I met Ivan Koloff at a WalMart years ago. He was charging $5 to take a polaroid with him for charity. Really nice guy. His forehead had so many indents and scars you could grate cheese with it. His wife is a country girl you’d expect to see milking cows. I asked her if he ever came home with his face all bloody. She said “Oh, yes.” Koloff said in his Russian voice, “If I got home late, she make my face all bloody!”
To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never actually watched a Perrito match, and watching that video has me teary-eyed. It’s made all the more potent by the fact that they actually taped that tribute the night after the accident, and that Konnan himself, who was present at ringside when it happened, was able to go out and say those words. It’ll be interesting to see what becomes of the matches that they taped that night.
Being a Cheesehead by birth I’m gonna watch this during commercials/halftime of the National Championship game, so don’t expect much out of me tomorrow
I liked that Connor’s dad came back about all this Justin Roberts/WWE stuff and only said “Justin loved Connor and we love him”. Nothing more. That’s class.
I met Justin Roberts at that infamous Seattle Raw back in December 2013 (he asked me if I wanted to be on TV and took some footage with his phone and got me on the Titantron) and he’s a real class act. He got a raw deal from WWE, both in terms of how they let him go and in how they marginalized the role he played in Connor’s story. WWE has always been more than willing to rewrite history based on what they think is best for business, and it’s truly distasteful, the degree to which they’ve exploited Connor’s memory in order to garner some public goodwill for their corporate entity.
That being said, it is nonetheless good that WWE was kind to Connor, and it’s good that they’re raising money for other people in the situation he was in. Sometimes, it’s possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Like many corporations, the WWE execs tend to compartmentalize everything into certain buzz word categories, so they can output just the language that pertains to dollars and cents to shareholders. Such individuals develop an almost depraved indifference towards anything that has value, whether it be financial, social, or conceptual.
That’s what Justin Roberts went through, and I can empathize with that. I did contracting for a company that had no qualms about telling their employees how valuable they were and then laying them off without looking back. That was how I viewed myself at any contracting job I took after that. I couldn’t form any attachments to the workplace because I knew I eventually get the SEEYABYE kissoff. Luckily, the place I’m at now just promoted me to full time.
But yes, the whole Connor thing, the Breast Cancer thing, the Disabled Veterans thing, are all columns on a spreadsheet designed to optimize goodwill vs. overall financial gain. That’s how WWE sees it in the bottom line. They’ve gotten too successful for their own good.
I thought the article was a bitter, sad, “someone pay attention to me” article that was SUPPOSED to tackle a bigger issue, but was lost in the writer trying to feel important.
As a PR person (in education only so far grr…) there’s nothing wrong with essentially spamming your good works in order to gain public attention, especially when you’re a company as widely looked down on/chided as WWE. You need to grab what you can, when you can and let people know everything you do. This is especially important when your publicly taking a financial hit and your stock is dipping as theirs is.
I haven’t looked into it berry much, but other than running their package 1000 times, and making it part of the 24/7 thing, and inducting him into the HOF…what else has WWE done that’s so bad? They’ve raised crazy amounts of awareness to the cause and IIRC tens of thousands of dollars have been donated in Connor’s name…why WOULDN’T you do everything you can to focus on it?
I think Justin’s main complaint is that the company underplayed the relationship he himself had with Connor in favor of glamor shots of him with Triple H and Steph and other people who Vince wants you to know are important and care about sick kids.
Which, in the grand scheme of things, may seem petty and small, but imagine yourself in his shoes, if you had struck up this relationship with this inspiring young person, and your employer proceeded to completely ignore that relationship and propagandized it for business purposes.
Of course the company understated his relationship with Connor, he’s an ex employee that has been public with degrading the company in the past (I believe since this isn’t his first post), there isn’t a company on Earth that is going to promote a fired employee for anything, much less for something that they want to get THIS much publicity.
I also hesitate to say they’re using Connor as propoganda* because that’s not really the textbook definition of propaganda**, it’s just making him a figurehead for their philanthropic efforts
- It’s such a dirty word for my (wanted) profession
**by definition propaganda is a lie, negative, and political…Connor is none of these
Yes Smapti, Photo Ops are usually shallow displays of goodwill, but WWE has long ago purged itself of integrity. Integrity doesn’t pay the bills. Image is everything in our visceral society. Justin Roberts may not have got the singular honor he deserved, but he wouldn’t have been able to make such a impactful gesture of charity in the first place if it weren’t for his former bosses. That’s why you see the forced grins in the headline pictures. One handshaker is thinking “My ass is on the line if this falls through” and the other is thinking “I’m sucking Satan’s cock to keep kids from dying.”
Well, obviously RAW was a big hit, as all you guys can talk about is the E’s token good publicity child.
Ok, as far as Raw…
I don’t think any of us bought Ryback possibly going to Extreme Rules against Rollins. I was kind of surprised that they went with Orton, but we’ll see where that goes since we already got the payoff beating. I expect Rollins to win with a lot of cheating.
Would be huge if they had Reigns challenge Cena for the US Title. The Guy against The Future Guy. LolCenaWins of course, but you’d have to expect that they’d want to make Reigns look really good in the process. Otherwise I have no idea where they go with Reigns. The endless matches against Big Show are not helping, nor do I want to see him going against Kane. Both those guys are over exposed and need to go away for a while, if not retire. And I sure as hell hope they’re not going to feed Bray Wyatt to him.
