MARCH 2018 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

[Technico Support]

LOL it took Bix a day and a half to rewrite a reddit post.  Everybody knew this was coming; he should have had this shit pre-written, like news organizations do for obits for people they know are going to die soon.

[Matt D]

It's been picked up by newsweek and "forbes" too. 

[odessasteps]

I thought it was pretty tame on the Bix scale. 

[PetrolCB]

Yeah, it wasn’t 76 paragraphs long. I guess he overslept and saw that other news sites picked it up, so he submitted his rough draft with less exposition. 

[sydneybrown]

17 minutes ago, Matt D said:

It's been picked up by newsweek and "forbes" too. 

Newsweek is still kinda Newsweek, but in fairness, pretty much anybody on this board could get picked up by "forbes."

[PetrolCB]

Well, bad publicity is good publicity. 

Quick, somebody say something ridiculous. 

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

King of the Ring 1995 is hands down the best PPV WWE ever produced?

[PetrolCB]

There you go. 

The Big Dog Savio Vega finally got his push. Only to lose to the bigger dog, Mabel.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

And the Road Dog won after a 2 count. 

[Raziel]

3 minutes ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

King of the Ring 1995 is hands down the best PPV WWE ever produced?

This is amazing when paired with your Orton sig.

[NikoBaltimore]

1 hour ago, PetrolCB said:

Well, Bix posted his Moolah piece on Deadspin. Hopefully this actually does lead to a change in the name of the match (probably won’t).

https://deadspin.com/fans-are-revolting-against-wwe-honoring-fabulous-moolah-1823744298

If people want to make sure articles like this and the Wreddit post mean anything to those that care then the simplest option is lookup WWE's shareholders and tweet these to them.  If enough people do that then I'm sure folks like Mattel won't have much choice but to ask about this.

[PetrolCB]

But then what are they going to do with those pretapes of Bayley, born in ‘89, (and others) saying she grew up watching Moolah? 

Do you mean all of those could be ::gasp:: false?

[nofuture]

Moolah was pretty active around the Attitude era.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

She even was the champ....Shows you how deep the division was in the shit...

[(BP)]

I'm curious what Ivory says (or doesn't say) in her HoF speech since she worked with Moolah the most during that whole mess. 

Also, Mae was so much better than Moolah during that comeback. She was the funny one. She took all of those insane bumps. I vaguely remember her in USWA doing a Mama Benjamin type of gimmick shortly before her and Moolah showed up in WWF too. Wish I could remember who she was managing as her son. 

 

[nofuture]

8 minutes ago, (BP) said:

I'm curious what Ivory says (or doesn't say) in her HoF speech since she worked with Moolah the most during that whole mess. 

Also, Mae was so much better than Moolah during that comeback. She was the funny one. She took all of those insane bumps. I vaguely remember her in USWA doing a Mama Benjamin type of gimmick shortly before her and Moolah showed up in WWF too. Wish I could remember who she was managing as her son. 

 

 

[Nice Guy Eddie]

1 hour ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

King of the Ring 1995 is hands down the best PPV WWE ever produced?

It would have been if Art Donovan was on commentary.

[SorceressKnight]

The worst part about this is that after this controversy, WWE could have easily tried to save face by now.

All they'd have to do is a press release similar to this: 

Quote

"WWE are aware of the controversies about the Fabulous Moolah. 

In addition to her storyline 27 year Women’s Title reign, Fabulous Moolah was most notable for being the woman who got women’s wrestling legalized by the New York State Athletic Commission. 

This legalization paved the way for women to wrestle at Madison Square Garden, which was the largest arena in the Northeast, World Wrestling Entertainment’s traditional wrestling territory. 

This decision, as a result, was the move that allowed the WWE to begin hiring female wrestlers.

Moolah did a lot of terrible things for women, but at the same time if it wasn’t for Moolah none of the woman wrestlers you see today would have been legally allowed to wrestle for World Wrestling Entertainment, and while that does not equal the atrocities she committed, that is an important part of the history of women in the WWE."

