Michael Sweetser

Since the book thread is dead, I thought I'd put it here: If you have the first edition of Death of WCW, DO NOT bother with the "10th anniversary edition". The "new content" boils down to a few added quotes from Mikey Whipwreck, Lance Storm, and a few others, most of which were gleaned from blog posts and shoot interviews. The hyped up "epilogue" is literally pages of a list of TNA fuckups stolen directly from the LOLTNA History page, some verbatim. Pathetic. On top of that, tons of errors in the first edition STILL haven't been fixed in this one, including factual errors. Including spending pages bitching about WCW's handling of luchadores, then mislabeling La Parka as Psicosis in a caption. It does hold the distinction of being the first Kindle book I've ever returned for a refund. I'm so annoyed by the cash grab done here that I'd return the first edition as well if I could.

It's all done with wires.

I'm far more interested in the fact that Undertaker is a fan of Krav Maga. Methinks he's gonna have a surprise for Brock next time they meet...

Hey, I was at the show too. Suites are the way to go for this kinda thing, trust me. Nobody that's been at the show has mentioned the fact that Miz got absolutely 100% potatoed by the punch from Reigns during MizTV. You could see his jaw bounce out and back in. There were several slow motion replays throughout the night of the punch. Just glorious. Of course, during the match Reigns then missed the apron dropkick by a country mile, so it all evens out in the end. Cesaro vs. Ambrose was darn good, with Cesaro even pulling out a WWE-version Burning Hammer. A few good combos into European uppercuts, too. Bo being squashed by Swagger comes across better in action than in print - the match was just getting started when Bo made one bad move and Swagger snagged the anklelock out of nowhere. To me it came across more like Swagger just happened to find an opening and took it, which to me would get him over far better. Bo also cut a quick post-match promo for the WWE App saying he forgave the silly referee for mistaking him reaching for the ropes as a tapout, and said that Rusev would crush Swagger at SummerSlam. Post-show, the Wyatts and Corporate Kane and Rollins came out to "teach a lesson" to Reigns, but Ambrose and Sheamus ran in and helped clear house. The only appearance for Bray, and he took one bump (a Superman Punch from Reigns) and skedaddled. Brogue Kicks for Harper and Rowan, and a spear for Kane. No dark match.

I never heard it myself until becoming a referee, and even then, only from the older vets.

I love seeing Austin just outright call people out on that. I enjoy even more that they're listening. Instant feedback in the year 2014.

If I recall, Punk said he and Beadle were no longer friends as a direct result of her actions. Which means he either agrees with his new wife or he's already whipped, and honestly, would it be so bad?

I loved the reason that Ventura gave for why Rude shaved his glorious mustache before the Starrcade '92 match with Ron Simmons (that didn't happen). He wanted to drop weight.

Triple H also just retweeted both tweets, so.

Exactly. Until you understand WHY A to B to C works, you have no business trying to go from A straight to C.

It's not really you, but more a generalization from others. I should've made that more clear in my earlier post. Maybe I'm just getting old and getting tired of everybody having to do things differently in order to stand out. Sometimes different ISN'T better, and sometimes the formula exists for a reason. I do completely agree that shine being longer than heat completely negates the idea of what the heat is supposed to do in a match. If the heat doesn't matter, then it basically becomes either a face-heavy squash, or a heel pulling one cheap move and winning out of nowhere, neither of which is conductive to business for long. And there's all sorts of ways for faces to shine on the heels, even if they're much smaller. They can outrun them, or outthink them, or outwrestle them, or just do hit and run. The idea of the shine is just for the faces to get one up on the heels briefly before the heels shut them down and the real meat of the match begins (which is why cutting the shine works in a time crunch).

When you get down to the point of "there should be X minutes of shine and Y minutes of comeback" then we're back into the world of totally choreographed spotfests, and wrestling really needs to get away from that shit. Do what feels right. If you DO need to cut something from a tag match, though, the shine should be the first thing to go. (This is why tag team formula works, by the way - once you've got it down, THEN you can fuck with it a bit.)

