Oh, come on

[yendi]

Time has a list of the ten worst corporate name changes. Most -- other than Airtran, which may be the best example of a name change saving a company -- are pretty dead on the money (including Sy Fy and Comcast's attempt to rename themselves Xfinity). But they apparantly have a staff writer who's still living in 1975, based on this sentence from the WWE (from WWF) piece:

The comment didn't do much to stamp out persistent rumors that the fights are rigged.

"Rumors?" "Rigged?" C'mon. There are plenty of reasons to gripe about wrestling today, but complaining that it's a bunch of rigged fights (and that the company is trying to pull one over one us)? That's not one of them.

Comments

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

What's in a name?

It's funny that the old WWF rigged "fights", and the current IPCC scandals involve the new WWF rigging "science".

EDIT: And Spike Lee's case against Spike TV was pure BS. At the time, I came up with ten "Spikes" that came to my mind before Spike Lee when the word "Spike" was mentioned. (The vampire on Buffy, the character from Cowboy Bebop, the album by Elvis Costello, etc.)

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

Is it just me or is it only people who have never watched wrestling who complain about the "rigged" fights?

I used to snark about it too, and then I had roommates who introduced me to wrestling. (Watching the reality tv show with Al Snow putting a buncha prospective young wrestlers through their paces also was pretty interesting.)

It's like complaining that a movie isn't real footage from a real story. Or that the people in a play aren't REALLY the people they are supposed to be portraying. You'd be missing the forest for the trees and losing out on the fun stuff.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Movies are a lot more convincing. But different strokes for different folks. Have fun.

[lovingboth]

Mmmm, yes, but it is pretending to be a sport, not acting.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what it's classified as, although I want to say something like sports entertainment. It's one thing to say the fights are rigged, but for most wrestlers, while they know the "outcome" of the fight, it's up to them to decide how they'll play it. There's still an incredible amount of physical performance going into the show.

(We just finished reading Hitman at our house, which is a nifty biography and peek into the world of wrestling.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think you missed the snark/sarcasm there.

[captain18.livejournal.com]

I was pleased not only to see a shout out to Chi-town regarding the Sears Tower, but that they also invoked the lingering resentment over Macy's bending over Marshall Fields.

(Periodically I have this fantasy whereby I somehow have enough money to forcibly take over Macy's and change the name of their flagship store, for the sole purpose of sitting back afterward and saying, "it's not so great now that the shoe's on the other foot, is it you jerks?")

[poobah103.livejournal.com]

It's cool. Wrestlers know how to fall.

Honestly, though, literally the first question that every non-wrestling fan asks me upon finding out that I'm a wrestling fan is "You know it's fake, right?"

It's fake? I always assumed the Undertaker was a dark wizard-zombie and that leprechauns were real.

[rubian77.livejournal.com]

Hah! They forgot the merger of the "First National" and "Union National" banks into "First Union." The name itself isn't unfortunate, but its initials are...