20 Years Ago - WON 08/08/88

[kjh]

Yeah, Jingus and Bix are right about the gay media not watching wrestling and being gullible marks for a wrestling promotion's claims about their storylines involving gay potrayals. Recently there was a silly column on OutSports.com praising Orlando Jordan's TNA gimmick, which you could only praise if you didn't understand wrestling or are being intentionally glib and misleading.

[S.L.L.]

if done today by Vince it'd be a huge ordeal with him getting raked over the coals by everyone in the media.

Did Vince get raked over the coals for Cryme Time? For the end to gay marriage thing? For the MLK tribute episode that ended with face Austin chasing Teddy Long around ring in a ATV threatening to tie him to the back?

 

This (except, to a degree, the Billy & Chuck stuff). WWE has done actual racist/sexist/homophobic/miscellaneous bigoted shit in modern times, often with the bigots getting their way in the end and sometimes being portrayed as faces for doing so. The media doesn't bat an eye at it. Hell, Chris Benoit murdered his family in real life, and the media treated it as a passing fancy. Even now that Linda McMahon is running for the U.S. Senate, the media criticism has been really tame compared to what it could be. Strictly speaking, they just don't give a shit about wrestling.

[Jingus]

For context:

Holy FUCK. Where were these originally published? Especially weird since Memphis had the only wrestling show I've ever attended with a majority black audience. It probably wasn't that way back in '77, but still. Goddamn that was unbelievably racist. Like, "blackmail material now that Jerry works for a publicly traded corporation" level of racist.

[KrisZ]

The best part about the Lawler stuff is that the majority of fans that went to Mid-South Coliseum were black and rooted for him.

[Death From Above]

I'm not one to get my panties in a knot over being PC, but Jesus. Those are really something.

[RCS1988]

-- Gene Okerlund is back. He and Vince apparently have huge blowups about twice a year. This year, Gene quit after the Slammys and came back the next day. His contract is too lucrative to stay away too long, but Vince wants to tone down his role to just doing PPV updates and NBC. No more on-the-road interviews, and no more hosting All American Wrestling.

Well, he still hosted All American Wrestling, so Dave lied about that. He should of just said he will be toned down to just PPV's, PPV Reports, Update, NBC, & AAW.