Professional wrestling thread

Speaking of Ric Flair, funny cartoon on News & Observer website with him and Carolina Hurricanes owner doing a Geico commercial for the team. Stay to the end when they do a few outtakes. Funny stuff.

http://www.newsobserver.com/1235/story/502674.html

 

A sample story:

"Wrestling DB is reporting that Gordon Solie has died. More on this story as it develops."

 

there's a DB for everything!

 

Wrestling DB has learned that Ric Flair has defeated Harley Race for his first NWA World Championship.

Taboo Tuesday/Cyber Sunday/Fruity Friday/whatever: notice that the options don't really matter a whole lot in the grand scheme, with the possible exception of the main event (though they're so obviously pushing for Cena's belt to go up). The rest is stuff that won't affect the booking too much. Sounds right boring to me.

ECW kills house shows: They might as well kill themselves at this rate, because Smackdown castoffs don't make me chant E-C-Dub. I was hoping they'd raid the independents and ROH and get some new faces there (Necro Butcher, Nigel McGuinness, Bryan Danielson), but instead they move The Great Khali and Matt Striker over. BOO.

Angle-Joe at TNA's next PPV: I'm torn. On the one hand, this is an infinitely more interesting pairing than anything WWE has offered this year. On the other hand, why so early? Your options are: a) break Joe's winning streak at the hands of someone who doesn't need the cred rub, b) start Angle's TNA career with a loss, c) create some wack-ass get-out-of-jail-free finish with run-ins or ref stoppages or something equally gaytarded. On the other OTHER hand, how long can you afford to wait with Angle?

 

More pro wrestling threads exist in the Anything Goes file. Be warned, though, as it mentions Jake Roberts :'(

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/33570/

 

Actually, they do follow the votes. The best example is last year's show, when you could vote for Christian to participate in one of the matches. His contract expired in the days before the show, but they flew him there anyway, put him on TV, and had every intention of using him if that's the way the votes went. Obviously, they didn't have to do any of that, and simply could have downplayed him and ignored it if he was voted in.

The first Taboo Tuesday also had a good example, as Shawn Michaels was voted to wrestle HHH for the world title. The thing was, Shawn injured his knee before the show, and if they were fixing the results they wouldn't have put Shawn in there to have a bad match on a bum leg. But since he won, he gutted it out and wrestled, forcing the match to be built around the fact that he was injured.

The rub is that they'll use the TV shows to steer people into voting the way they want them to. For example, clearly building up Carlito as the man to wrestle Jeff Hardy for the I/C title. If the votes didn't matter, they'd have no reason to do that... they'd just go with whatever voting result they wanted.

The ironic part is that it would probably seem more legit if they did fix the results, because then, using the Carlito example, they could build up Carlito, Nitro, and Shelton equally and then just claim that whoever they wanted in the match was the one who got the votes. But because the votes are taken seriously, they try to single out a certain option, and when that option wins it's not as surprising and doesn't seem as "interactive".

 

Also, about web sites for wrestling news, these are the only ones you'll ever need:

wrestlingobserver.com - Dave Meltzer's site
pwtorch.com - Wade Keller's site
pwinsider.com - Dave Scherer's site

Those are the 3 top reporters on the wrestling biz. News you read on any other site is just repeated from what those 3 guys are saying on their sites and/or their newsletters. And when the news is repeated, it's not always done accurately. In fact, more often that not, it isn't.

 

When I was a rasslin' fanboy, I read Pro Wrestling Torch so I could find out what was really going on. Kessler has a quality product.

 

I'd say Meltzer's site is well ahead of Keller in that his scoops pan out more, there's much less advertisement interference and he also does quite a bit of UFC coverage. He also does a good radio show on Sports Byline, which I didn't know still existed.

Scherer's okay, but make sure your pop-up blocker is updated and ready to go before you venture there.

 

Agreed on Nigel, he'd be a great fit in WWE. Necro doesn't fit what they value at all, and Danielson has little to no interest in WWE or TNA. He likes wrestling in the indys where he can go 20 or 30 minutes and emphasize technical wrestling.

 

I just watched Smackdown this morning (thanks TIVO). I enjoyed the Kane/Undertaker vs. Kennedy/MVP match. I hope they keep K/U together, but I doubt it. I have a feeling it was a one-time deal.

 

Kennedy's a great story.

The guy was essentially an OK indy name, latched on with the WWE and came up with what Meltzer called "the gimmick of the year" with him announcing his (actually, McMahon's middle name) name before the matches.

"MRRRRRRRRR. KENNNNNNNNNNNNNEDDDDDDDDDDDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! KENNEDY!!!"