The greatest cons in wrestling history

[S.L.L.]

Personally, the first time I saw 6/3/94, the only context I had was "OMG GREATEST MATCH EVAR!!!", and while it was clearly a great match, I really didn't see anything in the body of the match itself that put it clearly ahead of everything else. Context was definitely a big help there.

[tomk]

What do you mean by 'inform discussion' or 'inform their writing'? A lack of references to it and/or matches like it? Lack of perspective?

 

Also I'm wondering what you mean by "people currently writing about puro". I get a strong sense that there's a couple people specifically who stick in your proverbial craw.

No one writing about puroresu really sticks in my craw or has my goat at this point. I was not knocking Allan4l here. Hell I don’t really care one way or another if no one ever refers to a Muto scale for blood. I don’t really have a ton invested in Kawada v Misawa. I’m saddened by the current "artistic" state of Japanese heavyweight wrestling (something I used to really enjoy); don’t really care one way or another about the state of discussion. The existence of the English puro fanbase at figure four doesn’t bother me so much as amuse me in its bizarreness..

 

I wasn't mocking the figure four people I was saying that the idea that 6-3-94 represents all the holys, and the pinnacle of wrestling as an art form, that this is what wrestling aspires to be, yadda yadda may have been a talking point in 1999. But in 2009 it's remembered as a good match but not "what all wrestling should aspire to be". I don't feel one way or another is to if that is a good ot bad thing.

 

The idea that it invented the modern smark and modern wrestling discussion is historically inaccurate (there are 80s Observer's being recapped here) and it doesn't influence the smark discussion today.

 

Taking shots at that match as Holy Grail is like taking shots at Spuds Mckenzie. Its dated and doesn't have a ton of meaning to any real contemporary conversations.

 

It should also be said that the circa 99 discussion was all about context with perhaps people overanalyzing context.

[Ditch]

I think I get what you're saying, and to the extent that I do I agree with you. The match wasn't a turning point by itself for US smarks and today it's just one of many great matches from the '90s. Kenta Batista's post was quite silly and I didn't grasp that your post was in response to him.

 

Still, my misunderstanding led to some interesting discussions at purotopia so it's not all bad.

[Guest Kenta Batista]

After SO MANY discussions about this. I have to say that one of the greatest cons in the last 10 years is WWE selling the goods of Michelle McCool as the paradigm of a good female wrestler in the 21st century. Now Candice Michelle,Maryse, and some others can be thrown into this category, but there is no bigger con then McCool. No charisma, can't work, cant do a promo, and she doesn't get a crowd reaction. Heel or face, her reactions for the most part have always been edited in. Now, I don't want to go on any conspiracy theories, but this might be part of a bigger con of Calloway coning the office into thinking that McCool is worthy of the spot she currently has.

[Bix]

Who thinks she's any good?

[jdw]

I don't think 6/3/94 really changed anything, fan-wise. To the people reading the Observer and trading Japanese tapes back then, it was awesome, but those people were all watching Japanese wrestling to begin with. No casual fans saw it. I'm not really seeing the connection with the WCW or ECW.

Exactly.

 

Misawa-Kawada has meaning to people that Misawa-Kawada has meaning to. Little different than Flair-Steamboat, only that far more fans and *smart* fans saw the Flair-Steamboats in this country.

 

In constrast, Hogan-Andre has meaning to far, far, far more people in this country than all the Flair-Steamboats added together.

 

 

Not sure about WCW smartening people up, although Muta's exposure in WCW and the WCW/NJPW SuperShows may have encouraged more Observer/Torch readers to pursue Japanese wrestling. There was a time when people complained about Dave covering too much Japanese stuff in the Observer back before the tapes became more widely available with Japanese supermarkets popping up around the country.

