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The Viceland Wrestling Documentaries


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The only guy in this whole thing who isn't coming off completely awful (particularly to the people aware of the cavalcade of endless deaths in wrestling that took place in the quarter century after) is Mansfield.  

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Oh Mansfield isn't coming off that well either.  I mean nobody believes he did what he did because of a lack of insurance and a retirement plan

I liked that they brought up the total hypocrisy of Schultz getting almost blackmailed while Hogan shoot chokes the shit out of Belzer and gets a slap on the wrist 

Edited by hammerva
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Mr T was the reason WrestleMania was a success. That needed to be emphasized as a counterpoint.

The Belzer incident got the show a ton of last minute press and whatever settlement they paid was a pittance compared to the publicity they got. 

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37 minutes ago, sabremike said:

Honestly: how many people back when the 20/20 segment aired didn't know pro wrestling was predetermined? When I went to my first show with my dad at the Mid Hudson Civic Center on March 4th 1986 we were second row and could pick up on the guys calling spots in the ring.

one would think that marathon TV tapings would help some people figure out that this isn't on the up and up

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The stuff about him as a bounty hunter fucking up bad guys was actually awesome and I sorta wish they had done a bit more on it.

Stossel is still unaware that Vince pretty much told Dr D to do what he did.

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John Stossel and Dr. D probably have some mutual interests. A shame that they can't bond over talking about how the government sucks or how guns are awesome.

Also, Eddy Mansfield seems like he read Twitter to see how to argue his point in a way that would get cheap support from some people.

They fucked the timeline up about McMahon and the commissions. They aired a clip from 1997 (Undertaker/Christine Todd Whitman).

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6 minutes ago, hammerva said:

Next week is Herb Abrams.  NOW business will pick up 

Dead Herb Abrams would make a hell of a costume for a DVDVR Halloween party.

Edited by Nice Guy Eddie
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2 minutes ago, hammerva said:

I kind wish they didn't spoil in the trailer of Abrams and mention the dead naked covered in baby oil and cocaine.  But it is a hell of a hook 

I figure most of the viewing audience for Dark Side probably knows how Abrams met his fate anyway.

Edited by Nice Guy Eddie
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I'm glad there's no After Dark for the Schultz episode. I don't think the topic makes for a good round table discussion. Now, Herb Abrams on the other hand...I figure Foley will be on the panel. I wonder who else they got for the Herb episode.

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48 minutes ago, sabremike said:

Honestly: how many people back when the 20/20 segment aired didn't know pro wrestling was predetermined? When I went to my first show with my dad at the Mid Hudson Civic Center on March 4th 1986 we were second row and could pick up on the guys calling spots in the ring.

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. 

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1 minute ago, SorceressKnight said:

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. 

Dave has mentioned quite often that Roy Shire in the 70's was essentially forced to put a disclaimer at the start of his show saying that it's an exhibition and the results were predetermined. It had no effect on business.

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Stossel getting on a high horse about not liking it when people get bullshitted is amazing considering the last 25 years of what John Stossel has done on television screens.

If Stossel had discovered Reason Magazine and Libertarianism before 1984, he would have obviously realized that opposing kayfabe is inconsistent with all the other stuff he believes. That's not even getting into how Stossel hates frivolous lawsuits now.

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not sure if it's exactly a 180.. but the 20/20 reel they showed on DSOTR included him and some tobacco company about cigarettes and cancer... nowadays, Stossel is a skeptic on the tie between cigarettes and lung cancer. Going from consumer reporter to libertarian isn't a total flip but it's a change.

I had a college-level ethics class that had one of those Stossel videos once. So he sorta found a niche years ago among libertarian types. Now, no disrespect to those types since they have their positives.. but 2000s Stossel would have opposed 1980s Stossel's lawsuit to get $280k from the WWF.

Mansfield was more hateable than Stossel though

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