JerryvonKramer

They aren't / don't?

Wrestler: "You're all nerds!" Audience: "He's right! We ARE all nerds!!" **audience begins cheering him wildly** Okay ramp it up; show him kicking the shit out of a fat kid. Get him to smash up copies of the latest WWE video game. If the guy is a proper unpleasant bully surely they will boo him?

Here's mine: - An old-school jock character who HATES nerds, internet nerds, the internet, social media, twitter, video games and so on and so forth. He could come out and cut promos lambasting the state of the audience. He could make fun of their comments on twitter. He could make a mockery of the idea of a "selfie". I believe this would get over. He'd be attacking the audience where it hurts. This is my idea, what are some of yours?

http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrestling-38-wwwf-april-1975/ Parv, Pete, Johnny and Kelly jump back into the Leaping Lanny machine to the murky depths of 1975 for more thrilling grappling action. On the docket tonight: 04-02 BLACKJACKS vs DON KERNODLE/MR HAYASHI 04-01 ANDRE THE GIANT vs JACK EVANS/JOHNNY RODZ/BIG JOE NOVA 04-01 TONY GAREA vs THE WOLFMAN ANTONIO ROCCA REFEREE 04-09 BRUNO SAMMARTINO vs BOBBY DUNCUM TEXAS DEATH MATCH 05-27 DICKHEAD STRONGBOW/RIVERA vs KOWALSKI/DUNCUM Highlights include: Bios for Antonio Rocca, The Wolfman and some random jobbers Grumpy Pete Rocky Raymond is back and with a vengeance! Kowolskis mask and the great toupee-glue trials of 75 And wrestlers who were also teachers

Final final point: I'll agree that Killer Mike and El-P are making the best rap records right now but it's because they hit hard and are uncompromising like many of the old-school acts, not because they are socially progressive in any way. It's because they are awesome. Great lyrics and fat beats just like any other MC / producer duo who ever rocked it. I would hate to think anyone was pretending otherwise. I mean shit, I just put on Run the Jewels 2 and the very first line of the album is "I'm gonna bang this bitch the fuck out". In many ways they are a retrograde act. Just like if Magnum vs. Tully happened tomorrow it would still be awesome.

I am really weary of this topic because I don't really wish to discuss any political issues at all -- not that I don't care about them, just that it's not the sort of thing I want to talk about. I have my reasons for my views and they are tied to what the form is. Dylan put it best when he said that wrestling has violence at its heart. Like I said above though, if society changes, wrestling will change. It reflects its audiences, the audience doesn't reflect it. Crowds will not cheer things they don't want to and they won't boo things they don't want to. But since it's almost always been a male-dominated, blue-collar world, you might be waiting a long time before you get your socially progressive angles. Think about it, do you really want to look to a guy like Vince for social change? With hip-hop I think the form is primarily a form of showing off lyrical dexterity. If you study the roots, it goes back to the battle MCs. It has -- as an intrinsic part of the form -- a built-in form of one-up-man-ship whether it's the Wu-Tang telling you how dope their rhymes are or Slick Rick bragging about some broad he's banged. It's part of the genre. It's not ALL it is, but it's built-in. You can't try to lop it off. It's as part of it as faces and heels are part of wrestling. I strongly believe that attacks on hip-hop for its misogyny don't "get it" and are misplaced for that reason. But hell, I've argued with people in much more heated terms than this before and been called everything under the sun for my stance, but I don't think you can even be into hip-hop period if you're the sort of person who is going to be worrying about gender politics. Like seriously, just listen to Radiohead or something. It's like going to a boxing match and crying about the fact someone is getting punched in the face.

Like I said here ... What fuels cheers and boos is a projection of the audience's existing attitudes back on the audience. You only need to look at how rules work in World of Sport and in Japan to see that a certain amount of culture is projected into and forms the product. British people have always always been incensed by foul play, and the heels in World of Sport are a 1 to 1 mirror of that. Kent Walton is an embodiment of it. American society is a bit different. American heroes are cowboys, and renegades and outlaws. They don't mind breaking the rules if it achieves a goal for the greater good. It's a different value system and from Bruno to Hogan to Austin you see it reflected in the babyfaces. Someone else can talk to Japan. The point is culture comes BEFORE wrestling and then wrestling reflects it. It doesn't happen the other way around.

Wrestling doesn't form society's prejudices and attitudes, it feeds off them. If bullying a woman gets cheers, it's the crowd you need to look at, not the product. Promoters will do whatever to get over. Wrestling just isn't a big enough thing to be a mode for social change -- it's reflective and reactive, it follows trends, it doesn't set them. It's not the booker's job to re-educate or challenge his audience.

