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Dr. Darin Davis

Minnesota independent pro wrestler discusses past experiences and the current state of pro wrestling

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Category: Links

Best of 2011

Jan 1
Links, Wrestling

At the start of each year, I put together a post of what I felt were my best articles for the previous year. A lot of things were going on in the past year, many out of my control, that kept me from motivating myself to share some stories that I had been meaning to share. They also kept me from even watching a lot of wrestling in the last half of the year, and from starting a few other projects that I wanted to get to. I will share them eventually, hopefully in 2012.

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Below are the my best articles for the year 2011, 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.

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Best of 2010

Jan 1
Links, Wrestling

At the start of each year, I put together a post of what I felt my best articles were for the previous year. The year 2009 was a pretty good, with quite a few items to select from for the “best of the year” list. The year 2010? Not so much.

Between work and other things (mostly work), I haven’t done a lot of writing on here, and what I have done was not exactly the type I set out to do. Yes, this is a wrestling site and I wrote about wrestling, but the best thing I could do is share personal stories about my time as a pro wrestler that you won’t hear from any of the traditional wrestling sources.

I will try to do a better job sharing more of these stories in the coming year.

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Below are the my best articles for the year 2010, 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.

  • WWE: Don’t Call Us Wrestling (Jan): The WWE has spent at least the last several years, maybe the last decade, telling anyone who would listen that they are an entertainment company and not a wrasslin‘ company. Wrestling is apparently a dirty word.
  • TNA Monday Night War (Jan): TNA Wrestling had a live 3 hour broadcast on Monday Jan 4th, in direct competition with the WWE‘s live Monday Night Raw program. I describe the Good, the Bad, and a few that are On the Fence.
  • Invisible Wrestler (Feb): I usually don’t go for the stuff that requires a huge “suspension of disbelief“, but once in a while something comes along that I just have to share.
  • TNA Towel: 2, Believability: 0 (Apr): On a Monday night on TNA Impact, we got to see the TNA BloodyTowel ™ used again on a broadcast. Now I have to add another clause to the footnote of my answer of one of the most often asked question by casual or non-wrestling fans: Is the blood real?
  • TNA Waves the White Flag (May): After a few months of trying to compete head-to-head with Monday Night Raw, TNA retreats back to Thursdays.
  • TNA Should Add Bloody Towel to Roster (Jun): Since the towel has now gotten more air time than TNA president Dixie Carter, I figure TNA should just add the thing to their official roster.
  • The Highs and Lows of Monday Night Raw (Jun): The birth of NXT (high) and one of the most embarrassingly awful series of skits  with the actors from the new A-Team movie (low) all in the same episode of Raw.
  • Bigger Stronger Faster* (Jul): I rarely review movies here, but this was an exceptional documentary about the use, abuse, and propaganda of steroids. You may remember the filmmaker’s brother, Mike Bell, as an occasional jobber for the WWE, and for his death a few years after this documentary was filmed.
  • Final Match Rating Results (Jul): In July of 2009, I started collecting some data about the wrestling programming I was watching. What I was measuring this time was the number of matches per hour, and the quality of those matches as judged by a simple rating system. These are the final results after one year.
  • Final Wrestler Stats (Aug): I also have some Final Wrestler Stats. I used the same data to see who my top wrestlers were based on a simple match rating system.
  • Wait ‘Til Jumbo Gets Here (Sep): Quite often something seemingly unrelated triggers a memory that I decide to share on this site. Here’s a story from about 15 years ago…
  • My Wrestler Rankings vs. PWI 500 (Oct): I compared the list of wrestler rankings based on my data (see August above) to the PWI 500 for the year ending June 2010 to see if there was any correlation.
  • Line, Please (Nov): Comments on the Piper’s Pit segment and a supposedly leaked script from Monday Night Raw a year before, which implied that all of the wrestler promos were scripted by the “creative” dept.
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Links for February 2010

Mar 1
Links, Wrestling

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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Links for January 2010

Jan 31
Links, Wrestling

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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Best of 2009

Jan 1
Links, Wrestling

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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Links for December 2009

Jan 1
Links, Wrestling

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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Links for November 2009

Nov 30
Links, Wrestling

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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Links for October 2009

Oct 31
Links, Wrestling

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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Links for September 2009

Sep 30
Links, Wrestling

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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Links for August 2009

Aug 31
Links, Wrestling

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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