ESPN's Grantland

[Loss]

It's interesting that he generalizes to the point that he thinks that's the preferred style of most diehard fans.

[NintendoLogic]

Bill Simmons on Bret Hart:

 

Let's see … no personality, no sense of humor, wet hair, horrible entrance music, hideous wrestling outfit (pink and black?), never tweaked his gimmick, didn't get along with Shawn Michaels, "carried" the WWE during its most boring stretch of the past 40 years, sold out for WCW money, remains memorable only because of (a) the Montreal Screwjob (and the fact that he punched Vince McMahon afterward), and ( his phenomenal Ewing Theory credentials (the WWE took off again right after he left). Just thought he was overrated.

He goes on to say that Mr. Perfect was a more interesting and entertaining version of Bret.

 

Urge to kill....rising....

[Death From Above]

I tapped out at "horrible entrance music" considering Bret might have had one of maybe 5 WWF themes that were even tolerable in the presence of normal people up to that point.

[Loss]

Will jdw eventually blame me for that?

[jdw]

Simmons love of Shawn is fairly well known. Nothing terribly surprising in his comments.

[jdw]

Things wrestling and porn have in common, Vol. 78: An inordinate amount of guys in their 40s who have the long-stringy-sweaty-hair-while-balding-in-the-front thing going.

 

(Other porn/wrestling parallels include individual gimmicks; finishing moves; a preponderance of pseudonyms; illegal drugs; a booming DVD market; pay-per-views; tattoos; horrible acting; artificially enhanced bodies; premature deaths; a lack of college degrees, writers and directors; and scenes that vary in length and can include anywhere from two to 30 people. Read more in my upcoming book, "Columns That Could Never Ever Run on ESPN.com Under Any Circumstances.")

And yes... it's on topic with the thread.

[Marty]

Bill Simmons on Bret Hart:

 

Let's see … no personality, no sense of humor, wet hair, horrible entrance music, hideous wrestling outfit (pink and black?), never tweaked his gimmick, didn't get along with Shawn Michaels, "carried" the WWE during its most boring stretch of the past 40 years, sold out for WCW money, remains memorable only because of (a) the Montreal Screwjob (and the fact that he punched Vince McMahon afterward), and ( his phenomenal Ewing Theory credentials (the WWE took off again right after he left). Just thought he was overrated.

He goes on to say that Mr. Perfect was a more interesting and entertaining version of Bret.

 

Urge to kill....rising....

 

Back to Bret Hart: His market-correction guy was "Mr. Perfect," Curt Hennig, another technically terrific wrestler who hit the WWE in the mid-1980s. I always loved the arrogant "Mr. Perfect" gimmick and thought Hennig was more interesting and entertaining than Hart, but Hart's extended wrestling family (brother Owen, brothers-in-law Jim Neidhart and British Bulldog) morphed into the Hart Foundation family, which stole good spots in every pay-per-view. With the Hitman leading the way, of course. So Hennig ended up being the Keaton to Hitman's Hanks — he never won the WWE title and eventually jumped to WCW. So not only did Bret Hart semi-bore the hell out of us in dozens of pay-per-views, he drove away his more entertaining market-correction guy. I don't hate him for it. Just can't call myself a Hitman fan. Wait, did we just spend four paragraphs on this?

His apparent lack of knowledge of Hennig's health/insurance issues and the real situation of Hennig jumping ship is pretty funny.

[cm funk]

Wow. Simmons' opinions on wrestling are even worse than his sports takes. I didn't think that was possible.

[Bierschwale]

Bret was integral to the creation of the Attitude Era with the Austin match and the wildness of the '97 Hart Foundation (which is WAY OFF of Simmons's idiotic timeline comparison with Hennig), which was a fairly major gimmick change. Also, uh, he was utterly iconic in an era that people five-ten years younger than Simmons would consider much better than the period in which Billy came to age. But is he friends with Adam Carolla? Nope! I guess Simmons wins this round.

[Migs]

As usual, it's a bit of a mess, but I think he's right in the main point about why the McMahon-Helmsley-Orton regime is getting such great heat. There's a real alignment of "smart" fans and less so, and it's giving the shows really good energy.

 

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/960903...mad-cheer-about

[Childs]

The subhed of Shoemaker's column on Night of Champions includes the phrase "nexus of unreality." Dude just has no other mode for writing about wrestling.

[jdw]

You get the feeling that he first jerked off thinking about work-shoot-fabe angles in pro wrestling as a 12 year old.

