Robert S

from the daily news update on Monday

Wikipedia is awesome: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...302518322#Death Alvarez' reaction:

You don't know what a really shitty commentator is until you heard some of the German commentators. Just one example: The last time I bothered watching a WWE show on German TV (about 5 years ago) one of the commentators (who is doing this job for about 20 years and still has no clue about it) complained about someone (I think it was Charlie Haas) doing some working-the-body-parts because he thought it was stupid. His reasoning was that in 15 years of wrestling he has seen working-the-body-parts has always ended in a comeback of the worked-on guy.

I wouldn't bet money on that but this number seems to be off by a factor of ten.Edit: Ah, after reading the sentence twice I realized that you were not claiming that wrestling had these 20 million viewers. What show are you talking about? "Wetten dass"?

You have to consider the special conditions of wrestling business in Germany (or german speaking countries) to get a more clear picture of the high influx of competent "newsreporters" or whatever during the beginning of the decade: The boom period for wrestling (I am talking about US wrestling not regional stuff like CWA in Hannover, Bremen and Vienna) in Germany began about 92 and ended somewhere about 97. The people who became fans during this period (as early or mid teens) by the time of 2001 had reached about the age of twenty which meant that the fans who survived during the "dry" times had reached some level of education (writing skills, English etc.) and on the other hand often still had enough free time to work on projects like wrestling homepages (because they were going to college, were doing civilian service, etc.). Over the last decade these people grew older, began working and probably started a family which meant much less free time.

Maybe they thought they needed a "feel-good" induction as a counterpoint to the von Erichs. Talking about the von Erich induction: It was obvious how everyone (to some degree even including Kevin himself) tried to talk around the whole family tragedies. The whole night lacked good aceptance speeches, only Watts and Steamboat had some deeper speeches, the other ones were mostly just cutting promos. Terry Funk speech even reminded me of some old Ultimate Warrior promos.

Hayes wasn't part of that roundtable. The cast of that roundtable was Bill Watts, Jim Ross, Dusty Rhodes, Tony Atlas and Teddy Long. Maybe I lack the understanding of what has to be considered racism but to me there was no reason to feel that this episode was full of racism. The only thing that can be criticized is that some people of the roundtable (mostly Rhodes and Atlas) tried to pretend that there never was any form of racism in pro wrestling (some crap about how in wrestling there never was black and white, only green).

My question would be, what benefit would Stephanie get from a sham marriage? It's obvious what Paul gets out of it, but I don't see the incentive for vice-versa. A couple of things come to mind....maybe she really wanted kids, maybe that's how she thinks marriages are supposed to work (considering what she had as an example growing up that wouldn't surprise me). I mean, look at all the "Vince being Vince" stories over the years. If even a fraction of them were true then it's no wonder his daughter would think that having sex with everyone in the company is one of the perks of being in charge. Also there's a lot of circumstantial evidence out there to suggest that HHH might be playing for the home team. He's probably #2 after Vince in the "is he overcompensating for something?" sweepstakes. Maybe it's Stephanie who is playing for the other team? To combine this with another (unkillable) internet rumour: Maybe the Macho Man made Stephanie a lesbian.

There is one thing I was questioning myself for quite some time: Would Otto Wanz be a legit HOF candidate? I have hardly seen anything from him, but I think it is safe to say that he wasn't a great "worker", but he was a very successful (self-)promoter (till he quit) and/or a big draw during the 80ies. I am pretty sure he is still the most commonly known pro wrestler in Austria, nearly 20 years after his retirement.

There are stream captures of the webcast on all the usual pro wrestling torrent sites.

Go Shiosaki looked real good even in his first matches in the summer of 2004, to bring up a name of a still quite young wrestler.

The last Observer had the cost of producing weekly Smackdown as $630,000 (with the WB paying them $700,000 for weekly Smackdown). That in 20 years their costs for TV production have only grown from 250,000-630,000 is pretty impressive. You have to consider inflation: a buck in 1988 had nearly twice the value than a buck in 2008 has.

The line-up for the Austin set (from Meltzer): Brian Pillman & Steve Austin vs. Dos Hombres (Ricky Steamboat & Brad Armstrong) for the WCW tag titles in a cage match (5/23/93 - Slamboree) Austin vs. Pillman (11/10/93 - Clash of the Champions 25) Austin vs. Steamboat for the U.S. title (8/24/94 - Clash of the Champions 28) ECW interviews Austin vs. Sandman vs. Mikey Whipwreck for the ECW title (12/9/95 - December to Dismember) Austin vs. Savio Vega (5/28/96 - Beware of Dog retaping) Austin vs. Bret Hart (11/17/96 - Survivor Series) Austin vs. Yokozuna (8/18/96 - Summerslam) Austin vs. Undertaker (5/11/97 - Cold Day in Hell) Austin & Michaels vs. Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith (5/26/97 - Raw) Austin vs. Michaels (6/8/97 - King of the Ring) Austin & Dude Love vs. Owen Hart & Smith (7/14/97 - Raw) Austin vs. Owen Hart (8/3/97 - Summerslam) Austin vs. Dude Love (4/26/98 - Unforgiven) Austin vs. Kane (6/28/98 - King of the Ring) Austin vs. Kane (6/29/98 - Raw) Austin vs. Rock (4/25/99 - Backlash) Austin vs. Eddie Guerrero (11/16/00 - Smackdown) Austin vs. HHH (11/19/00 - Survivor Series) Austin vs. HHH 2/3 falls (2/25/01 - No Way Out) Austin vs. Rock (4/1/01 - Wrestlemania)

Is there any backstory why Kikuchi was so over in the early parts of this match? I mean the crowd was hot for Kobashi in the early parts too, but every time Kikuchi did something the hall was exploding.