Tawren

Is the Stan Hansen book out now? If so, has anybody picked it up yet?

Didn't the WWE go on a witch hunt against the potheads on its payroll a few years ago and smoke them all out (pun intended)? I'm kind of fuzzy on this, but I remember sometime recently they announced they have even begun testing against synthetic weed (K2 and the like). Whenever it gets brought up, Meltzer always mentions how large the fine is and how the wrestlers are very frustrated with the rules.

Well, one reason they did the full-on tribute show of just Benoit match videos instead of an Owen Hart-style show of current roster members doing tribute matches was that they had parodied their tribute shows the week previous for the Vince's death storyline, complete with the 'wrestler talks about the deceased in front of black curtains' and 'announcers talk in Owen Voice' and other such stuff. An Owen Hart/Eddie Guerrero-style tribute show would have come off as probably less offensive (still quite offensive) than the empty arena with 3 hours of Benoit matches, but that is also their own fault. I think it was Phil Schneider (might have been someone else) on DVDVR who posted about how the Vince tribute show was a horrible idea for the reason that they can't really do that style of tribute show anymore. It certainly fucked them that week. Not that I'm excusing the Benoit tribute in any way! Fuck that guy, and doing any form of tribute show of any kind when they, at the very least, knew it involved some form of murder/suicide is fucked up beyond belief. Just providing some more context.

I agree, it's completely unbelievable that HHH would squash someone, especially a rising star. Oh sure, he did it in the early-mid-late 00's, but not in 2011! Seriously, if they had 6 drafts, I 100% believe that was one of them.

I'd never heard that before but that is just absolutely hilarious, good on Cornette. Anyways, good for ROH I guess? I don't know what channels this Sinclair group runs but if they're going to shoulder the cost I guess it is a positive. I saw some ROH TV but wasn't a big fan, the constant boring squashes for guys like the Dark City Fight Club and the weird camera angle with that roving hard cam really turned me off. I think the main factors in ROH losing its buzz, in addition to taking to long to get the belt off Morishima and then taking way the fuck too long to take it off Nigel, was splitting the promotion into three different timelines with TV, DVD, and PPVs, making it all confusing and too much of an effort to keep up with.

It's worldwide. But I mean, the biggest UFC ever did 1.6 million worldwide buys, so if we go generously large and say there were 10 people watching at every one of those buys that is only 16 million people knowing who GSP is. Double that as some kind of generous "awareness measure" and you have 32 million people...the population of Canada. And every single Canadian knows who Gretzky is. I'm sure many (most?) Americans can name Gretzky at least as "the hockey guy". Add in people from other countries at least being aware of the name or even countries in Europe that know and play hockey knowing him. I mean, this really doesn't seem to be a real argument you can make.

Dave and Bryan's fixation with GSP being more famous than Wayne Gretzky is strange. I really don't see how they can think that.

I seriously doubt a Cena turn will ever happen. They chickened out of even hinting that he might do a few bad things when he was forced to join Nexus and they wouldn`t even let him disappear off TV (he could still be mentioned by commentary and video packages but they wouldn`t even go that far) for one week. He`s not turning. Re: money matches. Cena vs Taker if Taker can do it. Cena vs Punk would be good if they could build to it. The main problem here really is the booking, not Cena - if they had the guts to have Cena get beat down for a couple of weeks without beating up everyone every week without trouble he`d have a ton of money matches.

Goldust Mark Henry Big Show For how stale the WWE is, there has been a decent amount of turnover somehow. edit: beaten. I had to check WWE.com

Speaking of Henry, does anyone recall that brief period after he came to Raw last year when he beat Orton and started doing that deal with the crowd where he'd raise his arm and they'd go crazy and then lower it and they'd quiet down? That was nuclear heat for modern era WWE. Of course, within a month they'd dropped his push and forgotten it in favor of more Cena/Orton/HHH/HBK feuding.

If I recall correctly, the December 1999 PPV main event was Vince vs HHH with Vince defending Steph's honor and then Steph's turn that started the McMahon-Helmsley Regime. Or maybe Steph had already turned. Either way, Test should have been in that spot.

