March 28, 201411 yr comment_5596157 How bout Dave giving Shoemaker credit for Trips using the Reality Era line on RAW
March 28, 201411 yr comment_5596187 This was the piece that Simmons did that reference Snuka-Backlund (for the most recent time): http://grantland.com/features/the-action-hero-championship-belt It's an example of one of the things Simmons doesn't do well. He's had this Championship Belt concept for years, and applied it to various things like Best QB or Best Comedy Guy. The concept is kinda-sorta cute when applied to Action Heroes, but he creates some rules to apply to himself then ignores them, going from early long reigns to bouncing the title all over the place to running out of steam in the 00s. The problem is that it likely encourages people like Barnwell to do stuff like that as well. Which is too bad because Barnwell did a good job of covering with 8 pieces in 14 days before blowing up with no transactional piece in the past two weeks despite players still being signed and talent still out there... but I digress. John
April 2, 201411 yr comment_5596754 http://grantland.com/the-triangle/wrestlings-greatest-shoots-wrestlemania-edition-hulk-hogan-vs-richard-belzer
April 2, 201411 yr comment_5596756 Tweeting that link to Steve Austin brought me so much joy. For those who don't know Austin has a child fascination with that incident on his podcast.
April 3, 201411 yr comment_5596845 http://grantland.com/features/wrestlemania-preview-2014-triple-h-the-booker Over the years, readers have taken me to task for endlessly harping on the Reality Era. I’ve been told that I ignored backstage rumors and the perceived ineptitude of WWE’s creative team in favor of watching wrestling with the best (or most interesting) possible reading. What can I say? I have a soft spot for mythmaking. But it’s not just me being an apologist; it’s an actual tradition in literary theory. I'm thinking people are going to enjoy this one...
April 4, 201411 yr comment_5596866 He must have corrected it since it's now "the amazing, Italian-steeped Swiss".
April 4, 201411 yr comment_5596869 Tweeting that link to Steve Austin brought me so much joy. For those who don't know Austin has a child fascination with that incident on his podcast. Which episode?
April 4, 201411 yr comment_5596874 It's more like which episode doesn't he talk about it. That and the Dr. D thing.
April 9, 201411 yr comment_5598368 http://grantland.com/features/undertaker-loss-brock-lesnar-wwe-wrestlemania-30 Folks can sift through that. This one is... odd: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-ultimate-warrior-1959-2014 Just one piece: His legacy in WWE cannot be overstated. Despite not carrying the company, as Hulk Hogan did before him, his victory over the Hulkster at WrestleMania 6 signaled a legitimate changing of the guard. His nuclear charisma forced a shift away from the repetitive mythology of the Hulkamania era and into a grayer morality and a darker outlook. We relished in the neon paint, the arm tassels, the rippling muscles, and the antic ring entrances, but there was a deeper shift going on.
April 9, 201411 yr comment_5598369 This guy needs to roll down the sleeves on his flannel shirt and catch the next bus to hell out of Brooklyn. His writing is more insulting to people who like wrestling than anything TNA has done.
April 18, 201411 yr comment_5599827 I was amused to see that in the sub-headline of his piece on Detroit wrestling, they turned the Sheik into the Iron Sheik. That's not Shoemaker's fault. It's just a funny illustration of the lack of wrestling knowledge among the people packaging his stuff.
June 2, 201411 yr comment_5605474 After reading Shoemaker's latest crap, I realized why I have never really been a fan of his writing all this time. Have you ever waited in line at an indy show, behind some dude who thought he knew everything there was to know about wrestling, because he read an issue or two of the Observer but a lot of Scott Keith? And he goes on and on, getting some facts right, but many, many other facts wrong, but keeps talking loudly to make himself sound smarter than the people he had gone to the show with, and to the other fans in line? And eventually you just pray that the doors open and you can get into the safety of the building just so you don't have to be around this dumbass one more minute? That guy is the Masked Man.
June 2, 201411 yr comment_5605485 Yeah and on top of that he plays the Simmons card of trying to force an over-arching narrative to wrestling (Reality Era, I cringed when HHH used that just because I bet fuckin Showmaker came in his pants). When Simmons does it, you can usually tell he is joking and just having fun with it. When his minions do it, it comes off as too self-serious and overbearing. I decided to read his latest article the mailbag, my first Shoemaker article in months. He managed to piss me off in the first three sentences. "Shield/Evolution growing mold" are you shitting me??!?!? It is just getting good. Jeez, they could milk this until Summerslam and still put on quality TV. You got to let things breathe, dude.
