I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

• "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
  • "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
• "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
  • "We're spread way too thin."
• "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
• RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
  • Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
  • ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
  • Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
  • Widespread match fixing
  • The Pandemic
    • "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
    • "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
      • "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
      • "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
      • "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
• "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
  • RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
    • He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

• RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
  
  • He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
    • He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
      • He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
    • Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
    • RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
    • Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
      • "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
• He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
  
  • "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
  • He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
  • "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
• He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
  
  • He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
    • He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
  • He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
    • RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
  • "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
  • "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
    • "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
    • "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
• He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
  
• He also says their rankings are a joke
  
  • "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
• He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
  
• "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
  

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

• RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
• "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
  • "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
  • "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
    • Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
      • Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
  • "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
    • "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
• ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
  • He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
    • Also says more coaches being banned are coming
    • He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
• ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
  
  • "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
  • "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
    • "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
• RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
  

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

• RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
  • On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
    • "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
      • He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
        • He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
        • The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
        • "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
• He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
• "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
  • He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

• RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
  • "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
• "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
• Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
  • Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
    • They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
      • "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
        • "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
• RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
• "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
  • "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
• "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
  • "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
• He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
• "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
  • "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
• "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

• RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
• There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
• He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
  • RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
  • He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
• He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
  • He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
    • They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
    • When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
    • "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
    • He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
• He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
  • He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
• He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
  • He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
• He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
• He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
  • Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
• RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
• RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

• RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
• He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
• Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
• He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
  • He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
• He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
• He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
• New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
• He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
• He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
• He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

• Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
  • Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
• In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
• RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
• He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
• RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
  • A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
  • RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
  • RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
• RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
• Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
  • They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
• RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
  • Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
• He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
• Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
  • RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
• "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
  • Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
• "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
• "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

• RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
• "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
• "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
• "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
• "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
• "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
  • He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
• He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
  • "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
    • "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
• He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
• "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
• "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
• "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
  • "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
• "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
  • "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
• "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
  • "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
• "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

Intro
My name is Zach 28 years old, I am a compulsive gambler from the Gold Coast, Australia. I have been gambling for close to 10 years now. My losses would be somewhere in the hundreds of thousands now without a doubt. I live a good life, I live close to the beach, have a fantastic border collie called Switch, and I have my dream job for where I am at in my career at the moment that pays me six figures. I also have a fantastic family, that are somewhat aware of the gambling problem, but definitely have no idea as to how bad it truly is.
But due to gambling, I have basically not a cent to my name, and I have lost a lot of good friends, especially over the last 3-4 months. So a lot of the above has been what has been able to keep me going in life, and not look to drastic measures.
I have been trying to stop gambling for the better part of three years now.
Where it began
Gambling started for me back when I was about 18. I had some mates that I would go down to the pub with and we would have some beers together and then go to the pokies(slot machines) and put maybe $20 through, and it seemed fun and innocent at the time. Little did I know that my addictive personality would take a hold of this and drive my life to where it currently is.
My biggest weakness would be the pokies, especially once I discovered online casinos.
But it was never really an issue through my early 20’s, as I usually only gambled what I could afford to lose and it never affected my day to day life such as paying bills or anti social behaviour. It was just a “casual” gamble at the time.
Where it got bad
It was probably around the age of 24-25 where it got really bad. I was dating a girl at the time, where from the early stages I would manage to weasal money out of her to feed my addiction of the pokies. She would lend me money or give me money not realising what the problem was. I truly took advantage of her in this situation. There were even a couple of nights where we had been drinking with friends, and she passed out to go to sleep and I would take her bank card and go withdraw $1000 or so, just so I could go play the pokies.
She forced me to go to GA at one stage, I went once, but I was no where near ready to give it up. I mean why would I when I could keep syphoning money out of her?
After that relationship ended, things calmed down a little bit. I was still gambling in a bad way, but I wasn’t stealing money to feed the addiction. I did it through my own means. From time to time I would need to borrow money from friends or family to keep my head afloat, but I always paid it back to them.
In the last 2-3 months is where the addiction has got me real bad. I was living a bad living situation with a housemate that basically forced me to keep to myself in my room or the study. This is where I really discovered online pokies.
I put $300 in, over the course of about 3-4 days I managed to get that up to around $80k. I said alright I am gonna withdrawal at least 60k of this, but going to see if I can use the other 20k to see if I can turn it into more.
As online pokies have it, they really draw out the verification process. They do not make it easy to get your money. It goes without saying that within 3 days I managed to take that $80k and turn it into $0. Because I am a compulsive gambler and self control around gambling is not something that I have.
The follow on effect
Having gotten up to $80k, I was convinced that I could easily get up to like $10k or something. This resulted in me using money I didn’t have and borrowing money, and lying to borrow money in order to gamble.
As I sit here now and write this up. I went from having no debt, to now about $5k in debt and having blown around $15-20k over the last 1-2 months.
Going forward
Now I sit here contemplating the road ahead of me. Here is what I have done so far
- Called my bank and banned any form of gambling transactions
- Installed Gameban on my phone and computer
- Told a friend about my gambling and the true extent of it.
- Looking into counselling and GA meetings around me.
It’s a long road ahead, but I have to start somewhere.

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COVID-19 has now infected more than 215,956 people. There have been 8,757 confirmed deaths and 84,080 confirmed recoveries attributed to the virus.
 
Recent Updates
Note: These are the updates from the last 48-72 hours.
MARCH 18 -

• United States: President Trump signed into law a coronavirus relief package, which provides free coronavirus testing and ensures paid emergency leave for those who are infected or caring for a family member with the illness. The bill also provides additional Medicaid funding, food assistance and unemployment benefits. The "third phase" coronavirus response bill is expected to pass later this week. Read more here.
  
• United States: President Trump announced that home foreclosures and evictions will be suspended “until the end of April.” Read more here. He also invoked the Defense Production Act, which gives the government the authority to control the production and distribution of scarce materials deemed "essential to the national defense." In his executive order, Trump specifically cites protective equipment (presumably face masks) and ventilators as meeting the criteria in this provision. Read more here.
  
• United States: Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Ben McAdams become first members of Congress to test positive for coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• United States: King County in Washington State is building a 200-bed field hospital on Shoreline soccer field amid coronavirus outbreak. Read more here.
  
• United States: The New York Stock Exchange said starting March 23, it will temporarily close its historic trading floor and move fully to electronic trading. This is the first time the physical trading floor of the Big Board has ever shut independently while electronic trading continues. Read more here.
  
• United States and Canada: US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have agreed to close the US-Canada border to all non-essential travel in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus. Trade will not be affected. Read more here.
  
• Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a massive $82-billion aid package to help Canadians and businesses cope with the global COVID-19 pandemic, including income supports, wage subsidies and tax deferrals. The package includes $27 billion in direct supports and another $55 billion to help business liquidity through tax deferrals. Read more here.
  
• Japan’s Hokkaido, the nation’s prefecture with the highest number of coronavirus infections, will end its state of emergency over the epidemic on Thursday. Read more here.
  
• Europe: The European Central Bank launched an extra emergency bond-buying program worth 750 billion euros ($820 billion) in the latest attempt to calm markets and protect a euro-area economy struggling to cope with the coronavirus epidemic. Read more here.
  
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• RyanAir, Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier, said it expected “most if not all” flights to be grounded, apart from a small number to maintain connections between the UK and Ireland. Read more here.
  

 
MARCH 17 -

• United States: A plan developed by the federal government to combat the coronavirus reportedly projects the pandemic will last 18 months or more and could feature multiple “waves.” Read more here.
  
• United States: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin raised the possibility with Republican senators that U.S. unemployment could rise to 20% without government intervention because of the impact of the coronavirus. Mnuchin discussed the scenario with the lawmakers on Tuesday as he proposed an economic stimulus of $1 trillion or more. Read more here.
  
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• United States: White House requests and additional $45.8 billion in emergency funding due to coronavirus. The request comes on top of the $8.3 billion in emergency funding passed by Congress just two weeks ago and underscores just how dramatically financial demands at federal agencies have grown in a matter of days. Read more here.
  
• United States: Schools are likely to be closed for the rest of this school year according to Governor Newsom of California. Ohio's governor has made similar statements. Read more here.
  
• United States: Are Hospitals Near Me Ready for Coronavirus? Here Are Nine Different Scenarios. | There is a tool in the article that allows you to see your area's hospital capacity. See the interactive tool here.
  
• EU: Leaders of European Union countries have agreed to close the EU’s external borders to most people from other countries for 30 days in a new effort to slow the coronavirus pandemic. Movement within European Union member nations will be still be allowed. Read more here.
  
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MARCH 16 -

• A Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating an investigational vaccine designed to protect against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle. Read more here.
  
• The European Union will ban all nonessential travel into the bloc for at least 30 days. Read more here.
  
• France has instituted a lockdown and will deploy 100,000 police to enforce the lockdown and fixed checkpoints will be set up across the country. Under the new measures, soldiers would help transport the sick to hospitals with spare capacity and a military hospital with 30 intensive care beds would be set up in the eastern region of Alsace, where one of the largest infection clusters has broken out. Macron also announced he was postponing the second round of local elections on Sunday. Read more here.
  
