NEWM

Congrats Wand, enjoy!!

Reading an old edition of Meltzer's Observer from 1995, do you know the WWF planned on having Prince Andrew's wife, Sarah Ferguson, put the crown on the head of the winner of the King of the Ring that year? Very odd.

But she was busy so there was fucking Mo, glad of the wage.

Yeah, I recall Anderson being one of the few guys new Nice Guy Michaels publicly said was a total shit to work with. Am I misremembering or did Michaels actually put him over relatively cleanly on a PPV or Raw too? I also remember Anderson taking a swipe at Scott Hall the night after he no showed the TNA PPV where Samoa Joe had a period.

Have I imagined this or on the pre-game show to One Night Only, did they interview Bret (who got a very heavy mixed response compared to Owen and obviously Bulldog) and outright asked him if it made him sad to be booed over here, or words to that effect. I'm sure I remember him being a bit gutted to not still have the UK going apeshit and crying tears of joy for him like the Canadians and Savio Vega would.

It's been said multiple times before, but still something that puts me off BritWres almost entirely is that it's not American. I've never ever been able to hear British guys do modern style promos without it sounding all shite and car boot saley. Even when it's Brits in proper wrestling, other than Regal they never sound quite right. Our regional dialects can be death as well, all of them. The posters should leave American on in big fuck off letters if they can, it immediately adds credibility for me.

As for pro-US faces, as a kid I didn't like Hogan or Luger as flag-waving superchaps, but that's possibly also because they had Warrior and Bret as their counterparts and they were my favourites until Shawn Michaels got ace. My Mum told me I booed Jim Duggan at the Sheffield Arena in 1992 instead of doing his USA chant, but then I booed Davey Boy Smith too, because I always irrationally disliked him as a kid.

Yeah, totally possible. But do you think he's a good pro wrestler?

Court Bauer has said a few times in the recent Bauer and Pollock podcasts that Ross wanted a lot of autonomy and when he met with the Carters years ago, that wasn't forthcoming. I do wonder if he had business-based backers with him coming in at the Talent Relations level and sweeping the decks, could he do a good job? Some (slightly revisionist) history has credited his talent relations role as creating and moulding the Attitude Era, so it would make an interesting challenge given the similar circumstances he would find himself in. You could see the Roode/Kaz/Daniels/Aries gang excelling as actual perceived top guys under somebody like him. Joe could be reborn too.

I'm no fanboy of JR or Heyman, but I really wish they had gone to TNA when things were close. Would have loved to have seen what they would have tried.

Unless I've misread something, some ROH turds are being compared to HULK HOGAN and THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR. Is that actually happening? Not least because the subject is no-selling and they've basically picked arguably the two biggest superhero characters of all time as the example.

You could even have a pop at Hogan for the "reviving" elbow by Savage in 1995 as wrestling being really fucking daft, and that's still actually better than the infamous ROH stuperplex.

This debate starts and ends with Hogan vs Sting from Bound For Glory in my mind. Those silly old cunts are knackered as fuck and have got some Philly mutants sucking the jizz off the end of their dicks without so much as a bump from one of them. A glorious pro wrestling display.

I liked Corgan's story in that most recent (very, very good) ECW documentary, where he effectively revealed Paul Heyman as a bit of a snake oil salesman - even when he actually wanted some snake oil, he still just wouldn't invest in something so rudderless. I'd imagine him backing TNA would be a disaster but probably a morbidly entertaining one and fuck knows sytlistically how the show would change. I'd picture some 2005 TNA/Jimmy Hart's XWF/Wrestling Society X type thing. I'd watch that for a bit.

Kofi Kingston vs Santino Marella on Superstars this week is worth a watch. Fun little story of Santino being a bit shit but trying hard, and Kofi being a nice guy about it but still wanting to win.

I went out of my way to watch this, it was great. Raw could do with the odd match like this now and again - characters wrestling out of their comfort zones as ways to possibly build friendships or rivalries. Not slapping you over the head with angles necessarily, but adding depth to the characters they're supposed to be playing. Babyfaces in particular just do NOTHING as actual human beings if they're not actively involved in storylines. Tito Santana couldn't fart near a meaningful storyline after about 1989, but fuck me if you didn't have a good grasp of the type of bloke he was supposed to be from all the innocuous matches he had. Even as a daftarse bullfighter.

Fu-cking hell.

