Dav'oh

Was reading an old interview with Player Uno as he was then known. He said that it was El Generico who came up with the name and that if it wasn't for El-G there'd be no Uno. I wonder...

I'd go with "puerile", which I've always found to be a trademark of their "humour".

Flair's since-deleted Tweet on the matter: "Every person that I've worked with, from my lawyer to my publicist to my wife has said not to post a response; but I've never run from past behaviors before and I'm not going to start now. I want to clarify a few things: About four years ago, I gave ESPN full access to my life for a "30 for 30" special. They covered taxes, financial issues, adultery, divorces, the passing of my child and drinking/partying AT LENGTH. Rory Kampf, desperate to matter for another 15 minutes, did an interview about it this morning. When Rory’s lips are moving, he's typically lying, but one part of what he said was the God's honest truth: "I'd never heard that he had forced someone to touch his genitals,” Karpf admitted. "Everything with Ric that was construed as negative I tried to address in the 30 for 30. His drinking, his philandering, his adultery, his money problems, there's quite a bit, but never, at least in the people that I spoke to, no one ever brought up that he would force himself on somebody." I allowed my personal life and the lives of my wife and children to be turned upside down for one reason: Whether it's good or bad, even the really bad, the truth has to matter. Even in wrestling. My issues have been well documented over my 40+ year career. The impact of drinking too much (which nearly killed me 5 years ago) has been told time and time and time again. The reason Rory (or anyone else for that matter) never heard stories of me forcing myself on ANYONE is simple: it never happened."

What about us? How complicit does our fandom make us? We're in pro-wrestling up to our bottom lips, on the outside looking in, but still fully immersed. This is a board that is seriously considering a sex-offender (Flair) and a rock-spider (Lawler) to receive the Greatest Wrestler Ever honour, and any discussion of their pasts is met with "well if we disqualify all the shitcunts there'd be no-one left". Is our silence and our willingness to ignore, just as insidious as Dreamer's vocalisations?

SRS tweeted that not all ideas make their way to the talent, so it's entirely feasible Adam Cole didn't know about it.

Triple H can't even get credit for falling in love and getting a beautiful woman to fall in love with him and raise a family with him. He was "wily enough to marry the boss' daughter", it was "a political move", which also devolves Steph into a clueless pawn just pumping out babies for a guy who doesn't love her.

Thanks for the recommendations. I watched both Takada as a jr and Vader's UWF run contemporaneously, and liked Takada from the start. I enjoyed the Thesz-era UWF matches, I think they're very very good at what they do; what they do just isn't for me in larger doses. I actually came here because i feel I need to redeem myself, and what better way than with some champagne comedy. Better sit down, this one's a doozy. Yeah baby.

@ohtani's jacket Thank you for the info. I'm in the cheapest of the cheap seats when it comes to the background of RINGS. I thought Sayama and Maeda were "disgusted" by pro-wrestling and formed their own group, and foolishly assumed that all the off-shoots (and their workers) shared the same motives. I happily stand corrected. @joeg Yeah, that was a bit hyperbolic. As I said, I've seen only two handfuls or so of his matches, and they tended to be the big, pimped matches. I found them somewhat "same-y", is all - maybe because of the constraints of the style? I'm pretty articulate for an insane person! Didn't know I was "incapable of processing blahblahblah", but you learn something new every day. Cheers for that. (I also thought "real combat" had king-hits, bottles, someone's mates jumping in, occasionally knives, sometimes a gun, ball-shots biting gouging hair-pulling, cops, hospitalisations. Didn't know "real combat" had ropes and a referee! And ring-girls! Never seen one of them in any of my pub brawls or street fights - what a jip!). @elliott Yeah, I know. The wink was partly for you @El-P Thanks. I'd only like to add that I think it barely resembles pro-wrestling, and deliberately so, not I don't recognise it as pro-wrestling. I acknowledged it as a form. And apologies for "we".