• United States: President Trump held a press conference today, where he said that the U.S. may be able to get the new coronavirus outbreak under control by July or August at the earliest. He also said his administration may look at lockdowns for “certain areas” or “hot spots” in the nation, but said he wasn’t considering a full national lockdown. Watch the press conference here and/or read about it here.
  
• United States: The Department of Health and Human Services experienced suspicious cyberactivity Sunday night related to its coronavirus response. The suspicious activity HHS was not a hack but it may have been a distributed denial of service -- or DDOS -- attack. Read more here.
  
• United States: Six Bay Area counties announced “shelter in place” orders for all residents on Monday — the strictest measure of its kind yet in the continental United States — directing everyone to stay inside their homes and away from others as much as possible for the next three weeks. The directive begins at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and involves San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties — a combined population of more than 6.7 million. Read more here.
  
• United States: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut institute regional rules that ban gatherings of over 50, and close casinos, gyms, and theaters. Read more here.
  
• United States: The Ohio primary has been postponed. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) announced late Monday that his administration will order that polls be closed on Tuesday due to a health emergency. Read more here.
  
• United States: Dow Plummets Nearly 3,000 Points as Virus Fears Spread. Read more here.
  
• Canada is closing its borders to noncitizens because of the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. citizens are exempt from the ban “for the moment." Read more here.
  
• Israel is preparing to open four hotels across the country as quarantines sites for confirmed cases of coronavirus, Minister of Defense Naftali Bennett announced Monday night. The hotels will be used to treat people exhibiting mild symptoms of the virus. Read more here.
  
• Finland closes schools, declares state of emergency over coronavirus. Daycare centres are to stay open but parents were asked to keep their kids home if possible. Read more here.
  
• Sudan’s ruling sovereign council closed all airports, ports and land crossings and declared a public health emergency on Monday over fears about the spread of coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• Idris Elba has tested positive for coronavirus along with several other celebrities. See Idris' tweet here.
  
• Amazon will hire 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers in the United States to deal with a surge in online orders, as many consumers have turned to the web to meet their needs during the coronavirus outbreak. Read more here.
  
• The Peace Corps is telling its volunteers around the world that it is suspending all operations globally and evacuating all volunteers in light of the spread of the new coronavirus. Read more here.
  
• United States: The College Board has cancelled the May SATs. Read more here.
  

 
Tracking COVID-19

• Vox is keeping track of COVID-19 infections for each U.S. state here.
  
• John Hopkins University has a live trackemap of the global spread of COVID-19 here.
  
• Today's situation report from the WHO.
  
• The CDC's COVID-19 Situation Summary.
  
• There are tons of travel bans globally right now. CNN has put together a full list here.
  

 
Reputable Sources for Information:

• The CDC's Dedicated Coronavirus Resource,
  
• The WHO's Dedicated Coronavirus Resource,
  
• The University of Chicago School of Medicine's handy FAQ style resource.
  

