...TG

Our pal David Shoemaker is back at Bill Simmons' new site The Ringer with "The Story of Vince McMahon", and it's actually pretty good. This is because Shoemaker didn't write any of it - it's an oral history of Vince made up of quotes made by Vince himself pulled from various interviews. The oral history thing is super-played out at this point, but for me Vince is such a fascinating person that it works for me.

Certainly a 73 year old who's been taking bumps for well over half his life having dementia is not out of the realm of possibility, right? It has to be just as possible as Snuka fooling multiple doctors and lawyers and getting his family to lie under oath?

Whole thing was great, especially AJ repeatedly running back to continue the beatdown. Glad to see it came at halftime of the NBA game, hopefully they got some channel flippers. If we're not going to get any more Roman/AJ matches, Cena/AJ is a more than acceptable substitute. One thing I miss about the old days was the conceit that all the babyfaces were friends - if this was a WCW Saturday Night episode Zach Ryder, Enzo & Cass, and Sami Zayn would come to the rescue.

It's good to see Steph can emasculate the female talent as well as she does the men.

I have a highly distinct memory of watching the Killer Bees do their mask-switching thing. Looking it up, it probably would have been 1985 or so.

This one I can sort of buy. Not in the sense that Russo was some kind of double agent subverting WCW from within, as he's almost certainly not clever enough to pull that off. But more like when Russo told Vince that he was leaving for WCW, Vince figured that there was a near-100% chance that Russo would be an utter disaster with no filter.

This was a common one back in the day. I remember Meltzer's old Eyada show Dave went off on like a five-minute rant on a caller after he asked about it.

HHH's tweet this evening seems to hint at a Smackdown direction:

Wrestling twitter went quiet during the last few minutes, which is how good that match was.

You know, I really don't even know what being a good wrestler is or what being a technical wrestler is anymore. I think I've heard "YOU STILL SUCK" for Reigns as well following epic spots. That's at least clever. Though he objectively doesn't suck at this point - that Black Tiger bomb was picture perfect. Dump the spear and use that thing.

Credit where it's due - they did good work with the tacks. But good god that was at least 10 minutes too long.

Is this match longer than the two tag matches combined?

Miz has been great post-WrestleMania, love a good chickenshit heel performance.

On everyone else's feed, was there a promo in between the pre-show and the PPV with two bugs fucking? Just want to make sure I'm not tripping.

Cody just issued a statement on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PrinceCGR/status/734501299337584641. Goes pretty hard on the writers, claims he's been pitching to go back to regular Cody Rhodes for 6 months with no luck. If true, good for him for standing up for himself and quitting.

Bah! Was all set to post a "Renegade" joke only to find I've been beaten by four years.

Thanks for bumping this thread, kaufman316, it's a great read. It's kind of amazing that despite all the obvious, easily-correctable errors that Scott commits he's still out there pumping out content for almost 20 years. Like a lot of folks in this thread, Scott's stuff was some of the first I came upon when I got online, and I hung on his every word for a while. I don't regret that period in my fandom, though - through his work, and moreso the communities that sprung up around his work, I found places like Meltzer, tOA, DVDVR (and after a long break PWO) where my perspectives were broadened considerably.

The long shows can be daunting for newcomers but if it's a good show, I don't care how long it is.

So I really liked this, and specifically I liked Brody in this. I pretty much like Lawler in everything in this time period, so he doesn't get any extra credit. Brody sells plenty for King, doesn't smother the match with his gimmick, and has a damn good brawl here. It's too short to be an all-time classic, and there's a bullshit cop-out finish, but otherwise pretty entertaining. This finished 81/125 in the poll, which seems a little low on first glance.

You like stalling? King and the Macho Man give you all the stalling you'll ever need here. It's certainly effective, as the crowd is just in a lather by the time they actually begin to wrestle. And when King makes his comeback after the restart, the MSC is as loud as I've ever heard it.

So I follow Chris Charlton on Twitter, who's a great follow. He's an English speaker living in Japan who will post English-language translations of Japanese interviews. (There were a couple of great ones a few weeks back with Great Kabuki talking about Terry Gordy, and Tenryu where he talked about a lot about Hansen and Brody, and ripped Tommy Rich of all people, out of nowhere.) Anyway, his book on New Japan was mentioned above, and it's available on Amazon Unlimited and also if you have Prime, the Prime Lending Library. If you know absolutely nothing about the history of New Japan, it's a good introduction. I'm certainly no expert, but I know just enough that it's way too surface level for me to enjoy. A lot of the stuff I'm really interested in is just glossed over - the 70s-80s stuff, UWF, various Inoki sleazy business doings. And its coverage of the modern day is basically a recap of the in-ring feuds, and way too cheerleader-ish from the business standpoint. A big disappointment, alas.

You'll occasionally see the same thing here in the States - that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo reality show that was popular a few years ago was subtitled is the one I can remember

There's a stigma against southern accents because states in the Deep South, where you'll find the thickest accents in the country, happen to also be the poorest, least educated, and most obese. Combine that with the region's history with the civil war and the rampant racism and it's a pretty easy region to make fun of. Half those guys you listed as being able to work around a southern accent are from Texas. I think, given the area's wealth and popularity as a vacation destination, there's not much association with the neighboring Deep South, so that's what makes it possible for people get a Texan accent over without getting branded as a southern guy. Same thing for Florida. RE: the "rampant racism" of the South, singling out the South for racism is one of the laziest stereotypes there is. I saw more overt racism growing up in the Cincinnati area than I do now in Dallas. Partially that could be the changing times, of course. OTOH, I saw some dude just waving the Confederate flag on a busy street corner a couple weeks ago in Dallas, so what do I know.

Loved the show, as usual - Prazak is a great guest. The impromptu IWA-MS talk was super-entertaining too. Maybe an Exile with Prazak focusing on IWA-MS?

Depends on the nature of the release. A bad breakup can lead to the need to grind the axe for a fuck you bridge burning shoot. Has there been any hint as to why, after all this time, he's fired now?