SorceressKnight

Even if there was no one else...the whole thing doesn't seem to pass the smell test for a true screwjob even with all of that into play. I'm not sure, but even if they're covered in a full body suit, a woman in her 20s in peak physical condition would probably look a little bit different than a woman in her 60s in the same body suit, and if Richter was suddenly across the ring from a woman in her 60s, it'd be...kind of safe to say "this is obviously Moolah, and the fix is in" and be able to get out of dodge long before that happens.

On the contrary, I wasn't saying it's a bad thing for companies to make masks. It's the exact opposite. Pro wrestling is built around shameless self-promotion and shameless merchandising, and WWE was always best at it. Part of the pro wrestling experience is the duality of knowing: "Pro wrestlers would put their logo on a turd and sell it if they think someone would buy it", combined with the equal inherent knowledge "...yeah, a lot of us fans probably WOULD buy it." The fact that WWE is selling team branded masks isn't the issue- that's just good business sense to sell them right now. Rather, it's "how did it take two months to make WWE-branded face masks?" It's been two months of COVID. By April 15th, we should have already had WWE face masks, WWE making hand sanitizer with WWE superstar pictures on them, and WWE should have been desperately trying to get advertisements for Becky Lynch on Clorox wipes telling people it's a Man-sized clean.

Honestly, in 1985, I don't think there WAS a good enough sports personality who'd make sense in the role Mr. T was in. Muhammad Ali was retired and a little bit past his sell-by date to actually fight in a match, Mike Tyson hadn't exploded enough to be a big enough star to do it. The NBA and NHL weren't big enough to make sense, MLB stars wouldn't be big enough yet people would take them seriously in a wrestling ring, and WWE tried NFL stars a year later, including getting Refrigerator Perry (the closest thing to a breakout star in the 1985 season) and it didn't really click. And if you go action movie stars, it's the same thing- Stallone was too big, Arnold was too small, and WWE could have gotten neither. Chuck Norris might have been a possibility, but Mr. T was the bigger star , even if he didn't have the same legitimate fighting credibility- though Mr. T's aura was built on the image he was a legit badass

Surprising it took this long, to be honest. I mean, we expect pro wrestling to be shameless with merchandising, and WWE to be where they are because they were the best at merchandising everything and putting out any cockamamie thing you can think of. How it took nearly two months of COVID-19 for WWE to throw WWE logos on face masks is...almost shocking, to be honest.

Honestly, that ties to @Linus's timeline that, again makes it unlikely the 20/20 incident really had anything to do with it. Considering a big What If? here was- apparently going into the 20/20 incident, Dr. D was supposed to be in Orndorff's place at the first Wrestlemania, it seems likely- especially with the foresight that we know Vince is willing to change plans on a dime- that this was less "WWF punished Dr. D for the Stossel slap" and more "Vince decided he would rather build to an Orndorff face turn and chose him instead"...and when Dr. D did get fired, it's likely more the result of the Mr. T altercation and the "you nearly cost us a relationship with a real star? You're fired!" result.

Well, if you're worried about the economic aspect of wasting lunchmeat on them, sex workers can be easily trained to steal lemons, which will both add to your quarantine stockpile and provide important vitamin C to prevent scurvy from kicking in.

Well, even that hypocrisy at least had some logic to the difference there. With Belzer, what Hogan did was a more disturbing visual...but at the same time, there's also a "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" argument there. Belzer tried to prove wrestling was fake and, to prove it, openly asked Hogan to put him in a wrestling hold- and Hogan put him in a hold. Belzer's was more brutal- but because he flat-out asked Hogan to put him in the hold, he kind of had it coming to him. Stossel asked a question to Dr. D, and got slapped as the result of it. Stossel didn't ask to be slapped, and was punished for a result. In that instance, Dr. D was the one attacking an interviewer who didn't want to be attacked, so Dr. D was kind of at fault.

There once was an owner named Ennis, Who's Nuggets team's play was the meanest. He then froze out the E, the problem any fans would see, Vince's retort was how he rhymed with "penis."

