SovietShooter

I don't get where folks see Jesse or Skylar as innocents here. Jesse was already a junkie & dealer (albeit low-level) when he hooked up with Walt. Although Walt got involved to "provide for his family", Jesse did it just to get rich. These are the consequences. As far as Skyler, before she had any inkling about Walt, she started helping Ted Beneke imbezzle money, and once again, it was not to help her family, but rather to benefit a man that she listed for outside of her marriage. Walt didn't come to her about laundering the money, she came to Walt about it.

Yeah, I don't get that either.

Riverfront Coliseum (now known as US Bank Arena) was built in the late 1970s and featured that type of multicolored seating, which was designed to hide open seats in crowd shots. With that said, I do not think this is that building, but that pegs the time period down to 1975-1990.

That is an understatement. I had someone give me a copy of a show that I was on once. After watching it I got distracted and let the tape play. After about ten minutes the blue screen went away and it was video of Peter North just destroying some chick's anus. I had fans give me their yarder tapes all the time back in the day... which I promptly used to tape other stuff on without ever viewing.

KYDA = Keep Your Dream Alive. I think they are still running. They were an independent that ran very irregularly back in the late '90s, early '00s. They ran mostly in Virginia and Maryland, which have very tough athletic commissions. I was always under the impression they did a lot of stuff "off the radar" (military bases, prisons, fundraisers, etc) where there was a slim chance of getting caught running afoul of commissions. Pretty sure Corino worked for them quite often, and I know guys like Brock Singleton, Zubov, Mason Hunter, Sasha, etc worked for them - and were all military professionals.

"Contest" implies it is legitimate. WWE should just skip the bullshit and call them Choreographers. On the indies the official title is "Guy Helping Out In the Back". Old school term is "foreman".

If WWE title matches are "championship opportunities", shouldn't regular ol' matches just be "opportunities"? Thus they should be "opportunity producers". Y'all gotta think outside the box!

It's a TNA Thread.

I think part of the reason you see wrestlers do dangerous stuff is kinda two-fold. One reason is that guys want to go out and have a memorable match, and give the fans their money's worth. There is nothing wrong with that, you just have to be smart about it. The other reason, I think, is what I call the "credibility gap". People think "wrestling is fake", so you go out to the ring to show them "just how real it can be". ECW got over this way by having guys go out and maim each other. The reaction is "This wrestling shit might be fake, but how the hell do you fake getting hit with a chair when his head dented the damn thing?" The current trend of head drops and ultra stiff strikes is just another version of this - how does a guy fake landing on his fn skull? The flippy stuff is kind of a separate issue that is tangentially related. Fast-paced high-flying daredevil styles certainly have a place, but you can't just go 110mph and do spots and bruises with no rhyme or reason. Guys going out and aping CMLL or NJPW aren't looking to be like Negro Casas or Tanahashi - they want to do the dives and flips and have no clue how to put it all together.

K5 that, it might end up happening. Working on a treatment. Eh, who am I kidding, it will end up featuring Rob Conway, or Stevie Richards.

How does one do a "Package Canadian Destroyer"? Simply hooking one leg as they snap thru? Back in '05 (I think) I wrestled at the Nashville Fairgrounds as part of the NWA Anniversary Show/Convention. At that time Bill Behrens was the President of the NWA, and was kinda considered a "godfather" of sorts because of his connections w/ TNA, as well handling bookings for a lot of the "super indy" guys on the periphery of TNA. Anyway, he was the promoter of record for NWA Wildside, which at the time had pretty significant television syndication (Beherns' was in television syndication sales, by trade). The first match on the show featured four "Wildside guys" - Patrick Bentley & Seth Delay versus Adam Roberts & Lost Boy Gabriel. All of these guys were skinny as shit and I just had the feeling this was going to be flippyfest. I was watching thru the curtain with NJPW's Dave Marquez & Tommy Williams. The first fucking move in the match, one guy went for the ol' backdrop as the other guy came off the ropes, and BAM! CANADIAN DESTROYER~! I flipped the fuck out in the lockerroom in front of everyone.

