BrianB

He wasn't acquitted. He was ruled incompetent to stand trial. I believe he was found liable in a wrongful death civil action as well.

Early 90's WCW is so much fun. Some great stuff there. Even the bad stuff is part of the charm of WCW for me. Love that era! 1992 into very early 1993 WCW is probably the greatest year from a wrestling quality standpoint ever produced from a US stand point. Dangerous Alliance, peak Vader, arguably peak Sting (ring wise), peak Cactus, the Steiners, Gordy/Doc, Steamboat, Dustin coming into his own. It's a magical time. Superbrawl III seems like the marker. And I wonder from the declining business if Sting beating Vader would've been the right call. It's sort of blasphemous because Vader's 1993 is so great and I love Vader vs. Flair (I know your opinion differs stro, at least on the match). I think I'd still take 1989, but I've got to see more of the overall TV of both periods, especially since WCW had so many different shows in both periods.

Fair point. He might not have known though if Vince immediately axed it when he found out.

I don't think he's saying it was always going to build to a big reveal. Instead, Daniels just would be been a new character brought in for a big role. And if it was a Russo idea like Bruce said, then Russo bringing it back (albeit for a week) in WCW a year later when Vampiro was cosplaying as Undertaker makes perfect sense. This. If you look at the track record and sheets, Russo as a talent evaluator is clearly a strange cat. He pushed lots of guys he liked with bad track records, Jeff Jarrett being one of the most famous, but you've also got weird stuff like Big Vito getting lots of air time, or him pushing the worthless Harris Brothers...because....reasons? (aka probably how he knew them from WWE and they got along ok.)

they cancel the whole idea? strong no round 2.

Ha, quite possibly. It might've had something to do with the few beers I had before logging on too.

Guilty. No idea why I was typing it out that way.

I highly doubt WrestleCon was a defense strategy. Judges almost always hate seeing anything that looks like they are publicly being shown up, which is what this looked like--he's not competent to stand trial, but he's perfectly able to represent himself as the wrestling Jimmy Snucka and sign autographs, talk to fans, and likely share stories for $$$. I'd assume Snucka either just did it not thinking, did it because he needed the money, or figured he was golden by now and just went out to make some dough.

The coroner said it was a homicide. There was nobody else in the room. Who did it, then? Coroner's are not infallible. Secondly, whether Snucka did it or not, is a separate issue from if he's fit to stand trial now. I'm not sure what the right answer really is at the moment. Snucka is a worker and I'm not really sure how much stock can be put into his defense attorney saying he only has about 6 months to live. But, on the other hand, if we assume Snucka is barely legally competent but only has a year or two left to live and he'll fight the trial the whole time, is it worth it to go through the full trial costs for what seems more likely to be a manslaughter conviction than a murder 1 conviction? I'm not a taxpayer in that state, so I can't weigh in exactly, and I see arguments a lot of ways on that. At the very least, most people who have followed this episode believe Snucka is at least partially responsible for Nancy's death, even if just negligence or at most outright murder. Regardless, given Snucka's current age and condition, deterrence, rehabilitation, or incapicitation are all hard sells for pushing this prosecution, even if successful. There are other rationales, of course, for prosecuting him, especially related to the victims, retribution, and maybe a general deterrence signaling to the community, but they don't seem like slam dunks, imo. If the alternative to a trial is essentially Snucka stuck in an assisted living type situation for however long he has left that might be alright.

A single loss? Probably never. In terms of over a real lengthy span. When I read this topic title, Luger is a name that comes to mind but he got another chance in the WWF in 1993, though it didn't work partly because of him celebrating like he won the world series after a countout, but he still got a nice run in WCW in 1997 and was extremely over until they started jobbing him a lot after Hogan beat him at Road Wild. The only names I've seen where maybe you can make arguments--Ryback and Tatanka--however, both of those guys weren't good. I also wonder if it was that Mark Henry loss and the heel turn vs. Cena did more damage than the Punk loss. The Nash loss definitely didn't kill Goldberg (it probably hurt some, but again that fingerpoke of doom followup and Goldberg the inept goon was arguably worse.) Look at the latest historical observer that dropped, he was a massive ratings mover in 1999. But losses can still do damage. It's usually more the followup that's the killer, honestly. Especially if the guy keeps losing. The only names I've seen where maybe you can make arguments--Ryback and Tatanka--both of those guys weren't good. I'd also agree that Mark Henry and the heel turn vs. Cena did more damage than the Punk loss. Losses hurting a territory, though, I'd agree with that. Good examples listed earlier. If Punk had lost to Cena in 2011 at MITB, I'd imagine that would have hurt WWE in Chicago too.

It's one. But since heels in WWE rarely win by tap out, it's faded into the background more.

True. I wasn't delighted with that match's ending, but I didn't have a problem with it as far as it getting the pinfall vs. a kickout exactly; my issue was wanting Sasha to go over for the hometown crowd and how the loss deflated them. As a the heel is just too much for the weakened babyface finish though, it was executed well, even if the table didn't break or whatever. It is a bit strange that since that match WWE has been establishing Charlotte's big boot front leg back kick that time (fans) as her primary finisher, though she had won a match or two before with it, I think.

