Ronnie

It's clear when he's not acting and left to himself just how vacant he is. Consider the unfunny dick comments in the early days of DX. They showed a total lack of wit, which I imagine was genuine. There was the attempt to be funny in the commentary box once (Over The Edge '98?), when he inadvertently made it appear that he was acknowledging himself as bisexual. (I'm bi- a lot of things, but -lingual ain't one of them. Hey, did I just mean to say that?) Consider the spiteful one-off comments aimed at Lilian Garcia ("horse face"), Masters ("The Incredible Shrinking Man"), or Cena's wresting ability (when promoting their WM match, bringing non-storyline things up to try undermining the man); I'd say those things don't involve acting. Or consider the Trips on Larry King: Unsure, out of place, uncomfortable ... uncharismatic. It comes across that way. I can't think of any reason that WWE would have sent out orders to Fighting Spirit Magazine not to show Triple H "in a defenseless or vulnerable position" when featuring screenshots of a video game, unless somebody with a lot of stroke specifically requested it. You'd have to assume that the source, even if dropped casually in a conversation with his wife over dinner, was the man himself. Otherwise, who else would think to make such a strange request about a particular wrestler?

Simmons has now gone after the premature-death issue. His people have put a based on wrestlers who performed at Wrestlemania VII dying before the age of 50. They intersperse with clips of Linda stating that the health and welfare of the wrestlers is the company's number-one priority, and counter with the fact that she cancelled the original testing policy in 1996, only reinstating an amended version a decade later, following the death of a high-profile performer. The video quality is very poor and doesn't provide any reason to vote for Simmons (since not a single one of his issues is presented, and the sudden concern for wrestlers' health seems rather too politically convenient), but it certainly makes Linda look worse than she would have done before. The gloves are off. Edit: 40 edited to 50. Thanks, John.

Yep, though it's page 103 in my (UK) copy.

I didn't realise, but porn stars also have a penchant for "protecting the business" in the face of industry-associated death: Source

My fiancée has been watching RAW with me over the last few months, which is great, since she totally suspends her disbelief, reminding me what it used to be like for me. When Batista jumped Cena during his match with Vince she hissed "That snake!", and gets really caught up with the good guys versus the bad. However, in spite of her innocence and inexperience with wrestling, she refuses to watch TNA. I told her when dropping her off to the train station the other day that they'd just gone in direct competition to RAW, and that elicited a very negative response. She told me it makes her angry to even be in the same room as "that rubbish". If she hates it to this degree despite minimal exposure and no long-term loyalty to WWE, I don't fancy TNA's chances of making a success of this latest strategy.

That's what he said when writing his book, but it was apparently the case that he didn't speak highly of OVW in the past, and these words were used to justify closing it down. On the F4W board, Meltzer wrote:

I love how that is presented in such a way as to be induistinguishable from athletic credentials. Of course he was over 300 pounds, but not in a positive way. One of my obese friends says "when I was a 300-pounder", as though it's a positive, because he's used to mammoth-men presented as such courtesy of Titan from when he was a child.

^^ That's what he says, yes, in his latest appearance on WO radio. He's very clear that the one thing he wishes to avoid above all else is Vince McMahon having a monopoly. To this end, he will always work for some other firm. On a not-so-serious note he also said that the only way he would ever negotiate with TNA in the future is if Dixie gave him Vince Russo in a shoot-fight first. I believe there was a line too where he said the next time he speaks to Vince Russo, one is going to jail, and the other to hospital. He's really, really not a fan

Vince was discontinued as a performer (which was paying him a downside of $1m a year) about, oh, five minutes after the institution of the Wellness Policy. I recall Vince stating in those congressional hearings that it's only performers that are tested (chosen by Dr Black). That's obviously his get-out, but who's to say that it doesn't apply to others too? It's not as though we've ever seen Hunter's contract to know that it's specifically a performer's one. I know if I were Vince I'd have Hunter signed to an employee's contract. Shawn too. And Dave. And Cena. And so on. I'd say that those guys are loyal enough to him that he'd never need to worry about them one day doing an interview where they reveal how they passed those tests, and he knows it too. Rey, and others like him, don't have that depth of relationship with him, so they get the occasional suspension when they fail the tests that they're occasionally subjected to.

