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TBH Hogan proved with Pastamania that he probably would have failed at another supposed food deal too Also, I love this board so much. We can drag a great conversation about racial disparity, patriotism, blackness, boxing, and US history from "Hogan opens mouth, inserts foot. Again."

We shouldn't view Wrestling ratings the way we view Wrestling ratings. It's like saying Transformers is a better movie than Labyrinth because it made more money. Who gives a shit? Caring about US viewing figures should have died when Eric Bischoff's career in wrestling should have. This TV show is shown in dozens of countries around the world, but it's of paramount importance that everyone invest massively in how many Americans watch it on television. Does that not strike anyone else as slightly ridiculous? Is it going to get cancelled? No? Then the rating is high enough. The fuck do I care how many advertising dollars WBD can earn from it?

A sense of humor and self-deprecation is VERY important. Hogan can't laugh at himself. Why do you think Shaq has been able to do this shit for decades?

No matter how hard I try... you keep pushing me aside... And I can't break through... There's no talking to you Well, last week had quite a few debuts and surprises, didn't it! There are now more Samoans and Tongans than ever on Smackdown! Drew McIntyre quits live on Raw! And even on NXT... someone said his name! It's so sad that you're leaving, it takes time to believe it.... But after all is said and done, you're gonna be the lonely one, oh! And even with all that, we're still well on the road to Money in the Bank in a couple of weeks! More qualifying matches this week! And ooh, Breakker/Kaiser tonight! Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, I really don't think you're strong enough, no! But of course, the big story of the week is the debut of the Wyatt Sick6 as they begin their reign of terror... but first, Whataburger! Did I expect to use the gayest song of the 1990s for this week? No. But sooner or later, we will all BO-LIEVE! Happy Pride everyone!

Forman calling fights for HBO had a lot of the same qualities John Madden; came across as a bit of a lovable goof who deep down really knew what he was talking about

Foreman came across as truly genuine, had a sense of humor, and could be somewhat self deprecating, that’s why he was a good pitch man, Hogan had/has none of those attributes.

I think one of the bigger points is what's considered to be a patriotic tends to have a lot of goal post movement. I mean Ruby Ridge happened. Waco happened. The Unabomber happened. Matter of fact, guess what happened three days before Foreman fought Axel Schulz? The Oklahoma City bombing. Nobody ever went, "Shit, I guess white people ain't happy to be here." Another thing is if people like you, then they like you. Especially if you can keep a strong facade. When the George Foreman biopic came out a couple years ago now, some things came to light about George that probably would have destroyed his image had it been 20+ years prior. But that's the thing. Ray Mercer represented the USA on the 1988 boxing team in the Olympics while being in the U.S. Army. If you can find something more patriotic than serving your country, I would like to know. However, because his disposition ain't that pleasant looking and he looks like he can knock your head into the nearest body of water, he never really got marketed as being this proud American guy who everyone should look up to. I never heard stories about Mercer being on drugs or having a lot issues boxers usually have. Granted, he had some stumbles in terms of focus that hurt his career in ring that were largely his fault. However, he didn't get the steam on him the same as a Tommy Morrison. As Mercer tells the story surrounding sort of the business side of their fight, Mercer was a getting raw deal in terms of his purse by Top Rank who I believe promoted both guys at the time and chose to take it out on Tommy. Poor Tommy Morrison almost got decapitated. Tommy was presented as the All-American guy. Humble and well spoken. Always giving great analysis post fight about what he could do better even if he won by first round KO. He became the picture of what an All-American looks like and Mercer is just this black guy. Then, once Morrison sort of fades into obscurity when the HIV diagnosis abruptly halts his career, it comes out that Tommy was out there partying, doing drugs, and cheating on his significant other at every turn being with a different woman every night. Before the diagnosis though, Don King signed him and was positioning him to fight Tyson later in 1996 after Tyson could unify the titles. Morrison being taken out of the picture entirely sped up the Tyson-Holyfield deal. If he had gotten the fight though, he's going to be the babyface in that whole thing when in actuality Tyson and Morrison had a lot more in common than many would expect at the time. However, Morrison was able to keep up that facade until it came down entirely. When race is involved, it tends to distort things. You can tag someone with any label even if that label makes absolutely no sense.

