Death From Above

That boat story is class.

Same thoughts I posted on DVDVR because I think they are probably true for more than a few people that grew up around the time I did: Terrible news. A guy who was a part of so many of my wrestling memories growing up. In fact the first time I consciously remember ever seeing wrestling and wanting more as a young child was flipping the channels one Saturday morning and there was this crazy looking dude wearing this glittery purple outfit, a ridiculous purple cowboy hat, and wacked out sunglasses in the middle of his entrance, and my childhood self was intrigued enough to keep watching. By the time he hit the elbow off the top rope, I was a wrestling fan. RIP Macho Man.

I was going to make the same point John did. If you look at things like FoodTV or the National Geographic Channel or whatever, they are all airing basically the same loop of programming all day, with a couple of adjustments in that cycle based on what time of day it is. Lower tier movie channels fill time with half hour "whatever happened to..." shows and the like. WWE is definitely going to go down that same path. They will create a couple cheap in-house "the real life of your favourite WWE Superstar" shows (maybe even a new "where are they now" thing for past employees), Tough Enough will air 3 times a day in a 24 hour cycle, probably re-airs of their other core programming, PPV re-broadcasts, and old Raw and Nitros. Any of those shows you can air twice on whatever their day is, if not three times in a 24 hour cycle. I doubt they are going to break nearly as much new ground as most of us hardcore fans would want them to. A lot of their stuff that is "vaulted" is never coming out, ever. That shit is going to be sealed up to the public like the Vatican sitting on God knows how many billions worth of European art. It's a shame but I would be stunned if it played out any other way.

There is literally no reason not to do this. So of course they won't.

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...t=0&start=0

Contacting Hansen to judge matches would be hilarious being as in his shoot interview he admitted that if he's standing in the middle of the ring, the crowd was just basically a total blur to him because he's that blind and has been for many years. I assume he sees slightly better out of the ring wearing glasses, but still.

To me I think the other point I'm making there is that, in real sports, at the end of the day things like statistics and winning matter. Gretzky and Jordan are guys that have the weight of that on their side. Bo was good, but not *that* good when you're talking about comparing lasting fame in that kind of a context. To most fans of legitimate sports looking back on past eras, that's going to be the deciding factor about what players/teams they are going to focus on looking at. This doesn't necessarily apply to the same degree to forms of "pure entertainment", although obviously if a band sold more albums in their career, it generally makes them easier to access. In the context of wrestling discussion when comparisons come up, I much prefer the concept of comparing wrestling to "objectively entertaining" things like music or film than I do to legitimate athletics for that reason.

Well yeah but Gretzky and Jordan are the default "greatest of all time" answers in their sports. Bo Jackson isn't that guy in either football or baseball, as fine an athlete as he was. He was a mega-star of his time sure, but is he on that level? Not really. It seems reasonable he wouldn't be as known among current younger fans as the other two.

It's seriously a thousand billion times stupider than "wrestling = MMA". Not even close. People who have never watched hockey in their life know who Gretzky is. When I used to frequent a cricket forum, sports fans from fucking Pakistan knew who he was without me having to explain it. I doubt there's one hockey rink in Pakistan. Anyone that thinks George St. Pierre is on that level of fame has serious problems with reality.

Dave makes a great point that is still very relevant today about once WWF had established itself as a national brand that is seen as a "major league" it's a big part of the reason that building any meaningful smaller company only becomes that much more difficult. How many of us *really* give a damn about the minor league versions of our chosen sports that we follow? The point about it being harder and harder for new workers, even very talented ones, to break in also seems like it could have been written now. Sadly this sorta sounds about right still today as well. I'm guessing there's actually less money (relative in scale to 1988) on the indies now than there was then. And yeah these WON revisits are great. Nice to see a new one in action.

How many zeroes are on your paycheck!?! TWO! Mine too! Do ya think they misprinted these motherfuckers?

I remember the Murakami/Ogawa vs. Iizuka/Hashimoto match at the 2000 Dome show being quite good. The singles matches were really awful though, and I agree Ogawa going over to end the feud was never going to do much positive.

Robinson's stuff that has popped up in the All Japan Classics series has generally been very good or better. If the people doing the 1980's sets ever do a 1970's thing, I expect he'd be featured quite a bit in there someday.

