SteveJRogers

Oddly enough, I've always considered Professional Wrestling to be very much like the mafia in a lot of ways.

Wonder if the crowd sound was tweaked. Fast turn around! When is the DVD scheduled?

They actually are doing Main Event live on Tuesday (before usual Smackdown taping).

BTW, in the early days of the early Attitude Era's Saturday syndicated show called Shotgun Saturday Night, they aired from unusual places, usually bars and night clubs. Well, one night they did a show right in Penn Station underneath MSG! In fact, the ring was setup right about where young Johnny and family were probably milling about getting ready to hop on the next New Jersey Transit train home, well...at least that has been the NJT (and Amtrak as well) main waiting terminals have been since I can remember going back to the mid-1990s. Not that I expect there was major re-routing going on, just I never had the need to use New Jersey Transit trains out of New York City until the mid-1990s! There is a TGI Fridays right there, that used to be a Houlihans in the 1990s, I wonder what it was back in the early 1980s...

Its just Austin discussing going around backstage and setting up interviews and whatnot. Fun if you like solo Stone Cold!

What happened to Brick? I enjoyed listening to him too I'm still wondering about James, I don't think he's been back since the week after you had him killed off!

I do wonder about the headline in their subscriber section about Punk and Angle joining Jarrett's new promotion.

You could induct "the nWo" but the problem there is that everyone on WCW's roster was nWo at one time or another plus one of those race car drivers. Inducting the 1988 Horsemen I think opened the door for a "classic" lineup, as oppossed to the whole damn thing. The Rock and Roll Hall also does this with bands featuring various lineup changes.

I think that was informal or not an offical "group" to put in the Hall. Syxx was long gone by the time the nWo split up.

Be funny if done as Zeb!

http://bdrnitrocast.podomatic.com/ The NitroCast http://www.snsradionetwork.com/ Home of various shows, the one I listen to often is the nostalgic based Beyond The Bell http://wrestlespective.com/ Jason Mann's WrestleSpective http://whatamaneuver.onthestick.com/ What A Maneuver wrestling re-watch podcast from OnTheStick.com

Apparently I've been following TheRealSmartMarks since the Rantsylvania days, and now at their home over at CultureCrossfire.com Not sure how I emigrated there after they split off from Scott Keith's empire of sorts, but stayed there. Then apparently after I slacked off from paying attention to the day-to-day of wrestling around 07-08ish they even had their own little mini-exodus after some trolling and the usual crap that comes with communities, I found out about it because I decided to join up in an NFL weekly picks pool they did, but was told "hey, we are here now," and I guess they've expanded to have a bit of a PlaceToBeNation/411Mania type of site in CultureCrossfire.com Honestly I don't know about traffic, all I know it kind of-sort of has roots, tenuous at best at this point, back to Rantsylvania back in the late 1990s.

Notice that wrestling is the only place where the internet based fanbase is referred to it in that manner? Seriously, its usually sectioned off as either "blogsphere" or "Twitter-verse" or "social media" or "news boards" but its not like "reading comments from the internet baseball fan community" or "internet Red Sox fan community" or whatever. And the IWC seems to blanket EVERYTHING! Oh sure that was fine when it was just the Usnet forums and the proto-blogs that were the reviewers and recappers, but now its boards, Twitter, Reddit, podcasts, blogs, reviewers, recappers, "journalists" (in quotes since, how many get paid beyond those working under umbrellas such as ESPN, Bleacher Report, or institutions that carried over like Dave & Wade, etc), etc.

Dude was super grating for sure. When he kept saying "We" like he was some official representative of people talk about wrestling online. Ugh. I was surprised at the amount of time Austin gave the callers. Guy is trying to be a professional radio guy. What (not meant in the chant way), did you expect Austin to go into Stone Cold mode on the callers?

Worst Rumble he's seen? Guess he never saw 1999!

TECHNICALLY not in terms of shooting versus a work, but I always thought the Rumble was booked on the fly and improvised by everyone, but with strict instructions not to disrupt whatever the final grouping (6 or 4, whatever) would be, since that would be a more manageable match to script out for the finish.

Read my last post, take aside the fact that I'm talking American Baseball, but I'm curious about your perspective since Football fans tend to have bigger reputations for being notoriously viscous more so than any of the worse American professional sports towns known for their attitudes.

