S.L.L.

Que? There was a photo of her on WWE.com, someone posted it on DVDVR (I think) and after several "OMG SO HOT" replies, Bix had to be the one to point out that she looked like a tranny in that photo and the rest of the series that was posted. It really was hard to miss, and the sexual confusion that followed was hilarious. *edit* Loss posted it, I can't believe the dog-piling that occurred when it was pointed out she had quite the Dick Tracy-esque lantern jaw. To be fair, I'm not sure how much of the problems in that photo have to do with HGH-induced mannishness and Victoria just being plain old ugly without a pallet-load of makeup and way better liking than she had here. The "before" picture shown was actually from right around the same time as the "after" if I'm not mistaken, but that seems to have be taken by photographers who realized that that shooting her in a more naturalistic manner would be a really bad idea.

So I guess in another week you'll come back and apologize like the last time you snapped out on the board? Just calling attention to another unreasonable Bryan attack. He can't tie his shoes without someone saying shit. Sorry if my lack of hate offends you. For a guy who lacks hate, you don't really do a whole lot here other than hate on people who question the Meltzer/Alvarez standards of wrestling thought. Or does hating on haters not count as hate?

Indeed. Fate had me roll into a bar last night during the 4th round. Sonnen tapping put a pretty big smile on my face.

Hey, didn't this guy get the memo that wins and losses don't matter in MMA?

I'm not huge into MMA. I'm not huge into boxing. I don't dislike either, I just don't follow them closely. That being said, I think I know enough (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) to connect a few dots here: 1. Chael Sonnen was a wrestling fan growing up. 2. Muhammad Ali was - if nothing else - a fan of Gorgeous George. 3. It would seem that if you are/were a pro wrestling fan, and you end up becoming a professional fighter, the delivery of your "promos" may end up being influenced by pro wrestling, consciously or otherwise. 4. To imply any pro wrestling connection based on the delivery of their interviews beyond the above points without some other evidence to support it is silly. I will leave it to the experts to diagnose Sonnen, but from what little I've seen, the impression I get is that Sonnen watched wrestlers shit-talk each other as a kid, so when he got a job where he could shit-talk people he was going to fight, he did so in a wrestling-inspired manner, which probably wasn't intentional. It doesn't mean he's working people any more than Ali was working people when he joined the Nation of Islam. Arnold may be right, but what I've seen suggests that Sonnen could just as easily be a crazy motherfucker independently of trying to work people.

How so? I think I agree with you, but there are a few different ways that could be read. I think of a HOF as having the best/most important figures. There is no need for someone who is representative of 90s WCW, 2000's New Japan, or 2000s AAA, or 2000's WWE. I get the sense that there is an argument being made that you need someone to rep a period/promotion even if that person wasn't significant (interchangeable). OK, I agree with that. It's certainly what's in the back of my head when Dave talks about the top 15 of the 90's and 80's being HOFers, with the seeming implication that the same should be true of the top 15 for this past decade. But this was kind of a shitty decade for wrestling across the board, so I'm not sure how much that really means. Scratching out the guys who - deservedly or otherwise - are already in the Hall, who from this list has a good case? Cena should be a lock. Danielson maybe could get in on work alone, but I wouldn't be in any big rush to induct him. If Joe ever managed to turn it around and have another decent-lengthed run as a superworker, I might be able to see past his lean years, but who knows if that will ever happen? Mistico belongs in the discussion, but I don't know if he gets much more than that. Edge has a better candidacy than Jericho, but neither have particularly strong candidacies. Nagata or Tanahashi going into the Hall seems laughable unless the puro landscape changes drastically. And, of course, HOF inductee Angle is #1. That alone should tell you all you need to know about this past decade.

Also worth keeping in mind that the lesson of 2007, as decreed in the wake of Gonzaga beating Cro Cop, was that if you have a big money match, you run it immediately before anything can happen that would screw it up, pure sports build be damned. So, yeah.

Someone describing WWE as having a "favorable business environment" sounds to my ears like Trent Lott saying that "we wouldn't have had all these problems" if Strom Thurmond had been elected president.

How so? I think I agree with you, but there are a few different ways that could be read.

Boiling down the argument to "if Lawler, why not Finkel?", yeah, I don't get it either. But I doubt WWE thinks things through that much.

Was he supposed to look younger and in better shape? He's in the grizzled veteran role. As long as he can still go - which he can - his age isn't really a detriment to that.

I haven't watched a whole lot of WWE lately, but 2009 Lawler was awesome. If 2010 Lawler working in WWE isn't a pretty sight, I'm guessing that's the WWE roster's fault, not Jerry's.

I'm not really terribly interested in the impression being given off. I know I love wrestling, I know everyone else here loves wrestling, and I'm confident enough in that that I don't feel the need to meet some kind of quota for positive posting in order to maintain my fandom. Why do you need it? And furthermore, if you feel the board is so starved for positive wrestling discussion, why don't you start some instead of posting yet another whiny complaint about excessive negativity on this board?

Not directing this at Al, but with the HOF voters in general, it seems the one big sticking point with Colon was that he helped cover up Brody's murder. Benoit was voted to stay in the HOF after committing a double homicide, so really, there's no longer an excuse to keep Colon out. He's a star belonging strictly to one territory, but I'm not sure that any single-territority star approaches his level of significance. One of the few who does is Lawler, who was inducted in the first class. Honestly, I don't see the argument that keeps him out at this point.

Not really. If a company had multiple guys who were strong draws/workers/positive influences, they get consideration, too. And there have definitely been points in the past decade where you could argue Rey was the strongest draw and definitely the strongest worker in WWE.