This went on Youtube a year ago so I might have missed it doing the big rounds, but it's a match from early-00s I'd guess, a good few years before Candido died, between him and The Sandman. Tammy's looking on her way to plus-sized but not there yet. Anyhow, it's a living breathing pissed up indie shambles, the type of which DDP is trying to end forever with his goodwill and hard work. Candido and Sunny come out ARSEHOLED, Candido cuts a promo on some locals including AJ Styles I think, beats them up with spectacularly bad offence, all still wearing his trackies and a t-shirt because "they lost his ring gear". Sunny is fucking blitzed out of her mind just standing around flicking her piss wet through hair back trying to look sexy (I think? Fuck knows what she's doing. She is proper, proper gone). Sandman finally comes out, does his big drunk entrance but falls off a host of chairs he tries to walk on, soaks two oldish birds in the front row with beer who really don't want to have that happen to them, just acts all pissed up and stumbles around as usual, but this video makes it look bleaker than when he does it in ECW. Anyhow, the match is diabolical, obviously, and towards the end Sunny carks it, gets carried out for a bit, then somehow zombies herself back out for an end spot where Sandman DDT's her on a guardrail, even though she's already out for the count when he's holding her in the position for it. I'm not even sure how she ended up back at ringside.

I know it all follows form for these three, but it's still something to behold. Amazing only Candido is actually dead out of this lot so far, and even then it wasn't the booze and pills that actually did it. What a grim shower of shit this all is. Wrestling will take people and well and truly fuck them up if they're not careful - this entire thing is about as far away from the modern day vision of nice shiny telly that WWE produces.

I tell you what the weekly PPV concept could have been great for though - a return to the days where a wrestler could be seen legitimately as a "draw". WWE has long been the draw for itself (mostly) regardless of who's on top, but like with the Raven example, if you have your big territorial stalwart such as Jarrett paired against somebody who gets hot, you could measure exactly who really is a numbers mover by how many people pay for the build up and execution of a big angle. I vividly remember that Jarrett/Raven match feeling like a fucking super big deal for TNA and wrestling as a whole - it was some proper good wrestling-style hype and buzz for something that was actually pretty smalltime. Nothing else sticks out from the weekly PPV era like that, (the introduction of SEX, maybe, but it was still just another Attitude era retread) but you'd have sharp known by the buyrates if somebody came in and made a real difference. It would take maybe a three/four week steady trend of the graphs pointing upwards for them to stop and say "Wow, ever since we've had that Kane knockoff in his Denim clothes and his Mankind mask, more people are buying the show", and then see how long you ride that wave before starting again with the next up-and-comer.

This is why I don't give much credit to TNA's "survival" all these years. I know it's treating it rather broadly, but it's not that unfair to say that if the Carters lost interest then TNA would probably be fucked as nobody else would be arsed. It's success or failure as a product has never been effectively measured by finances because they're just getting bankrolled either way. Only now when people are getting sacked or sent home or whatever is that actually showing itself, but the exact opposite of that happened in 2010 when you had Val Venis and Anderson coming in getting money chucked at them for doing fuck all. It wasn't because the product was suddenly ace and they were reaping the benefits inflating the roster - it was just because they were cash splashing at that time. If Spike elected not to renew Impact whenever that came up, and/or the Carters washed their hands of it, TNA isn't actually anything tangible, is it? It's a name, and a few ropes, big screens etc, and some wrestlers with nowhere to wrestle and nowhere to be watched wrestling. Basically the same as the WCW "company" that Vince bought, but with a HUGELY weaker brand recognition.

I bet he can sort you out with some right tasty shots of Sunny and Sable, Gladders. You could review that glimpse of Sable's minge under bunched up chains from Raw Magazine.

Yep, I'm with all that Raid. I could be wrong but I think I remember Powerslam and the net reporting it as a stonewaller that Bulldog was gonna be a big face again following the big split from Owen, and Bret's demands as part of his heel turn was what nixed it. It also lead to the messy all-heels tag title match at Mania. To be honest, things obviously turned out for the best, but I thought it was a real credit to Owen how well Bulldog was getting over as a face again. He was still acting the prick (and bizarrely so, at that) but Owen at that point was such a brilliant sleaze bag dickhead that the people couldn't wait for Davey to fucking chin him.

As we probably all have, it's mental to think of 97 had all the weird events not lead to the year we got. Let's say there's no Harts vs Austin, and Bulldog turns face. Once he's done with Owen, what the hell's he doing if Taker's your Champion? Or a face Bret or a god-knows-what-Shawn? That's all been done before, and Davey's not a proven draw. If Austin stays heel, do they feud for the IC belt and neither get any more over than that? It's such an odd landscape to think about.

Really surprised that it didn't draw massive interest too, I know WWE wasn't quite the Disney-like conglomerate it is now, but the product was white hot. I bet they could have done it a year or two years later. Spose they did, with WMX7, thinking about it.

