Yes, a complete bust. He didn’t make the team. And why wouldn’t he have played football since highschool? Not good enough to make a college team? Pro-level potential usually merits a scholarship.
However, a quote from the Steve McMicahel wiki page says this:
Gah!
Yes, that was the reason for the switch, but he was healed (as well as he would) before he went into wrestling. My poor phrasing aside, Goldberg was referring to injuries suffered as a wrestler.
Jodi, Wiki also gives fairly detailed history on comic book stories. It’s factual in that Wiki will (usually) correctly identify the title reigns and the ongoing feuds (scripted of course - it’s easier and safer to wrestle a friend than an enemy). The people who update wrestling entries are wrestling fans - likely as obsessive as the comic fans who can tell you what issue Superman first used super-breath.
“Reporting”? She’s talking about wiki pages, which are almost surely written by wrestling fans.
You don’t remember that…and you call yourself a GIANTS fan. Taylor, however, only did the one appearance. Bam Bam Bigelow credited Taylor’s work ethic in preparing, as many who come in for one-shot think wrestling is incredibly easy. That said, Bigelow also lifted Taylor to a very good match, in wrestling terms.
Is this on the level? Assuming it is:
Most reporting is “by sources outside of wrestling,” journalism inside of wrestling being a little thin on the ground. I don’t really have an opinion on the accuracy of what is set forth in the Wiki articles, knowing nothing about the epic battles recounted. But the recounting of these matches as factual underscores the inability or unwillingness to step outside the fakery of wrestling even for purposes of ostensibly factual biography. It’s like a bio of William Shatner that recounts the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
If you’re suggesting he never really wrestled, nice try. Directly below that it describes, in detail his four-year run in WCW.
You missed that point. LT was bolded - Ellis just lost a hero.
He was drunk…high on cocaine…IT NEVER HAPPENED LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!
Well, since the quote of Ellis’s which I was responding to contained links to two articles, neither of which was from Wiki, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
How else do you write it up?
You’d have to do that on every line. It has nothing to do with stepping outside the fakery of wrestling, it’s simply shorthand. Since everyone knows it’s scripted you don’t need to say it every line. It would like writing
when writing it a narrative of Lord of the Rings. It would be pointless.
In all seriousness, I’m sitting here trying to figure out why I don’t remember LT being at a Wrestlemania. I was a WWF (or whatever it was called) fan during the mid-80s, a huge Giants fan since '90, and living in the greater NYC city area (southwestern CT) in '95.
I sorta kinda vaguely remember something, but it’s just not there. Perhaps the general sucktitude of the Giants during the mid-90s caused me to block out all Giants-related trivia from that time period.
Or maybe it was all the drugs. heh.
I think Cecil Adams is real. At least, it never occurred to why he wouldn’t be real ten years ago when I was sitting in a cafe reading The Straight Dope in the Washington City Pages. You all seem pretty credulous when you mention him. You wouldn’t be pulling one over on me, would you? I mean, I’m pretty sure in a place like this, every time someone mentioned Cecil they’d put a warning! He’s not real!! tag in front of it or something so I wouldn’t be fooled into thinking he was real if he really weren’t. You guys wouldn’t nonchalantly talk about him as if he were real if he weren’t, right? Right??
When did I call anyone an idiot? I think you have terrible taste, but that doesn’t mean you are an idiot.
Y’know, maybe it’s late, but I’m really honestly wondering if the obtuseness is intentional or not.
Frodo is a character. The Lord of the Rings is a book. The reality of Middle Earth exists only in the book (and movie) and no one – not Tolkein, not Peter Jackson – asserted it was “real.” The fans were never invited or expected to enjoy it as a “real” experience intersecting in any way with their own reality, much less ostensibly occurring in their own reality. If you look up the biography of Elijah Wood, it doesn’t list the epic battles of Frodo. If you look up the biography of Frodo, it reflects he is a character in a book.