1930-Birth of Xavier's mother, Geneviève DDL in Versailles
1931-birth of xavier's father, Hubert DDL in Senlis
1955-they get married and settle in Cannes. Hubert is an aeronautical engineer.In September 1957,The couple had their first child, Véronique. But Geneviève, who has always been fragile and introvert, could not bear the distance from her family wanted to return to Versailles to be closer to her parents. They settled at 50 rue du Maréchal-Foch.
1960The mother of the murderer had created a prayer group called ′′ Philadelphia ′′.
January 20 1960-birth of Xavier DDL
1966-Birth of Christine DDL.
1972-Hubert starts an affair with his secretary, Catherine, and left home around 1972 .
1974-Xavier and Emmanuel Teneur meet for the first time on island Brehat. Emmanuel is 14 and Xavier is 13.
In late 70s both of them will become part of a prayer group Xavier's mother founded.
1979-
-Xavier's father, Hubert goes to Ivory Coast with his mistress.
-Xavier is doing small jobs, handling etc. To soon he wants to be a husband and a father, he reconnects with Agnes Hodanger a girl from good family he met in High School.
1982-
-Agnes and Xavier get engaged at ages 20 and 21. During the summer of his engagement Xavier meets a german girl, Claudia. Tall, blonde a camping model. He falls in love with her and leaves Agnes. Agnes returns to Versailles alone meanwhile Xavier travels between Hanover and Versaiiles.
Agnes was miserable first the break up with Xavier, later her mother's cancer and death. Agnes focuses on her job as typing secretary and devotes her free time to her father and brothers. To forget about Xavier she focuses on a new man, a waiter working in a bar not far away from her home, she gets pregnant and gives birth to a boy, Arthur in July 1990. The waiter will not accept the kid as his and will leave her.
Meanwhile Xavier goes to the south, first he goes to Aix-en-Provence. He is finally free. He joined Véronique who lives in Draguignan. Emmanuel Teneur is of course with him. He was hired as a commercial by Société des fertilisers Monnot (SEM), where he sold garden equipment for the PACA region. That's where he meets Michel Retif, also commercial. Michel is opposite of Emmanuel. Adventurers, womanizer,outgoing. They become best friends quickly. They both love USA.
1989-Xavier is fired from SEM. He is single and free. Him and Michel are going to the USA. Finally they will go to America 3 times. They apparently visited 48 out of 50 states. First trip is founded by their unemployment benefit. For the following, they invent a combine. When they return to France, they bring back American vehicles, those Cadillac's and Ford Mustang's which always fascinated Xavier, to resell them with a significant margin. Both friends plan to extend the adventure, this time in New Caledonia, where Xavier's other cousin works as a banker for Crédit Agricole. And then one day. Xavier suddenly announces to Michel that he cancels everything. Passing through Versailles, he saw Agnes again. This one is pregnant with a baby boy. Xavier leaves his freedom and plans and decides to go back to France to take care of pregnant Agnes.
They will be married in 1992 (or September 1991). Emmanuel Teneur becomes a godfather of couples first child, Thomas.
1994-Birth of Anne.
1995-The apocalypse that Xavier's mother was prophesying. Christine sleeps with every single male member of the prayer group. After the apocalypse doesn't happen. Xavier's older sister leaves France.
July 4th 1995-ex member of prayer group sends documents about prayer group to a lawyer of Montpellier.
1997-Birth of Benoit.
1998-
-Agnès having lost both parents inherits 3,000,000 Francs, ie 400,000 € (cash, securities, real estates)
-Family vacations in the USA.
-Start of the Commercial Route.
-Rent of a pretty villa with swimming pool in Pornic.
2002
-The family moved to the USA. ( children enrolled in school, Nov 2002 Aug 2003 the family lives at the Little Inn by the Sea Motel, LAUDERDALE usa)
2003-
Family moves to Nantes.
2004-
Beginning of financial problems. Agnes' inheritance is slowly finishing.
Agnes is gaining lots of weight. She also starts a romance with Michel. She complains on online forums about her marriage etc.
Ending of the year is a spiral of failures for Xavier.
2005-
Agnes and Xavier seperate in July one of the reason was Agnes refusing to give Xavier the rest of her money. Also Xavier punches(?) Arthur . Agnes fills a complain to the police. She loses 20 kilograms (around 44 pounds)
March 2005- Massage between Emmanuel and Xavier ''captain and his sailboat returned to the boat''(after the investigation Emmanuel says that Xavier was the one who knew where his will is)
October 2005-Xavier comes back home to the family.
December 2005- Agnes still has an affair with Xavier's friend. Xavier writes an open letter to the family, that makes him look innocent, he didn't cheat, he wasn't violent etc. Xavier also writes resentment to Michel.
2006
January-Xavier puts Agnes under pressure and she confesses to having an affair. She said that this thing was only virtual.
Xavier starts trio with Michel. He also starts humiliating Agnes even more because she decided to go back to traditional church.
22 Feb. 2006-Agnes' e-mail to Claudia “you are the only girl Xav really loved a long time after me".
March 17 xddl “hello pigs” to Agnès and MR… how to measure penis. ((His is obviously competent!))
DEC 25, 2006 XAV writes about his loss of faith. While Agnes reconnects with the traditional Church. Big disagreement.
2007
Xav lists the faults of Agnes ("totally impatient and intolerant of everyone" "Arthur Anne and him in particular").
MARCH 15, 2007 XAV writes to Agnès: "I would spend my days cursing you () and suspecting you"
APRIL 24, 2007 Agnès believes XAV is still under the thumb of his mother, he reassures her.
Agnès worried about the hold of CDDL and GDDL on Xav talks about it to her prayer group in Nantes.
August 2007- Xavier basically robs Emmanuel of 6000 euros and his family jewelry.
To his ex-mistress he had said: "if you give me 1,000,000 I will leave everything"
2008
Agnes is obese and depressed. Her therapist tells her to divorce her husband.
Xavier writes to Vero about how he lost his faith. He fills files / his reflections, exegesis etc. ((His mother Geneviève has a whole cupboard full of Files with articles etc. on ALL kinds of SUBJECTS)).
2009
Agnes working part-time: 500 Euros per month AGNES Ericksonian therapy, homeopathy, osteopath "visionary of the brain" ... she joins several prayer groups
February 2009, xddl finds Catherine V
APRIL 21, meeting CV, relationship begins, romantic weekend, Relais et Chateaux, xav pays.
from MAY xav talks about his company, to convince her / his CRYSTAL project, CV accountants say: not viable
CV nevertheless yields 50,000 EUROS on JUNE 3, 2009, cashed on June 9.
- July, CV presents Xavier to her friends / birthdays. Dinner with her brother.
50,000 cashed on JUNE 9, June 12 golf cabriolet gift to AGNES, and tour of the grand dukes ALONE in cities with casinos, Deauville, La Baule, Dinard (August), xddl writes checks to all creditors. At the end of 2009, nothing remains of the 50,000. He must repay the 50,000 on July 3, 2010. In June he tries to soften it "drop of water for you". End of summer CV confides in friends. OCTOBER XAV ACKNOWLEDGES HAVING NOTHING INVESTED, he just used money to repay his debts. And paid for the hotel when they were together! With the mistress's money! CV cuts her contact with him.
Philadelphia reveals the miracle of Saint Christ. CDDL: “Jesus wants us to ACT, Jesus' next offensive will be through the internet!” -> Xav writes on CC* every night ...
-Dec 27, 2009 computer distribution of the "Libretto of St Christ."
Xavier is banned on CC. He creates another account.
2nd report against the sect, reveals that the group is still active, renewed activity for years, Bertram took over from his father as chief financial officer, pays the gddl bills. XDDL then approaches the group, also registered on CC, still interested in THEOLOGY, consults Bertram by email. AGNES worried / grip of gddl on xddl, FEAR.
2010
January 2010 last meeting XDDL CV. She talks about a lawyer ...
Letter to his mistress Catherine. While he has to repay Catherine's loan: 50,000, suicide blackmail letter: his "current life" will end in a few months if he does not find 25,000 immediately.
04/29/2010-Xddl connects to Cité Catholique to discuss the need for sacrifices, and revives the conversation for a month.
Xddl to CV, talks about "burning the family", to the lawyer: "bankruptcy, insolvent, homeless soon"
-05/07/2010-Visit of a bailiff mandated by the mistress of Xddl (Catherine), with a view to foreclosure on her income. He was due to repay on July 3.
Family vacations near Montpellier at MR (except Arthur).
end of August / September: (Letter from Xddl to Michel and Emmanuel evoking individual or “collective” suicide already mentioned in the letter to his mistress of January 14, 2010.And instructions for afterwards (Dispositions.doc). Letter titled: "Ligonnès family issues and perspectives (absence of ...)"
September 17th-Anne takes letter from bailiff she's still in her pj's.
NOV 10 2010 conversation on FB Anne + Agnès // death "the most perfect form of existence" according to Agnès.
(Agnès on antidepressants and anxiolytics for several months at the time of her death, but no suicidal tendency, projects, commitments, ex. full-time job from Sept 2011)
2011
At the start of 2011, a big contract ... did not happen.
20/01/2011
Death of the Count of Hubert Dupont de Ligonnès. (Heart attack. Xav withdraws up to 6,700 euros from his father's accounts ). End of January Father's rifle found, reconstituted, revised and repaired by the director of TIR. XAV DRINKS A LOT!
February
Xddl applies for a shooting license
Xavier takes his family for farewell visits to the family.
February 25 a friend commits suicide at 53 / debt / professional failure, 5 children, Xav very shocked.
March
1 month before murders, husband of a friend of vddl who committed suicide, Baron, Versailles, 53 years old, 5 children, debts / model family in vddl's eyes. Xddl: "it's abominable, monster, to leave children and wife ALIVE, with nothing to live on", 3 years later the wife also dies at 53 years old.
12/03/2011
- Xav and Benoit at funeral mass in La Rochelle, 1 witness will go on June 4 and 21 to testify to the police // child trembling in all his limbs, crying a lot, Xav shows him stained glass resurrection, crying which redoubles, the witness wants give water to B. refusal of Xav!
Purchase of silencer and ammunition
March Emmanuel Teneur: xav shoots in his garden / balloon, with the 22 silenced, Emmanuel tries out the weapon ((lies to the police when he claims to have never seen the weapon in operation)).
03/15/2011 Xav / family / Versailles: "farewell" visit,
MARCH 2011 xddl recontacts Catherine R, see you in Chamonix week of 12/4? Coincidence, “xddl” saw Nice car rental company where a “Catherine R” rented 1 car… Disambiguation. CR, strange message on 5/20, from a stranger, Philippe Steiner, profile deleted before his reply
-26/03/2011
Xddl prints Non-Pledge Certificates for Agnès Golf and Arthur's Xantia.
-31/03/2011
Brigitte L / prayer group, sees Agnès for the last time, very anxious. Heavy threats. Nothing about Xav's possible suicidal tendency.
Agnès asked to pray for them // threats received, the witness is thinking of CDDL and GDDL !
Apparently in October 2011 someone complained of having discovered in the file these threats, which forced Agnès to change phone number and email.
April 2011
-Purchase of cement, rubble bags, spade. SO1: Orvault Castorama: 2 10KG prompt cement bags, 2 gray adhesive rolls, 12 extra reinforced 50L rubble bags, a Lorraine hoe, a spade)
Emmanuel sees Xddl in the company of his 2 sons at the shooting range for the last time, an appointment taken for baptism of shooting offered by E, scheduled for April 9.
-Xddl sends 1 second letter to his mistress Catherine V: personal letter / Australia, he accuses her of having screwed up their relationship, "her money" makes her paranoid, (cf. letter of contrition from Agnes, same spirit) "no one will find me". ((Catherine received this final letter from Xavier on 9 April 2011, which means it must have been posted 3 or 4 Apr. ??
2/04/2011 Saturday
-Purchase of quicklime by xddl (SO1 4 bags, Xav also buys stamps and fills up GASOLINE).
Benoit spends the night at his friends house, comes back in the morning for the mass.
Agnès / conference / autism 9 am-5:30pm in St Herblain, which contradicts the thesis of preparations for the big trip ((Reality of this presence of Agnes at this conference is doubtful ??))
7:07 p.m. to 7:50 p.m. ET calls xddl 5 times, talked together 43 minutes
Sunday
ET calls xddl twice which does not respond to tel
Arthur ... at the pizzeria from 11 a.m. to 2:55 p.m
(Arthur told his friends he won't be available during weekend. Anne said to her friends something similar, on 5th of April Thomas supposedly received a text massage from his mother.For CDDL a proof that Agnes is alive! Because Xav on phone at the same time .... - as if he couldn't answer a text message on another phone ...))
4 p.m. return of Agnès and Anne ((return from where ??))
5pm Thomas goes back to Anger.
That night family goes to cinema and restaurant.
21st april the bodies are found.
​
​
I translated some points from this facebook group post . There is so much more points and information in there i just translated the ones that stuck to me the most. Feel free to point any mistakes i used a translator so some of the translations might be weird. I tried my best to correct them.
CC*-cite catolique

Gambling or betting on things seems to be an extremely male-dominated behaviour, especially here in Australia (and we spend the most on gambling per capita worldwide).
On a subjective level, almost every one of my male friends and colleagues gambles daily, and social conversations amongst friends often tend to steer towards what's going on in the horses/greyhounds/NRL betting/AFL betting/under-12 disabled Ukrainian volleyball if that's all that's left. Blokes will make bets with each other over things like the coin flip before a game, the exact time of kick off and if a racecaller will say a catchphrase during a race.
I believe that part of the reason is that betting advertising has become part of our daily life here. TV ads, radio, print media, social media; literally everywhere you look. They've even managed to seamlessly entwine betting watching sport - every ad break or pre-game show there is a representative from one of the bookmakers showing live odds, tips and gambling strategy. They have TV pop-up ads showing live odds. They even have banner advertising that is cookie-generated so you literally can't escape being marketed to if you're online at all and have looked up a sports result that day. In recent years, gambling ads are now primarily for racing and sports betting rather than, as in the past, for lotteries.
On the flip side, none of my female friends or colleagues have any interest in gambling. Quite a few follow sport here but never put any bets on or talk about gambling.
Is this because sportsbetting marketing is extremely targeted towards the male demographic? Here in Australia we also spend the most on gambling advertising over all other countries in the world. Our major bookies (Sportsbet, Ladbrokes, Neds, BetEasy) have incredibly male-oriented advertising with TV ads that specifically target men from 18 to 40 - this is obviously their bread and butter market but why? Sports betting advertising often features men standing together, drinking and watching a sporting match. Have a look at some examples of this targeted advertising all showing the single male demographic.
Is this due to the fact that sports in general are more popular with men, and this is the reason for the propensity to sports bet?
I think men are genetically predisposed to gambling or betting. From an evolutionary point of view, men have been more likely to be competitive with each other in providing for their family/tribe and having the ability to fight for alpha male status.
​
END NOTE: I am not referring to casino gambling. For some reason Casino gambling is a lot more gender equal.