I've always though the term "smark" is a nonsensical term. The folks captured by the term "smarks" aren't really any different than those captured by the terms "smart fans" and "hardcore fans" in the 80s. The launching of the WON in the 80s and newsletters like it is a better starting point for modern smart fans than the 90s. These types of existed before that (as pointed out above going back to the 1800s), but the WON and the other newsletters became a rallying point, a place of increased knowledge and information. I think the departure for modern smart fans is that rather than just enjoying and following the "entertainment" aspect of wrestling, they became much more knowledgable about and intently followed the "business" aspect of wrestling. That would be following not just the storylines, but how they came about behind the scenes. Following not just the wrestlers, but the reasons why they've changing promotions/companies, or changing pushes, etc. Those elements of the business, in addition to what's making money. And of course in following the "entertainment" side of the business, starting to cover it similar to other entertainment: talking about / reviewing the quality, as people do with movies, music, TV, plays, books, etc.

 

The would be the general starting point of the modern smart fan / hardcore fan / smark.

 

Nothing really changed until the growth of the internet made smart fan thinking widely and easily available to the masses (now just most anyone who follows wrestling if they chose to can find "inside info"), and in turn the business began to react to it far more strongly and far more openly. I think most anyone who was around at the time would point to the growth of AOL giving the internet to the Masses rather than what had largely been college based before (students and teachers). Not to dismiss Prodigy or Compuserv or things like that, as they had some impact. But AOL was the monster that first exploded things to the masses. Also not saying it was the endpoint of the growth, as the shift towrds information websites and message boards and file sharing and everything else since then have had massive impacts. I see them as continuations of that online growth and improvements on sharing of information, opinion and not literally media. To a degree they're a bit like the ongoing growth of the subscriber bases of the newsletters from the WON launching up through say 1995, where it wasn't just the WON but also the Torch and a number of small newsletters at that point. Some overlapping subscribers, but still vastly bigger than the number Dave had when rolling out his first issue.

 

Anyway, long post and maybe the point is lost at the end.

 

1992-94 didn't have a major impact on the growth of the modern smart fans unless we look at the technology side. The matches and the promotions didn't have much to do with it. In a sense, ECW's initial growth and buzz among smart fans was generated by fans who had been around for a number of years, and who looked at ECW as giving them a bit of what they loved in prior years (say 1989) but had been fading by 1993. It's not like Dave Scherer or Jeff Amdur became smart fans because of ECW. They had been for years.

 

John

[Guest Kenta Batista]

Who thinks she's any good?

You'd be surprised the amount of online praise she gets from people who HONESTLY believe McCool is the pentacle of women's wrestlers. This belief isn't shared within the smark community as much as I see it from other types of fans. I have debated tons of people in the last 2 months about McCool and those people honestly believe McCool is God's gift and the best thing going today.

 

I understand that McCool is a product of the WWE marketing machine and because of that some people have latched on, but the live crowds reaction to her is very telling of how people REALLY feel about her and her matches and yet she is still PUSHED hardcore.

[jdw]

Sometime ago I actually got to finally watch the match. I turned out the lights,hooked my computer to flat screen, and sat back and watched it. Good match, make no bones about it. But I left with this feeling that if that EXACT same match happened in the U.S. it wouldn't be pimped as much.

I'm not sure who in the US could have had that match in 1994 or even 1996. By that, I mean top stars rather than Benoit and Eddy trying to match it move-for-move. But among tops stars, even trying to block out their signature spots/moves in the place of those of Kawada and Misawa... I'm not sure who could have worked that match for 35 minutes.

 

I'd go further. If Shawn and Bret could have worked spot-for-spot the 7/95 Misawa vs Kawada match, it would be the consensus greatest match in US history. It's obviously not my favorite match between the two, and probably is one of the starting points to AJPW style getting out of hand over the balance of the decade. But it's a match that would translate in Pavlovian ways if a pair of major US heavyweights put it on in a big match setting.

 

It's a bit like comparing the 6/89 Jumbo-Tenryu match with say the 2/89 Flair-Steamboat. Ric and Ricky couldn't have had the 6/89 match. They just didn't work that style. But if they could, we'd still be calling it the clear best match of all-time. The stuff in the match would translate to US wrestling fans *if* US wrestlers did it, and would be molten hot if those US wrestlers were top stars working a similar storyline. Which to a degree Flair-Steamboat were: one wrestler trying to take the top spot long held by his rival. Instead, they had the match they could work... and plenty of us think that it's a really exceptional match.

 

The Misawa-Kawada would easily translate in the US if Shawn and Bret could do it. I think we're fooling ourselves to think otherwise as pretty much everything Misawa and Kawada did in that match was over at one point our another in the 90s, with the exception of the finish which I don't think anyone did in a major promotions.

