Slasher

Think it was designed to get the fans who weren't too interested in Rematchamania to order the show for the hope they get to see the long awaited potential heel turn.

My mother? She is a horrible woman whose only good deeds involved pushing me to be the best person I could be so I could fly the coop as early as possible. But that is neither here or there. And no, her culinary skills resembles Patricia Heaton's character's on Everybody Loves Raymond.

That is fine, and I would appreciate that notion if it happens, but regardless, there are some who do not carry as much empathy, and I do not see a reason to attack that part of them. But I will leave it at that, I did not intend to take this thread in a different direction. I was just trying to stick up for Nell.

Don't get me wrong, I was not saying that it is ok to talk about how he was a good amateur in this specific circumstance, I was more saying that it was a bit much for anyone to expect that we should have this deep impacted emotion over the situation. Using my mom as an example, if I announced that she died, I wouldn't jump down people's throats if they did not show "sufficient" grief over a woman they did not know personally. If a person functions in a way where they take a detached approach, "Well that sucks, he could have been something...", that is their right. Let's not vilify them. We don't need to be shaking our fists at them for it.

Oh man, get off your high horse here. I doubt that is what he is saying at all. But not everyone can be deeply profoundly devastated about this. Did you know Reid Flair personally? Or the Flair family? It's okay to be sad about this, but don't try to twist things around to imply that everyone else should be the same way or else they are unfeeling soulless robots. Reid Flair had problems with heroin. He died. It sucks but that's what happens in many cases of deeply disturbed drug addicts. For the record, I've sat next to a really good friend who died on the couch and I did not even know it, and it turned out he overdosed on heroin that he injected in the bathroom prior to sitting down next to me. I know seeing firsthand the horrors of drug overdose, and I was not running out to deify the guy.

I know I'm going to be in bed tonight, wide awake trying to figure out the sense in this. My guess is he meant that the people COULD blow their noses, implying there is nothing upstairs in those people's heads.

Sadly that was the point. They wanted to breed competition in their creative ranks, theoretically to get the best out of everyone.... So yeah.

He got laid... often.

Think it was more to be spiteful. They were guys with "finer tastes" that resented how popular wrestling was in that period. So they tried to tear it down. Of course, Stossel got his ears boxed out for his trouble.

Yeah so the locker room was right to resent Luger as Meltzer implies. It was a big stupid gamble on Vince's part. Nothing like signing a proven mega icon wrestling star Rock for few appearances. The resentment would be more to the idea he gets the screen time over the full timers and he does not show the commitment they hoped he would. The steroids issue plays no role in it. With Luger, there is a clear message sent- "We signed this guy because he has a great body. Maybe if you had his body, we will treat you importantly too."

The difference is that Dave likes The Rock and didn't like Luger. Probably but my point is the locker room isn't going to look at the Rock and think, "Man, if I blew up like that, I will get the pushes." They would be thinking more accurately- "Man, if I got as over as he did, then left for years and found other ways to get even more popular while acting like I didn't need wrestling anymore, then decided to gift WWE with some spot appearances, they will bend over backwards for me too". The Rock is in a different league than Luger ever was in 1992. Your point is valid however about Dave's biases coloring the newsletters.

2013 YES. I highly doubt that this time around, we'll get Dave editorializing about the message that pushing a guy on top with Rock's physique sends to the locker room, although it's no less true now than it was then. Loss, you do know there is a major difference between pushing a roided up Luger as a full timer and a roided up movie star part timer Rock, right?

There's always the film division It's weird how having that division could be a boon for WWE looking for talents that COULD write the shows in cycles, but alas, we run into the problem I outlined earlier: Vince and Stephanie doesn't want writers criticizing them in wrestling content. It's their bread and butter and they aren't having any outsiders tell them what they are doing wrong with that stuff. When Kreski was telling Paul Levesque and Stephanie McMahon why the love triangle wouldn't work out the way they outlined, they pushed him out and proceeded to kill the storyline their way.

