Death From Above

I'm voting here for a whole seperate thread where people try and guess what's going on in the mind of Bix. That could be a really good long-running thing.

I've skimmed over a ton of stuff so this might just be rehashing old ground, and my sarcastic humour is occasionally wasted on the internet, but anyway. There are other guys in the hall besides Big Daddy who can't work. Daddy is particularly shit from what little I saw, but I don't know if in the big picture that means a ton to me. Wrestling is a carny scam, and if "having good matches as defined by less than 1% of wrestling fans that give a shit about a hall of fame for pro wrestling" was the criteria, you really need to start over with the whole thing. The Crusher was one of the people given a free pass in year one. The last 20 years of his career (and for all I know, the 20 before it) weren't exactly Tenryu vs. Jumbo or Santo vs. Casas. There are other guys in the hall besides Big Daddy who only succeeded through being selfish and putting themselves in positions to succeed. Daddy happened to do it in an unpopular (to the American voting audience) territory. There are plenty of other guys in the hall who weren't significant draws out of a single region, like Mexico, or one specific US territory. Or realistically, almost every Japanese worker in the hall (although in it's heyday Japan generated so much money that no one sane would argue that alone isn't major). There are plenty of guys in the hall that succeeded in the US, or in some cases only one region of the US. These people all got in without (relatively to Big Daddy) much fuss. If Daddy had been born in Mexico City, stunk up the ring, pushed himself to the moon, got himself into 8 lucha movies, and become one of the biggest names in the history of Mexico, he'd probably be in the hall despite not being able to work. But he didn't, he's English. Different culture, but for better or for worse he's easily the biggest name in British wrestling. People in England who know nothing about wrestling anbd/or think it's retarded still often know who Big Daddy is. That says something of note when discussing a carny scam hall of fame. Dusty Rhodes is a (somewhat loveable) selfish fat fuck that pushed himself to the point he'd kill a company to see his name on the headline. There are Mexicans in the hall of fame that never drew a nickel outside of Mexico but became super-famous in their niche, made a few movies, and are in the hall. I have no problem with any of that. In fact, I basically think that's what a pro wrestling hall of fame organized by people outside of any one company is supposed to be about. Turning a carny hustle in to name value. If you can do it through AMAZING WORKRATE, good for you. If you can do it through talking/manipulating promoters/manipulating fans/manipulating the media, so what? Is that less of a skill than "ZOMG Benoit Headbutt off the top of a cage 5 stars"? Hell, only one of those two is actually a useful life skill. Is the hall about workrate, or is it about acknowledging this is a stupid carny scam and rewarding people who made their name mean something? I'm not even sure the people voting on this thing really know. That's probably the one thing about the hall that discredits it the most to me. If it's about celebrating the art of the carny hustle - and if it isn't there's not much point in having a pro wrestling hall of fame, the only reason Big Daddy isn't in the hall is because he's English, and not Big Billy Joe Bob the Killer Pig Farmer from Memphis, Super Yokozuna Samurai Machine from Tokyo or El Grande Nacho Burrito Papa from Tijuana. Would Big Daddy be the worst worker in the hall? Possibly. Hell, maybe even probably. But I'm not really sure that's a huge knock against his case at the end of the day. Keeping him out because he managed to pull off this ridiculous hustle in the wrong location or because his work is all kinds of ass just makes people look like marks.

Flair and Onita blowing each other up and flopping around for 12 minutes might be the only freakshow that has enough going for it to get me back to watch wrestling one last time. I'd love to see the economics of this new company here though. If there's cash being thrown around the ticket prices might be high enough to kill their own novelty value. And if the money isn't there the whole thing doesn't make sense.

No discussion about Dynamite Kid can happen without this coming instantly to mind for me: Not enough "baby"s I say.

Judging from the lessons of ECW, no one.

Snorting coke isn't actually part of the job of being a professional poker player, no matter what Stu was telling people to get them to loan him money. So in that sense the comparison doesn't quite work. Actually I would sooner compare Stu Unger to Kurt Angle. Lots of talent and a billion and one ways to flush it all down the toilet. And really it wouldn't shock me at all if Angle's death mirrored Stu's and if one day in the next 5 years Kurt is found dead in a hotel room because his heart said "fuck it, I quit" after one too many trips down the stimulant freeway. I hope that isn't the case, but if that happens to Kurt the word "shocking" had better not be applied to it by anybody that's been paying attention.

