Jesse Ewiak

I have a database of 500 wrestlers as well. It's called TEW, a booking sim.

I have a theory that reality shows that are popular today are basically taking the place of soap operas. Bad acting, silly storylines, good looking people, and so on. But now, it's "real" people doing it all and you can watch it all the time. The kind of people watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians today (Ie. female) were watching General Hospital and Falcon Crest in the mid-80's

Why use one belt when you can sell two at the merchandise stand?

Two quick things. To kind of defend Parv, there was an anti-Japanese, they're going to take over sentiment in the mid to late 80's, fueled by things like Japanese investors buying Rockefeller Center and Sony buying Columbia. Plus, there was analysis showing Japan would pass the USA as the #1 economy by such and such date. I'm sure there are books published today that have just cut 'n' pasted China for Japan and released the same book. However, in the early 80's, there was still a feeling that Japanese products were kind of junk - it's part of the reason why Nintendo tried to hide the fact they were a Japanese company at the launch of the NES. The World's Martial Arts Championship was a belt given to Inoki by McMahon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWF_World_Martial_Arts_Heavyweight_Championship). The NWF title was a separate belt that Inoki used as another personal title that was treated as the top belt, I think, in New Japan, before the creation of the IWGP title.

As far as WWE unionization, the thing that has to happen is a wrestler has to have enough 'F U' money to basically go through the long, painful, and involved process of any number of lawsuits that would hopefully end with the recognition that the idea WWE wrestlers are independant contractors is a joke, both legally and in reality. Brock was on his way to doing this in a weird almost accidental way in '05 when he went to New Japan and I think the WWE realized this, so they made a deal with him.

Nah, if it wasn't Orton and Batista the backlash reactions for Bryan wouldn't be as heated. Number one, Orton and Bryan work together amazingly and have killer matches, and number two, Batista getting the reactions he got and the whole Evolution deal have a big effect. "Basically anyone else"? Nah. Bryan being the new hero of the fans and new top guy is totally dependent on the idea that it's HHH and "his guys" are his adversaries. You know ....like it was maybe planned this way. Well, I could believe that. Or I could believe all evidence out there. I mean, unless they decided to book the main event scene badly for most of the fall and winter to set up Wrestlemania.

I'm going to guess, if we're considering all wrestlers, their white males, nominally Christian, many of whom are above thirty five, and from the South. That's a recipe for a Republican voter if I've ever heard one. Throw in relatively high salary (at one point) plus the fact their independent contractors, and again, I wouldn't be shocked if 70-80% of the WWE & WCW roster since 1990 voted Republican. OTOH, with the WWE roster being more diverse, younger, and with more women in it, I'd actually guess Romney only won 60-40 among the locker room. After all, even with their pay, I doubt either Punk or Bryan is voting for Romney.

I feel like that is only going to increase if he wins the title at WrestleMania. I just don't think the character is going to work very well as the Champion. Great underdog to chase the title, but what do you do with him after he wins? They pretty much are going to have to screw him out of the title shortly after having him win it and have him chase Batista for a while. I think a possibly great thing to do is Bryan wins the title at WM. Then, the night after WM in front of the smarkiest audience in wrestling, Bryan is doing his celebration at the end of the show, when HHH comes out, gives Batista an immediate rematch, then wins in...sixteen seconds. It's either go over great or possibly actually cause a riot.

Sure, everybody is going on the Internet to get 'news' about wrestling, just like everybody goes on the Internet to find 'news' about movies, celebs, or sports. But, they're going to TMZ, googling 'Batman vs. Superman' and reading whatever crap floats to the top, and ESPN, not say, Baseball Prospectus nor The AV Club.

If I remember right, he owns the building he lives in that has several businesses on the bottom, so he's got that income stream, even if he's not wrestling.

I think it's also important for us to remember, that as hardcore wrestling fans, we're like the comic book geeks who are upset that Captain America's costume or motivation is slightly different than issue #247 in 1975. For 98% of fans, somebody selling the knee for a few minutes is all they need to 'get' it. They don't need the injured guy to be subtly selling the knee during the finish. So, while we may be tweaked by it, a wrestler shouldn't change what he's doing, no more than the writer of The Avengers 2 should listen to the guys complaining about continuity from the mid-80's.

I think the big difference is that Punk hasn't refused to job to anybody, especially while holding a title, and he has other issues beyond being in the main event (PPV bonuses and such) that seem reasonable as compared to "lose your title in the ring." I do think the people who act as if Punk (or Bryan for that matter) are being oppressed are silly.

There's no way they did the full Batista turn if Punk wasn't coming back, either to take the HHH spot or be thrown in the main event. I can easily see HHH/Orton/Batista bearing down on Bryan at the end of RAW, when Punk comes out of the crowd and gets a GTS on Orton to end the show.

