DukeCaesar

Currently the only wrestling pod I'm listening to week to week is Why it Ended with Robbie E. I love that most of the episodes are a tight hour (I finally have thrown in the towel on the marathon Conradcasts for the time being) and the guests have mostly delivered in different ways.

Listening to the Vampiro episode because a get a kick out of Vamp shootin' brother, and am laughing at Austin's strange, increasingly aloof questions. "Whatever happened to Skeletor?" (referring to La Parka) "What's his body type under all those skeletons?"

Schiavone's show in the final stretch (maybe?) as his daughter's wedding approaches. Sad to see it go but realistically one had to see it coming in its current format. There's only so many WCW ppvs out there and a lot of the storylines and performers of the Nitro era were pretty redundant for about a three year stretch. In regards to Sean Mooney, I listened to the Jim Johnston episode because who doesn't love 80's/90s WWF production music. Probably the worst guest with the most potential in wrestling podcast land. His Austin appearance a couple was a total dud too. No memory and a tendency to drift into boring anecdotes. You could tell even Mooney was getting frustrated.

Austin repeatedly putting Brutus Beefcake over as "a damn good worker". Peak modern day podcasts going against decades of smark opinon?

On the Schiavone podcast, it bubbles up every so often, but I think there's big untapped potential in Tony Schiavone - Movie Geek. Road Warrior Animal joins the podcast glut. Can't speak too much for the content yet but its pretty well produced.

Download data might say otherwise, but good god, the 3 to 4 hour length of these Conrad Thompson podcasts has finally did me in as a weekly listener. I would imagine people listen to more than one weekly podcast throughout the week even people that don't leave the Wrestling Bubble~! It was sort of revealed that Schiavone isn't that great when discussing stuff without a pay per view in front of him to jog his memory for good stories but surely they could chop them up into 2 parters. I would assume an average work commute is around an hour so if i was the pope of podcasting (and not just for wrestling ones), I'd set a limit of 2 hours. And to hop on the Bash Bruce bandwagon, he can be engaging at times but 4 hours of dancing around some of the sticker issues isn't the best use of 4 hours.

They seemed able to process it well but Jericho taking his young daughters to see IT definitely raised my eyebrows. In other bizarre happenings in podcast-land, I sometimes wish there was a little more kayfabe but MLW acting like their upcoming IPPV is a SHOOT~! is a little offputting.

Really dug the Jeff Jarrett episode. But then again I've always found Double J's WWF career (and the New Generation era) fascinating. Plus Bruce was energized as he clearly had strong feelings about the 97 re-hiring.

KANE is going to be on JR's podcast this week. I don't believe he's ever done a long form interview like this. Should be good as there's a LOT of career turns there to dig into. (Full disclosure: I'm selective chooser of Ross episodes but I don't mind his goofy non-sequiturs.)

I think he's in it til they run out of topics to riff on, which to be fair, will probably happen sooner than later. Its a surprisingly feel good podcast deep down, as Schiavone seems progressively happier as the weeks go by. Regarding the Heenan episode: my interpretation of their spat was that it was a personality clash between a guy treating the business like a job (show up, put in the time, go home to the family) vs. the mentality of an old school paranoid carny like Bobby. The story about Heenan staring at Schiavone all night across a bar was genuinely creepy. Over in Prichard-land, while I'm not out on the show, I definitely feel there's been diminishing returns. The Cornette and jovial, backslapping Vince impressions are always funny to me but some of the back-and-forth is starting to feel forced like they're going through the motions.

I came here to put over the Schiavone podcast and am happy to see I got beat to it! Its really hit its stride. Tony is confident and candid while the subjects are covering ground that hasn't been treaded on ad nauseam. Great perspective from a guy that seems relatively normal (not a dyed in the wool carny) who recognizes that the wrestling business exists in the proverbial bubble. A far cry from when he sounded tired and depressed on JR's podcast a couple years ago. I feel bad for him that he was painted as A Bad Guy on the wrong side of history by the IWC for the last 20 years.

"(fake laugh) Ha Ha Ha! Okay. We're going to talk about the time you did (career highlight) but before that let's talk about (sponsor)." Its to the point where its hard to concentrate on the interview because I'm practically anticipating that any sentence is a strangely edited cut to an ad. I appreciate the effort of trying to paste them into the interviews but you're right, they're very disconcerting.

