MoS

Also Brock botched the shooting star press and nearly killed himself in the process.

Rock had never beaten Austin in a singles match before I think, and Austin pretty much knew it was his last match - he was broken down and had a massive panic attack the night before, spending the night in hospital, to the point the match could very well have been cancelled - and they did not know then that Rock would essentially never be a full-time wrestler again. This was like the passing of the torch that never was.

I remember Austin getting (slightly) more cheers than Rock in the build-up to WM 17, but I don't remember Rock getting boo'd. However, Dave's point about turning Rock and not Austin was not one of booing or cheering but the kind of investment people had in their respective characters. He said you could turn Rock because Rock was like Hogan, a larger-than-life charismatic figure. He said that Austin was much much more like Bruno, and that's how fans felt about him, and there's a reason why they never turned Bruno. It just wouldn't have worked. By the end of their first runs, both Bruno and Austin had the kind of relationship with fans which would have made a heel run absolutely disastrous.

Just chill out and listen to some Indian music, people.

No idea, but knowing Ross, it probably ended this way. "[something offensive to gay people].... not that there's anything wrong with that..." He had come out in support of marriage equality, hadn't he? That was a big surprise to me. Austin in an interview supported gay marriage as well, which was again a pleasant surprise to me, considering the character he used to play.

Maybe the Sasha title change happened because they are trying to recreate the "Anything can happen on these shows!" that was the selling point of the Attitude Era, which the brand split essentially tried to recapture?

Man, he was granted an exemption from the 4-month testing scheme pretty specifically to get all the shit out of his system, and he still failed two tests. UFC is really lucky his results came out after the PPV. Also, every fighter who has ever failed a test has had multiple successful ones around the same time-frame. Plus, we do not know the kind of tests these were. This might have been a blood test while the others were simply piss tests. As people said, doping is almost always far ahead of the testing. Given his failure and that of Jon Jones, I am guessing they developed a new way of testing estrogen blockers.

Ronaldo saying Iceland have a small mind for being defence-oriented is like Triple H saying RoH are losers for not aggressively competing with WWE

And YAY TAJIRI!!! He has always been one of my absolute favourites.

Please tell me more. The first world's (ironic?) love for Bollywood always makes me happy.

I always mark out a little whenever I read that Austin goes on YT and watches old matches, as well as current indy matches.

Brock is tough, but he does not react well to getting hit. And Mark Hunt could probably knock out Godzilla if he connected well. I would be interested in how Brock's situation is treated in WWE, both in backstage contractual negotiations and the way he is booked, if he becomes the victim of a highlight-reel 1 minute walk-off ko on the biggest UFC PPV of all-time.

Copa has seen some fun stuff as well. Messi's freekick was a thing of beauty. That own goal by Ireland was really weird. I get what he was trying to do, but there was just one way of defending which could have made an own goal absolutely certain, and the dude did exactly that.

I thought Raw was better for a few months, but that's because I was 10 and loved Raw's theme song. move to the music, yeah! Then Triple H v. Kevin Nash happened.

I don't see Meryl Streep being the equivalent of Shawn, for the simple reason that I think Streep is gebuinely awesome andnhas a lot of extremely versatile performances, and I don't feel that way about Shawn. Kobashi I can definitely see, although her longevity is really more comparable to some of the lucha legends. Funk as Oldman is a great pick.

I swear I am not making this up, but I once read some shit about how Owen Hart deliberately killed himself because he wanted his family to receive money, as he was not happy with the money he was making. The douche who propounded it even went into details, the most memorable for me was "Owen said 'I love you' to Martha, something he would never say to her."

What fucking cesspool full of douchebag losers did this happen at? This happened at LoP, but in the board's defence, it was in a section called "Free-for-all", where flaming was explicitly allowed, and implicitly encouraged. Was a long time ago as well, 9 years or so. Maybe that section is much milder now.

Not related to this, but I remember being told "Listen, you fucking dothead. Go kilk yourself. You are already taking away our jobs. Don't take away our wrestling as well." when I had the temerity to suggest that giving Khali the secondary world title for a month or so was not an irredeemably awful decision, since it was getting a lot of free publicity here in Ibdia, and it could only be a good thing. And in hindsight, I was right; India has to be at minimum the 3rd most profitable market for WWE after the US and UK. But saying that was sacrilegious, and I am guessing "dothead" is a racial slur used becayse many Indians shave their heads but apply tika on their foreheads, I guess? Had it just been one racist fan, I wouldn't have noticed. But the sentiment was echoed by many; I remember that post being quoted with "Preach, brother." and shit like that. He wasn't warned. It makes me think that racism is considered almost a natural trait of many wrestling fans by outsiders.

Puerto Rico isn't a foreign country. Sorry, my bad. Don't feel bad. A surprising number of Americans do not know that Puerto Rico is part of the US as well.

Yeah, didn't they ask Regal to actually change his natural accent?

Yeah, The Rock was the only one I could think of in terms of non-white wrestlers whose race was relatively never emphasised. At least when he became a megastar. In a way, Austin was the opposite of that. It was regional emphasis more than racial emphasis, but he was playing a foul-mouthed redneck in a New York company and was its biggest star. That is really a stereotype you associate with white people.

Is Taker the ibly long-time wrestler who has never been criticised in shoot ibterviews and books? Everyone from Bret and Jericho to Shawn and Cornette seems to love him

This does not mean much, probably, because this bias existed in wrestling well before globalisation, but foreigners in 3rd world countries like myself - and even first world countries, I'd say - immediately associate America with New York or L.A. No one really thinks of Alabama or Mississippi when they think of America here. So for promoters like Vince with international ambitions, it might have been thought to be a marketing hindrance. Although that doesn't explain the specific North-Eastern part of ECW that Loss mentioned.

Excellent read, and was actually very informative for me about America's socio-political evolution - and the Western world in general, I guess. Holy shit Newt Gingrich wanted to quarantine gay people? Fuck, wasn't he a Presidential candidate recently? Jesus. Also, fuck John Wayne. I realise I am not close to his target audience, because I am a brown dude in India who doesn't cheer for Murrican troops, but his entire shtick is a huge turn-off for me.

This is not so much a post for listing out the stereotypes in wrestling, since stereotypes exist in all forms of entertainment, but a post to felicitate discussion on how it is treated. I have a lot to say, but I am finding it difficult to articulate my thoughts. Principally, I am reminded of the story when Tiger Ali Singh asked Vince to reconsider the angle where his Turban was removed - for laughs, IIRC - because of its importance in his local culture. Vince, apparently, listened to him, and then just said "Go and fucking do it." I am not saying he should not have booked that angle, but I do want to talk about how it was booked and treated. To put it mildly, for a man of Singh's character's background, his turban being tossed like that is literally ten times worse than Hogan getting his cross ripped from him. Of course, Singh is no Hogan, but remember how it was treated like an enormous deal when Andre did that? It was tantamount to blasphemy, almost. The reaction and treatment of the Turban angle did not come close to being treated with suitable gravity. Has wrestling improved in that matter now? It has always had a fruitful relationship with the Samoan community, but now, when the Usos do their entrance dance, not only is it not made fun of, it is also treated with respect, or at least that is what I feel. Is it a sign of an overall improvement, or just an exception? Would the Maori Haka also be treated with the same level of respect, considering the Maoris, to the best of my knowledge, have not been a consistent target demographic in wrestling history? It is something I am intrigued about.