blueminister

The best part about Mantell coming back is that it's a continuation of the Uncle Zebekiah character who hasn't been around in like 15 years and the announcers treated him as someone the audience was expected to remember.

Was ECW ever profitable?

I liked the Genius okay but never quite understood the combination of the Intelligent and Gay heel gimmicks.

If you're writing about wrestling and find yourself using terms like "Freudian" and "meta" in earnest you should probably stop.

But nobody rates those guys whereas for some reason a lot of people were talking about the Goldberg clone derailing the year-long Punk angle as A Roll of the Dice That Needed to Happen to Shake Things Up.

That is probably true but RAW is like very terrible.

I've long wondered about Keith's psychology. He's some guy who likes to say strange, counterintuitive tidbits with the seeming goal being to make himself seem like the insider who has all the information. Most of his past works are obviously sensationalistic by nature, and he writes history with the intent of putting himself over more than constructing narratives that are supported by both facts and critical analysis. Honestly, he reminds me of those carny barker trolls who used to frequent wrestling figure websites by claiming his inside source within Jakks has given him a list of the next few sets of figures, creating an impressive but obviously bs list in the process. Over time, those people were banned or not trusted, but it got them over for that minute I suppose. IIRC, Keith wrote a book called "The Death of the WWE". If he did, I wonder how he justified that title given that the company was still making ginormous amounts of money that WCW could only dream of. I think he's someone who has some low level sources and he takes their word as gospel, rather than, as you say, only believing the stories that are backed up by further evidence. I don't think he even has low level sources. Seth Mates, who was on the WWE creative team about ten years ago was quoted on the front page of one of his book's saying: "Scott gets it dead-on". Ahahahaha so Michael Cole's erstwhile young boy has given his stamp of approval, nice.

Yeah, at least until recently the album format has never favored rap as much as pop-rock a Measure of Greatness because of the omnipresence of skits. I can think Biggie is right up there with rock greats without trying to argue that a skit of him getting blown by Lil' Kim is as powerful a transition as From a Buick 6 -- just two different worlds, really. If you're judging, say, "flow of a 45+ minute extended work" I'd have to give it to other genres but at the same time it seems to largely miss the point of hip-hop. That's funny, because half of my big arguments on this board can be whittled down to "pro wrestling is performance art, and if anyone has ever successfully created their intended impression for a mass audience then they're doing their job a lot more effectively than people who can fake crisp execution of a style of folk grappling that doesn't actually exist." close board lol

I've got an opinion about New Order and here it is: I like the first album a lot more than other people.

Compared to Bob Dylan, who's gone through extended spurts as a less-than-compelling live performer and lost at least two decades as a top tier creative force to alcoholism and annoyance with the studio process? God yes.

fffffffff It is a well known fact that the greatest musicians of all time are immune from being murdered or being born before the establishment of the modern recording industry.

What you're going to put Notorious BIG against Dylan? How about Prodigy? How about DJ Shadow? Once another genre produces a Dylan, maybe then they'll get brought up in GOAT conversations. May I point out that other musical genres existed before 1995? Also sticking Dylan as representative of "pop-rock" like he's some sort of lone standard banner for Artful White Guitar Music is actually a hella complicated proposition? Also there's no reason other than the uh, particular ethnic cultural sensibilities that Prince or Stevie Wonder haven't been mentioned even though they are easily Dylan's superior in composition, arrangement, performance, singing and consistency of output? (And this is speaking as a hardcore Dylan fan.)

The Saturn thing is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard him push (I mean, it's not like it was before his time, he hasn't written a Benoit book or that the era hasn't been covered to death) and makes me wonder if we should be looking at him less as a confident dumb guy with a weird memory and more as someone with some sort of pathological personality disorder.

It was strange how WWE chose to use a brief clip of Jericho making a detailed reference to the WCCW/USWA banner switch angle on the World Class DVD but otherwise didn't touch on Embry at all. I know Embry's a guy that history forgot, but you'd think they'd either go into it with a few clips or or leave it completely alone.

No, Dusty's pretty consistent about it being a weird Vince idea that he was committed to making work.

Given how far away Goldberg's actual wrestling was from shootstyle (I mean, did a kneebar occasionally I guess? Does being lead to the ring by security count as a shootstyle entrance?) and how little interest there was in UFC by the time he became a star I guess I don't get the need to bring in actual MMA guys. Much better idea than the aimlessness they went with, though

Those are only notable because the overwhelming majority of their songs were regarded as instant classics. I'm not even close to the hugest Beatles guy but you're talking about a band whose recorded output consists of eight years where they were working with one of England's best producers and setting the pace for their field with every new album. In light of the point being made, I'd compare Bret to a singles-oriented band with tight fundamentals who were never huge like Buffalo Springfield and not a band with a run of several classic albums, as whatever you think of them the Beatles are like the exact opposite of a band who only brought their "A" game for the big songs and were content to record lots of album filler. /music derail

The Beatles had possibly the tightest quality control of their era making this a bizarre analogy.

The general impression I got was that for storyline purposes it was established as a real company because that's how they roll over there but Inoki didn't want Zero-One stealing UFO's thunder and Hashimoto realized he could get better paydays doing interpromotional tags with Misawa so he got some real backers and just went with it. As big of an Ogawa fan as I am the real-world politics of that era are really fuzzy for me, though. (I have no idea what the Fujinami-Hashimoto mini-feud was about, for example, or to what degree their heat was even real.)

Levy and Monsoon were a very undervalued team with the "Uncle Gorilla" stuff.

Buff Bagwell was a successful gimmick for him. I think choking huge on live television and then doing nothing of note since except getting fired and picking fights over the internet killed Bagwell.

I am not sure what the relevance of a wrestler who died 25 years ago not being famous is. Judging by The YouTubes I'd say Brody does very well for a guy that WWE is not at all interested in promoting. edit: well "not at all" may be a stretch because I think he gets like a minute of face time on the WCCW and AAA dvds as well one of the matches on the cage set.

Is the overness the result of a persona the wrestler created and their projection of that persona? Did the overness translate over virtually the entire globe? You should consider than it's the measure of some sort of quality instead of filing Brody in the chump file because he doesn't pretend to fight exactly like you enjoy.

Hahaha okay, I don't read much fighting stuff so I thought it may have been a really weird regional euphemism. I'll stick with "devour."

This is ridiculous. I'd think even haters would have to acknowledge Brody was a charismatic performer with a great look and a successful main eventer in almost every major territory. Meltzer did not create that perception in 1988. If anything, Brody's diminished circumstances would have been the result of his behavior outside of the ring and not his performance in it.