The Unknown Poster

And they are very busy and very expensive. If only you know someone that is really close to them that could put in a good word...

2 Senators from whatever parties get elected. So you can have two Republicans. Arizona right now has McCain and Flake, both Republican. Im not what states might have one of each. I think states usually go down party lines so a Republican leaning state likely elects two Republicans and vice versa. But I dont know for sure. Just checked. Alabama has one of each (as Doug Jones beat Roy Moore). Colorado has one of each Florida. Indiana. Missouri. Montana. Nevada. North Dakota. Ohio. Penns. West Virgina. Wisconsin. The rest have an dependent or are same party shared. The senator in each state with the most tenure is called the Senior Senator and the other one is the Junior Senator.

@ediger thanks! i couldnt remember why Paul Diamond was here. I was told there was a bidding war for his services and the CWF won by putting him on salary as their trainer. Someone recently suggested I put Omega vs Styles on a site where you can sell views or something. They thought I could make tens of thousands from people all over the world paying a small fee to watch it. I dont know. Maybe. Im sure it would garner interest. But I have to find it! lol My feeling on WFX was the money out was never going to be recouped. For example, once you announce (for the same show), Billy Gunn, Rikishi, Christopher and whomever, is Virgil going to sell you another ticket? Are there people who say "nah, I wont pay to see all those guys...wait! Virgil?? Take my money!" So to me, you're giving away names to the same market. You'll sell the same tickets to see Kishi and Gunn as you will them plus 4 other guys. But the way it was explained, their gamble was getting regional TV deals based on the recognizable names. So where some station manager in rural Texas doesnt know who Samoa Joe or AJ Styles are, they get giddy thinking about Scott Steiner and Billy Gunn and would make you an offer. They thought they could get enough TV deals to justify the expense. They were crazy to think that. But thats what they thought. The days of regional TV deals paying for a promotion are long over. And no one is getting a national deal. So then if you want to be in the wrestling business, whats the economic model? If you're spending $60,000 per show, you're screwed. Indy wrestling is almost entirely gate driven. Ring of Honor was successful on the back of the DVD business but that isnt there anymore either. The only promotion I know of that succeeds on DVD sales is PWG in California and they're very unique in being the ONE promotion that is considered the crown jewel of indies and they deliberately keep themselves "small". So you have to manage your expenses to where you can break even on gate revenue, sponsors, bought shows. When WFX tried to run this past November (as Wrestling Supercard) it was doomed to fail. They announced the same passe names, no "cool indy" names which are the draw now and needed 1000 tickets sold to break even. They barely sold double digits, let alone triple, let alone 1000. Just different visions for a different time. Can you sell 1000 tickets to an indie show in Winnipeg? We did it twice (Eddie, Honky, Beefcake and LOD, Bagwell) but that was 2002. I could sell 1000 right now...I have an idea. But its the only thing that would sell 1000 tickets in 2018 AND make a profit.

Its Jeff Flake's seat

Nah, they likely wanted him to not run so they could back someone else. Its also not uncommon to do opposition research on yourself. But Bannon's dossier on Trump would be interesting because clearly it contained information he thought might squeeze Trump out of running if it became public.

Ivanka wants to be the first female president. And she’s trying to talk out of both sides of her mouth.

Hmmm Im struggling to think of who that might have been that brought him in. HTM was well booked in Winnipeg. I think we brought him in...oh 3 times here and a few of times out of town. Others brought him in as well. Very popular. Easy to work with.

Yeah. Some people will say its a job for a politician but the right of all citizens is to run for office. Thats the point. Oprah admits she has voted for both Dems and Repubs so, not knowing where she stands on the issues, its possible she's a more measured, center-ist candidate than most. She'd have to be willing to do everything the Dems demand of Trump, namely release her tax returns. She's never come under fire and she would if she ran, how can she handle that. What skeletons are in her closet. etc. The money doesnt really matter since Trump spent almost nothing. But her success would counter any sense of Trump as a business genius. She'd easily win with women and minorities and very likely get a lot of the voters who came out for Obama but didnt come out for Hilary. She'd have Obama endorsing her too. Would she lose any of the Dems "base" to the Republicans? I cant see it if Trump is the candidate (which I tend to doubt anyway). Trump vs Oprah seems like an easy win for Oprah unless there is even more of the vile right who didnt vote for him that would be so moved by the "horror" of a black woman as President that they'd come out for him. Given that Hilary *should* have won and Obama would have creamed him, Oprah should beat Trump fairly easily. Thats without knowing of any scandals or skeletons. I could see Kimala Harris as her running mate but thats just a guess.

yeah...she could. She'd be younger than McCoy was in TNG. Speaking of, T'Pol would make for a great cameo. She'd require less make-up and would probably be more interesting a character.

