S.L.L.

On a certain level, I want to read something into the fact that Lance criticized Anderson's promos and character work but not his in-ring work. There's too many possible choices, and I'm sure none of them have much basis in reality, but I still found the potential for amusement there.

It could be worse. It could be "the Cru".

Re: Sepinwall's editorial... I freely admit that my experiences may not be universal, but I never thought this was really even in question. I am not part of the classic sports audience, and I enjoy watching the Olympics regardless, largely for the above reasons. The classic sports fans I know who do watch it seem to have the same thing going. Most sports fans only really seem to care about things like track and field or swimming or skating or skiing once every four years. And lest we forget, a lot of folks in the States - even classic sports fans - don't give a shit about hockey even in between the Olympics. Of course, there are a lot of people who don't give a shit about the Olympics to begin with, and I don't know how much that really has to do with the presentation as it does with the whole "no one gives a shit about the Super-G or the biathlon" thing. Point is, I don't see how Ebersol's claim is so far-fetched here. Oh my God, seriously? Seriously? He's seriously arguing that it's a bad thing that Ebersol is airing things at a time when people are actually at home and can see them? That viewers really would rather they just air the events when they can't view them? I mean, that is full-on Babbysack level stupid. And yeah, I know airing things live doesn't preclude them from re-airing them in prime time. Maybe Sepinsack meant that viewers really wanted things to be aired at a time when they couldn't view them, but if they did that, they'd be OK with them getting replayed at a time that they could view them as well. Wouldn't change their viewing habits at all, but they'd feel better just knowing that shit was airing live while they were at work. It's still mind-bogglingly stupid. As for Bix's article itself, I'm not really going to disagree with it. I actually loved the pre-match hype video just for the pure cheese factor of it (insert Meltzerian "Olympic wrestling does wrestling better than wrestling"-style comment here), but the actual call of the match was atrocious for all the reasons he pointed out. But Sepinwall's article is awful, and really reads like the Olympic version of a bad F4WOnline guest editorial. I mean, Christ..."in which female-friendly sports like figure skating and ice dancing always take scheduling precedence over the likes of hockey"? Should Evan Lysacek turn heel to please the real sports fans who don't want women and children fucking up their good time? If Kim Yu-Na wins, we riot? I'm used to wrestling reporters being members of the He Man Women Hater's Club (unless they go wayyyyyy too far in the other direction), but this is the goddamn Olympics. I'd like to think these guys would be held to a slightly higher standard.

Huh. Somehow that just flew under my radar. I guess that clears that up. My bad.

Here's an enigmatic statement from a recent update: Do I read this as.... A. Dave/Bryan forgot that Brett DiBiase is Mike DiBiase? B. There's a third DiBiase sibling that nobody alerted me to? C. Dave/Bryan is hoping/expecting that Ted Sr.'s father Mike will get a surprise induction at the same time he does? D. Dave/Bryan is hoping/expecting that Ted Sr.'s father Mike will rise from the grave to help induct his son?

He definitely had more good matches in '09 than Angle did (vs. Matt Hardy, vs. Christian, a bunch of tags, had a strong performance in the Championship Scramble match), and this was a year that most of your Henry supporters thought was a step down for him because of his jump to Raw. What did Angle do in '09 that was so great other than get carried by Jeff Jarrett? Did he and Tanahashi manage to pull some kind of miracle out of each other? Incidentally, I think the one guy who Henry did have a bad match with in his '06 run was Kurt Angle, and that was really because of Angle. So on a certain level, the line actually works, albeit awkwardly and not in the way Dave intended.

