So, "Ring of Hell"...

[Dylan Waco]

As a former wrestler (not pro) with a martial arts background, I am trying to figure out what on earth random punches to the face would teach anyone in a dojo setting. It certainly doesn't teach you how to "take care of yourself".

[jdw]

Quick thoughts without having read the book:

 

I like that Matt found another roman numeral to add to his name.

 

I think we now have two extremes of the "I Want To Believe" mentality that is par for the course among wrestling fandom. We all know the old fanboy side of it where folks wanted to believe the best in all their Heros, or at least that the sleaze related to them was harmless "boys being boys" fun. I think we've now got the other side where people know the business is a shithole, so just about any story is credible. They know the business is shit, so they want to believe as much crap thrown at the wall as possible.

 

Back in the day, that was the Lano extreme, and the stories he bounced around were true at times, and we pure bullshit at times.

 

It's still a working business. People in it lie, make shit up, or just falt out misread stuff and come up with a "story" to explain what they think they're seeing.

 

People on the outside remain extremely receptive to the stories that play to which side of the "We Want To Believe" extreme they're on. You hate Hogan, so you'll lap up the stuff of Hogan's nuttiness. You love Flair, and you'll end up buying the Madden-style nonsense that Ric was just up to "boys will be boys" stuff. Lawler's taste in young pussy offends you, and you'll buy 100% of the stories tossed out on it... when maybe 25% of them are from someone who just hates the shit out of him and it making crap up.

 

Point:

 

I would approach the book like we tend to approach so much about the business: with a grain of salt.

 

Matt may have "busted his ass" on the book. He may be a good guy vouched for by people who knew him better than those of us who thought he was a goofy, gulible wrestling fan. That doesn't mean that he's not beyond being worked by his "sources", anymore than the rest of us. Or that he's not willing to eat up a "story" that apeals to him or his theme that is bullshit.

 

It's a "wrestling book". Even the "best" of them tend to be fucked up in various ways, unless you take them just on the Bruce Mitchell Scale: "They tell great stories"

 

Lest anyone thinks I'd like to see the underbelly of wrestling whitewashed, I think the folks here who've read what I've written for a long time know that I go back further in thinking this is a shithole business longer then most folks online. I've got no problem with all the sleaze coming out - the business warrants it. But my long jaded, doubting, negative, pessmistic, non-believing point of view also gets aimed at sleazy "stories" just as it did the rah-rah shit about the business.

 

John

[S.L.L.]

Wonder why someone is shooting on you in the 21st century? Respond by beating the shit out of him? I don't know what the protocol is for something that hasn't happened in over a century.

What. Yeah it does happen. Not on most of the more reputable shows, but disagreements and fights happen all the time on the smaller indies. When you get a bunch of maladjusted macho egotistical types who think they're tough guys together in one room, it's almost inevitable that you're eventually gonna have problems and someone is eventually gonna try to stretch someone else. I've personally seen liberties taken in the ring by guys who were seriously trying to hurt their opponents more times than I care to remember. It doesn't happen on every show or anything like that, but it happens often enough that wrestlers at least need to know some basic self-defense if such a situation arises.

 

See, I would think the ideal form of defense here would be to fire dudes who are shooting in a worked sport, but maybe that's just me. In any case, God help you if you ever work anywhere with an orchestra pit.

[Bix]

For what it's worth, basically everything was confirmed independently by multiple sources, so if anything that's false got in, it's something that's widely believed to be true.

[Dylan Waco]

I agree with John's point, but I think the "all the sleaze must be true!" contingent is largely a response to long time fans realizing that the business is in fact one of the sleaziest in the world.

 

In other words the point is that a lot of these fucked up stories are entirely believable within the existing established norms of pro wrestling.

 

The stories are born of the reality of business. Not vice versa.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

For what it's worth, basically everything was confirmed independently by multiple sources, so if anything that's false got in, it's something that's widely believed to be true.

So that includes the stuff about Konnan/Sullivan/Nancy/and which ever luchador bit Nancy on the ass? Because in the book that story was quoted directly from the sleaze thread, but I assume Matt wouldn't have put it in if he thought it was just 'net gossip.

[Bix]

For what it's worth, basically everything was confirmed independently by multiple sources, so if anything that's false got in, it's something that's widely believed to be true.

So that includes the stuff about Konnan/Sullivan/Nancy/and which ever luchador bit Nancy on the ass? Because in the book that story was quoted directly from the sleaze thread, but I assume Matt wouldn't have put it in if he thought it was just 'net gossip.