[Bigelow34]

It is absurd...he is obsessed with the topic. Every damn article. I don't bother reading them anymore, it's all the same shit at this point.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

I liked his Dead Wrestler of the Week posts at Deadspin. He's been "Simmons-ized" at Grantland: Find a quirky angle. Stick to it no matter how absurd it is. Receive praise from Internet hipsters and writing snobs who care more about prose than insight. Repeat.

 

(And for the record, I don't mind Bill Simmons. But one of him is enough)

[Bix]

I liked Dead Wrestler of the Week, too, but after the Sammartino article I see it less as him being Simmons-ized and more that he had a niche that protected him. When he was at Deadspin, based on his writing style back then and the type of stuff he included in his articles, it was not uncommon for people to guess he was some old DVDVR poster like Matt Randazzo or Kevin Cook. It's crazy to think about it now that he clearly has such a terrible grasp of every facet of wrestling history: Can you picture even the youngest, least knowledgable DVDVR regulars writing that Bruno Sammartino shot on Buddy Rogers to win the WWWF Championship after saying "You can do it the easy way or the hard way," much less long time hardcore fans?

 

It's one thing to not know stuff. Lots of people don't know stuff. The problem is that he pretends he does. Throw in stuff like how he and Simmons addressed the Keller stuff he has no business being the "prestige" pro wrestling writer of record.

[evilclown]

It's one thing to not know stuff. Lots of people don't know stuff. The problem is that he pretends he does. Throw in stuff like how he and Simmons addressed the Keller stuff he has no business being the "prestige" pro wrestling writer of record.

How did they address the Keller stuff?

[soup23]

They linked to a response Keller wrote them. They left the actual article involving HHH's interview as is and there hasn't been any public mention of the mistake on podcasts Simmons and/or Masked man have done since.

[jdw]

He clearly isn't Simmons-ized. He's just a shitty writer. Perhaps less for writing style, which while annoying isn't as poorly written as say some of Dave's pieces on MMAFighting.com. It's the content of the pieces that's horrid. Like we all seem to be agreeing, he's a mark for the work-shoot-fabe concept of pro wrestling. It's pretty funny that he likes to give it a Reality TV spin, when Reality TV in this country took off in 2000 (Survivor) while work-shoot-fabe reared its ugly head nationally with "I Respect You, Booker Man" in 1995.

 

It's sad he writes for Grantland. It's also sad that they don't have an MMA writer. Given ESPN doesn't have a skin in the MMA game, but remains an immensely powerful sports entity (especially on the "news" side), it's a spot where some really interesting writing, reporting and analysis could take place.

 

John

[Superstar Sleeze]

What's funny (Keller does not touch on it in his response, which I only skimmed) is that the story is a hammy-down Kliq story. It is actually a Nash story, which makes more sense as Nash was with Dallas in '92. Nash tells this story verbatim on the Steve Austin Show only with him in the room with Dallas. I understand why Trips used this story because it fit the answer he wanted, but it is just a Kliq story to show how some boys take the dirt sheets too seriously. Nash does not tell it in a way to make the dirt sheets look fickle as Triple H does, but just to say you can't get all caught up in that. I like Kliq interviews for the most part, but usually prefer Nash, Hall and Waltman to Michaels & Hunter.

[jdw]

My recollection is that Nash's version, which he's told several versions of over the years, was just about the same level of being full of shit as Trip's version.

 

In the end, it's not really a Kliq, Hall or Nash story. All sorts of wrestlers and promoters over the years have told different stories above how they pulled one over on the sheets, how the sheets rolled over to them when pushed, how some wrestle was bent about something in the sheets, etc.

 

My favorite variation was Bret Hart getting up in a WWF locker room and going off on how too many people were talking to Meltzer and stuff was ending up in the sheets that shouldn't be there.

 

Of course it ended up in the WON the next week.

 

One of the times we went down to TJ, we were joking about the piece and Hoback tossed out:

 

Hoback: "It would be funny if you got that from Owen."

 

Dave: *pause* *smile* "It wasn't Owen."

 

 

Anyway, there are a lot of variations of bullshit out there. One suspects that these guys have grabbed hold of them, retold them, morphed it from being someone else to being one they're in the middle of, and then say them enough times that they believe their own bullshit.

 

John

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

He clearly isn't Simmons-ized. He's just a shitty writer. Perhaps less for writing style, which while annoying isn't as poorly written as say some of Dave's pieces on MMAFighting.com. It's the content of the pieces that's horrid. Like we all seem to be agreeing, he's a mark for the work-shoot-fabe concept of pro wrestling. It's pretty funny that he likes to give it a Reality TV spin, when Reality TV in this country took off in 2000 (Survivor) while work-shoot-fabe reared its ugly head nationally with "I Respect You, Booker Man" in 1995.