Here's a . Flair's great in it. Two woman in the crowd are talking about 'sexiness', Hulk mentions to stay away from Flair, causing Flair to snipe that he should tell his fiancée the same thing. BOOM!

They were speaking about Hogan's "neck injury" at the hands of Undertaker on F4W Daily recently. Alvarez was saying that he'd seen Hogan limp from a helicopter when there were only a couple of people (non-wrestling related) about to sell a scripted neck leg injury. Lance Storm responded that Hogan could be accused of working the boys too; he was sat with Flair and Undertaker once when they were discussing the Tuesday in Texas match in which Hogan scored that neck injury. (There's a slight time difference between 1974, as Hogan claimed, and 1991, the time of the incident, but it's Hogan, so let's not over-analyse.) Apparently Hogan went into spasm in the ring and sought attention for his injury, and Undertaker was distraught at what he'd caused to happen. Flair backstage consoled him and told him that he needed to look on the monitor. All became clear when Undertaker saw the repeat; Hogan's head was eight inches clear of the canvas. Undertaker was doubly upset that Hogan caused him to think he'd injured him, when he was really BS-ing to protect his spot at the top of the card (since that newcomer "couldn't work" and injured a main-event guy). Edit: Changed "neck injury" to "leg injury".

That would have been great, had WCW been forced to put the article before their name! Typical WWF arrogance to include it in the text (assumung it wasn't a typing error by Herb), especially considering how indignant McMahon was about what Kroenke's staff wanted him to say.

I would think that subsequent digs by Bischoff would also have influenced Dave's comments, such as this one: Interestingly, Bischoff added in the comments section:

It was too much caffeine that he blamed it on. Loss: There's an excerpt of his book visible here. The events leading up to his pre-WM XIX hospitalisation are the first thing he talks about. Pages 2 and 3 are those that would be of interest to you.

I wouldn't agree at all that Vickie had X-Pac heat. She was a really effective heel, and very entertaining with it, without crossing over into that accursed "cool" territory. It's not as simple as someone saying to her "These are your lines". A lot of her best boos were received by her knowing when to throw in one of her Excuse me! interjections, rather than rigidly following a script. I don't particularly enjoy what's presented on WWE TV lately, but Vickie was an entertaining exception and, as Sean Liska said, something as a feel-good story, where she grew to be good in her position, much moreso than any of the Amy Zidian types that we've been subjected to during her tenure (even if the latter can't get her head around why Vickie has a job in spite of not being "in shape").

I don't know whether what I'll say will be abundantly obvious to you and thus a waste of time, but I'll try to add something anyway. My thinking is that those of you who have watched a tonne of NWA Flair will have very different perceptions to people like me whose only exposure to Flair is from the WWF. Years before we ever had access to the internet and opinion-leaders my early 90s peer group at school all seemed to share the same perception that Flair was boring and his matches were all the same. We all knew to expect what we'd come in later years to know as his "high spots". Every match contained a Flair Flop, a flip over the turnbuckles (which always looked too contrived because he never had the pace of a Shawn to make it more believable that force had taken him over), getting elbowed running across the apron after the flip, and so on. (I genuinely don't know whether he had the "miss the top-rope move" in his repertoire back then, which was later pulled out in every match.) Sure, other people had their things that they did in every match but these were either offense (such as Hart's flourish at the end of every match), in which case no problem, since it wasn't being done to them, or not quite so contrived. (For example, Hart was the only one I recall ever taking that sternum-first bump from an Irish Whip, but it had a certain believability to it because of how he carried it out. Flair's stuff didn't.) I assume that's what other people mean by "Flair by numbers", because that's how it always struck me and my entourage. Every Flair match would have these hokey things in them, and nothing else to write home about. I realise that most of you will see things differently, but I and a lot of people who would refer to "Flair by numbers" don't have the background or such a degree of interest that you chaps do. That's how it came across to us, and i'd wager that it comes across that way to an awful lot of people who don't follow wrestling to the degree of watching old, non-WWF footage.

I don't see anything hypocritical in Cornette writing this whilst employed by TNA. I understand that he gave up sitting in their booking meetings after spending hours pointing out why nothing made sense and subsequently getting ignored.