My case is much the same as Loss' and Tim's. Over the last few years, I've tried to do everything in my power to streamline my wrestling watching so that I can get to see everything I want to see without wasting my time on stuff I don't. At this point, that means.... 1. I don't watch any TV show or PPV live unless I'm hanging out with friends for that exact purpose. Even that caveat is usually only limited to the Rumble and Mania. It can extend to SummerSlam, but I always take a week-long excursion to New Hampshire during late August, and often, it's the week of SummerSlam, which puts a stop to that. It sometimes extended to Survivor Series, but I suppose that's not an issue anymore. My closest "wrestling fan" friend is really into the Night of Champions concept, so that can sneak in there. We used to go ROH shows when they ran them on Long Island. When they stopped, we started heading out to the Manhattan Center shows. But my interest in ROH has waned considerably, so that's not really on my to-do list anymore. There have always been weird, freak occurrences as well. We bought a WWA PPV once, just for kicks. We watched the first episode of TNA Impact on Spike, just to see how hard they would fail. My friend was training to be a wrestler with Mikey Whipreck's outfit at one point, so I went to an NYWC show out of support. But otherwise.... 2. I only really watch stuff that's been hyped, or that has guys who I'm really digging lately. Of course, not every match that gets hyped deserves it, and not every match between good wrestlers ends up being good, so.... 3. I've grown impatient. If a match doesn't grab my interest fast, I'm hitting the fast forward button/chucking the file in my recycle bin/clicking another YouTube link. 4. I almost never watch full shows. Sometimes, a show or a company will get on a roll, and I'll figure "what the hell" and watch the rest a show that I pulled a match from. If I'm really inspired, I might even check out the show after that (CMLL Puebla, baby!). Otherwise, I'm sticking with individual matches. 5. Those four rules really only get waived when I take a big project upon myself. Namely, watching he various 80's sets and putting together the 80's Texas set means watching everything, like it or lump it. So that's what I've come up with after several years of refinement, and it's still a little daunting. But really, we should all be so lucky if "there's too much wrestling" is the biggest problem in our lives, so I figure I can deal with it.

Yeah, watching the '88 stuff, there is a definite jump in quality, but it is happening in front of some pretty sad-looking crowds. This is something I'm not really seeing. Whatever you think of Kevin, his talent and physique were pretty consistent throughout the decade. Curiously enough, of the two matches of I've seen that I thought he gave a poor performance in, one of them was his title win over Black Bart. But there's no real decline as far as I can tell. He is pretty much the same guy throughout his run.

You're right, but the difference is in the presentation. ECW was presented as being an honest to goodness alternative to WWF and WCW. Before anyone asks, no, I never 'drank the kool-aid' so to speak, I never thought the Eliminators were really the best tag team in the world, and didn't think that the RVD/Lynn matches were legit MOTYC's. ECW was also able to, at times, make something out of the leftovers who'd run out of steam (Al Snow, Justin Credible, Shane Douglas). Not that they were super workers or anything, but they were able to adjust their characters and personalities and go on to return to the big leagues. ECW was a third-rate promotion that tried (and succeeded) in being something different. Vince's ECW was a third rate brand that was treated as a third rate brand. I wouldn't dispute any of that. However, as far as the bolded statement goes...Regal, Goldust, Ryder, Ezekial, Kozlov, and Burchill all feel more vital since coming over to ECW than they did before they got here. With the exception of Ryder, none of those guys got the big career makeovers that Snow, Credible, and Douglas got. I'd liken them more to a gaggle of Bam Bam Bigelows - guys who came into ECW, kept their existing characters more or less, but were given a bigger spotlight and/or did better work than they did in the other two promotions/brands. Even Christian fits that bill to a degree. Hell, for all his complaints, Tommy Dreamer looked more vital leaving the new ECW than he did leaving the old one. And it's that aspect that leaves me slightly worried when I read this in the most recent Observer:

Because it sends people off on semi-related tangents? Article is basically harmless. Like you said, there's some internal consistency errors, and in general, the guy doesn't come across as a very good writer. I question some of his taste in wrestling, but that's beside the point. His basic point - that you should cherish the things you loved in the past, but accept that this is the present, and be willing to open yourself up to new things even if they aren't exactly what they were in "the good old days" - is a correct one. I assumed in reading it that things "not going very well" meant that a bunch of mutants rolled in and took issue with his premise. This seems like a rather unusual turn for the subject to take twice.

She's actually shoot Croatian, FWIW, but yeah, it's kind of a stretch. If nothing else, in doing research for the above complaint, I found out she grew up in Germany and started her career there. If you remember what happened to The Hart Foundation and JBL when they went to Germany, you'll know they're more than a little touchy about employing Nazi imagery for fun and profit. Unless she was stealthily trying to stick it to the man, she's not referring to the tank. If it's a nickname given to her in the States or elsewhere, you have to consider that she's largely worked face (not exactly conducive to Nazi allusions), and that it would have to be a name given to her by American promoters who knew about Croatia's role in WWII...long story short, it's not terribly likely. Mind you, I've never watched a second of SHIMMER in my life, and am telling you all of this based on a minute of looking at a Wikipedia article and basic common sense. Babbysack is slavishly devoted to SHIMMER, and somehow, I understand it better than him. Go figure.

