kaufman316

I'm thankful that I got to meet him once (at PWS 2012 in Toronto) - funnily enough I was showing off my "They Live" alien mask just last night. How short life is! RIP, Roddy.

My WWE DVD set is in storage with family - I think I'm going to get it out of drydock this weekend and maybe even convince my brother to watch the doc with me. In the meantime, I'll tide myself over with these: http://njpwworld.com/search/tag/man_31 Rest in peace, Dream.

Botchamania! can be fun - not my thing in large doses unless it's something I'm already interested in e.g. Rumble 2014, Victory Road 2009... I enjoy OSW but don't really take them too seriously for critical opinions, but rather try to enjoy their witticisms when they strike gold - in that respect I'd put them more on par with Scott Keith than, say, VOW. Aptly enough, Jay Hunter (the OSW editor) cites the Voices of Wrestling network as a great source of info, FWIW.

For her to satisfy the trifecta of Hall of Fame, her "impact" and her performance needs to be good. For her to not be the most cancerous sore on the wrestling industry, her impact needs to be not be the most alarmingly destructive the industry has never seen. She fails on both accounts. As a performer, she made El Gigante look like Toshiaki Kawada. That bled over to her training: all Moolah proteges wrestled in the same hair-pulling, screaming shitty style that she used. As a booker of women's wrestling, not only did she use her power to hold back talent for 30 fucking years, she also was directly responsible in the devolution of women's wrestling from a reasonably respectable style of wrestling to a pathetic sideshow carnival; bearded women in circuses had more respect than women's wrestling did in her reign of terror. Mildred Burke was not the draw Jim Londos was in her time, but she was good enough to fill out arenas as a performer. No woman in the U.S.A drew a single dime after Moolah took over until horny teenagers started buying Sable merchandise. That is how destructive she was. She killed an entire sub-genre of wrestling, and was greedy enough to pocket most of the money the women did make. If you are going to measure impact in that way, then Jamie Kellner and Vince Russo should also be in the Hall of Fame. This basically explains why Moolah isn't in the WON Hall of Fame.

Old hat, but the WWE characters of HHH and Stephanie McMahon - I have zero desire to see either ever again in any worked capacity, and I think it highly unlikely to return to watching current WWE till they're done as on-screen characters once and for all. That said, I'm well aware that death or bankruptcy/new-ownership will be the only ways for this to happen, at least within the next 20 years or so...

Current favorite wrestler to watch: Shinsuke Nakamura Last fun match you saw: Sting/Steamboat Vs. Flair/Austin (from Austin's 2011 Bluray) Wrestler you want to see more of: Daniel Bryan - I'm dialed out of watching WWE's current product (e.g. no plans to watch WM31 anytime in the foreseeable future), but I like his work Last live show attended (if applicable/different from last time you answered): a local spot show circa Hallowe'en 2014 Match you're most looking forward to watching: Tanahashi-Okada IX, whenever it happens Last fun interview/promo you saw: Lawler's wild RAW promo in 1997 hyping his match with Goldust - if only we got *that* Lawler during the Attitude Era instead of "Puppies" Lawler Last interesting thing you read about wrestling: hmm... wrestling reading has really trailed off in recent months...pass Last worthwhile podcast you listened to: Austin's podcast with "Nightmare" Danny Davis (#202) and specifically about entering wrestling school (no spoilers, but a great carny scam story) Most fun you've had watching wrestling lately: moving through the WarGames Bluray, one or two matches at a time Favorite recent post on this board: probably the "WWE week of" thread, a handy way to glom info from informed PWO folks Favorite thing about the wrestling landscape in the past three months (if you live in the past, then go with your past three months of time-traveling): a pile of upcoming local shows to hopefully rediscover why I love pro wrestling in the first place

I recall that Vince himself stated that he viewed WM26 as the "blowoff to the Mr. McMahon character."

That's amazing. And it's not a HHH bash, it's a hilarious explanation of his character while also being a declaration of why Pro Wrestling is awesome to people who don't get it. That's the premise. Everything in there that's also an Internet trope about why people hate him is shown clearly to be part of this TV Character the host loves. And most importantly, it's really funny and it's making fun of people who still bash wrestling for not being "real". "Wrestling Isn't Wrestling" is the best tag line ever. I much prefer Kevin Cook's take on Trips: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/8273-the-greatest-things-ever-written-on-wrestling-message-boards/?p=5435882

Maybe it was the lack of an overarching main event appealing well beyond the typical fanbase, perhaps a bit like WM19; WM23 without Trump/Vince or WM27 without The Rock (both with weaker cards overall) probably don't do as well.