Gambling or betting on things seems to be an extremely male-dominated behaviour, especially here in Australia (and we spend the most on gambling per capita worldwide).
From a subjective level, almost every one of my male friends and colleagues gambles daily, and social conversations amongst friends often tend to steer towards what's going on in the horses/greyhounds/NRL betting/AFL betting/under-12 disabled Ukrainian volleyball if that's all that's left. Blokes will make bets with each other over things like the coin flip before a game, the exact time of kick off and if a racecaller will say a catchphrase during a race.
I believe that part of the reason is that betting advertising has become part of our daily life here. TV ads, radio, print media, social media; literally everywhere you look. They've even managed to seamlessly entwine betting watching sport - every ad break or pre-game show there is a representative from one of the bookmakers showing live odds, tips and gambling strategy. They have TV pop-up ads showing live odds. They even have banner advertising that is cookie-generated so you literally can't escape being marketed to if you're online at all and have looked up a sports result that day. In recent years, gambling ads are now primarily for racing and sports betting rather than, as in the past, for lotteries.
On the flip side, none of my female friends or colleagues have any interest in gambling. Quite a few follow sport here but never put any bets on or talk about gambling.
Is this because sportsbetting marketing is extremely targeted towards the male demographic? Here in Australia we also spend the most on gambling advertising over all other countries in the world. Our major bookies (Sportsbet, Ladbrokes, Neds, BetEasy) have incredibly male-oriented advertising with TV ads that specifically target men from 18 to 40 - this is obviously their bread and butter market but why? Sports betting advertising often features men standing together, drinking and watching a sporting match. Have a look at some examples of this targeted advertising all showing the single male demographic.
Is this due to the fact that sports in general are more popular with men, and this is the reason for the propensity to sports bet?
What's going on here? Are men just genetically predisposed to being competitive?
​
END NOTE: I am not referring to casino gambling. For some reason Casino gambling is a lot more gender equal.

Hi guys! Recently I've properly learned poker and quite enjoy it as a game with half skill half luck oppose to other casino games.
I went to try and find an online site which offers it to learn online poker is banned in Australia! The baffles me as lotto, pokies and other casino games are all allowed online. It makes it seem that one of the few games where the 'house' isn't taking the majority cut is banned.
I have read that we are still allowed to play on overseas operated site though. So does anyone know of any sites that accept Australian players?
I'm just worried about not being able to verify an account, withdraw or deposit funds etc on an overseas website. Do any of you play? Where do you guys play that you've had no troubles with?

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999

1-3-2000	1-10-2000	1-17-2000	1-24-2000
1-31-2000	2-7-2000	2-14-2000	2-21-2000
2-28-2000	3-6-2000	3-13-2000	3-20-2000
3-27-2000	4-3-2000	4-10-2000	4-17-2000
4-24-2000	5-1-2000	5-8-2000	5-15-2000
5-22-2000	5-29-2000	6-5-2000	6-12-2000

What's up everybody. Hope everyone's doing well. Just a heads up, there will be no Rewind posts for the rest of this week. I won't be around on Wednesday or Friday this week so the next post after today will be next Monday. Hope everybody has a good Thanksgiving. Also, ham is better than turkey and I will die for that belief, fuck you, fight me if you disagree.

• The long-rumored split of AJPW has finally come to pass, as company president Mitsuharu Misawa resigned his position on on 5/28. All sides attempted to keep it quiet to ensure a smooth transition but when word leaked to the media a week or so later, an emergency board of directors meeting was called and 5 more members of the board (wrestlers Kenta Kobashi, Akira Taue, Mitsuo Momota, along with front office exec Yoshihiro Momota and AJPW managing director Kenichi Oyagi) all formally resigned as well. It confirmed that virtually the entire company has decided to leave Motoko Baba. It's strongly believed that will Misawa will be starting his own promotion, probably in September (ends up being August actually). Misawa had hoped to avoid a public promotional war with the wife of Giant Baba and had attempted to negotiate with her to use the AJPW name for his promotion to preserve the legacy and history of what Giant Baba built without it turning nasty. But Motoko Baba refused the proposal and refused to give up any financial control of the company (she owns 85% while Nippon TV owns the other 15%). Both Misawa and Motoko Baba are expected to hold separate press conferences this week to detail their future plans. According to sources, every single wrestler in the company with the exception of Toshiaki Kawada and Masa Fuchi have pledged loyalty to Misawa and pretty much the entire front office is going with him as well. Kawada will likely be named the new AJPW president this week. Kawada and Misawa have known each other since high school but haven't ever really fully gotten along, with Kawada feeling like Misawa was holding him down from being the top star in AJPW. With him in charge, it's expected he will become the top star and will attempt to form a working relationship with NJPW while also bringing in indie talent to fill out the now-empty roster to keep the company afloat.
  
• Misawa and Motoko Baba have never gotten along since Misawa took over as company president following Giant Baba's death. A lot of the problems stem from Baba wanting to maintain the status quo in a company that has been floundering, while Misawa wanted to make major changes, push younger wrestlers, and things like that, only to find himself often overruled. Dave notes a specific show last year when Misawa booked Budokan Hall and put Jun Akiyama vs. Takao Omori in the main event, which Baba was adamantly against, feeling a Budokan show shouldn't be headlined by wrestlers who weren't yet established main eventers. Misawa also wanted to modernize the contracts, with wrestlers having medical coverage if they're hurt, full pay while out injured, and things like that. Usually every year at the end of March, the wrestlers get raises but that didn't happen this year and as a result, nobody re-signed, so currently the entire AJPW roster of wrestlers are free-agents right now, which is why they're all able to up and leave with Misawa. As much as everyone loved Giant Baba, his wife has always been notoriously unpopular in Japanese wrestling circles and was nicknamed "Dragon Lady." Shortly after Giant Baba's death, she forced Jumbo Tsuruta out of the company after he had worked there for 27 years.
  
• Needless to say, there's some potential legal hurdles here. It's believed Misawa may have a non-compete clause in his previous contract that hasn't run out yet. There's also the possibility that Baba will file a lawsuit claiming that Misawa had started working to set up his new company while still employed as AJPW president. During the meeting where Misawa resigned, Baba didn't attend, instead sending her lawyer with a note saying that she wasn't going to be there. The key to this whole thing is Nippon TV, which has been broadcasting wrestling weekly since the Rikidozan days. Dave says this whole thing is really similar to the 1972 situation when Giant Baba left the old JWA promotion (Rikidozan's company) and started AJPW, and Nippon TV went with him. 7 months later, JWA was dead. Publicly, Nippon TV isn't saying anything but it's believed that they are likely going to side with Misawa also, so AJPW's days on television may be numbered. If for some reason that doesn't happen, the Fuji Network in Japan is interested, so Misawa's promotion will surely end up on TV one way or another. All in all, this is pretty devastating for AJPW.
  
• The situation with AJPW's foreign wrestlers is uncertain. They all ride on the same bus and were told to clean out all their stuff. They also checked to see if their hotels were booked for the upcoming July tour only to find out they haven't been booked yet (they usually are by now) so the foreign stars are said to be pretty concerned that they suddenly might not have jobs. Many of the foreign wrestlers are closer to Mrs. Baba since, well, she writes the checks and the money's never late. But they've all been told not to worry, although they haven't been given any details of what their futures hold. Steve Williams and Johnny Ace are the closest to her on a personal level. Stan Hansen, the highest paid foreign star in AJPW, is staying out of the situation. He's just about ready to retire anyway and has saved his money well, so he's just chillin' and waiting to see how this whole thing shakes out.
  
• Things are only slightly less chaotic in the United States. The WWF vs. USA Network trial began this week and the futures of both WWF's Raw and ECW as a whole probably depend on what happens. USA Senior VP David Brenner testified during the first 2 days and revealed that USA pays WWF $42,000 per episode for Raw. Last year during negotiations, USA had offered to increase the payment to $80,000 per episode in 2001, $85,000 in 2002 and $90,000 in 2003 as well as offering increases in payments for the other three weekly shows on USA but Vince McMahon turned them down. USA then increased the offer but McMahon again turned it down and began negotiating with Fox.
  
• More talk about the future of WCW also. The SFX talks to purchase WCW have seemingly gone nowhere so far but are still ongoing. Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan have been meeting with Fox about a deal. The idea being that Bischoff and Hogan would go to Fox to start a "new promotion," which would then do a big inter-promotional angle against WCW. Meanwhile, WCW is also still reaching out to ECW about possibly working together, but Heyman has once again refused because he wants no part of anything to do with WCW.
  
• Oh yeah, speaking of....ECW is pretty jolly well fucked up right now too. Heyman has also had discussions with Fox but they haven't gone anywhere. Even though WCW is suffering financial losses the likes of which have never been seen before in professional wrestling, ECW is actually the company in the most danger right now. They're in a major financial crunch and wrestlers are weeks behind on getting paid. Several sources are said to be willing to loan ECW money or to buy a stake in the company, including WWF, which has offered several times to bail Heyman out. But the loan would come with certain conditions that Heyman isn't willing to accept because they would basically give WWF too much control over his company. Furthermore, the situation with the WWF/USA lawsuit is precarious because it's entirely possible and likely that TNN will boot ECW off the network if/when they get WWF Raw, which would leave ECW sitting on a mountain of debt without a national TV deal. Heyman is hopeful that they can survive on syndicated TV, just as they did before they had TNN, but things have changed a lot since then. If TNN ends up getting Raw, ECW's best hope is that they will be picked up by USA but that's by no means a guarantee. Given the state of the company, Dave says they're going to need a major network deal and a much larger production budget from that network if they hope to survive or be competitive.
  
