Pretty much all I read in terms of MMA sites at this point is Snowden, stuff from more general sports news/blog sites,stuff friends forward to me, and stuff in Russian on google translate( only MMA fed that I kind of follow closely is M1 which gets no US coverage)...so I really have no idea how anyone wrote about the promotion of this fight without talking about the race baiting. Neither here nor there in terms of the discussion of race baiting, but this is pretty racist behavior that at least in this article is described as "breaking character"... http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2013/0...r-people-video/

I can't see this card drawing anything but flies, and only then if their regular garbage source was unavailable. Is that this match: cause this is famously the inexplicably hot, inexplicably great Angelo Mosca Jr match.

I love the arm wrenching spot. You can see that in clips back in the 60s. yeah, I've seen it in lucha a bunch. There is a section of the internet who first saw the arm wrenching spot as an MPro lucharesu spot...and you would get these reviews of MX matches where the author would writes "Stan Lane does the Super-Delphin spot..." which would crack me up, ("I'm watching this Lou Thesz match and he does a Steve Austin press"). So yes, it's a spot that translates across time and cultures.

So I've been in crowds that laughed pretty hard at the spot where one member of MX ends up with head in anothers dick while face does the swishy hand, and the spot where Eaton drapes faces arm over top rope and Lane stands with back to ring to wrench arm over his shoulder only for face to escape and Lane unknowingly wrenches Eaton's arm. I just searched youtube for a Roughouse Fargo tag and this is first one that pops up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AtX2LTpczo Ric and Scott Steiner didn't build their whole matches around them but I've seen Ric and Scott Steiner do most of these same comedy spots to crowd hooting.

The wwe is a formula fed (yes a lot of their formula stuff they aren't doing successfully right now). I would say that Laughter7 was the best tag team from japan last year ( I liked the one time Sano tagged with Aoyagi too) but if you were recommending people to WWE developmental would you recommend Laughter7? Hiring is about bringing in folks who can work in your organization. Is there a hiring headhunter who would say "This guy I hired for you was great you just failed to rebuild the organization around him"? Would you contract with that headhunter? I doubt Karma was offered the contract that thrown at Mistico...so, in that sense, no not as bad. But "hey he didn't cost a lot" isn't really equal to "good pick-up".

Someone want to walk through what made either of them great pick-ups? I can't speak for Kharma, but how was Sin Cara not a great pickup? Meltzer, for example, talks about him as a HOF-worthy draw from Mexico. Konan is a HOF worthy draw from Mexico too. Would anyone suggest that he would be a smart signing? "in hindsight"? The WWF started discussion of picking up Mistico in 06, Mistico was talking about wanting to leave to go to WWF as early as 07. They had five years. Five years to find out that he had a rep as a backstage headcase. Five years to realize that he was a guy who used supplements. Five years to figure out what his strengths and weaknesses were, what he brought to the table and whether his skill set was appropriate for what it is that the WWF does. People discussed all of the ways in which he would and would not fit in with WWF as early as 06. I probably have more positive things to say about Mistico than anyone on the WKO other than Tim Evans. But he failed in really really predictable ways. I don't see any reason to pretend that we live in a world where HHH couldn't watch some Mistico matches, or do some research...and instead signed him and was just surprised by what he got. Vader was over instantly. Monster Ripper in her hillbilly gimmick was shockingly over when they first signed her. They had no idea what to do with Vader, and while they had an idea for Ripper (and then had Madusa and Galactica to work with her...I'm not sure who the equivalent is that they had ready for Karma) it's not like they did much with her.

Yeah well I didn't quite get the twitter feed format so all I got was Meltzers stuff and not Snowden's responses. Also hilarious that Snowden's article is what precipitated this and not either the deadspin or the Rios piece: This is a hilarious set of dumb defensive talking points, starting with “your making shit up to help your career’ and ending with “you’re the real racist”. It legit reads like the kind of thing I’d expect from a Mark Madden level dumb corporate shill. What makes the Ps Hayes comment the funniest is that I think even Madden would have the self awareness not to use “wMichael Ps Hayes called Mike Von Erich "boy" once” line. I imagine if you called Michael Ps Hayes tomorrow and asked you to walk through Sonnen’s mic work and explain why it’s so effective he’d be able to identify the race baiting. If you called Ole he would lecture you on how what’s wrong with wrestling today is the way the corporate culture in todays business won’t let you do this type of racial coding.

Someone want to walk through what made either of them great pick-ups?

Didn't know Dave had a twitter account. Plus being an even bigger luddite than Dave means I have no idea how to read twitter pages. Is there is a way to expand these posts into coherent threads to figure out what he's responding to and what people responded back? As is with no context it comes off as just a list of clueless apologist statements. Including a whole bunch of discussion of live arena reaction as though Sonnen is primarily an arena draw and not a PPV draw, and my absolute favorite: When Michael PS Hayes calls any black person "boy" even his illegitimate 6 year old son, it's a racial slur. If you're going to try to claim someone isn't race baiting, don't bring up Michael Ps Hayes as part of your defense.

Ralph Malph regimmicked as Satanic Heavy Metal singer on CHIPS: