JNLister

I wouldn't be at all shocked if that line in the Observer turns out to be either badly worded or a misprint and he meant to say he wouldn't have done it. Even leaving aside the ethics issue, I seriously doubt he would have been available to fly to Japan, particularly on the weekend of one of the biggest UFC shows of the year.

The "taking stuff down is to make room for new stuff" comes directly from the official Ask wwenetwork Twitter. Which means it's completely unreliable.

Somebody has already somehow downloaded 40 TNT episodes from the network and uploaded them to a torrent site.

I may be misremembering but I believe it wasn't so much foreign talent as much as US guys working in Japan, with WWF saying "hey, you watch all the tapes, how's so and so looking these days?"

Having already done Monday Night War episodes on the NWO and DX, they're now doing one on the Kliq. For fuck's sake.

New YouTube channel with a lot of stuff updated in the past few weeks. Not sure if any of it is "new": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYRqU2G_RxGJDWBBVRaS-Ww?app=desktop

May just be coincidence but the Prime Time is the first one with Monsoon and Heenan as hosts.

There's now a link at the bottom of the page to select English language. You select it once and it's permanently set for your account. It's still Google translations, but does some extra stuff like the text on icons that Chrome doesn't do.

Saw one theory that that episode was originally rated PG-14 so they skipped airing it on the live stream (BLAME CANADA!) and as a result it's not been automatically added to the VOD library.

Which show has the wrong date? And what should it be?

Trivia note: Mohammed Butt has worked alongside Johnny Kidd in their day job (car spraying) for 30+ years and it was Kidd who suggested Butt get into wrestling.

I've found the recently launched TVersity ScreenServer (separate to the main Tversity Media Server software) a great solution. It streams the content of your computer screen to any DNLA-compatible device on your network, which is my case is the PS3. It's not quite perfect as you get some very brief sound glitches/dropouts, but the picture is fine and the video stream uninterrupted. For best results set transcoding to "never" (NJPW World works fine without it) and make sure you've got nothing else running on your PC except your browser. http://tversity.com/download/#ScreenServer http://tversity.com/announcing-the-tversity-screen-server/

Ring of Honor has had the equivalent of the network for a couple of years now. It's $7.99 a month (or less for longer-term signups), which gets you access to about 70 full archive shows from 2002-13, the full run of TV on HD Net, the new weekly TV shows on the Monday after they air (they then go free on the site on the Thursday) plus discounts on merchandise and early access to ticket sales. The main difference is you don't get any access to the current iPPVs like you do with NJPW and WWE.

Closes I came is when I stopped watching WWF after Hogan came back and stole the belt at WrestleMania IX. That said, I did start watching again the following weekend after I heard Mr Fuji had filed a protest as I wanted to find out Jack Tunney's ruling.

The 24 inch monitor would be for my PC for work (I'm a home-based writer), not as a TV replacement. I work on my desktop PC in my office. I do casual web browsing on my tablet or phone. I watch YouTube, Netflix, WWE Network and, erm, content available as video files, on a PS3 hooked up to my TV. Literally the only thing I can't do with my current setup is watch Flash-based video streaming on my big screen TV, which is pretty much New Japan World and ICW On Demand. That doesn't justify getting a laptop and/or replacing my TV. Getting a 24 inch monitor (and one with a higher resolution and an HDMI connection) for the office would be a nice and affordable way to make watching that streaming stuff a little more pleasurable, as well as having benefits for work (I already have a two monitor setup for productivity.)

Despite being both tech-savvy and a tech news writer, I don't have (or need) a laptop and my desktop PC is on a different floor to my TV. Even if I did have a laptop, my TV (bought in 2006) doesn't have HDMI ports. And even if it did, there's not really a convenient place to put my laptop that would be easy to access (particularly as I usually skip through parts of shows) and hook up both HDMI and power cables. There's enough streaming stuff I can do on my PS3 that it's not worth buying either a new laptop or new TV just for specific streaming websites. I am strongly considering getting a 24" monitor though. Regarding translation, best bet with Chrome is to install the official Google Translate extension. It's two clicks to translate any page, but works everytime unlike the built-in browser translation which can be flaky.

Something that I've not seen mentioned anywhere is that, at least from how I've heard recaps of the interview, Punk technically refused to take a urine test on the day he quit. While the circumstances might make that perfectly understandable in reality, I'm surprised WWE didn't have that as a major gotcha in legally arguing they could suspend/fire him and/or dock pay and royalties.