Joe Aiello and Don Callis had another show in 2002 where they brought in Terry Taylor and Sabu. Show was at Coyotes.

So what does everyone think of Oprah's chances should she decide to run in 2020 which, apparently, she is giving serious thought to...?

You missed the best time for local wrestling! lol The late 80's and into 90's was good because of the old territory days. So you had a lot of veteran talent that used to work for WWE, NWA, AWA. When those companies did shows (house shows or TV), they always had "locals" they used for jobber matches. AWA especially was a great conduit because you had the Browns (Bulldog Bob and Kerry) who worked that circuit down into Kansas. Bobby Jay. Brian Jewel. A bunch of Alberta. Lots of guys who would be lower level WWE guys or just miss the cut. But still worked all over. Then they aged out. 2000/2001 was great locally. Indulge me as I go over some history...lol This will be long. CWF was the NWA affiliate promoted by Ernie Todd. Robby Royce was the top guy. Paul Diamond moved to Winnipeg (I cant remember why) and became a regular with the CWF. So you had these great Royce/Diamond matches. Keep in mind Diamond was the top guy for Shawn Michael's promotion in Texas. He was really good. The "kids" came along. Rawskillz, Mike Angels, Chad Tatum. Darren Dalton. Plus with Royce, EZ Ryder etc, you had this really great mix of talent in the CWF. They'd pack Le Rendezvous. This was before I broke in. I remember going to the parking lot of Pony Corral on Pembina Hwy to watch WFWA with Don Callis on top and Joe Aiello announcing. But I lost interest in wrestling and missed the great 99/2000 era locally. As the NWA affiliate, CWF got dates on the champions. So Steve Corino came along. He was really, really good (and from Winnipeg). Former ECW World Champion. He worked with Royce and they became good friends. Sabu no-showed though. And suddenly there was another promotion promising Mr Perfect and not delivering. And the "names" cooled off. In an incident locals call The Garage Sale Massacre, Royce and several guys including most of the young talent went to Ernie Todd's home and quit en mass. Ernie was a wrestling fan who owned a trucking company when he bought the CWF and promised it would be a "business". We all have pros and cons. Ernie's cons were that he was an prick and felt that, as owner, he should be pushed on his shows. A previous promotion called Power Pro Wrestling was a splinter group that broke off from CWF because the boys were sick of Ernie. It lasted 1 or 2 shows before folding and everyone went back to CWF and did an Invasion angle. The story goes that most of the guys that broke away were veterans except for Mentallo who was a young guy. So when they all came back, Mentallo was the one jobbed out as punishment. Ernie used to make guys sign contracts and DID take guys to court if they quit. A later splinter group was Top Rope Championship Wrestling. Promoted by Bobby Jay. He had worked some WWE TV matches in the jobber role. He had a few bucks and was well liked. So TRCW successfully broke away from CWF. They mostly ran community centres. CC's were the life blood of local wrestling for a time. But insurance costs rose and the city increased their insurance requirements for wrestling (a really nasty thing actually). Around this time, it was rare for local promotions to bring in big names. CWF has Corino come in (they got him cheap due to the NWA affiliation) and the Sabu no show. TRCW brought in Jim Neidhart. I believe it was for an out of town guarantee (a guarantee is when a venue or town pays you X amount of dollars and "buys" the show so you know you're not losing any money). TRCW's booker was a young guy named Mike who convinced Bobby Jay to keep Neidhart an extra few days and use him in Winnipeg. Bobby claims they lost money on it. But it was pretty exciting for the local fans. TRCW had an influx of young guys from River City Wrestling which was sort of a lower level local promotion. Don Callis trained guys locally and a few of them went on to TRCW (Will Damon, Donnie Dicaprio, Chris Stevens, Chad Ripley). In 98 I began working at the Palladium. In 2001 we were approached by both the CWF and TRCW to put on live shows. The manager went with TRCW and it changed the local business. What made Le Rendezvous such a cool venue for the CWF (and in turn made the CWF the cool promotion) was it was a great venue to watch and had a liquor license so it appealed to an older crowd. And by older I mean like 20-something as opposed to the usual kids and seniors that made up a lot of the Community Center crowd. So when TRCW debuted for a weekly show at The Palladium, expectations were high but it sucked. The bar was really busy on the weekends and we asked our regulars who never waited in line or paid cover, to do us the favour of coming to TRCW on Thursday night. They did. They loved it and it snowballed from there. So now you had a University-aged crowd making TRCW into the cool thing to do on Thursday night. The hot angle in 2001 at the Palladium was the group called "MVP". Will Damon & Donnie Dicaprio, trained by Don Callis and Shane Madison who had trained in Ontario. All three guys were young, good looking, dressed the part, had great gear, tans and physiques...and that was getting rare in local wrestling. They were cool. The crowd nearly rioted when Madison turned heel on his partner TJ Bratt and joined Damon and Dicaprio. When Royce and his buddies quit CWF in the Garage Sale Massacre, they did so to jump to TRCW and suddenly CWF was dying and TRCW was super hot and super cool. But egos got in the way. Bobby Jay was the owner and promoter of TRCW but his booker (the script writer) was a young guy named Mike. Mike got the gig because his cousin Vance Nevada had been the booker and went on a tour and had Mike fill in (because you cant trust anyone to not try and take your job). Well, Mike took the job by becoming tight with the other young guys and pushing them while