Stefanie Sparkleface

Everyone always forgets about the aftermath of those events. - Gilbert running over Lawler nearly got their show shut down because fans called the cops, who showed up and were going to charge Gilbert, which necessitated Lawler having to go on TV and say he was fine. - Funk using the plastic bag on Flair got WCW cracked down on by Turner Broadcasting. - Raven crucifying Sandman caused Kurt Angle, who was being courted by ECW, to walk out. - Tommy Dreamer piledriving women and Kevin Sullivan spiking W*ING Kanemura cost ECW and SMW TV outlets. - Bad News Allen breaking Jeff Gouldie's neck caused Ed Whalen to quit and say that violence went too far, and a few months later, Stampede is sold to the WWF. So all those things had mild-to-dire consequences to the business of the promotions that performed these things. I'm not saying it's a guarantee that AEW's going to suffer similar consequences, but it's hard to do something like that and get away clean.

To support your point, Haku and the Barbarian could have beaten up the entire population of the planet at one point, and they lost all the time. Legitimate toughness has only mattered in pro wrestling if you worked for Bill Watts.

I dunno, I'm just not a fan of needles in my wrestling. The discourse this will generate will be insufferable as well.

I sure hope not, emptywarehouses-r-us.co.jp is a fraud! A scam! A hoax!!!

For my money, the best thing Flair ever did was when he showed up in Memphis in 1982 as the calm, cool, collected touring champ, gets baited into wrestling Jerry Lawler on TV, then goes absolutely berserk after the match and gives a $10,000 check to Jimmy Hart to make sure Lawler never gets close to contending for his title, which he promises to sign when Lawler's put out of wrestling. If Lawler wasn't already a made man in Memphis before that, he sure was after that. Speaking of Flair, Memphis, and Koko B. Ware, there's a really great Flair/Koko match from 1985 from Memphis that's worth tracking down.

Not to mention that Flair's early-1990s WWF run was more a caricature of Flair than Flair himself. I always thought it was weird that he rarely if ever wore his suits during that run, he just ran around wearing his robes all the time. I can imagine that if that was your initial introduction to Flair, your lasting impression of him would be "who's this old man wearing a bedazzled housecoat".

That was Ice Ribbon's dojo. Ice Ribbon runs weekly shows there and occasionally rents it out to other promotions when they need matches filmed. If it's good enough for Tsukasa Fujimoto, it's good enough for everyone else.

Koko was great, full stop. He absolutely doesn't get enough credit for how good he was, or how good he made others look.

I can understand the talking point here, but think about it from this perspective; if Flair's doing the spots because it's what the audience wants, and they still buy into his gimmick even though doing those spots runs counter to his gimmick, is it wrong? Not what you bought into, but the audience as a whole. If the majority of the audience isn't buying into it, then clearly it's an issue, but if people paid for 40 years to see Flair get thrown off the top rope in spite of that move only ever working for him two or three times... maybe Flair's not the one who's wrong. And like I said, there's nothing wrong with doing "logical" or "routine". It clearly works. But the problem is to say that this guy's routine is wrong - and considering Flair's success over multiple eras, it's not - while this other guy's formula is right.

So here's a question I'm curious about, based on the "don't get it" topic... how do you folks watch wrestling? Do you watch matches in and of themselves, do you watch them within the context of the shows in which they occurred, do you watch live, do you watch after the fact (and if you do, how soon after it happened do you watch)? For me, I always try to watch whole shows because I find I appreciate things better within the context in which they took place. I liken it to watching the entirety of a movie, not just a scene. A match might be slower paced than expected because it immediately followed a sprint, so the people involved decided to slow things down a bit as a result. There might also be moves that you'd expect to be used that aren't because they were used elsewhere (for example, you might see a superplex not be used in the fourth match when it's a signature of the participants because it's a big spot in the main event). That's always why I find it hard to watch matches by themselves outside of their context. I rarely if ever watch live, but that's a product of what I watch (mostly joshi and DDT, which is usually running when I'm asleep). Even if I am watching wrestling in North America, it's rarely appointment viewing for me, but I'll try to watch within a week of airing. How about you?

Okay, Dax Harwood.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with that. I said there was something wrong with bashing people for doing the exact thing you're doing, which is what Bret was doing by bashing Flair for sticking to a formula when Bret himself stuck to a formula. Or a playbook. Or whatever. Point is, Bret's wrong.

Connections isn't as fun without Victoria Coren Mitchell giving restrained amazement like when someone solves the connecting wall in Only Connect.

Run away and don't get into Strands. Trust me.