I don't care to discuss the politics or any of the surrounding issues. Wrestling makes more sense to me when Bill Watts is calling Jim Cornette a sissy and being cheered for it, and rap makes more sense to me when the rappers are bragging about their sexual prowess. It is what it is. I wouldn't want either of them to change -- although I do understand and respect all the arguments for those who think differently.

This might be a controversial point of view, but I actually don't want wrestling to be more progressive. I like the fact that it is a hermetically-sealed all-macho environment with its own warped morality system. It's more entertaining that way. I see no point in complaining about gender politics in wrestling, just as I see no point in complaining about gender politics in rap. Hip-hop wouldn't be the same without dudes bragging about how many bitches they've fucked, and wrestling wouldn't be the same if it wasn't ridiculous in the ways you've outlined. I already hate the modern product, but a PC-approved modern product would be even worse. I genuinely 100% think this. I guess a love of kitsch and amorality kinda go hand-in-hand. "But what about your hatred of Kamala?" Yeah that's different.

Oh come on, this could be one of the all-time great angles!

In fact, I may have to fantasy book a feminist gender theorist's heel run, but I might do it in early 80s Mid South.

I really want to see that!! Would be an AWESOME heel.

It so was!

I think that Vince in 1985 or 1986 went back and dubbed over the orginal 1980 commentary to Bruno Sammartino vs. Larry Z -- when they released the "Best of WWF Vol. 1" (or whatever it was) VHS tape. This is because Vince calls that like "shouty mid-80s Vince", not like the calm sportscaster 70s Vince who was still calling matches like that in 1980. If you analyse the cadence of his voice, it's clearly the slightly older Vince. Also there are zero contemporary references during the match or callbacks to other parts of the feud. It just seems like a re-dub. Who knows why Vince felt it necessary to do this.

I've been scouring the internet to try to find a pic of Willie Gilzenberg, these are the only three I could find: Apparently, here he is co-operating with an investigation into boxing. There he is clearly as an older man, with Andre. All the RAW GMs in history can't stack up to the true gravitas of the WWWF's first President.

Tunney actually kept a very high profile compared to his predecessors Willie Gilzenberg and Hisashi Shinma. Maybe it's really the return to the days of Gilzenberg that we want. I wonder how many times he actually appeared and spoke on TV in the 15 years he was WWWF President.

Right but you don't see him all the time unless the shit hits the fan. The key point is that he's a "hands off" sort of figure -- maybe a bit too hands off in his case.

It would be awesome if every show closed with the announcers running down the matches for the following week as a callback to how it used to be. That way, matches aren't being made on the fly as the show goes along. Some mysterious figure is the one making all the matches and that's all there is to it. The long-awaited return of Jack Tunney is in the offing. In all seriousness, Tunney / NWA President or Board of Directors / WCW Commissioner was absolutely fine. Them not being there all that often served to increase the sense of their importance and authority. They didn't make matches, they made rulings in times of controversy. Maybe for the modern product, WWE should aim towards a wrestling equivalent of Roger Goodell or someone like that.

I dunno, it's swings and roundabouts. Running in New York you are competing againt literally hundreds if not thousands of different things to do from Broadway to sports teams and all the other things you can do there. What's there to do in Tulsa on an average week night? You could argue that the population advantage is off-set by the increased level of competition for the entertainment dollar. All that said, Vince Sr and Bruno had done such an effective job of drawing in the North East that I do think that you could have replaced Backlund with virtually *any* competent babyface and seen no discernable impact on the numbers. Backlund might as well be a puppet on a piece of string and I give him basically no credit at all for the numbers he drew.

I just found out that in the 60s there was a midget wrestler called Chico Santana. I'm now wondering if Jesse was obliquely referring to that midget wrestler all those years he called Tito "Chico".

Only if you admit that Van Hammer circa 91 wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the teams.

When we interviewed Ivan, moments before Pete and Kelly came on the line, it was just me and him. Maybe he could tell I was a bit nervous or something but he cut a promo on me in his Russian accent to put things at ease, we both laughed. A little surreal, but it broke the ice and we talked a bit before the others came on the call. Just seemed like a really nice guy.

What do you make of that 75 tag with the Funks, Childs? Might be the best match I've seen from the 70s so far, apart from those Abbey-Sheik tags I love so much. I'd have it ahead of the Brisco vs. Baba match I also put at ****3/4.

Holy shit!!!! Have Vince ever ever ever done a shoot before? I mean a proper one?