Jesse Ewiak

Apparently the only thing on TWC anyone ever used to watch was World of Sport. I could swear Sean Herbert said something along the lines of it being the only real money maker for the channel. Well yeah, that's why they failed. But, my very flimsy idea is that say, only 10,000 people out of a nation of 50-odd million were watching random shows on TWC, that's still 10,000 hardcore wrestling fans exposed to indy/puro wrestling on their TV instead of having to run across it infancy of Youtube and Youtube-like sites. Like I said, it's a weird thought, but if tape trading still got various US indy folks like Punk exposed to puro, I don't think it's a crazy idea that a whole wrestling channel full of indy and puro stuff got a few guys currently in Progress or PCW into wrestling.

Weird thought, but could this be the result of The Wrestling Channel/Fight Channel being easily available during the mid-00's? After all, if a bunch of teenagers/young adults in their early 20's have easy access to lots of wrestling, it's not a huge leap to think that five to ten years later, a bunch of those people will get into wrestling either as fans or workers down the road, right?

If Brie could talk at all, Steph/Brie could be a contender for Feud of the Year. And even then, Steph is dragging this to Top 5 of the year for WWE at least.

I'm not saying he's objective. I'm saying Meltzer isn't on this island calling it the greatest tournament ever. Now, you may disagree with these people, but I see no sleazy Scherer-like connections. They just have a different view of what great wrestling is compared to some of the people on this board. That doesn't make them wrong. It doesn't make you guys wrong either, when it comes to the quality of the wrestling. Again, Meltzer's views on why New Japan is drawing or what they're doing right/wrong may in fact be incorrect. But, that's totally seperate from his belief on the greatness of this current G1.

The difference is, lots and lots of people are saying the same thing about this year's tournament, at least on the quality of the work. Yeah, Meltzer is a big fan of NJPW-style matches and likely overrates them. By that measure, so do the VoW guys, Alan4L, and probably a dozen other guys I don't know on the Internet. By the same measure, I'm sure plenty of people also think you overrate Titus O'Neill Superstar matches. I don't think that makes you a Dave Scherer-type shill for underpushed WWE guys. But, Meltzer has criticized the booking of New Japan, especially earlier this year and parts of '13. I mean, do you think if say, the Seibu Dome doesn't draw, he'll make excuses for it, or say that the G1 should've been booked differently? And if it does draw, doesn't that mean that Meltzer is actually right and you guys are downplaying how good the booking is, simply because it doesn't appeal to you?

If the WWE had booked as strongly for most of the last two to three years as New Japan has, quibbles aside, I don't think he would. Again, if this was only the time that parity showed up in the booking.

If they booked the other 11 months like New Japan does, I don't think there would be. Of course, if the WWE continued to book like they do and booked a tournament like this, yup, they'd get rightly nailed. Also, there'd be probably also plenty of people on the Internet delighted to see Cena lose a few times clean in a mne month period.

I think the reason why the G1 even-steven booking works is that this is the only three weeks of the year it works like that. The other 9/10 of the year, main eventers beat upper mid carders and so on and so forth, especially in singles matches. If New Japan booked like this for the whole year, it'd be a valid complain. But, when they do it in the context of a grueling tournament, where people are wrestling big singles matches almost every day, upsets happen.

Honest question. Has Styles passed Sting in the category of "guy most fucked by spending 90% of his career in a company run by idiots?" I mean, between his New Japan run (especially if he keeps the title through the Dome and it draws) and his indie appearances drawing great, there's an argument that he could've been a HoFer if not, ya' know, TNA.

The thing about Gut Check is that it seemed like they picked the people who shouldn't have hung around to stay on TV, then either sent the people who should've been on TV to Ohio Valley or didn't sign them at all. I mean, there's zero reason Brian Cage and Velez at the very least could've been reasonable parts of the X Division and Knockout's roster.

3/4 of the current WWE roster would kill to get the pop Dean got for unmasking as Ciclope after that battle royal at Superbrawl (I think). Of course, that might be more a credit to Jericho's heel work than anything else.

A shining example of Skeith's work ethic. It may not be accurate, but I had to get it done on time! To be fair to Keith, this sentence could be part of any sports pundit "hot take" on the vast majority of sports news, and those people actually had journalistic training. At least Keith has the honesty to include it.

I think in general, we're going to see an upswing in "celebrity" fans as a whole bunch of people in their early and mid 30's become more well known, whether it's running a TV show, an actor, or whatever, because they grew up as teenagers during the wrestling boom.

So, is Dixie the dumbest human alive for continuing to fall for Russo's bullshit, is Russo actually a svengali of Rasputin-like proportions that we've always underrated, or have they just been banging this whole time?

No, no, the more important news is that we're both proving we know more about New Japan booking than Alan4L, at least through three days.