...but then you go on to dissect my argument. To wit: 62 matches in ten years does not come close to "durability" - the ability to withstand wear, pressure, or damage. Think Flair's Great American Bash tour schedule - or Flair's schedule, period. If Flair is "durable", how does Volk enter the conversation? He's not even a pimple on Flair's - or Bret's, or Kobashi or a countless others' - arse in that respect. Me. I thought we could form our own opinions with our own eyes and our own brains and our own words Just throwing this in because, again, you said I made no argument... Daddy, what's a strawman? What's "whataboutism"? Does it exist? I don't know. I do know I've never seen him work as either face or heel. We can revisit this when you tell me if it "apparently doesn't" or just doesn't. Wait, what? You're saying he was presented as a pro-wrestler? We'll agree to disagree on that. Me: "Yes, there's different forms of pro-wrestling, but Volk's form is the most removed (deliberately) from what we know and love and call pro-wrestling." You ignored that so that you could say "From there, there is nowhere to go and nothing to argue", i.e you created an imaginary, false, starting point for yourself, before going on to argue every point I made...That seems a lot more "invalid" than anything I wrote. And isn't "wrestling shouldn't be prescriptive"...prescriptive? I love your work brother El-P. I don't love pro-wrestling as MMA sparring. Part of my problem with Volk is something Cornette once said, about a punch in the face being the easiest thing to get over, because everyone knows what a punch in the face feels like. I've never been kneebarred in my life.

I am now. I probably should've put this in the Volk nomination thread, rather than a comparison thread. That's all well and good, but it's not much of a counter-argument. You've disagreed with my "prescriptive" viewpoint - that I think pro-wrestling should resemble pro-wrestling, not resemble fake kickboxing or fake MMA - which is purely a matter of personal taste. Let's talk versatility, durability, shitty pulled strikes, actually considering yourself a pro-wrestler, let's chuck in "couldn't work face or heel because there are no faces or heels as far as I can tell" - you know, all the things we look for and look at in the GWE discussions. I think Volk fares horribly in those categories, standing alone, let alone standing next to other contenders. Fuck, he wasn't even presented as a pro-wrestler, yet he we are discussing him as one of the greatest pro-wrestlers ever? Who's next - Andy Kaufmann?

(Braces for impact) Volk Han could only work in one setting - king of a touring grapplefuck troupe. Didn't even try to work anywhere else, because...well, he couldn't. He has one match (I've seen about a dozen versions of it), and it barely resembles pro-wrestling - they don't even lock up, for example; rather, they assume kickboxing stances. Volk is a Sambist or a karateka or a judist or whatevever before he's a pro-wrestler. I think he's fantastic at what he does, but it's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover Leglock, 50 Ways to Leave An Armbar. Yes, there's different forms of pro-wrestling, but Volk's form is the most removed (deliberately) from what we know and love and call pro-wrestling. I don't know if RINGS even call themselves "pro-wrestling" (Wiki says, "puroresu promotion from its inauguration to 1995, mixed martial arts promotion from 1995 to its 2002 disestablishment, and the revived mixed martial arts promotion from 2008 onward." Not sure how accurate that is), so it's unlikely Han ever viewed himself as such. And just like "You Must Be This Tall To Go On This Ride", sixty-two matches? So no longevity, no durability, to go with little adaptability and little versatility...meanwhile, someone like Killer Kowalski working all over the world, getting over all over the world, facing the best, working at the highest level for decades, probably won't get a look-in, in favour of this flash-in-the-pan who is so disgusted by pro-wrestling that he and his promotion did everything they could to distance themselves from it. Dav'oh wept. And as for carrying, any decent wrestling-school teacher could take you or me by the hand and have a passable match. No points for that. I think that's everything. Wait - very obviously pulled "shoot" punches and very obviously pulled "shoot" kicks look a thousand times more pissweak than worked punches and kicks. It takes more than worked finishes to be pro-wrestler. (INCOMING!!!!!!)

His jacket matched his shoes perfectly, bubba. Like he got his yellow and black Jordans and then found a coat with the same colours. Far from putting on "whatever", for mine.