 

That was in the WON (without all the details but basically confirming the story Jose told) after the murders though Dave didn't name Heavy Metal. Plus it wouldn't exactly shock me if Randazzo was able to get Konnan for background.

 

I believe that Jose was a big source for the book so it may have just worked better to quote his old post (which was originally at OLC before the sleaze thread) since it was written well.

[Jingus]

As a former wrestler (not pro) with a martial arts background, I am trying to figure out what on earth random punches to the face would teach anyone in a dojo setting. It certainly doesn't teach you how to "take care of yourself".

It would teach you nothing. I was just agreeing with ohtani's jacket's point that if you can't take a punch you shouldn't be in wrestling, which is generally true. Then sek69 claimed that nobody shoots on anyone ever, and it steamrolled from there.

 

See, I would think the ideal form of defense here would be to fire dudes who are shooting in a worked sport, but maybe that's just me.

A great theory, except the promoters are often sleazier than the wrestlers and let people get away with all kinds of shit. All too often they just don't care.

 

In any case, God help you if you ever work anywhere with an orchestra pit.

...what? That's the least sequiterish non-sequiter I've seen in a while.

 

Sometimes the All Sleaze Must Be True viewpoint is kind of annoying, since the people espousing it take a tone which is not terribly different from a revivalist. It's almost a sermon about how we're all blind fools and we need to wake up and see the real world like it is. Or, another analogy: sort of like those annoying types of aggressive vegetarians who go around telling people about what happens to animals in a slaughterhouse, in graphic detail. Um, yeah, I generally knew all that stuff already. I can't stop or prevent any of this bad stuff myself, so it gets annoying having someone yell "REPENT!" in my ear about it. Hell, I believe that most of the stories are at least part true, some of that from having experienced a whole lotta sleaze during my own indy "career". But it seems like if I'm skeptical about any single one of them I get a True Sleazer screaming at me about wrestling is the single worst business on the entire planet, apparently worse than street prostitution or gang membership or telemarketing, so every bad story about it must instantly be assumed true. Some of them go so far in the We Must Not Be Naive direction that it runs into being a different sort of gullible where they're willing to believe anything. And if you think that little of pro wrestling, it makes me wonder why you're still wasting time talking about it on the internet. Go read a book. One besides Ring of Hell.

 

Also, the True Sleazers usually also to subscribe to the All Wrestlers Are Congenital Liars And You Can't Believe Them If They Tell You Water Is Wet viewpoint... but the vast majority of these stories they believe came from wrestlers... "At what point do Must and Cannot intersect on the graph?!"

[ohtani's jacket]

If you can't take a punch you shouldn't be in the ring. Seriously. What are you gonna do the first time you get hit for real?

Wonder why someone is shooting on you in the 21st century? Respond by beating the shit out of him? I don't know what the protocol is for something that hasn't happened in over a century.

 

I'm talking about accidents. If the average person was kicked in the face and broke their orbital bone, they'd hit the deck like a sack of potatoes. And they sure as hell couldn't hold a broken neck in place. However severe dojo training may be, it increases pain threshold & makes people tougher. Some trainees find dojo training easy, others struggle and are punished a lot. People who can't hack it runaway. The description about their daily life didn't make me blink. For years people have been praising Japanese workers & Japanese matches and now the system that trains them is horrifying? Harden up. Full-contact sparring is not brutal. The dojo system is open to abuse, just like wrestling schools in the US. I'd rather a dojo system that weeds out people than a fly-by-night school that cons them.

 

Someone on DVDVR said the banana story is a "legend has it" story. Who knows if it even happened or how often, let alone whether it's an institution... I know Matt was careful about rumours & sourcing/cross-checking stuff, but if you believe everything you hear Jaguar Yokota had her head shaved because she got pregnant, needed to have an abortion and was punished by the Matsunagas. Or Nancy Kumi was a man-hating lesbian, who was raped by a client (possibly yakuza) in a hostess club. These rumours exist in Japan because the world of Joshi puroresu is alien to them & the idea that women could go without men too tantalising. And the rumours about the NJPW involve sexual acts of some sort. How surprising.

[jdw]

For what it's worth, basically everything was confirmed independently by multiple sources, so if anything that's false got in, it's something that's widely believed to be true.

Understood. That is the way of pro wrestling.

 

I've sat/stood next to Meltzer when false stories independantly confirmed 5-6 times in a week's trip to Japan. By the third time we heard them, they became a running joke.