Batista was surprisingly candid about his movie career and the productions in which he's participated. If you're into the films he's been in, he drops a lot of fun tidbits about them. Its a shame wrestling fans ran him off for not being flippy or coming up through the "right" indies. I also always get a kick out of vaguely-but-not-really-up-on-movies Jericho.

From the snippets, this reads like a script that Christopher Moltisanti would have written on the The Sopranos.

Interesting. I had figured the place in LA would be the first to go if he was going to sell one but I guess he still takes meetings in Hollywood. I wonder what Ted Fowler's going to do in the meantime.

Did anyone with the time and inclination listen to the solo Austin shows where he talks about selling the Broken Skull Ranch? If so, what was the reason?

After all the Klondike Bill stories and the tale told on the Q&A episode in great detail about Tony being in the room with Flair and a "party girl" who was trying to coerce him into a threesome, the Schiavone podcast might be better off bringing the SLEAZE~! going forward instead of copying the Prichard format.

There surprisingly wasn't much buzz for Roman's appearance but I thought he came off really well. You can see why the WWE would really so the time and effort (besides a heel turn) into making him the centerpiece as he's the proverbial Guy That Would Be Good on the Today Show with crossover appeal. Charismatic in that laid back cool guy way, not unlike, say, Kevin Nash, in wrestling personality comparisons, but without the everpresent offputting snark just underneath the surface.

The Rip Rogers episode had some awesome old carny uses insider shoot~! terminology to describe random life things. On being hit by a car - "I wasn't expecting the bump so I did put it over a little."

It feels like its surprisingly been a while since we've had a delusional old timer telling tall tales in wrestling podcast land but the Paul Roma two parter delivered in spades! Did you know: It only took 8 weeks for Roma to completely learn how to work? The reason he never got into any backstage altercations was because everyone was afraid of him? The students at his school could work at any company in the world today? (at least he's giving the rub to some others with this one)

There's no real documentation or reviews of the plethora of wrestling podcasts but Saturn on Jericho is essential listening. Even for non-wrestling fans.

The Tony Schiavone/Conrad Thompson podcast got off to a pretty good start. Not sure how much longetivity there will be in its current format but Schiavone's vulgarity was amusing and along with the Prichard show sort of offers some pushback here and there against the Meltzer (and his sources) historical narratives that have pretty much gone unchallenged since the dawn of the dirtsheets. On Meltzer's 1997 criticism that Goldberg's gimmick wasn't highlighted enough as being that of a shoot fighter: "No one gave a fuck about shoot fighting back then." Hard to argue with that. Other comedy, when Meng asked Schiavone on how to get his kid to listen to him. "Just tell him who the fuck you are."

Watched the very last and next to last episodes of ECW Hardcore TV on the Network. My local tv affiliate that carried ECW dropped the show at some point in 2000 so this was my first time seeing the last stand of the promotion, although, I remember reading the reports online at the time. This was pretty bad. One could tell this was a company going through its final death throes. People compare the (everchanging) final days of TNA to WCW's last days but after seeing this a more apt comparison for TNA is some of the stuff ECW was throwing out there at the end. From Nova seemingly being pushed as a top babyface to the likes of Belvis Wesley filling out the roster. Also, some forgotten and never mentioned one-off appearances by WWF guys. The Dudleyz worked a taping in late 2000 which from the highlights looked like nothing but comedy spots to a bored-looking and overweight Taz coming out to put over Danny Doring and Roadkill in a promo. Pretty depressing stuff.

Granted I know absolutely nothing about the financials but Jericho/Podcast One poaching podcasting from MLW seems a little underhandednat face value. I may just be disappointed because I think Konnan worked a lot better as a member of a trio and think he'll be exposed hosting solo. MLW counters by bringing in Flair. Its the Monday Night War all over again in the podcast world.

I don't think its really accurate to sum up Austin as Man Event Guy Who Could Work (along with your Shawn Michaels and your Kurt Angles). Raw 1998 could have easily just been re-titled Steve Austin & Friends for as much as the show revolved about him week after week. I don't think The Rock ever truly ever became The Guy. By 2000, when he peaked before the increasing time off for movies, he was one more hot act on a roster where everyone was over.