Ridiculous quotes from WO.com columnists

[jdw]

Amen, Dave covers MMA as good as anyone and that pisses off some people because he covers it too well and not defending his time to other subjects like lucha, Japan. and US indies but that's their problem. MMA is hot right now and Dave who has been covering MMA forever is well equipped to do his job. It's just the pro wrestling theory is flawed and he has lately used that theory for other sports as well such as boxing and football.

I don't think seeing the entire world through Pro Wrestling Eyes is too healthy.

 

Which is a bit funny since when UFC was starting, he pretty regularly threw up his arms about the people in pro wrestling who could only see UFC through Pro Wrestling Eyes: i.e. that it was a Work.

 

John

[Johnny Sorrow]

Sorry if someone already mentioned it, but Roller Derby and Pro Wresting are more alike than wrestling and MMA because Roller Derby and Wrestling are fake.

[goodhelmet]

I'm not a fan of aggressive message board moderating at all.

 

That said, I kinda feel like the jdw post about Ginger Lynn should be off limits.

 

I don't want to "lay down the law", as much as I really want to encourage that topic to just die.

 

Please?

 

Thank you.

Yeah, What he said. But to lay down the law, if you have beef with another poster/message board then take it somewhere else.

[Eduardo]

This part from Meltzer's update today confused me:

 

--Thanks to Tammy Sytch, Sable was No. 4 on the most searched list on Google yesterday.

?

[Cox]

Alvarez had a really weird rant about the Christian/Regal match from last week's ECW. It was almost like he was pouting that the guy he wanted to win didn't. It really read almost Scott Keith-esque.

[sek69]

Alvarez had a really weird rant about the Christian/Regal match from last week's ECW. It was almost like he was pouting that the guy he wanted to win didn't. It really read almost Scott Keith-esque.

 

I've noticed both Dave and Bryan (but especially Bryan as you note) seem to have been under the impression that Regal was going to get pushed to the moon in ECW when he's clearly in the "established vet helps out the youngin's" role. Also I kind of get why they would have expected Regal to win in England but they've done that a few times and there really wasn't a reason to take the title off Christian unless they're planning to move him to a different show, and clearly they don't seem to be.

[kjh]

Yeah, that struck me as odd. It's sorta weird that they complain about parity booking so much, yet then they complain on the very rare occassion when someone is clearly booked as being better than the person they're feuding with or clearly the top star of a brand.

[Wahoos Leg]

I would LOVE to see someone from the Meltzer/Keller crowd get the chance to book a wrestling promotion after boasting for years about how they could do it better than the people who do it for a living, have to manage egos, negotiate offce politics, et cetera

[Tim Evans]

How long has Crimson Mask been doing MMA reviews on the WO site? The fact that he didn't end it with "So long from the Sunshine State" makes me believe it's not really him.

[Grimmas]

I would LOVE to see someone from the Meltzer/Keller crowd get the chance to book a wrestling promotion after boasting for years about how they could do it better than the people who do it for a living, have to manage egos, negotiate offce politics, et cetera

Yeah, and we would love to see Roger Ebert direct movies and music critics produce albums....

 

Being a reviewer does not mean they think they could do it better.

[S.L.L.]

I would LOVE to see someone from the Meltzer/Keller crowd get the chance to book a wrestling promotion after boasting for years about how they could do it better than the people who do it for a living, have to manage egos, negotiate offce politics, et cetera

Yeah, and we would love to see Roger Ebert direct movies and music critics produce albums....

 

Being a reviewer does not mean they think they could do it better.

 

True, but many - if not most - critics will put forward ideas as to how something in what they're reviewing could be done better.

 

Roger Ebert will point out flaws in a movie and sometimes make remarks of how it could have been done better. I'm sure he knows from writing "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" that he is not the guy to actually implement those ideas as a filmmaker. But as a critic, he knows why he does and does not like certain things in movies, and he can point out how something that didn't work could maybe be converted into something that did by someone other than himself.

 

Ebert is a pretty good critic. Generally speaking, I don't mind seeing his ideas about what makes films work implemented by actual filmmakers.

 

I can't speak for Wahoo's Leg. I don't doubt that at least some of the Meltzer/Keller followers think they could book a wrestling promotion. But generally speaking, if bookers implemented the Meltzer and/or Keller aesthetic in their wrestling promotions, it probably would not turn out quite so well as filmmakers implementing Ebert's aesthetic in their films.

[jdw]

We use to here the same thing tossed at Bill James: it's easy to write books, but Real Baseball was different.