UWFI and Pancrase aired PPV's in the US in the mid-90's?

I don't think they have it now, but who knows where things are in a year or two if Brock can't beat Cain. An analogy would be that there was a long time when UFC didn't have the *heavyweights* to sustain the heayweight division. It frankly sucked for a long time there in the Arlovski / Sylvia / Mir era. It got "better" when Randy regained it, but that was a sign of how shitty it was: a guy who'd been hammered twice by the LHW champ then retired was able to fall out of bed and win the title, then defend it against the "number one contender". It was such a bad division that Brock came in and cleaned up on it with little experiance. That suddenly made it look like a "loaded" division. On this point, the UFC heavyweight division is still quite shitty, really. Past the big names (Lesnar, Cain, Carwin, dos Santos, Mir, Nelson) and the lower tier to that (Schaub, Noguiera, uh...Madsen? (yeah), Rothwell) there is a huge drop off to the tertiary talent level (Cro Cop now, Browne, Kongo, fuckin McSweeney). That's a ridiculously thin division. In MMA overall, the heavyweight division is probably the weakest of the established divs of 135-265. But outside the UFC, there are a large number of world-class heavyweights that are above the UFC's lower tier guys in Werdum, Fedor, Overeem, Sylvia, Silva, and a few others and a fair amount of guys at or above the UFC lower tier. It's interesting that the UFC hasn't really consolidated the heavyweights as well as they have the other divisions.

Did it ever come out why exactly Kawada and Misawa had their fall out? I seem to remember in the Misawa death fallout someone (Dave? maybe Ditch) mentioning that it was Misawa who soured on Kawada and not the other way around. Or maybe not, I'm really not clear on the whole situation and it's hard to find any info on it.

They never reported that

The HHH bodybuilding stuff is also hilarious. Anybody remember the ultra-homoerotic HHH/Steiner posedown in 2003 where they wore sweatpants because they didn't have the developed legs bodybuilders do? I'm not at all a bodybuilding fan but I always found that funny. HHH bashing has gone "out of fashion" on many boards, but really has he ever credibly put anyone over? You'd think someone with a "mind for the business" as he is often credited would be able to put people over 1/10 of the level Foley did for him in 2000. I think HHH sees his character as the promotional ace but doesn't understand why other promotional aces (Hogan, Misawa, etc) had the connection with the fans that he lacks.

Just curious (seriously not trolling) if you guys want to rag on Dave and Bryan for considering MMA and pro wrestling to be the same thing why is your 2010 newsboard based around MMA and pro wrestling combined coverage?

German UFC broadcaster with tons of connections?

From kjh's cageside seats post: That's a pretty fucked up thing to say. He deserved domestic abuse because he drinks or isn't monogamous or any other "indiscretion"? Once again I find the "I'm smarter than Dave~" crew to be going a bit overboard

It was very good. I'm looking forward to seeing the "finished" version where they'll include the confrontations and stuff at the end and then I can see it contending with "My Way", "Highway to Hell", and "Mr. McMahon's Utopia" for all-time best. It's too bad they won't acknowledge the 1997 feud because there is some good footage they could include from there like Michaels getting tossed off the HIAC or Taker's first big dive. I think so far, this is the best looking WrestleMania in a while. If they can keep this build-up pace for four weeks I'll be very happy.

Speaking of really stretching it

There's a small chapter on it in his book Total MMA, but I got the feeling that a lot of that chapter had been shortened.

I know, and I was being a little facetious with my comment. What I am arguing is that while Bryan and Dave are definitely in the wrestling bubble, a sizable amount of their pop culture ignorance is not a big deal or worth making fun of. Stuff like not knowing Ken Jeong or specifics on Johny Damon is fine. Really, when they're immersed a business that thinks Mini-Me jokes are relevant in 2009, it's amazing they are as up to date as they are.

Now ask 50 randoms who the Vice President is. And then ask 50 other randoms who Ken Jeong is. Lets find out

OK, now you're reaching a bit. It's one thing to have no idea who Johny Damon is (although not knowing details also isn't a big deal), but not knowing Ken Jeong is not a big deal at all