Matt D

Like Goldust in ECW in 09. (Not even Regal or Christian but Goldust, who could help Sheamus get over and get better).

I think Christian should probably be an announcer. He's got a pretty quick wit and understands how to put a match together as well as anyone.

Weirdly, i'm more interested in Jericho than I have been in years due to his podcast.

Stewart's promo on Lana was pretty funny.

It's not really any different than his bios which you sort of learn how to read and I'm sure we all have. The real difference was the larger cast of characters. The big knot to me was when he started to go on about all the different people who owned the territory and why they did and it started moving around in space and time too much.

Yeah exactly. A narrative doesn't have to be realistic but it does have to be consistent with itself. At the same time I think there is an artistic value to confounding the expectations your narrative has created (thinking of the ending to Magnolia, the one scene in Funny Games...) though I'm not sure where that fits into wrestling. That Triple H vs Orton Wrestlemania match where they started with the finishers?

It's all about narrative tools. Wrestling is storytelling and storytelling is neater and cleaner than real life most of the time.

Going to listen to some of this now. I kind of like the "comprehensive look at the roster" way of getting at things. It reminds me how much i loved these magazines as a kid:

The same. If I had a bit more free time, I'd reedit the thing into something that's actually readable because the info contained within is very good.

Wrestling is really symbolic. It's all about selling and presentation. The Cobra can be as legitimate as Kawada kicking someone in the skull if it's sold strongly and consistently over time. That said, complicated moves that take a lot of obvious cooperation do sort of bother me. That's about it, past a lack of selling.

To me wrestling has its own physics. It also has its own norms and rules. Something like both guys hitting the hot tag at the same time works for me for the same reason that (and this is a terrible, but pretty distinct example) a true love kiss can wake up a cursed princess in a fairy tale. That said, there are some rules or laws of physics I like more than others.

"smaller podcasts" Kelly says. 2:20:00

The Georgia stuff from this week's WON is probably the single worst written article I can remember Dave writing in ages. It's in almost reverse chronological order for a huge chunk and is pretty incomprehensible which is frustrating since there is so much good info in there.

They should bring up CJ Parker as a smark.

Was out picking up food. What'd he say?

To the Producers

Again, I don't disagree to the general concept. But I'd also say that the WON allowed for elite ideas to spread on an on an exponentially larger degree that had been previously possible when fans like Yohe and Front Row Section D operated in either isolation (if they didn't have a few Smart Hardcore Fan bus like themselves), or in small circles (such as FRSD). Suddenly you go from a group of 1 or 10 to being in a group of 3K. In turn, the growth in the early web days were expanding the circle from perhaps 6K (lets say WON+Torch+RSP-W+Prodigy+AOLGSW with there being a decent amount of overlap between one of more of those) to say 60K in 1998/99. Pad the number up higher if you want, but it's possible the 6K number is low as well. That 60K has grown over time. It's far higher now, though I look at the number of different posters on this board and it really doesn't look like a higher number than the elite boards had in the 1999-2001 range. Is DVDVR at peak numbers now, and is that peak number insanely more than say 2005? The Interweb Websites were a Key Point in the evolution of hardcore wrestling fandom in this country. There have been a number of them, and the evolution from say 1983 (the dawn of the WON) to the present is one of a new continual evolution. That's generally a point I, and others, have been trying to get across. It's not a 0:1 binary flip the switch moment. More that the switch was already on, there was a fair amount of juice going through it, and then a brand new bigger electric plant got built that cranked up the juice to a higher level. It still was electricity, and it still was the same type of electricity as before. There was more of it. And I don't disagree with a lot of this. I think it's an evolution. I'm personally not arguing otherwise. What I am arguing is that the internet coming along is the most important moment of it. Otherwise, you'd still have that small group with their newsletter, that if the WON coming along allowed this relatively tiny group of people to find each other and develop their views, the internet coming along allowed this mindset to spread to the masses (over time), and that was the most important part of all of this, the thing that would have never happened otherwise.

I feel like them working with Dustin for a while will help things.

In NXT, she really didn't sell much. She was cast as a warrior.

Hopefully he destroys a Cena midget.

At least they can sneeze again though.

I could totally see her ribs on her shirt!

The SHOOTs answer is that he was easy to control and that's what Vince Sr wanted after Bruno/Superstar.

Cena went way up for Kane's chokeslam.

At least the World title is still a thing.