It'd be nice- but honestly...we saw what happened in Game 6. Even if an opposing team to the Lakers plays All-Star Game levels of defense they'll get called for fouls. Any defensive move short of "take a bow to the Lakers player as they drive to the basket" will get a foul if the season resumes.

The big problem to that is- it's probably not just about Lebron here- but the fact that the NBA is one of the most narrative-driven sports out there. Basketball's exploded because the NBA is usually really good with finding the narrative and hammering it home so that anyone can understand it. That's probably more important than "the NBA will do it because Lebron wants it!" because of how narrative-driven the NBA is. Make no mistake- if the NBA reopens and the playoffs start, it won't happen because Lebron wants it or because it may be his last chance to get a ring- but because the NBA wants the narrative of "Lebron and The Lakers won it all for Kobe!"

Honestly, that also can be said for a problem in-ring as well, because for the same reasons that pro wrestling hasn't recovered from having The Rock, in-ring wrestling can't really recover from Brock Lesnar. Post-Lesnar, it's like, we just saw a guy who had an amazing physique who radiated "this is a monster you don't want to mess with", was a powerhouse who could throw anyone around, was a legitimate enough tough guy that he could become the UFC Heavyweight Champion and prove to be one of the greatest legit fighters on the planet, and in addition to being a powerhouse, he had legitimate enough amateur chops to be one of the better scientific wrestlers in the company. Just like getting a legitimate A-List movie star on a pro wrestling show is too much after The Rock, after a person like Brock Lesnar comes into pro wrestling, how can you go back to the monster heel method of "this is a 300-plus pound guy or 6'9''+ guy who can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. We'll bring him in for about six months, have him run roughshod, then feed him to the ace of the company- and if it clicks, maybe keep him around. If not, no harm done?" after that? Smoke clears, you have less good monster heels, and less good monster heels, then suddenly the biggest array of dragons for the hero to slay dries up.

I agree with that, but even then, there's still problems with having an ace. You can't make the ace so high above everyone else that no one can even slightly touch them, but even then, there are some people who SHOULDN'T be able to touch the ace or the star. It ties into the controversy last week over Omega giving his jobber a competitive, back and forth match very well, because if you have a true mega-star, then there should be some guys who it's clear "not only is this guy not in the star's league- quite frankly, they're not even playing the star's sport." There's a very thin line between "Wow, that jobber nearly HAD the superstar! They might be a name to watch in the future!" and "...wow, this superstar really sucks. They had to struggle to beat that no-name guy? If they can't beat that guy easily, how the hell can they beat the actual stars?". It's the same with an ace. Someone like Roman Reigns shouldn't be so far ahead of people he could destroy Drew McIntyre or Seth Rollins without breaking a sweat...but if Roman Reigns can't destroy Akira Tozawa without breaking a sweat, then that just makes Roman look bad and won't really make Tozawa look much better. When there's too high a difference between the superstar and the lowcarder, it goes past "the lower name just got MADE by the ace and is now in that league", goes past "this was a huge upset, and the lowcarder might be a little higher on the card", goes past "This was one of the biggest flukes in wrestling, and it did nothing for the lowcarder", and can go screaming into "This was a comedy segment. See, it's FUNNY because the lowcarder beat the top star, and that's funny because even if you tied the ace's hands and legs behind his back, then gave the lowcarder a nuclear bomb, the ace would STILL win. So the lowcarder winning is funny, because he could never win against him!"

Even then, it's also the difference for timing- the expansion eras, ECW, and the indies today are different than on a main scale. With those levels, there's at least a case for multiple stars and anyone being upwardly mobile to take a bigger role- because you don't know when a national promotion's going to come calling for one of your top stars, and when they inevitably do you'll need to be prepared to replace them at a moment's notice. Companies on a national scale: WWE, NJPW, AEW, are different: They can likely assume that their top stars are pretty much safe. It's not likely Okada or Tanahashi are leaving NJPW for somewhere else, the Elite probably aren't leaving AEW, and it took a global pandemic for WWE to have to deal with Roman Reigns not walking through the door. With those companies, your top stars are safe, and so you can have more of a pecking order.