Same boat over here brother!

I believe what actually happened was me shaking my head in disapproval, and then tweeting:

Awesome, awesome book. Terry Pluto killed it with Loose Balls - one of my favorite books. It really helps you understand the importance of Dr. J, the Indiana Pacers, and the Kentucky Colonels. His follow up, Tall Tales, about the early years of the NBA is pretty damn good too.

This is a brilliant idea that was totally glossed over in the silly Roadies/Nasties & missile dropkick debates.

I agree with this point of view. In addition, I think that Walt & Jesse are kinda like two soldiers in the same unit that were together for a tour of duty, and saw all the horrors of war together. No matter how much Walt tells Skylar, Hank, Saul - whomever - Jesse is the only one that can really understand what they have been thru together. They totally have a father/son and teacher/student relationship. Jesse still calls him Mr. White. I also think that perhaps Hank vs Walt is a red herring of sorts... but I am not sure how. Maybe, like someone said, Hank ends up saving Skylar/Walt Jr/Holly and gets to finally be the hero... or maybe he makes the ultimate sacrifice. I kind of think that Walt killing Hank though would be that final line that Walt crosses where it illustrates how it has become more important for him to be Heisenberg than it to provide for & protect his family. "I'm doing it for my family" rings hollow when you are killing your family. Could Hank's death be what pushes Skylar to flip & leave Walt?

They way the house was abandoned and fenced off, it seems like the property was seized. That seems to indicate that in the flash forwards, Walt is on the lam. I think the catalyst for something really big will be Jesse dying. Walt goes into hiding, Hank kills Jesse, so Walt comes back for Hank?

I missed the last season because I had Dish, and they were having a spat w/ AMC. I am trying to plow thru it during the maraton AMC has on right now, and I am a couple eps behind real time. Desperately trying to avoid spoilers.

Personally, my fav Warriors match is when they beat Stan & Bobby for the belts. The heat in that match was off the charts.

I was surprised at the whole wallet situation with Sonya and Ruiz. Seems like Ruiz' fling with Charlotte is more of a plot device to move something along, with her beau coming into town, and there being some odd situation with Sra. Ruiz, Gustavo, and her co-worker/boss. Sonya saying why she wasn't eating the enchilada was choice.

I was just thinking about how interesting a book or documentary about the Japanese wrestling promotions would be. The story of Rikidozan is somewhat well-known, but aside from Baba/Inoki being his students and then starting their own promotions, there isn't much on the subject after him. I know because of the yakuza involvement with the business, and with there still a sense of sport/kayfabe about wrestling there, it probably would never happen. Hell, I would enjoy an in-depth bio of Inoki or Baba - even if translated.