 

"Stories" in pro wrestling are like a virus - they spread. Usually rapidly.

 

Some of them are true. Many of them are bullshit.

 

Everyone on the board who has heard the story about Dave banging Debbie Malenko raise their hands.

 

It was a bullshit story, but it had legs for years. In fact, more than a decade and a half by now if there are people out there who still buy it.

 

You that you can find "multiple sources" to "confirm" it. Lano would be the first. Then you only need one more.

 

That's the way of pro wrestling stories. They're worked in every direction.

 

My point above was to not lose your jaded nature towards the business simply because we've moved over into the other extreme "We Want To Believe" scale - that it's the sleazist business around. It's best to remain jaded and pessmistic about all of it, just as one should have been about the rah-rah bullshit.

 

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

Man Dave banging Debbie Malenko is a great story. They ought to be the bookerman.

[jdw]

I agree with John's point, but I think the "all the sleaze must be true!" contingent is largely a response to long time fans realizing that the business is in fact one of the sleaziest in the world.

 

In other words the point is that a lot of these fucked up stories are entirely believable within the existing established norms of pro wrestling.

 

The stories are born of the reality of business. Not vice versa.

Eh. The reality of the business is that it's a work. Stories born of that "reality" have largely been bullshit, back to first part of the last century. They really aren't anymore "believable" now than they were then. Nor "unbelieveable".

 

That remains my point. Many widely believed things coming out of the business are works. Many of them are works by people so deluded that they think that their own work is true. Many people in the business buy into the works because it fits into what they want to believe.

 

Apply your normal bullshit detectors and doubt that you apply to just about everything else in radar to this as well.

 

John

[jdw]

Man Dave banging Debbie Malenko is a great story. They ought to be the bookerman.

I suspect Dave still runs into it occassionally. It's just that very few people know who Debbie is these days since she's been so long removed from the business.

 

John

[S.L.L.]

In any case, God help you if you ever work anywhere with an orchestra pit.

...what? That's the least sequiterish non-sequiter I've seen in a while.

It's a turn of the century wrestling joke. Something about screwjob finishes where Frank Gotch fell into the orchestra pit (because apparently, they used to have wrestling matches at places with orchestra pits). I figured the last real shoot in wrestling predated that by some time. It seems I was wrong.

[Resident Evil]

JDW and Jingus echo a lot of my thoughts. Good work guys.

[Bix]

The only Dave and Debbie story I have ever heard was that Lano's excommunication from Dave's inner circle was in part due to some incident where Lano called Debbie's (Dave's friend and nothing more) room and behaved like Mike Lano. It's possible someone twisted the story into "Dave was banging Debbie and Lano called then while they were in flagrante" but it's not exactly a widespread enduring story. It's also a very different type of story from numerous people in WCW telling Randazzo that when Sullivan was made booker in 2000, Benoit threatened to bang his fists on the ringpost until they were broken and mangled before raising them to the camera triumphantly and walking away. Even if it's not true, enough people told it unsolicited that that it shows enough wrestlers believed he was more than just "wrestler crazy" 7 and a half years before the murders.

[S.L.L.]

If you can't take a punch you shouldn't be in the ring. Seriously. What are you gonna do the first time you get hit for real?

Wonder why someone is shooting on you in the 21st century? Respond by beating the shit out of him? I don't know what the protocol is for something that hasn't happened in over a century.

 

I'm talking about accidents. If the average person was kicked in the face and broke their orbital bone, they'd hit the deck like a sack of potatoes. And they sure as hell couldn't hold a broken neck in place. However severe dojo training may be, it increases pain threshold & makes people tougher.

I repeat the previously-asked question of how the fuck does getting randomly punched in the face increase your tolerance for pain? I'm no scientific genius, but I am somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% sure that's bullshit. Lots of things increase pain tolerance. Adrenaline, drugs, mental illness...and those are all things fairly common in wrestling, too. Getting randomly punched in the face by Jushin Liger is not one of those things.

 

Some trainees find dojo training easy, others struggle and are punished a lot. People who can't hack it runaway. The description about their daily life didn't make me blink. For years people have been praising Japanese workers & Japanese matches and now the system that trains them is horrifying? Harden up.

Oh, cut the fucking shit, OJ. The system was ALWAYS horrifying, we just didn't have all these details about it until now. The fact that we didn't know about then doesn't mean it was OK. The fact that it produced great wrestlers who had great matches doesn't make it OK. If my still having something vaguely resembling a moral compass means I should harden up, then fuck you, 'cause I'm not doing it.

