March 1st, 2010
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of February 2010.
- StuntGrannie: WWE Kills Survivor Series — Vince McMahon announced during the stockholders’ conference call today that WWE would no longer use the Survivor Series PPV name, stating it has “outlasted its usage” and is “obsolete.”
- The Geek Revolution: Farewell, ECW — The last episode (ever) of ECW aired on Feb 16th. The promotion has been ECW in name only, but they still could have done a better job with the last episode.
- Joe Montana’s Right Arm: The Many Faces of Flair — With the passing of his 61st birthday, take a look at the many faces of “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (
http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
January 31st, 2010
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of January 2010.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (
http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
January 1st, 2010
Below are the my best articles for the year 2009, listed in chronological order. If you didn’t get a chance to see them when they were first posted, you may want to check these out.
Previous articles are always available through the Archives box on the right, the Category selection, or the Search box.
- Birth of the Doctor (Jan): The story of how my doctor gimmick was born (yes, it’s just a gimmick)
- Aaaaaaaaagh! (Feb): One of the funnier moments from wrestling training camp. The hardest thing about going over the top rope backwards is not screaming.
- TNA Boneheads Volume 2 (Feb): Some of TNA’s “great” talent decisions were getting rid of Petey Williams and Sonjay Dutt. Yeah, right.
- Never Say Never (Mar): After more than 7 yrs away from the wrestling business, I ended up in a battle royal (correction: a Royal Rumble) at Robert’s Sports Bar in Mounds View, MN. How did that happen?
- “Playboy” Pete vs. Dr. Darin Davis (Mar): Video of a match between former tag team partners that took place back on Mar 25th, 2000.
- The State of Pro Wrestling Today (Apr): My take on Jim Cornette’s rant about wrestling storylines and the team of writers responsible
- The Dummy (May): Fond memories of one of my old training partners. The one that never complained about being stiffed.
- TNA Adds More Has-Beens to Roster (Jun): I get on TNA a lot because they have the most potential and talent to put on a wrestling product. Adding the likes of Shane Douglas and Raven didn’t sit well with me.
- Do You Know Who That Was? (Jun): A case of mistaken identity.
- TV Viewership Stats Wrapup (July): Wrap-up of some stats on TV matches that I kept track of for a year (July 2008 thru July 2009)
- Don’t Mess with the Ref (Jul): If you’re thinking about storming the ring after a few beers– think again. You probably didn’t consider the referee as a factor.
- Raw Guest Hosts Not About Ratings? (Aug): The WWE Monday Night Raw guest hosting idea was not about ratings. At first I thought it was just to collect some publicity $$ from the marketing machine of whatever the guest celebrity was trying to plug. But it turned out to be more than that (see further below)
- Darin Davis, D.D.S (Aug): Remember the time a promoter didn’t want me to do the procto gimmick? I certainly do. More than 10 mins notice would have been appreciated.
- WWE + Talk Show = Raw? (Sep): Yep, the Raw guest host idea is about creating a new equivalent of a talk show circuit for celebrity publicity tours, not ratings.
- More Fun Than a Figure-Four Leglock (Oct): With your North Carolina Education Lottery winnings, you can take a trip to Space Mountain. Wooooooo!
- It’s WCW All Over Again (Oct): TNA = RMS Titanic, Hogan + Bischoff = Huge Iceberg. Bring them together and you get a big disaster with many casualties.
- Dear Santa, Please Bring Me A Ring Bell Alarm Clock (Nov): Too late for Christmas, but my birthday is coming up…
- Another Crack at TV Wrestling Quality Measures (Nov): Another year-long tracking of some TV wrestling match stats to see if I can see any trends in the quality of the programming. Tracking actually started in July, but I didn’t post anything until November.
- Do You Want Your Wrestling Back? (Dec): Prompted by Jim Cornette’s Contract with Wrestling Fans, I add my $0.02 to the mix and ask for my wrestling back.
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Posted by Darin Davis
January 1st, 2010
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of December 2009.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (
http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
November 30th, 2009
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of November 2009.
- Carnage Chronicles: Wrestling 101 — Jerry Jarrett writes about how the “Art of Professional Wrestling” has been lost, and comments about what has happened in TNA since he started it in 2002.
I hope he’s right about Hogan and Bitchoff (intentionally misspelled) “turning TNA around”, but I doubt it. You can read my thoughts on that in a previous post (It’s WCW All Over Again)
- City Pages: Hulk Hogan Interview — City Pages interviews Hogan about his book and how his life is going down the crapper.
- Stunt Granny: Ric Flair Getting Married Again — WTF? Flair is getting married for the fourth time. Maybe he should listen to some of his shoot interviews first, where he talks about some of his previous wives bleeding him dry in divorces.
- The Inno View: “I Respect You, Bookerman!” — A look back at Brian Pillman
- WrestleZone: Hogan vs. Flair in Australia — Three pictures from the Hulkamania tour of Australia featuring Hogan & Flair. I really figured Flair would stay retired, but I guess he has to save up some cash for his next divorce.
- Missouri Wrestling Revival: Welcome To Wrestling – Former Harley Race Wrestling Academy instructor Matt Murphy is writing a series of articles about the insides of pro wrestling. They include topics like training, creating characters, booking, and running TV. There are 11 chapters so far, but the link above is for the first one. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to navigate from one to the other except to do a search for “chapter” (or something similar).
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (
http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
October 31st, 2009
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of October 2009.
Hard to believe there were only two stories over the whole month I thought were interesting enough to mention. I probably spent less time looking for stuff while preparing for the site move. Or maybe it was just a slow month.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (
http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
September 30th, 2009
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of September 2009.
- Rantables: #42 The Week In Review 8/24 – 8/30 — I agree with pretty much everything he has to say in this one.
