Robert S

Meltzer has talked about this a couple times, usually when talking about Moolah. I think they went something like "What about Moolah? You have to put in Moolah, right?" - "Actually, why should she be in?" Regarding Cornette: I am not saying that he should not be in *now*, but putting him in via fiat and put Condrey, Eaton and Lane to a vote later on looks wrong with the benefit of hindsight. All were great performers as a unit and drew quite some money especially in Mid South. What somewhat devalues Cornette to me compared to other great managers is that he really was only a one-team-at-a-time guy. WWF-era Heenan or some WWWF managers probably made their companies (or more concretely the Vinces) more money than Cornette did.

Jesus, I would call a movie with that plot unbelievable silly. That makes Austrian politics feel pleasantly boring, and we recently had a former high level clerk accuse the former chancellor, a couple of former ministers and a state governor of corruption. (Actually, said clerk (and other former officials) is under investgation for about a year now after text conversations between him and a bunch of other government officials become public. Apparently, he tries to get out of it by turning key witness.)

The Riverhounds are a division 2 team, aren't they?

I felt a bit bored and went over the list of the 1996 inductees to see if there are names that stand out as controversial of simply bad and was shocked to see that Jim Cornette got inducted with the first bunch. By that point, Cornette had done two or at best three bigger things in wrestling: He was the manager of the Midnight Express. The Midnight Express itself was not introducted until 2009 and Cornette was not bigger than the rest of the MX. He was the promoter of Smoky Mountain Wrestling. There is not much about promoting SMW that reads "Hall of Fame". It was a terroritory that lasted for four years, did just good enough to stay alive for this time, did not influence the wrestling industry at all and barely produced any future stars. I went over the list of SMW alumni on Wikipedia and the biggest names that I would say can thank SMW for their careers are Bob Holly, Kane, Tammy Sytch, Chris Candido and New Jack. Not a very spectacular list. He managed some people in WWF, most notably Yokozuna, Owen Hart, British Bulldog and Vader. He was competent in his role, but I doubt he was necessary for any of those acts to work. Also, that was during the worst years business-wise in WWF history. He added to his résumé later on (working WWF backstage from 96 to 99 and later on producing some of the biggest stars of the last 20 years in OVW), but by 96, his vita does not really shout "HOF without even being put on the ballot" (at least if the rest of the MX does not get in initially). I should also mention that he was only 34 or 35 (depending on when the HOF issue cam out) at that point (I think of the first batch, only Misawa was younger than Cornette).

On a quick cagematch search I found 15 tag team matches of Santo & Octagon. Cagematch is very incomplete w.r.t. lucha (the listed matches were mostly from TV) but still.

Okay, I am not an expert on 80ies Japan, but if you want to nominate an Ishingundan tag team, isn't Choshu & Yatsu the more obvious choice? Not that either team looks very HOF-worthy to me. If Meltzer wants to nominate Ishingundan, he should write Ishingundan on the ballot. Considering that the three men versions of the Freebirds and MX are in the HOF and Kerry, Kevin & Davin von Erich are on the ballot (as well as some Mexican trios teams that are already in like the Brazos or the Misioneros del Muere), I don't see much speaking against that.

It was Fuyuki-era FMW while at the same time WWF was using thumbtacks, barbwire and fire (all thanks to Foley, to be honest). So it is not that weird. BTW: you can say a lot of negative things about Michaels (and all of them true), but he was definitely looking after his students. Danielson and Lance Cade got an FMW tour out of Michaels' guest referee gig.

Which Mania was it where there were actual plans to do a Starrcade 95-lite series using AJPW wrestlers? XIII, XIV or XV? IIRC, the thing did not go past initial talks because Giant Baba wanted mid-7-figures (considering that Baba was still involved, I guess that rules out Wrestlemania XV).