This pretty much says it all. Lest we forget, the WWF in 1984-85 was doing something that no promotion had ever really done before. There was no established template to follow, there were a lot of transitions to be made, and there were a lot of experiments to be performed, not all of which would succeed. It certainly looks messy now, but now we have a system that's been honed and refined over the course of 25 years. This was just the beginning of that process. Some of it probably was legitimately messy. Trial and error and all that. Some of it was just the nature of transition into this bold new idea of a true national wrestling promotion. And some of it was just things being different in '84 than they are today.

Hell, the whole reason the book showed up on Bix's radar is because was already well-established as arguably the worst guy writing about wrestling on the internet today. I mean, it's almost a disappointment to see something like his most recent SHIMMER review, which, while bad, is mostly bad based on minor flubs like this... Or this... Not sure why you would assume your Croatian wrestler would name herself after a tank used by the Nazi forces who conquered her country (well, Yugoslavia) during World War II instead of a badass jungle cat, and as I pointed out elsewhere when talking about an earlier Babinsack article, "dynamics" by itself is not a word. But that's small potatoes compared to other things he's written, and it's kind of a letdown. It's not really about feuding. It's about Babinsack being so stupid that you're let down when his articles aren't hilariously awful.

I was just piling stuff on at that point, but yeah.

Well, be fair, what exactly was the original ECW? It was a third-rate promotion. Anyone who got over wound up being signed by the WWF or WCW. ECW would in turn get many of the leftovers who had basically run out of steam in the Big Two. And, of course, they were receiving financial backing from McMahon. So the they new ECW was basically being treated the same as the old ECW, but with a higher profile and their position relative to the new "Big Two" being made official.

Don't forget having good matches that will actually hold up on tape if you're sober and pushing actual talented wrestlers at the top of the card. Ask Tommy Dreamer. THIS is why he left. After they gave him a bigger main event push than the original ECW ever gave their "heart and soul". And gave him a big, emotional farewell, even though he was rumored to be jumping to TNA. Seldom do I defend the humanity and decency of WWE management, but there you go. Seriously, is there some reason why people expect wrestling promotions in 2010 to be run exactly the same as they were in the mid-to-late-90's? Do we need to start a new WrestlingClassics board for a new generation of fans to talk about how much better things were back in the good old days?

I was disappointed with how sane Babbysack was in that review, but if you stick around to the very end.... So, if you were still wondering what the hell that book was supposed to accomplish, it's inexplicably that. And probably something involving Marxism.

Not that it's intentional or anything, but I do find it somewhat interesting that in the midst of Bret's big heroic comeback, they're now starting to book Shawn Michaels as an unsympathetic whiner.

I thought he hadn't made any more appearances because he was indicted the day after his debut, but still, kinda figured he wasn't just going to show up for a one-shot and then head straight back to the WWE.

Dave expands further: So, apparently not out of left field, except his health problems weren't as widely reported as Jerry's recent strokes were.

Yeah, this is really out of left field. RIP.

And his ongoing employment by TNA. As the kids say, "epic fail".

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Shawn justify the whole Hogan brouhaha by arguing it would go against his faith to work heel? I'm religious and pro-religion in general, but this is pretty clearly a guy using Jesus as a crutch to explain away bad behavior.

Let me see if I'm reading this correctly.... Chris Jericho is the wrestler of the year. Chris Jericho spent the bulk of the year working as one half of a tag team. The tag team of the year is...the American Wolves? I mean, I liked the Jericho/Rey and Jericho/Steamboat feuds a bunch, but is that really enough to make you wrestler of the year if you think the rest of his year was less significant than the American Wolves? It was a weak year, and I won't complain about voters making a weak pick, but the internal logic looks wrong to me.

Bolded line is right out of my playbook. Clearly, Wade must have compiled the talking points of other, better wrestling writers, and then assembled them into his own piece.