- The 450 Splash: Dixie v PPV — Dixie Carter thinks that monthly TNA PPVs are not a good idea, but it’s not clear if she thinks they are too often or not often enough. With TNA talking about producing a new weekly show, and now talk about “shaking things up”, this can’t be good.
- Heelzone: Angelina Love Released By TNA — Sounds like this all due to visa issues (she’s Canadian, eh). Hopefully they’ll get this resolved quickly and get her back on TV. Oh, wait… this is TNA we’re talking about.
- Heelzone: Jeff Hardy Arrested — … after a search of his residence yielded 262 Vicodin prescription pills, 180 Soma prescription pills, 555 milliliters of anabolic steroids, a residual amount of powder cocaine and items of drug paraphernalia. The timing on this seems kind of suspicious. Did someone tip off the cops right after he left the WWE?
- The Burning Hammer’s blog: WWE and Monday Night RAW — Another person that thinks the WWE product, especially the Monday night show, is not as compelling
- No Cash Back: Women’s Wrestling Sucks? — A video compilation of some high impact women’s wrestling. That first leap from the rafters is insane.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
August 31st, 2009
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of August 2009.
- Stunt Granny: TNA makes some creative changes; still sucks. — Lost Dutch Mantel, but Russo is still there
- WWE.com: Ricky Ortiz Released — WWE cuts loose another one from the roster. I wasn’t a fan of his.
- Rantables: Dropping Like Flies — Discussion of the recent injuries in the WWE and what “Creative” might do about it.
- Rantables: #38 — Really, Vince? — Discussion of McMahon’s frustrations with the company’s “inability to create new stars.” While I’ve never been a fan of Eugene, but I agree that Vince still tries to promote the big “muscleheads” over the smaller guys with the talent.
- The 450 Splash: Another WWE Release — Goodbye Eugene. Hey, I was just talking about you…
- WPXI.com: Kurt Angle Arrested/Kurt Angle Is Innocent — I bookmarked this story back on 8/16/09, but by the time I put together this post the headline on the site had changed from “Wrestler Kurt Angle Arrested“, to “Attorney: Kurt Angle Is Innocent“. Why wouldn’t the update have been filed as a separate story? Maybe by the time you read this, the headline will be “Kurt Angle Cleared of All Charges“, or “Jeff Jarrett Sleeping With Kurt Angle’s Ex-Wife“.
- Variety: WWE Added to Talkshow Circuit — Oh, boy… I’ll comment on this in a separate post when I get around to it. The WWE wants to be one of the stops on celebrity publicity tours, in between Letterman, Conan, and Regis & Kelly. On one hand it seems like a brilliant idea. On the other hand it can only lead to problems because it makes the product worse tailoring the show to the celebrity.
- Stunt Granny: Vince Wants His Own Cable Network — With a library of over 100,000 hours of programming, Vince McMahon wants to start his own basic cable network to showcase it.
- Wresting DVD Reviews: The Rise and Fall of WCW — Review of the latest from the WWE. Sounds like there are a good set of matches, but the documentary part tends to “rewrite history” and leaves a lot to be desired.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
July 31st, 2009
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of July 2009.
- 450 Splash: Jarrett/Angle Controversy — Jarrett off of TV? Angle in control of TNA? Karen Angle cheated on Kurt with Jeff? Better than a Mexican soap opera?
- Blog of Duty: TNA Gripes — TNA throws all of the former WCW talent into a stable and runs over the new talent/future of TNA wrestlers. Agreed- horrible idea that needs to stop
- WWE.com: THE Brian Kendrick Released — Explains why he was jobbed out to Kofi I guess.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis
June 30th, 2009
Below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of June 2009.
- RasslinHick.com: Wrestling Territories: Past or Future? – An interesting history of wrestling territories.
- Indie MMA and Pro-Wrestling: Kurt Angle Off The Record — From Sept of 2008, but an interesting listen. For more interviews click through the YouTube link on the site.
- Musing of A Canadian Sports Chick: Raw Has Been Painful Lately — Agreed. I was sick of Santina on day 2. And Flair must really need the $$, the spotlight, or both.
- Heelzone: WWE Announces Release of Umaga and UPDATE: The Reason Umaga Was Released – I was going to say, “Hard to believe. That’s the second guy (following Kennedy) that got let go after recently returning to TV after an absence.”, but the updated story indicates that Umaga had a second violation of the company’s “wellness policy” and refused rehab.
- Indie MMA and Pro-Wrestling: ECW 1995 – Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko vs. Sabu & Tazz — A classic match including “he who shall not be named”.
- Wyldefyre723’s Blog: The Wrestler – A Different Perspective — Another take on the movie The Wrestler from someone with an inside perspective of the wrestling business.
- Hope Lies At 24 Frames Per Second: Another look at The Wrestler (2008) — Review of the movie The Wrestler after a second viewing.
- 450 Splash: More WWE Releases — Candice Michelle and Sim Snuka hit the bricks.
- 450 Splash: Bashir/TNA — Bashir supposedly signed a multi-year deal with TNA
- Ed Mayes: “I’m Not Booked”… – A clip from the wrestling documentary “Beyond the Mat“, where Dennis Stamp hopes for a booking from the Funks. Those in the biz can identify with the statement that “I’ve got to stay in shape because I never know when my next match is going to be…”.
- WrestleZone: Full List Of 42 Roster Cuts Made By WWE So Far In 2009 — Wow. 2009 has been an interesting year, and the last 4 weeks alone had several high profile departures (Umaga, Kennedy, Candice). Unfortunately, Bam Neely was one of those let go this year.
- WrestleZone: Full WWE Trade Results Revealed — WWE recently swapped some talent around between their three “brands”. This was not including the “draft” they had a few months ago.
As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.
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Posted by Darin Davis