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I took Foley's blog post the same way Strummer did. I'm glad I wasn't the only one!

I've been covering the story at Cageside Seats with Zach Arnold's help: Nobukazu Hirai's brain bleeding - Another lesson in the dangers of head trauma Keiji Mutoh resigns as All Japan Pro Wrestling president

Surprised no-one has mentioned "Superstar" Billy Graham who went from WWF champion in 1978 to being pronounced dead by Gorilla Monsoon as he had fallen so far off the radar or Bob Backlund who also drifted into obscurity after his first run as WWF champion. Slaughter's fall was really faster in 1984 than in 1991 too.

That's not quite right. Dave did kind of blow off the Quinton Jackson motorboating Karen Bryant because she was comfortable with it, which would be fair enough if Quinton didn't have a track record of similar behaviour with female interviewers that weren't as appreciative. But he did say the criticism of Rogan was deserved. I get the sense that Dave is so used to Dana and Rogan's nature that he can't muster much outrage for the situation. I'm just amazed how Joe Rogan didn't learn from his "f*****" mistake. Is it that difficult to avoid using offensive words on message boards when you're a public figure?

I would be very surprised if the autopsy didn't reveal that Savage had an enlarged heart, given that pretty much every muscular wrestler who died of a heart attack had one. Of course, we should wait for the autopsy to come in before judgement, but the steroid angle is obvious for a reason.

I was thinking the same thing. I think we've also deluded ourselves into believing we're better than everywhere else after years of backslapping rhetoric.

To make an analogy, as a gay man I don't see Kenny McBride of the UKFF in quite the same way when he became a militant defender of the Catholic Catechism on homosexuality and started linking homosexuality to paedophilia. People will be sarcastic dicks when you make such goad-worthy statements for a long time after.

Also, the Can Ams were an ageing banged up tag team, so they would have likely been stuck treading water in the WCW tag division, before fading into Saturday Night obscurity. Snow would have done better in the short term, but he had a good run with the Head gimmick in the Hardcore division that was better than being around for WCW's fall. Scorpio would have fared better in WCW than the WWF, but he landed on his feet being one of All Japan/NOAH's top foreign stars for seven years. So going to WCW instead of the WWF probably wouldn't have helped their overall careers in the long run too much.

Ouch~! I missed that one. John I think Sean is talking about this post: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...p;#entry5427978

Depends on the country. I think you'd be right about Western Europe, but not Eastern Europe, where ice hockey was very popular and the WWF didn't have the same foothold. Gretzky's still featured heavily in Wii videogames. Ten years after he retired.

Meltzer wrote about the feud in his Shinya Hashimoto obituary issue of the Observer in 2005. I could fish it out if that would be helpful. Ogawa going over to blow off the feud was one of the biggest mistakes New Japan made in that era.

Um, only with Vincent Verhei formatting the tables for him, it should be noted!

From the Torch archives, Dusty was placed on the booking team on June 8th 1998, and probably remained on the team until he was fired when Russo and Ferrara came in, but with his influence reduced when Nash was head booker:

"They're both entertainment so fuck it." - Dave defending Bryan's right to compare the WrestleMania match quality to that of UFC 129.

It's a handheld.

Everyone is skirting around whatever's wrong with him. I really want to know. The latest rumor is that he's got Hepatitis C. Which would actually explain the whole problem, and why TNA is so goddamn secretive about it. But keep in mind that there's been plenty of other Hep C talk recently (Waltman, Abdullah, Ian Rotten) so this might just be a copycat story. I think the reason why they are so goddamn secretive about it is because they allowed someone to wrestle with a medical condition for ten months that caused his job offer from WWE to be rescinded. I think WWE will have been a lot more vigilant about blood borne diseases ever since the incident where The Undertaker found out that Bob Orton had Hepatitis C after their Hell In A Cell match where he and both Ortons bladed.

To be fair, Heyman did latch himself onto Brock Lesnar, the top star in MMA, and seems to be hustling for himself pretty well outside wrestling.

Fit Finlay's firing inspires Lance Storm to write a column entitled Too Sensitive where he wonders whether "in a World so worried about being politically correct, and not offending anyone, is it even possible to get heat anymore". My favourite part: Trust Lance not to even consider the loss of kayfabe making cheap heat angles like this much less effective.

Nostalgia shows in the Carolinas did very well for awhile a few years ago.

The Undertaker was in the final match of both SummerSlam '94 and Survivor Series '94.

I'd normally agree, but actually looking at a YouTube video of the match, it looks like Flair is telling the truth, as Savage was the one fishing into his tights after the megaphone shot, went over to Flair and looked like he forcibly gigged him.

I wouldn't put too much stock in that report just yet, he may just be holding out for a better deal. Really to take the first offer given when the company is in such a weak state would be a pretty foolish thing to do.

Dave was amusing on Observer Radio saying "God damn that's scary" at the prospect of Christian vs. Mark Henry main events, despite Christian being as good as he is. Wade broke the story on TNA's upcoming rebranding campaign. I think part of it is that what Wade reports flies under the radar a bit nowadays.

It came one week after Bret bladed on a WWF PPV, Loss, at a time when WCW didn't want to be outdone by their competitors. Connect the dots.

That was a joke, hence my happy smiley face.