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All the local news people who do problemsolvers segments are unhappy with that sort of talk.

Superniche thing I just realized tonight: of course Schultz was facing Inoki after an incident involving a slap. Guessing there isn't enough good content for an Inoki DSOTR, even if Inoki is as whacked as anybody in this business.

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As polarizing as he is(and God knows we talk about him enough here), I do enjoy Historian Cornette on episodes/shows like this. I think this is easily the best way to utilize him going forward, as long as he doesn't disintegrate in to cutting promos on Russo.

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1 hour ago, Cobra Commander said:

All the local news people who do problemsolvers segments are unhappy with that sort of talk.

Superniche thing I just realized tonight: of course Schultz was facing Inoki after an incident involving a slap. Guessing there isn't enough good content for an Inoki DSOTR, even if Inoki is as whacked as anybody in this business.

Presumably Inoki stuff could be folded into an episode on the North Korea show. 

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6 hours ago, hammerva said:

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 

The villa in France Belzer bought with Hogan's money is a bit more than a slap on the wrist.  Plus Belzer literally asked to be put in a hold.  Stossel was just a smart ass that was asking to get slapped but didn't actually verbalize it.  Don't know how it is hypocrisy.  The top guy on the card versus a guy moving down the card aren't treated the same?  Quelle surprise.  It's like complaining the Quarterback and the backup Left Guard aren't treated the same.  Like being surprised that Ric Flair and Denny Brown wouldn't be treated the same

Edited by Serious Darius Bagfelt
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5 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

So Stossel pulled one of those Dennis Miller ideological 180s? Great, another guy I liked as a kid down. I haven't paid any attention to what he's been up to since back then when I loved him trashing people on 20/20.

You assume they have done 180's as opposed to saying what they are told too buy whoever is cutting the paycheque and keeping personal opinions out of it.

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4 hours ago, Serious Darius Bagfelt said:

You assume they have done 180's as opposed to saying what they are told too buy whoever is cutting the paycheque and keeping personal opinions out of it.

Which can be completely disproven by the fact that they clearly reevaluated their own beliefs while working for ABC and HBO respectively (watch the last several years Stossel was with 20/20 and the last season of the Dennis Miller Show on HBO).

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 I'm wondering why was this even brought up at all? Was it just an attempt to latch on to the whole "WWF as part of the cultural zeitgeist" that was going on at the time? Was this the lead story on 20/20 that night?

I can't imagine 60 Minutes or whatever the NBC News magazine show was (First Camera, I think?) doing something like this, but then again, I may not have had a good read on investigative journalism back then since I was 5 and probably watching cartoons.

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I've never seen the full episode of 20/20 that featured the Schultz slap but, given the thirst for ratings and the like, I could definitely see ABC opting to air this first on the episode in question. Stossel was arguably the most well-known reporter on the show at the time given his gimmick as the "consumer advocate."

CBS and NBC would not have done anything since, well, both would have WWF programming on its airwaves within the year of the 20/20 episode. I don't have a doubt WWF tried negotiating with CBS, NBC and ABC (as well as MTV and other cable channels) around this time in their push for national exposure. ABC was likely the first major network to be knocked out of the race, so they responded with what was essentially a hit piece for morons.

 

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1 hour ago, StarChief EagleDemon said:

 I'm wondering why was this even brought up at all? Was it just an attempt to latch on to the whole "WWF as part of the cultural zeitgeist" that was going on at the time? Was this the lead story on 20/20 that night?

I can't imagine 60 Minutes or whatever the NBC News magazine show was (First Camera, I think?) doing something like this, but then again, I may not have had a good read on investigative journalism back then since I was 5 and probably watching cartoons.



Dude, 60 Minutes did a story on Cannon Films back in the 80's and let themselves get kayfabed by Menahem Golam.

 

20/20 did all sorts of pop culture stories to pop ratings back during the Hugh Downes/Barbara Walters era.  A bunch of us school kids ended up watching an episode in summer 1988 because they were talking about the popularity of Nintendo and showed 30 seconds of footage of Super Mario Bros. 2 before it was released.