• WCW's Great American Bash is in the books and after a heavily-hyped build-up that something game-changing would happen, the big surprise ended up being the heel-turn of Goldberg. Dave says the show was a huge let-down. Endless run-ins, 3 big "stunt" spots which meant none of them stood out, predictable swerves, and the 3rd straight PPV with the same finish. Goldberg's heel turn got a lot of heat but Dave says it's way too soon in Goldberg's career, plus he just came back after being injured for 6 months and the fans have been dying to see him back. But Russo was determined to turn him heel immediately because "omg swerves are awesome!" so....here we are. Needless to say, Dave thinks this is just about the dumbest thing WCW could have done. It also re-solidifies Hogan and Nash as the top 2 babyfaces in the company, because this company just refuses to fucking learn. Coming out of the PPV, it seemed like the obvious direction for the next PPV would be Hogan vs. Jarrett for the title and Goldberg vs. Nash, but in their infinite wisdom, they went ahead and gave away both matches for free on Nitro the very next night, which, to be fair, it's not like anyone buys WCW PPVs anymore anyway so it probably doesn't really matter. To show just how far WCW has alienated its fans, both Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan were in matches on this PPV where their career was at stake if they lost. Two of the biggest names in history in potential retirement matches should be an instant sellout and monster buyrate but needless to say, they only drew 4,600 paid (in Baltimore, a city where both Flair and Hogan have been huge draws during their careers) and the buyrate is expected to be among the lowest ever. Dave says try to imagine a scenario in Mexico with El Santo and Perro Aguayo in retirement matches only selling 4,600 tickets to Arena Mexico, or Inoki and Riki Choshu putting up their careers and drawing 4,600 to the Tokyo Dome. It would be unthinkable, but welcome to WCW in 2000.
  
• Other notes from the show: the opening cruiserweight match ending got screwed up because the guy who plays Rection's dad came out 5 minutes early and since his run-in was part of the finish, they had to rush to it early. How does that even happen? Kanyon turned on DDP, making it 3 PPVs in a row that DDP lost because someone betrayed him. In the words of Raylan Givens, "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." I'm just saying, maybe we should start asking why all of DDP's friends keep turning on him. Hogan vs. Kidman was about what you expect: Hogan overcoming all the odds and beating Kidman like a jobber. Ric Flair's entire family got involved in his match with David Flair, including his daughter Ashley (Charlotte) attacking Russo. Vampiro beat Sting in an inferno match, with "Sting" (a stunt double) being set on fire and knocked off the top of the video screen and Dave hated this. And of course, finally, the Goldberg heel turn.
  
• WWF is planning to slowly enact a new rule banning all moves in which a wrestler might land on his head (aside from tombstones and DDTs). The details are still scarce but it would essentially ban all forms of piledrivers, brainbusters, and other back and overhead suplexes. It won't be an immediate change, and wrestlers who use those moves will be asked to move away from them and gradually change their moveset. The idea, of course, is to try to lower the injury risk of guys dealing with neck issues who are working 4 shows a week. Dave talks about major injuries that have happened, particularly the Masa Chono and Steve Austin neck injuries which both came from botched piledrivers and nearly ended the careers of both. No word on why exactly this was decided, but Dave talks about a crazy looking DDT from the top rope that Dean Malenko did to Scotty 2 Hotty at Backlash that scared a lot of people backstage. And of course, there's also the issue with Droz being paralyzed (although that was a freak accident) and things like that. Tazz had already been told to limit his suplexes and wasn't allowed to use some of his more dangerous ones. And Perry Saturn was told to change his brainbuster finisher so he's using an elbow from the top now as his finish.
  
• The New Jersey state assembly passed a bill to regulate "extreme wrestling." It's a bill clearly designed to shut down Jersey All Pro Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling, while not applying to other promotions that operate in the state, like WWF, WCW, or ECW. The bill still has to pass the state senate and the governor (who has come out in support of it) before it becomes law. There's a lot of direct quotes from the bill in here that tries to distinguish between WWF/WCW/ECW and promotions like JAPW and CZW and it's pretty bullshit. Most of the things that are listed as being banned in CZW and JAPW happen regularly in the main promotions too. Dave talks about Jeff Hardy doing dives off ladders in WWF, or New Jack jumping off balconies in ECW. Those would still be fine on those shows, but Jeff Hardy or New Jack went to an JAPW or CZW show and did the exact same thing, it would be banned. Any "extreme wrestling" promoter or wrestler that allows someone under 18 into a show would be subject to a $5,000 fine. Other wrestling promotions can run shows without a license but "extreme" promotions (only CZW and JAPW) have to not only get a license to operate, must notify the public safety director 20 days beforehand to get permission in writing, and a bunch of other shit. It's also subject to a bunch of taxes that the other companies aren't. And the biggest thing is that "extreme" shows must carry medical insurance on all the wrestlers and have 2 doctors and an ambulance on site at all times. For these small companies that only draw a couple hundred fans, that's an expense they can't afford. In short, the entire purpose of this bill is to run JAPW and CZW out of business, or at least out of the state, and it looks like it's likely going to become law.
  
• A&E aired a Biography special on Hulk Hogan and I can already tell this is going to be good. Dave's itching to point out the lies and inaccuracies. In an interesting note, after the show finished filming, they got a negative response from an early screening because they never acknowledged Hogan's role in the current downfall of WCW. So they tacked on a thing at the end mentioning that WCW had declined in popularity due to promoting wrestlers who were too old. Anyway, the rest of the documentary was basically Hogan and his friends and family telling a wonderful tale of fiction. Some of it is nitpicky stuff but others, like Vince McMahon's role in Hogan's success and the 80s boom of wrestling, was completely downplayed. He told a bunch of lies about his past steroid use, basically just that he dabbled in them when it was legal. Of course, none of that's true and Hogan's own testimony in Vince's 94 steroid trial contradicts it, but whatever. Overall, it doesn't sound too bad compared to the tall tales Hogan usually tells, but Dave always delights in nitpicking Hogan's conveniently selective memory.
  
• This week's ratings fun: on Raw, the Crash Holly vs. Gerald Brisco match did double the rating of Nitro's Nash/Goldberg main event, which was Goldberg's first match since turning heel the night before. As soon as Nitro ended, 40% of fans switched over to Raw, which is much higher than the usual number.
  
• NJPW experimented with selling tickets online for a show this week. It was a 17,000 seat arena but since this was an experiment, they only put 2,000 of the tickets online for sale and they sold out within an hour, so needless to say it was a success and they'll probably start doing that more often. Watching the business slowly begin implementing technology and taking advantage of the internet is one of the more interesting parts of doing these Rewinds to me.
  
• There was a big news story in Japan due to a recent incident where RINGS president and former wrestler Akira Maeda attacked Pancrase president Masami Ozaki at a hotel. Ozaki ended up pressing charges against Maeda for the attack. From reports, apparently Maeda lost his temper for some reason and punched Ozaki and threw him into a table. Around the same time, a newspaper article ran with Maeda talking about having a friend in the Yakuza, which seems like a pretty thinly-veiled threat.
  
• A newspaper in Sydney Australia reported that promoter Andrew McManus would be running some shows, including a major show headlined by Dennis Rodman vs. Brutus Beefcake at a 19,000 seat arena. The largest crowd for wrestling in Australian history is around 12,000 for an Andre the Giant match several years back. Word is Rodman will work several shows and will be making 7-figures. Dave is skeptical of this to say the least (turns out it was sort of true. Rodman did end up wrestling one show, headlining against Curt Hennig but I'm sure we'll hear more about it when the time comes).
  
• The FX Network is airing a toughman contest featuring wrestlers against football players. Most of the wrestlers are no named indie guys. The biggest names are XPW's Damien Steele and Mustafa from the Gangstas. The Fox Family channel is currently casting roles for a show called Los Luchadores about a group of Mexican wrestlers (this was a kid's show, only lasted 1 season).
  
• Memphis Championship Wrestling has been taping shows at the nearby Sam's Town casino but because no kids are allowed in the casino, the shows have been basically empty so they're moving them back to an all-ages venue in Memphis. Several of Shawn Michaels' students are expected to start working there soon.
  
• Sable is on the cover of the new Muscle & Fitness. In the article, it described her as "the most popular female athlete in wrestling history" and Dave supposes you could make a case for it. The story also said she can bench 225 and squat 405, to which Dave says he hasn't laughed that hard in weeks.
  
• Dave notes 2 promotions that are apparently starting. One is called Urban Wrestling Federation and is gonna be based on hip-hop and target Spanish audiences and they're bringing in Koko B Ware to build it around. On the other end of the spectrum is the Christian Wrestling Federation, which is wrestling without the vulgarity and sexual stuff and at the end of the show, all the wrestlers return to the ring for a big group prayer. I'm absolutely baffled that neither of these clearly brilliant ideas are still around today.
  
• ECW's Heat Wave PPV will take place in Los Angeles which is the first time the company will attempt a west coast show. Dave thinks it might be interesting since that's XPW territory (boy, I'll say....)
  
• Regarding the incident mentioned last week with Sandman being drunk at a show in Florida and making a scene in the ring, word is it got heated backstage afterward. First, Tommy Dreamer and Sandman got into it physically but were quickly broken up. Then shortly after, Jack Victory and Sandman got into a fight that left Sandman bleeding from a cut above the eye.
  
