Von Erich... on RAW??

[bluedevil71]

Brad, you're comments are right on. If anybody was hit with a sledge hammer he'd be seriously hurt, if not dead. There's no question to that. Unfortunately, with all that ECW did, then Vince's WWE did, what happened Monday Night was minor compared to all the b.s. that's gone on over the past 5-10 years. It doesn't even come close.

And, unfortunately, let's say somebody does that at a show this weekend. Any show. Any indy group. Doesn't matter where it is at. Say so-and-so nails somebody with a sledgehammer and the guy doesn't get up, the fans will have a hard time buying it. WHY? Because they can always come back and say 'Well, he's not so tough. Flair took that and more Monday night and lived for another day.'

What ECW started and WWE later followed has destroyed the credibility that wrestling used to have and it will be a hard sell to get people to buy the "realism" of wrestling again. Sure you'll get a few people at spot shows here and there, but not everybody because of what others have ruined.

That said, it's hard to point the blame at Vince here. Because Paul Heyman and ECW were doing this crap a lot longer than Vince was.

I'm not saying I like what Vince produces, but the bottom line is this. He is a businessman. What he is doing is selling his product. Is it working? Well, considering the man has hundreds of millions of dollars, I'd say he's doing pretty well for himself.

As for the Jim Ross, I agree with you there. He has totally forgotten where his roots were. That said, however, you know what. Vince is putting food on the man's table, and nobody can fault a man for having a job and doing it. We can fault him for losing his morals and beliefs, but not for feeding his family.

[bobbyryates]

bluedevil71 said:

What ECW started and WWE later followed has destroyed the credibility that wrestling used to have...

That said, it's hard to point the blame at Vince here. Because Paul Heyman and ECW were doing this crap a lot longer than Vince was.

which is exactly why i hated ECW from the beginning and until now. it destroyed the concepts of wrestling to an insane degree. a point of no return.

[bluedevil71]

Exactly, Bobby. I mean when New Jack started doing stuff from the balcony, when they these Triple table matches, etc., give me a break.

ECW, in my mind, was best when we had the Chris Benoit-Eddie Guerrero matches or Guerrero-Dean Malenko or Rey Mysterio-Psychosis. Shoot, Monday night, the best match on Raw, by far, was Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels.

You know what was really sad though was when they had all the legends in the ring. Think about it: Steamboat, Arn Anderson, Dusty, Jay Strongbow, Kevin Von Erich, Harley Race, Billy Graham, etc. I know I'm leaving out a ton. That's what we remember and shall cherish.

[bobbyryates]

amen.

[pinkandblack]

I'll say it again. I don't watch much WWE... I doubt I've watched more than a couple hours TOTAL in the past few years. But it was nice to see some familiar faces. I mean, I enjoyed those few minutes of airtime that Vinnie Mac graciously allowed the legends to have... But it wasn't enough to bring me back to the WWE.

I've only heard rumors about the HHH / Flair thing. Sounds like typical WWE crap... WAY overdone - to the point of completely destroying what could've been a great angle.

Another rumor which keeps being whispered in my ear concerns Bret Hart's upcoming appearance at some FanFest rip-off. Supposedly, all the other guests are WWE wrestlers / announcers / etc... Which would make it a WWE sponsored event. Which means.... I can't even say it. Anyone know if there's any truth to this vicious rumor?

[natureboy14]

from what i have heard is vince is considering have fanfest type events before the ppv's and before big house shows (you can bet it wont be a fan friendly price either considering a ringside ticket to any of their ppv's average a minimum of 200.00

[flair1]

I just wanted to stick up for ECW. I think that they have got a bad rap as far as the use of tables and chairs and such. That's all anyone seems to want to remember. When you see highlights from ECW, you see the tables and chairs, but if you ever went to a live show, there was some great wrestling. I went to 5 or 6 ECW shows total, and I think I saw one table broken. I saw a lot of great action. There were a ton of great wrestlers. Guys that never made it "huge". Jerry Lynn, Steve Corino, Kid Kash, and Nova to name a few.

I discovered ECW at a time when WCW was burying Flair, and the WCW product was really starting to suck.

And I'll go out on a limb here (and this is just my opinion). I think that Jerry Lynn is one of the top in-ring talents of all time.

[flair1]

...and back to the original topic. I read the (Jim) Ross report that WWE has not yeat purchased the World Class tape library.

[stompingground]

I am a die hard Mid-Atlantic and WCW fan, but I loved ECW. The wrestling was always solid. They always looked at history. They didn't make believe that wrestlers had no history coming in. Guys like New Jack, Rotten, Mahoney, all had their place; this was just a piece of the whole pie. During their run there were a lot of talented guys that wrestled and took it serious. At first glance I can see why people just saw it as guys leaping off of tall buildings, but it was much more than that. I put it right behind Jim Crockett for as a great promotion

[pinkandblack]

natureboy14 said:

"from what i have heard is vince is considering have fanfest type events before the ppv's...."

[/size]

Okay, so the one I heard about is in November... No, surely Bret wouldn't do that. He wouldn't agree to make a return at SURVIVOR SERIES!

I guess it kinda makes sense though, after what he said during his Q&A. To me, it seemed at first he said "No, I'm not going back." Then a few minutes later, did a complete 180: "Well, I might go back for a Legends or Hall of Fame thing..."

And all Vince has been doing lately is "Legends" stuff. Who knows? If he goes back, I don't intend to follow him.



(Every now and then, I really start to wonder about the whole Montreal thing...)

[kyle]

bluedevil71 said:

Exactly, Bobby. I mean when New Jack started doing stuff from the balcony, when they these Triple table matches, etc., give me a break.

ECW, in my mind, was best when we had the Chris Benoit-Eddie Guerrero matches or Guerrero-Dean Malenko or Rey Mysterio-Psychosis. Shoot, Monday night, the best match on Raw, by far, was Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels.

I agree with most of what's being said. As usual Triple H's beat down on Flair went entirely too long. Naturally you would stagger back to you feet if you could after the first slegehammer shot, but you would probably be defenseless. For Flair to really sell this he would not be able to comeback for a long time and could have memory loss or brain damage. He could wind up as a Eugene type character.

As far as knocking ECW, I enjoyed it up to the point when they went national on TNN. Sure some of the triple tables and other thing were over the top but times had change. Movies are the same way with the sex, langauge and violence. But we did get some good wrestling from ECW also. The real ECW was a cult thing, not for everyone. If I had kids I'm not sure if I would let them watch any of today's wrestling. If I was an adult with kids in the 70's and early 80's, I would have let them watch and taken them to the shows. It's just another sign of the times.

[wreckingcrew]

Bluedevil71- I don't post much on this site and sometimes the cross talk is really irritating. But thank you for explaining the business to me. I really did not know how the whole thing worked. Gene Anderson and Nelson Royal should have been quiet so I could listen to the True Master Mind on the Psychology of wrestling.

P.S. I did say if you have a problem with what I posted to talk to me about it at some of my upcoming bookings. which include 10/22 Thomasville NC.
11/19 Spartanburg, SC -Oh there was a couple more that should have been there, but I turned down other bookings for to honor my original deal like:
10/15 Fayetteville ,and10/16 Laurinburg for Pro Wrestling South but the promoter some how couldn't promote a town and had to cancel these dates on me even though he knew how to tell someone who grew up in and breathed wrestling every day "HOW IT WORKS" Thanks again! Brad Anderson