I can confirm that the old ladies I work with do not view soap opera ratings the same way we view wrestling ratings.

Have you ever watched a Wrestling show with someone who doesn't like wrestling? You should try it. See how long it takes before they say "When are they going to stop talking and start fighting?". All of this "We need stories for the casuals" is a nonsense. People who don't watch wrestling, they might like a funny move, or something spectacular. They don't want 20 minute soliloquies, or 30 minute matches that are 5 minutes of wrestling and 25 minutes of stalling.

George Foreman is definitely John Madden level greatness. Definitely 1 of the few guys in Madden’s league at just plain being fun while also being genius somehow.

I agree with this, broadly. However, with all respect, I think it's a mistake to fold these sorts of neo-Nazi or largely white right-wing Christian movements into what was happening with race relations broadly and black-white race relations specifically in the '90s. Nobody ever suggested that white people weren't happy to be here because those events you mention were cast in the media as fringe movements, not as a mainstream way of thinking or living for greater white America. That's very different from the events I mentioned, which were cast as some sort of historical referendum on black Americans no matter who they were or where they wre from. I'm not suggesting that how these events were cast was true or accurate; I'm just suggesting that the media's choice of framing on these events was different and held a lot of power in terms of how Foreman was embraced by the wider American public. I think it's important to look at how race relations were polling in the 1990s: https://news.gallup.com/poll/318851/perceptions-white-black-relations-sink-new-low.aspx Specifically: Optimism about the future of relations between the two racial groups was below 50% in the mid- to late 1990s, spanning the Rodney King riots and O.J. Simpson case. You can look at the chart below this quote at the link and see the polling for this issue dipped to 29% (!) believing that black-white relations would ever be positive in 1995/96. Personally, I can only read Foreman's new-found popularity in that context, but I understand if others don't. 100%. One of the things that I'll note w/r/t Foreman's public persona is that it certainly did lighten up during his comeback. I just recently read Norman Mailer's The Fight, and in it, Mailer makes a point of noting the juxtaposition between how Foreman is seen by the greater white American audience and what Foreman has said about his upbringing, which is boilerplate WASP-culture stuff about uplifting oneself, America being a nation of opportunity for anyone if they just do the right thing, being proud to wave the American flag at the same Olympics that John Carlos and Tommie Smith held up black gloves, etc. So while I do think that how Americans broadly view patriotism matters, I don't think it's the mainstream beliefs about what is patriotic that really changes very much. America is, for good and ill, heavily defined by Puritan-influenced WASP culture. But times change, and contexts change, and Foreman saying and doing these things in 1974 post-Civil Rights Movement when there's a bunch of pushback against the gains of that era is taken very differently than in 1994, when the pushback era has sort of eroded after H.W. Bush has left office and there is a new generation of voters who have noticed that the post-Great Society revolution that was supposed to happen w/r/t race (and everything else) didn't happen. I think Foreman didn't change much inwardly. What he did change was his outward persona, but again, that's contextual. It's hard to be a smiling, joyful black American in 1974 in the midst of post-CRM pushback and with Ali derisively pointing out your patriotism. In 1994, it's much easier to do that with no Ali there picking at you, 25 years after the CRM, and with mainstream white America looking for a sign that not all is lost w/r/t race relations between white and black Americans. 1000%. I think the label that '90s Foreman got compared to '70s Foreman is the far more accurate label even though Foreman really didn't change much about what he was saying about himself and his identity. Now, to swing this back to Hogan, the reason this is one of my favorite Hogan fibs is because Hogan doesn't understand anything about how and why George Foreman was important to the national identity of the '90s, which is why Foreman got that grill deal. It's especially funny because Hogan was hugely important to the national identity of the '80s, so you'd hope that he'd stopped for a second or two to think about why he got that popular, so popular that everyone from every demo in America knew who he was. It would have maybe lent him some insight into why telling this particular fib about the grill doesn't hold up if you stop to think about it for three seconds. I know that there are many very successful people who think they were pre-ordained to be successful rather than considering themselves and the contexts that they came up in, but Hogan might be the textbook example of that type of person.