 

John

[Death From Above]

I wasn't sure where to put this (it was here or bumping the Sleazier Business: Wrestling vs. Porn thread. I flipped a coin). But this old update from the Wrestling Observer got posted on DVDVR and it seemed so low that it had to warrant mention, somewhere, in some discussion about people conning people in wrestling.

 

4/26/93:

 

From several reports, Kevin Adkisson (Kevin Von Erich) held up GWF promoter Grey Pierson for $1,000 cash before the show on the 4/2 benefit show at the Sportatorium for his nieces. All the wrestlers had agreed to work the card with no payment since it was advertised that all the proceeds would go into a trust fund for the two young daughters of his late brother Kerry. Pierson had agreed to reimburse wrestlers for transportation costs and had told wrestlers that if they had to cancel a prior booking in order to appear on the show, that he would reimburse them for missing the booking. None of the wrestlers on the show asked for any money for either transportation or reimbursement for canceling a prior engagement besides Kevin. Kevin claimed he had a prior booking that night in Birmingham, AL which brought with it a $1,000 payoff. We have no record of any such a show in Birmingham on that evening that Kevin would have been booked on, let alone had been promised that kind of a payoff, which would be labeled as very unusual in the independent market for a wrestler of Kevin's calibre, but not necessarily impossible. Kevin is believed to be on a tour of Nigeria so nobody has heard his side of the story. According to other reports, there was no show in Birmingham and the promotion paid him the money before the show figuring his no-showing that particular event would cause numerous problems, especially with the potential fear that should he not appear that his father might choose to leave with him. Wrestlers holding up promoters at the last minute and promoters underpaying wrestlers what they promised ahead of time is as old as the wrestling business itself, which doesn't make it correct, but in many ways this is almost inherently in many cases an unscrupulous business. However, this particular incident of doing so on a benefit show where everyone else on the card gave up their Friday night and worked for free on a benefit show for ones own nieces does seem to set new record in that regard.

So to summarize, Kevin Von Erich held up a promoter on a charity show raising money for the kids of his dead brother.

 

That Von Erich family is really something else.

[goodhelmet]

I wouldn't put it past Kevin Von Erich to do something like that but I would also be interested to hear who the other sources were. I also wouldn't put it past a promoter to lie and say talent will appear (when they never planned on appearing) and then make up a story about the talent holding them up.

[Bix]

So, where do we rank Wrestlers' Rescue now that it appears to be a giant scam by Dawn Marie?

[jdw]

High for balls and tastelessness. Balance that a bit with it being unlikely she got much money, so probably not Top 10.

 

John

[sek69]

Was her charity the one that was supposed to be getting Steve Williams his electronic voicebox? Conning con men is one thing, conning a cancer patient is pretty low.

[artDDP]

If I read that correctly, Sek, yes it was.

[El-P]

Jeez. And I actually thought her being fired while being pregnant was pretty low. Turns out she's as scummy as the people who fired her pregnant ass. What a cunt. Wrestling truly is a depressing environment. The Steve Williams part is particulary terrible.

[goodhelmet]

Has Meltzer reported on this?

[Cox]

It was in last week's Observer.

[kjh]

Hmm, maybe I missed it, but I don't think he did. He didn't mention it while talking about the New York Times article at least.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

An Open Letter from Dawn Marie

 

On behalf of myself, the Wrestlers’ Rescue organization, and the many volunteers and donors, I'd like to strenuously deny and condemn the false and baseless defamatory statements currently circulating concerning an alleged investigation and or corruption in Wrestlers' Rescue. Not only are the accusations false they contain no merit and they are disrespectful to the volunteers who have invested their time, energies, and hearts into helping former professional wrestlers in need. These statements (most of which appear to have begun following comments made by Mike Aldren) are defamatory and contain no basis or fact. These unfounded false allegations have put at risk our efforts to help the former stars who currently face major personal, medical, and financial crises. The damage these falsehoods may have done to real people (not wrestling “characters”) is immeasurable.

 

I am currently weighing options for an appropriate and comprehensive response. When I have decided on my best course of action, as well as exploring legal options on behalf of both myself and Wrestlers’ Rescue, I will address all allegations.

