Lee

Regarding cropping they did this for years on their official DVDs before they finally changed it. Never had a issue with the stretched pic on the dvds before this. When did WWE ever crop anything on their DVDs? I've got absolutely no recollection of this ever happening outside of clips inserted into widescreen documentaries. Original content has always been presented in 4:3, sometimes with bars added at the side if there's a mix of footage.

Wasn't Vince's quote on the Austin podcast "By the new year"? Meaning they've got three days to get it sorted or that's three start dates they've missed.

Exactly. So taking a one-off kayfabe commentary gig would suddenly invalidate that and impugn his credibility? It's ludicrous. It really isn't ludicrous to say a reporter would harm his credibility by taking a paying promotional gig for a company he covers. Again, this is really basic ethical stuff in journalism. What if Dave took the job and then a wrestler died or was seriously injured on 1/4 because of some promotional negligence by NJPW? You'd have the most respected reporter in wrestling suddenly unfit to cover a major story on the second biggest wrestling promotion in the world. Is that scenario unlikely? Sure, but those are the kinds of instances we guard against by not creating the appearance of conflict. Now, Dave didn't pursue the job, so this is all theoretical. And it's certainly not anything to get heated about. But as someone who has to deal with these kinds of issues in everyday life, I find the line here to be clear. It's more like a media member playing themselves in a quick movie cameo. It doesn't mean they can't ever mention the media conglomerate that produced the film without cynicism and suspicion. Agreed. Roger Ebert appeared was in the movie Abby Singer, but his life's work doesn't become devalued or lose credibility because of it, otherwise you're suggesting that anyone who does anything from wrestling to film to TV to music suddenly can't have a credible opinion when critiquing it. It's not like Dave would have been under the employ or New Japan, or would have remained under the employ of Jarrett either. Then again, I can't believe people are still wasting part of their Christmas holiday worrying so deeply about something which isn't even happening.

It's always been a week hasn't it? Or is this another laptop vs. other platforms thing? The weird thing about the schedule for me is the next day tab doesn't work, and I have to click one day ahead to get the previous day's schedule (click Tuesday for Monday's list etc.)

I don't really get the placeholder thing because they always work for me, though I don't use Roku or tablets or anything like that. I'm not sure why it would be different across different platforms?

I'll go through my spiel another time but a friend of mine, a couple of years younger than me (I've not long since turned 31) who was a casual fan, not "smart" in the sense that he wasn't visiting websites for insider information or anything like that, and without any kind of influence from anyone on the subject, once told me that he'd stopped following wrestling in the early 2000s (in his teens) "when Triple H beat everyone and it got shit."

Thought it was interesting when Colt was talking about Punk doing the podcast instead of taking money for a shoot interview and then going off (rightfully) about bootleggers, mentioning that Take Down Piracy guy and bringing up Wrestling Road Diaries... all entirely justified, before he follows up with a line about him stealing property from WWE. Having a million dollars = you're a qualified GP. So does everyone, it's called the internet.

EvenSteven's on to it.

"Who the hell is Stanley Blackburn!?" - Dusty Rhodes.

