Pro Wrestling

Press Release: RING OF HONOR ANNOUNCES SALE TO SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP BRISTOL, PA. (MAY 21, 2011)--Ring of Honor Wrestling owner, Cary Silkin, announced today the sale of the promotion to Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., one of the largest television broadcasters in the country and which owns and operates, programs, or provides sales services to 58 television stations in 35 markets across the United States. ROH, currently the third largest wrestling promotion in the country, just celebrated its ninth anniversary, and Mr. Silkin is excited about taking the next step towards increasing the company's visibility and expanding its operations. "We have be…

Does it have to go that way, though? Well, probably, yeah, but maybe we could at least try to clear the air. Look, we all like the professional wrestling. I think that's kinda obvious. But the why's and how's of it can be pretty variable. There's nothing wrong with that. I want to make that perfectly clear. But I do want to get this out of the open, stripped of the other subjects these arguments tend to manifest in (Mark Henry, anyone?), so that we all know where we're coming from in other threads. I think a lot of us have an idea of what a lot of other posters look for in wrestling, but some of those ideas are probably more accurate than others, and in any case, you …

http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/snanemcmahontodepartWWE Fascinating. There has to be more to this. I know it was for different reasons, but it's interesting that two McMahons are no longer part of the company. Looks like it's just Vince and Stephanie now (not counting HHH and Marisa).

I decided to do a random google search on this earlier and this thread came up from Wrestlezone: http://forums.wrestlezone.com/showthread.php?t=70524 It's fairly clear to me reading that, that probably not one of those posters genuinely watched WWF in the early 90s. It's clear that they are mainly fronting it out. The general consensus there is that DiBiase is obviously the best worker out of the four, but Rotunda probably the worst "although underrated". A lot of weight seems to be given to Money Inc's three tag title wins and WHO they won them against: Legion of Doom, Natural Disasters and the Steiners. Now both you and I know that 1) they have got this …

1 - spitting blood is cool because it shows the guy really wants it 2 - girls are supposed to be exactly as strong as 200 pounds guys and should go through the *exact* same training 3 - WWE workers are all able to stand on the top rope and do squats. Ask HHH, he can do it for hours 4 - wrestlers work injured and that's the bizness. Ask HHH, he tore his quad once, and he keep on going. 5 - Bill Demott who did exactly nothing but be a JTTS on Nitro, and who got a slight push when there was nobody else on the roster and when his ring-name was Hugh G Rection, is a great trainer. 6 - Luke has accomplished exactly zilch but is already as annoying as Shawn Micheals in…

The Texas history stuff in the comments that don't warrant a thread...thread got me wondering about this. The history of how wrestling evolved in Texas over the years is a pretty big deal, but because just about everything available on video is from after the splits, people think of Houston as being a St. Louis/Toronto-esque "one big city" promotion that favored certain offices at times as opposed to part of a full-time territory, whether it was Fritz's, Blanchard's, or Watts's. They don't realize that Boesch and Blanchard with his (San Antonio-centered cities that became the main part of the Southwest Championship Wrestling territory) had just been associate promote…

I'm pretty sure that anyone who calls themselves a 'wrestling fan' has noticed in the last couple of years, there has been a steady decline in tag team wrestling. So why has this happened? Lets examine WWE first... The last time a tag team in WWE could call themselves 'credible champions' was last year when the Hart Dynasty held the belts (and to a lesser extend, Drew Macintyre and Cody Rhodes). There was a really good build to the Hart Dynasty becoming champions. Starting with a push, post Wrestlemania, DH Smith and Tyson Kidd were quickly built with the excitment from Bret Hart's return still in focus. They defeated Big Show and The Miz to earn a shot at the titles…

Like most people on the internet, I loved Japanese wrestling in the 90s, grew disenchanted with the deterioration of the All Japan style in the late 90's, New Japan's self-destructive booking, and the overall collapse of the industry in the early 2000s. I paid attention to NOAH during Kobashi's title reign and enjoyed parts of it, but haven't watched much over the past few years. I hated the strike exchanges, no-selling, and guys needing to stiff the hell out of each other to get reactions. It seemed to me like the Puro-style had devolved to being like a bad ECW show where guys needed to kill each other to get a pop. I've been reading about how New Japan is having a s…

Thought this would be an interesting topic. Obviously, if we were considering best of all time, I can't imagine how anyone but Hulk Hogan would fall in this category, but if we're looking at current wrestlers and how they market themselves, I've gotta go with Chris Jericho, who seems to be more media savvy than anyone in wrestling these days. I'll elaborate more later, but I'm curious what everyone else thinks.

http://www.youtube.com/stranglercorleone Check out The Strangler...one of the best heel promo guys on the INDIES....

Myself, Hollinger and a host of others attended the Smackdown tapings in Des Moines tonight and had a ton of fun. It's been a long time since I saw a WWE event live, at least 5-6 years. Some thoughts: - The crowd was surprisingly low for a TV taping. I know they would get more fans for RAW, but there were still maybe only 4-5,000 in a 16,000 seat arena tops. They even did the half-curtain of the arena. Considering this and the large amount of radio advertising in recent weeks, it makes me happy to even get the 200 average we get at our local 3XW shows just a block away on a super-limited adverting budget. - The only one who truly received a star reaction wa…

from WO.com: I wonder if CMLL will end up like early 80s AWA when Vince decided he wanted 3/4ths of their talent pool. AAA survived all their guys going to WCW in the 90s, so who knows.

