Arnold,
Try this story. It has the smoking gun. A CBS commentator was told the results before the event started.
http://www.canoe.ca/SlamNaganoFigureSkatingArchive/feb18_fskate.html
Gee, I don’t think any of us expected him to say that.
Arnold,
Try this story. It has the smoking gun. A CBS commentator was told the results before the event started.
http://www.canoe.ca/SlamNaganoFigureSkatingArchive/feb18_fskate.html
Gee, I don’t think any of us expected him to say that.
Arnold,
Try this story. It has the smoking gun. A CBS commentator was told the
results before the event started.
http://www.canoe.ca/SlamNaganoFigureSkatingArchive/feb18_fskate.html[/u
rl]
Gee, I don’t think any of us expected him to say that.
I’m so soryy for the multi-post.
::Hanging head in shame::
Gee, I don’t think any of us expected him to say that.
Another dream Debate.
Well, while I reluctantly have to admit that I can’t quite get my mind around the idea of wrestling=sport without qualification (and in some cases, no disqualification), I was intrigued with Mick Foley’s assertations in his book. I would hazard a guess ( I know I know, no place for boldfaced assertations sans cites in here) that Bret “The Hitman” would agree with Foley… when the “sports entertainment professionals” are properly trained, there’s an element of sport that can’t be denied.
But… considering the state of wrestling today, particularly the WWF with which I’m most intimately aquainted: Did anyone see the Wrestlemania last week? What utter tripe… worst Wrestlemania in years, if not ever. But it blew some of the assertations above out of the water, too.
Ascrott said:
For one thing, there were enough “out of the blue” surprise endings to matches, none of this “Good guy/fan favorite wins the title” in the last match, for example. Having Vince McMahon “screw” yet another fan favorite from the title, of course, fits the quote’s formula for the bad-guy win… Perhaps this belongs in the “Ask the Gay Guy” threads instead. Hmm… I wonder if Vince is a “top” or “bottom” in real-life??
Secondly, the good guy/bad guy dichotomy has largely fallen to the wayside in later years… more like “every man for himself, and girls, try to avoid losing your clothes except on pay-per-view events”. Stone Cold did wonders for this transformation… So did Mick Foley. Is he a good bad guy, or a bad good guy?
I think that the thing I have the hardest time getting past, of course, is the scripting and sculpting of the outcomes. What good is a title shot if you know who’s gonna win? Where’s the sport in that? The sell… plain and simple.
For the record, I do believe the best matchup in that wrestlemania was a toss between the Hardcore championship (or, How many times can you nail Viscera and Crash Holly with flimsy metal objects) or the triple ladder match, with those Damn Dudleys. God I love watching people being “put through tables”.
Excuse me, there’s a couple of people in my office that could use a “Stutter”. Talk to you all later.
“Oh my God! Hogan just slammed Andre AGAIN!”
Jai Pey
Okay, First, I am a Wrestling fan. I have liked wrestling for many years. I watched back when it was GCW (Georgia Championship Wrestling) on TBS with Gordon Solie (sp?). I have been a fan of WCW and been to a couple of Nitros at the Dome. Lately, I have preferred WWF due to WCW being dull and having a bunch of old wrestlers that should have retired years ago.
Is it a sport? Who cares! We all agree on what the base action is and that the wrestlers are indeed very athletic and very skilled. The disagreements are over semantics. What is the definition of a sport? That is why they call it “Sports
Entertainment” folks. It is an athletic endevor that is meant to be entertaining.
I will not go so far as to call Mick Foley god, but I will say that he has an amazing dedication to his work. It is suprising that he can even still walk.
Jeffery
Joe Blank said:
“We can argue over semantics all day, and you can find definitions of the word sport that encompass wrestling. Non-wrestling fans are not going to agree that it is a sport because the winner is not determined by who plays the game better at the time it is played.”
And here I just thought we were just having a fun little discussion about something kind of interesting.
I’m sorry, Joe, but I guess I just don’t go in for the “this whole argument is pointless” argument.
Cactus, I did not outright say the whole argument is pointless, although I may have implied that. I don’t completely believe it, or I wouldn’t be here debating it. I guess what I meant was non-fans are not going to agree that wrestling is a sport, for the reasons I stated, but the bigger question is why do they feel the need to argue that it is a sport? As Jeffery said, “Who cares?” If someone likes wrestling for the entertainment value then good for them. They shouldn’t feel the need to argue that it is a true sport, to try to justify liking it.
Bad example: If you order a veggie burger expecting it to look and taste just like a hamburger you will be disappointed. If you know ahead of time that the veggie burger is something entirely different, not quite veggie and not quite burger, but just appreciate it for what it is, you may find yourself enjoying it. You certainly should not feel obligated to convince your burger-loving friends that your what you are eating is just as much a hamburger as their slabs of beef.
P.S. Waitaminit, beef ain’t ham either. Maybe we are all fooling ourselves.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, what do you suppose it is?
If your veggieburger is indistinguishable from your hamburger (I know it’s not, but it’s not my example) is it still not a hamburger.
Would a veggieburger by another name, taste as bland?
At what point of convergence is a veggieburger a hamburger?
If we were arguing abortion we’d ask: At what point is a fetus a human being with rights?
To mix a metaphor, I’d say professional wrestling quacks like a duck. Every monday night I sink my teeth into a tasty burgers worth. By the way, I like mine RAW.
I gotcha, Joe. Fair enough.
“And that’s all I got to say about that.” – Forrest Gump
are daytime soaps real-life…
Rift
it takes effort to be this condesending 
Had Rift read the thread, he’d see this argument has already been covered extensively.
You know, this whole thing really annoyed me, but I know exactly why Vince did it: to fool the Internet fans once again.
The heads of WCW and the WWF (Eric Bischoff/Vince Russo and Vince McMahon, respectively) apparently have people reading websites and newsgroups like rec.sport.pro-wrestling, trying to see what the general public THINKS will happen, and then they decide to do the exact opposite. Sometimes it makes sense within the storylines, and sometimes it doesn’t, which is when fans really start to get mad.
Somehow dragging this back to the original topic, I don’t think wrestling fans care too much about whether wrestling is a real sport, or even if it tries to look like one. Internal consistency within storylines is clearly the most important thing, although I do appreciate the athletic aspects of pro wrestling as well. Again, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s real, just as long as it’s entertaining to the viewer.
Mr. Armageddon
“Just when you thought you had all the answers, I went and changed the questions!”–Roddy Piper