Funnily enough, the TV Times (think TV Guide) made exactly that point in a piece published that year:

In what's likely not a coincidence, none of the new ECW uploads (other than the Heyman interview) are scheduled for the live stream.

Always fascinates me that had Sayama not pulled out for whatever reason, the 1981 Wembley show would have had Rocco-Sayama on the same card as Daddy-Haystacks. Truly something for everyone.

Yep, anything you can send me would be great. It's john at johnlisterwriting dotcom. Definitely looks to not be as simple as "Hurst sold to Astaire, Astaire sold to William Hill". As best I can tell, it looks to be a lot more like, Astaire was part of (or bought into) the Hurst Park Syndicate, which was then bought by William Hill but Astaire carried on running things. The more I read, the more I suspect Astair never personally/individually owned the wrestling groups and the stuff about him buying them from Hurst was a combination of confusion over his role and wrestlers remembering him becoming the guy they saw as their ultimate boss. Really fascinating thing is that in 1971 -- which is right when William Hill is buying Hurst Park and in turn Dale Martin and several other Joint members -- William Hill itself was bought by the Sears Group, which owned several major shoe stores and a department store chain. It's bizarre to think that ultimately Selfridges and Dale Martin were part of the same business family.

Wrestling Heritage has this capsule history, which is roughly in line with how I understood the timeline: Based on what you've found, and stuff I've briefly looked at, it sounds like the true picture is less "Astaire buys the wrestling companies from Hurst Park, then sells to William Hill" and more "Astaire was part of Hurst Park the whole time, but took the hands on/visible role after it bought up Dale Martins and Paul Lincoln Promotions, but before it bought up the the others, and may well still have been the 'management representative' in the William Hill era." It also looks a bit like the ownership history some of the wrestlers remember is based on who they actually dealt with. It also definitely appears as if the day to day operations of the regional promotions was being handled locally for several years after they were all under a single ownership. Also, as far as I can gather Relwyskow & Green was the only Joint member never bought out and always remained a separate promotion. It was doing some of the TV shows as late as 1988 (in the 'Joint' timeslot) it appears that even after the various takeovers you still technically had two promotions as members of Joint. That leaves the question of the extent to which you had a business/corporate difference between Dale Martin (as a massive promotion eventually running near nationwide) and Joint (as a 'governing body' holding the TV slot.) Long story, this is definitely something I need to look into for a Greetings, Grapple Fans article. Really sad irony is that the one archive of business-related documents I know still exists and I could get access to is that of Relwyskow & Green! I'm also very intrigued by the Billy Dale stuff with Hurst Park/William Hill - I wonder how much of his work there was "real" and how much was getting a good job for life as part of the sellout. Short story, if it's on TV before 1987 you can safely call it a Joint Promotions presentation!

Hurst Park (which was a group of racecourse owners) only bought out Dale Martin. Hurst then sold to Jarvis Astair in the 70s, and he then bought out most of the other promotions.

Joint didn't own Dale Martin as such. Joint is a rough equivalent of the NWA - a public "governing body" and a private cartel. As an organization, it had the TV contract. Dale Martin was the biggest individual member, covering the south of England (including London), so had the most prestigious venue (Royal Albert Hall) and put on the biggest proportion of the shows taped for TV. Aside from the absolute biggest stars who'd be booked nationally like an NWA champion or Andre, the biggest proportion of full-timers worked for Dale Martin and it had both a place for them to stay and provided transport to and from shows in buses. It's territory covered roughly half the population of England (40% of the UK population as a whole.) The story goes that Jarvis Astaire (a multi sports/entertainment) promoter bought Dale Martin in the mid-70s. He then gradually took over the over promotions and sold it as a collective to bookmakers William Hill. They employed Max Crabtree (previously a local Northern promoter) to run the whole thing and start promoting under the Dale Martin banner nationwide. Crabtree later bought it out. So by the time the Daddy push began, Dale Martin and Joint were largely interchangeable terms. Wrestlers who were active from that era tend to use the term "Dale Martin" (or even "Dale and Martin") because if they were working full time, that's likely who directly employed them. Specifically on Davies-Veidor, it would be a Dale Martin show under the sanction/oversight of Joint Promotions, even though by that time Dale Martin was one of only a couple of Joint members and by far the most dominant. It's roughly equivalent to a Jim Crockett Promotions show under the NWA banner in 1988 when there were hardly any other members doing notable business.

Pretty much the attitude of me and most subscribers I know is that we've subscribed since day one, we'll probably always subscribe unless the price gets silly, and it would be nice if WWE wasn't so obvious about taking full advantage of that.