Just a random question I was thinking about the other day. Obviously when Vince McMahon dies there will be a shift in power and things could change dramatically in the WWE, but what if more than Vince dies. I know the president and vice president fly on different planes so if something happens they aren't both taken out, but i don't think most businesses do that though i could be wrong. We may not know the actual answer to this, but who is usually on the WWE jet lets say when they are on there way to a Pay per view location? If the WWE jet crashed and everyone died who would that leave in charge? I know it's a bit morbid but i often wonder about worse case scenerio situa…

Are there any wrestlers in the world whose matwork can compare to the very best in Lucha, like Blue Panther, El Dandy, Negro Navarro? Got exposed to Japanese wrestling, which is great for its own reasons, a few years ago. Only in last six months have I been exposed to real Lucha. And man, I don't think there's better wrestling out there if you care about, um, wrestling -- matwork, submissions, ground game, pinfalls. I'm astounded more American wrestlers don't take holds from Lucha.

From Iraq to the Ring This is a story I shot and edited on OVW wrestler Michael Hayes. The guy is pretty inspiring. I hope you guys like this. I consider it to probably be the best thing I've ever done.

Did they do a Macho Man tribute at the beginning? I missed the first 5 minutes. R-Truth vs. Rey Mysterio - Decent but short opener. Truth took a nasty bump early on outside the ring followed by a Rey rana. The end was never really in doubt since they have been pushing Truth lately Wade Barrett vs. Ezekiel Jackson - Crowd didn't give a shit about this match. I tried to stay engaged but not good at all. I know some people put too much emphasis on strikes and others don't mind at all but this had some of the shittiest strikes and selling of said strikes I have ever seen. Jackson gives Barrettt 5 bodyslams to Barrett which gets the crowd into it and he was abou…

Has anyone written about the weird matches in 1999 between Hashimoto and Ogawa? It seems to me that this was part of Inoki's plan to capitalize on the growing popularity of MMA and worked just about as well as sending Nagata to be massacred. It seems like something John Williams may have written about, but internet searches are letting me down. Any one have thoughts on these matches? I remember them being very exciting, but they kind of destroyed one of New Japan's big draws for little long term benefit.

Punk vs. Orton - Really sick spots in this one and I thought it was well constructed for a finisher killer match. I was hoping against hope that one of Punk's spots would have finished it but I knew Orton was going over. Reminds me of HHH pinning Jericho back to back in 2002. Is it just my feed or is the crowd really quiet tonight?

This is something i've been thinking about a lot recently. Although this is something people are sick about hearing, with WWE's so called 'Expansion' annoucement, it got me thinking about how Vince's greatest success has seemingly become his most embarassing achievement. Now before I proceed, I want to iterate that I'm not going to be focusing on Vince himself, I do not know him personally so I will merely be writing about his character from a public perspective, anyway. No one can deny that Vince McMahon is the greatest Wrestling Promoter of all time, he saw things the business was lacking and had the balls to go all in. A lot of people resent his actions in the ear…

I'm interested to know what everyone's picks will be for this. All you do is rank your Top 3 in each of the following categories by copy-pasting the below and adding your picks, then PM them to me. I'll collate and announce the results in a few weeks. Top ranked in each category will form the forum's theoretical "dream team" for TV. For fun, I've also included a "worst" option in each category, the most "worsts" will form a "Nightmare" team. Number 1 pick gets 5 points, number 2 will get 3 points and number 3 gets 1 point. "Worst" gets -1. In a lot of the categories, I can see there being at least 2 obvious front runners, so I'm especially interested in what peopl…

Well, shit http://www.thefightnetwork.com/news/10465:...inlay-released/

I have narrowed it down to these out of some seasons to watch: 1981/82 Georgia Championship Wrestling 1985 World Wide TV 1986 AWA 1987 Memphis 1992 Saturday Night TV 2004 Smackdown These shows are all things I have tasted but never in full context. Much as I would like to get them all, I think finances will likely force me to pick three of them -- out of the six listed. Besides, with the 1996 set factored in, I figure I'd be hard pressed to watch more than three of these at one time anyway. For variety and just plain fun watching, what would you guys choose? Help me winnow it down, please. . .

I thought of just posting in the "comments" thread, but I wondered if the constant lows of TNA ought to be broken out to their own thread. If there's another TNA or Cageside thread, or this "doesn't warrant," apologies. I wanted to highlight Cageside's piece on Daffney and her legal fight with TNA. This is really pretty shameful stuff, mostly because TNA do make their claims about caring about their workers while trying to get away with things that WWE (or a legit sport, or any large company) would get bad attention for. Abyss may need surgery after getting teeth knocked out by RVD at this week's tapings; I wonder if the company will pay for that. I think t…