Can only speak for guys I've met, or at least 'been around', which doesn't necessarily speak for someone in general, just how they were at the time, but Blue Meanie was cool fuck, Kevin Steen was a nice dude, and 'Uncle' Jerry Lynn was a great guy. Ricky Marvin was very funny to be around, even through his somewhat broken English, and very polite. Some of the Japanese guys I've met (Takeshi Morishima, Go Shiozaki etc.) have been nice guys, but the language barrier means you'd be hard pushed to argue with them even if you wanted to. Doug Williams, Jonny Storm, Paul Burchill and Johnny Moss all seemed like decent guys when I was around them, and for all the shit Alex Shane gets in various quarters, he's been nothing but gracious to me in the few times I've been around him. Likewise, Davey Richards was quiet and unassuming when I was around him in 2006/2007. Roderick Strong and Chad Collyer were also both very open to answering questions from myself and others. I got to spend a bunch of time with Tracy Smothers who was a sweetheart and extremely nice to me, although he did later try to fight my friend when he got the wrong end of the stick about a payoff. Poor old Trace was going through some personal issues at the time, so we all put it down to him being justifiably grumpy and it all got patched up later. He was nothing but a gentleman to me though, and apparently very complimentary about me to others when I wasn't around, so yeah, Tracy = totally awesome in my book. Al Snow is a guy who has an air about him and I've heard stories about his being a dick at times, but I figure a lot of that is down to his lot in the business, or walking on eggshells under various periods of employment. That said, I was with him at this intimate pre-show Q&A thing (we were in another part of the building) and a guy in a wheelchair started disrupting things by being loud and shouting a lot (obviously a condition he had, not being a jerk or anything). He was also out of sight of the wrestlers and fans at the Q&A, so there were a lot of confused, puzzled looks being shot by people who had no idea what was going on. Anyway, Al went out of his way to go introduce himself to the guy, shake his hand, give him a hug and get down on his knees to talk to him, which not only diffused the disruption but placated the guy and gave him a real nice moment that probably made his week. Just thought that was a very classy thing to do. Adrian Neville I've known since 2001, years before either of us had any sort of involvement in the business (he a lot more than I, obviously), and for all of his talent, he has always been one of the most bashful, humble, polite people I've ever known so I couldn't be happier to see him go to Dragon Gate, work with Liger in the New Japan Super Juniors and succeed on NXT. His knocking on my door and immediately asking "Dee ya mind if ah take a piss in yar toilet, mate?" is my second favourite "rubbish claim to fame" ever, and I still laugh at my introduction to him - "Alreet mate, a'hm Pac" he announced, before a mutual friend said "Show him! Show him!" and he did a running shooting star press over a garden fence. Christian blanked me at an indy show once because he was a Bigtime Superstar™, so "Fuck that guy!" became a running joke with a couple of buddies for a while every time he came on TV.

I wish they'd called the team "Ashes to Ashes" and they'd made that part of their promos.

Basically you use a chroma key to eliminate the blue and green (green is generally chosen because blood is red, ergo skin tones are generally have some shade of red in them). The blue backgrounds would be keyed out and replaced with the game background (i.e. the crowd animations), and the ropes and turnbuckles would be lined up with the ring in the game (so the wrestlers would be stood at the same place in the game and to avoid things like Bret being taller than Undertaker etc.) The reason Bret wears a green singlet is so they can capture Bret doing his moves once instead of twice (which would be marginally different animations and require more memory), and then chroma key his singlet colours on after the fact (as in he would have different colours if two players both picked him, one shirt would be pink, one would be black, etc.) Also the reason his singlet is green rather than blue is because if you filmed him against the blue background and keyed out the blue, you would see the ring and crowd through his shirt, and that part of him would technically be invisible. Same as if they filmed against a green background, his outfit needs to be a different colour to it.

I can't say as I'm particularly interested in the main roster Divas, but between Natalya, Charlotte, Bayley and Becky Lynch, NXT's doing pretty damn great for itself.

All of the women's matches on the NXT specials have been excellent, especially Charlotte vs. Natalya. Charlotte vs. Bailey was a lot of fun too, but I'm dreading any of them being called up for 2-minute Raw matches and lost-in-the-shuffle 8-woman tags.

Explains why Styles kept repeating "video on demand" like a mantra during the ECW Exposed special. In those bits, he appeared to be a huge Network shill - or at least a parody of one (which may have been the point). Speaking of which, was anyone else disappointed by Exposed? It had some fun banter between Heyman and Styles, but most of it seemed forced. It was also too much of a clip show for people who knew nothing about ECW. I'm not sure longtime fans would've learned anything new. I thought Heyman was far too obnoxious, like he was playing his advocate TV character... and then it quickly became apparent they were doing less of an "ECW Exposed" show and more of an "Introducing ECW" show for new fans. I guess that makes sense for new subscribers, but I figure 1995 ECW is of much more interest to the hardcore fan than the 12-year old WWE fan who's parents signed him up, and they basically kept saying it wasn't suitable for kids anyway which I why I found it all so contradictory and pointless. Joey being a Network shill is fine, but doing it on an ECW show felt yacky. I mean, they couldn't have dug up Lance Wright?!

WWE as on the ball as ever when it comes to pop culture and internet memes. Just you wait until 2016 when they start going apeshit over those RKO Vines!

Neither of the relevant national promotions would book Tully after the drug failure though, that's more or less being blackballed. Obviously it's not the same thing as when the NWA cartel kept you off other cards, but that situation combined with his preaching pretty much consigned him to showing up on Tri-State cards or in the dying AWA. His ECW shots were after WCW had tried to bring him back in '93. Him being at Clash X is something I've never heard, and that may be crossed wires with him being at Slamboree '93 and balking on the financial offer, hence Roma as the 4th Horseman.