But on the same token for that, the opposite booking plan of "make everyone look like a star" is just as bad in a different way. People seem to romanticize the ECW booking plan of "every person on the roster could potentially open the show or main event and/or win the title depending on the week", but when companies use that style of booking, eventually you find out the hard way that Syndrome was right: If everyone's special, then no one is. Any time a company's actually tried to build around multiple people, inevitably what happened is that none of them become special enough to truly become STARS...and since pro wrestling is a star system, the only way that a company can be a true success is if someone manages to become a legitimate star (and because everyone's enamored by the star, they then come to the shows, and start caring about the lowercarder...and even if they don't care, they'll still be coming in so much that other lowcarder gets a nice paycheck out of it.)

Honestly, that ties to why I didn't get that: ESPN/Fox sounded legit, but when it's remembered Disney didn't get the Fox Network, it makes less sense. Likewise, the "NBC-Universal knows how important WWE is to USA being a top cable network, so Comcast would ABSOLUTELY match or beat any price Disney offered" would also help. This ties to the other part of it-...apparently, after that Tweet by Colter got legs, it was revealed that Vince McMahon's stock is set up so that it can only remain the way it is if he directly sells it to another member of the McMahon family. Otherwise, it instantly becomes common stock and Vince will remain a majority owner.

That fact kind of makes it a little more surprising that this merited a Dark Side of the Ring if it was all happenstance in that case. If he was fired before it happened for an unrelated thing, the Dark Side of the Ring status would be less a blue-chip Dark Side episode and far closer to, say, Rick McGraw's death (just a typical wrestling story: "He was a wrestler. He liked to do drugs. He eventually died of a heart attack from too many drugs" that is kind of sad, but not particularly Dark Side of the Ring-worthy... but because of a unfortunate coincidence of his last match airing on TV the next day, and Roddy Piper beating him where he did a stretcher job, you still had schoolyard whispers of "holy shit, Roddy Piper killed a guy in a match!" for a while after.)

Personally, I thought there's more Styles in Matt Striker than anyone, since Striker has the same "they can be very good as an announcer", tempered with "they can be too smarky for their own good on there- using smark talking points for the sake of using them, even if it makes no sense in the match." Mauro uses a bunch of cheesy pop culture references, but he doesn't have the same "reference backstage info and talking points for the sake of using them". Even then, Mauro, Striker, and Styles aren't the worst example of this. That'd be Don West, with his "he never met a inside joke he couldn't strangle the reference out, beat you over the head with it, and in the process take any sense of humor away."

Honestly, the "pro wrestling was predetermined" thing was like a dance between pro wrestling and the public. For most of the 20th century, the public knew wrestling was predetermined (and it was basically known as far back as Hackenschmidt/Gotch and the "because of an injury I was promised I got to win one fall, but he doublecrossed me and won two straight falls" thing), but as long as wrestlers and promoters hid that fact, the public agreed to look the other way. Every 10 or so years, there'd be some smoking gun that'd prove wrestling was fixed- a promoter with loose lips here, a sports page reporting results to a card that didn't happen there- and people would be up in arms about it, but eventually they'd forget about it and look the other way until the next time someone did an expose hinting this pro wrestling thing wasn't on the up and up, and it'd all repeat. The 20/20 segment was important for a few reasons: It was the first time one of these scandals happened as WWF had started to go national, and really, it was the last gasp of the masquerade between "wrestling is real" and "wrestling is predetermined" and the last time that there was this scandal. We came close to seeing one in 1988 with the "WWF Magazine talked about WWF World Champion Randy Savage in a magazine where a few copies leaked out just before Wrestlemania IV happened", but that quickly swept under the rug without much of an outcry...and the next year in 1989, the trial in New Jersey about WWF needing to pay sports tax involved Vince McMahon saying under oath "oh yeah, wrestling is completely predetermined" and officially ended the masquerade for good.