Along with the weekly US Title matches on Raw, they should have DBD doing weekly IC Title matches on Smackdown. He already said he wanted to help the show.
And seriously, WWE. When you’re intentionally holding guys off TV, send them home. It’ll help with the whole ‘giving wrestlers time off to rest up and heal’ thing you crazy workaholic maniacs say your people don’t need.
I said before that I was choosing to watch my poor Badgers lose their best chance for a championship for the NEXT 70 years over RAW
And from what I can gather RAW just pretty much phoned it in anyway
FWIW, I watched RAW last night. For me, it was a mix of great stuff and same old shit. For the same old shit, see everything involving Big Show and Kane.
Highlight of the evening was [del]Adrian[/del] Neville’s match against Seth Rollins. Getting, and holding his own in, a match against the current WWE champ is a huge rub for Neville. Better than that, commentary generally spent their time putting him over rather than either a) pretending NXT doesn’t exist or b) burying NXT. I have to think, watching that match, that your average guy or kid at home now sees this ugly dude with the stupid cape who doesn’t talk (because Geordie) as a fairly serious competitor.
I assume he will now take a series of losses from Torito, R-Truth, Heath Slater, Zack Ryder, and Bradley Maddox. (Ok, I’ll mark the fuck out for that last, at the same time I’m dying inside.)
Some… other stuff happened? Some people liked John Cena’s match w/ Stardust; it didn’t do a lot for me and it sure as fuck didn’t do any favors for Stardust. But this may be the price we pay for a relegitimized US strap, and I don’t know that it left Stardust any worse off than his present no-story midcard hell. So sure, if we need to feed a bunch of midcarders to Jern Cena to make the belt look meaningful, fine. In the best possible situation, Cena would eventually lose the belt to somebody on some random Raw, worn down by the effort of being a “Fighting Champion” week in, week out. This won’t happen, because Superman doesn’t get worn down, but it’d be great.
(Aside: It really does not help insert any suspense into these US Title Open matches when you book Cena v. Rusev for the title at ER like the day after Mania. The commentary desk did it’s best with this–JBL or T said something along the lines of ‘Well, Stardust may win tonight and then it’ll be Stardust v. Rusev at ER!’–but seriously guys. How fucking hard was it to just wait to book this shit until the go-home Smackdown? Everybody already knew it was happening; you’d just be putting off making it official.)
Other than this… yeah. Stuff… happened. We had some variation on the same main event we’ve had for the last ten years, and then the Authority interfered in such a way that the babyface won. I don’t even know.
(Post Script: They advertised the May 11? Raw in Cincinnati during the show, including the putative main event. it’s presently set to be Reigns, Cena, and Orton v. Rollins, Kane and Rusev in a six-man tag. If you’re expecting a match report from YT, feel free to put a few ducats down for the tix–ain’t no way I’m putting down my hard-earned shekels for that.)
Take those with a grain of salt though
I doubt I’ll be the first to tell you but the proposed 6 man tag for the RAW I saw was not even close to the match that we got as a crowd
I might put down $15 for the show. Otoh, we’ve got an indie promotion here. I saw That indie promotion’s go-home for a big show.
I think I’ll continue paying $6 for the indie show.
For the seats you get for $15 you’d have a better view of the action by staying home and watching TV. I don’t bother going to WWE shows unless I can afford the $95 for a floor seat near the ring.
We don’t have any indie promotions this side of the Columbia river, so that option’s not available to me. I’ve been wanting to go down to Portland one of these days and go to one of WCWC’s tapings (apparently Matt Striker wrestles down there pretty regularly) but it hasn’t worked out with my schedule yet.
A WWE road show is coming to R’yaleigh, but I don’t think I’ll go. DBD vs BNB and Cena vs Rusev are advertised, but I’m pretty sure those matches are going to be TVed out repeatedly.
Although I’m glad to see Neville getting more pay in Prime Time, I don’t like that they put him against the WWE champ right away. It made him look like one of those unknown expendable jobbers from back in the NWA days. He could at least have gone through a few mid-carders first. Rollins did succeed in becoming more unlikeable with the taunts and slaps, but I just hate to see the NXT guys waste their talents to put the A-listers over.
I also hated the ending to the RR vs BS match. Yes, they’re making RR the guy who never gives up and laughs in the face of pain, and that’s fine. The Superman Punch is fine for a “Move Out of Nowhere,” like the Diamond Cutter and the RKO. But it doesn’t look as damaging as a regular suplex, and there’s no reason to believe RR’s Spear is anything close to the impact of BS’s Spear. RR just doesn’t do anything amazing to win a match, and BS has kicked out of much more lethal finishing moves. I don’t know why that bothered me more than anything else on RAW, but it did.
Oh well, gotta jet. I get to work from home today, and I ought to at least look like I’m logged on.
The Superman punch is actually pretty much an instant KO in MMA, so it’s actually kind of impressive that WWE has managed to make it look less effective than the real thing.
So I was just peeking over at The Underground Luchador blog, and it looks like we’ve got a mask vs mask match coming up tonight. Sounds like we’ve got a tasty replacement for what is fairly certain to be a very missable installment of NXT tonight.