Yep, it was really the Holyfield fight that got the ball rolling on that. However, to the earlier point, it's funny cause Foreman was in that apolitical sphere during the prime of his career in the 70s. If anything, he was fighting that "big dumb oaf" vibe as this new era Sonny Liston where he's out there annihilating people with jabs and barely touching them. However, to quote Richard Pryor about Leon Spinks, "nobody ever said the heavyweight champion had to be no etymologist, anyway". Problem was he found himself in Ali's shadow much like Holmes later on and before that the pretenders to the throne fighting in that heavyweight tournament for the vacant world title and Joe Frazier up until he beat Ali in the first fight. What happened was much like Ali during his three year imposed hiatus, Foreman was able to reinvent himself without virtually doing anything. In the time Foreman was gone in the late 70s to the mid 80s and early in his second comeback fighting randoms, boxing had suffered a serious image problem much like the NBA around the same time period. Half of the combatants were on recreational drugs. Like Tyrell Biggs won the gold medal at the 84 Olympic games and was in rehab before the year was done. Kennedy McKinney had the same thing virtually after the 1988 Olympic games before coming back in the 90s and winning some world titles. And that's the U.S. Olympians. Fighters who were on the road to being great potentially like Michael Dokes were out there (in his own words) doing enough cocaine to kill a rhino. I dunno how much cocaine would actually kill a rhino but that sounds like a lot especially for one man. Hector Camacho and Aaron Pryor would disappear months and even years at a time battling addiction. That shit consumed the sport and almost destroyed it. Commentators (Al Michaels, Tim Ryan, Barry Tompkins, Jim Lampley, etc.) were on boxing broadcasts talking about cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and pill addictions like folks talk about coming back from torn ACLs and Tommy John surgery. It got to a point where it was a really casual. It was scary. That compounded with the newest supernova Mike Tyson going from bashful big kid from Brownsville to the Robin Givens ordeal and then later what happened in Indy gave folks the power to create this revisionist history around the supposed glory days of boxing. George Foreman was able to benefit greatly from that. In literally twenty years, not being well spoken goes from unappealing to all of sudden you can put "Big" George Foreman's face on every goddamn thing. He's this sportsman ambassador that transcends race in America, which very few people could do then and now. Muhammad Ali had to lose his career, lose his world titles, lose three crucial years of his prime, watch his name and religion be dragged through the mud, and then later develop Parkinson's disease that made it hard for him to communicate so he could become that. All George had to do was smile and shamelessly plug everything. Meanwhile, Hogan even five and six years removed from the steroid controversy and when WCW and specifically the nWo was white hot never had that type of popularity. Hogan was never really associated with this beloved bygone era other than this cartoon superhero pro wrestling that a lot of people aged out of. On top of that, the cause and effect allowed Hogan to have that mini rebirth anyway. If Hogan stayed this sanitized guy when folks clearly knew there is at least a decent bit of bullshit artist/con man in him, he would have faded away much like many of his contemporaries. However, that wasn't enough to make him this incredible pitchman. In the wrestling bubble which to be fair at the time was a huge bubble, he was a big star. Outside of that bubble, business as usual.