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24 minutes ago, Southside Jim said:



Dude, 60 Minutes did a story on Cannon Films back in the 80's and let themselves get kayfabed by Menahem Golam.

 

20/20 did all sorts of pop culture stories to pop ratings back during the Hugh Downes/Barbara Walters era.  A bunch of us school kids ended up watching an episode in summer 1988 because they were talking about the popularity of Nintendo and showed 30 seconds of footage of Super Mario Bros. 2 before it was released.

20/20 was trashy and that it was treated as a "legit" news show back then is scary, I think they singlehandedly kept the Satanic Panic rolling for a few more years and straight up showed an exorcism. The only blowback they got was an occasional "Jeer" in the TV Guide "Cheers & Jeers" section.

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17 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

That was probably why my parents were afraid of Dungeons and Dragons. 

I was too young to even know what that was, of course. 

I am so old I remember when my parents wouldn't let me buy a Pat Benatar album because one of the songs was called "Hell is for Children". Which I believe was about child abuse.   That was like her best album too.  

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13 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

That was probably why my parents were afraid of Dungeons and Dragons. 

I was too young to even know what that was, of course. 

One of the perks of growing up in a city and going to a Roman Catholic Church/School was that no one was concerned with all of the moral panic stuff due to the massive gambling operation that was going on.

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looking at the TV listings for that night and 20/20 was on Thursday Nights in February 1985.

There was a Presidential address at 7pm Central that bumped everything back a half-hour.

20/20 aired from 9:30 to 10:30 Central that night up against Hill Street Blues and Knots Landing. That year, Knots Landing was a top 10 show and Hill Street was top 30. NBC and CBS had 6 other top 20 shows on that night (Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court)

ABC had the following shows on Thursday Night that season: People Do The Craziest Things, Who's the Boss, Glitter, TV Movies, Wildside, Eye to Eye, Street Hawk, "Specials". Who's the Boss was the only show to make it to the end of the 1984-85 Season (and it moved quickly to Tuesday Nights).

Anyways, the news stories mentioning Stossel/Schultz started coming in once Schultz was suspended by the NYSAC (which happened before 20/20).

So one reason why people think slapping Stossel got Schultz fired is because Schultz was fired 10 days before that 20/20 episode aired for different reasons.

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DAVID SCHULTZ PUTS BUTTS IN SEATS. Or in front of their TVs.

https://www.f4wonline.com/other-wrestling/dark-side-ring-draws-second-highest-ratings-series-history-309936

Quote

This week's episode of Dark Side of the Ring drew the second-highest ratings in the history of the show.

Dark Side of the Ring averaged 255,000 viewers on Vice TV for last night's episode focused on David Schultz and the incident where he slapped 20/20's John Stossel. That's up from the 221,000 viewers that last week's episode on Dino Bravo drew.

The rating in the 18-49 demo was a 0.11, up slightly from last week's 0.10 rating.

 

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15 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Anyways, the news stories mentioning Stossel/Schultz started coming in once Schultz was suspended by the NYSAC (which happened before 20/20).

So one reason why people think slapping Stossel got Schultz fired is because Schultz was fired 10 days before that 20/20 episode aired for different reasons.

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.) 

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9 hours ago, Southside Jim said:

 

20/20 did all sorts of pop culture stories to pop ratings back during the Hugh Downes/Barbara Walters era.  A bunch of us school kids ended up watching an episode in summer 1988 because they were talking about the popularity of Nintendo and showed 30 seconds of footage of Super Mario Bros. 2 before it was released.

I remember watching this one flick with Fred Savage as a kid just because it was about him competing in some video game contest and the movie had the first footage, that I'd seen, of Super Mario Bros 3. I could care less about the movie I just wanted a preview of the latest Mario game when I went to see it. 

 

On topic, what happened to Dr D in Japan? The show mentions him slapping a Japanese reporter and Dr D just makes a dismissive face about his time in Japan, like things didn't work out or something, and then they drop the topic completely. 

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