 

We've seen that Jamesians can win in Real Baseball. World Titles. A pair of them.

 

The first problem for a Super Booking Genius hardcore fan to overcome would be a commitment from the Owner. It's vastly more important than the egos of the "talent". If you don't have the full committment of the Owner to the direction you want to go in, then it's not going to work.

 

John

[Cox]

We use to here the same thing tossed at Bill James: it's easy to write books, but Real Baseball was different.

 

We've seen that Jamesians can win in Real Baseball. World Titles. A pair of them.

 

The first problem for a Super Booking Genius hardcore fan to overcome would be a commitment from the Owner. It's vastly more important than the egos of the "talent". If you don't have the full committment of the Owner to the direction you want to go in, then it's not going to work.

 

John

The obvious example being Paul DePodesta being run out of Los Angeles by Bill Plaschke and the LA media because Frank McCourt would not fully commit to a more advanced statistical approach.

[Al]

We use to here the same thing tossed at Bill James: it's easy to write books, but Real Baseball was different.

 

We've seen that Jamesians can win in Real Baseball. World Titles. A pair of them.

 

The first problem for a Super Booking Genius hardcore fan to overcome would be a commitment from the Owner. It's vastly more important than the egos of the "talent". If you don't have the full committment of the Owner to the direction you want to go in, then it's not going to work.

 

John

Conversely, I think James learned a few things of his own from working in the Red Sox front office.

 

If there's a problem with the fantasy booking types, it's that they have little feel for the business aspect of wrestling.

[sek69]

So everyone on the site seems to be up in arms over the whole "Piggy James" angle. Is there any actual proof that this was one of those Vince Sends A Message deals, or is everyone just jumping to conclusions?

[kjh]

We've seen that Jamesians can win in Real Baseball.

We've seen that Meltzerians can win in Real Wrestling (aka MMA) too.

[goodhelmet]

So everyone on the site seems to be up in arms over the whole "Piggy James" angle. Is there any actual proof that this was one of those Vince Sends A Message deals, or is everyone just jumping to conclusions?

Explain.

[sek69]

So everyone on the site seems to be up in arms over the whole "Piggy James" angle. Is there any actual proof that this was one of those Vince Sends A Message deals, or is everyone just jumping to conclusions?

Explain.

 

 

They did an angle on Smackdown where Michelle McCool did a promo dressed as a farm chick and calling Mickie James "Piggy James". Whoever did the Friday update on WO.com did a mini rant on how this was such an obvious example of the company calling Mickie a fatass and how mean that was to do. Only thing is when it aired, it looked like a heel doing a heel promo. That didn't stop Dave from posting a letter on the site from a reader up in arms at how terrible it is for them to do such an angle.

 

 

edit: Found the quote from Dave:

 

" They also do a personal angle with Mickie James which was clearly a message at her and one that to me makes the company look real bad."

[kjh]

Dave Meltzer stated on his latest audio show that Mickie James lost her spot as Raw Women's champion due to her "weight issues" and that this was the next step in sending a message to her. The fat pig remarks are also very reminiscent of another performer who was sent a message when she took some time off for her family recently.

[Cox]

Even if it wasn't one of Vince's weird personal messages, can we at least agree that this is a pretty rude thing to do to a woman? I know it falls under the category of drawing heat or whatever, but it's still pretty demeaning. Plus, all it does is give ammunition to Linda's challengers in the Senate campaign that WWE disrespects women, even if Linda is no longer associated with the company directly.

[El-P]

Dave Meltzer stated on his latest audio show that Mickie James lost her spot as Raw Women's champion due to her "weight issues" and that this was the next step in sending a message to her. The fat pig remarks are also very reminiscent of another performer who was sent a message when she took some time off for her family recently.

Weight issue ? What a joke. This company is fucking embarrassing. It's so sad that nobody ever had the balls to pull off a wrestlers union...

[S.L.L.]

Even if it wasn't one of Vince's weird personal messages, can we at least agree that this is a pretty rude thing to do to a woman? I know it falls under the category of drawing heat or whatever, but it's still pretty demeaning. Plus, all it does is give ammunition to Linda's challengers in the Senate campaign that WWE disrespects women, even if Linda is no longer associated with the company directly.

Lots of things heels say about faces are demeaning. The problem is that the company apparently either believes it, or wants Mickie to believe that they believe it so it can be used as ammunition against her in real life. And that's kinda fucked up.

[jdw]

Conversely, I think James learned a few things of his own from working in the Red Sox front office.

