tomk

Fuck that someone make Behrens a Best of Capture DVD. "Capture Georgia" would be awesome. Restricting audience to being over 18 would hurt it.

Letting a guy finish a performance won't be as big a deal as the question of what medical treatment was offered to performers after performance.

He was hopped up on drugs. Look at his eyes and then watch Juve's XPW interview. Most people on drugs are willing to go past pain threshold. I watched his comeback match about a year ago it was like watching a Violent J match, difficulty with in-ring bumps but really throws himself at the table spot. I guess Violent J puts alot of heart into his craft too. Or it could be just the drugs.

Except my guess is that they didn't lie. They probably told the truth which is that a member of management knocked an employee unconscious within the regular performance of his job, and no medical examination was done. They could have lied and spun there way around it, but they were too busy trying to reject the brain exam results that they did'n't think about how their rejection dug themselves into deeper hole. You say that and his father can request the paperwork/trail on his medical treatment which means you better have it.

The WWE says they have no records of employee suffering a concussion. We know he took alot of blows to the head but the incident that Bix references is one where we know without a shadow of doubt that he was knocked unconscious. Having no medical records of concussion, for a guy who we know was knocked unconscious----means they did no medical checks on him after he regained consciousness. That kind of complete negligence and indiffference to employees health is not something any jury is going to look at positively. The talking point "we have no records of him siffering concussions"is a far more damning talking point than "we knew he had concussions and were adviceing him to do this that and the other thing".

Well that was first thing I thought of when the WWE made that statement. but haven't heard anyone else raise it. Not Muchnick, not Meltzer...you'd think it would be obvious. You'd think that more likely han not the ref who was concussed in same incident might have actual medical records available..whatever. But haven't seen anyone really raise that incident in anything yet. It should be raised and maybe might be worth sending a note to Meltz, Ichter or Muchnick asking about it. But haven't seen really any mentions of it. Did I miss an Observer passage?

The article doesn't say it. FH posted the link to the article. It's not that long. It might be worth peoples time to read it. It's one of the better things I've read about the relationship/lack of relationship between MMA and boxing. Meltzer's recap misses a lot of interesting points and incite. Yes boxing writers are crusty old white guys in derby hats, but that's not your actual boxing audience. Helen Thomas is very devoted to politics, I wouldn't want to make demographic assumptions about american voters based on Helen thomas' devotion.

Haven't gotten the Observer yet but reading the article you linked to it seems like a pretty balanced article and not really much to argue with. The only big argument I'd make is the authors claim that UFC doesn't like booking mismatches. This isn't the argument being made at all. The point is that MMA has attracted a white audience. For a long time one of the issues with boxing is that it lost its white audience. Boxing has a large Mexican audience and a black audience. that minority audience has sustained boxing. The assumpotion was that there wasn't a white audience for fight sports in America anymore. Well there was your Gatti fans. But boxing wants its white audience back. MMA has shown boxing that there still is a white audience out there if they want it. It's why Hopkins goes out of his way to try to increase his value by baiting white fans. can you attract those white fans without building around white fighters? Who knows? But we do know that for long time UFC wanted to make sure that they weren't building around all foreign fighter v foreign fighter match ups. This isn't about white fans not being as cool and not being able to dance. This is about white money and the desire to get some. Larry Holmes who had a sweet jab just got inducted into Boxing Hall of Fame. That has nothing to do with article but he really had a sweet jab. Still this is a quote from Steward not point of article. More nuanced point about MMA is being made in article that no one has really said yet in any of these boxing v MMA articles. Boxing is based on idea that anyone can be knocked down by one good punch. The real issue is what the fighter does after being knocked down. Most boxing fight of the year candidates involve a guy coming back from one or more knockdowns. In MMA ( aas alot of the surprise wins have shown) anyone can knock anyone else down, but once you are knocked down you don't have a ten count and pretty much the match is over. Watching MMA, the question isn't so much can a guy change strategies and come back after being knocked down, so much as can a guy capitalize on knocking down his opponent. Coming back from a knock down in boxing is a sign of strength. Not being able to beat a guy you knocked down in MMA is a sign that you can't follow through. It's why the talk of dieing with your shield means something in boxing. Again that's not what's being said at all. What's being said here is not that wrestling fans are somehow beneath boxing. He says UFC attracts people who outgrow wrestling. If boxing tried to promote towards those folks, boxing might be able to get them. Nah again the article says the opposite.It's all about the problems in boxing. Your summary suggests far more insecurity than anything in that article.