 

It's sad he writes for Grantland. It's also sad that they don't have an MMA writer. Given ESPN doesn't have a skin in the MMA game, but remains an immensely powerful sports entity (especially on the "news" side), it's a spot where some really interesting writing, reporting and analysis could take place.

 

John

Oh MM most definitely is Simmons-ized. His writing is fine, it's the content and disconnectedness that makes him bad. His prose is fine.

 

I've quit reading Simmons over the last year or so because he's checked out. He marries himself to the "quirky" angle or take whether it's insightful or not. Still a helluva wordsmith, though, even if it's just putting a tuxedo on a scarecrow. His podcasts are slipping too. Grizzlies fans are nervous during games because they're still on edge from the MLK assassination. Ugh.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing what MM and BS could come up with for ideas on a wrestling 30 for 30 series. Something to get them both away from a keyboard for a while.

[jdw]

I'd disagree.

 

I thought the T-Mac piece was terrific. I may not view T-Mac exactly like he does, but he did terrific job of walking through his career, and unlike his former days now has access to (and is willing to dial them up) some people who were there who can add to what's he's thinking/writing.

 

In turn, the piece today look like a throw-away piece on something that a lot of football fans were pondering: the Trent Richardson deal. Much like a lot of us were trying to come at it from different angles to try to figure it out, he does... and from several additional ones that we may not have run across yet or popped into our heads. It's breezy, funny, extremely readable (if his style of writing doesn't annoy you), completely topical... but it's also hitting deeper football themes than, "The Browns are idiots!" and "The Browns got ripped off!" The content is actually solid stuff.

 

Bill doesn't "write" a whole helluva lot anymore, at least not relative to the SportsGuy era where writing was his stock trade. A chunk of it falls into tropes like "NFL Picks" and "NBA Trade Value" and the Power Polls and the Mailbags. On to those he'll append throw away stuff like the Breaking Bad vs NFL Sunday Night piece, which is a throwaway harking back to massive digressions out of Mailbag questions... and aren't terribly interesting. Hell, the Eagles and Midnight Run pieces were similar, though he did those in the SportsGuy Era as well.

 

But when he actually sits down to write something that he gives a shit about more than just having fun, like the T-Mac piece (or the How We'd Fix The Lakers or the Tim Duncan Career Arc), he still has the content to go along with having some fun with the pieces. In turn, there are sleeper things like the Richardson piece that pop up, often buried in something else, that while largely having some fun do bring the content if ones follows along.

 

Do I think Bill has it in him to write something like the Basketball Book now? Probably not something that focused... which is somewhat odd to say since it bounced all over the place in dealing with various basketball topics. I think the podcast and ESPN/ABC NBA gig (along with family) eat up his time and focus, and also allow him to get out a lot of what in the past he would have needed to write down to have a chance of people reading (in the place if now hearing) it.

 

Bill never was 100% off the charts in content. He never consistently in the old days brought the content like say Lowe does now on Grantland. That never was what made Bill readable to a mass of folks, or popular. It was largely fan boy stuff spouting off mixed with other shit that interested him (porn, gambling, movies, etc)... and on occasion he bring some content that was strong analysis.

 

That's the difference: MM couldn't do a quality T-Mac piece, and if he tried to do a piece like the Duncan one, folks like us at PWO would point out so many errors in it that it would be laughable. I'd be surprised if MM could even pull off a throwaway like the Richardson piece that delivers content in such a breezy way.

 

Just to be clear: I'm far from a Simmons mark, despite enjoying the hell out of his Baseball Book. His Red Sox book annoyed the shit out of me. I could only take the ESPN Page 2 stuff in stretches, kind of pacing myself by wandering off for a half year here and there before wandering back and catching up selectively in the archives. It's far easier to pace yourself at Grantland: there aren't that many pieces, and I generally hate listening to anyone's podcasts, so those are easy to skip. I just think that MM is horrid, while Simmons as a writer is someone who has passed his prime but can occasionally reach back for the heater for a game here and there and toss a shutout, or scatter 8 hits to win a 2-1 game.

[Migs]

New one, although there's not much to breakdown here.

 

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/969340...d-gratification

[Jmare007]

So it seems Peter Rosenberg is joining TMM for the occasional podcast. Can't complain about this honestly, I like Rosenberg.

[Minds_Eys]

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/975598...ve-drop-kicking

 

Article on Memphis wrestling reunion in Tunica. The show is on sale at Highspots, but the Lawler vs Jarrett main event is not included.