Gorilla was always good, but it's likely the reason people thought he was terrible was that he was SUCH a good straightman at what he did. Once you're old enough to watch real sports and not just be enamored of the game, you realize that Gorilla Monsoon had a gimmick the whole time- he was the announcer for your home team's locally-televised games. That's basically the whole schtick Gorilla Monsoon had. Just like the home team's announcer- the home team has never committed a foul, even when they're intentionally fouling to get the ball back. The lowest man on your team's bench could drop a safe on the head of the opposing team's star and the home announcer would say it was overstated by the referee and proof the guy was on the take from the other team. Same schtick from Monsoon- whether it was Hulk Hogan or a random jobber in white boots, the guy could punch a child on the way to the ring and Gorilla would say "Eh, the kid had it coming to him." That made Gorilla far better than he gets credit for...because when you combine Gorilla being the homer announcer and being so good at selling his color men with Hulk Hogan's in-ring style being best described as "he's a classic heel wrestler who does his heel schtick to bad guys", that meant that Bobby Heenan and Jesse Ventura could tee off on Gorilla's claims and make Gorilla seem stupid for how much of a homer he was and how much he was letting the faces get away with. It worked with Heenan (because he was never supposed to be taken seriously and you knew Heenan was a homer for the bad guys), but with Ventura it never clicked as well because it was tempered with enough realism that even the most starry-eyed kid who thought it was all real would sometimes realize "wait a second...Ventura has a point there...". As far as whether Pettingill was just the real Vince's humor...I don't buy it. Todd Pettingill wasn't stupid Vince humor, he was a morning zoo guy brought into pro wrestling, and invariably his sense of humor would have fallen to...well, a morning zoo DJ. That doesn't seem like Vince's style- if Vince was doing DJ work, I'd assume he'd be the town's guy who is trying to be a shock jock, but failing miserably at the role and ends up "It's not good. It's not funny. It's not even that shocking. It's just...stupid."

Reynolds may have been small, but he WAS a former college football player, so it cancels out a small size at least. Even if, for celebrities you also have the biggest x-factor that borderlines on a possible What If? in and of itself: Andy Kaufman tried to bring his "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World" schtick to the WWF first, but Vince Sr. refused to bring Kaufman in, and eventually Kaufman was given the contact info for Memphis, who were willing. Considering how VKM has always run WWF, it likely goes without saying VKM absolutely would have brought Andy Kaufman into WWF. Hell, there were claims that even as Kaufman left wrestling and was battling the cancer that probably took his life, VKM was still trying to get Kaufman for the first Wrestlemania.

The Booker T sea change happened less than a week before the feud with Triple H started (the result of the known "Scott Steiner was supposed to be in the Mania match, but he absolutely bombed in his WWE debut to the point WWE knew for a fact they couldn't get to Mania with this feud, and Booker T was the Plan B.") Saying that Booker T was instantly the same guy he was in WCW literally one week after Booker T and Goldust had split up would be like saying, if No Way Jose got brought back to WWE, said "I am no longer No Way Jose. I'm Levis Valenzuela, and I'm here to show what I can do as a real wrestler, not some sports entertainer", and got in a feud with Drew McIntyre, that would be perfectly believable and you'd instantly buy him as a threat. The answer in both cases is: No. It takes time to fully kill the clown for a comedy character, and they just didn't have enough time to do it for Booker T (which is why his heel turn took in 2004 and he was a solid uppercarder- they had enough time to kill the clown.)

Booker T in WCW: A dynamic firey babyface who rose to the top organically, through working hard to prove himself in the ring at any means, and finally got to the top and became a franchise player for the company. Booker T in WWE: Started out as that WCW guy, but lost many, many times, only getting out of the Invasion purgatory when his character was slowly changed after he bombed on "The Weakest Link" and WWE changed him to...a guy who was really, really dumb. I'm not sure, but I think if Booker T got the victory at Wrestlemania 19 with that gimmick, it would...well, be a very, very, very, very, very bad thing. Like, bad enough that you can make the case there Triple H's victory was also a very, very, very bad thing, but it was still somehow the lesser of two evils.

