Matt D

Geez, I think all I did back then was post about comics. https://web.archive.org/web/20051228102744/http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.php?showuser=561

Zack Gibson responding to everyone in that thread about board games is pretty wholesome.

It’s politics and video games and managers at your local Walmart too. What’s important is that people are speaking out and the efforts to clean things up. It’s better to stay engaged and promote reform than to try to find something to love that is somehow pristine. You would think the nature of lies and kayfabe and men in power might make wrestling worse but I’m not sure that would shake out.

I don't have much to add here because I'm so distanced from modern wrestling. When we've talked about separating the artist from the art in years' past, the biggest stumbling block for people has always tended to be personal connection (as in I can't really watch Benoit but I can watch Invader I no problem, and those are both cases where the work actually has a connection to who they are or what they did). This is widespread, in everyone's face, horrific in a different way considering the breadth and nature of the acts and the victims and the people turning a blind eye or protecting this, and it comes at a time where wrestlers and fans are closer than ever. Social media and so many wrestlers coming out of fandom really broke that divide so these are people that a lot of you feel like you know. Moreover, as many of us are older, these are generally people our age or younger which gives everything a slightly different feel than maybe Lawler or Flair, whether it should or not. For those who are feeling terrible about their own reactions, we're all only human. You can't help how you feel but like Jerome said, it's good you're aware of it, and what matters is how you act in response to it. This is the time for the community to vet, for people who are engaged with current wrestling as fans to put their money and watching time in positive places, to foster talents that reach the hopefully (but apparently not) low bar of decency and responsibility. I think that this is a direction a lot of current fans (especially younger ones) were heading anyway, with such a focus on inclusion and diversity instead of just workrate.

I'm seeing coverage places I wouldn't normally see coverage. I half wonder if this might not be the moment it does reach Vince, to be honest. I think we're going to hit Trump's rally and potential protests this weekend and there'll just be so much news it gets drowned out from a mainstream perspective though.

So the 27 minute Thesz vs Ruffy Silverstein match they posted an hour after the Gunkel match doesn't have any thanks/name attributed to it. I wonder if once they digitized one, they just kept going?

Where did this end up? And how do we learn more.

I mean heck, Hector Garza in 2010 after his rudo turn was basically the closest we'd ever get to that sort of charisma. He probably had even more of it than Eddy during that run but didn't quite match up in other areas.

Do we think Flair is just staying home and playing online poker anyway? He’s probably more likely to infect everyone else than the other way around.

I guess my point is that despite the rumors and what we've seen so far, I can't imagine him wrestling tonight, even in a protected streetfight situation. Managing Orton? Getting taken out by the Fiend? This being a swerve to ambush Drew? I don't know. Anything but. And I'm the biggest Christian fan here.

I think all can be true. I think you can appreciate the end product for what it is, try to understand how they got there and pay attention to where you can see the strings both for good and ill, and to judge it conditionally as you compare it to other matches and other performances from the two wrestlers.

Christian on the E&C podcast always sounded so gunshy and certain about not coming back. Like sticking his hand into fire. With Edge it was always almost scholarly, where he'd sort of lecture about it and how he had kids and couldn't end up paralyzed, etc. With Christian, it was, and I don't mean this to shame him in any way, but my read on it was always fear. Real fear.

Obviously the Boogeyman is coming back.

I am definitely not with you guys on this one. You're on your own. Wait, I just took a look. There's blood.

It's interesting to hear wrestlers who have worked Orton talk about him. What comes to mind is a talk between Rollins and Christian (I think), where Rollins talks about convincing Orton to try the WM finish (the curb stomp attempt into an RKO) and Christian seemed to completely get it. Orton's apparently really conservative about trying anything out of the norm relative to other wrestlers. But he's also a guy who gets praised heavily by everyone that wrestles him too. I think it's more that he's safe/easy to work with ("like a night off") than anything else, mind you.

Virus is right there. And Casas too, though he's obviously slowed down the last couple of years, but he was still delivering high end stuff on a weekly basis until what, 2018?

Isn't she in charge of a Trump Super PAC. It's more her job to kiss ass than it was when she was in the administration.

Hey, happy 50th @Johnny Sorrow

Not really meaning this as a slight on Drake but some little guy publicly crying about how much WWE means to him probably checks a lot of boxes for Vince.

We’ll get there in 2022, thank you very much.

Won't it be Delaporte? Just from a sheer footage perspective? Or was he too much of a main eventer. The deal with Virus (who I was basically the high vote on at #10 so that feels a bit like a personal attack) is that we have basically over a decade worth of weekly footage from the guy plus another decade of more scattered footage and plenty of indy matches. I mean at least we have over 15 Petit Prince matches, right?

Footage is joy.

That's two votes for Husberg vs Arroyo and that's enough to make me wonder if we either lack some distance, are still blinded by the novelty, or are just a little overwhelmed in general given the state of the world. It was the first match in the project that really felt like work to get through for me. I have my type and I have my preferences, and have traditionally, in other projects, been for nuance over flash more often than not, but in so many of these matches, we get both and I fully admit that I may not have appreciated Husberg as much being so used to Pellacani and Peruano and Oliver and Bernaert who are all much more overt and over the top.

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Shows were built around Hogan in a way that isn’t at all the case with the part timers. It doesn’t mean there aren’t issues but it’s not apples to apples.

I think he might have said that the poster was wrong or some such too, but come on, I couldn't even keep the wrestlers straight on that one.