Owen's stooging and comedy were way better than Bret's, I don't think anyone could deny that. He could also be a stooge, he could be a comedy guy, he could work serious matches, he could put people over, he could be a top guy, he could be a mechanic, whatever you needed him to be. I don't say "versatile" in the sense of "he wrestled a different style comparing two matches ten years apart", I mean versatile in "how many different roles can you put him in on your show and have him still be effective". Owen could play tons and tons of different roles; he's a Swiss army knife. Bret could either be a serious babyface or a serious heel. Also, Bret's something of a hypocrite for being a formula guy who calls people to task for relying on formulas. There's nothing wrong with being a formula guy, do what you've got to do to get through the night without getting hurt, but when most of the audience can call your comeback of manhattan drop / Russian legsweep / backbreaker / second rope elbow / Sharpshooter just as well as you can, you don't really have a leg to stand on to call out Ric Flair for always getting caught on the top rope.

All Duggan had to do was waffle someone with the board and be like... a quarter of Mid-South Duggan, and he would've had the ECW fans eating out of the palm of his hand.

Owen was absolutely better than Bret. Owen was so much more versatile of a performer, I personally don't think it's even close.

I mean, if you're a content consumer, sure. If you're a content creator, not really.

Read this article this morning on Business Insider, realized it was paywalled, and found it mirrored elsewhere so I could share it. https://www.msn.com/en-ph/money/companies/cable-tv-s-collapse-deepens-it-is-becoming-increasingly-clear-that-there-is-no-longer-any-floor/ar-AA1pVse7 The pay-TV industry as a whole lost 1.6 million subscribers in Q2 2024. Q2s are bad for the industry (the article points out the loss of 1.8 million in Q2 2022 and 1.7 million in Q2 2023), but it continues the trend of cable/satellite and even companies like YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV dipping. Considering the fight that DirecTV and Disney are having as well over their carriage issues (long story short, DirecTV thinks Disney is upcharging for traditional carriage to price them out of the market while advertising their services as the cheaper option, and since Disney owns Hulu they're not entirely wrong), and companies like Echostar (who owns Dish) now talking about potential bankruptcy/asset sales, it's awfully choppy seas out there. Find a lifeboat.

You mean the thing that happens regularly in real sports, when players congratulate opponents for reaching milestones, and is commonly lauded as good sportsmanship?

I'm aware of that. I'm saying that, in my experience in managing people, that you go a lot further and get a lot more out of the people you work with by letting things like this go. The managers who don't are typically the managers who wonder why they can't retain employees, wonder why they aren't getting the most out of their talent, or post signs like "nobody wants to work anymore". Re: your hypothetical, who cares? Why does it matter? Why is that any different than people congratulating each other on Twitter? Why can't wrestlers be publicly supportive of each other without fear of being called "unprofessional"?

How interesting that you make that comparison. The end of eval year period just started at my job and I just created 36 eval forms for my team. I'm sure there are people who do keep that in the back of their mind. I can personally attest that, for the sake of the morale of the rest of the team, if that specific person is meeting all their deliverables AND they didn't do anything illegal AND they didn't hurt anyone or themselves, I let it go. I hire adults and I expect them to act like adults while they're in the office or working remotely. What they do outside of the 40 hours a week my office pays them for is none of my business, until they make it become my business by getting in the way of work. It's not like the guy was on their TV and doing a planned spot. He went there to support his friend - and as a worker you can appreciate how many times other workers do that when they aren't booked - and some random person put a phone camera on him for pumping his fist and being happy. He should be fired for that? That's a great way to make other people who work for you start looking for other options, because they know they can't support their friends or go anywhere, because if they get a camera pointed at them in a way you don't approve of, you're going to fire them. Want a locker room walking on eggshells and cutting each other's throats? That's a great way to do it.

I don't care what people do in their off time. Heck, start a parade for your friends if you want, as long as you're not crashing cars into buildings or ODing in hotels, that doesn't bother me. There's no expectations of "professionalism" when someone's in their off-time if they're not hurting anyone else. Someone going to my competitor's show and celebrating his friend getting a big push that we literally would have never known about if some creep hadn't lasered their phone in on him instead of watching the WrestleMania main event? Yeah, I'm okay with letting that slide. Show up to work and do a good job while you're on the clock, don't hurt anyone or yourself while you're off the clock, and that's all I care about.

HOW DARE YO- I mean that's fine too! lol I'm riding on a wave of enthusiasm!

That sure opened up in the second half If you had told me going in it'd be a draw, I'd be over the moon, but maaaaaan that was winnable. Oh well. I'll get over it. Brighton drawing Arsenal at the Emirates is just fine by me.