Couple other things. First One related to this quote. This obviously isn’t a 1:1 comparison, but when Raw/WWF looked like they were on their deathbed and there were even talks about WWF potentially folding (I remember this coming up frequently enough on WOR during the Eyada days and in the newsletter), they were starting to crank out good content on a consistent basis. It’s the last time you could look at Vince’s booking and say he was consistent and stuck with what was working despite things looking bleak. He actually stayed the course. Of course they had Austin (intermittently due to injuries), DX, the Nation and the Rock, Mankind, the Hart Foundation, etc. and those legendary acts are going to help, but they didn’t lead to an immediate turnaround at the time. Even still, they stuck with what they were doing week to week. He figured out what fans loved the most or at least he had decent storylines and he kept it going. A month of good wrestling and stories aren’t going to turn things around. Neither will 2 or 3 months, but if you stay consistent, it will turn around. Let the other company make mistakes and retake the market share that you have ceded to NXT, Raw, and SD. Basically, “It’s a problem you think we need to explain ourselves. Don’t. To anybody.” They’re on a roll. They have something in Ospreay. They have something in Swerve. They have something in Mark. Then there’s the no brainer guys like OC, Joe, the Elite, Toni, Mone, etc. MJF, while I hated his title reign and think he’s a bit overrated, should be positioned as a featured act. Like the clip says, they need to see this thing through, for better or worse. NXT is developmental and they’re going to falter when they rebuild again. Hell, I’m the process of seeing this through, you might actually, gasp, create more fans and grow the market for all of wrestling. This would include TNA. When WWF had their best legendary talent, they were in the pits ratings wise even putting on good shows or shows better than Nitro week to week. AEW isn’t even in that dire of a situation. They just need to stay the course. Now is not the time to shake things up. Secondly, the TV landscape is fucked up and makes no sense. Even with AEW doing their worst viewership number ever, they were still 3rd on the night. I have no idea how much of an impact Juneteenth of the Kendrick concert had, but it’s something. One of my friends out in LA didn’t specially say he and his friends were celebrating Juneteenth, but he did say this was their actual “beach day.” They do it every year on 6/19. I believe @Ace lives in the socal area so maybe he can weigh in, but is this something tied to Juneteenth? From what my friend said, the beaches they went to were all packed and they eventually had to settle on one. Then after being at the beach so day they went back to someone’s house to hang out and cook. I have no clue if one has anything to do with the other, but I don’t think you can discount 6/19 having an impact on viewership when everything was down to the point where with their worst number ever, Dynamite was still third and they’ll probably still be up high enough for the entire week. Even WBD has dismissed it. And related to all of that, something is amiss with TV numbers. I know folks point to it not being a good look to run large venues, but TK has mentioned in the past how they get a better deal to run those venues than smaller ones. It makes more sense financially to keep doing that then. Anyway, their live event numbers are fine, their PPV numbers are some of the most consistent buyrates I’ve ever seen, but the TV is falling off? I told the story in the past about how we were a Nielsen household and eventually I stopped it because it was way too intrusive and a pain in the ass. I don’t believe for one second that ONLY less than 600k people were watching Dynamite. I don’t believe that ONLY a couple million people are watching Raw or SD. And I know that’s how it’s supposed to work. They take a sample of the people watching and expand that to a certain number and everyone goes off of that number. It’s insane that we’re in the 2020s and everyone still relies on Nielsen as much as they do. I just don’t think it’s realistic. If it were, WWE wouldn’t consistently have record setting gates, sellouts, and merch sales and AEW wouldn’t have consistently good attendance numbers and buyrates. It just all doesn’t add up.

You knocked this all the way the hell out of the park. This is a fantastic answer. I have my doubts about the validity of how viewership is measured in 2024, too.

https://twitter.com/Maffewgregg/status/1805293039046332891

I had to go to a mental hospital for 8 days. Was there over Memorial Day weekend. My bipolar got really hard to manage and I had been struggling for a while. It was a wild 8 days. I am glad I went because I was going down some very dark places unfortunately. But even better — I really learned there what empathy for others really looks like. My first few days there were very scary. I was still completely out of it but when I came to — I was the only person my age who was functioning. People were either talking to delusions or just really zonked on medication. There was one 23-year-old who could have a conversation but that was it. My first night: We were also in our little outside area when there was a major fight in the building next to ours that was filled with really hard looking dudes — a lot of smashing and yelling and they had to evacuate all of the people on that floor to their rear pen while staff fled to whatever was going on. I was afraid it was a planned breakout and was just freaked out. A few other things were jarring. First — multiple homeless people were in the unit. This was not jarring in a bad way, but when do you ever share space with unhoused people? It was also affecting me because I went down the “these people have real problems, what the fuck is wrong with me?” rabbit hole. In PA, if you go to an emergency room and say you’re suicidal, they will find an available bed for you at a psych hospital. A lot of homeless know about this rule and will use it for housing, especially in the winter. It sounds like a loophole (it is) but if you’re homeless you also very likely need psychiatric care and that’s the only way you’re getting it. Another jarring thing: There was this really big guy who is schizophrenic on the floor. He would fight with the voices in his head and because of that would scream obscenities. He was in the room next to me and trying to rest and relax and sleep with someone screaming that all night long was really scary. But then later on, one of the staff members told us he was just a scared 23-year-old kid dealing with this awful disease and felt horrible about how people were scared of him. We started incorporating him more and more into activities and conversations. And over time (and because of the inclusion, partly) he started not having his outbursts. It was really great to see. The wildest stuff came from disruptive patients. Remember what I said before about the ER rule? A lot of addicts know about that rule, but a lot have no intention of trying to get clean. People with addiction are supposed to get into a drug unit but since Philly is the drug capital of the country these are few and far between. People in addiction who are there to get clean are usually very quiet since there is a huge amount of shame involved. But a good amount are there to try and score a dosage and prescription of some kind of benzo (Ativan and klonopin the most popular, especially from meth users.) They intend to be there for as few days as possible and will be as disruptive as they possibly can do a doctor will write them a prescription and send them on their way. One of the rules where I was at was that you had to keep your door shut if you were not in your room. So if you needed to go to the bathroom, you needed to get a floor tech (there are only 2) to open your door. But if someone is busy threatening a nurse or busy using the n-word or hiding a pill under their tongue and lying about it — that takes up all of the oxygen and attention so you have to wait to take a leak until that stops. But it got more comfortable as we progressed. More people were able to talk and it was a lot of really nice people who were dealing with similar stuff like I was — manic episodes lasting a few days where people were so sleep deprived they were having hallucinations (I have come close to that), or people dealing with major life stressors dealing with depression and suicide ideation (yep!) who wanted to become safe. People end up taking care of each other that way — even if someone is delusional or paranoid but really functioning. I will write more about all of this later. But it has been a wild summer for me.