The worst wrestler I ever saw enough of (i.e. more than one or two matches like Rajah Lion or Megaman McGee) to really think he stunk was a local indy guy who rarely if ever left his home promotion, aside from tokenistic shots on other local group's cards. He certainly didn't leave the area very often, but was around for years and rubbed me the wrong way by basically being a strawb in vets clothing. One of those guys Raven alludes in some shoot interviews where he explains the difference between "years in the business" to "number of matches", and this guy was a total "years in the business" sort when it came to his perceived place in the locker room hierarchy. My thing I usually point to is seeing him work a comedy match with Colt Cabana that was absolutely rotten as everyone sat there in stony-faced silence, then seeing Colt do the exact same match, spot-for-spot, with Jonny Storm, and rolling about laughing despite knowing what was coming. It always stuck out to me about the difference between a competent worker and a lousy one. I do feel to some extent it's not cool to bash the clueless weekend warrior types who don't make it anywhere based on their own ineptitude, but at the same time, they were still performing to paying customers, so if you want to name the guys in Texas and Portugal, fair enough. Probably more fun to name mainstream guys most of us know though.

Irrational hatred of the day - Bryan's regular reaction to Dave sitting up until 4am to watch live shows like he's some kind of out-of-his-mind iron man. Yeah, try living in the UK if you want to watch regular live wrestling pal, then we'll talk.

Yeah, I scrolled through some of November 2 Remember '95 and couldn't believe how much profanity from Taz's promo was left intact (although they did bleep out his use of "Jew" as a slur). Colour me pleasantly surprised.

I don't know the exact date Tully was fired over the coke test, but I'm 99% certain the Brain Busters were on their way out of the WWF because they'd already shot an angle while Tully was still there to set them up as splitting from the Heenan Family/being fired, which aired on the Survivor Series Showdown (after Tully was canned) where Tully worked against Ultimate Warrior. I was always under the impression the NWA had made them an offer to reunite the Horsemen with Flair and Ole, then Tully failed his test and WCW wanted nothing to do with him, and subsequently lowballed Arn since he was less valuable as a singles, and knew the WWF would have no interest in him as a singles either. Basically, Tully's drug habit it seemed managed to blackball him from the business (for the most part), fuck up WCW booking plans, and cost Arn a chunk of change, all in one fell swoop.

I always found the issue with the Henry thing to be people going overboard on it and completely overrating him as reactionary to people who steadfastly refused to accept anything but the common consensus that he sucked. You had one camp so bored by the guy that they refused to accept (and perhaps were legitimately blinded to) the fact thatp he improved dramatically, while another group just went so far with it to the point of being obnoxious. It's like, we all have our "darlings" we can't stand and guilty pleasures we love, and that just seemed to get lost somewhere amidst all the talk to the point you couldn't take anyone seriously with it. He developed into a pretty good monster heel after years of mostly sucking, that's it. And now he feels overexposed to me. Maybe it's the idea of him and Big Show again but I'm not exactly hyped for another round of that. I also think a lot of people have bandied together to really bastardise the meaning of the word "awesome" in recent years.

Not 100% on this, but I think that might have been the first Nitro shown in the UK. I remember it being advertised in the kids section of the Daily Mirror one Saturday and the very next Friday I got me a pizza and had it taped by my uncle, watched the shit out of it since WCW had vanished from Tyne Tees in 1992. I think I saw a Hollywood Blonds match in Ireland while on holiday but that might be about it. In the meantime, have this showdown between ZEB COLTER & THE UNDERTAKER vs. JERRY LAWLER & SYCHO SID. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdZmtXMBWn4

Lex Luger & A Mystery Partner vs. Big Cat & Motor City Madman from WCWSN. I don't particularly recall what the eventual payoff was (or if this was it) but the mystery partner is a babyface Vader. I know he did that match with Stan Hansen on PPV, but it was just jarring to see Vader on the other side of the fence that early into his WCW run. Possibly a test run or some kind to see what reaction he would draw?

It think it aired at the time because it was covered in the Hart Foundation guidebook I put out last year. This is where we sourced it, pre-Network http://www.56.com/u54/v_NjEyMTY0NTE.html and it has the WWE insignia in the corner so it likely aired on 24/7.