True. The other part of this problem is that matches very rarely end with a fall to a non-finish move. After decades of this and typical crescendo WWE style, fans have been conditioned to only start getting hyped up once the first finisher lands (or occasionally a signature spot.)

Thanks for the clarification. If it was the most heavily promoted and fan anticipated, I don't have an issue with it. I wasn't watching ECW then, so I didn't know.

Currently hitting 1989 WCW Saturday Night and re-watching the PPVs

I haven't watched that show in awhile, but I don't recall the crowd heat being so much bigger for that match over the final 2 matches. Was it?

What's Taz talking about with headlining Barely Legal vs. Sabu? The actual headliners were the #1 contenders match between Richards, Sandman and Funk, then Funk got the title shot immediately and beat Raven.

And yet none of my degrees can help me make any sense of what this sentence is supposed to mean. There have been other shitty Survivor Series, but did any of them make less sense than this one? Did any of them actively bury talent and top stars with quite the same relish? I mean say what you want about the Million Dollar Corporation, at least there was never any doubt that they were the bad guys. Might be a regional difference then, since I'm across the pond, or maybe intentional obtuseness. It means you've been extra 'get off my lawn' gimmicky in tone and sports radio talk-y. Recency bias, either toward something being amazing (see Sasha vs. Charlotte HIAC) or shitty (see this PPV.) edit: additionally, over here, the pick a side and just argue it passionately started to go out of fashion with academics over here circa 2010. Now, it's more attuned to back and forth debate and counterarguments and being more measured. I don't get why would expect a strong face vs. heel dynamic to a show that is essentially brand vs. brand, and they want you to watch both brands, and, if anything, Brock has been the heel to this Goldberg feud. I was confused at what happened in this show, and I wonder if it will be like this past year's wrestlemania where it's legacy was jsut defy predictions and advance a few storylines but mostly just be an outlier show. However, that doesn't make it the worst survivor series show of all time in 30 years. Survivor Series is notorious as a treading water or weak big 4 ppv.

1995 was even better.

WWE worked me into a Dean Ambrose heel turn. If he gets a program vs. Taker...that might be very interesting. For a professor, you've been a hot take machine lately. This show reminded me of wrestlemania this year in terms of moments, omg maggle factor x500 and booking and match layout questionableness...but 1994 survivor series was the shits. 2013 was really bad too...orton vs. big blows. 1997 is a historically important show, but it's a dire abortion. 1998 is okay from a story/big picture pov but it's a really boring show and still has some storyline holes if you've paid attention to the TV (e.g. Shane joining Vince.) Generally, I'd say the match quality was good. I'm not as high on the women's and tag team survivor matches as everyone else, but they weren't terrible and most of the rest was solid, if strange.

He got beaten by a 50 year old Taker at SummerSlam last year too. I'm not sure what to make of this ppv, but I wouldn't call that finish a disaster or anything.

Yet the current economy is not in nearly as bad a state as the Weimar Republic was, Trump is not a leader of his political party in the same way Hitler was. Additionally, he's already facing push-back internally on some of his campaign promises, such as the deportation force. He needs the support of Congress to get most things done. That doesn't mean he still won't try and be much more combative than Obama was, just saying there are more checks on him. At the moment, I'd say the closer historical parallel is 1968 with Nixon.

Depends on the group to an extent I suspect, but in a nutshell: too much in-fighting and purity testing. Hillary's history didn't help either. They wanted change they could believe in and she's not a convincing vessel for that message.

Nope, it's not. But Trump's side did it well-enough and retained most republican voters and they turned out. Plus, if so many people are really dying of anxiety because of immigration, muslim, abortion, LBGT issues, repealing obamacare, etc, and very concerned about the supreme court, then what were they doing sitting out? Bush vs. Kerry wasn't that long ago--some people sat out then that shouldn't have--and we got the worst Bush term of the two by far. This was foreseeable. The polling was not Clinton with a national 10 point lead. It was in the same range as the Brexit polling that shocked everyone, and in the swing states it was even closer than the national average by a point or two. But some people seemed to prefer to keep their hands clean, rather than making a responsible choice, and opted to keep churning out their hot take opinions, outrage policing, and meme quips all over social media, then act horrified that we got Trump? Sure, next time, people hopefully won't don't do the perfectionist fallacy, and voters nominate a candidate that isn't terrible and actually inspires the base. However, it's not like people weren't on notice about this.

Yep, being told your own country hates you is no reason to feel impacted at all. So vote, and go out and get people like-minded with you to vote. This election had fewer votes than 2008 and 2012, and Trump received fewer votes than Romney. It also had two of the most disliked candidates of all-time. If people thought more outside their bubble and their echochambers, I think they'd realize that 'your country hates you' is an exaggeration of what happened with voters. Hopefully Trump isn't so temperamentally unfit or ideologically loony that he drives the country off a cliff in the next 4 years. In the meantime, everyone so unhappy should out and get involved in organizations that will advocate for the things they want to change. It's understandable for people to be emotional for some length of time, but they've got to move beyond that. I've tried to stay off social media since the election, but spent more time on it today. It seems like lots of people haven't moved past that stage and don't want to face reality. I'm left-leaning and I think there's a lot to be hopeful for after 2020, or maybe 2018, if we can keep everything from going to shit in the meantime.