In this weekly column, I will comment on the past week's goings-on in WOW, and whatever else it occurs to me to discuss :-) I also hope that a big part of the column will be printing and responding to your e-mails. So please send them in (the address is thatthing35@yahoo.com)!
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6/17/01: More Letters and Ramblings
First, a site announcement... This site seems finally to have gotten some momentum going, and viewership has been increasing of late. So, I am going to keep the WOW Fantasy column going, on the purely selfish basis that I want these new viewers to keep coming back. Please click over there and check it out!
There's so little going on in the WOW world that I suppose this qualifies as news... Let's begin by explaining that wow-fan.com was Mike Sweetser's old WOW fansite. When Sweetser got the official WOW webmaster job, wow-fan.com began forwarding to wowe.com. Someone recently discovered that, although you can no longer get to the site through wowe.com, you can still do it through wow-fan.com. (Except for the webboard, which was shut down almost immediately after this "back door" was discovered). In all probability, this happens because Sweetser is still paying the bills for his personal site wow-fan.com, but WOW is no longer paying the bills for wowe.com. The important thing to remember is that wow-fan.com is Sweetser's personal fan site. It really has nothing to do with the official website... WOW still, for whatever reason, is not supporting an official website. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if WOW wanted to put their website back up, they would do it on wowe.com.
What else is going on... GLOOW released the following announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen G.L.O.O.W. officials have just informed me that G.L.O.O.W. TV that is currently airing late Sunday nights on WGTW Channel 48, will be going off the air. The last thirty-minute G.L.O.O.W. TV show will air Sunday June 24th 2001. With that being said, they have made the announcement that G.L.O.O.W. TV will go black for a few weeks and will return to WGTW Channel 48 as an entire one hour long program. It has also been stated that the show will move to a different day and time slot. More to come on that when it becomes available. Also there are a few more announcements coming soon. Stay tuned to gloow.com and this newsboard for some more MAJOR announcements coming soon!" To a WOW fan, the announcement that a show has gone off the air -- with no information as to when or where it might return -- is depressingly familiar. I am starting to get increasingly skeptical of GLOOW's continued promises of "big announcements", but I guess we'll have to wait to find out if one of their announcements is indeed a merger with WOW.
One odd thing I'm not sure how to interpret... Every weekday, I check WOW's Yahoo! Finance page to see if any new press releases have come out. Recently, the press releases have been disappearing from that page. At first, the ones about the "upcoming pay-per-view" and about the "first season ending" (cough) disappeared. Now they're all gone. Anyone know why this would be? Does WOW itself control what's on this page, or does Yahoo? Maybe Yahoo just changed its format? I don't get it... if you have any insight, please let me know. I hope this doesn't bode poorly for the chance of there being another WOW financial report... the next one is due out in mid-July.
Let's hit the mailbag (your letters in regular type, my responses in italics). John Tamson writes:
"In regard to the rumor that WOW will merge with GLOOW, let me say if it does happen, I will be extremely disappointed. I've seen GLOOW live once, and a video, and I would never spend another cent on it because it was so lame. What a joke. Truthfully, a strip joint would be a better alternative. If you have looked at the GLOOW site, you will see plenty of 'promises' made, but it's just a line of BS to stir up controversy, because they have no talent there and are very desperate."
Very, very possible. Desperate businesses do tend to make vague promises and never follow through on them... which is to say, WOW did it ;-)
"Don't hold your breath for any big announcement. Seeing has-been hags like Missy Hyatt, and Gorgeous George ain't gonna do the trick. I can buy their pornos and see even more:) WOW was a breath of fresh air in that it was a step forward for women's wrestling, no matter if it returns or not. If WOW does sell out and decides to join GLOOW, it will die for sure and you can count out this WOW fan as someone who will continue to support it."
Barney O'Neill writes:
"Riot will be impressive in any league she makes her way into. The WWF is of course the major league of professional wrestling, but historically it has been lacking in the correct principles to follow in treating its athletes, and just getting into the organization should not represent to anyone the highest level of achievement to aspire to. (Just say no to implants, Riot.)"
First off, I think that if you look at the big picture, you will find that there is less difference between "how the athletes are treated" in WWF and WOW than you believe... and I'm tempted to get into that, but I won't because it gets complex and controversial, and it would probably only end up detracting from the more important point. The more important point is this. It's easy for us to sit here and say that we would do this or that if we were in someone else's position. But when you have to deal with the consequences yourself, it's a very different matter. If Riot makes the WWF, she could very easily be internationally famous and making six figures in a year or two. If she doesn't, she could be wrestling for 10 more years in indy federations, which means 10 years of not knowing whether there's going to be food on the table next week. If she does the latter, when she's 40 years old and can't wrestle anymore... do you really think she would be a happier person than if she went the WWF route? Do you think she'll have proven anything to anybody, or made a difference in anyone's life? Will it really have been worth throwing her life away to make an idealistic point that no one noticed or cared about? When someone's dream is to work in a certain field, and there's only one company in that field, their choices are very simple: either do what that company wants, or find a new profession. I don't see how you could be judgmental of someone who, in that situation, decides to stay in their profession. Especially when that person loves wrestling as much as Riot does, has worked as hard as she has, and is as good at it as she is.
Jason Kreitzer wries:
"I haven't seen GLOOW, but going by your commentary, it sounds like the women's equivalent of XPW. In short, a cheesy, no-budget, no-talent sham of a promotion that survives despite completely abominable product."
I haven't seen it either, but as I said last week, they seem to be trying to sell the idea that they are as outrageous and exploitative as possible, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they achieved their goals. I'm not going to be moralistic about it... I just don't think it will get anywhere as a business if that's their product.
"The T&A approach would benefit no-talents such as Lana Star, The Beach Patrol and Asian Invasion, but would damage WOW's more serious workers (Riot, Danger, Roxy, Caged Heat, Harley's Angels, JG, Ice Cold, Poison, etc.)
"I don't know who runs GLOOW, but I get the feeling it is someone who makes McLame look like Vince McMahon by comparison."
That statement could be taken many ways ;-) I assume you mean that they are a fly-by-night business. I do know that they used to be Gorgeous Ladies of Oil Wrestling (the second "O" now stands for "outrageous"). I seem to recall reading when they were founded that it was spun off of a porn company, but I can't find the original source for that info. If anyone can give me a reputable article that confirms or denies this, I'd be curious to see it.
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(e-mail: thatthing35@yahoo.com)