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mightygodking (3)
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Frank Deford, a 50-year veteran of Sports Illustrated, once labeled Meltzer the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism. “You could cover the Vatican or State Department,” Deford said recently, “and not do as good a job as Dave Meltzer does on wrestling.”

For nearly 30 years, Dave Meltzer has published the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, featuring weekly behind the locker room door insight into the business of professional wrestling. How far reaching has Meltzer's impact been? In one famous incident, Hulk Hogan, frustrated by what he perceived as consistently negative coverage in the publication, burned a copy of the newsletter during a live Pay-Per-View event.
posted by The Gooch on May 15, 2013 - 14 comments

Bill Moody, best known as professional wrestling manager Paul Bearer, passed away Tuesday at the age of 58. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy on Mar 7, 2013 - 27 comments

CHIKARA Pro Wrestling is notable, in the wrestling world, for taking the position that intergender tag matches should just happen whenever men and women want to fake-fight one another - but perhaps this is just part of CHIKARA's particular worldview, which is one that includes a time-traveling knight from medieval times who came to the present day and then formed a tag team with another version of himself from three weeks later who also traveled in time to the present day and the Super Smash Bros., who are very defensive of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. At this year's King of Trios three-day super-event, two all-female teams competed, including the Sendai Girls from Sendai Girls' Pro Wrestling. The Sendai Girls made it to the semifinals where they competed against Team Ring of Honor in what was subsequently deemed by many wrestling fans to be the best intergender match yet wrestled in North America. This week, Chikara put the match up free on Youtube.
posted by mightygodking on Jan 16, 2013 - 17 comments

Some folks in CHIKARA Pro were having a wrestling match, and a baseball game broke out.
posted by mightygodking on Oct 27, 2012 - 20 comments

A Very Serious Wrestling Match. Courtesy of the fine athletes of CHIKARA Pro.
posted by mightygodking on Sep 14, 2012 - 17 comments

Hard Gay was a Japanese pro wrestler turned TV personality popular in the mid 2000s. Like Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno, he is a cartoonish gay foreigner portrayed by a straight person, but has come under considerably greater scrutiny for his more minstrelsy than satyrical approach. The BBC has profiled Hard Gay as part of their series, Japanorama. [more inside]
posted by modernserf on May 10, 2012 - 39 comments

Secrets of Pro Wrestling (1987) What happens when these two wrestlers get a raw deal from their chosen profession? They don't get mad, the get even! (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Trailer) [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Apr 29, 2012 - 19 comments

While Hulk Hogan may have been professional wrestling's biggest box office star of the past generation, from a critical standpoint, Ric Flair is widely regarded as the most talented wrestler of the modern era in terms of actual in-ring ability, as well as being known as one of the best promo men (the ability to give entertaining interviews promoting upcoming matches) in the history of the business. In recent years, however, Flair's legacy has been tarnished, with his name more likely to be making news for any number of embarrassing out of the ring incidents and dire financial situation as for his in-ring exploits, to the point where comparisons to Randy “The Ram” Robinson are not out of place. Grantland explores Ric Flair's fall from grace in "The Wrestler in Real Life".
posted by The Gooch on Aug 26, 2011 - 39 comments

Spencer Baum's self-published first novel One Fall explores the world of professional wrestling through the eyes of an up-and-coming star, a taken-for-granted women's division wrestler, a head booker with no authority, and an internet fanboy, all trying to navigate the line between fiction and nonfiction. Baum is now releasing the novel one chapter at a time as a Creative Commons audiobook. The book closely parallels the Monday Night Wars, with sly references to infamous reality-blurring events like the Montreal Screwjob (the subject of an excellent National Film Board documentary you can now watch online) and Bash at the Beach 2000. (mild spoiler inside) [more inside]
posted by roll truck roll on Nov 5, 2009 - 3 comments

Botchamania is a series of fan-created, professional wrestling video mashups that showcases the physical slip ups, bad commentary and interviews, and bizarre aspects of wrestling.
posted by ollyollyoxenfree on Oct 6, 2009 - 41 comments

RIP Fabulous Moolah. 84 year old Lillian Ellison died in Columbia, SC Friday. She was a wrestling champion for 28 years until losing her crown to Wendi Richter in 1983 in a match involving MTV and Cyndi Lauper. More here, here, and here, with obligatory YouTube link here.
posted by TedW on Nov 4, 2007 - 11 comments

Meet Obasan: Adorable demon-possessed little girl and Japanese professional wrestler for the horror-themed Triple Six promotion. More highlights: (1) (2)
posted by StopMakingSense on May 12, 2007 - 30 comments

House of Deception is dedicated to the history of the deceptive arts, including magic, carnival sideshows and pro wrestling.
posted by amyms on Jan 9, 2007 - 23 comments

[WrestleFilter] Eddie Guerrero, a/k/a Latino Heat, was found dead in his hotel room in Minnesota this morning. He was 38. His is the latest in a years-long string of tragic early deaths in professional wrestling.
posted by MegoSteve on Nov 13, 2005 - 44 comments

In Japan it's a sport. In Canada, it's tradition. In Mexico, it's religion. In the US - it's a joke (NSFW language). Perhaps rightly so. In step with it’s history, American professional wrestling has a sordid, carnival-like backstage atmosphere, replete with insider slang. Extensive travel schedules and backstage politicking (QT movie, NSFW language) take their toll in the form of drug abuse and an unusually high mortality rate. While a few transition into mainstream careers, most don’t.

A billion-dollar industry , it has seen a fair share of success (NSFW image) over the years: Books, movies, video games, cartoons, records (not to mention an ECW nod in the lyrics to El Scorcho) and even punching John Stossel in the head. But it’s inconsistent and never seems to meet the level of popular acceptance as in other countries. It is, by and large, dismissed as a novelty for the NASCAR crowd, barely respected enough to be kitsch. In truth, it’s a back-breaking, death-defying, colorful soap opera of questionable taste that is anything but fake
posted by StopMakingSense on Feb 16, 2005 - 30 comments

These days, we remember the age of legends by reliving them, virtually. Is it a sign of the fall of civilization when modern leaders are so bland as to be indistinguishable from one another? Oh how I miss the golden years.
posted by zekinskia on Jun 16, 2004 - 3 comments

RIP Mr Perfect Former WWE star "Mr Perfect" Curt Hennig was found dead yesterday at the age of 44, joining a long list of professional wrestlers to die at an unnaturally young age. It's no secret to participants and fans of the pro-wrestling industry that its performers live unusually stressful lives. With working schedules commonly encompassing upwards of 300 shows a year, their bodies take a constant beating that often leads to alcohol and painkiller dependency. Furthermore, despite the high-profile scandal of the mid-90s that eventually saw Vince McMahon acquitted of trafficking steroids to his employees, the abuse of performance-enhancing chemicals continues to be the rule rather than exception, driven by the endless quest for bigger and freakier physical size and proportions to wow audiences.
posted by plenty on Feb 10, 2003 - 24 comments