Ditch

I don't think Rock should be dismissed at all On the other hand, they could have easily pushed Booker faster than they did. Who SHOULD they have given the title to other than those two before 2006? Maybe it's more a matter of not giving many big chances or something, but they've had three Hispanic world champs, and Pedro was decades ago and isn't generally considered an amazing talent. Post-2006 is, to me, the clearest misuse of talent, between Kofi and Sheldon and MVP.

Norton's was split with New Japan, IIRC.

IIRC there was more than one person who got fined repeatedly. Wasn't London one of them?

Yessir. And yes it would apply equally were the parties reversed. I just love the concept that someone, somewhere might cast a vote based on the possibility that a politician would clean up pro wrestling if elected to the senate.

Are you suggesting that pro wrestling regulation would be a low priority issue should the GOP regain the Senate? I wonder what would give you that idea.

Wait, so HHH punched JR in 2005 over a hearsay comment about something from years earlier?

When did this shoot punch take place?

????

I know I'm jaded about wrestler deaths when I'm more upset about Kanyon further delaying a possible Steve Williams bio in WON than I am about the actual death.

It still had better angle potential than DDP: Personal Motivator, which similarly had some fun vignettes but wasn't ever going to accomplish much.

Piper did something stupid (IIRC in an interview) and got canned, and O'Haire was attached to him so he got depushed. The gimmick wasn't going anywhere though.

What happened there? Also, has anyone ASKED him about a Doc bio?

Movement relative to Blumenthal is what matters, not Simmons.

Actually, he just closed it.

There's no way TNA is anywhere near as unprofitable as 2000-2001 WCW. Way smaller roster, far fewer wrestlers making 500k+. Stevie Ray was making like 750k. Dozens upon dozens of jobbers who weren't necessary at all, making 6 figures. THEN they had all the geezers making millions, and all on their own dime. TNA at least has Spike defraying some of the cost for the Stings of the world.

Wasn't TNA profitable for a decent period of time, IIRC before the recession?

Puroresufan underwent a major redesign after some sort of hack messed things up through comment pages. For some reason he also took down a lot of .html pages that couldn't possibly be a vulnerability, including the old result and title history pages. He restored some of that for NJ but that's about it. Purolove.com has 99% of what puroresufan had, plus a bunch more.

There's no question TNA wouldn't be doing 4's in the ratings, but that said I have little doubt that enough people have given them a chance and thought it sucked to where if the product was actively good and kept said people they could pull in 2's.

Ah, I missed the word 'stream'.

It's the opposite actually. It counts as a viewer if there's like 5-6 minutes in a given quarter hour, so there's some double-counting. IIRC this was demonstrated best when WCW closed.

Wouldn't the All Japan crossover show with porn stars be a better reason to bump this?

And to me it isn't even that hard to determine what one can live without. Lots of people seem to feel obligated to watch every last second of WWE-produced content when all they really care about is bell-to-bell wrestling, in which case there's much better uses of time than skit-heavy Raw and Smackdown. Or, people will watch something that they're 99% sure they'll hate, but because it's a big match they'll go ahead with it. Hey, 1% of the time it winds up being a pleasant surprise, but there's a much better than 1% chance that the person will enjoy something they EXPECT to enjoy. I can somewhat understand when it's someone's "job" to watch things they don't actively like, but the vast majority of the time it's a total waste. ((By the way, where can said Jumbo vs Murdoch be found? edit: JDW answered at DVDVR '80s board.))

Lots of what SLL wrote hits home for me. Not watching full shows, lack of patience, not following the weekly US shows. Earlier in the decade, I was still discovering lots of styles and promotions and wrestlers. So I shifted from watching mostly the mainsteam US stuff, to some of that but also lots of puro and US indies. Now that certain indies (IWA:MS) have stopped being relevant, and others (ROH) have tanked in quality, I've shifted to trying to find every last 'hidden gem' from Japan in the endless Lynch catalog. It's much harder for me to find something I like from the current scene, and as a result I'm having to buy DVDs to find new matches to enjoy even though there's a vast amount online. Thankfully DVDs are much more affordable than the VHS days! I'm still amazed at the volume of quality matches Japan produced over the decades. Every new nook provides new goodies. Ryuma Go in the '70s! IWE! Semi-obscure tapings from the '90s!

The tight race in Mass is just the thing to make both GOP candidates think they stand a chance when they actually don't, since they'll be up against a GOOD opponent instead of an actively horrible one.