 

Full-contact sparring is not brutal.

 

Jushin Liger randomly punching dudes in the face =/= full contact sparring.

 

The dojo system is open to abuse, just like wrestling schools in the US. I'd rather a dojo system that weeds out people than a fly-by-night school that cons them.

I think both systems suck, but at least Hiromitsu Gompei could've theoretically made his money back somehow.

 

Someone on DVDVR said the banana story is a "legend has it" story. Who knows if it even happened or how often, let alone whether it's an institution... I know Matt was careful about rumours & sourcing/cross-checking stuff, but if you believe everything you hear Jaguar Yokota had her head shaved because she got pregnant, needed to have an abortion and was punished by the Matsunagas. Or Nancy Kumi was a man-hating lesbian, who was raped by a client (possibly yakuza) in a hostess club. These rumours exist in Japan because the world of Joshi puroresu is alien to them & the idea that women could go without men too tantalising. And the rumours about the NJPW involve sexual acts of some sort. How surprising.

I do love how you've covered all your bases here. First paragraph is dedicated to playing down the significance of the abuse, the second one still opens up the possibility that the abuse didn't even happen. Of course, it would've made more sense if you flipped there order, but still, pretty savvy.

[Jingus]

I figured the last real shoot in wrestling predated that by some time. It seems I was wrong.

Like I said, the more respectable shows like ROH generally wouldn't allow it (though you gotta wonder at stuff like the match where the girl wrestled the guy with an erection). But on the outlaw indy circuit, it's still the frigging Wild West at some shows. Hell, one of the last shows I worked involved Jamie Dundee beating a guy unconcious in the parking lot because the guy was out there chatting with the fans instead of selling the stretcher-job beatdown that Jamie and others had given him in the ring. No police were called, and although Jamie never returned there (yet), the no-seller was back a month later. I've literally got dozens of stories about wrestlers doing stupid violent shit like that on these little shows that nobody's heard of. When you put pro wrestlers together in an environment where they're not getting paid shit and they can do this stuff with no consequences, they are more than happy to step up to the plate and swing for the fences.

[sek69]

It would teach you nothing. I was just agreeing with ohtani's jacket's point that if you can't take a punch you shouldn't be in wrestling, which is generally true. Then sek69 claimed that nobody shoots on anyone ever, and it steamrolled from there.

Whoa, holy I-never-said-anything-close-to-that-Batman! I didn't say no one shoots in wrestling. I said that legit beating people's asses might not be the best way to train future professional wrestlers. If you punch someone for real in that context, "YOUR DOING IT WRONG" as the kids say. In cases where you happen to get punched for real, I'd wager that one would handle it just as you would if it happened on the street. Training future wrestlers by beating their asses doesn't really accomplish anything other than ensuring there's another generation of fucked up pro wrestlers.

 

 

Sometimes the All Sleaze Must Be True viewpoint is kind of annoying, since the people espousing it take a tone which is not terribly different from a revivalist. It's almost a sermon about how we're all blind fools and we need to wake up and see the real world like it is. Or, another analogy: sort of like those annoying types of aggressive vegetarians who go around telling people about what happens to animals in a slaughterhouse, in graphic detail. Um, yeah, I generally knew all that stuff already. I can't stop or prevent any of this bad stuff myself, so it gets annoying having someone yell "REPENT!" in my ear about it. Hell, I believe that most of the stories are at least part true, some of that from having experienced a whole lotta sleaze during my own indy "career". But it seems like if I'm skeptical about any single one of them I get a True Sleazer screaming at me about wrestling is the single worst business on the entire planet, apparently worse than street prostitution or gang membership or telemarketing, so every bad story about it must instantly be assumed true. Some of them go so far in the We Must Not Be Naive direction that it runs into being a different sort of gullible where they're willing to believe anything. And if you think that little of pro wrestling, it makes me wonder why you're still wasting time talking about it on the internet. Go read a book. One besides Ring of Hell.

 

Also, the True Sleazers usually also to subscribe to the All Wrestlers Are Congenital Liars And You Can't Believe Them If They Tell You Water Is Wet viewpoint... but the vast majority of these stories they believe came from wrestlers... "At what point do Must and Cannot intersect on the graph?!"

Aren't you just a ring announcer? I don't want to start fights so please correct me if I'm wrong, but 99% of the time you come off like a indy fed version of JR always going on how the internet is full of lying liars or some other variation of "you can't believe everything you read" yet usually in the same sentence pretty much confirm that fucked up stuff goes on. It seems like people in the biz, even on an indy level, just hate when dirty laundry gets aired that reminds people just how amazingly fucked up it is.