Is this the thing that featured Kobayashi vs. Akitoshi Saito (at least I think that's who it was), just beating the ever loving hell out of each other over some wooden board with some writing on it? That was on one of the first blocks of NJPW TV I ever saw. Totally unlike anything I'd ever seen in north America before. Bizarre, awesome, bloody, not that long, and a ton of fun. It's something that really stuck with me over the years because it was one of the first things I saw from Japan that was so clearly "different" from what I would be seeing otherwise.

Just within wrestling circles alone, I'd say Dusty Rhodes is a guy you can mention. I mean... have you actually *looked* at that guy? In theory there shouldn't be an athletic endeavor on earth that Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons couldn't give him a run for his money at. And yet he's Dusty Rhodes. He's made an amazing career on his mouth. Which isn't to say I've never liked his matches, that wouldn't really be true, but clearly it's his charisma that makes Dusty what he is. Mainstream is a different story, of course. Hogan is probably more famous than The Rock based on his level of exposure in the day, but Rock's movie career, while never becoming super-massive, has still been infinitely more respectable within it's niche. Inoki is the big winner in Japan for sure. You also have Santo who did all those movies and what have you in Mexico that I'm not as familiar with, but they merit mention too. I thought Jericho did fine with that little game show hosting gig he had for 15 minutes there. So he wasn't really the problem with it.

The Sir William thing makes me laugh. Jamie Dundee said his dad was working as a road agent anyway so he booked himself as Sir William so he could get paid twice. If true, bravo Bill Dundee you wonderful carny.

Orndorff didn't exactly retire yesterday either.

Oops, just posted in the big comments thread, well a C & P: If he's been losing feeling in his arms then for goodness' sake do indeed stop. I never had any big beef with the guy back when I did watch. I thought some of the Edge and Christian stuff back in the day was really funny, and I enjoyed more than a handful of his matches. All the best to Edge if that's it for him. I'm sure the company will find something for him to do if he wants the gig.

If he's been losing feeling in his arms then for goodness' sake do indeed stop. I never had any big beef with the guy back when I did watch. I thought some of the Edge and Christian stuff back in the day was really funny, and I enjoyed more than a handful of his matches. All the best to Edge if that's it for him. I'm sure the company will find something for him to do if he wants the gig.

Seriously. I have never seen a non-wrestling fan refer to the company as WWE. Maybe different among kids these days, but among people my own age and older? Not once.

This reminds me of something once written by online movie reviewer Scott "Foywonder" Foy, referencing the attempt to make Hulk Hogan a mainstream film star: Essentially that sums up my thoughts on WWE investing time and money into this sort of thing. I can see why they'd want to (and in the big picture it's all a bit meaningless to me) but anyone that thinks it's going to mean anything is crazy. I assume this is one of those "only Vince thinks this is worth doing" things. At least I hope so. Won't make any actual difference in any way to either their own fans or their haters though.

What was the reason for Savage being in the announce booth around the time of Wrestlemania 9? Was he out injured or was it just a thing where Vince decided he was past it and stuck him in the booth to phase him out?

I think his booking is one part amusement, 5 parts trainwreck. The whole thing is just constantly in fast forward for absolutely no reason. Constant turns to the point none of it means anything. Thinks everything needs a gimmick, even in situations that it should be plainly obvious this isn't the case. Cage matches to set up the cage match PPV and the like. He came up with a lot of dumb bullshit that would bring heat on the company he was working with for no good reason, but it's now reached the point where nothing he writes is really shocking anymore. So you're just left with dumb bullshit. He seemed acceptable when he had other people keeping him on a leash, although the last point about shock for no reason stands. He seems to hate tag team wrestling and doesn't have any faith that people will just watch the bloody match. Every tag team match in history must have either a partner turn or a screwy finish. I mean this is partially a joke you can make about his singles booking as well, but in tag matches it ceases to be slight hyperbole and enters into the realm of "would be funny if it wasn't true". I get a kick out of reading some of the stuff he writes. I read TNA spoilers all the time with some degree of fascination. Wouldn't actually subject myself to dedicating time to watching the show. There doesn't seem to be any reason to think that there aren't other people available who could do a better overall job. In the big picture he's done 1000 times more harm than good. I wouldn't hire him to run my company if he offered to work for free.

I always thought Rick Steiner would make the most AMAZING junior high school/middle school gym teacher.