For most of these reasons, I would add an extra reason: 06. In 2002/03, Booker T's WWE run had basically seen him as half of a comedy team with Goldust. The Booker T/Goldust team was really fun and one of the rare comedy things WWE has done that was genuinely funny, and it worked...but Booker T and Goldust were a comedy team for most of that time. Even if you use Daniel Bryan in Team Hell No as an example there of "well, this comedy act won the World Title, why not that one?"- Daniel Bryan and Kane were a comedy act in 2012, and it wasn't until a year later when most of the clown had been killed before Bryan ascended to the top. Heck, Team Hell No even were better for the role even by kayfabe standards; it was a plot point during that 2002/03 run that Booker T and Goldust had problems winning the big one even in a weak tag team division (with just before the Evolution feud, a large part of the storyline involved the team may have been not good enough to win the Tag Titles.) Even if you consider "well, Booker T and Goldust's stuff in 2002 was one of the biggest bright spots on the show" as an excuse for Booker T to have a Santino Marella-esque 2011 Royal Rumble or 2012 Elimination Chamber finalist main event shocker...or more relevantly, Kofi Kingston winning it all last year at Wrestlemania, the fact Booker T and Goldust's comedy run was exclusive to 2002 meant you didn't even have the longterm staying power and cult following Santino got, or The New Day's longterm staying power, incredible popularity, and Kofi's being a longtime veteran ready to win the big one." Booker T winning the WHC in 2003 would have been less like Daniel Bryan winning in 2014, or even Santino winning a World Title or Kofi winning the World Title, and would have been closer to "R-Truth's gotten so many 24/7 Title reigns and has done good stuff for it...why don't we make him the World Champion?"

Yeah- one thing with the time off on it I've seen is I can really start hitting through all the series in a huge backlog. Even without touching VRV as much since reupping, I got through Eden of the East (disappointing), Disgaea (disappointingly lame), Death Parade (interesting), DAIMIDALER: Prince vs. Penguin Empire (stupid generic crap), Chaos:HeaD (disappointing like Eden of the East), D-Frag (worse than I thought it'd be), C-Control (had some moments)Baka and Test, Cat Planet Cuties, and Ben-To (Why the hell I still had them at the top of my queue and didn't give up on them is beyond me.) This is likely the reason I stopped watching anime for so long: It seems like virtually everything that's come out in the 2010s was either "generic slice of life" or "generic isekai". What was worse was, all the slice of life was "humor? Story? Who cares. Here's a few cute girls, and you losers will make one of them your waifu and we'll cash in because of it", and all the isekai was "I was transported into a mysterious new world...which is a fantasy world where magic takes the place of technology, and everyone does adventures in a guild, with everyone planning to save the world from a mysterious evil force...and who the hell are we kidding. It's World of Warcraft. The hero was put in World of Warcraft. This whole show is a hero fantasy where they get to be the best player in their MMORPG of choice and get rewarded with power, and fame, and every hot girl avatar in the game begging to be with him."

Going further for that, the example for RVD is possibly the worst of the "bu-but I WANNA see my favorite with the title and Triple H wouldn't let me...he BERRIEDED my favorite!" misfires of that era even beyond it. Some of Triple H's "graveyard" is things that he genuinely gets a bad rap on (for example, people claiming "but HHH buried Edge!"...uh, Edge wasn't on the same show as Triple H in 2002, he was injured in all of 2003, Triple H wasn't the champion for most of 2004 before Edge turned heel, and when Edge turned heel in 2005 it was off to the races. Triple H had nothing to do with Edge not being World Champion as a face beforehand). Some of them are things that were fishy but ultimately you can make a case for it. Some, like Benoit, no one could have seen coming for the problems. RVD, on the other hand, is the one time that WWE didn't give someone the World Title, who made it clear to everyone exactly why he wouldn't be a good World Champion, made it a plot point why he wouldn't be a good choice- hell, the reason he's popular with fans was in why he'd probably be a bad choice as World Champion, and it was completely ignored. "Oh, you mean this guy who has sold for a decade how much he loves smoking marijuana, and is very popular for telling people how much he loves smoking marijuana, and made us want him to be World Champion because of how he tells us he loves smoking marijuana, finally won the World Title and two weeks later gave WWE a huge black eye by being pulled over by police and charged with possession of marijuana that he presumably was planning to smoke? YOU DON'T SAY!"