Sean Liska

We've heard a lot about how smart of a guy Brody was. What if he was in pretty good financial shape? Maybe he could have just spent the 90's doing occasional shots for Japanese and American money marks and spent the rest of his time at home. I can imagine him seeing the changes that were happening in the industry and agreeing to do some high-profile jobs for big paydays like an Onita stadium show or a big NJPW show (not sure of what his relationship was like with those guys at the end) in order to cash in while he still could. He could have done some shots in early ECW when they would bring in random guys like Abby and the Sheik for appearances, but he wouldn't have been a weekly part of the TV under Heyman.

The whole thing is so strange. Who knows what the motivation is. Stuff happens when people get old. Maybe he's bored. Maybe he's worried about his legacy. Maybe he sees it as a final step towards closing the door on all of the hard feelings caused by Montreal. Maybe he thinks it will be fun. Maybe he's in solid financial shape but a Wrestlemania paycheck still sounds pretty good. The timing is what's really weird. I don't know how much of the current audience is aware of the backstory. Too bad there aren't any upcoming RAWs in places like Canada, NYC, or Chicago where this could probably still get crazy heat.

No, I think the point was that it is the fans who are at fault for demanding certain body types and forms of wrestling. I could see that point in ROH when it comes to in-ring. But plenty of non-roided up looking guys have drawn money in wrestling and are currently drawing money in MMA. Jeff Hardy was the biggest breakout drawing card of the last couple years and he's an average looking dude that wears a shirt to the ring. And the WWE in-ring style is whatever they want it to be, the money is made in the promoting and the characters. Guys like Cena, Rock, and Batista aren't know for crazy bumps.

Dave keeps adding sentences to his original story. Newest one is that they believe it was a heart attack.

Lots of things heels say about faces are demeaning. The problem is that the company apparently either believes it, or wants Mickie to believe that they believe it so it can be used as ammunition against her in real life. And that's kinda fucked up. Think about the company we're discussing. These are the people that, upon finding out that a loyal hard-working employee had a traumatic cancer scare and was having painful colon surgery, decided the best gesture to make was a 5 minute skit mocking the surgery so they could take numerous personal shots at him. I'm way past getting too upset about something like the Mickie James skit.

A tidit from Meltzer on the Observer board about Flair doing the tour: "The funny part of the whole thing is Flair called Vince before signing the contract. Three weeks later WWE made him a big offer to return, dependent upon him no-showing the tour, which he couldn't do at that point. "

That's from Alvarez.

Wow, this took an unnecessary turn that isn't going to go anywhere. Meltzer posted this on his board and it made me respect his position more. "Yeah, given that the Obsever gets more poll responses for UFC PPVs shows than anything except Mania certainly tells you the readership isn't interested in MMA. Check the year end award responses, poll results, etc. Look at the numbers, see what the numbers say, then come back to me with business conclusions as opposed to "I don't like MMA, therefore none of the readership cares." MMA polls on this site (except for Ultimate Fighter TV show being below Raw every week in responses) always beat pro wrestling polls. UFC PPV poll numbers always beat pro wrestling poll numbers. However, traffic is bigger for WWE PPV days then UFC days, but how many people care about CHIKARA, ROH or TNA really? But I should drop covering UFC and devote more space to Dragon Gate USA. Think about that for a second if you actually believe that." From a business perspective, you can't blame Dave for the MMA stuff in the WON. If my ability to support my family was dependent on the long-term health of the pro wrestling industry, I'd be having a lot of sleepless nights right now. Expanding into MMA is absolutely a good move for him personally and makes his future a lot more secure. He seems to be hinting at that here, and I can't blame him. The MMA = Pro Wrestling argument is tiresome but I can't blame him anymore for the MMA content each week.

It wasn't anything overt but they had definitely been hinting towards Hart becoming more of a whiny character constantly complaining about being screwed and Austin being more of an ass-kicker. The proof is in how the live crowd ate it up and instantly took to Austin as a face and Hart as a heel.

That's what any good leader does, though. He surrounds himself with smart people and uses their good ideas while giving them an overall shape. I think the whole Ringmaster/Austin coming up with Stone Cold thing is overplayed. Yes, it took 3-4 whole months for Vince to see Austin's potential. But once he did, Austin was given as effective of a push as you could conceive of. That's what is overlooked when people make it seem like Austin came up with his gimmick and soon after that was the biggest thing ever. Vince used Bret Hart's big return match at Survivor Series that year to elevate Austin to a new level. He teased the double-turn with him and Hart for months, and had the audience right where he wanted them when he did the big angle at WM13, which was all things considered one of the best angles in wrestling history. Then they kept it hot with the USA-Canada feud which was unlike anything ever done with guys alternating between heel and babyface weekly. They built up the deal with Austin giving Vince the stunner at the Garden perfectly. Vince made a multi-million dollar gamble on the Mike Tyson thing working out, and he couldn't just throw money around loosely back then like WCW. Austin confronting Tyson was perfect. Tyson joining DX was great. And of course the Austin-McMahon feud speaks for itself. Maybe Vince didn't come up with the idea of turning heel, but once he did they executed it perfectly. And you can't tell me it was Russo writing that weekly TV. It's easy to look back ten years later and say, "Well, he stumbled into Austin and the Rock, of course he had a big run." But it required a ton of smart booking decisions and several years worth of compelling TV to get where they did. And all of the momentum they built could have easily been killed if there had been any major booking missteps. If it was so easy to do, they wouldn't be the only company to have ever gotten so hot.

How many non-lucky wrestling promoters have there been in history? Everyone is a product of their times and circumstances.