Somehow I thought IWA-MS would live forever. Like a horror movie monster, no matter what you do it wouldn't die.

Hansen has much better psychology than Vader. I love both guys. But it's Hansen easily. I'd rather have either to use as the focal point of a company than 99% of the other available options.

Man I think the fact that I'm not watching wrestling anymore is starting to really show. I just blew a $200 Jeopardy question.

Wasn't Hawk injured, which is what led to the creation of the Hellraisers Animal/Sasaki team to begin with?

If "PolishBobStupak" is Randazzo, I wonder why he chose that name. Seems like a weird, ultra-obscure actual person to reference on a wrestling forum. I only mention this because I got a book I'd been angling to get for a while on my birthday this week, "The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King", and the real Bob Stupak is mentioned offhand in there once, I think he was only mentioned as the guy behind developing The Stratosphere in Vegas in the 1990's which was a massive money losing project at the time. Anyway, that's just really really useless trivia. Just thinking out loud.

I'm sure this has come up before, that at one point WCW started putting plants in the crowd to rush the ring from time to time because they thought it "looked cool" on TV. Obviously that only encouraged other non-plants to follow suit. Really not the best of ideas.

Ha. There's probably an easy spin off to the myth busters thread about smart marks being an internet fad, but I'm too lazy to write it out. So just ha.

I THINK he was a Baldie for a time too, no? also. I went to Destination X 2007, right. Remember that Muta was there for no apparent reason. Were they supposed to be building towards anything there or was he just there for no apparent reason? If I recall correctly Muto was over there to negotiate some sort of talent exchange for TNA workers coming into All Japan at the time, and he ended up doing some random cameo on the PPV but I don't think there were any specific plans for it to go anywhere. It was more of a "well... you're here anyway. Sure, throw him on".

I don't know what to say. One of my all time favourites. I just don't know.

Tried watching ROH's TV show for the first time the other day, just saw it was on flipping through the channels (It's on The Fight Network here in Canada which I'm getting FREE all month). I lasted less than 60 seconds. There was some promo going on with really murky audio straight out of 1996 ECW, and the first thing I hear is some fan going "Shut up", followed by "NO, you shut up. I'm the babyface, he's the heel, get it right", greeted by thunderous applause from the mutants. Flipped it off right away. Yeah I'm one of those grumpy old people. I caught pretty much the one thing that threw me off ROH to begin with (wrestling written by smart marks to cater to other smart marks) and that was a sour taste for me. Probably would have given it a shot if I'd come in during a match though, but my attention span for "wrestlers I don't relaly know" is just too short these days.

Hell there are subsections of fans that still haven't come to terms with the fact that X-Pac had X-Pac heat.

Ah but did you shout THE BIGGEST ICON IN WRESTLING?

I thought Watts was a sheet-hater?

There's a bunch of Tom's TNA Reports in the "Greatest things ever written on wrestling message boards" thread, and a lot of them are pretty fucking funny.

Not that I'm disagreeing with this general point here, because wrestling is clearly a very screwed up (and probably under-regulated) industry. But in terms of any sort of embarassment as a fan vs. being around non-fans, I don't have it for this reason. Because none of the non-fans I've ever talked to really grasp (or really care) just how ridiculous an industry wrestling can be behind the scenes. And that's probably for the best because as Jingus puts it, it is hard enough "to explain my inexplicable love for watching sweaty musclemen in tights grabbing each other, to non-fans", without them knowing that someone in Dragon Gate had a pet monkey they tortured or that Bruiser Brody was stabbed to death in Puerto Rico or that some promoters got guys jobs in exchange for sexual favours, or whatever. Wrestling is a ridiculous thing. Some of those ridiculous elements are what make it great, some of them are what make it... well, the stigmatized thing that it is. Double edged swords and all that.

