sek69

Gah, the "ITS A PERSONAL CHOOOOOOOOOICE" crowd is really pissing me off. Like I said in the DVDVR thread, it's really not a personal choice when it's been made clear the company considers guys who don't do what they're told to be pussies who can't handle the workload of being a wrestler.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175782.html The price point is rumored to be $19.99, which would be awesome. If you've played any other Fire Pro games, that's pretty much all you need to hear. If you've never played, GO OUT AND GET THIS GAME! Fire Pro, IMO, is the greatest series of wrestling games ever produced. Even the two games for GBA are worth the effort to track down (the first one might be hard to get thanks to the UFC though).

from WO.com:

Wow what a douche. The divorce was the last straw, but pretty much everyone agreed wrestling left him a mess physically. JYD's death was not drug related, but he certainly had a problem. It cost him his job in the WWF when he was a top babyface. You can tell he's never worked a job outside of the pro wrestling business. You can't even get hired to work the fryolator at McDonald's without passing a drug test. Also, most non sports jobs are not likely to be rife with roids or HGH either. Nancy and Daniel would beg to differ. Only midcarders were getting released and the suspensions stopped when they started to interfere with storylines/PPVs which tells you all you need to know about how serious their testing is. So is Ryder trying to wrangle himself a WWE job or what? Surely he doesn't think they need him to be their interweb shill?

Which is one of my biggest concerns. Congressional action is essentially drug testing employees of a private company. Would any of us be comfortable if the government tested us for drugs at our own workplace? If my workplace had an alarming amount of deaths, I'd probably welcome any investigation. Now I realize Congress may not be able to directly change WWE policy, but perhaps airing all their dirty laundry on a public forum would shame them into making some real changes. If nothing else, for the stockholders' sake at least. I can understand how anti-government people would be upset at this, but then they should stop and think how we got to this point.

I don't think anyone's trying to arrest Vince, that's just WWE "everyone's out to get us" paranoia. However, if evidence turns up that Vince or any WWE official was aware of the drug trafficking these doctors seemed to be doing, they could be boned. I think people kinda want the deaths to slow/stop more than "OMG GET VINCE".

I don't get why people over on DVDVR are upset about this. We just had a month of "OMG SOMEONE NEEDZ TO FIX TEH BIZNEZZ" but having Congress investigate is apparently a horrible thing. I suspect some folks don't want their fake fighting messed with and will just take the trail of dead bodies as collateral damage.

I'm pretty sure he wrote it so he should at least own the publishing rights unless he was really bad at negotiating when the deal was made.

The irony of someone who worked closely with ECW chastising anyone about honesty when it comes to drug usage is off the charts. You can tell Marc Mero must be getting under people's skin when the personal attacks start. It also speaks volumes of the inability of disputing what he says when the most people can come up with is challenging if he was over or not, as if that matters at all when discussing drug problems. What was the point of him bringing up other things the Congressional committee is working on? Is it not possible for them to deal with more than one issue at a time?

Makes me wonder why WWE can't secure the rights to it then, it's not like Hayes is ever going to use it again and the video is a "Shorties" segment if there ever was one. Then again, WWE doesn't seem to have the rights to half the songs on the albums they made themselves either.

Assuming the median on his age is 40, and he's already a grandfather, is this some kind of father-daughter Gilmore Girls thing going on? How old was Big Dave when he became a father? Also, if this is real, I want to hear how they handle the Batista: Wacky Womanizer approach they seem to be going for with his wife having cancer during it.

Maybe they actually used Freebird that night? Consisidering they were deep in the sequins and makeup phase at this point, I doubt it.

More WWE editing hilarity: The Freebirds' entrance is clipped completely from GAB 90, they didn't even get the dubbed over generic music treatment. What makes it great is that I have to assume the Birds were using Badstreet USA or some other song made by current member of the WWE inner circle Michael Hayes, and they couldn't even secure the rights to his music either.

I can't wait for JR to diplomatically call her a cunt now too.

From his review of a match involving Tugboat on the Hulkamania Forever! video: Now I admit that the Vince angle did come to an abrupt end, but did I miss this in all the Benoit stuff or is Scooter getting his HAWT GRAPZ N00Z from crackheads again?

CMLL could afford it?

Holy shit, the 4/21/76 episode of CWF that just came up is the greatest thing ever. Funky 70s theme music, Gordon in a pink 70s jacket, Dusty with a paralyzed face looking and sounding eerily like current Jim Ross, Andre, Frank "Not Brody Yet" Goodish.......just wow............ *edit* If that wasn't enough, Goodish is teaming with KING CURTIS~! (with hair~!)

Heyman never seemed to grasp the ultimate goal of a con either. However you have to admit becoming Jim Jones to the ECW mutants, preaching against the evils of the Big Two companies, all while WWF money kept them afloat has to rank up there with the most awesomest cons ever. I remember being personally shocked when I found out how long Vince was giving them money.

Actually, there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself since the fans see the guys who win all the time as the ones to get behind. It's when guys like Hogan and Nash take it to ridiculous degrees that it becomes a problem. Speaking of, despite how much I personally think he's awesome, Nash getting TNA to hire him when he has nothing left to offer and ends up making everyone else around him look like tiny jobbers is a great con.

I was just reading in the new WON I got today how the Japanese fans at the ROH show "booed and cheered faces and heels not because of US style fan passion, but because they thought that's what you are supposed to do when you see American wrestling". For greatest cons, I vote for JR conning smart fans into his "golly shucks, I'm just a Okie who tells it like it is because I keep getting fired by Vince" act when he's one of (and in light of recent events possibly *the*) biggest company douchebag in WWE.