CHILEAN GOALKEEPER BLADES DURING WORLD CUP QUALIFIER Rojas admitted that he'd had a razor stashed in his glove throughout the game The story: in 1989, with Chile needing to beat Brazil, in Chile, to qualify for the World Cup, and with Brazil leading 1-0 with 20 minutes to play, a female Brazilian fan threw a flare which exploded near Chilean goalkeeper Roberto Rojas. Rojas went down, clutching his head, and came up bleeding. The Chilean team stormed off and expected the game/score to be nullified. But then people looked at photos of the incident, and noticed the firework blast didn't hit Rojas, landing a few feet behind him. "Under questioning, Rojas admitted that he'd had a razor stashed in his glove throughout the game. When the chance presented itself, he fell to the ground, used the razor to cut his own head, and pretended the flare was to blame. It was a conspiracy between Rojas and the team doctor, Daniel Rodriguez, to nullify the match if things went poorly for the team. As far as we can tell, the fan who threw the flare (who went on to grace the cover of Playboy) wasn't in on it at all. Even without any flare showing up, Rojas would have feigned a fall and sliced himself open. The surprise flare just happened to offer a perfect opportunity. So, FIFA kicked Chile out of the 1990 World Cup after all, and then banned then from the 1994 World Cup as well for good measure. As for Rojas, they banned him from the sport for life. Or at least until 2001, when he asked to come back as a trainer and they said yes, because hey, it had been 12 years." Flair only got a fine for blading at WrestleMania 8....

He seems to be having a grand ol' time since being allowed to have chest and arm hair again. "Uninterested" is pretty much the last adjective I'd use to describe Moxley's time in AEW. Even Blind Freddy would call him "motivated" or "excited".

It was 1990-ish, so I was being compared to softcock prettyboy Keanu. I looked up to not-so-prettyboys like Ax and Smash. To be fair, I did bear an uncanny resemblance to Theodore "Ted" Logan Esq. Don't know where my girlfriend pulled La Paglia from - she must have been squinting.

I've looked like Keanu Reeves, Anthony La Paglia and a young Richard Gere according to various women at various times. This fucker gets to look like Dwayne... *That's Eric Fields, Morgan County Police Officer on either the left or the right.

I second that. What a font of knowledge. Here's "Yohe's 'Greatest 100 Wrestling Stars' Project" from WrestlingClassics in 2013 http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=003916 for anyone who hasn't seen it (page 5 has the final results - Thesz, Londos, Hogan, Lewis ,Gotch are the first five).

You're breaking my balls here, elliott ....I'll try again: I thought Londos was a lock for these things, but of the inductees from before the television-era ie the 1950s, they seem to be honouring the "shooters". Tough crowd around here...

Lifted straight from KayfabeMemories: "Debuts Sgt Slaughter (March 30, 1983) Ivan Putski (May 10, 1983) Tito Santana (May 10, 1983) Tony Atlas (August 2, 1983) Iron Sheik (September 13, 1983) Tonga Kid (September 13, 1983) Paul Orndorff (November 15, 1983) Alfred Hayes (December 26, 1983) Hulk Hogan (December 27, 1983) Adrian Adonis (December 27, 1983) Gene Okerlund (December 27, 1983) Dick Murdoch (December 27, 1983) David Schultz (December 27, 1983) Roddy Piper (January 3, 1984) Greg Valentine (January 24, 1984) Brian Blair (January 24, 1984) Jesse Ventura (May 21, 1984) Mad Dog Vachon (June 16, 1984) Kamala (July 10, 1984) Brutus Beefcake (July 31, 1984) Ken Patera (July 31, 1984) Nikolai Volkoff (July 31, 1984) The Freebirds (August 4, 1984) Angelo Mosca (August 6, 1984) Junkyard Dog (August 10, 1984) Bret Hart (August 29, 1984) Dynamite Kid (August 29, 1984) Bruno Sammartino (September 11, 1984) Bobby Heenan (September 22, 1984) Hillbilly Jim (September 24, 1984) Briscos (September 28, 1984) Barry Windham (October 13, 1984) Blackjack Mulligan (October 29 1984) Mike Rotundo (November 13, 1984) Jimmy Hart (February 12, 1985) Rick Steamboat (March 2, 1985) King Kong Bundy (March 5, 1985) Pedro Morales (April 16, 1985) Missing Link (May 20 1985) Terry Funk (June 17, 1985) Jim Brunzell (June 17, 1985) Uncle Elmer (June 17, 1985) Randy Savage (June 17, 1985) Lanny Poffo (June 17, 1985) Elizabeth (July 30, 1985) Dino Bravo (August 18, 1985) Cpl Kirschner (August 20, 1985) Cousin Junior (August 20, 1985) King Tonga/Haku (August 20, 1985) Steve Gatorwolf (August 20, 1985) Dan Spivey (October 26, 1985) Hercules (November 12, 1985) Ted Arcedi (December 3, 1985)."