 

It's not so much "every horror story must be assumed true" as it is "so many horror stories have already been proven true why should this one not be true as well". I mean, you have massive drug use, institutional spousal abuse, and extreme abuse toward trainees all on the record for years. If a story comes out that Wrestler A jammed a banana up Wrestler B's bunghole it becomes like "well of course he did, it's pro wrestling". If anything it's the business reaping what it sowed.

[Jingus]

Aren't you just a ring announcer? I don't want to start fights so please correct me if I'm wrong, but 99% of the time you come off like a indy fed version of JR always going on how the internet is full of lying liars or some other variation of "you can't believe everything you read" yet usually in the same sentence pretty much confirm that fucked up stuff goes on. It seems like people in the biz, even on an indy level, just hate when dirty laundry gets aired that reminds people just how amazingly fucked up it is.

Hey, that's MR. Former ring announcer/television commentator/referee/heel manager/on rare occasions wrestler (shitty)/cameraman/website writer/general hanger-on, to you. Anyway of what I ever did is considered being "in the biz", I'm not anymore. I quit for a variety of reasons, including burnout and general weariness with the permanently juvenile idiocy which seemingly couldn't be eradicated or avoided. Well, that and the fact that I moved cross-country to a place where I didn't know anyone and there are no nearby shows, but I'll claim the burnout thing as the primary factor simply for the nice warm feeling of moral superiority.

 

It's not so much "every horror story must be assumed true" as it is "so many horror stories have already been proven true why should this one not be true as well". I mean, you have massive drug use, institutional spousal abuse, and extreme abuse toward trainees all on the record for years. If a story comes out that Wrestler A jammed a banana up Wrestler B's bunghole it becomes like "well of course he did, it's pro wrestling". If anything it's the business reaping what it sowed.

It's just that I think it's important to be accurate about this kind of stuff stuff. "Might as well happened" is an entirely different thing from "did happen", but some act like they're identical. It's like, if tomorrow a rumor gets out about Tom Cruise flipping out and doing something crazy, I'll think it's probably true, but it's logically fallacious to instantly assume that the story is 100% accurate if you've only heard a secondhand rumor, no matter how true it "sounds".

[ohtani's jacket]

I repeat the previously-asked question of how the fuck does getting randomly punched in the face increase your tolerance for pain? I'm no scientific genius, but I am somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% sure that's bullshit. Lots of things increase pain tolerance. Adrenaline, drugs, mental illness...and those are all things fairly common in wrestling, too. Getting randomly punched in the face by Jushin Liger is not one of those things.

If I want to play rugby & do light training drills, what'll happen the first time I get tackled? You can only build a threshold towards pain by experiencing pain, making your body stronger & toughening your mind. Why do you think they train the way they do in Japan? Because they're sadistic fucks? Perhaps some post-WW II baggage? Maybe it's because they're yazkua-affliated, so they follow the same intitiation rituals? How far can we distort the fact that they train hard. I don't know why Jushin Liger punches people. My first question is whether it's random. It could be because they're not doing the exercise right, or they broke a rule, or he wants to see how they react, or he thinks they're not tough enough or it's the same shock you get from being accidently struck in the face during a match. Or maybe he's a sadistic fuck. Whatever the case, I don't think being punched in the face is a big deal in a profession where a loose or mistimed strike can do the same thing. If I get hit in the face during a match, at least I know what it feels like.

 

Oh, cut the fucking shit, OJ. The system was ALWAYS horrifying, we just didn't have all these details about it until now. The fact that we didn't know about then doesn't mean it was OK. The fact that it produced great wrestlers who had great matches doesn't make it OK. If my still having something vaguely resembling a moral compass means I should harden up, then fuck you, 'cause I'm not doing it.

Excuse me if I don't find it horrifying or particularly immoral. I think there's an interesting debate to be had over the consequences of such training, but before that happens people need to stop treating it as a freakshow.

 

Jushin Liger randomly punching dudes in the face =/= full contact sparring.

How is it described in the book? I was thinking more along the lines of when Chigusa steps into the ring with the trainee in GAEA GIRLS.

 

I think both systems suck, but at least Hiromitsu Gompei could've theoretically made his money back somehow.

Sasaki killed a guy & should have gone to jail. One death in 50 something years? Perhaps there were more.