Very insteresting question. I'm somone who grew up on wrestling, and still has a pretty sizeable collection although it doesn't really get much/any use for long stretches at this point, and it's the business end of the business that still keeps me interested for the most part. I don't really spend that much time with wrestling anymore, but I do spend a lot of times on a couple of wrestling-centric message boards (though this is probably the only one I still actually talk wrestling regularly). I prioritize following some real sports, my semi-serious hobby in poker, and music as things I spend much more actual free time with though as some examples. I still play video games in my 20's too, but being from the "Mario Brothers generation" at least among ourselves I don't think there's really much of a stigma towards that anymore. This isn't the 1980's and families are gathering together to play Rock Band now. So I don't think there's nearly the stigma with that which you might get with wrestling. I grew up in a big (well, for Canada) city but moved out into a more rural setting not long after I got out of high school. As a result, I lost the ability to regularly get together with some of my high school friends I'd watch wrestling with. That damaged my fandom a lot. Sitting alone in one's living room watching wrestling isn't nearly as much fun as having friends to share the experience with, I think it's the same reason people tend to enjoy the live experience (for anything) pretty much by default more. There's something about sharing an experience that makes it better. From that point on I've been swinging more and more towards following the business end and less and less towards the actual in ring stuff. I don't regard "entetainment television" that highly, meaning mainly sitcoms and TV dramas. There are a handful of good ones but I watch very little. I don't really watch much of anything anymore, aside from sports, maybe the news now and again, but not really very much when it comes to TV drama or sitcoms. The two chanels I watch the most are TSN (the big sports network in Canada), The National Geographic Channel (which has a ton of shows on engineering which I've developed a sudden interest in through my mid-20's), and I'm an Antiques Roadshow junkie. That gives you some idea of my viewing habits. Having said that it's not like I'd be embarassed to say "yeah I watched this show". I probably would be with wrestling if I'm around non-wrestling fans. It has a stigma, that's just the way things are whether it's right or not. And that's kind of strange, because I do respect what wrestlers put themselves through as performers. I don't always agree with it, but I respect that it's not an easy business. Hell, it's a very screwed up business in many ways. But I still wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to sell non-wrestling fans on the idea that it's "respectable". But I don't regard most mainstream TV that highly as I said, and for the most part I probably respect what wrestlers go through at least as much as what actors on rotten shows are doing. There's no doubt in my mind who is working harder. I don't respect wrestling as much as "real sports" as a generalization. Musicians it probably depends on whether I liked the album or not. ;-) But if I liked it, I don't respect wrestling as much as top music. Doesn't mean I don't like wrestling. I'd have to echo this line as well. For better or for worse, pro wrestling is somehting unique. And even if I'm more interested in the *concept* of that something at this point than most of the actual execution of it, it does still fascinate me. I draw comparisons between wrestling and (insert "legitimized" entertainment form here) plenty when I'm talking with other wrestling fans. I probably wouldn't do the same in reverse though. I think good wrestling is much better than bad TV, cinema, or music. I don't find it a strange comparison. Bad wrestling, well, that's a special breed all it's own but in the end that has to be part of the charm too on some level or you'd stop. And what I would consider the best wrestling probably entertains me as much as anything does. I wouldn't say I'm ashamed to be a wrestling fan. Frankly I'm too grown up to really give a shit about anyone that wants to ostracize me in some way if they found out I enjoy it. But at the same time I don't go out of my way to talk about it with non-wrestling fans either or ever try and sell anyone on it. To each their own.

One other thing that bugs me. Overall, "originality" might be the most over rated pile of nonsense that gets praised in society as a whole. What does being original (when discussing something as subjective, and overall worthless, as wrestling match quality) even gain anyway? The shakey cam action scene in movies was at one point an "original", fresh concept. It still sucked and has added virtually nothing of value to the greater cinematic collective. Plenty of things, and ideas, that are original don't really bring anything good to the table but are more originality for the sake of originality, which gets you at best a lateral move.

Wasn't most of the material in the ridiculous "Mark Henry has somehow become the fulcrum of wrestling talking points" on DVDVR lost during the purge of non-stick wrestling? Sadly we also lost such gems as the "Kane vs. Abyss, who is a better worker" thread, and the "pictures of women in wrestling bleeding as fetish porn" thread. Can't say I miss it much.

Insert joke here.