That wasn't the point. It's not an issue of consent, but of whether the other person is pre-pubescent. Steph wouldn't have been pre-pubescent at the alleged time, hence there are no grounds for labelling him as someone who is attracted to children, rather than adolescents. The rumour was that he had sex with Steph in 1994 when she was "14/15". That's obviously hurt by the fact that Steph was 17/18 in 1994.

Look at the first post in a topic. On the right side of the header is a drop-down labelled "topic options". Under the heading "Display Mode" click on "Switch to: Outline" to get the display that codegreen was posting about. To get back to normal follow the same procedure, but this time select "Switch to: Standard".

I thought he did a good job of controlling himself in the initial stages and that talk of throwing a "punch" at the female was overstated, although this GIF appears to corroborate the reports: The idiocy of some wrestling fans is astounding. It's no wonder we're despised by the masses when you look at the conduct of these idiots, yelling abuse outside of the location of the performance, harassing, laying their hands on the wrestler, and so on. The fact that you have one woman repeatedly asking for a photo in the midst of the fracas, another saying that (because Jericho finally reacted) "he really is an asshole", and the woman who continually goaded him until he lashed out now looking to sue him just seals the deal. Pathetic.

He's said several times before that it was Orndorff turning on Hogan that turned him into a huge fan, which was 2 or 3 months after Wrestlemania 2. He can't even keep his own memories straight, and people are supposed to trust him as an authority? Erm ... he says they rented WM2, not took him to watch the event. What's so hard to believe that they may have rented the video cassette months after the event? Googling shows that the date that Keith is speaking about is August 30th, 1986. Orndorff turned on Hogan two months prior. Maybe that got him originally into wrestling, causing his parents to think of renting WM2 for the party as a good idea, and this sealed the deal for his fandom.

Considering the widespread perception (reinforced by Flair himself) that he spent more than he made and has nothing left, I was surprised by this post on the F4W board:

I'll be attending a Q&A session with Flair in England tomorrow. My experience so far is that most people in the audience tend not to ask questions, except for the uninteresting things like "What was your favourite match?" I'll ask these two that Loss suggested, and will add another of my own: "Having just been relinquished a WWE contract because they wanted to limit your right to work anywhere else, do you think that the case brought by Levy, Klucsarits, and Sanders has any merit?" I might be able to get a good aside out of him if I factor in: "Eric Bischoff's comment on this lawsuit was to say that it was frivolous litigation and "I detest it". I wonder whether you have any comment to make on Bischoff saying this, seeing as he used frivolous litigation himself in an attempt to bankrupt your family." Anybody else have anything they'd like me to ask?

I'm amazed to see the wrestlers referred to as such: WRESTLER. Not "Superstar", not "Talent" nor "Sports-Entertainer". Wrestler. I thought Vince considered that to be a dirty word ...

I met a sober Sheik in April when he was on his own, and he was perfectly normal. He proudly said that his favourite things were his three grandchildren (who call him Papi Sheik), and was nothing like his drugged-up, on-camera persona that has seen him revitalised for the YouTube generation. It's also interesting to note that there are dozens of road stories about his behaviour from years before Marissa was killed, and they're not too different to those of now. He still spoke the same, and had the same esoteric outlook on things. I think that the main difference is that he now gets attention for them, has stumbled upon a formula that generates a response from an audience (and is relayed to him by Eric Simms and the other hangers-on as they prep him for the next time), and hits them like he would spots in a match. (You know the usual: Brian Blair, Ultimate Warrior, dat Hollywood-blonde jabroni guitar-player body-builder ... ) I happen to find lots of his stuff funny, especially when he does it on his own, but there is an unsavoury aspect to some of it, and that's when he's clearly led by people out for exploitation, who give him his drugs, whip out a camera, then start telling him that "so and so said such and such". I can't think of any case more unentertaining than Feinstein filming him smoking crack, arguing with his wife in her house about his addictions, and, especially, filming the private moment of a father visiting his murdered daughter's graveside. In instances like that, I also struggle to find his wacky adventures amusing, but I still don't see that the murder of his daughter should rule out finding amusing those things that have nothing to do with it. One ought still to laugh at his appearing on Raw and throwing in asides about how he beat "Kennedy McMahon" at racquetball even if one knows he happens to have experienced personal tragedy in his private life.