I think an underrated part of the reason why even people who were lukewarm on the WWE in the past has basically said in the past year or so that the in-ring work is awesome is two reasons. 1.) A lot more of the awesome wrestling is on RAW after the shift to three hours. Even hardcore wrestling fans tend to forget Smackdown exists, so despite all the awesome stuff that happened there, it kind of got lost in the mists. 2.) People that hardcore fans are already predisposed to liking are having these awesome matches. Convincing somebody that Chris Master or Mark Henry are having great matches is a little harder than convincing them Tyler Black and Claudio and Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson are having great matches. For example, on the WWE 2013 recap Alan4L did, he said during '10, '11, and '12, he had about 10-15 4*+ matches each year. In 2013, I think he said he had 40.

On the lucha in Atlanta, don't underestimate the fact Atlanta's a massive traffic hub, so it'd might be more cost-effective to have a show there than say, an area in Texas or Arizona with a higher Hispanic population.

One "community" within another one is the WressleGAF section of NeoGAF. Their February thread has over 9,000 posts and 900,000 views within one of the biggest message boards of the entire Internet.

Or, more likely, most of the piece was written before Punk left and nobody forget to edit the article til it popped up.

I don't know. Again, I'm like 90% sure it would never happen. But, one, I actually think I highballed the number it'd take for him to wrestle. Especially as Punk was somebody who discovered NJPW/AJPW like we all did back in the day. Even ignoring that, a lot of those people who would torrent the show anyway have a connection to Punk, so ordering the iPPV would be a way to support him and stick it to McMahon. In addition, you'd have all of the people who are "casual" fans who follow Punk on Twitter and other social media. Imagine, if for a month or two, you had Punk linking to the uStream page every few days and posting wacky pictures of him in Japan. Like I said, I don't think it'd happen or even probably work, but I do think if one guy who could pull it off, it'd be Punk.

I don't actually think this would happen, but New Japan has to know they're probably getting decent iPPV buys from the US based on their coverage in the country. So, why not make a Godfather offer ($500k or $1 million for one match) to him for a Tokyo Dome match versus Tanahashi or Okada?

Yeah, they were also trying to push Miz to get him over as a heel as well. I'm talking more about the heel champs or main heels, like say, Dolph, Awesome Truth, Swagger, and so on, that were supposed to be main event heels, but couldn't beat midcarders or ever get one over on a face. Orton, Triple H, and Miz during his title reign (for some of it) actually stood tall at the end of RAW, something that barely ever happened with other heels. Same thing with faces. How many times was Austin, Cena, or The Rock left totally laid out like Bryan was multiple times during his 'push'? Now, the last month or so has been wacky for Orton, but he still beat John Cena in two straight PPV's, one time clean and the other time semi-clean. How many people can say that since Cena won his first title?

Bingo. Again, look at the way they pushed Austin as he was rising, or hell, look at the way they pushed Orton once it was obvious he was turning heel and afterward. Most heel champions are pussies and barely win their matches. Not Randy Orton. He beats faces clean in the middle. They're pushing Bryan, but not in with any real plan or momentum.

It's weird how Impact was at least a decent TV show most weeks even 3-4 months ago, but just went down the toilet recently. It's like the booking team realized, "OK, how can we save our jobs before the sale," and realized that the answer was, make the boss the top heel.

To be fair, why would it come up before Steph was a character? Meltzer in '93 wasn't the type to print completely unfounded rumors, especially about the underage daughter of Vince, and it was the days before enough people with knowledge could spread rumors around on the Internet. So, assuming it did happen, it slowly percolates through the wrestling rumor chain and eventually enough people hear it 14th hand that somebody posts it in the sleaze thread. Assuming of course, there's any truth to it at all.

They did recently put in force a TOS for the board and basically nuked the pics folder. I mean, it's still a board with hundreds of people on it, so there's always going to be idiots. But, I find if you stay in Alan's section, you can get good info. If I was Dave and had seen as much awesome booking and wrestling as he has, I'd be a curmudgeon about most thing wrestling as well. Unless you think 2013 was full of fantastic booking from WWE or TNA?

Business wise, it works. If I had to guess, with the website and everything else, Dave's probably been never more successful. As other people have pointed out, there's always something Dave covers that a small minority bitch about. People complained about Dave covering lucha in the 90's, just for one example. Also, the amount of MMA coverage is based on the news that's happening. Around Wrestlemania, MMA will hardly be mentioned Around the biggest UFC show of the year, it'll be mentioned a lot. I don't really care about a third tier Invicta PPV recap. So, what do I do? I fast forward or zone out for a few minutes. It's not the end of the world.