Ronnie

He's bigger than Punk, I would've thought. Still, the inclusion of half of those names becomes questionable considering that there's no Steve Austin.

He is, but I recall somebody else who was also at the event later debunking it as just a story. I can't remember the details, unfortunately.

If I recall correctly the WWF made a loss of $5m dollars that year. Bret's contract (was it $2m-ish?) represented a near halving of that deficit, if one assumes that PPV revenues wouldn't have changed as a result of Bret's absence. So I suppose that one could indeed justify it as a cost-cutting measure, consdering Bret's base salary was so far ahead of anybody else's.

And it wasn't only limited to the post-Montreal period, including a spot (admittedly comedy) where he shoots Austin the bird and audibly yells "Fuck you!" to him without receiving any comeuppance.

It is in kind if not in degree. They both belong in the category "Should be binned asap". It's just that the Olympic one is far, far worse. Especially when it won out over brilliantly creative piece such as this.

Yep, it's the W based on this monstrosity: Such a shame that it's prevalent even on the thoroughly professional-looking cover of their shoot DVD with Abdullah the Butcher. It's one of those things (like the logo for the Olympics in London) that should've been cast aside at the earliest opportunity.

I don't agree at all. For a start, you only need to consider the money that Bryan's invested in his audio equipment to ensure that he delivers audio content that sounds so much more professional than his competitors'. As far as the site is concerned, he's taking an interest in it right now. One of their forum members proposed a redesign and Bryan came into the thread to say "I like it" and then returned after a few tweaks were made to say "Original one def my fav". He -- entirely justifiably -- doesn't bother posting in most of the threads there, yet checked back to see the progress being made and responded favourably. The proposed look doesn't change the layout of the page much à la Bix's idea but modernises the appearance so that it looks as though it actually belongs in 2011. It still has that vile logo though.

That apparently didn't happen. In his Timeline of the WWF: 1997 for Kayfabe Commentaries Jim Cornette mentions that Vince paid Nash the same as Undertaker and Hall the same as Goldust for WMXII (even though Hall wasn't on the card). Asked why, Vince replied "I don't want anybody to say I fucked 'em on the way out." It's a three-hour DVD and I've not tracked it down in fifteen minutes of dipping in and out of it but Googling the key term has brought up an interview from 2000:

Yep. He was very clinical when asked why WWE has this offer: "Two words: Public Relations" I'm not particularly surprised to see the figure on the site. I would think that Vince truly doesn't see himself or his company as responsible for drug problems that others developed so the shame factor's not there; I would say that it's more likely to be a reflection of his PR mindset: "How many other companies would pay for 6% of its former employees to go to rehab (/or something else that was totally unrelated to past tenure there, such as "treat them to a holiday", "buy them a holiday home")?" It won't be too long before we're seeing it on those "Do you know?" sections that they inject into their TV programmes.

How? Meltzer knew this (that he was out of breath and people were worried) yet, in your words, "insists there was no heart issue". How you can take Meltzer's printed words to that effect and then say "Oh, there was a good reason to suspect a heart attack after all", if not purely to look for something dramatic? He's an old man, not in ring shape, and his elbow disintegrated (or something) early in the match. Those things would perfectly well lend themselves to his blowing-up and, given that they happened, should be the first things to attribute to it. Had that Grantland article not been written, "heart attack" would not have entered anybody's head.

I'm the polar opposite, not interested in either of those two things Surely at some point you get tired of drawing up the same lists after having done so for a decade or more? Still, I'm well aware that I contribute nothing to these forums and simply pop by because I often enjoy the comments on the gossip and salaciousness here, the denizens of which are often capable of adding historical context that I wouldn't find elsewhere.

I didn't find it much of anything precisely because it was so nonsensical, such a stupid thing to put on their programme that I couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. I didn't feel like getting offended at such a stupid thing. Why script him to hit his MurderDeathKill move (or 'Wile E' Special, if that's how Victator wants to see it) on a very pleasant woman who politely declined his offer of a beer? Stupid. I don't think it warranted giving it any attention, never mind getting offended. I think it deserved the equivalent of a dud match; silence from the crowd rather than cheers or boos. But Stone Cold has made for uncomfortable viewing in the past, regarding his intimidation of females. I think that even Victator might acknowledge that this scene isn't cartoony in the slightest, and is much more indicative of what happens in millions of homes around the world. I don't even care that there was a storyline reason for him to be so apoplectically angry; the audience wasn't cheering him as the put-upon hero standing up for himself. At least JR was alert enough to react as though it were thoroughly unjustifiable conduct.

^^ Isn't it enough that the police apparently paid Jeff and Beth a visit? Unless it's double-layered, reverse-psychology working and he's got Beth joining in on it too, I suppose ... I hate myself for even thinking along those lines, but that's how childish the whole troupe comes across. Oh, and:

No lesser an authority than Randy Orton said the same thing in that interview in which he brought up questions of Kelly Kelly's chastity. He said that, while Cena smokes everyone on the mic, "When it comes to wrestling, heh heh, in the ring, like the technical aspect, like, I feel as if I blow him away in that aspect. I feel like I'm more of an athlete. Now, the guy can squat 800 pounds; I'm not saying that he ain't ... he's not an athlete. But as far as, like, just watching him, I feel like he's a little bulky and big, a little stiff, hard to move, robotic. It certainly hasn't hurt him and that's not necessarily a dig."

So, did Big Dave have a prescription? This is some mega mass-loss: http://yfrog.com/kglkwp

I'm fairly sure that the nickname was first used when Trips, wearing the black glove, assaulted Austin following the revelation that Rikishi, doing it for "da Rock", ran Austin over at Survivor Series 99. Triple H was found to be innocent during the subsequent investigation but, when Rikishi predictably bombed in the role, was revealed to have masterminded it all along. Thus JR branded him the Cerebral Assassin, the man who fooled all of us. In that context, the "cerebral" part of the nickname doesn't strike me as odd at all.

"Creepy Little Bastard", Austin's nickname for Christian.

The thought never entered my head when I was told that Benoit and his family were all dead. Sue me, but the first port of call for my brain isn't the then-unthinkable-to-me notion that a father murdered his seven-year-old, especially when I had this idea that I was familiar with him to some degree. Not when there's the alternative that someone came in and gunned them all down in, say, a burglary that went wrong.

I'm surprised to hear that Mooney felt mutually acrimoniously with the WWF. I know that he deleted any reference to the company from his résumé, but my thinking was simply that he didn't want to hinder his prospects by including wrestling. A poster on another board (and lurker here) sent him a drunken email one night and found a reply his inbox the next morning:

Vince was asked during the Waxman hearings what had motivated this magnanimous gesture. "Two words: Public Relations." At least he was honest.

I've upped the resolution; it's no unicorn. What's jumping out to you as a horn is the light reflecting off the edge of first plate on the hood.

^^

No he didn't. He said, "Good to see you, Amy. Still shopping in Baby Doll's favourite store, the "junior moose" department."

Just to embellish John's earlier post: That's a nice way of acknowledging that Linda is synonymous with WWE, and so it's illegal to distribute the merchandise within 75 feet.