Sean Liska

It is unfortunate that Observer subscribers have this open access to Dave, and can ask all sorts of questions to this great wrestling mind, and the end result is mostly Dave berating people for being dumb. I would have been so excited to be able to communicate with Dave like this 15 years ago.

Dwayne was a junior in high school in 1989. Is he thinking of one of the Wide Right games?

You really think indy wrestlers are going to be unaffected by the fact that these companies are having such a difficult making money?

It means he should shut up about it. He has made more money from piracy than every uploader on PWT combined. It's not just Gabe that gets screwed over when everyone steals their stuff. The indy workers not making any money to begin with aren't benefiting from everybody being too cheap to pay to support their efforts. I didn't realise Gabe was running a cooperative/profit sharing scheme? The whole "I'm doing it for the boys" schtick seems more to be a way of guilt tripping pirates to see the error of their ways to pad his bottom line than to genuinely boost his workers pay. I know that's cynical but we are talking about a wrestling promoter who had no qualms about bootlegging in the past. So you don't think the average indy wrestler's earnings are affected by widespread internet piracy?

It means he should shut up about it. He has made more money from piracy than every uploader on PWT combined. It's not just Gabe that gets screwed over when everyone steals their stuff. The indy workers not making any money to begin with aren't benefiting from everybody being too cheap to pay to support their efforts.

The latest from today's WO update: "-- YouTube Set to Announce TV Initiative With 100 Niche Channels. One of those channels is going to WWE. This is almost certainly the first roll-out of the new WWE Network which the company has claimed will launch around WrestleMania of 2012. This would certainly solve the problem of trying to get clearances on over-the-air television, but it's also certainly not what most fans were expecting when they heard WWE was planning to launch its own network." http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/yout...-poehler-254370 http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118045254

Dave trolling Dylan: "--Who is the best wrestler of the current world champions? Davey Richards 44.4% Mark Henry 16.3% Hiroshi Tanahashi 12.3% James Storm 9.3% Alberto Del Rio 7.5% Jeff Jarrett 3.4% Go Shiozaki 1.8% Masaaki Mochizuki 1.8% Hector Garza 0.8% Suwama 0.4% Well, that's quite embarrassing" How can any of those guys point to drawing like our boy Mark Henry's TV ratings power?

Technically, while they have not been full-on building up to the match (and really, they can't, otherwise the fans would get burnt out way before the match even happens), they have peppered in hints here and there to remind the fans, and the Rock is scheduled to show up in November, and who knows how often he'll be at the shows from that point on. I do want to know, Loss, why you think it's even remotely possible that the Rock will win? Is it because the show is in Miami? I'm pretty sure Meltzer has said that Rock will be around through at least SummerSlam next year, so it may not be a one-match series.

Am I crazy for thinking Rock should win Best Box Office draw and Austin should win Best Promos (Tough Enough)?

Here's what Dave wrote last year after someone bumped a thread from 2007 questioning why Angle is in the HOF. "Do the people in the first few pages realize that with the benefit of hindsight how absolutely little about wrestling they understood three years ago? The good thing is you can always learn. The ones who think they were right at the time three years later, well, there was no hope for them to begin with."

I remember Dave on the Board saying that people who argued against Angle's HOF induction must feel silly now. Like his TNA run has made him an inarguable candidate.

Dave trying to justify Ultimo and Hase getting in: "When Dragon was in WCW before he injured his elbow (and he was never a great worker after that), I remember people in that company saying he was the best worker in the entire business. That was in a company with Benoit, Malenko, Rey and Guerrero. I remember a Dragon vs. Malenko program in particular when guys in WCW were saying it was the best match in the country and Dragon was better than Malenko in those matches. Again, those within the business in Japan felt he was influential there as well. Hase was the co-booker during what was the most successful period arguably of any wrestling company in history up to that point in time, at least when it came to profit margin it was. New Japan drew more people and averaged bigger gates when Hase was booking than WWF did in the Hogan boom period. It was later surpassed by WWF post 1998 but it's still the best period for Japan. They did a profit sharing plan and at the end of the year, the mid-card guys were getting incredible checks for their share. He was also the guy who moved Muto to All Japan, and while some in the U.S. decry that, the fact is Motoko Baba was going to fold the company, and while All Japan is no great shakes, it has lasted nine more years. Hase was evidently a great worker given that virtually every one of his contemporaries voted him in. " A few guys backstage in 1996 thought Ultimo was the best worker in the business. Not sure how much ring time those guys had with Kawada, but there you go.