Yeah, that's craziness to say he "lucked" into Austin and Rock and the Attitude success. People forget how ugly it was in 96-97 with them doing ratings in the high 1's and low 2's and with WCW having all of the momentum. To go from where they were to the heights of the Attitude boom required a lot more than luck. To say that Austin is self-created is to ignore the double turn with Bret, the USA-Canada feud, the Austin-McMahon fued, the huge Tyson gamble, the Highway to Hell in the summer of 98, and a ton of other brilliant stuff that lead to Austin's success.

Currently listening to the Observer audio update. Meltzer is being vague but said, "A whole bunch of people that don't like Vince McMahon have found this thing." And he's repeating that something bigger than Hogan is supposed to be upcoming. So yeah, I'm intrigued.

Hogan as an on-screen character obviously isn't going to mean much at this point. But I am intrigued by Meltzer saying bigger things are supposedly coming and by the presence of Bischoff. I don't think Eric would join TNA if things were going to continue as they have for the last several years. He seems like he has enough stuff to do without needing to hitch his name to a second-rate company that he has bashed repeatedly. So I'm interested in what else there might be to this and what it could means in terms of licensing and TV deals overseas.

So I've been reading the Observer forever but just got the online service for the first time in order to hear the Heyman interview. My question - has their board always been like it is now? Is it like that because of the Figure Four people? I always thought a board with Observer subscribers would be pretty cool.

Pedophile would be the wrong term, ephebophile would be the correct term. But please, this is wrestling. I'm sure Dave knew all the jokes about Mel Phillips' love for young boys feet before the sex scandals became public. Not to mention Ric Flair's love of exposing himself in public. Dave has covered for delinquent behaviour in wrestling since becoming an insider. So he's not above giving the benefit of the doubt to a long term source and childhood favorite. Yeah, but Ric Flair stripping down in an airplane isn't really news. Covering up the fact that Pat Patterson touched underage ring boys, during a massive sex scandal, with Patterson being a key part of the story, is quite a bit different.

I think that was more them just running into each other after shows. Meltzer has always said that they don't talk much, and JJ Dillon was the front office guy that was supposed to be talking with Dave back then. I also don't think Dave would cover for a pedophile because the guy was a source or childhood favorite or whatever.

From what I understand, MMA fighters get challenged to fights pretty regularly as well, so it's not necessarily a case of wrestlers being challenged because people thought they weren't legit.

Have you seen the video of Ernie Ladd and Ox Baker fighting out of a riot in the 70's from Cleveland? I don't have a hard time believing that stuff was common. We have a newspaper article confirming that Bobby Heenan was shot at. There are wrestlers with scars from being stabbed. We know people cheered when it was announced that heels died. A fan jumped in the ring with a gun when JYD was doing the blinded angle and was being cornered. These guys used to get visitors in the hospital when they did injury angles. I know it's fun to be cynical and detached and call BS on old wrestling stories, but I have no problem believing that plenty of fans back in the day thought wrestling was real and acted out on those beliefs. Did most of the general public believe that? Of course not.

This sounds like an overblown story. I doubt that Vince McMahon would devote all of the hours of TV that he has to Punk, in addition to using Jeff Hardy's last few months with the company as a way to get him over, and then bury him because he wears jeans and a Cubs hat on the road. I'm more prone to believe that they wanted a face champ on SmackDown because they have a heel champ on Raw and they have the Bragging Rights PPV coming up. Not to mention that the only other top heel on SD is Jericho, so they have no one else to push. Maybe this is one of those Vince humbling deals, but I'm sure Punk will be fine.

I dunno. I'd probably rather watch Rude than Edge, but Dave has some points. Rude was only the top heel in a promotion for, what, less than a year? He was great but it's not like business was set on fire. Edge has had a period of being a top heel for several years. Smackdown hasn't done huge business during that time but it's been fine. I can see the argument that Edge has been a more significant figure during this era than Rude was during his. I could be persuaded otherwise if Rude was a strong B-show draw as the IC champ.

I believe the popular line being thrown around was that he's the only guy ever who was once the best in the world as an amateur and best in the world as a pro. It's still not relevant to a pro wrestling Hall of Fame discussion. Barry Bonds was one of the greatest college baseball players of all time, and arguably the greatest pro baseball player of all time. Yet I don't think we're going to hear anybody talking about his exploits at Arizona State when he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame, and there are a LOT more similarities between college and pro baseball and amateur and professional wrestling. That doesn't even weigh into account that Angle was pretty far from the best pro wrestler of all time, either. I didn't agree with it. The Angle thing is when I personally stopped even caring about the Observer HOF. I just shake my head now when I read that Curt Hennig was a top-5 worker in the world from 87-91 or when I read that Kurt deserves to go in just because at his peak he was on such a different level from every other worker.

I believe the popular line being thrown around was that he's the only guy ever who was once the best in the world as an amateur and best in the world as a pro. I don't think all of the arugments Dave's making on the positives and negatives of candidates are necessarily things he believes strongly. He's just going down the list of eligible candidates and giving reasons why people may or may not vote for someone.

He got paid in advance by ROH for some dates that he later pulled out of, so that's why he owes them money back. No idea about Highspots.

Goldberg didn't get as many chances to be on top and really draw money as someone like Graham did. It wasn't his fault, but they screwed up the title chase by blowing it off way too early and then still focused the company around Hogan once Goldberg had the belt. How many succesful PPVs did he main event? I know Starcade 98 did a good number, and that's a big credit to him considering Nash was never a PPV singles draw. Goldberg and Hall did a solid buyrate for the next PPV, Souled Out 99. Outside of that, I'm not sure what you can credit specifically to him outside of maybe some house show attendance. Again, not his fault because him chasing Hogan for the title should have been as big as anything they ever did. A 6-month build-up towards a Goldberg-Hogan match at Starrcade 98 would have done Wrestlemania level numbers. But that's WCW.