Holy shit. Also, I wonder how many of the people who are playing the "PERSONAL CHOICEZ~!" card are the people who would throw a spaz fit and point to the workout routine when it was suggested that Benoit might be on roids of some sort.

When mentioning the "Fighter of the Year" ESPY in this week's WON he seemed annoyed that not only was the award not presented on TV, but they didn't even mention it or show anyone who was nominated in the crowd.

You know, at least when a WWE employee spouts ridiculous bullshit you can say "well, he's trying to keep his job", but Lance is just an idiot. I mean, technically there's no one forcing wrestlers to take drugs but to act like you don't know what compels them to do so is just plain retarded. How can anyone argue that to get any significant push in the WWE you need to be either A. freakishly tall B. freakishly fat or C. freakishly muscled. You can be in the WWE without any of those qualifications, but don't expect to get too much further than the midcard if that. Do people who push the "personal choice" argument really think someone like Benoit would be pushed at the level he was with the exact same skill but off roids? On what would they base that opinion on? And for that matter, why doesn't anyone on any of these talk shows (and someone might have, I didn't watch them all) just lay all the cards on the table already and point out that the company that shapes what pro wrestling is defined as is run by a 62 year old man who was recently on the cover of Muscle and Fitness looking like Popeye after a spinach bender? Hell, all you'd need to do is show a clip of Vince walking to the ring for one of his matches and that pretty much would destroy any and all argument made by WWE. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to put these clues together. That's been the most frustrating thing of all this: You expect WWE to be deceptive and scummy but you'd think someone would do the 5 minutes of prep work necessary to completely own anyone coming on a show simply to spread bullshit.

So the first ROH PPV was available on my PPV system today and I watched a full ROH show for the first time in a while (I've seen matches, but I don't thin I've seen a whole show since Punk left). The card, for those who haven't seen it yet: The first thing you're presented with is an "ROH" chant from the crowd. Chanting the promotion's name really irks me for some reason. It would happen during matches too. When someone nearly dies on an awesome highspot or hits a cool move it seems almost disrespectful to the wrestler to chant the promotion name. It's like if the old Techwood Studio crowd would have started an "NWA" chant during a Horseman beatdown. The production was actually pretty good. You can tell it's not WWE, or even TNA, but it's not like it was embarrassing in any way. They seem to be a little too self conscious about getting the point across that they've had shows in other countries. I mean it's one thing to convey the message that your title has been defended around the world, but after the third or fourth mention of Japan I could see how a non fan would start to think it was typical pro wrestling bullshit. It's probably a small point to quibble about, but I don't know why seemingly every smaller wrestling promotion has to have some Napoleonic complex. Was it some optical illusion or something I've never noticed before that the ring seemed to be absolutely gigantic? Maybe my eyes are just used to tiny WWE rings. Moreshima was much more impressive here. The match I saw of him vs KENTA in Japan was pretty blah, they were still in the "Moreshima is the new Hansen" phase and it was just him killing KENTA with lariats and KENTA being all "RAR YOU CANNOT KILL MY FIGHTING SPIRIT" (until he finally did). The tag match was a lot better, Moreshima was busting out the fat guy aerial offense which is always surprising when you're not expecting it. The tag title match was good, if nothing else for Matt Sydal's willingness to die for our entertainment. I'm not quite on the "BRISCOES BEST TEAM EVAR" train yet, but they seem to be way better than any other team in ROH right now. Also, has Adam Pearce always been that good at promos? What made it even better was you didn't even realize till later that he really didn't say anything. The whole "Tank and Sara do squats" skit seemed pretty riveted on as an "HAY GUYS WE HAVE WOMENS TOO" moment to any WWE fan who may have wondered across the show. "No Remorse Corps" isn't that bad of a stable/team name. "The Resilence" is. It sounds like something you'd need antibiotics for. Speaking of, this was my first experience with Roderick Strong. His gimmick is he has 1,001 ways to do a backbreaker? Really? I guess he'd be huge in Mexico. Part of me was wondering if it wasn't some bizarre rib on Randy Orton and his love of the chinlock to have a guy be a master of a transition hold. One thing I noticed, and this isn't just a ROH thing, is the announcers. Not that they're bad or anything, but there was just something about them I couldn't put my finger on. Then I realized what it was: They're way too young sounding. Most indy feds have this problem, and there's probably not a lot they can do about it. One thing the announcer does is convey to the viewer that of all the shit you've watched in your life, this shit you're watching now is the best. That message is best conveyed by an older (or at least older sounding) dude who has that pull of someone who's seen it all so you can believe it when he tells you how great what you're seeing is. World Class had Bill Mercer, the NWA had Gordon Solie, Stampede had Ed Whalen, UWF/WCW/WWF had Jim Ross. It just doesn't sound convincing when the announcers look and sound like two guys who could have been pulled out of the crowd and put in suits. Marafuji vs Romero was proabably my favorite match of the show, despite the ROH fans doing their best to annoy me with how they mark over anyone Japanese as if it was the reincarnation of Giant Baba, but that horse gets beat enough. All in all I have to say I enjoyed the show, and I'll probably buy the next show in September. Probably the best ROH could hope for in a PPV debut.

So as someone who works for a cable company, I'm on a mailing list for WWE' promotions people. I got this in my inbox today: The current promotional material involved Umaga and the Jackass crew. Is the big angle already scrapped?