• Notes from WCW Nitro: we're starting out at peak stupid this week. Commentator Scott Hudson did the entire show shirtless because on Nitro last week, Vince Russo got his shirt torn off and all 3 announcers made jokes about his physique. So Russo thought it would be great to order all 3 announcers do the entire broadcast without shirts to get him over as a heel. Mark Madden and Schiavone apparently refused but Hudson went along with it. They showed Vampiro talking to a mystery man in a robe in a smoke-filled room, who is expected to be revealed as Christopher Daniels. They wanted to name him God or Lord but the Turner standards and practices people shot that down and he still has no name (this ends up going nowhere but yes, it was indeed going to be Daniels before it got forgotten). They also had an idea for Vampiro to set the dressing room on fire and Asya would get burned, to set up a feud with Vampiro vs. KISS Demon (who is Asya's real life fiance). Also, the Millionaire's Club group has been rendered pretty much dead because most of the guys are out. DDP and Flair are on the shelf with injuries. Sting is out ("another vacation, what a great job he has," Dave says) and Luger is, of course, gone after walking out last week over creative differences. They had a bit where Kevin Nash's fake 8-year-old nephew Hunter (3 guesses why they picked that name) gets left with Scott Steiner to babysit and Steiner just leaves him with one of his half-naked women. They did an angle with Vince Russo shaving Ric Flair's head and Dave admits it was a really great angle and really well done (including another run-in by daughter Ashley, aka future Charlotte). But much like everything else in WCW, they left money on the table. This is Ric Flair's trademark hair that he's had for 30 years. They could have turned it into a huge deal on PPV or built up to it or something. Instead, just shaved his head with no notice on free TV. It was a great angle, but it puts all the heat on Russo and the end game is still Flair vs. Russo, which isn't exactly going to sell out arenas. Dave suspects Flair went along with it because he's trying to help David Flair get over but the kid just isn't any good and he's being pushed way beyond his capabilities.
  
• Goldberg was quoted in an AP news story criticizing the direction of WCW. "We are farther away form the kids and closer to pornography. It bothers me. Absolutely. We have a show that has a girl in a bikini in every single segment. I'm not in favor of that. I voice my opinion on everything I have a problem with. We can't shut our eyes on the kids who watch. There is a time and a place for segments where kids can watch with their parents, and we don't have it."
  
• WCW head Brad Siegel called both Bischoff and Russo in for a meeting regarding the 6/7 Nitro rating because everyone was hyping that show up and it was expected to do a bigger rating than it did, but it pretty much flopped and Siegel wanted answers. This Russo/Bischoff team isn't exactly doing great things for WCW, you see.
  
• Christopher Daniels made his WCW in-ring debut at a World Wide taping, losing to Chris Candido in a decent match.
  

WATCH: Christopher Daniels vs. Chris Candido - WCW WorldWide (2000)

• Regarding the incident a couple of weeks ago when a horse almost kicked Terry Funk during a hardcore match, turns out the horse had been traquilized beforehand (Dave believes it had been given PCP) and had also been harnessed. But it still lashed out and kicked Funk when he got too close. Dave points out how we could have seen a tragedy on live TV if the horse had kicked Funk in the head (let's be honest though: getting kicked to death by a horse in a hardcore match would be the most Terry Funk way to die. If you told me that happened, my first response would be, "Yeah that sounds about right.")
  
• Random WCW notes: WCW is once again considering bringing Dennis Rodman back in for some matches, in hopes of getting some publicity out of it. Elix Skipper was in a serious car accident and will be out for a few weeks. Lance Storm's debut has been delayed due to visa issues.
  
• WWF has hired a guy named Stuart Snyder to be the President and COO of WWF. That position used to belong to Linda McMahon but she has been given the new title of CEO while Vince remains Chairman of the Board. Snyder used to work for USA Network and will be helping lighten the workload on Linda. He'll handle more of the day-to-day stuff while Linda will focus on Wall Street and stockholder business. He will report directly to Vince and Linda (not sure how long he was with WWF, but he later became the head of Cartoon Network I believe).
  
• Judgement Day is looking to be around a 1.05 buyrate which will be the lowest WWF buyrate this year (but still, like, 10x the numbers WCW is doing on PPV).
  
• Triple H fought Chris Jericho in probably the best Raw match of the year and Dave actually says that Triple H put on a master class in how to get yourself over, get your opponent over, protect the integrity of the title, and entertain fans all at once. Dave says with a match this good, it's an easy thumbs up for the entire show, even if everything else sucks. Luckily it didn't because Benoit vs. Matt Hardy was really good too. But Dave really heaps the praise on Triple H for this one (yeah, 2000-era Triple H was absolutely on fire before injuries slowed him down and paranoia led to him burying everyone).
  
• Jim Ross sent all the wrestlers a memo saying they can't do anymore media appearances or interviews without office approval. Vince McMahon apparently feels that doing interviews with other media outlets is basically competition for their own website and they want to be in control of when WWF wrestlers talk to the media and what is said publicly.
  
• Random WWF notes: Chyna is doing a fitness video that will be released soon. Billy Gunn is expected back from injury in September. Shawn Michaels may still be used sporadically, but there are no real plans to bring him back for any weekly role.
  
• NCAA heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar signed a WWF developmental deal this week and will start in OVW this summer. Lesnar will be the 3rd NCAA wrestling champion under contract, with the other 2 being Kurt Angle and Sylvester Terkey. Dave talks about the history of NCAA champs in pro wrestling and starts listing names like Verne Gagne, Dick Hutton, etc. He doesn't know about Lesnar or Terkey, but he predicts Angle is going to end up being a top star in this business sooner rather than later (2 out of 3 did okay for themselves. The other guy probably would have done better if his name was Sylvester Ham though).
  
• Giants Stadium in New York and Soldier Field in Chicago have officially been named as 2 of the home fields for upcoming XFL teams.
  
• Curt Hennig's WCW contract expires soon and it's thought that WWF isn't interested. At 42 years old, and after years of being a big star, there's doubt that he would even want to come in and accept a lower card role. They have no plans of pushing him as a focal point of the company and think he might not be easy to work with if they want to use him to put over others. There's also the question of whether WWF would accept Lex Luger back if his current WCW issues lead to him being fired. Henning is still a good worker and while he left WWF on bad terms, they weren't unfixable. Luger, of course, left on the worst terms possible, literally walking out of a WWF house show on Sunday and showing up on WCW Nitro 24 hours later. So it's more likely that Hennig will end up in WWF than Luger, but Dave doesn't seem to think either guy has much of a shot (Hennig returns at the 2002 Rumble. Luger, to this day, hasn't stepped foot back in WWF or even gotten a HOF induction, although he has done a couple of DVD interviews and things like that).
  

NEXT MONDAY: more on AJPW/NOAH split, WWF/USA trial continues, Vince Russo "quits" WCW again, and more...

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999

1-3-2000	1-10-2000	1-17-2000	1-24-2000
1-31-2000	2-7-2000	2-14-2000	2-21-2000
2-28-2000	3-6-2000	3-13-2000	3-20-2000
3-27-2000	4-3-2000	4-10-2000	4-17-2000
4-24-2000	5-1-2000	5-8-2000	5-15-2000
5-22-2000	5-29-2000	6-5-2000	6-12-2000
6-19-2000	6-26-2000	7-3-2000	7-10-2000
7-17-2000	7-24-2000	7-31-2000	8-7-2000
8-14-2000	8-21-2000	8-28-2000	9-4-2000
9-11-2000	9-18-2000

• The Delaware Supreme Court ruled against the USA Network in their appeal to prevent WWF from accepting the Viacom deal. The decision makes it official that WWF is moving to TNN next week and ends the 17-year WWF/USA relationship. The appeal process has been lingering for over a month and because of it, USA, Viacom, WWF and ECW were all pretty much paralyzed and waiting to see how things turn out. But now that it's all finalized, ECW's final TNN show will air on 9/22 and the first Raw on TNN will air on 9/25. It doesn't give Viacom much of an opportunity to promote the move. They had set aside $7 million to promote Raw's TNN debut but because of the lingering court proceedings, they kept having to delay it and now there's almost no time. On Raw's final show on USA, Jim Ross mentioned repeatedly that this was the last episode on the network and plugged the move to TNN (and hyping that Austin will be there live). But that's pretty much it so far. During the next few days, you can expect Viacom to bombard all media outlets with as much promotion as they can cram into the short amount of time, but it's going to be impossible to promote it as much as they'd hoped to. And considering they're moving from the #1 rated network to the #15 rated network, they need all the promotion they can get.
  
• Needless to say, this all gives WCW a golden opportunity to put their best foot forward for Nitro on 9/25 and hopefully gain some much-needed ground (in case you're want spoilers for next week, Russo uses this opportunity to make himself the WCW champion). In the short run, Raw's ratings will almost certainly fall, but in the long-run, being with Viacom is going to be hugely beneficial to WWF. As for ECW, this opens the door for them to continue negotiations with USA. They desperately need a TV deal, on a strong network, and most importantly, they need outside financial support if they are going to survive. Having a TV deal is useless if you can't afford the production costs. As mentioned last week, ECW missed payroll and has had to cancel several house shows due to the financial crunch they're under.
  
• Also this week, TNN announced that it's renaming itself The National Network (instead of The Nashville Network) and will be moving its base of operations from Nashville to New York. They're planning to debut a new logo and target their programming to a more diverse audience. Dave recaps the history of WWF on the USA Network, dating back to 1982 when they aired monthly WWF MSG shows. Then WWF got a weekly show called All-American Wrestling on the network in 1983, which then became Prime Time Wrestling and Tuesday Night Titans, the creation of Raw in 1993, the Monday night wars, and now to this.
  