 

I do love how you've covered all your bases here. First paragraph is dedicated to playing down the significance of the abuse, the second one still opens up the possibility that the abuse didn't even happen. Of course, it would've made more sense if you flipped there order, but still, pretty savvy.

Yeah, I have a better idea. I'll accept it as a fact and go around telling everyone that institutionalised banana rape is real. If it happened, then it's fucked up. No doubt. There's a pretty good chance that it did happen. It wouldn't surprise me either way. Sorry for not being gungho in believing it. The worst thing you can do is make a mockery of it.

[Bob Morris]

I'm not going to say that what is in the book has to be "absolutely true."

 

But I will say this: The claims that are being made by the sources quoted seem to be more serious than the "Dave banged Debbie Malenko" rumor that was brought up.

 

Example: Dean Malenko being accused of still supplying Eddie Guerrero with steroids and painkillers when he was supposedly "clean" is a pretty serious accusation, especially given the talk that Dean was one of the guys who was concerned for Eddie's well-being at one point.

 

So it's a pretty serious accusation to make toward Dean that he would be doing this sort of thing.

 

On top of that, I think just about everybody who is currently working for the wrestling business would never admit that Dean did any sort of thing, regardless of whether it was actually true or not.

 

So I would assume whoever told Randazzo that story is somebody who was in the wrestling business, but is now out of it. Hence, he isn't going to be thinking of the mindset of "protect the business" or "don't sell out the boys."

 

This doesn't mean that it, and everything else in Ring of Fire "must be true."

 

But when John talks about how so much in this business is about the work, I would argue that starts to end when somebody gets out of the business and decide he is done with the business for good. At that point, he has no reason to keep the work up because he no longer has any reason to "protect his spot in the business."

[Dylan Waco]

If I want to play rugby & do light training drills, what'll happen the first time I get tackled? You can only build a threshold towards pain by experiencing pain, making your body stronger & toughening your mind. Why do you think they train the way they do in Japan? Because they're sadistic fucks? Perhaps some post-WW II baggage? Maybe it's because they're yazkua-affliated, so they follow the same intitiation rituals? How far can we distort the fact that they train hard. I don't know why Jushin Liger punches people. My first question is whether it's random. It could be because they're not doing the exercise right, or they broke a rule, or he wants to see how they react, or he thinks they're not tough enough or it's the same shock you get from being accidently struck in the face during a match. Or maybe he's a sadistic fuck. Whatever the case, I don't think being punched in the face is a big deal in a profession where a loose or mistimed strike can do the same thing. If I get hit in the face during a match, at least I know what it feels like.

Getting burned is part of working in a kitchen. It is also far more common, than someone shooting on you in a wrestling ring. If you were getting trained in a kitchen and a guy purposefully burned the shit out of you would you try and find someway to rationalize it as a reasonable part of "learning the business", or would you regard it as sadism of the worst ilk?

 

I think the most interesting thing that could come of this book would be fans reevaluating why it is that we make exceptions for bad behavior in this business that we would never even think of making for others.

[ohtani's jacket]

Getting burned is part of working in a kitchen. It is also far more common, than someone shooting on you in a wrestling ring. If you were getting trained in a kitchen and a guy purposefully burned the shit out of you would you try and find someway to rationalize it as a reasonable part of "learning the business", or would you regard it as sadism of the worst ilk?

So take the knives away from them. Don't let them near a stove. We don't want trainees getting hurt.

 

If you don't want to get roughed up, don't enter a dojo. Don't try and be a wrestler. If the recruiting numbers are anything to go by, Japanese young people are doing just that. Even in Sumo where the money's better.

 

I think the most interesting thing that could come of this book would be fans reevaluating why it is that we make exceptions for bad behavior in this business that we would never even think of making for others.

Eh, fans who wanna see bladejobs and worked punches, stiffness and ass kicking brawlers, getting upset at real violence. What a crock. If you wanna watch something where nobody ever gets hurt, nothing bad ever happens and people's lives are never wrecked, I suggest taking up another hobby. Something without an underbelly. It's pretty clear that there's no safe way to do professional wrestling.

 

And what exactly is the connection between dojo training & wrestler welfare, anyway?

[Guest DaDirtiest]

You guys are acting like Japan is the only place people get rough in training. I remember the Ken Shamrock Shoto Interview and he said he basically earned his wrestling training by shooting on guys with egos that his trainer didn't want around.

 

Heavy Metal bit Nancy Sullivan's ass.

 

Who is Dave in the Dean/Debbie Malenko story?