No doubt. But I suspect if you asked him if he leader more from working in the front office or in his 30+ years prior to that, he'd say the 30+ years prior to that.

 

Anyway, my point above is less "Bill James" than "Jamesian", which is what Theo Epstein is. Having a good ownership group that bought into his approach didn't guarantee that the Red Sox would win. But if he had an ownership group that either didn't believe, or cut his legs off at the first sign of "pressure" from the media or within the club (Grady Little), he flat out would have failed.

 

Being a Jamesian doesn't guarantee success. But Theo and his team in the front office proved once and for all that being an egghead/stathead isn't exclusive from Winning In Baseball.

 

Sam Muschnick wasn't a "wrestling man". He was a reporter. I think we all would say he was pretty successful on the promoting/booking/operating/executive/consensus builder level in pro wrestling.

 

I'm not 100% certain that Dave or Wade *specifically* could have been dropped into 1999 WCW with the full faith and support of TW/Turner/TBS/TNT Executive Management and flat out made it fly. While both saw many of the issues that WCW faced at the time, I don't know if they had the vision to get WCW to the otherside of darkness. No doubt they had a vision at the time of how they would have turned things around. Just not sold that it would have been effective.

 

That's also not to say that I had the vision to pull it off, or that Wade/Dave couldn't have. But I suspect that if we set up 10 groups of 5 hardcore fans at the time to figure out the way through it, and Corporate was fully committed to WCW surviving and giving a committment to giving New Management a long term period to fix things, that at least one of those 10 proposals would strike us here as, "Yeah... that would have worked" and infact would have worked.

 

Probably the same thing could be done with the WWE right now. The backstop to it is always: Vince is fucking insane and never will commit to someone else's vision.

 

 

If there's a problem with the fantasy booking types, it's that they have little feel for the business aspect of wrestling.

I think that people inside the business like to project mystical qualities to the "inside". I think what we've seen over the last 20 years of greater analysis of the "business" of wrestling is that people *inside* the busienss don't really have a good feel for the business aspect of wrestling.

 

How do we know this?

 

A. In 1982, how many wrestling promotions in the country were doing good, profitable and/or reasonably decent business?

 

B. In 2009, what's the number?

 

C. Of those companies in 2009 that are doing reasonably well, how many of them have been utterly and completely fucking stupid at times in this history?

 

A > B

 

C = 100% of the promotions that matter

 

As brilliant as Vince as, he's been a fucking moron many times from a *business* standpoint.

 

John

[Sean Liska]

Even if it wasn't one of Vince's weird personal messages, can we at least agree that this is a pretty rude thing to do to a woman? I know it falls under the category of drawing heat or whatever, but it's still pretty demeaning. Plus, all it does is give ammunition to Linda's challengers in the Senate campaign that WWE disrespects women, even if Linda is no longer associated with the company directly.

Lots of things heels say about faces are demeaning. The problem is that the company apparently either believes it, or wants Mickie to believe that they believe it so it can be used as ammunition against her in real life. And that's kinda fucked up.

 

Think about the company we're discussing. These are the people that, upon finding out that a loyal hard-working employee had a traumatic cancer scare and was having painful colon surgery, decided the best gesture to make was a 5 minute skit mocking the surgery so they could take numerous personal shots at him. I'm way past getting too upset about something like the Mickie James skit.

[S.L.L.]

Even if it wasn't one of Vince's weird personal messages, can we at least agree that this is a pretty rude thing to do to a woman? I know it falls under the category of drawing heat or whatever, but it's still pretty demeaning. Plus, all it does is give ammunition to Linda's challengers in the Senate campaign that WWE disrespects women, even if Linda is no longer associated with the company directly.

Lots of things heels say about faces are demeaning. The problem is that the company apparently either believes it, or wants Mickie to believe that they believe it so it can be used as ammunition against her in real life. And that's kinda fucked up.

 

Think about the company we're discussing. These are the people that, upon finding out that a loyal hard-working employee had a traumatic cancer scare and was having painful colon surgery, decided the best gesture to make was a 5 minute skit mocking the surgery so they could take numerous personal shots at him. I'm way past getting too upset about something like the Mickie James skit.

 

Yeah, basically this. The Mickie James stuff is just another straw on the camel's back at this point. Still....

 

And as far as the Dave/Wade as bookers thing goes, even if either of them really knew what the hell what they were talking about at this point, and even though I agree with most of what John wrote above, I would suggest that if there's one thing I've learned from playing "I Wanna Be the Guy", it's that knowing how to do something and actually doing it are not always the same thing.