• There was a frightening moment at WCW's Fall Brawl PPV with Paul Orndorff suffering a stinger that left him motionless in the ring. The good news is that it was only temporary paralysis. He was treated and released from the hospital that same night. It was reminiscent of the injuries suffered by Droz and Buff Bagwell in recent years, but fortunately for Orndorff, it didn't end up being as bad. There was immediate suspicion that the whole thing was a work, which Dave thinks is a pretty sad reflection of WCW these days. When Orndorff went down, everyone else in the match basically panicked and continued working the match on the other side of the ring, taking bumps that kept jarring the ring, all while the EMTs and trainer were trying to tend to Orndorff. Finally, almost 2 minutes after he collapsed, referee Charles Robinson finally took charge and ordered the match stopped. The match was scheduled to go several more minutes and run-ins were scheduled, but it all got scrapped when Robinson ended it. The injury happened when Orndorff tried to piledrive Mark Jindrak but Jindrak didn't go up correctly for the move. Orndorff had to deadweight lift him and when he did so, his hamstring went out. He completed the piledriver but landed awkwardly, causing something with his neck and spine to jam up and that was it. Dave talks about Orndorff's health problems over the year, specifically his arm injury that caused his right arm to atrophy severely and never recover. He retired twice before due to health issues (87 and 94) only to return both times when he probably shouldn't have. (This was his final match for 17 years. But it looks like he came out of retirement last year and worked a 6-man tag match at an indie show in Canada. But otherwise, this Fall Brawl match was the end of the road for Orndorff).
  

WATCH: Paul Orndorff injury at Fall Brawl 2000

• This whole thing brings up questions about Nitro this week, which has a match scheduled between Booker T and Vince Russo. Just a few weeks ago, Russo suffered a concussion during an angle and has been dealing with headaches and such ever since, and it's probably not a good idea for him to be in the ring. They could probably work around it, but Dave thinks it's bad enough to have untrained people in there doing moves anyway, much less ones who are already injured. Dave notes the recent example of Kurt Angle wrestling on Smackdown 2 days after getting severely concussed at Summerslam, which he never should have done and led to him getting another concussion because you're always more susceptible to further concussions during the period after suffering one. Russo has openly claimed to have had 3 concussions in the last year and has only worked about 6 matches. If that's true, he probably shouldn't be in there taking bumps again. But maybe they'll book something safe that doesn't require it. Either way, Dave is just concerned about the overall safety of all these guys.
  
• Oh yeah, other notes from Fall Brawl: crowd was 8,600 although only about half of that (4,311) was paid, the rest were freebies. Dave notes all the excitement people in WCW had last week when the Nitro rating was higher than usual, and points out how it obviously didn't mean dick when it comes to ticket sales. TV ratings are nice but it's a vanity metric. The real numbers that matter are the ones that make money. Ticket sales and PPV buys. And, well, those are still horrible. There was a guy in the crowd facing the hard cam who was seen constantly throughout the show wearing a Destroyer mask. Destroyer was a famous wrestler back in 60s and 70s who wore a red and white mask. Anyway....turns out that was the real Destroyer (real name Dick Beyer), just sitting in the crowd at a WCW PPV at 70 years old, still doing his old gimmick. Kevin Nash cut a promo earlier on the pre-show claiming he was hungover from hanging out at the bar last night and essentially telegraphing that he was going to lose his match (he did). Right after the Orndorff match, Shane Douglas cut a pre-match promo saying Kidman would be joining Paul Orndorff at the hospital. Even his partner Torrie Wilson seemed to drop her TV smile and give him a "what an asshole" look for that one. The scaffold for the scaffold match was way wider than any other ones before and the area underneath was padded and safe, but Torrie still seemed legitimately terrified up there. After Madusa took a bump off the scaffold (which the crowd booed because it was clearly gimmicked for safety), the announcers also tried to compare her injuries to Orndorff's injury earlier in the night. Dave is just disgusted. Torrie never took a bump off the scaffold, which was the original plan but she refused, and good for her Dave says. It would have meant nothing for the match anyway. Negative 1 star. They did a segment with David Flair beating up a mailman in his yard and Dave says the whole segment was actually hilarious and more interestingly, it was all David Flair's idea. ICP did commentary on Vampiro's match again, which once again was funny. Mike Awesome came out with former child actor Gary Coleman. There's been a lot of news stories lately about Coleman working as a security guard for $6 an hour these days, so at least WCW probably didn't have to spend a lot to get him. Naturally, he got involved in the match and it was hilarious because he knew he was going to take a guitar shot from Jarrett. So he had a hat on with a towel folded up in it to cushion the blow. But during the chaos, his hat got knocked off. So just before the guitar shot, he picked up his hat, calmly put the towel back in, put it back on, and took the hit. Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner was a shockingly good match and Dave gives it 4.25 stars. And of course, Booker T won the title from Nash in the main event.
  

WATCH: Fall Brawl 2000 highlights

• We get the usual long obituary for Professor Toru Tanaka, one of the biggest heels of the 60s and 70s, who died at age 70 in California. Dave recaps his career and of course, he was a Hawaiian who got booked as a typical salt throwing Japanese heel. Worked for WWWF feuding with Sammartino, won titles in all the territories, etc. He also tells an interesting story from 1977 when Pat Patterson returned to the San Francisco territory after being gone for 8 months and was supposed to face Mr. Fuji in a show that ended up drawing 12,000 people. But Fuji had a falling out with promoter Roy Shire and left the territory 2 weeks before the match. So Shire brought in Tanaka and put him under a mask and tried to pass him off as the real Fuji. The crowd didn't buy it and the media got ahold of the story and started claiming fraud and the athletic commission got involved. Shire nearly lost his promoter's license but he claimed he didn't know and thought it was the real Fuji under the mask. Tanaka and Shire were both fined but the commission seemed to buy the story (others backed it up to protect Shire) and let them off with just the fine. The real Fuji caught all the heat and was legitimately banned by the commission for life from wrestling in California, but that was overturned in 1984.
  
• The current plan for AJPW's Triple Crown title is to hold a tournament soon, which is expected to be won by Toshiaki Kawada, who will then defend the title against NJPW champion Sasaki in a title vs. title match at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show. And the plan from there is for Kawada to get the surprising win, since most people don't expect NJPW to book their champion to lose to AJPW's champion. But the way Riki Choshu (NJPW booker) sees it, AJPW is pretty much doomed and he's not too concerned about them as competition anymore, and he's well aware that this inter-promotional feud is the only thing keeping AJPW alive right now. But there's still money in an AJPW/NJPW feud and they want to prolong it, so Kawada will have to win. The idea is to keep Kawada strong because NJPW loves the gimmick of a strongly booked outsider coming in and shaking things up. In the past, that person has been Naoya Ogawa but Choshu is tired of the headache that comes with dealing with Antonio Inoki and Ogawa because Inoki is intent on making Ogawa an unbeatable superman and NJPW can never get him to put anyone over. Choshu is pretty much trying to do anything he can to get Inoki's influence as far away from the company as possible. So the idea is to keep Kawada strong and milk this angle for all it's worth.
  
• New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman officially signed into law the bill to regulate so-called "extreme wrestling." The bill bans children under 18 from attending extreme wrestling shows. It also adds an athletic commission tax to promotions running extreme shows, mandates an ambulance and 2 doctors must be on hand at every event, and even though it's a state law, the city officials where the show is to be held must specifically give permission for the event. This bill doesn't affect ECW, which was categorized as one of the 3 major companies which are exempt from the law. The bill is a not-so-subtle effort to drive Jersey All Pro Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling specifically out of the state, JAPW in particular. They're planning to still run shows but will be forced to get rid of bladejobs, no more light tubes or thumb tacks or barbed wire, etc. JAPW owner Frank Iadeavia has said they are considering legal action. But at this point, if they want to continue to run shows as they have, they're going to be forced to leave the state of New Jersey to do so.
  
• Raw did well in the ratings again, facing stiff competition from the Olympics and Monday Night Football. But they had one segment that was a major bomb. Mick Foley came out, cutting a promo once again trying to get George W. Bush and Al Gore to appear on Smackdown for a debate. The segment was right before the main event and caused a full 700,000 homes to change the channel, which is an unheard of drop for a Raw episode. That led to the Rock/Undertaker main event that followed to be the lowest rated Raw main event of the year.
  
• The Wrestling Observer Hotline has been officially killed off. 1-900 hotline numbers have been dying anyway and the numbers were down and Dave says more importantly, he needed to stop because he's so busy with the newsletter and the Eyada online radio show and wants to concentrate fully on those and the daily hotline stuff took up too much time.
  
• Motoko Baba threatened a lawsuit against Nippon TV over their decision to drop AJPW and start airing NOAH instead, and due to the lawsuit, NOAH currently isn't airing on NTV, which is a major blow for the fledgling new company. In the meantime, Misawa has started negotiations with TV Tokyo, which is another one of the major networks in Japan.
  
• Former WWF and ECW wrestler Nicole Bass made headlines after being arrested in New York after getting into an argument with someone on a street corner. It turned into a fight and when the police tried to break it up, she allegedly bit one of the cops. Bass was one of several people arrested.
  