For these wrestlers, OTOH, the factual and the fictional is mixed, and both are presented as if they are fact. If “we all know” it’s fake and there’s no reason to say so, why is it presented as fact? I don’t think for a minute many people actually believe it’s fact, so then the question becomes – why do they pretend that they do? Again, it’s a complete suspension of disbelief that transcends the performance and the stage, to be the default position – let’s all act like this is on the level. I’m willing to suspend disbelief myself, but not forever, and not when the alternate reality I’m offered is so cheesy and implausible.
Well, there we run back into the problem that entertainment that attempts to blur the reality/fiction line (to obscure the frame around the story) should be minimally realistic in order to invite the audience to participate in the suspension of disbelief necessary to blur the lines between reality and fiction in a way that doesn’t insult their intelligence. Pro wrestling fails in this, IMO, because the premise(s) offered is not realistic enough to allow me to suspend my disbelief. “Cecil Adams” doesn’t require me to suspend disbelief because the identity of the author of the Straight Dope is largely irrelevant to the information and enjoyment of the Dope. I never cared, and do not care, about the actual name of the person writing the Straight Dope column, any more than I care whether Alan Smithee is a real producer.
It’s not presented as fact, it’s all part of the game. Most characters in books don’t acknowledge that they are characters in books because that is not the convention of the genre. I’ll go back to magicians again. Some never admit that it’s all illusions (though many do) because it’s simply not the convention of the genre.
You claim that it is an insult to the intelligence of the viewer to perpetuate this ridiculous and untenable notion, but wrestling fans don’t care. I think that’s the part you are having difficulty accepting. Just like in musical theater it is convention to burst into song in the middle of a discussion, no one stops and says “hey, why aren’t all the other characters wondering what’s going on?” It’s part of the landscape, you don’t even notice it. If you are not familiar with the genre (or simply don’t like it) it may seem odd, but none of the fans of wrestling notice it.
Unless it’s done particularly badly, then they notice. Like Shockmaster falling through the scenery, that killed any heat the character had. 
Heh, some of you people ragging on wrestling fans are back-pedaling and looking like idiots because
That’s funny.
Next time you give people shit about whatever their tastes in entertainment are, try to be at least somewhat knowledgeable about it.
Dipshits.
I realize this.
No, characters in books do not acknowledge that they are characters in books because in the context of their own reality – which does not intersect with our own – they are not characters in a book, they are people. Actors acknowledge that they play roles from the vantage point of their reality as actors, but they don’t acknowledge it while in character, because their character isn’t acting, he or she is living the existence provided by the author. Again, the problem with pro wrestling arises IMO because there is the intersection of the fictional “reality” with actual reality. As I’ve already said several times, this is extremely hard to do successfully.
I don’t know a single magician who professes to perform actual magic. And the only fans of magic who are expected to take it at face value, or even to act as if they do, are children.
.
Yeah, I get that. As why should they? It’s not Shakespeare; it’s pro wrestling. They are willing to subsume themselves in the alternate reality, just as hard-core D&D’ers, SCA’ers, and Trekkies sometimes do. But that doesn’t always make such people look smart, or even 100% stable, to the disinterested outside observer (at least this one) – they put the “fanatic” back in “fan”. But I actually think it’s great they don’t care; like what you like, so long as you’re not hurting anybody.
I’m actually pretty fine with it; I just can’t do it myself because I find the offered alternate reality so silly that it is not possible, much less worthwhile, for me to suspend my disbelief to participate in it.
I don’t think it’s that you don’t notice it, but that you accept it and move past it. I can’t do that. Again, there is a level of disbelief that is required to enjoy it and I don’t have it for this particular entertainment form.
So again, to people who might ask, “Why don’t people like pro wrestling?” or even “Why do the haters always harp that ‘It’s fake!’?”, these are my answers. I never said they had to be anyone else’s and I honestly don’t feel I’ve been either snobbish or condescending in presenting them. But I will admit that it’s hard to formulate “I think it’s stupid” in a way that is palatable to those who disagree.
:dubious: Nice way you have of gutting what I said to make it appear that what I said is not what I meant.
What do you do in your day job, dipshit? Cut up movie critic’s columns for positive quotes for some piece of shit movie?
What the movie critic wrote: This movie is the biggest bomb to hit movie theaters ever.
After D_Odds writes the quote for the paper
This movie is the biggest… movie… ever!
