Steenalized

Steven's might win for the people watching as he does everything he can to kill the crowd, short of retiring Bruno to DiBiase in a cage match on the same card. Edit: Meant his first card, not the fat man card.

Still low, but I'm actually more interested now than last week. You can thank the pre-taped Brock and Rusev videos for that.

I love Brock as a character and as a wrestler, so much. Resign him. Turn him face and give me Brock vs. Rusev.

Exactly, Sting comes out and starts to actually give some explanation for is actions, a real motivation, and then "lol WCW failed and we made it happen."

I thought Sting was cutting a good promo before Steph came in and spat out the same stuff that we've been hearing forever.

You very well may have, I listened to the first half at work and so I was somewhat distracted.

I did not know that, and that helps explain the talk you guys had directed on confusion in the market place. It'd also be a lot easier to take a muscular blonde action figure with a WWE logo or WWE written on a baggie and claim it's infringing on their IP than it is to do so on just a muscular blonde action figure with no further info attached. Resale is legal, original works are legal, but it can always come down to the WWE seizing what they reasonably can since who's going to have the resources to fight it?

About a quarter in and fascinated by this podcast so far. I feel like it was made specifically for me, given the confluence of IP, law, and wrestling going on here. We'll see if I have any more thoughts to speak to as I listen to it all. I get what you guys are saying about the action figures too and I agree (well, I'm on Dylan's side of the validity of IP, though I don't even buy the moral argument he supports, but that's beside the point). Anyhow, at least in the 9th Circuit and possibly elsewhere, courts have said you own a right to your own image for publicity purposes. I'd wager WWE wrestlers sign this over in their contracts to the WWE, which in turn would give the WWE the power to enforce the right. As a result, that's where the WWE gets off on seizing even custom made action figures, even if you take some other action figures, piece them together, paint them, and then call it a HHH figure or whatever. I think that's morally and ethically dubious to say the least, and counterproductive to their actual fanbase and market, but I'd guess they do have the right.

I haven't seen him wrestler yet either so I'll try to search some stuff out. I can see some ROH fans (your "ROHbots", to use a term) who would be pissed about this given how he looks and what his name is. But whatever, this isn't 2002, code of honor, shaking hands, top 5 rankings and no gimmicks (unless they do).

He's a husky midwesterner named "Beer City Brawler," that alone gets him my love.

That was fucking awesome, please tell me it got shown on Raw or at least Smackdown. Maybe it still will, if it hasn't.

That's terrible, RIP to the man and I feel awful for the other guys in the ring too when something like this happens.

He also found his wife through the WWE and, per wikipedia and a citation there, his ambition is to be the best wrestler possible. Certainly that means NJPW or ROH to some, but he's not exactly churning out duds in the WWE.

He's starting to show up in more TV shows and movies, so we'll see about that.

Undefeated teams that steamroll everyone are major stories that draw tons of attention. College football and basketball are the best (most frequent and likely) examples, like Florida State football two seasons ago and Kentucky basketball this year. The problem is, as JvK is getting at, is that I can't think of any undefeated sports team who are "faces". At best, a team like UK this year is split - huge fanbase, sure, but people don't like to root for old powers and dominant teams. Ratings suggest they sure do like to watch them though, even over plucky, once-in-a-lifetime underdogs.

Along with that, they also sent Hogan there primarily to announce the KENTA signing. And they seemed to treat the KENTA signing like a big deal.

So your beef is with gullibility and shoddy reporting, not twitter.

Recognition in the Japanese media.

The word last year for Danny Hodge not going in despite his huge popularity there was that too little footage exists. Stevens could be in the same boat.

Why would a rate the third best member of Legacy that high?

To just name names for the most part, no order to this other than how they came to mind. It's nowhere near 100 either. Terry Funk Stan Hansen Ric Flair Ricky Steamboat Genichiro Tenryu Mitsuharu Misawa Jun Akiyama Akira Taue Toshiaki Kawada Steve Austin Bret Hart Jerry Lawler Bill Dundee Rey Mysterio, Jr. CM Punk Daniel BRyan Jushin Liger Yoshinari Ogawa Shinjiro Otani Arn Anderson William Regal Shinya Hashimoto Samoa Joe Mick Foley Randy Savage Barry Windham Dustin Rhodes Nick Bockwinkel Bobby Eaton Kenta Kobashi Minoru Suzuki Eddie Guerrero Cesaro Chris Hero

Good thinking, thanks, Will. I know I tend to think to myself "well shit, I watch less wrestling than [you guys] and haven't seen even remotely as much, what's the point of my ballot in comparison?" But I've got time and I'll keep chugging away. Even though I havent' posted much about it here, this project has already been a ton of fun for me to keep looking up new people or for new materials on old people I've seen before.

I don't think it's the complete change in style I'm looking for since for one, I very clearly have favorite match types (monster vs. underdog, probably why I love Lawler, Cena, etc.) and two, it is more 'can you still have a good match with this person while adjusting to/with their style' moreso than 'can you work that exact style.' It's something that came up on the Wrestling Culture episode of Funk vs. Flair vs. Lawler as GOAT. I agree that Flair can have a great match with a broom working his Flair magic, but I'd rather see Funk doing his thing to work with whoever his opponent is.

To lay a little critqiue on the first set of questions: I really do not care for match length as a (sometimes the) defining criterion for worker performance. I am more interested in if a worker can do a variety of styles and/or how well they do in any given style (excellence in one being better than mediocrity in them all) over whether they can fill time for 40 minutes. Even if they make it a great 40 minutes, I don't think a great 40 minute match is inherently better than a great 30, 20, or 10 minute match. The work against a variety of opponents and opponent styles does interest me more. I think question three is really a subset of question one too.

What's stupid about a brief testament to what the WWE is doing (may be doing) at their shows?