Can the WWE recover?

Wikipedia stuff is covered in the other thread. Most likely a kid spoofing a WWE IP address who happened to screw up and guess why he missed the PPV.

 

Occam's Razor says that's quite a coincidence.

Not saying that's not what happened. But it's quite a coincidence.

 

They did; off the top of my head I think it was 1988 or 89 in a court case in New Jersey. If I recall, it was so they wouldn't be judged by the more stringent regulations of boxing in that state.

 

Honestly, I'm not that surprised. It's very easy to spoof an IP address and wikipedia gets hacked on a daily basis. As soon as it became knowledge Benoit was missing the PPV for "family reasons," somebody made the edit. They just happened to do a pretty good job of guessing why he'd miss the PPV.

 

Possible, but the page history indicates only a handful of vandalism/stupid shit changes around that time. At various points that evening, the 2006-07 section said that Benoit was boring, sucks and "eats crabs because he's fat," all of which are a far cry from "he's not at Vengeance because his wife's dead."

 

I just watched the Today Show interview of McMahon, and he came off like dog-shit, IMO. "Our job is to put smiles on people's faces?" What does he think he runs, a roaming comedy troupe? So, putting smiles on people's faces include:

• Parading around nearly-naked women in the presence of small children & enact lesbian innuendos
• Lock up one of the fans' favorites in an ambulance and run it over with an 18-wheeler
• Blatantly engaging in adulterous acts with someone 30 years younger in front of your "comatose" wife"
• Staging your own death via car bomb & putting out press releases like it was true

Good grief, give me the good ol' days of the mid/late-90s. If I want to see hot blondes that are 25% silicone, I'll get me a porn. McMahon better hope that authorities can't link the steroids in Benoit's house (and probably his body) to him in any fashion, otherwise this interview will lock him up. I don't think I'll be watching WWE for a very long time, if at all.

 

Don't forget having your top star and son-in-law (Triple H) fornicating with a corpse (the infamous Katie Vick angle).

 

Good lord, I forgot about that. That's vile.

 

Many of the same things were happening in the mid/late-90's...remember Sunny? Sable? Debra? The Sandman was literally crucified in ECW in the mid-90's, crown of barbed wire on his head and all. Stonecold was ran over by Rikishi, as well as crucified to Undertaker's cross resembling symbol in 1998. Undertaker's group the Ministry of Darkness, performed evil rituals and human sacrifices. Gangrel and the Brood would darken the arena and then drench a wrestler with fake blood. Stonecold brawled in a church with Booker T years back. And the Big Bossman dragging Big Show's dead father's casket in his Cadillac through a graveyard. Or Bossman stealing Al Snow's pet dog, grinding it up, and serving it to Snow for dinner. The Godfather, Val Venis, and Golddust characters. Mark Henry getting simulated head backstage from a transvestite? I could go on and on about the mid/late 90's, which may be even crazier than right now's storylines...

This is hardly a new thing. Professional wrestling is outrageous, outlandish, and occasionally offensive. It's a recipe for success and it won't stop until people turn the channel.

 

Well, it is kind of a new thing.

In the 1980s, the WWF was populated by characters that were cartoonish. So cartoonish that they were turned into an NBC Saturday morning cartoon series. And you sure didn't have the outlandish angles in the NWA territories like the Mid-South or WCCW in Texas.

 

Ever since I was a young kid, I have been a pro wrestling fan. As an aside, Chris Benoit was supposed to appear at a WWE show in my hometown of Beaumont, Texas (I don't live there anymore ... Austin these days). To hear that these events took place while WWE was doing shows in Texas is somewhat ironic considering Jack Atkisson's (Adkisson's?) kids' deaths. Jack's in-ring name was Fritz Von Erich. His sons David and Kerry died from alleged drug issues, too. Plus a young guy whose in-ring name was Gino Hernandez who wrestled in Paul Boesch's Houston territory for a few years also died from drug issues. Look ... how many more fucking deaths will it take before Vince GETS IT? I mean ... he did a good thing by telling Kurt Angle to either get off the painkillers or else. Kurt walked over to TNA. Yet there have been too, too many deaths of professional wrestlers (I will NOT use the "sports entertainment" tag. That's offensive.) in the past quarter century. Will the WWE survive? Hey, they've still got marketable people like Paul Levesque, "Triple H" in the ring. Yeah, he's so gassed up anyway that he's the perfect one for Vince to ride his type of wrestling on. Hey, I didn't mind watching Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the ring. Sure, there are storylines ... then there are fucking stupid, sick storylines like Vince killing himself. Don't worry, Vince, me boy. You don't have to do that storyline ever again. You keep running your "Attitude!!" style or some form of it and more wrestlers will die. Hey Vince, if they have kids, you can blame it on the KIDS!!! Vince and Linda have shitloads of money. Stephanie and Shane are set for life.

There are probably some independent wrestling promoters who are shocked and stunned by Chris Benoit's death. Yet they're watching a Dead Man Walking on different TV interviews in Vince McMahon. He looked like he was about on his last few months with Meredith Viera on "Today." That's good, Vince. You keep on trying to sell me that shit. I'm sorry, Vince. You either get WWE back to storylines and straight pro wrestling matches and keep your roided-up ass out of my TV screen ... or do an honorable thing -- cancel your TV shows for a month and cut back your yearly 350-show total down to 225 so these men and women can heal and have time to live lives.

Sorry for the rant. I come on SportsJournalists.com to find laughter and relief from life's stuff. I love this Web site.

Thanks for letting me share.

May God's grace be with the Benoit family and all of Chris' friends in and out of the business who are struggling to make sense out of the senseless.

healingman

 

Despite our group flaws, we are also here to please, brother....