Built up enough to justify putting over a new trio in their first real match in a two week program, to justify having some heel control during the match without it totally ruining the babyfaces’ credibility. For the purpose needed it was fine. It was even a half segment match. They didn’t go over a commercial break.

Also, Foreman used to joke about eating hamburgers during his training for fights, I’m sure that was a reason the grill people picked him and I doubt Hogan was even on their radar.

One thing I do want to highlight during AEW's run is those kind of happy accidents, like Jamie Hayter getting over and becoming a top star. Also Rusev of all people striking gold with his whole Redeemer thing. It didn't last that long, but there was that short stretch where it finally felt like Rusev was back where he needed to be. Also, Eddie Kingston probably one of the most genuine and believable guys on the roster. I think Eddie Kingston coming in to answer Cody's open challenge and managing to earn his spot in AEW was pretty incredible.

Video | Facebook Black Sabbath preforms Iron Man in a wrestling ring for some reason

Okay, I was able to find it. Timestamped is HBO's absolutely amazing video package for George on his final HBO broadcast narrated by Lampley of course. This pretty much encapsulates what pretty much everyone has said so far.

Different, but not too different because that's sort of the issue: You can fold blackness into itself and come up with same results, which is to your point about it being historical referendum of the race. You can also separate those movements from each other even though the one thing that ultimately binds it together is whiteness. Add on top of that, a lot of those groups or subgroups never really went away. They just devolved or evolved into something else. In the early 90s, the LA riots, Rodney King, etc. might as have been a world away from me because I had zero connection as a black person living in rural Mississippi. In 2024, Kendrick Lamar can have a concert in Inglewood at the Forum in basically the same area all those things happened and make it feel like you're there with him and everyone else. So when I pose the question of why folks didn't ask that at the time, it's not to belittle your point as much as a rhetorical question because all those things just didn't happen randomly as isolated events and how folks perceived politically and socially those events in real time.

That story has always been a bit nonsensical. If Hogan would have gotten that deal, that particular product wouldn't have been as popular. For some reason, George Foreman during that his second comeback (especially towards the tail end) was insanely popular. I mean it was to the point where someone ran a poll and George Foreman had more votes than any of the other actual U.S. presidential candidates at the time. Hogan's popularity meanwhile was going the opposite way. Why would they give that deal to Hulk when Foreman himself was a money making brand even before the grill? Even if Hogan got that deal, it wouldn't have been the same deal that Foreman got. Unfortunately, that's just how those type of deals go.

On the one hand. I actually agree with this sentiment. Unless you have ties to one of the companies involved or work in the tv industry, you shouldn’t care so much about ratings. It doesn’t affect you as a fan and most people outside the industry have a fairly poor understanding of what goes into the ratings or what the ramifications or good or bad ratings actually are. It’a a much more complex subject then we make it out to me, and most of the time we don’t know enough about the industry or variables to have an informed opinion. It’s like fancying yourself a legal expert because you watched a lot of Law and Order and washed it down with a YouTube channel. On the other hand, it seems like the “ratings shouldn’t be so important” talking point mostly gets trotted out when someone doesn’t like the rating in question and wants to divert the conversation.

