Cox

I think this is completely false. The smaller the scale of the operation, the more these indy companies need to rely on ticket sales to make a profit, because frankly, there aren't as many avenues for profit as there would be on a national level. Gabe's biggest problem is that he has two companies that nobody wants to pay to see, either live or on DVD. If he ran better shows, he'd fill more venues, he'd sell more DVDs, he'd make more money. And if his break even point is such that he will operate at a loss even if he fills his buildings and needs DVD sales to turn a profit, then there is something wrong with his business model. This isn't ROH in 2004. What worked then will not work now (if it even worked then).

I guess I've seen enough stuff with real-life human beings interacting with the Muppets over the years that it didn't stand out to me as particularly strange at all. I mean, when they had guests on the Muppet Show, they had humans and Muppets interacting all the time. I don't see WWE and the Muppets operating in two separate worlds that it seemed jarring to me. I mean, if the Muppets found their way into ECW or Mid South and the wrestlers treated them as "real," I'd find that bizarre, but not within the world (or "universe," I guess) that WWE has established themselves in the year 2011. YMMV, I guess.

One spot that was pointed out to me as a kid by one of my uncles, which became one of those things that I noticed in every tag match afterwards... How come the referee always needs to see the babyface make the tag with his own two eyes, even forcing guys who have made a clean tag out of the ring because he didn't see it, but always accepts that heels are making honest tags behind his back just because he hears a clapping sound behind him? Aren't the heels the ones far more likely to lie about something like that?

What about every babyface that was friends with Hulk Hogan after Orndorff and Andre turned on him? I mean, Hogan should have developed a serious reputation as an asshole after everything that went down with those guys, yet dudes like Randy Savage still trusted Hogan afterwards. I mean, of course Hogan lusted over Elizabeth, he had an established track record of selfish behavior and being a poor friend. It's hard to feel bad for Savage, he should have known what he was getting into.

I should have been more clear. Whereas in the past, Dave would go through each candidate one by one and list their positives and their negatives (and would also list his ballot), he doesn't do that anymore. There wasn't anything in the WON this year pushing strongly for Edge, for instance, but there was on the Board.

I think the best place for him to post some of this nonsense is the F4W board, because I'd have to think that an extremely low percentage of HOF voters actually read what he writes over there (unless it is dragged elsewhere, like here). He's largely kept his feelings about the nominees out of the WON in recent years, so it's possible few people even know his opinions on Edge or Lesnar at this point.

How in the world does Dave know how many pro wrestling fans bought UFC PPVs to see Brock Lesnar from 2008-2010?

Wait, what? They drew for Crockett, Watts, and on a regional basis for Smoky Mountain, over a time period from 1984 to 1994. Also, they spawned a bunch of copycat tag teams, which makes Alvarez's influential claim laughable, especially since he clearly influenced Alvarez's favorite wrestler ever. And there's also the point that Ricky Morton is probably the best working pure babyface of the 80's, and one of the top five best working babyfaces of all time (which makes it especially comical that WCW turned him heel in 1991). There is a stronger case for the RnR than anybody on next year's ballot other than Cena, in my opinion.

Crimson's injury was a work so they could have him go undefeated throughout the tournament and yet not win it. Roode was the guy from day one.

Add KOTR '00 to the list of "Lousy PPVs that Cox has attended in person." What made this one worse is that I drove five hours each way and spent two nights in Boston, all so my friends and I could watch an absolutely horrible PPV live.

He didn't lobby for Edge in the newsletter, though, only on the board. How many voters actually read that cesspool that weren't already voting for Edge? I think between retirement and less American competition, he will see a spike, perhaps even a sharp one, but I think 18% to 60% is way too high. Maybe that's just blind optimism, though.

I don't think Edge is going to make it. I thought he had higher than 18% of the vote last year. Is there really 42% of the voting pool that's been waiting for him to retire before deciding if he makes it in? What else has he done in the past year that's going to sell that many people that he deserves to make it in? I mean, as much as people loved the Kane feud last year, I don't think that's going to be enough. I think there will be a bump, but I don't see how he's getting that many more votes. Of course, I could be wrong.