The best thing about that is that you couldn't resist making a "blow-off angle with the Tornado" pun. Bravo. Correction: the best thing was that I didn't realize that I had made a very obvious pun until just now.

After much delay, Part 2 of my look at Judy Garland is up, although this part really focuses more on the growing madness of Mervyn LeRoy. More Wrestling Than Wrestling: Judy Garland, Part 2

Oh dear. Surely, if "the goal of pro wrestling is to create the illusion of an MMA fight", then the best way to work a pro wrestling match would be to make it look as close to an MMA fight as possible? But that style of working is dead. That one actually goes back at least to a Cyber Sunday event when Matt Hardy and MVP were feuding. The fans were going to get to choose between a standard wrestling match, a boxing match, and an MMA match, and Dave decried the pointlessness of the MMA choice because "a worked MMA match is just a regular wrestling match, anyway". Because, you know, it's not like there's any difference at all between how your average WWE match is worked and how your average RINGS match is worked. Nope. No siree. MMA=wrestling, just like WWE=UWFi.

Isn't this the same guy who maligned indy films for not having high production values & or lots of explosions? Forget that. Isn't this the guy who basically didn't know that indy films existed, period? Did Bruno get some tickets to Sundance and decide to bring Babbysack along for the ride?

That one is really stretching it. And personally, I get the impression that Heenan was done by this time because he retired. I don't think the guy who retired being done is really up to debate. Before that, he wasn't bad by any means, but definitely past his prime as a manager, while Sherri was just hitting hers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GCAOnTPATk Well, it's a bigger bump than I thought he was capable of taking in 1991. That said, it was just one bump, not one of the bigger ones of his career, and he retired shortly afterwords specifically because he was so banged up by this point. He certainly wasn't going to out-bump Sherri. The whole argument starter here was the claim that Sherri was the best "worker" in the WWF between '89 and '91. Quote Loss: The focus is on bumping because that's the terms of the argument put forward. When looking at the larger issue of who was the better manager, mic skills are important, but not the be all-end all. What managers do when they're actually at ringside counts for a lot. Both Sherri and Heenan tended to get very physically involved in their charges' matches, and both were great at it, but by the time period in question Heenan had to dial back his physical involvement - and ultimately retire - because his body just couldn't take it anymore.

Gorilla making fun of his height probably didn't help. Although that stopped around late 88 or so. Monsoon made fun of Rude's height? I always thought Rude was a pretty tall guy. Billed at 6'3", which is about average for a WWF/E guy.

As a guy who became a wrestling fan in '91, and who was strictly a WWF guy until I got the internet and Nitro hit the air, I can say from my own experience that while I knew Flair's name and knew he was kind of a big deal, it was Heenan's work in the build-up to Flair's arrival that hammered home just how big of a deal he was. I grant you that I'm an unusual case, coming into the fandom at a time when most people were leaving it, and missing the previous boom completely. If I had come in in the 80's, even if I was still just a WWF guy, I probably would have gotten the significance of Flair even without Heenan's help. As to Heenan's WWF work in general, on a similar note as what John was saying, it's worth nothing that the WWF, pretty much since it's inception, was a promotion built around the formula of a dominant top face wrestler opposed by a dominant top heel manager bringing in his various henchmen to do his dirty work for him. The standard logic of using a manager as a guy who can provide a mouthpiece to wrestlers who can't talk was often there, but for the most part, I think it was really just about having a constant arch-villain at the top of the card while still providing the face champion with a steady diet of face challengers. Heenan wasn't attached to Bundy, Andre, Rude, and Flair because they needed his help getting over. Heenan was attached to them because he was the successor to the Three Wise Men, and these were the guys who were going to bring him the gold. Did they need Heenan's seal of approval? Not really. Bundy, Rude, and Flair were all perfectly capable of handling themselves on the mic, and Hogan/Andre is a match that sells itself. But the formula called for an evil mastermind - a "brain" if you will - to call the shots for the heels. It's a good formula, and Heenan was great in it. I think it's kinda telling that the company's big down periods coincided with them struggling to pull it off (mid-90's, where it kinda looked like they wanted Cornette in that role, but just couldn't make it happen) or abandoned it altogether (the past decade, with Triple H completely tossing every idea the WWF had been built on out the window so he could cosplay as an NWA touring heel champion). All that being said '89-'91 was a period where Heenan had largely ceased to be critical in that role. He was critical with Flair, but that not only seemed to be the exception, but also coincided with his retirement as a ringside manager. Heenan spent '89 in the midcard while Hogan feuded with Savage and Zeus (manged by Sherri...hmmmm....). He came back to the forefront in 1990 after Warrior became champ, but it just didn't take. I don't think that's really Heenan's fault, mind you. The standard story that Warrior squashed so many potential challengers en route to the top that he didn't have any new compelling ones when he got there seems to be right. But Heenan couldn't save it. And in '91, he was great with Flair, but he retired as a manager. Career vs. career, he's clearly a better manager than Sherri, but just looking at '89-'91, it's a draw at worst, and certainly not unreasonable to put Sherri ahead. And as a "worker", it's Sherri all the way. And yes, Jimmy Hart is Memphis is the greatest manager of all time.

Fair enough, but I'm guessing the basis of Loss' (and Meltzer's) claim is that she often got so involved in the matches where she worked as a second, she may as well have been a full-fledged wrestler/worker. It's bending the rules, I don't deny, but I can see where they're coming from.

This sounds like a job for Victator....

"Worker" is a term pretty much directly associated with match quality, so...umm...yeah. Bossman is actually a really good dark horse pick, though. I think it's not unfair to say there's a better case for him than for Sherri.