I think Triple H is actually been pretty great during this current heel run and if we're going to have a "person in charge of the show", Triple H is probably the best reasonable qualified guy out there that would actually be chosen by WWE Creative. Obviously, you guys were working within a perfect world on that, but realistically, a McMahon or McMahon-aligned character is going to have lots of TV time, and of that entire group, Triple H and Stephanie are the best. In a purely business way, Brock may not make as much sense now (even though his contract may be different now than his original one), but on a storyline level, a full-time Brock also doesn't work. I don't need to see Brock in a random six-man on RAW every week or in a four-minute match with Curtis Axel. Now, does he have much use beyond winning the title at Summerslam and then dropping it to somebody at Wrestlemania? Probably not. Unless he takes way less money or works more dates for the same amount of money. With Cena, I just think a heel turn won't work long-term (you'd just get a reversal in reactions and those reactions would be less intense on both sides), and also, business-wise, they don't have a #1 guy to replace him. When Hogan turned, there was at least the idea that hey, there's Randy Savage, Sting, Ric Flair, and Lex Luger to make up for him turning to the dark side. Roman Reigns, Daniel Bryan, and whoever the #3 face would be (Dean Ambrose? Sheamus?) simply aren't strong enough to make up for that. Which is WWE Creative's fault, but you don't fix your broken windows by setting fire to your working water tank. I'm also not as high on Ryback as you guys both are. I don't think he's bad or anything like that, but I don't think he has much of a sustained main event run in him (I think the HiaC buyrate was largely built on the concept of 'jacked up undefeated guy vs. weasel-y guy with long title reign - not Ryback vs. CM Punk the wrestlers). Once he lost the undefeated streak, any draw he had was pretty much gone, then he got booked into oblivion. Honestly, I think Titus has way more upside than Ryback in the long run. Finally, this is more disagreeing with Dylan than you, but I think Seth's a good heel and Stardust works, even if I'd actually like to see a Dust Brothers match sometime, along with the wacky promos. This probably looks like a lot, but I agreed on your basic ideas probably 3/4 of the time. I mean, beyond obviously, Kane should be pushe - OK, I couldn't finish that sentence.

Any podcast that can drop a Thomas Sowell reference gets five stars, even if I disagree with some of the ideas.

According to the Great Wiki, it drew a 15.2 rating and 33 million viewers. It was up against the beginning of ABC's TGIF lineup (Full House/Perfect Strangers) and Beauty on the Beast on CBS. Again, according to the Great Wiki, they were doing about 10-12 million homes on average.

I think the big difference today, is there are a lot of casual fans who visit cut 'n' paste websites and have no idea who either Bruiser Brody or Misawa are, but have this vague idea of people being held down. So, maybe, if that same kid in his late teens or early twenties who 25 years ago, when they got tired of Hogan being on top, they either would've drifted away or cheered for just somebody 'new' like Sid or Bret Hart, ignoring workrate, now they think "Cena can't wrestle" and think Dolph Ziggler is being "held down." I bet if you actually asked them to break down why a match was "bad" or "good", they couldn't actually tell you, they just know the people they read on the Internet (who are mostly sub-Scott Keith level) tell them Ziggler, Punk, and Bryan are great and that Cena and Batista are horrible. They're still marks, but just being conned in a different way.

I've said it more than once but it amazes me the simple things he gets wrong. Like, common knowledge things he gets wrong or doesn't know. I always use it but he and Bill Simmons were talking about Curt Hennig and Bret Hart. Simmons asked why Bret Hart essentially took Hennig's place in 1991 and Shoemaker said he didn't know when someone who wasn't an idiot would have said that's when Hennig fell into injury problems. Yeah, on deep pro-wrestling knowledge, I'm a minnow compared to some of the guys on this board. But, literally, every week I listen to the podcast (when you work 8 hours a day at a computer, you scarf up anything halfway entertaining to listen too), there's some obvious fact that you could either glean from reading the Observer that week or paying attention to wrestling at all in the past decade on the Internet. Plus, he's not even that good on the podcast. I understand why Rosenberg is on there, aside from the fact he's Shoemakers buddy. OTOH, I could name half a dozen people on various podcasts who could do a better job of being the "wrestling guy" on the podcast. As for Barnwell, yeah, he's gone a bit off of where he should. I mean, I doubt we're going to see Lowe write a Running Back Championship Belt article this August 'cause he has nothing better to do.

Naw, they keep saying "If you're not watching on the Network then why aren't you? It's only 9.99 a month!" Probably worried about OnDemand dropping them from PPV in the near future. So, getting at people while they can.

I'd say Sting over Flair myself. Flair had been in the WWF for two years a decade earlier, his presence wasn't so shocking compared to what Sting would have been back in 2001. And Goldberg really was a HUGE deal at the time. Remember the promo Vince did "the night he bought WCW"? The fans organically started chanting Goldberg - he really was to WCW what Austin was to WWF in the late 90's. Yeah, the main reason why I chose Flair is simply for talking ability. Flair could basically be Goldberg's hype man, while Sting couldn't quite pull it off. As far as why Goldberg, I look it at this way. At the end of WCW, there's basically five groups of fans - core WCW fans, casual WCW-leaning fans, pure casuals, casual WWF-leaning fans, and core WWF fans. The core WCW fans were gone the moment Vince showed up on Nitro or even earlier if they got disgusted by Russo and friends. However, casual WCW-leaning fans hear Goldberg is in WWF, along with casual fans who may have drifted away from wrestling in general after the boom ended, but watched Goldberg beat Hogan on Nitro would see Goldberg in the WWF as something to see. In other words, Goldberg was the only crossover star who wasn't a former WWF guy that WCW had. So, why not use him from the start?

I know somebody else said this on another board, podcast, or something, but you really needed two people for the Invasion to work - Goldberg and Flair. If they're involved, WCW feels like the WCW that was actually successful and has the spirit of WCW that frankly, Booker and DDP never had.

The thing that's really off about Shoemaker at Grantland is that for every other major sport, their main guy is considered at worst, 'very good' at covering his sport. Lowe, Keri, the NHL guy whose name I always forget, Barnwell, and so on. Plus, Shoemaker's not even a great writer. I mean, I understand why they didn't grab Meltzer, for all the obvious reasons. But, Brandon Stroud over at WithLeather does a RAW recap weekly, and has the same basic approach to it that Shoemaker does, except he actually seems to have cared about wrestling.

So, did you lose a bet? Or, has the VOW crew managed to get a Yazuka hitman that will come after for you for not giving New Japan it's proper due unless you watch TNA weekly?