Well to be fair, I don't go to BBQs with Hansen or Animal. But I think that you hit the point square on the head - the gaijin of the '10s are not the gaijin of the '80s. I don't know when the Ribera jacket became the big "thing" amongst the gaijin, but it was a status symbol, not something that one "earned". Back then, the Japanese promotions were huge money laundering fronts for the yakuza, and it was important for the wrestlers to be seen with the high ranking yakuza, and for the yakuza to be seen with them. This led to the infamous "Sponsor Dinners" at various restaurants, one of which was Ribera. The gaijin got the jackets because they were provided by the steakhouse at the behest of the yakuza. When you only had two major companies, it was a helluva lot harder to get a jacket, and when you did, it meant something. But, back in the '90s when you started having indy groups pop up in Japan, you started having more foreigners going over, and you had jackets handed out left and right. These days, you actually have indy groups in Japan that will book gaijin as long as they pay their own way over - and these guys all go to Ribera to get the jacket, because they want the same status. But it isn't the same. So yeah, Karl Anderson isn't Stan Hansen. But he also isn't wearing the fucking jacket and acting like he is. I've talked about this on the old board before, but there are multiple point of views here, and going too far in any direction makes the philosophy seem ridiculous. The scorn against a "shoot job" comes from the idea that unless 100% of your income comes from wrestling, then you are not a pro wrestler. This is rooted in the idea that you cannot call yourself a "professional" unless you make your living from wrestling. THIS concept has been bastardized, where guys just lowered their standards of living, because they weren't able to make enough money. This is why you have guys that live in their parent's basements (or that shack up with the "Rat-o-the-week") mocking the guys that have jobs outside of the business - because they "live off wrestling" and the guy with a real job just cannot manage to do it. On the other side of things, an overwhelming problem in the business is that there are too many wrestlers, and not enough professionals. Wrestling is supposed to be fun, because it is just guys going out there and entertaining folks. To get into wrestling you have to love it, and you have to want to be good at it. However, at some point you have to realize that it is a business, and that it takes some level of commitment. Yes, there is no guarantee of success if you throw yourself 100% into wrestling (or anything else for that matter). However, you cannot argue that there isn't a significant time commitment required. It isn't any different than if you play football at a Division 1 school, or you play the oboe at Julliard. What you get out of it is directionally proportional to what you put into it. At some point you have to focus time and energy into what you are practicing, and you have to take it seriously. It doesn't mean you cannot have fun doing it, but you have to make an actual commitment. So honestly, there needs to be a happy medium, and priorities need to be determined. If your dream is to make a living as a professional wrestler, then maybe don't have a wife & kids that you need to support? If you want to advance your career as a professional wrestler, you may not be able to advance your 9-5 career. You can either spend your nights in the gym training, or you can go out drinking with your buddies. It is all about priorities and choices. Hell no you cannot give a guy shit for choosing to put food on his family's table rather than working a match. At the same time, you cannot expect a booker/matchmaker/promoter to constantly deal with a guy that calls-off/no-shows/cannot make towns. You just cannot have your cake and eat it too. You have to make choices. Personally - I did a lot of things that, if I had to do it all over, maybe I wouldn't do them exactly the same way. Yes, I missed weddings/birthdays/anniversaries/gradations because I had a booking - but I knew it was my choice, and that if I wanted to be a success, that missing those things were the price. The guys in the WWE don't get a Monday night off because it was their wife's birthday. NBA players aren't allowed to miss a game because it is Christmas. Guys working at Target don't get off the day after Thanksgiving. I viewed wrestling as a job, and that the sacrifices I made were investments in my career. I didn't know how things were gonna turn out for me, but I just felt that I had to go as "all-in" as I could, while also living to make it to the next town. Everything took a backseat to my passion - wrestling. Did it all work out for me in the end? No, of course not. I was divorced once, and lost another good woman over the business. I am 35 with no kids. I have arthritis in my shoulders and neck. I have a ton of scars. I do not have a lot of close friends, because I sacrificed time with people that were important to me to make a town. I've lived out of my car, and I've mooched off of family & friends when I couldn't pay bills (and totally didn't deserve it). I have no retirement fund, and a ton of student loan debt. But I am glad that I made my choices, and I understand that what I have now is because of what I did then. Some guys don't get that.

FWIW, I was talking to Karl Anderson about this one time, and the current mindset among than gaijin working the big Japanese promotions is that Ribera jackets are for marks. If you go back far enough on Twitter, you can find him and Bernard giving a ton of shit to younger guys that took the jacket.

If you didn't catch the August 6th Colbert Report, find a replay and watch it. Daft Punk was scheduled to appear and got pulled by MTV because they wanted them exclusive for the Video Awards. Colbert proceeded to verbally dismantle his own parent corp., followed by a dance number featuring Hugh Laurie, Ashton Kutcher, Matt Damon, Jeff Bridges, the Rockettes, Jimmy Fallon, the cast of AGT, Jon Stewart, etc. Followed by a surprise musical replacement. Damnedest half hour of tv I ever saw.

I don't know if it is a hoax or not, but I just saw some news about Disco Inferno online... will update if I see legit confirmation. EDIT: It is a hoax per Frank Goodman on Twitter:@MaskedManiacXXXI Just Spoke To Disco Inferno aka My Sparring Partner Glenn Gilbertti....He is Not Dead......