I don't know if best means most consistent start to finish, or just has highest highs. Wrestlemania 10 is often pointed out as best Mania since it has opening Owen v Bret match and the ladder match although it really is pretty unwatchable in between those two. So worth pointing out that the 2007 Royal Rumble had two WWE MOTY candidates in Hardys v MNM and Cena v Umaga.

While his first PPV WWF match was going through tables. It also looked like he was pilled up on pain killers walking to ring. I have tapes with Gino interviews where Gino is clearly coked out of his mind and can't stop sucking his teeth, Shawn eyes were far more dilated.

Outside of royal Rumbles when has he last worked a PPV match without blade.

How exactly was he backed into a corner?

So slowly making my way through backlog of tivoed Smackdowns and watched a Finlay v Rey match and a Noble v Rey match and HOLY SHIT. Rey Misterio performs the best La Mistica i've ever seen. I mean he takes what is a cool looking "hit out anywhere" flashy finsher and works it into a match as a transition escape spot just perfectly. So I've only seen three Rey matches since his return as I'm moving through this slowly but its easy to forget how good Rey is. If Best High flyer is not the guy with the most spectacular moves but best wrestler who works highflying into his match, really Rey does it so much better than almost everyone else that it doesn't make any sense not to have him as one of top candidates.

Of course that's not why it was pulled. It was a tasteless angle that was made even more tasteless by Benoit's murder/suicide. Yeah so context made it even more tasteless a week later. In the June 25th Observer Meltzer does a nice job of pointing out the flaws in the Vince is killed angle. That while in terms of management it’s clear that those tributes weren’t real, that the emotions of some of the wrestlers and audience were real. And treating those real emotions as a joke is a way of going “Ha Ha we tricked you”. Even if Benoit hadn't killed himself and his family, other wrestlers would have died during this angle. Sherri died within the first week. It's wrestling, it is a buissness that kills people and then burries them. Making a mockery of the real emotions of the burial and mourning process is if not tasteless than callous. Benoit then went and killed his family and himself. Benoit was a guy who according to Meltzer had a difficult time “coming to grips with justifying working in the WWE during the exploitation of the death of Guerrero”. An emotionally guarded person who took deaths very hard and let his guard down for the Eddie tribute ( ). The Vince goes boom tributes were a real outward manifestation to everyone who watched and participated that this was “all for nothing”. And then it all becomes even more tasteless.

If I were the kind of person who put together "Evolution of Nelson Frazier Jr." comps (which I'm not, I've got enough other crazy projects in the works), my guess is you'd want to look to see if their were any Viscera/Mideon tag matches on syndi shows ( which I think would be Heat at that point). I don't think he was tagging with Mideon during the shotgun period and really that team was deep in Russo world so not much chance of getting a match where midcarder would get to showcase much outside of the syndi show and even there... but who knows there might be a Mideon/Vis v Kevin Quinn/Brian Christopher match that got some time out there .

I don't know if anyone is saying that Viscera was good from jumpstreet. I doubt you'll find anyone who will tell you that he was the better worker in MOM... And I don't think that was just people popping for Mo saults.