 

A full and complete refutation of all false claims will accompany our forthcoming formal response, in the courts and/or other venues. More importantly, though I wish to express the anger I feel that for the sake of a few web hits and some false ego-gratification, all those who spread his falsehoods as “truth” may have put at risk Wrestlers' Rescue's attempts to aid good and well-loved people facing enormously difficult circumstances. Unfortunately, internet rumor mongers feel that they can tarnish people and an organization’s reputation without any evidence and still have impunity. It is truly shameful that I must even dignify these individuals who have nothing more than time and a computer, to address these harmful and baseless allegations.

 

I give thanks to all my friends and colleagues who have called and written to express their anger at this attack and their support of me. It is for people like you and not the Mike Aldren's of the world that Wrestlers' Rescue exists and will expand.

 

Dawn Marie

 

Dawn Marie

 

Wrestlers Rescue

1162 Saint Georges Avenue

Suite 313

Avenel, NJ 07001

Office: (732)548-5875

Cell:(908) 565-0388

Email: [email protected] e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Web: http://WrestlersRescue.Org

[rovert]

My initial reaction was oh shit better edit allegedly into all my posts here. But she hasn’t provided any proof where the money has been going to, who has actually benefited from it, as well that wrestler’s rescue is registered as a charity.

[Ronnie]

Dawn Marie's allegedly paid up for a lawyer to send an email to Munchnick [sic]:

 

Dear Mr. Munchnick:

 

This law firm represents Wrestlers’ Rescue and its individual officers. We have been asked to write this letter to you to address the false statements contained about our clients on your website.

 

On or before July 22, 2010 , you have and continue to publish articles and or blogs on your website http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/, which you alleged that money has been misappropriated by Wrestlers’ Rescue and/or its officers. The statements are untrue and defamatory. These statements were part of a calculated campaign to falsely spread propaganda in an effort to damage the credibility of Wrestlers’ Rescue and its officers. Your publication of these statements, without regard to their truthfulness, is libelous and seeks to willfully injure for personal pecuniary gain. As such, your comments are defamatory per se. Your website and corresponding blogs also constitute tortious interference with the business and contractual relations with Wrestlers’ Rescue and its officers. As such, your conduct is actionable and exposes you to the imposition of compensatory as well as punitive damages.

 

To avoid a lawsuit, we demand immediate retraction from your website of these false and libelous statements. Wrestlers’ Rescue demands that your retraction and correction be accompanied by a statement on your website in which you specifically repudiate your libelous statements.

 

This letter is your sole opportunity to remedy the injustice perpetrated upon each of these facilities by your actions. Failure to remove this information no later than Friday, July 30th from your website and blog, publish the requested retraction on your website, and cease and desist from the aforementioned comments about Wrestlers’ Rescue, will result in a lawsuit against you. Any such legal action will be accompanied by an Order to Show Cause demanding the immediate removal of the defamatory material from your website. Please govern yourself accordingly.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

JASINSKI, P.C.

 

JOHN C. HEGARTY

Irv doesn't seem too concerned, and it doesn't strike me as overly daunting that the email was sent from the [email protected] domain.

[sek69]

Surely Dawn can't be that stupid to think that someone like Irv who has gone round and round with Jerry Goddamn McDevitt is going to be concerned with a legal threat like that. All Irv has to do is ask her to provide one shred of proof that any of the money that was donated went toward a single thing (which as a charity there should be documentation for tax purposes), and if that is provided he would take the posts down. There's likely no way she could do that in any way that would pass the laugh test.

[kjh]

Sounds like a lot of financial details were kept confidential even from the secretary of Wrestlers Rescue.

[rovert]

Is it just me or other those letters almost too heavy handed in their wording to be totally legit?

[jdw]

I agree with the notion that Irv wouldn't be worried. In fact, he'd invite the lawsuit.

 

The last thing Dawn wants is the discovery requests that Irv's lawyer would send her. In fact, he likely could find a lawyer in the jurisdiction who like Barnett would take it on just to fuck with Dawn and her attorney. The instant discovery would be filed you'd see Dawn and her attorney vannish.

 

John