Muto looked 20 years younger in that match than when I saw him in person at WrestleReunion last year. He looked significantly younger than I remember him being in 2003. I have no idea what got into him.

I'm sure there will be cable and dish systems that won't offer the WWE Network. People go crazy when they can't watch a crummy Thursday night regular season NFL game because they don't get the NFL Network, imagine how pissed wrestling fans would be if they didn't have WrestleMania. I can't imagine this happening.

I have to soften what I wrote after re-reading the paragraph in the Observer about Kurt. It does come across as being almost defensive of him. I don't think he meant it that way, and he's probably just being realistic, but it didn't read well.

He can complain, but it's not going to happen, so he'll be wasting his breath. Seriously, it really is just TNA, they are what they are - the worst wrestling company ever in every way. Dave has probably written hundreds of pages about this stuff over the years, no one has put more time into advocating for drug testing than him.

HHH should get like 97% of the credit for Batista. Picked him out for Evolution, did a six-month Wrestlemania angle with him that made him a major star, jobbed the next month and then in a Hell in the Cell three months later, and put him over at every turn.

That's horrific. I think the truth is just that he's seen so many tragedies and is numb. We've seen this same deal play out time after time. It's not like Dave is defending Kurt. He's being realistic about how this is going to end. By saying there's "no solution", I'm guessing he meant in terms of other people trying to help him out. It's obvious that Kurt needs to take responsibility for his actions and get sober, no one would deny that. Dave has no great affection for Scott Hall, but he hasn't called him out personally either.

I'm with Vic in that I have a hard time getting upset over cartoony pro wrestling violence. Dreamer piledriving valets was just silly. The one that bugged me was in 1999 WCW when Randy Savage marched angrily backstage and started slapping Torrie Wilson and Gorgeous George. That was too "real" for me.

I don't think Jay meant that comment seriously, he's never been against skanks and hoes and sluts.

Do we really know this to be true? Meltzer has noted that Nash is always praised as this great example, but he was taking bumps in the Impact Zone in his 50s while doing what it took to be unbelievably jacked for his age despite a history of heart problems in his family.

The modern guys seem to be doing better. Foley, Michaels, and Jericho come to mind as being great workers with lots of money put away. Many considered Edge a great worker and he seems comfortable.

Oddly, Fifi the Maid said that Manny was going after her verbally for some reason, and that Reid stepped in to defend her. I can't imagine anyone but hardcore wrestling fans reading that whole thing, there had to be a more engaging way to format it.

Sting only spent 2 years in a company as successful as WWE has been over the last decade. I'm not a big proponent now on Batista or Edge, but someone deserves credit besides Cena. They are maintaining an already successful healthy promotion. Big difference than being the guy keeping WCW or worse yet TNA from oblivion. WWE's numbers were heading the wrong way from 2001-2004. They ran a few MSG shows that drew in the 4,000-5,000 range, and it overall seemed like a company that was fading and didn't have any answers. They got new life and several big years when they elevated Cena and Batista and other guys like Orton and Edge started clicking with the audience. Sting drew the biggest buyrate WCW ever did and was a big part of one of the biggest angles in wrestling history. That trumps anything Edge or Batista have ever done. Batista drew the 2nd biggest buyrate in WWE history, and it's a lot harder to do historically good numbers in WWE than WCW. Although there is the issue of international buys inflating things, but it was still huge.

They blew the original angle of Punk leaving with the belt, but I'm still excited about him getting such a big push. I don't think they've made this big of an effort to elevate a guy to main event babyface-level since Lashley. It's still shocking that he's had this many exchanges on the mic with HHH and has come out looking strong every time, I don't think that's happened in about ten years.