de-pushing the aging veterans. This caused conflict between Mike and Bobby. Long story short, even when business was awesome, you cant cross the boss. Bobby fired Mike. Mike admits he was also very immature and unprofessional at the time. With the change in booker, the shows became less cool and fan interest began to wane. Mike and I became close friends. And decided to start our own promotion, essentially splintering from TRCW as it had done from CWF. I used my connections to scoop the Palladium as a venue and Mike scooped most of the roster. I remember a lot of people wanting TRCW to bring in a big name. The HonkyTonk Man was always suggested. And Bobby publicly said he could never justify it financially. Meanwhile, Joe Aiello had the wrestling radio show on 92 CITI FM with Don Callis. They did a show where they brought in, I believe, Mad Dog Vachon and Kurgan. So Kurgan was what passed for a big name in Winnipeg. We launched in early 2002 and brought in Honky Tonk Man, Brutus Beefcake and Eddie Guerrero. CWF brought in Dan Severn (who Ernie Todd worked himself and actually made Severan "tap out"). Bobby was game for a fight and responded by bringing in Tatanka, Davey Boy Smith and Sunny...but Sunny no showed twice. Bobby also tried to get the Road Warriors, so we out bid him for them and Buff Bagwell. We had Bret Hart booked too but it was when he had his stroke and had to pull out. Our financial backer had basically pulled out in mid 2002 when he got bored. But we kept it a secret and everyone thought we had a millionaire backer. Bobby threw in the towel and closed TRCW and came to us (PCW). The remnants of TRCW were picked by Royce (he and my partner Mike disliked each other so Royce had not been asked to come to PCW initially). Royce called his group ICW and they ran Doubles Bar. Eventually Royce closed ICW and did come to PCW. A side note in the "never trust anyone", Bobby was working for us but had talked to Coyotes about doing shows. He figured we'd hear about it so came to us and said it was a one off show and would be a PCW show. But in reality he was negotiating a weekly guarantee and went to our roster and began asking guys to prepare to jump ship. One of the guys tipped us off and Bobby's project never happened (he said not enough guys were willing to jump). Le Rendezvous closed and CWF was basically finished...they kept promoting but not very well and without a good roster. His last gasp was leaving the NWA for a project called Ring Warriors which was a group of former NWA affiliates that wanted to create a "new" NWA. Dusty Rhodes was involved. And actually, Ernie had Dusty call our financial backer and try to convince him to financially back Ring Warriors. It never got off the ground. In mid 2003, we promoted a show that was supposed to feature D-Lo Brown. The venue (The Avenue) backed out at the last second and it never happened. That contributed to me and my partner having a falling out. Mike quit in August 2003. At the same time, CWF had rebounded by piggy backing on Bobby's efforts and convinced Coyotes to pay him a $750 weekly guarantee (a lot of money back then). Coyotes liked the idea of beating The Palladium at wrestling. They were also unhappy because we used to film amusing vignettes and in one, we filmed Mike "walking" from the office on North Pembina to The Palladium to the song "500 Miles" and in one scene, he pissed on the side of Coyotes. This got back to them and they werent amused. But CWF's crew was mainly older veterans who didnt really fit the "young, cool, nightclub" vibe, they never drew well and my now-ex partner was down there every day with his friends talking in the ear of management. CWF got thrown out. Mike ran a show called "AWE" with Dan Severn and Buff Bagwell. The politics and craziness were off the charts around this time. My former financial backer even threatened to kill me (send me a picture of him pointing a gun and holding a sticky note that said 'dont mess with Jon'). There was even talk of mafia hits. It was stupid. But...the BEST time for wrestling was around the corner. In December 2004, we brought in Jim Neidhart and packed the Lid (Palladium). But it wasnt "our style" but we knew we could make money with names. So we proceeded to, from 05-07, bring in Amazing Red, Petey Williams, Chris Sabin, Samoa Joe (3 times), Aj Styles, Johnny Devine, Steve Corino, Chris Daniels, Ultimo Dragon. Mike started WFX and had a plethora of big names like the Steiners, Rikishi, Billy Gun, Severn, Bagwell, Jerry Lawler, Ultimo Dragon. So, a good time to be a local fan. The Lid closed and we moved on to Dylans and brought back Corino, Davey Richards, Keven Owens, Sammy Zayn, Honky Tonk Man. And ofcourse, for most of this time we had Kenny Omega as a regular. CWE was sort of a splinter group from us, brought in Daniel Bryan, Rollins and several Ring of Honor guys. Oh and Ernie Todd sold the CWF to an Ontario group and they still run shows today, just not in Manitoba. Mike had several projects too big to sustain themselves and quit for a long time. He attempted a comeback in November but cancelled due to low ticket sales (wrong mix of "names"). Bobby Jay still works, mainly for CWE. And Robby Royce recently returned to PCW (you can see him this Saturday at Doubles). There's local wrestling in a nutshell. @JCon you mentioned Alex Rain. A really good wrestler. One thing that I noticed, every "generation" builds on the previous. So like Royce was ahead of his time. But then Rain was great and Mentallo was great. Then you had Madison and Damon. Then Stevens and Omega, Scorpio and Rawskillz. Danny Duggan and AJ Sanchez were in that generation and really good too. And now guys like Jackie Lee, the next generation. It keeps turning over. Which is probably the only reason I still do it. Its like community theatre for actors that want to make it i Hollywood. You do it because every so often, someone comes along that becomes an Oscar winner. Anyway....whew. That was a walk down memory lane.

