Cox

Dave Meltzer takes advantage of the Benoit situation, starts writing two Observers a week: I like Meltzer and I like the Observer and all...but c'mon, did we really need two Observers the past two weeks? Nothing significant has broken on the Benoit thing since the toxicology report has been released. He couldn't cram the past four issues into two 18-page issues?

Weird that Ryder is anti-Mero, when Mero was in WCW, Ryder got him to join the Prodigy service (I assume with a free username, since Ryder used to give those to everybody) and would bring him in for frequent chats and such. After Mero went to WWF, he stopped posting since WWF had an agreement with AOL at the time, but I assume Mero remained one of his WWF sources until he left. BTW, as an aside, Eric Bischoff used to post under a pseudonym (I think it was Keith O'Brien or something) and would defend WCW whenever anybody spoke ill of it and would talk about how WWF would be dead in six months.

I know somebody who fell for that! Man, was he pissed. Awesome! Details please. That's pretty much the entire story. He thought he was going to Japan through Pat Tanaka and then Tanaka skipped town with his money. I think the moral to this story is that if you're a wrestler, you should never, ever pay anybody money no matter what they claim it will do for your career. Well, is the guy normally this dumb? He was conned by Pat Tanaka, what do you think?

I know somebody who fell for that! Man, was he pissed. Awesome! Details please. That's pretty much the entire story. He thought he was going to Japan through Pat Tanaka and then Tanaka skipped town with his money. I think the moral to this story is that if you're a wrestler, you should never, ever pay anybody money no matter what they claim it will do for your career.

I know somebody who fell for that! Man, was he pissed.

There is almost no way that this is real. How would they mention the confrontation with the Undertaker, but not Booker T knocking him the f out? Also, has WWE ever mentioned terms like "heel" or "face" in a release like this? I am calling BS.

Well, yeah. The ROH Japan shows are basically the small-scale equivalent of WWE running 2 nights in Antarctica for $100 million because it sounds cool. Only not awesome.

Oh, and speaking of cons: Jerry Lawler and the USWA: Lawler gets together with conman Larry Burton to purchase Jerry Jarrett's half of the USWA to sell it at an inflated cost to Mark Selker under the guise that the promotion is a national promotion (based on their syndication deal) that is worth millions of dollars. Of course, USWA in 1997 was on its ass, as the Raw/Nitro wars had killed Monday night wrestling in Memphis and they were running out of a flea market with a crew of mostly older local wrestlers. Selker closes the promotion down and sues Lawler and Burton. Lawler blames the entire thing on Burton, and the jury convicted Burton and let Lawler walk simply because they liked him more (surely that has nothing to do with Lawler's twenty years working as a top babyface in Memphis!). Jerry Lawler somehow out-conned a professional conman and left him holding the bag while he got off scot-free for the same crime. I think even Heyman would have to give Lawler a tip of the cap for that one.

I think you're forgetting about the biggest con here; Gabe Sapolsky conning Cary Silken into losing tons of money so he could fulfill his dream of promoting a show in Japan. The amazing thing is, he probably originally sold Cary on the idea that it wouldn't lose that much money, because they could sell DVD's based on Samoa Joe wrestling Tenryu, Sasaki, or whatever other big names they could book for this. Yet even after Joe pulled out and the best main event they could muster was Morishima/Nigel (which he ran in Edison, NJ already) and the KENTA/CIMA dream team (which ended up not happening when KENTA hurt his knee), Cary didn't immediately pull the plug. There is almost nothing special about these shows that anybody outside of the ROH base would want to see, and Cary still went ahead and ran the shows at a major loss anyway, just so Gabe could claim he promoted a show in Japan. You have to give Gabe credit for that con, especially since I doubt he lost a dime on this. Of course, you would think somebody like Gabe, who worked for Paul Heyman for all of those years, would realize that the ultimate goal of a con is to make money, not live out some mark fantasy. Then again, I'm not sure Gabe realizes how badly he was conned by Heyman yet.

Is this the same Johnny Rotten that's been in Memphis forever as kind of a "Sid, Jr." type?

It's like they're begging for an outside source to challenge them on their drug test results, or begging for an independent investigation of their drug testing policy.

Lawler's got a history of saying whatever he thinks will help him personally. Apparently, Lawler would go on Memphis TV in the 80s and early 90s talking about how the WWF guys were steroid freaks, homosexuals, etc. in order to knock their product and keep his afloat. That all changed when Vince brought him in as a commentator in 1993, although a lot of the boys didn't particularly like him much. (Depending on who you talk to, anyone between 3 people and the whole locker room filled Lawler's crown with a massive amount of shit on one or more occasions, with the only identified people being Undertaker and Steve Kiern.) The best "Jerry Lawler bashing the WWF before he got a job" moment was when Vince was trying to get wrestling deregulated in New Jersey in the 80's by claiming it was fake, and then the next week Lawler went on TV and said "See? Their wrestling is fake, but this is the real deal." Also, suing WWF over calling Harley Race the King of Wrestling is up there too.

Somebody I know said they would pay up to $1500 for this, so the price might get even nuttier.

You know, just seeing headlines like Dan Wahlers looks at the steroid issue in pro wrestling, which is one of today's headlines on WO.com, is often enough to send a shivver up my spine. Thank God we have Dan Wahlers to RIP THE LID OFF about steroids and pro wrestling.

I'm not sure Kurt Angle is smarter than a brain-damaged chimp.

Yeah, I mean, for crying out loud, THE SANDMAN has been on the gas. People would be amazed at the dudes who have been on the gas, and there's probably at least one or two dudes in WWE on the gas that would really surprise some people.

"She took my credit cards, she took my horse, she took my money, she went to Hawaii and spent $5,000 on assorted men and papaya juice, jack!"