That's some great stuff from BAHU. Funny line about HHH: I also had to look up which Austrian town Shinzaki was talking about. That was some weird tour. In Germany, they ran Berlin, Nuremburg, Essen, Mannheim and Frankfurt, all big cities and/or parts of bigger metropolitan regions. In Austria, they chose Wels and Zeltweg. Zeltweg is a small town (7.000 people or so) in a rural area, Wels at least has 60.000 people living there and is not far from Linz (200.000 people). I thought that the CWA may have run Zeltweg from time to time, but at least cagematch has nothing and I probably have confused Zeltweg with Leoben here (another small-ish town in Styria).

Rey was considered to be on borrowed time in 1999, IIRC. EDIT: the one Twitter reply this got (so far) says exactly that as well

I remember when Haaland played in Austria for half a year or so. Seldom was future stardom so obvious than with him. So... (looking at the list of WON Rookie of the Year winners) Akiyama? Dr. Death? Austin?

Controversy creates cash?

I had some weird random thought recently: "I am sure that someone made a list with the 'best' wrestler per US state". Googling found a couple of lists but I first did not take them seriously as the listed for example Kenny Kaos (of High Voltage "fame") as the best Alaskan wrestler or Torrie Wilson as the number one export of Idaho. I mean Idaho has a population of two million people (and had 1 million thirty years ago), so that there had to be some decent notable wrestlers from that state in the last couple of decades but nope. If you search for "Idaho" in cagematch, you find 23 people listed and the only somewhat notable person on the list besides Wilson is Vince Lopez who seemed to have a good career spanning from the mid 1930s to the late 1950s (mostly based on the west coast). There are also other states that don't give you much to work with. Looking at Vermont for example, the only names I recognize are Vivian Vachon, EC Negro and KC Blade. And to go back to Alaska, cagematch does not come up with anyone worthy of any kind of list (besides some fake Alaskans like Jay and Mike York).

Eddie Graham you say. That was a spectacular comeback considering he was dead for four years in 1989. ;-)

The constant singing of the same three notes by the crowd is some freaky Close Encounters stuff.

LOL, WWE is still in the NFT business.

Why are the Mysterios doing a heel spot here?

Man, old-ass Edge sucks. It's like watching the match in slow motion.

What's the idea of having a 10-15 minutes break after every match?

The star-thing often is a circular thing. If you want someone to become a star, treat them like a star. Do you think Roman Reigns ever would have gotten to the level he is right now if they would have treated him like let's say Zack Ryder for a bunch of years? No, when Roman came in, they introduced the time keeper barricade for him to spear through, gave him the Diesel-run at the Rumble, let him run the gauntlet at Survivor Series etc.

I am disappointed, I would have expected a thread title like "Haaland is going to break all records if he stays fit". Just looked at the current All Out lineup. They had Dark Order go over the House of Black in the trios tournament and don't even have House of Black on the card?

A video game magazine I read 25 years ago put my perspective on wrestling games pretty well: wrestling games (if they take themselves seriously and pretend to be a simulation) are missing the point of pro wrestling due to the, well, worked nature of pro wrestling. Plus, I am not the biggest fan of sports video games period. I usually play single player and sports game become very repetitive and there is a limit what you can do besides the core mechanics. For example, as a Gamepass user, a couple of months ago I spent a couple of hours with FIFA 21. Besides having better replay animations, the game plays very much like the last football game I owned (some PES game for PS2) and (as you play zoomed out quite a bit) does not even look 2-3 generations (or 20 years, if you will) better. As far as I can judge the same is true for the WWE games that in core mechanics are still not that different from the early PS2 Smackdown games (e.g. Here comes the pain! - the last wrestling video game I bought).

Talking about racist WWE executives, is Michael Hayes still employed and in a position of power?

I listened a bit to the reaction of Cornette on Vince's retirement and Cornette's complete lack of understanding of how law works is astounding. He assumed that Vince cannot be criminally charged for sexual harassment because he bought the woman off.

His next step will be to call Regal to ask what's going on with NXT.