Cox

There is about a 90% chance I taped this. I recorded the show for Dennis, as his son Marc was an online friend around this time. This show took place down the street from my parents house, which as a young wrestling fan, it was always cool to walk two blocks to hit an indy show.

The only thing reliable about Eddie Gilbert was being unreliable. That wouldn't have changed no matter what.

Or an AppleTV, if you're an Apple guy.

ECW might have actually gotten the clearance to air this since Perry Saturn was in the music video for the song, so I assume he had SOME sort of connection to the group.

What I've always found fascinating is, Memphis and St Louis, geographically, are extremely close, only a five hour drive. Yet wrestling wise, they are worlds apart.

For reasons having nothing to do with wrestling, I will always hate November to Remember '97. My friends and I drove from New Jersey to Pittsburgh for the PPV, only my idiot friend's van broke down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, so we had no way of getting around town the entire weekend. We wound up piling into the car of a bunch of creepy dudes to get to the show. The show was fucking terrible. And then we had to take the bus all the way home. I wound up having a huge falling out with all of my friends over what happened that weekend, and the show left such a bad taste in my mouth, I never went to another ECW live show again and stopped watching their TV. So...I guess you could say, I have nothing kind to say about this match or this show.

Sadly, he is not going to be selling these. I had actually bought one from him yesterday, but he refunded me today saying that WWE had found out about it and rather than deal with WWE legal coming after him, he is just going to give away a few prints and work on maybe trying to get WWE to sell these officially.

I think I've made this point before, but I think there is sometimes a pretty huge difference between what a wrestler likes in a wrestler and what a fan likes in a wrestler. That doesn't mean the two are mutually exclusive, but there is often a huge disconnect between what a wrestler likes about another wrestler and what fans who watch matches like in watching them work.

I think the best way to handle candidates falling off the ballot is to follow the baseball model: drop the "Historical US and Canada" part of the ballot, form an actual Veterans Committee consisting of 10-20 historical reporters who know their shit for older wrestling, and after wrestlers fall off the mainstream ballot, they become veteran's-eligible 5 years later. That keeps the modern candidates ballot free of wrestlers who are clearly never making it in (Owen Hart, Curt Hennig, Jimmy Snuka, Seiji Sakaguchi, etc). Honestly, I think Murdoch has a better shot of making it in through a veterans committee anyway, and I think it would benefit the HOF to have a clearly defined definition of when older wrestlers move over to the "historical" ballot. I mean, I still don't know why Koloff moves over to the historical ballot in 2018, but there is no defined time for Murdoch to move over to that ballot when his time as a headliner ended at roughly the same time as Koloff's. As for Edge, I don't think he's going to make it. He has gone from 18% to 46% to 37% and remained stagnant at 37% again this year. With Cena on the ballot last year, dropping from 46% to 37% made sense, and with Cena off the ballot and a lack of strong candidates on the US side, he figured to bounce back into the 46% range, and possibly pass the 50% range, setting him up for a 2014 election. Instead, he remained stagnant and his support is leveling off. He's already retired, so he's not going to do anything to improve his own case. The ballot gets tougher in the next few years with modern candidates CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and (arguably) Randy Orton being added as guys with better credentials than he has...who probably won't go in right away, either. Really, short of RNR, Koloff, and Murdoch all going in next year, removing the last of the 80's wrestlers from the ballot who really impair his chances, I can't see him ever really making it unless he really starts building some positive momentum.

Separate issue from what is being discussed here, but can't Dave set a rule that if you don't get voted in after so many years, you fall off the ballot? Owen Hart and Jimmy Snuka have been on since the first election in 1998. That's 16 elections, and neither of them are polling above 30%. They aren't ever going into the Hall of Fame. Can't we get them removed from the ballot and open it up to other candidates that might have a shot? The baseball HOF removes players after 15 ballots, that seems like plenty of time to make it in. At least table Snuka and Owen until they are Historical Candidate-eligible, because all they are doing right now is taking up room for other wrestlers who are still discussion-worthy.

I'd even go back as far as 2001. That year, he won KOTR, gets a high profile win on the Invasion PPV, wins the IC title, gets a high profile split feud with Christian where he goes over in the end, and beats Test in an IC/US title unification match at Survivor Series, which was the blowoff PPV for the Invasion. To say he wasn't chosen is ridiculous. If WWE got behind somebody now the way they got behind Edge in 2001, they wouldn't have problems creating stars.

Alternatively, they could have had Rude beat Jake in the first round and draw with Muraco in the quarters. That would have made DiBiase/Savage the finals.

From today's update. I know bitching about Dave's shitty polls and his reaction to said shitty polls is old hat, but I can't resist. Stories 2 and 3 are also neither pro wrestling nor MMA stories, Dave.

Say what you will about Miley, but the "We Did Stop" sketch from SNL was amazing.

If Scott Keith hid behind his intellect, he'd be found pretty quickly.

I do think Edge is probably going in at some point (much as I may not want it to happen) but it won't be this year. I think he has way too much ground to make up from last year. I do think he is going to get a bump up with Cena off the ballot and the lack of a can't-miss top guy being added to the US ballot, but I think asking Edge to gain about 40 votes from last year (after accounting for new ballots) is probably asking too much. My guess is his vote percentage will be around 45% this year.

Meltzer has said that Edge had a rep backstage for being one of the best guys at putting a match together, which you'd think would have manifested itself last year with a good showing among current wrestlers, but he failed to make the top ten in that group. In fact, he failed to make the top ten in any of the four voting quadrants last year (Current Wrestlers, Former Wrestlers, Reporters, or Historians) which makes me think he won't be getting in anytime soon, at least until he starts pulling in better numbers among one of those groups. He dropped last year from 46% to 37%, and hasn't done anything since last year to help his case, so I find it hard to believe he's going to receive a sudden surge of support to help him gain 23% of the vote. If anything, the 46% was probably a post-retirement bump and 37% is his true support range.

How many voters have made their ballots public? Enough to do something like this? http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsst...ollecting_gizmo

Manziel's family is carny as fuck. When you descend from carnies, you are more apt to become a carny yourself.

Also in Gary Hart's favor: dude lost a hair match, and never grew his hair back again. Now that's commitment!

I find it amazing that PPV is finding a way to gouge people for ordering these shows in HD. HD is the standard now, not SD. They should be offering HD PPV for $45 and offering SD PPV a $10 discount.

I voted for Sabu. I think RVD became a lot better in WWE, when his style became more focused and he was forced to drop a lot of the extemporaneous shit out of his routine. Less posing, less to no reliance on the Van Daminator, more bumping and better use of his athleticism. But even at his WWE best, he was never as unique as Sabu or had the aura Sabu held. I'd rather watch a bad Sabu match than a good RVD match, because even a bad Sabu match can be fun as hell to watch.

In fact, you could argue that the bottom completely dropped out after Ricky left, as that was when SMW became depressing to watch. SMW before Ricky wasn't much to write home about (unless you have a particular love of Brian Lee working as babyface ace), and SMW after Ricky left went beyond the hope of no return. I don't see how anything Ricky did in SMW hurts his HOF case, and in fact, I think it strengthens it, as it gave him 3 more years of high profile matches and angles he might not have gotten elsewhere, beyond popping into Memphis here and there. I voted for Ricky, because I think he's the best babyface of all time. Great at selling, getting almost any crowd to buy into him...just an incredible worker. I love Bobby and would vote for him over damn near anybody else, but Ricky is one of my favorite guys of all time.

Man, if KrisZ can't even make a HOF case for Bullet Bob, he must have no prayer. Oh well. We'll always have his awesome SMW run at least.