Wait, are we eschewing standard tag team formula now? I need to update my notes.

I can't even hate. That's amazing.

God, nobody sold an atomic drop like Ravishing Rick Rude. i used to tell people at the DOA school to watch him just for that. And for a million other reasons, because Rick Rude was fucking awesome. I always had a pet theory about this - Rock had such an oddly smooth forehead (and used so much oil) that the blood would just sort of bead off him, like he was covered with Rain-X or something.

I'm assuming this is different than the Jim Barnett "WCW" in Australia. Or is it?

There's a wannabe "wrestling" "promoter" going by Iron Buddah up here. Or Von Hess. Or Von Hess Sullivan. Or whatever the fuck he calls himself these days. He runs a barely-above-backyard "promotion" called SCW, that used to run on reservations and in literal backyards so they wouldn't get whacked by the commission. (There's tons of Indian land in the area, and fly-by-night places would use them to avoid the commission). When that stopped up, he started doing "charity" shows since he can't legally charge for admission (which still violates the commission rules, but he hasn't been brought up yet). Anyway, he's now bragged for close to five years about pinning Raven. In his own promotion. In a match he booked. Against a guy he paid for himself. This is also the fuck that challenged a number of my friends to fights, sometimes literally with a tire iron in his hand, only to back down when one of them actually called him on it. Fuck, I hate Washington. If anyone ever asks, I trained on the road in Oregon or in Canada.

I'm wagering it'd be a fake nose, mustache and glasses. Or he'd be in drag. Or both.

That photo was reversed, look at the NWA letters on the turnbuckles. Oh, come on, I remember their great battles in the AWИ.

Hey, I didn't name it, I just worked for it. DOA Pro Wrestling was formed by a group of wrestlers that all quit the shitty NWWA promotion at the same time to form their own group. They were told that their new promotion would be DOA inside of two months. And thus, it became DOA Pro Wrestling.

Sorry, didn't mean to be all cryptic. It was more a comment that for all the big stuff you hear, all the shitty fly-by-nighters with no physique and even less training end up with pushes because either they own the promotion, are related to the owner of the promotion, drank with the owner of the promotion, put posters up that week, sold two or three tickets to fans, or whatnot. Mostly whatnot. As Jim Cornette once said, the guys that know how don't have the money, and the guys that have the money don't know how. Pretty much every promotion around here save three don't have the money AND they don't know how. (ECCW, DOA, and WCWC, in case anyone was wondering. Any other promotion in BC, WA or OR is a complete waste of time and, in 99% of the cases, don't deserve to be called "promotions.")

Honestly, the ones in here pale in comparison to the REAL bullshit you see on some indies, especially on the smaller local level. You would be aghast at what passes for a push around places.

Good point. Be sure to pay attention to any individual nuances of the promotion you're working for (punches being legal, piledriver being illegal, 20 count on the floor vs. 10 count, etc) in my experience it's usually dudes who start out training to be a wrestler but are quickly discovered completely to suck ass at it I know of a couple guys who straight up started out wanting to ref & ended up being the best ones, though Personally, I was self-aware enough that I knew my body wouldn't hold up to being a full-time wrestler, so I went for the next best thing. (Actually, I wanted to be a manager, but I knew I couldn't start out that way,) I actually tried the dress shoes first. They ended up killing my feet, and actually stood out too much against the rest of the outfit. The more matte black Skechers worked better, were much more comfortable and allowed far better movement. Workers also seem to give some dirty, dirty looks when a ref's wearing wrestling boots, especially if they weren't a wrestler before. Also, keep in mind reffing may look easy on the body, but it's not. Consider that every time you're going down to do a count, you're essentially taking a minor bump, and usually on your knees, which is not good for them. Also invest in some thin knee sleeves or kneepads - your ligaments will thank you. A lot of this amounts to "don't be a bloody idiot." Believe me, 99% of the refs on indies don't subscribe to that, and it shows. You can probably count the number of legitimately decent referees on the indies on your fingers and toes and have some left over.

The Grappler has a book coming out on August 13th. Check out http://www.grapplerbook.com/.