Kind of a bad analogy since Shawn's heel character was able to play off of "YOU SCREWED BRET" but considering chanting that some 15 years later, and a few years after the hatchet had been buried between Shawn & Bret, that is the type of behavior that kind of turns non-scripted sports athletes off to fandom. HELL, a Cub fan named Steve Bartman can no longer show his face in Wrigley Field after he botched a foul ball that was about to be caught by an outfielder in the 2003 NLCS! Roger Maris should always have been treated as one of the greatest Yankees of all-time, back-to-back MVPs, 61 homers in 1961, solid glove, but Yankee fans HATED him for daring to break not only a beloved Yankee's all-time single season homerun record, but a guy that was brought to the team from Cleveland just a few years ago was having the audacity to do this while a Yankee who came up with the franchise a decade earlier, Mickey Mantle, (who also heard many boo-birds up to this point because he wasn't exactly Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig rolled into one, like he was promised to be, this season was the turning point, and Mantle has been a beloved icon ever since) fell off the pace late in the year due to injuries. It didn't help any that the poor guy played through injuries and never quite had the same years as he did in 1960-1961 and was pretty much run out of town as someone that was never a "true Yankee" (whatever THAT means). Granted Maris was a very introverted and private fellow who always carried chips on his shoulder, (hey reminds me a little of a certain wrestler from Chicago) but the fans never really accepted him, nor was he very forgiving of how they treated him. Though strides were made in the last 10 years of Maris' life (died of cancer in 1985) to bring him back into the Yankee fold (the Yankees would retire his jersey number #9, and have since treated his Yankee years with the proper respect) and fandom would, and to this day embrace him as the Yankee Legend he should be. Point of this rambling being, YES this is Professional Wrestling, and yes "YOU SCREWED BRET" is part of Shawn Michaels' history, and as I said he DID work in playing off of the chants when he was a heel (both as DX and his brief return during the Hogan feud), but there are times where the way a fanbase reacts negatively towards a person can affect them, and by the same token the relationship between the athlete and the organization (be it a franchise or promotion). Obviously this is a side note to chanting CM Punk's name when he is not on the show, as opposed to chanting for Bryan, or Ziggler, or Ryder or hell pick your favorite underpushed Superstar or Diva, but it is all connected in terms of how fans at shows, on communities like the internet, sports radio or whatever treat athletes in general.

WHAT!? WHAT!? No seriously, you could interpret the "What" chants after the walkout as the fans honoring Austin in a way, even though they were used during promos that Austin wasn't involved with going back to that previous summer. And to be a little fair, it was clear that, despite the screw up with booking Brock vs. Austin on free TV, they were trying different things and pushing new stars (i.e. Brock Lesnar), and Austin didn't walk out because they were bringing back "tired" acts and demanding Austin put them over, or have a "diminished" role in the pecking order of the Main Event scene. BTW, that thing about diminished roles has been kind of bugging me about this. In an article I contributed to last year I made a quip about John Cena in kayfabe calling his 2012 his worse year as a professional, and my quip was that I was sure there are dozens of under pushed wrestlers who would kill to have a "down" year like Cena's 2012! Kind of feel the same way here with Punk's 2013. Its not like they've shuffled him into mid-card hell, he was still getting Main Event treatment and his angles were treated as important angles to the ongoing narrative of the 2013 WWE year. So it wasn't like Punk was being ignored and undervalued the way his actions and words seem to indicate.

Hard to knock the WWE for that. You don't want attention seeking fans to sabotage a taping for a show that has never had anything to do with CM Punk, save for Punk being the New Nexus leader back in 2011. To say nothing about the fact that the fans are reacting to someone who just up and left. This wasn't a firing, or quitting after a very public debate over several issues, where it is clear that management is in the wrong. Essentially the fans are doing something that they think is the "cool" thing to do anytime there is a controversial topic. I do love how marks on a FB page were acting like the WWE is going to give Punk the "Benoit Treatment." Seriously? Grow up and understand how damage control, especially when the employee in question is more in the wrong for leaving, and promoting current products work!

For what its worth, just checked WWE.com a few seconds ago, and Punk is STILL in the Current section, and in the "Featured Superstars" menu dropdown! What the heck? Are Joey and his crew basking so long in their "We were on the JBL & Cole Show" glory that they aren't keeping up with the breaking news of the day?

Oh I agree with that, my point is that I can see someone thinking it something like that was a work, as opposed to health scares or other more insane marks trying too hard to sound smart theories.

While I wasn't around the IWC at the time or even watching, to be fair it was brought up on air by Wade Barrett to explain why he wasn't out with Nexus any more. They didn't have to do that with a fired employee unless something was "up" in terms of Bryan returning down the road.

Things that make you go "Hmmmmmm..." Its 11:20pm est, and CM Punk's profile is still in the "Active Superstars" listing on WWE.com, in fact he is still listed in the "Featured Superstars" options on the menu drop down.

Gist I've been getting, hence my last post, is reliance on part-timers like Brock and Batista, as well as what happened with Bryan Sunday night.