Robert S

If WCW got a buck every time Dave misses to properly set a comma or a full-stop in the WON, they would still be running today.

Hisa's site (don't remember if that was an angelfire or geocities site) definitely had all double-changes (including the Colon double-change) besides the Veneno one listed in the late 90ies.

Some other prominent wrestlers that come to mind: Low Ki (he probably would not make it even to the first show) Austin Aries (he would be gone within a couple of weeks) Drake Younger Jaxson Ryker Velveteen Dream El Ligero

How many of those years were financially really bad or at least as bad as was reported back then? One of the biggest learnings from Nitro (the book) was that accounting at Turner & Timer Warner was a mess and the real numbers WCW did were much better than how it ended up being in the books.

That Pedigree gave me a good laugh. My assumption was that the arms were the problems. Considering that Cody did not even try to bend the arms I assume they did run through the bigger spots beforehand in the PC and there were issues with a lack of flexability of a certain 51-year-old.

That reminds me of a classmate in school who accidentally grabbed a teacher by her tits. It went something like we was walking around a right corner, for whatever reason had his hands up and was talking (and looking) to a colleague on his left side. Obviously the teacher was also walking around that corner in the other direction. From what I got the guy (who was around 15-16 from what I remember) was really embarrassed while the teacher (who from what I remember was pretty young and good looking - just to paint a picture) took it cool (because it was obvious that it was not on purpose). On the other hand, how is anyone expected to take a move or strike from Gulak if he can't even hit a stationary target like a hand. Or is he also used to thigh slapping that he even wants to do that when shacking somebody's hand?

So you are expecting Somalia Joe and Wayne "the Cock" Johnston to be on the card?

Even the name of name of the group was weird. I mean the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not a white supremacist group and it did not control a militia or whatever that group was supposed to be or stand for. Did Vince have financial interests in South Africa in the 80ies that suffered by the end of Apartheid? Because this really reeks like Vince's MO: Vince hates paying taxes -> here comes Irwin R. Schyster, he distrusts lawyers -> hello, Clarence Mason, he feels televangelists are a joke -> hey Brucy, I've got an idea, he is a lifelong republican -> let's put some Clinton impersonator on PPV, Lawler, make as many Clinton jokes as you can think of on Raw, how about having Gennifer Flowers at Wrestlemania 14? fake Clinton was such a great idea, let's repeat this with a fake Obama etc. etc. etc.

335 million divided by 1200, so basically the money goes straight to the lawyers.

16:55, probably a new personal best for me, I only had to brute force a single letter, but the answer to 31 across is really stupid.

So this made look up false friends between English and Spanish to make a silly joke, but I ended up almost empty handed (for one, because the ones with wrestling connections are way to obvious, I mean no one would think Julio Dinero translated to "Jules Dinner" or "Sin Caras" meant "sinn faces"). Though it's funny that a significant bunch of them also work as false friends between English and German (obviously there are also ones that work between Spanish and German, but that was to be expected considering that German and English are closer related to each other).

I thought those filters are gone for almost a decade now. Let me try: OMG, meh, DOI

Regarding people not knowing that he had cancer: my memory might be completely off considering that was 20 years ago, but didn't he have either a blog or a website where he was quite open about his bout cancer? Quick googling at least showed that he seemed to post on the Wrestlecrap board. Here is a reddit post (I guess from one of Tenta's sons) containing a screenshot of a Tenta post from August 2005: (I assume that's legit.)

Cornette had actually a good line about Ole's time working under Herd, something like "it was against his religion to not take this kind of money".

It's Hogan, so 95% yes, though at the very least Patterson really worked the show where Hogan had his first match (at least according to cagematch). On the Hogan-lie-scale this at least hits the mark "does not violate obvious facts like the laws of physics and does not require necromancy".

Is thigh slapping worse than stomping when doing punches or similar strikes?

Okay, I probably should have prefaced it that I was not comparing that on a layoff level. In central Europe, Austria more specifically, doing mass layoffs just to optimize profits for stockholders is not that easy legally anyway. I was thinking about a current hardware project, for which over the last decade the size of the hardware team was maybe doubled. This project is slowly coming to an end (after taking about three times as initially planned and costing about five times as much) and management is getting nervous because they have loads of specialists that they won't need for a decade or so reg. new development. But you are definitely right: there is a lot of work to be done to keep the product on the market (fixing issues with early series, replacing parts that become unavailable etc.).

I guess that's the story of software development turned up to 11. You start up with a team of what you think is a sensible size, after a couple of delays realize that there is no way that you can keep your target (date and/or content-wise) and add loads of people to that project, completely ignoring Brook's law ("Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."). Once the project is done (one way or the other), you are left with a huge team without much to do, because of course you don't start to think about the next project while the current one is still running (and the current project is always the only thing that is really important) or even better slowly move resources out of one project and move it into the other so that you have a smooth transition when the first project hits market. Looking at my company, hardware development probably is not that much different either.

Cornette recently had a great story about what Bill Dundee apparently once said about Ole: "Ole Anderson likes to fuck but he don't (sic!) like to come. He just wants to fuck all the time he don't wanna come. He just wants to fuck. He is miserable."

It probably did not help that Naomi looked completely washed up.

Looking at how the business works it's no wonder that wrestlers have inferiority complexes in that regard. A talented young person in any sport is a hot commodity that may be treated sometimes too well (that they start to believe their own hype and don't work hard enough to reach their full potential - pro sports is full of such people), in wrestling the veterans will tell you that what you do is shit (and probably a lot of times simply that you yourself are shit) from day one, you have to start at the bottom of the foodchain and work your way up for years and years and years long after you might be ready for the top. At a certain point you will either quit or start to believe what you are told. You have to be very stable mentally not to end up with deep psychological issues. I am sure that the drugs and the alcohol are not just to treat the pain and because you are on the road a lot. I would assume even the biggest stars might take it hard when they are pushed away from the top. Flair is the most prominent example, but I am sure that he is not the exception but the rule here.

Damn, I hate it that my mind went into the exact same direction. I blame Russell Crowe and John Oliver.

Regarding that Cena interview, my reaction can be easily summed up: The only way to get Cena distance himself from Vince probably would be China threating to ban his next movie.

On a quick glance - just from the couple of lines I have read so far about the case - it might be a completely different situation. His wife was 85, suffering from dementia and Haynes was taking care of her. In cases like this the likeliest scenario is that Haynes was overwhelmed with the situation, could not see any other way out resp. forward than murder-suicide (the stand-off with the cops might have been an attempt at suicide-by-cop) and in the end did not go through with the suicide. Still a very tragic situation, but not in the least comparable with the Benoit case. Trying to understand the Benoit case inevitably leads you to think about concussions, steroids, other drugs, friends dying left and right and yes also previous behavioural problems that pre-date a lot of other issues, the Haynes case on the surface does not require that, it seems rather simple and similar cases happen often enough that it is barely news-worthy (though, again, still tragic). Of course, I could be completely off trying to read what happened why and the case might be very different.

Road Dogg technically came in in late 94 as well. Apart from that, I think Tekno Team 2000 and Jean-Pierre Laffite are probably debuting soon in your rewatch. Man Mountain Rock is a weird case. He has a great look, is a legit amateur wrestling All American and had a gimmick that was (I think) not complete bullshit. Yet, he completely suck in the the couple of squashes I have seen from that timeframe. I know he was involved in the Cactus Jack vs. Nasty Boys feud (though I vaguely remember him dangerously, recklessly even, blowing stuff in the Clash match that set up the Superbrawl match), was he any good besides that in WCW?