My impression is that he's around Rey or Jeff Hardy's age. He's been wrestling for a while. While I'm a guy who believes that guys can suddenly figure it all out at any point in their career and it's quite possible that tommorow Enrique Vera will wrestle a great hair v hair match. and there are lots of guys who started their wrestling careers late in life whose work I've enjoyed: DDP, MVP, Batista, etc. But I don't see any reason to pretend that Ken Kennedy is some young green kid with years ahead of him to develop. Yeah there aren't alot of black guys. People like their blacks athletic. Hell Meltzer likes all his wrestlers athletic. I don't want to be doing the opposite and making a fetish out of fattness, but not like Yokozuna was getting anywhere near the praise he deserved for his work either. Weren't he and Mo originally trained by Gene anderson? Or was that just Mo? Cause Gene Anderson should get old school paying dues respect. It should also be said for whatever anti-WWF bias there is, alot of it is merited. Watch 24/7 The WWF was filled with talented guys who were in sucky matches. I liked Men on a Mission but fuck is MOM v Quebecers a dissapointing series. This isn't an example of a bias this is WWF sucking. The WWE style is built on being upset that One Man Gang doesn't work enough like Big John Studd.They couldn't do anything with Vader. VADER~! My guess is someone will eventually put together a DVD of the three weeks that Bill Watts was booking the WWF and Viscera got his big push and then he left and no one understood how to lay out matches with a strong heel for the actual PPVS. And then people will discuss Mabel as the big what if? But the point is that the WWF didn't know how to book Vader, expecting them to have been able to make the most out of Mabel is silly.

So reading last Observer and big thing jumps out at me "Why is Abyss in booking meetings?"

Ummm. Is this the match from 2004...or did they have a rematch a couple of months ago?

For most disgusting promotional tactic: The Vicky Guerrero/Benoit angle where if I recall Vicky was ripping off Eddy's estate was this year, the Vince's death turned out to be so tasteless that they had to drop it completely, leaking the Tragic X story to the news the same day they ran the lighthearted Khali choking childlike retard Eugene squash seemed pretty wrong to me. And best gimmick is clearly Festus.

not sure which one he popped but pretty much everytime he is in a PPV main Meltzer wrtes afterwards that the buyrate did "surprisingly" well or some variation of " I refuse to believe he is a draw but seems like this got a one time freak show buy"...yadda yadda.

I liked him. Carlito was fine as poor man's Ricky Santana as heel on Smackdown and RAW. It's when he turned face that it all fell apart. I mean I watched him in Puerto Rico and he never was a very good face but he showed up in WWE and he seemed to know exactly what people where doing to carry him, exactly how to feed a face their comebacks. This was the weird period where WWE was bringing in guys and not giving them finishers (Carlito had a roll up, Cena was using a chain, etc). They did briefly saddle him with Elix Skippers finisher which is a really shitty finisher (I think they stuck that on MVP at one point too) and made no sense within the context of the matches he was working. They saddled him with some shitty tag partners (Aguilera, Matt morgan, Chris Masters) and he wasn't exactly Tully carrying the team of Tully/Luger but was good in that role (and honestly Aguilera, Morgan, and Masters were no 89 Luger). He moved to RAW and was a good foil for guys like Cena, HBK, and Flair. He was then paired with Shelton and eventually turned heel. Him working Shelton Benjamin style match was attrocious. Oddly the whole "He's lazy" meme started during that period. He had changed and started working a workrate highspot Shelton Benjamin style...and was being called lazy. He wasn't working smart at all and absolutely sucked. But he was working the opposite of lazy.

There is a lot of Bolivian wrestling thats started to show up on youtube in the last year or so. You're Al Jazeera documentary in two parts: Stripped of all culural context for Magaly Medina controversial Peruvian personality show (awesome use of Nation of Domination theme): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKvfyHLKh8Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbjpPTh55eQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVekGRHA3AE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvs10LAbe2c

The standard crit of Monsoon is the same as the standard criticism of Mean Gene. The self agrandizement. Insistence that he is tougher than everyone else in wrestling. Neither Solie, Ross, or Russell (or 80s Mcmahon) ever portrayed themselves as being tougher than the wrestlers. I don't buy that. As there is a difference between the audiences I've been in in Northeast and the audiences been in in the South East or South West. The audience for FIP is very different from the audience for ROH and the shows with same roster tend to reflect that difference.

Do people on the DVDVR actually complain that all he does is superkick...so much as wish he wouldn't do anything but the superkick?