I agree. I subscribe to the traditional time travel in Star Trek where changes to the past change the present, not the JJ Abrams "every choice creates a new universe". So the question is, if the Defiant went back in time 100 years, why was the Mirror Universe technology equal to Prime Universe when Kirk and Co. crossed over in "Mirror Mirror"? The simple answer is, it hadnt happened yet. Mirror Mirror was episode 39. The Tholian Web (when Defiant went back in time and crossed over) was episode 64. So when Kirk crossed over, the past hadnt been altered yet. A more complicated answer is that it still should be different because we saw Enterprise-era Mirror Universe from their perspective. If Empress Sato kept the Defiant all to herself and did not allow any reverse engineering or research to be done on it, then the advanced tech would not have spread. As soon as she allows others to control comparable tech, she gives up her advantage.

Robby Royce is another guy from Winnipeg who was ahead of his time as a worker compared to everyone else. Almost as if they came along a bit too early. Mentallo helped a young Omega though so thats a good legacy to have. As well as Rawskillz who was tremendous. Omega gave an interview last year and was asked if there was anyone from Winnipeg who could have made it and he said Rawskillz. But he finished school, got a job, settled down and quietly retired. Royce was the NWA North American champion and would have worked with Steve Corino for the NWA World Championship but he left the CWF (NWA affiliate). We brought Corino in a few years later when he was AWA World Champion to work with Royce (and Rawskillz). Royce is actually the first local guy I read about in the "dirt sheets" before I was a fan of local wrestling.

Yes he usually does a couple of the out of town shows when CWE has a tour and their bigger local show. And often works for ringside wrestling in SK. Mentallo was one of Kenny Omega’s early trainers and they were often considered 1 & 2 talents here for awhile. I’d put Rawskillz and Mike Angels in that discussion too though most of you won’t know them. Really good talent. Winnipeg has been a solid producer of talent for a long time especially lacking another major market close by.

I appreciate the kind words. A bunch of like minded guys who work hard. I’m lucky to have them. Several of our guys were trained by Lance Storm (Jackie, a justice, Alix Vanna, Shao ming).

Correct. Or so they say now. Mix of new and old faces and searching for a new manager for the office. I’d suspect many of the background players to be the old faces returning. It’s the leads they’d switch up.

These people are so out of touch

Her “let’s not keep these assholes waiting” was hilarious. What didn’t you like about the Enterprise use of Tholian Web? one spoiler was kept very well hidden from this episode. It was a shocker

I think I missed this when it was first revealed in December but saw it today as Jenna Fischer says she knows nothing about it. http://tvline.com/2017/12/18/the-office-revival-nbc-2018-new-cast/