You will note that the tone of the quote has changed just a bit after D-Odds got a hold of it.
For those playing along at home here is what I said at the top of page 3
I would like to think it is obvious that my final sentence is referring to the previous paragraph, but I guess I am giving you rasseling fans to fucking much credit. :rolleyes:
Also you will note I said I met people. Where the fuck did you get the idea that there idiots are my friends? Did I say that? Where? Also I don’t give a fuck about survivor, or AI never said I did.
Fuck off and die idiot.
Oh, and Telemark Nobody said that redneck males had a corner on stupid.
…here is a bio of Captain Kirk on Wikipedia-a character played by William Shatner. It pretty much details Kirk’s voyages on the Starship Enterprise.
Here is the bio for one of my favourite wrestlers: The Macho Man Randy Savage:
Randy wrestled one of my favourite matches of all time at Wrestlemania III: from his wikipedia bio:
For a definition of Kayfabe, go here:
To put it quite simply: most of the bios on wiki will mix fact and fiction, but that fact and fiction is clearly defined. If it “happened” on the show, but wasn’t really real, the incident would be labeled kayfabe. Understanding the basic terminology, and understanding that some media like Pro Wrestling Illustrated treat everything as “real” because they are marketing to a particular crowd, might assist in your struggle to understand why people like me love to watch wrestling matches…
Does the knowledge that my favourite wrestling match was strictly choreographed take away the enjoyment of that match? Hell no! In fact, when I learnt how much effort went into producing that classic match, my respect for both Savage and Steamboat skyrocketed. The match was a plethora of bold emotions and brilliant story-telling. I still occasionally pull out the tattered video tape of Wrestlemania III to watch this match-it is like watching Melinda Doolittle nail another song while those around her flailed, or it was like watching the All-Blacks put 40 points on their rivals the Wallabies.
I sense you are trying to come up with a logical reason why wrestling is popular: the truth is that there isn’t one. Wrestling is popular with different people for different reasons: and popularity is principally driven by emotion, not logic.
At the end of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Rings, I remember crying in the movie theatre. I proceeded to see it again in the movie theatres five more times (my own personal record.) Did I cry because Gandalf died? Was I emotional because the Fellowship had been broken?
Nah: I saw Fellowship at a time in my life when I had hit a crossroads: and I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with myself. I watched that movie with the knowledge that Jackson was a Miramar man, that I walked past the paint factory that turned into Weta Workshop every day on the way to school. New Zealand didn’t have the infrastructure to make million dollar movies: so Peter Jackson created it.
Thanks to his efforts, along with his decision not to make movies in Hollywood and to keep the “suits” at arms length, along with his loyalty to his co-workers and his desire to simply “make movies that he(Peter Jackson) would like to see”, Peter Jackson created a trilogy of films that not only took the world by storm, but inspired me to get out of the rut I had fallen into and commit to turning my dreams into reality.
Ask a hundred different wrestling fans what their favourite wrestling memory was, and you will get a hundred different responses. None of them, analysed through a logical filter, will make any sense.
My best mate, Export Bear, is one of the hardest working guys I have ever worked with. He was a manager at the local Stadium-and 12-18 hour back-to-back shifts were not uncommon. On a rare day off, we went to the Armageddon Expo to watch the local wrestling outfit put on an exhibition. Now these guys were rank amateurs: art students, college guys, accountants, who as a hobby dressed up in funny suits and pretended to pummel each other in the ring.
…and these guys were pulling off fantastic high intensity moves, and telling great stories in the ring: I had never heard of these guys before but I knew that this guy hated that guy because he stole his girl and stripped him naked in the toilets!
But the biggest thing that sticks in my mind about this visit to the wrestling was seeing Export Bear’s reaction to what was going on in the ring. He was whooping and hollering and cheering and booing, it was the happiest he had been in months and seeing the smile on his face was one of the best things I had seen in my life.
That was my favourite wrestling memory and that is the reason I love wrestling: everybody else has their reasons for loving wrestling, but it ain’t logical, it won’t make sense, and can’t be quantified. Once you understand that, you will be a lot closer to understanding what makes the wrestling fan tick…