No mention of whether they used BIGLAV or not, but here's the first 24 inductees into the International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, which will be housed in the Times Union Center in Albany, New York: Bruno Sammartino, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Terry Funk, Giant Baba, Ed ‘Strangler’ Lewis, Mil Mascaras, Lou Thesz, Buddy Rogers, Frank Gotch, Danny Hodge, Great Gama, Yusuf Ismail (the Terrible Turk, circa 1890s), Paul Pons, Rikidozan, Martin ‘Farmer’ Burns, George Hackenschmidt, Evan ‘Strangler’ Lewis, William Muldoon, Satoru Sayama, Antonio Inoki, Stanislaus Zbysko and Tatsumi Fujinami. I thought Londos was a lock for these things, but they seem to be honouring the "shooters" of the pre-TV era. Disappointed there's no Killer Kowalski (pretty sure I'll be the high vote on him here). The ballot committee comprised Robert Bryla (Chair), Nathan Hatton, Mark Hewitt, Koji Miyamoto and Jimmy Wheeler if that helps (Bill Apter is a consultant, and JJ Dillon and "Irish" Davey O'Hannon are honorary trustees).

I just had to find out what happened. From the man himself: "I'll do the top 3. I'll get the tattoo but not on my neck (at least not exactly where Cody got his). I'll donate the $200 to charity. I'll record myself staring at a wall for 569 minutes....I would get terminated from my job if I got the tattoo on my neck. I'm creating the compromise that works for everyone. I'm not a liar, afraid of commitments or seeking attention. I am, however, keeping my job."

Regarding Bray being one of the fed's best merch-movers, Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics says that only 30% of revenue comes from "direct-to-consumer" sales these days (ten years ago, it was 67%), and by his calculations that'll drop to 21% next year. TL;DR Actual wrestling fans are an increasingly small source of income for Vince & Friends. T-shirt sales are a but a drop in their fiscal ocean.

Alexa Bliss' tweet: “I really am at a loss for words… thank you so much Windham for everything you’ve done for this company. The most fun I’ve had is working with you. Such an amazing talent & the most kind person. I’m just in shock.” Various stuff, various sources: "according to Dave Meltzer, WWE Head of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis informed Bray Wyatt that his release today was due to budget cuts. Additionally, Wyatt was reportedly prepping for an August return and was said to have been booked for some shows before this decision was made." "Wyatt’s 90-day non-compete clause will run out the week before AEW Full Gear." "The relationship between Wyatt and Vince McMahon “ran very hot and cold” at points, and since McMahon is giving Khan more freedom than anyone else in history to run things, there likely wasn’t as much push back over cutting Wyatt." "The reaction backstage has been one of shock, especially due to how big The Fiend was for merchandise in decent years. The character sold a lot of t-shirts and action figures. One source blamed WWE President Nick Khan and CFO Kristina Salen, claiming the two are “obsessed” with WWE not being in the red at all" "Wyatt’s name had previously been brought up during another recent round of cuts. Multiple wrestlers had been discussed but were ultimately kept. The creative team had been told that Wyatt was getting protective of his character after “poor creative decisions and ideas” presented to him." WWE tweeted the stock "future endeavours" line, too.

14 year old Terry Meeka/Mecca vs Big Cat Ernie Ladd. Curiosity value only, but Ladd really looks after him and doesn't take any liberties. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kL-_QxdTY

Do you use the word "legend" in America? Cos around here, you'd be called a legend, mate. Fascinating stuff, as I'd say 70% of my pro-wrestling diet is devouring written wrestling history. Thanks for sharing your efforts and I hope you enjoy the book.