This makes me sad - I am sure Grimmas, Kaufman316 and yourself could go and meet up at a SMASH show? I am probably going to be in Toronto for work purposes once a year and if timed correctly would love to go see a SMASH show with some of you guys. Musgrave too! PWO meet up at Smash in February! Welp, just reading this presently...for my part I could almost certainly make the April 26th show, which would even give me a buffer to catch up on Smash (much obliged for the recommendation too, Grimmas). Maybe we can figure out logistics elsewhere to see who can go to the March/April/May shows, ROH, etc.?

Maybe Heyman advised Brock to be careful about damaging his brand, especially given what happened to The Rock at the Rumble - there are few things Vince loves more than to devalue talent on the way out.

Where there's smoke there's fire...and yeah, this can't be reposted, shared, and IM'd enough for the LU lockerroom re: VR and "lucha libres" (sic) (esp. at 1m25) :

http://gallery.zzq.org/d/70941-1/fry-see-what-you-did-there.jpg

I suppose one example, though not back-to-back, would be the Rude-Chono matches: the first one from August 12/92 for NJPW at the G1 which was well-received, and the latter from October 25/92 at WCW's Halloween Havoc - the latter won the WON Worst Match of the Year.

LU denies these most heinous allegations: https://twitter.com/EricVanWagenen/status/565726385055203328

Even though signs so far are mixed, HHH in charge may turn out well so long as he's off WWE TV or we'll have the second coming of Fritz Von Erich in 20 years' time.

The champ not defending more than 1-3 times a year works in other sports, and for that matter Hollywood Hogan was still an attraction in 1997 WCW (albeit backed by a hot product and a deep roster). BUT he still made TVs and was heavily involved in storylines, and cut lots and lots of promos. He wasn't AWOL by any means (if anything he was overexposed at times).

I would think Arnold would be inducted by HHH because "they're both 'pro' bodybuilders", among other reasons.

How about Uncensored 1995? It's a pick'em of bad match booking: one match got everyone involved fired (Bully/Dustin along with road agent Mike Graham); another saw the TV Champ knocked out in a gimmick match (Arn/Badd); a "hardcore" tornado tag match involved cotton candy and lots of mustard, to the exclusion of other "international objects" (Heat/Nastys); a no-DQ match ends...in a DQ...when a top-drawing heel interferes disguised in drag (Savage/Tenta along with "retired" Ric Flair); said heel, still wearing mascara, somehow jobs despite not being in the match - oh, and lest we forget THE RENEGADE~ (Hogan/Vader not-yet-yappapi strap match). Good grief, what a cluster; surely the "Samurai Cop" of PPV cards, I think.

Welp, I'm 33 and grew up in southern Ontario, Canada: Waterloo Region, actually. Started watching WWF syndicated in late 1993, hooked by - of all things - a recap of the Nov. '93 Luger-Pierre match from RAW. After that I became familiar with Bret Hart and Rick Martel and my fandom took off from there. I watched all the national TV I could, which in those days was limited to WWF syndies, lots of Coliseum tape rentals, and listening to audio of "ScrambleVision PPVs". I also hopped online in the BBS days, being a fan/contributor to the niche-of-a-niche "Creed Ontario Wrestling" (Taylor, hit me up if you're out there!). When Nitro started to be carried in Canada I watched/recorded that when I could, and was probably most hardcore in 1997, finding WrestleLine and watching RAW avidly till the Montreal Screwjob. After that I was a fan of both WCW and WWF through 1998 but fell off into 1999 as high school ended and adult life started to take over; by 2000 I was burned out on the product despite the WWF in-ring being much improved by the Radicals jumping. I watched very little while in post-secondary, limited to random RAWs while on vacation, but kept up somewhat via the internet: so I missed virtually all of the InVasion and HHH's Reign of Terror, two blessings for which I'm thankful to this very day. After school wrapped up I started watching periodically, but with the internet ramping up I sought out Puro and older programming in earnest, and found several new interests in the process e.g. 80's AWA, smatterings of US territories. Within the next couple of years I grabbed a bunch of Ditch's stuff, the entire runs of Nitro and Thunder (poor El-P), the runs of SNME and CotC, other odds and ends, and bought a lot of WWE DVDs. I moved to Toronto in 2007 and nowadays I very occasionally check out a local show e.g. ROH and still keep up with the news, but I've such a backlog of media in general and diverse interests that I watch little wrestling nowadays (I have an 8-disc set of Liger and a large custom-assembled collection of "the history of the AJPW Triple Crown" mostly unwatched) - I did watch WM XXX and the surrounding week of programming, however. I might jump onboard with NJPW and/or catch up on NXT, but there's so much good non-current-WWE product out there, easy to access, that it's almost overwhelming. Suffice to say, I don't imagine myself watching RAW or Impact for the foreseeable future.