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Johnny Mantell creates $100,000 "pro wrestling as gymnastics" tournament con


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Hasn't Nick Bockwinkel (who's listed as a judge for this thing) been talking about wanting to do precisely this for years? Except, you know, not an obvious con?

 

Very disappointed in The Pride of Montague County. Or proud, depending on how you look at it. It is wrestling after all.

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I'm really surprised to see this on the WO. Dave has to know it's a scam, but maybe the guy was paying for the time. I love how you have to pay $250 to even try out. Even if this guy gets the 400 wrestlers he wants, there's no way everyone can possibly get a chance to actually wrestle, as that would mean 200 opening round matches. The prize is not $100,000 either, it's a trip to the Wrestling Hall of Fame and a belt. I just hope all of the legends cash their check before they get on that plane.

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I'm really surprised to see this on the WO. Dave has to know it's a scam, but maybe the guy was paying for the time. I love how you have to pay $250 to even try out. Even if this guy gets the 400 wrestlers he wants, there's no way everyone can possibly get a chance to actually wrestle, as that would mean 200 opening round matches. The prize is not $100,000 either, it's a trip to the Wrestling Hall of Fame and a belt. I just hope all of the legends cash their check before they get on that plane.

The Observer as did everyone else lol'd at TNA being cheap on tryouts.

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After looking over everything a little more, I saw that there is a seminar with the judges (included in the entry fee) on the day before the festival starts, which is something and not overpriced as far as those things go, but with so many people attending, how good could it be?

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Bryan strongly defended this on his show with Lance Storm stating that a scam is were you someone offers you something with no intention of giving it to you. Also noting that experience/exposure wise this is no better or worse than a FCW tryout not understanding that those arent run by a fly by night carny.

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This is a great scam. I'm assuming by the look of this that it is also a paid show. He is being paid by a Germanfest to have wrestling and the wrestlers are paying to be on the show. Assuming the prize is a work, I am voting Johnny Mantell as best promoter in 2011.

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Bryan strongly defended this on his show with Lance Storm stating that a scam is were you someone offers you something with no intention of giving it to you. Also noting that experience/exposure wise this is no better or worse than a FCW tryout not understand that those arent run by a fly by night carny.

Even if he intends on delivering...

 

This is a great scam. I'm assuming by the look of this that it is also a paid show. He is being paid by a Germanfest to have wrestling and the wrestlers are paying to be on the show. Assuming the prize is a work, I am voting Johnny Mantell as best promoter in 2011.

..this is what I was thinking: It's clearly a sold show. He has no risk. He's using this gimmick to make extra money while booking enough guys to be able to constantly run matches throughout the festival. He's already picked up an extra $16,000. The seminar is just to keep it from looking like more of a con and it can't be close to a worthwhile seminar with so many guys.
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Also:

 

People have complained about the FCW tryout camps being scams. Anyone who's ever charged anyone to work has been branded a scammer/conman. Frank Goodman was largely reviled for his dependence on ticket sellers who had to sell X amount of tickets to work the show and were often untrained (when an untrained ticket seller in his first match was paralyzed from landing on his head taking a German suplex, Goodman fled NY for Florida.)

 

Also, assuming Ryu Nakata's gonna be there, it's highly unlikely that anyone who's bothering to do this would be good enough to go to Noah.

 

I decided to take the time to transcribe the F4D discussion for reference since I'm planning on doing a post at Cageside post about this mess...

 

Bryan:

 

"Anybody who thinks this is a scam does not know what a scam actually is. I don't see the difference between this and, for example, WWE running a tryout camp where they bring in 80 guys and one of them is going to get a contract; who they probably knew was getting a contract before they even arranged this whole thing. You're gonna fly yourself in, you're gonna pay several hundred dollars, and you are going to get nothing out of it except maybe advice from John Laurinaitis about how you need to work on your size. In this...this tournament, you fly yourself in, and you pay $250 to enter. However, if you win, and granted, this is very unlikely, you're going to get this...this championship belt, you're gonna get the flight to New York, to the hall of fame, and...and all of the stuff that goes along with that. Which, granted, is not a whole lot of stuff but it's still something. For everybody who does not win, for your $250, you're going to get a chance to compete in this deal, and potentially work several matches...in front of a large crowd of people. And granted, I don't know that there's going to be 50,000 people watching the matches, I'm sure there will be 50,000 people at the Germanfest, but if there is wrestling there, you're gonna draw a pretty damned huge crowd to watch your match, which if you're an average indy guy, for example here in the Pacific Northwest, this will be by far the biggest crowd you ever work in front of. You get to do it three days in a row, several times, perhaps, per day. When it's over, you're not just gonna have John Laurinaitis telling you 'Ok, you need to put on some size and get a tan.' You're gonna have every single one of these judges, and as Lance noted, there's a lot of them, they're gonna write up a sheet with a lot of helpful advice for you. You're gonna get helpful advice from a variety of different people telling you what it is you need to improve if you need to go farther. Furthermore, on the entry form, it tells you exactly what's going on. You must pay $250, fly yourself down, and that's all you're guaranteed to get out of it except for these things from these judges. There's no scam here. It's not like you're...you're...you're going to be told something that isn't going to be delivered or you're being promised money you won't get, those are scams. This very clearly says what you're going to get for your money and if you don't wanna do it, you don't have to do it. So, the idea that this is a scam...anybody who calls this a scam has not been around wrestling very long, because there are a shitload of legitimate scams in professional wrestling and this is not one of them. This is essentially a clinic with a lot of big names that are going to evaluate you and maybe at the end you're going to get a flight to New York; most likely you're not going to get anything except the experience, and as a young worker, this is very valuable for you.

