artDDP

I think by WrestleMania II they were billing it as "sports-entertainment." PWI shit all over that.

I remember The Wrestler published one inside the December 1995 issue. I read and re-read it so many times. I found it fascinating. (I couldn't find any scans of the inside, sadly.)

Guilty Pleasure: Zack Ryder. I don't know what happened. I wasn't watching during his initial YouTube stardom and when I did tune back in I didn't get the hype around him. I checked out a few of his videos and some of his matches and I wound up liking him. I think it's because he reminds me so much of when I was a total WWF/E mark and bought up all the toys and merchandise and never missed an hour of programming. Maybe I just like him because he seems to be a genuine fan who really loves the business. Guilty Displeasure: The "Attitude Era". I was a teenager during this and hated it then. I hated the short matches, the stiff chair shots, the shock for the sake of shock. I wound up tuning the WWF out completely after SummerSlam 1998 and slowly started watching again around Armageddon 1999. I don't look back on it fondly and I never pull up the stuff on the Network. I've seen some Raw cards from that era on the live feed and I still hate them.

Triple H just can't bear to be without his title and tries to buy the belt from Brock. Vince McMahon then declares that cannot happen and vacates the title and we have a one-night tournament at Survivor Series. Lesnar and Cena draw byes to the second round.

Piper wrote in his book that he wouldn't let Hogan pin him because he knew that if he did he would just wind up stuck in the mid-card afterward.

I agree with you, sek. The guy keeps saying "the common fan loved it" but the numbers show that they didn't.

Wait, he keeps saying how "entertaining" everything he did was despite the fact that viewers were actively tuning out of WCW week after week?

Hey, thanks, rovert! I'm a Kindle Fire user and this is great. I'm surprised I didn't know about this sooner!

Well, they could if they cut out all the backstage crap and stupid vignettes they've no doubt got planned with whatever celebrities happened to want to bring their kids backstage. I kinda got that impression with the comment about how "puny" Bryan was. Similar to Triple H calling Chris Jericho "that sawed-off midget" and Chris Masters "The Incredible Shrinking Man."

I always liked it for the incredible photographs.

I just don't think their current staff has any idea how to write something like that without it being totally over-the-top.

Hey, thanks for sharing that. It was actually a fun read. I remember the Randy Savage interview from 1994. It was very in-depth and much more of a shoot than anything I had read up until that point. I was 12 or 13 at the time and that interview helped keep me hooked on wrestling. I felt the business was growing up with me in some weird way. There was also a Shawn Michaels interview leading up to his title win at WrestleMania XII. He mentioned blading himself at a party one night and running around the streets with his forehead gushing blood. Russo published it unedited.

Yes, especially the entire power outage episode from the first month.

In 1995 he "resigned" from the Magazine to publish his own "dirt sheet" called The Bite. He published transcripts of Vince McMahon AOL chats and gave away TV taping results. The news was still strictly kayfabed and almost entirely fantasy booking. I don't think it lasted very long. He outed himself as Vince Russo in the Venom column at some point in either 1998 or 1999.

Watch you talkin' bout? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLrulcZ9UXY Yeah, I thought that was pretty over-the-top even back then before Awesome's death. And Joey and all the other ECW mutants should realize wrestlers leaving for actual paychecks weren't the reason their promotion went under.

And don't they have Del Rio working as a heel announcer on the Spanish-language shows?

Subtitle: How TNA killed Vince Russo. Anyway Night 2 of 3. The talent were told there's no update on TV negotiations. I get the feeling there won't be any update and Dixie and the other investors are just trying to make an exit as quietly as possible before moving on to their next venture. He's probably hoping to get a (paying) spot as a talking head on the Network.

For all the talk ECW fans and performers give about "the business" they forget that it is a business. If you aren't getting paid enough to even cover your travel expenses then by all means go make money elsewhere.

This seems phenomenally stupid. Three-plus hours of live Raw is preceded by 45-60 minutes of dark matches and Superstars tapings. Immediately following that you're going to tape another 90 minutes worth of action with the same wrestlers? Those crowds will be burned out or start leaving. Didn't something similar happen when WCW began filming Nitro and Thunder on the same night? Or will WWE only tape maybe 60 minutes of in-ring action and fill the rest of the show with Raw recaps and promos? I've noticed the opening pyro for the TV shows has been missing. Does this mean that WrestleMania's production next year will look like it did in 1997?

Wrestling fans must have been much more patient in 1998 because despite being as nonsensical as any year of TNA they still had high ratings and managed to beat the WWF some weeks. I know I watched ECW every week in 1998 but I honestly don't remember anything really good about it.

Wade Keller has been saying that this angle would be better if Stephanie were still playing the cowardly role and she made it clear wrestling Brie is something she absolutely doesn't want to do. I agree with him. This "badass, unafraid of anything" Stephanie is such a turn-off. Sandow.

I loved the WWF in 2000 and still watch it from time to time. It was the only product I watched week-to-week that year as ECW was a mess and WCW was WCW. The Good: WWF PPV main events. The Bad: Hogan vs. Kidman feud. The Ugly: "Goldberg did the unthinkable...he refused to follow the script!"

Why can't Ambrose and Rollins just have a street fight? Or is that spot reserved for Randy Orton and Roman Reigns?

This.

Plus I don't think Tyson would have wanted to be a heel. Even considering what he did later with DX, I'd imagine it was with the understanding that it would end with him raising Austin's hand in Boston as it did. It's purely guesswork on my part, but knowing now that he was such a huge fan growing up that might have been his mentality towards it. I always thought the "heel turn" and joining DX was pretty contrived. I mean, I guess it worked, and you had the payoff of Tyson "swerving" DX, raising Austin's hand and KO'ing HBK, but it seemed unnecessary. That had to be a Russo touch. It would have been so much better if Tyson was on the fence/in the middle, had issues with everyone, and didn't side with either dude until the payoff I think it was just the WWF trying to make it look like everything was against Austin in that match.