Simple as that.It probably wouldn't have stopped the controversy, but it could have at least shown WWE wasn't turning a blind eye to the fans' anger and given at least a plausible reason that Moolah could deserve the honor.

 

...or, you know, they could have Carmella declare herself the "Modern Day Moolah" and beat Naomi (knowing most of the worst claims were how Moolah treated black trainees, specifically.) That too.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

Settle down Hollywood SorceressKnightico!

[MORELOCK]

7 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

...or, you know, they could have Carmella declare herself the "Modern Day Moolah" and beat Naomi (knowing most of the worst claims were how Moolah treated black trainees, specifically.) That too.

Wait, so it's "tone deaf" for Naomi to lose a match at any time during the promotion of the Moolah Battle Royal? That's quite a stretch.

[(BP)]

Here's a very dense breakdown of the sixty year dispute over licensing women's wrestling in New York. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/findingaid.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/on-lawsuits-for-licenses-the-fight-for-womens-wrestling-in-new-york-long-form/amp/

This is the relevant part: 

"Fabulous Moolah is credited (rather, credits herself (55)) as having broken down the barrier, but it was Ethel Whitehead and Silvia Calzadilla who took the New York State Athletic Commission to court, Betty Niccoli who took on the Commission in the press, and Shari Lee, on behalf of Mildred Burke’s World Wide Women Wrestlers Association, who fired the shots in the battle to end the ban on women’s wrestling in New York."

That's not to argue that WWE cares about such nuance and wouldn't just repeat Moolah's version of history.

The interesting thing is that legislators only cared about the matter because if they gave wrestling licenses to women they'd have to do so for boxing. They were protecting, in their words, "the manly art of defense." 

[SorceressKnight]

8 minutes ago, MORELOCK said:

Wait, so it's "tone deaf" for Naomi to lose a match at any time during the promotion of the Moolah Battle Royal? That's quite a stretch.

To lose in the promotion, that's a stretch.

To lose a match, specifically to Carmella, while WWE is actively trying to sell her as "the new Fabulous Moolah?" A whole different story.

[MORELOCK]

2 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

To lose in the promotion, that's a stretch.

To lose a match, specifically to Carmella, while WWE is actively trying to sell her as "the new Fabulous Moolah?" A whole different story.

Is it? Nearly all of the women have either tweeted or gave TV interviews about being inspired in one way or another by Moolah.

[Technico Support]

Quote

Moolah did a lot of terrible things for women, but at the same time if it wasn’t for Moolah none of the woman wrestlers you see today would have been legally allowed to wrestle for World Wrestling Entertainment, and while that does not equal the atrocities she committed, that is an important part of the history of women in the WWE."

I don't know what's funnier:

1. WWE getting all defensive and going full on "Hitler built great roads and kept the trains running on time."

2. The fact that this story is not even true

3. "She may have been a pimp, a disgusting con artist, and a serial abuser, but she also made it possible for the women she treated like shit to get treated like shit in the biggest market in the world!  Generic Girl Wrestler #642 got to fake fight at The Garden~! and blow Hulk Hogan instead of Phil Hickerson!"

[SorceressKnight]

1 minute ago, Technico Support said:

I don't know what's funnier:

1. WWE getting all defensive and going full on "Hitler built great roads and kept the trains running on time."

2. The fact that it's not even true

3. "She may have been a pimp, a disgusting con artist, and a serial abuser, but she also made it possible for the women she treated like shit to get treated like shit in the biggest market in the world!"

Again, if they made it possible to be hired by WWE, that is important.

If you ignore this piece to it and make it there, then you're openly saying it's fine for women to not be hired by the biggest company in the world and taking the biggest payday a woman could get from them, forcing them into the indy scene where they're only hired for a couple of token matches, maybe some indy promotions, and have so little a payday they'd have to do the custom matches that are borderline fetish porn.

 

...you know, like Fabulous Moolah did.