Here's some rare pro-pro wrestling commentary from the op-ed pages of the
Charlotte Observer, which actually does more wrestling-related coverage than
probably any other major newspaper in the country.
I don't know how many of you are into stamp collecting, but I used to be when I was a kid. Fun as it is, one of the things that holds the U.S. back from producing stamps honoring contemporary figures is that you need to be dead ten years to be on a U.S. stamp unless you were the President of the U.S., in which case you only have to be dead one year.
As a result, a number of small nations have been catering their stamp issues to collectors of stamps of contemporary figures, honoring the Beatles, Elton John, and even the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Well, pro wrestling has finally hit the big time as evidenced by the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent issuing real stamps honoring WCW/nWo stars. You can click on the graphic up top for a bigger JPG.
They were officially unveiled yesterday, Tuesday, 12/29. If you are interested in more information and/or ordering some, click here for the press release.
So, I got WCW Nitro for the PC by THQ for Christmas. Am I missing something here? The game seems to be in slow motion. I don't think it's an issue of my PC slowing it down, as it's not jerky and the sound's OK. It's just that the characters seem like they are wrestling in molasses. Can anybody give me insight into whether I'm doing something wrong or whether this is the way it is supposed to work? If so, please e-mail me.
S.J. from Charleston, SC, sends a great link. Check out The Dialectizer. Select any one of the DDT Digest reports as input, select "Redneck" or "Jive" as your translation, and you'd think Dusty Rhodes was calling the action once again.
I usually don't get a lot of "hate mail" about WCW. The obvious reasons being that if someone hated WCW, they probably wouldn't be reading DDT Digest and, even if they do send me e-mail critical of WCW, it's not like I can do anything about it.
After a crappy PPV, I might get one or two randoms e-mails by someone ticked off. Well, for Starrcade, it went off the scale. I guess a combination of high expectations, promised matches that didn't happen, mid-card matches on the scale of WCWSN, and a very unsatisfying end to the Flair/Bischoff match combined to make a lot of people unhappy.
As for me, it's not the sub-par card that gets me, it's the inattention to detail. Personally, I don't feel ripped off seeing a Norman Smiley match at Starrcade. The guy seems to be on his way up, so that's cool. (Although I will agree with you on the Finlay/Flynn vs. Adams/Norton match.) What does offend me is when there are stipulations for a match, and these stipulations are dropped with absolutely no explanation because (I'm guessing) that it was decided it would be better to have the Flair/Bischoff thing come to an end on Nitro rather than the PPV because of the bigger audience.
Heck, I'll take attention to detail whenever I can get it. Hell, the poisoning angle is, relatively speaking, a stroke of genius. It makes all the confusion about the heart attack make sense.
Normally, on the rare occasions someone finds another page plagiarizing DDT Digest, I don't even mention it in an update. I send the offending webmaster a message requesting they take the material down, and they've always done so. Plus, my telling you about their offending page ironically might give them what they want, more people going there to check it out.
Well, in this case of plagiarization I'm going to make an exception for a number of reasons:
I've told the webmaster to take the stolen material down and I have gotten no response.
I am constantly getting mail from people telling me to link to the page.
The webmaster himself had the nerve to ask for a link.
The webmaster purposely changed a little bit of the wording around to make it less obvious the reports are stolen.
So, next time you're about to send me a link to the "official" Chris Benoit Home Page and ask me to link to it, don't bother. Also, if at some point you do check out that page, and you like their Horsemen news section, you'll know where he copied the information from. You'll especially like the similarities between his 12/3, 12/5 and 12/10 and ours. As for the 12/19 report, he seems to be really hitting his stride in changing just enough so it's not quite so obvious, but you'll still see the obvious similarities.
Sorry to be so catty, but I'm just getting tired of the link requests.
As much as possible, I try to come up with trivia questions out of my head. Getting a trivia question out of a reference book kind of defeats the purpose. However, last week's trivia question is a good example of one out of my head that was too open-ended, that being Scott Hall's earlier nickname besides "Big".
I said it was "Magnum", but I good a flood of mail with other correct answers. A number of people said "Diamond Studd" and "Starship Coyote", but that's wasn't exactly what I was looking for because they were names rather than nicknames. However, one answer I got from a number of people that I didn't already know about was "Gator".
Well, you learn something new every day.
Trivia Answer: True...with the help of Elizabeth's shoe. That match led to Arn's matches on Nitro with Hogan where Arn pinned Hogan one night and then defeated Hogan by DQ the following Monday.