Most certainly. But has there been a good wrestling *writer* thus far we can talk about ? They've all been pretty shitty. Wasn't the head writer in 2000 from TV? Chris Kresky was his name? The guy who did the whole Steph/HHH/Angle love triangle and used story boards. Yeah, Chris Kreski, he died of cancer a few years ago, but he is probably the last good TV-oriented writer the WWE ever employed. He had storyboards that showed who could have alliances and who couldn't. Also had storyboards for how feuds should progress naturally. Of course, Stephanie pushed him out so that she could assume the lion's share of control over the storylines in WWE. We see how that went. Also as for great writers coming to WWE, won't happen. Smart writers get fired in WWE for pointing out continuity errors and storyline errors that Vince and/or Stephanie insists on forging ahead with. The WWE nowadays wants non-mark writers who won't argue with them and that will just script their desires. It's become a vanity project now moreso than it's ever been, and that's amazing considering how the last twenty years has essentially been an on-camera tribute to the awesomeness of the McMahon empire.

Now I am remembering a bit more, wasn't Shawn Michaels's appointment the first time vs Taker a result of a multi-man affair or was it just HBK vs JBL? I could have sworn Rey was involved for some reason.

I was a big Benoit fan so for a while after the murders, I was able to watch his matches and be detached, but as years have gone by, it's been less so. It isn't really even that he killed his family which ruined it for me, but rather that I am getting older and I just don't want to continue idolizing every tenet of which drove him to be fanatical about wrestling and leading him down a dark path.

Which is funny because Benoit's more fanatical defenders had no trouble trying to create their own McDonald story (devil worshipper Kevin Sullivan invading)

I seem to recall one year the Streak opponent being decided in a tournament... Or was that a Smackdown video game storyline?

Since apparently the whole act of killing everybody then himself took place over a full weekend, my guess is once he killed Nancy, and he had time to think about it, there was no way Daniel, and even Chris himself, was going to be alive after that. Benoit seems like the sort who had too much pride that he wouldn't want a son alive to endure the father killing mother taunts or that he would want to endure the guilt of having killed anybody while alive. So once the life went out of Nancy, so did Daniel and Chris's.

Kevin Sullivan got more play as a suspect than Nancy did. Weird thing to ask though, don't think Nancy has it in her to overpower Chris, nor to murder Daniel as well.

Now that people are mentioning it/refreshing my memory, yeah the whole no-showing the PPV due to a family emergency set off alarm bells. Still didn't put it together that this guy would kill everyone and then off himself. I guess I had more faith in the human race than I should.

Yeah. Seems weird people coming out with the "I knew it all along!" angle. Chris Benoit to most people outside the wrestling community was a guy who was hyper driven to be the best wrestler but was also by some accounts a guy who loved being a father to Daniel. I knew Benoit was a bit weird, but I did not immediately jump to family annihilator when I first heard about it. Although I do admit I found the theory that floated around of a home invasion turned deadly to be a bit unlikely, as I would imagine Benoit german suplexing the intruders multiple times on his kitchen floor rendering them useless.

I do think the WWE just stopped caring about giving Orton interesting things to do. They pushed him hard since 2003 and this is 2013. He never really got over the same way John Cena did. I think they are nowadays content with using him as a threat in the upper card, a guy who'll win a good amount of matches, but not necessarily be a franchise player anymore. Seems like the turning point was John Cena complaining to management to fire Orton after his last wellness strike, because ever since then, he's been in this spot.

They're both still wrestling and star names, I don't understand. Unless this is just a terrible joke. Orton is never getting a major push again. I mean "dream match" level push. His two wellness strikes made sure of it.

Why are people pouncing on the whole HHH peeing his pants thing from Raw? Like, who really cares? Wrestling is a physical thing, everyone knows HHH isn't actually peeing his pants in terror it is a weird thing to mock HHH, to me.