June 5, 201411 yr comment_5605935 Actual headline: "Who Will Be The Shield's Marty Jannetty?" http://grantland.com/features/wwe-payback-monday-raw-who-will-be-the-shields-marty-jannetty/ I'm not normally one for blind rage, but when even the TITLES of your articles make me want to punch myself to forget the stupidity of them, you've done something for the ages. Kudos.
June 5, 201411 yr comment_5605956 https://twitter.com/AKATheMaskedMan/status/474344961027375104 Davis Shoemaker @AKATheMaskedMan So I wrote Ultimo Dragon instead of Jushin "Thunder" Liger. Apologies to Liger, who is awesome, and to all who are shoot offended.
June 6, 201411 yr comment_5606002 The thing that's really off about Shoemaker at Grantland is that for every other major sport, their main guy is considered at worst, 'very good' at covering his sport. Lowe, Keri, the NHL guy whose name I always forget, Barnwell, and so on. Plus, Shoemaker's not even a great writer. I mean, I understand why they didn't grab Meltzer, for all the obvious reasons. But, Brandon Stroud over at WithLeather does a RAW recap weekly, and has the same basic approach to it that Shoemaker does, except he actually seems to have cared about wrestling.
July 11, 201411 yr comment_5612304 After listening to Shoemaker's podcast this week with Peter Rosenberg and Sam Roberts, my theory is confirmed; he is THAT guy at the indy show standing in front of you who thinks he knows a lot more than he does, and his friends all think he knows a lot more than he does. Awful.
July 11, 201411 yr comment_5612318 On Jesse's comment about Barnwell... good god has he had an awful run of articles since the end of early part of Free Agency in the NFL. The FA pieces had been solid, and pretty informative of who was out on the market, who fit where, what teams might be overpaying, etc. Then... He ventured horribly over into Soccer. He did an awful piece on "fixing" the first round of the NBA playoffs without bothering to look at whether the 1st Round differs greatly from Later Rounds over the past decade or so. He's dabbled in baseball, not of it very good. He ripped off Simmon's gimmick to do a Pitching Championship Belt which was terrible. This week it's The Battle for the Best Sports Movie Villain of All Time, which is brutal. Rather than stick with a core strength of Football, he's trying to be Simmons and write about everything, and work gimmicks. It's the NFL... there's enough material to write about 52 weeks a year. If he wanted to stretch himself out as a Writer (rather than as an Entertainer which seems to be his desire), he could work on a major feature piece a month in the off season while letting someone else (Mays) cover the weekly beat. Instead, it's places like Deadspin that have put out strong feature pieces on Football. It remains disappointing since I thought his work within the season had been good.
July 11, 201411 yr comment_5612328 The thing that's really off about Shoemaker at Grantland is that for every other major sport, their main guy is considered at worst, 'very good' at covering his sport. Lowe, Keri, the NHL guy whose name I always forget, Barnwell, and so on. Plus, Shoemaker's not even a great writer. I mean, I understand why they didn't grab Meltzer, for all the obvious reasons. But, Brandon Stroud over at WithLeather does a RAW recap weekly, and has the same basic approach to it that Shoemaker does, except he actually seems to have cared about wrestling. I don't imagine they'd want Stroud's incessant bleating. Shoemaker gives off more of a "hey look, I'm a wrestling writer and I'm cool" vibe.
July 11, 201411 yr comment_5612336 After listening to Shoemaker's podcast this week with Peter Rosenberg and Sam Roberts, my theory is confirmed; he is THAT guy at the indy show standing in front of you who thinks he knows a lot more than he does, and his friends all think he knows a lot more than he does. Awful. I've said it more than once but it amazes me the simple things he gets wrong. Like, common knowledge things he gets wrong or doesn't know. I always use it but he and Bill Simmons were talking about Curt Hennig and Bret Hart. Simmons asked why Bret Hart essentially took Hennig's place in 1991 and Shoemaker said he didn't know when someone who wasn't an idiot would have said that's when Hennig fell into injury problems.
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