Googling Footbrawl myself tonight, I found this lovely, lovely old NEWZ AND RUMOURZ site from 1998. It's fucking gorgeous this, you'll sit and read it all with a smile, I promise. I think he's a kid just nicking off the news sites that would nick off Meltzer. And then he'll editorialise a bit too.

http://camposk.tripod.com/index-wwfnews.html

Check this pearler our for an example:

August 5 News

The following will come as a blow to the entire wrestling world, but it now appears as if the August 15 edition of TV Guide will no longer feature Stone Cold Steve Austin and Hollywood Hogan on the cover, but rather Princess Diana. I mean no dis-respect whatsoever towards her, or anyone who might take offense to it, but isn't it about time they get over it??? It is still unknown as to whether or not the interview with Vince McMahon will still be in this edition.

What was your favourite from that spell Cleets? Toothy McMurderface is all over those great matches though, isn't he. Without much thought, him and Edge beating Evolution for the tag belts (is that right?), him vs HBK and the Iron Man Match with HHH were all corkers, but they're not ones I particularly enjoy now. I do recall 2004 as the year HHH started to become a good wrestler again though, so I'm probably forgetting loads.

Did Christian and Jericho have a really good cage match (for two Mr Averages like those two jerks) too or have I made that up?

Your expectations are unrealistic then. Maybe in a 6 episode 3 series BBC effort, but 24 episodes at a time for 10 years because networks keep wanting them to make shows? There's no way the quality can stand up to that each and every week, but you reward the great moments you've loved when the show is awesome by sticking with it to be rewarded in kind when it gets good again (or at least delivers good plot resolution) after dodgy spells.

Where you're bang on though, is that a saccharine love story/character arc is often the forced plot at the expense of LOTS of laughs. It's annoying when the shows spend a lot of time on them and forget to be even remotely funny.

That's insane, man. It's a sitcom! The same rules do not apply.

We've disagreed about this before Chest (Parks and Rec, The Office?) but you're FUCKING WRONG, friend.

Modern sitcoms, (possibly due to the success of Ross and Rachel but nobody hold me to that because there's probably a billion better and earlier examples) have always made a point to throw in two or three overarching story lines in between the gag-of-the-week stuff that either contribute to the cliffhangers or other big payoffs, or give long term fans something to stick with during inevitably barren runs for the show. These big character moments are basically the same as those in a drama - you want a resolution wherever possible, so just because this weeks episode of the sitcom is 'character A gets a dog', it doesn't mean at some point a plot point about the thing you REALLY care about isn't covered too.

I like his Sparky Plugg tattoo more than his Batista one.

Blimey, fair play to Hell No and The Shield for legitmately re-establishing the tag belts a bit. I dunno if it was the quality of the reigns or just the longevity with the belts, but WWE.com have done a little picture feature with most of the champs from the last ten years, and in between Jerishow/Showmiz and Hell No, I'd forgotten every fucking one of them. It's a right shower. All I remembered when scrolling through was that time they had Lawler bash Otunga and McGillicutty on air every week BECAUSE they were so shit and forgettable.

Michael Cole's job sounds like one of the hardest going, to be fair to him. Matt Striker gave him huge credit in his shoot interview for his workrate when it comes to driving Raw every week. The level of detail needed to be gone into for each little segment, from a loose grasp of the stuff in the ring, to the WWE and non-WWE things that need promoting, the social media, the local town/upcoming PPV stuff, as well as engaging in some sort of craic with whichever pillock he's stuck out there with week after week. And that's ignoring the shifts he has to do at that big table on the HHH DVD, that looks a fair fucking task as well.

I reckon, in hindsight, this all-in-one pitchman Cole is now is basically why WWE wanted to get JR out of the way all these years. It was a necessary requirement of the modern game, and they saw Cole's "half-decent at the wrestling moves, A1 at everything else" approach better than Ross' "knows his holds and his American football, not that fucking useful with hashtags".

What a lovely bloke Lex Luger seems these days. Just watched his 93 Timeline shoot and his enthusiasm for everything is infectious (if slightly maniacal). Great to see (and read in that PS interview) how things have so massively turned round for him.

Soft reset perhaps. Hold the power button and home button until you see the Apple logo. If you've Googled it, you've probably already tried it though.

Cheers, but yeah had already given that a bash. It's annoying me even more today, I think I'll drop in the Apple shop or O2 or something and get them to have a prod at it.

Took the update to iOS 7 on my phone today and have a bug where it always says there's 1 text waiting to be read in my messages. There's not, and obviously it doesn't harm me, but seeing that little red 1 next to the app is annoying the fucking shit out of me. Google was mostly useless with this particular query, anybody have any fixes? Thanks a lot.