Couldn't Konnan do his buddy a solid and ghostwrite it for Dave like he did his own?

I attended Wrestlemania XV in person, and the only thing I remember from that show is Bart Gunn getting knocked the fuck out by Butterbean, and I only remember that because I had deluded myself into thinking Bart Gunn was going to wreck Butterbean, and then reality happened. WWE must have really hated Philadelphia, as arguably two of the worst PPVs of the 90's took place there (the other being KOTR '95, another PPV I attended in person).

And Austin wrestled on the same show when he had been told by doctors that one bad bump would kill him.

Dave clearly still thinks very highly of Angle's work, and would probably pimp him as the best US worker of the past 12 years as a way of justifying him as an entrant. I don't think he'd get in on the first try if this was his first year on the ballot, but I do think he'd be getting pimped just as hard as Edge.

I didn't get the point of Dave responding line-by-line to a HHH column in WWE Magazine, of all places, as the lead story in the second Observer this week, but honestly, I don't get a lot of the stuff that goes into the Observer anymore.

I think the line about dates points towards Jarrett. He was always a big believer in promoting to women.

They changed the rule on television so only the top rope kneedrop was still illegal. I believe Watts did a promo explaining why the kneedrop was outlawed in particular. I'm sure WCW forgot this as the years went on and the kneedrop became OK again at some point.

That's why I think there might be something to WWE selling the rights fees to Wrestlemania. What if they included the rights to air Wrestlemania live in their next cable TV contract for Raw and Smackdown? Wouldn't that significantly boost the value of that contract, perhaps more than they could make putting the event on PPV? With the explosion in the sports TV rights industry, couldn't Wrestlemania be a pretty valuable bargaining chip for a network? Maybe I'm crazy, but I think they could make some serious coin putting that up for bidding. That said, it would probably have more value to another, established cable network than it would for WWE's.

According to Dave Meltzer, WWE sent out a survey for ideas for the WWE Network that included the idea of moving the "big" PPVs (Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, Survivor Series) off of PPV and onto the WWE Network. The B-shows like Night of the Legends, Over The Limit, etc. would remain on PPV. I'm kind of baffled about this, to be honest. I mean, I can understand moving to a system where the B-shows that nobody buys anyway are WWE Network-exclusive and they just run the four big PPVs every year and try to make as much money as possible that way. I can even understand if, instead of running Wrestlemania on PPV, they tried to sell the rights to another network and tried to make more money on rights fees than they're currently making on PPV (which I don't think is necessarily crazy; look at how they manage to get cities to bid against themselves to host Wrestlemania). But running the major PPVs on the WWE Network while still trying to get people to buy the bullshit PPVs? I don't get that at all, unless this is Step 1 of a multi-step plan to move WWE off of PPV because they don't think it's going to be successful long-term. What does everybody else think?

The difference is, Andre in late '89 is clearly at the very end of the road and Warrior is clearly getting the next big babyface push. Maybe he put him over so clean knowing he was done? Plus, by late '89, he may have only been able to do one minute jobs due to his physical condition, which had declined greatly even compared to 1988.

To be fair, it must be a shock to go from working 80 hours a week to working 0 hours a week, so it must be hard to know how to fill that time.

From his Twitter: First, as I'm sure he is aware since he's been pulled over now three times for suspicion of DWI, the legal definition of "intoxicated" is not necessarily limited to alcohol, so just passing breathalyzer tests doesn't really prove anything. I assume that's just damage control, though, so I guess harping on that isn't a big deal. But even if he wasn't intoxicated in any way, no drugs, alcohol, anything (I know, the odds of Matt Hardy leaving his home while not on any drugs whatsoever three times in the last few months is extremely remote, but work with me here). How bad of a driver do you have to be to get pulled over on suspicion of DWI THREE TIMES in a short time frame, and then somehow fail field sobriety tests each and every time? That would be a monumentally horrendous driver to somehow drive so poorly that police in three different towns in three different areas assume, based solely on the way he's driving, that he must be drunk.

Plus, Survivor Series '94 was the first time Bret Hart ever got screwed at the Survivor Series!