Not to be confused with Brian Dennehy.

It depends on who's talking. Is the speaker engaging? Interesting? Fun to listen to? Or are they... well... 80-85% of the promos out there?

Not to be confused with Brian Keith.

WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT, JIMMY??? TAKE AWAY CURT MCGIRT'S SIDE BREAD, DUDE edit: @FourPostMassacre beat me to it I tip my plate of Hulkaroos to you.

Scorp was doing the 450 while stabbing him. These things happen upon checking the news.. it happened in my area but not in the same county as me. Scorp was in-between the Ameristar casino and Worlds of Fun stabbing a dude on a Saturday in Clay County also if it had happened in Jackson County, my jury duty date is next month so they wouldn’t be able to call me for this case so I can’t get out of it by noting that the defendant deserved a better push in 1993.

Imagining a kitchen with a boom box playing sounds of a loud kitchen with hissing pans and cooks yelling while a guy sits there smoking and opening cans of the real Chef in their establishment and dumping them in a plate to put in the salamander and get heated up

“No side bread for this dude” Didn’t it eventually come out that Pastamania was just a “Chef Boyardee restaurant”. Not defending Hogan but that wasn’t going to work with anyone.

I played the trial period for Balatro and didn't even get halfway through my hour before buying the game. Oh no, I think I have a new obsession.

The NXT studio fans are the direct opposite of a tough crowd. They just love and support everything that's put in front of them. They were thrilled when their developmental territory became a Super-Indie kickout fest, and they were also thrilled when their super indy became a developmental territory again.

I think also that it's important to remember the context outside of boxing. We were in the midst of Rodney King, the L.A. riots, O.J. Simpson, gangsta rap having Tipper Gore and a bunch of senators clutching their pearls. And here's George Foreman, happy black person and proud to be from the U.S.A. His appeal to a mainstream American audience at that time was undeniable. If you were feeling bad about race relations, Foreman was like a soothing balm.

The media repositioned him from from "Angry black man" Foreman to "Happy old guy showing that forty-something men still have the virility of their youth after he knocked out Michael Moorer" Foreman. The media did a heck of a job on seizing on his patriotism in the '90s, too, even though he talked about being proud to be an American in the '70s all the time. Lots of it was just media portrayal. I have a whole essay's worth of ideas about why the media did this, but they're beyond the scope of this thread.

To emphasize your point, George Foreman was getting his own sitcom on ABC, while Hulk Hogan had to settle for direct-to-video movies and syndication schlock.

I think you meant aides...now if Hogan had AIDS I think it might be the first time in history people rooted for the disease...

One Orange Racist goes down... next one up?

And it turns out to be Al Snow

I hope he called him a bitch.

Pretty sure Brooke got the Grill

Always thought Terry Crews' President Camacho was at least partially inspired by Hogan.

I'm loving the hell out of the Sheik book. One of the coolest things is hearing that when Harley Race got in that car crash when he was 17 that killed his wife and unborn kid and they wanted to cut his fucking leg off, Sheik -- who had never even met the kid -- paid his medical bills through the mail. And the big feud that he had with Bruno was done gratis because New York was in serious trouble with houses and they needed the help. Also, this has to be one of the top books I've read for listing even in two-word detail every regional star that existed from all of North America. It's like the Hornbacker NWA book if it had a personality

I like how the thumbnail makes him look more like the high school English teacher who isn't mad at you, just disappointed, for using Cliffs Notes, instead of a guy who had already done time.

If Tsukasa Fujimoto is the guest at a Beach Bunny concert, my brain will melt.

Only if the Generals also drove the bus and had to (probably) supply Curly and Geese with pharmaceuticals.

I AIN’T SCARED OF YOU MOTHERFUCKAS flashback, sorry

Other "what if AEW never existed" scenarios: FTR is in their 4th year of dressing like jesters Jon Moxley still left WWE; he walks the earth like Cain in Kung Fu wrestling for every indy and doing odd jobs from town to town, getting in adventures. Sad music always plays when he leaves town, like he's Dr. David Banner.