 

Lance:

 

"Yeah, you can argue if you want that it's not worth it, but you certainly can't label it as a scam if he's telling you ahead of time 'You pay money to come do this, this is what you get,' then he's being up-front and honest, he's not scamming anybody. If he's promising people that they're going to get contracts and this and that, then yeah, he's scamming people."

 

Bryan (interjecting):

 

"Which he never did."

 

Lance:

 

"I listened to the show, and it's...you get to come here, you get to see...all these legends will see you work, they will give you some feedback, and again, one guy gets to go to the Hall of Fame thingy at the end of it all. So yeah, he's being completely up front. If you think paying to go wrestle at this thing as silly, then don't go."

 

Bryan (interjecting):

 

"Yeah."

 

Lance:

 

"There's a chance that you might actually have Harley Race or...umm...Danny Hodge...or...Stan Hansen or any of these other great veterans out there to see you, even if you just wanna get to meet them; there are a lot of guys that'll pay money to go to a meet and greet, you'll get to see these guys, some of them will see your match and offer you some feedback, so you can certainly argue it's a worthwhile chance...and like you say, guys spend more money on...on other things that aren't gonna be any more productive for them, so if you think it's worth it, then go for it, have fun!"

 

Bryan:

 

"I mean you guys have to think about wrestlers and what they do nowadays. I mean some of them have to drive quite a ways for no money to work...to work in front of no people. [Giggles] You know what I mean? I remember when I used to drive down to Portland...every single weekend I would drive the 200 miles or whatever to Portland. I would work for Tito Carreon in the hardest fucking ring I've ever been in in my life, absolutely free, in front of like 20 people, just so I could get some experience. If I were a young guy that was actually trying to make it nowadays and I knew...alright: For a plane ticket and 250 bucks, I can go potentially have matches all weekend in front of a big crowd of people, and have guys like Harley Race there that are gonna give me advice afterwards? I'd jump at that opportunity."

 

Lance:

 

"Yeah, I think, too, it's sad, because again, paying someone to work is a sad situation, but if you are someone who is just breaking in and is only able to find a booking a month or a match every couple months, this is a chance a chance to work several times in a short period of time...uh...not the end of the world. Y'know, even if you were just looking at...say you were hoping to...y'know...get enough experience to get to a WWE tryout at some point in time at one of these tryout camps and y'know, if I go to this thing I might pick up a half a dozen or ten or I don't know how many freakin' matches you have to have, but it is an opportunity to get lots of matches and work different people, umm, so it certainly could be beneficial, 'cause that's another hazzard of, again, if you're career is once a month in Tululip Championship Wrestling where you wrestle the same dude every month, y'know, you log 2 years in the business with 14 matches with one guy."

 

Bryan:

 

"Yeah."

 

Lance:

 

"And that's not exactly the world's greatest experience builder. So if...umm...if you feel this is worthwhile, again, especially if you live close and don't have to fly in, then it might be worthwhile. And again, at the end of the day, it's each person's option, and, like you say, this dude's not lying to anybody, he's telling you you gotta pay the money."

 

Bryan (Interjecting):

 

"No one's forcing you to do this tournament!"

 

Lance:

 

"Mmm-hmm."

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Anything in any line of work where you pay someone else to do a job is a scam, up front or not up front.

 

If he was going to charge, he should have presented this as a revolutionary wrestling school.

 

"In today's wrestling environment, there are less places to work. Promoters expect more out of you, and you have less opportunities to travel and get better. At my school, we're making the training more intense and true-to-life so that you finish more prepared and better equipped to work in front of crowds. For $250, you get the opportunity to not only train, but train with an audience. You'll be better by the time you have your first professional match than many wrestlers are after a year or two in the business. Spaces are limited, so apply now."

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I don't think Bryan is very knowledgable about scams and cons in the bigger picture.

 

Many of the best scams are ones that offer to the mark the illussion of getting something of value in return for your money, but that something is of extremely limited value/cost to the scammer.

 

John

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Beast, you're missing the part where Bryan doesn't think it's a scam. That's why there was no follow-up about it being stupid to give Mantell time to plug it.

No, I totally agree with you on that. I had to turn off the show with Mantell a few minutes once I realized Dave and Bryan were just going along with his BS. That said, it doesn't really warrant personal attacks on Bryan.

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Dylan Waco angry about Bryan having the WRONG OPINIONS about wrestling again is he?

 

 

Beast, you're missing the part where Bryan doesn't think it's a scam. That's why there was no follow-up about it being stupid to give Mantell time to plug it.

F4W is just filling the niche that 57talk left, Bix. :lol:

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