• Notes from OVW: Jim Ross did announcing on some of the shows there this week, because he was down there scouting talent. Shelton Benjamin is showing a lot of promise and Jim Cornette says Benjamin is progressing even faster than Kurt Angle and believes he's guaranteed to be a big star. Brock Lesnar still hasn't debuted on TV there yet but Bob Orton's son Randy Orton recently did. They're also strongly pushing Leviathan (real name Dave Bautista) and Jim Cornette predicts he will headline Wrestlemania within the next 5 years. (yup, exactly 5 years later in fact)
  
• Ed Farhat, better known as The Sheik, is said to be in very grave condition. He's down to 150 pounds and can only communicate through blinking his eyes or lightly squeezing if you hold his hand (he ended up living another 2+ years after this. His Wikipedia page says he was working with a biographer and did extensive interviews before he died, with plans to have a book on his life released. But it says the interviews "provided a highly explosive look" into the business and as a result, the interviews and draft of the book were sealed at the time of his death and to this day it's never been released. Interesting. When I originally wrote this up a few months ago, I tweeted Dave about this and he responded saying he didn't know anything about it either. I'd love to find out more.)
  
• The latest revival of Stampede Wrestling is in bad shape. They have no more shows scheduled and have only done 10 shows in the last few months. Their TV show has been airing old tapes rather than new episodes lately.
  
• Ken Shamrock broke his silence on his recent PRIDE loss to Kazuyuki Fujita. Shamrock pretty much blamed himself and admitted he wasn't in proper shape to fight and said things happened which contributed to him not having time to train properly (he doesn't go into detail but I think Dave mentioned something in an earlier Observer but I can't find it right now. But I think Shamrock was going through some personal shit around this time. Something like a divorce or a custody battle or something. That doesn't get mentioned here, it's just something I vaguely remember reading awhile back, I might be wrong).
  
• Nobuhiko Takada has announced he's going to face Igor Vovchanchyn at next month's PRIDE show and that if he doesn't win, he'll retire. Takada had a reputation as a shoot fighter from his years as the founder and star of UWFi, which was a worked shoot promotion. But then he started doing real shoots and it's been bad news ever since, including 2 high profile losses to Rickson Gracie. He's had a couple of wins, but they were worked matches. His real MMA fights have all been losses and Dave says the real fighters in PRIDE have pretty much no respect for Takada as an actual fighter. He doesn't like Takada's chances next month (indeed, Takada gets punched into submission in the 2nd round. But he still didn't retire).
  
• Notes from Nitro: the building was mostly full, with not that many freebies. But only because it was a small arena that only holds about 5,000 people. It was also in Canada and the crowd was pretty much only there to see Lance Storm (who ended up jobbing to Jim Duggan in an undercard match) and Bret Hart (who wasn't there at all). They hated Goldberg with a passion, probably due to the Hart stuff, and booed him mercilessly.
  
• On his personal website, Mark Madden apologized to Lou Thesz for his comment on Nitro last week where he joked that Lou Thesz beats up women. Madden said he was only joking and that he has a ton of respect for Thesz.
  
• Pamela Paulshock apparently injured her ankle doing an angle on Thunder last week. Dave thinks it's bad enough when they have untrained wrestlers in there getting hurt, but now untrained ring announcers are getting hurt too.
  
• WCW is pitching an angle for Vampiro to team with singer Billy Idol in a feud against Mike Awesome and David Cassidy, of Partridge Family fame (Never happened but.....yeah. That was a thing evidently).
  
• Dave only has a couple of thoughts on this week's Thunder: he begs someone in WCW to PLEASE send Major Gunns to get acting lessons. He also wants someone to save Mike Awesome from a gimmick worse than the Red Rooster. And finally, I guess there's been a lot of commercials for the new Meet The Parents movie and Dave thinks it looks funny.
  
• Various WCW notes: DDP is likely being brought back soon, though Kimberly won't be. Nitro Girl Spice was released. She was being groomed to co-host WCW's Saturday morning show, but then the show got canned and they didn't have anything else for her. And after being world champion for a couple of months, WCW has finally decided to start making some Booker T merch. Seems like a good idea to finally get around to. The Harris Twins taped segments for both the Maury Povich and Jenny Jones shows, no word on what they are or when they'll air. Goldberg will be on an episode of The Daily Show this week. Gene Okerlund is expected to be given a grumpy old man gimmick where he swears a lot.
  
• Next month might be a surprisingly good month for WCW ticket wise. They have shows in Australia that are expected to do big numbers because Australia is so starved for wrestling that even WCW can do big business there. And they have a PPV in Las Vegas which will do good because the casinos are buying up a lot of tickets to give away.
  
• Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner are reportedly being total team players right now, because there's concern that a regime change could come at any time (a lot of people are pushing for Johnny Ace to replace Vince Russo) and they're basically being on their best behavior until they see who their next new boss might be. The only person right now who's really stirring up shit is Goldberg, who is said to be openly pissed about pretty much everything and isn't shy about expressing it (yeah, even Goldberg has since admitted that he was frustrated and probably wasn't very pleasant to be around back then).
  
• Scott Hall is expected to return to Nitro next week. Brad Siegel reportedly gave up on fighting with Nash about it and is willing to bring Hall back. Siegel and Hall spoke last week and Hall was basically told this is his last chance and if he fucks up one time, he's gone for good. Of course, Scott Steiner has been told that a dozen times in the past, so you know how that goes (Hall doesn't end up coming back. Not sure if it fell through or Dave got bad info or what, but it never happens).
  
• They held a Miss WCW Pageant in Las Vegas last week with Carrot Top as one of the judges and of course there was a bikini contest. Nitro Girl Chae ended up winning over Torrie Wilson, Major Gunns, Baby, Chiquita, Midajah and Stacy Keibler. Pamela Paulshock was supposed to be in it but no-showed due to her ankle injury (there's some good catty drama coming out of this in the next week or two).
  
• So the deal with Konnan is....pretty messed up, actually. He had tricep surgery a few months ago and has no business back in the ring yet. But WCW cut his paycheck in half so....he came back and he's wrestling. But here's the problem. The doctors still haven't given him a medical release yet because, well, they're doctors and he's still fucked up. They're like, "Dude...no." Anyway, because he doesn't have his medical release, WCW is still only giving him half his pay. But they're still allowing him to wrestle. He's hoping to get a medical release this week so he can start getting full checks again. Dave just thinks this whole policy is so screwed up on so many ways.
  
• Disqo Inferno has been bringing out some plastic duck to the ring called the Disqo Duck. (I should stop for a second and explain something for the younger readers. R&B singer Sisqo had a HUGE hit called "Thong Song" around this time and WCW, in their infinite wisdom, capitalized by changing the spelling of Disco to Disqo.) Anyway, the duck is fucking stupid and apparently at Nitro this week, Konnan literally handcuffed himself to the duck backstage to try and keep Disqo Inferno from taking it out to the ring. Someone had to try to save him from himself.
  
• Jeremy Borash will be doing announcing at this week's Thunder tapings. Dave says there's a lot of heat here because Borash is close to Vince Russo, so he's getting a lot of chances to do things like commentary even though he hasn't really earned it yet and hasn't shown any real aptitude for it. Dave says if Borash ends up replacing one of the main announcers on Nitro, there'll probably be a meltdown.
  
• Steve Austin and Debra got married last week in Las Vegas (fun fact: same wedding chapel Triple H and a drugged out Stephanie McMahon got married in. Funner fact: also the same wedding chapel I got married in).
  
• The plan for Sunday Night Heat, now that it's moving to MTV, is for it to be more of a humor and skit type show, with a lot of Tom Green-style humor (oh man, 2000 was such a weird time). They want to bring in musical guests and celebrities for it and will do a lot of the stuff from the WWF New York restaurant as well as at MTV's Times Square headquarters.
  
• Notes from Raw: a lot of the show was built around trying to seemingly bury Kurt Angle, by turning him into a goofy heel character and implying that he's gay. They showed a lot of footage of him crying at the Olympics and had Triple H make fun of him and all that stuff. Dave thinks it's a pretty weird thing to do one week before the biggest match of Angle's career (he's got a No DQ match with Triple H at next week's PPV) and sure didn't do him any favors for people taking him seriously. Hugh Hefner was on to plug Chyna's upcoming Playboy appearance and Dave thinks it's nice that Playboy and WWF could come together again in the interest of making money after all the nasty legal issues they had with the Sable fallout. And finally, Steve Regal debuted.
  
• Since we were talking about WCW's injury policy, Dave decides to let us know what WWF's policy is. A WWF wrestler that is out with an injury receives their downside guarantee. WWF contracts give you a guarantee (say, $300,000 per year for example) but you can make a lot more money on the road because everyone gets a cut of house show gates and PPV revenue and whatnot. So if you're injured and not on the road, you won't get all that extra money, but you still make the $300,000 guarantee. Of course, that leads to the same incentive for guys to sometimes come back before they're ready, because they're losing money by being at home, but from everyone who talks to Dave, there's not nearly as much pressure from the WWF to hurry up and come back as there is in WCW.
  
• Various WWF notes: Big Boss Man will be out for a few weeks after having his knee scoped. Grand Master Sexay needed 14 stitches in his ear after getting legit cut from the belt shot on Raw. Tori should be back in Oct. or early November after shoulder surgery. Billy Gunn should be back in a few weeks. Road Dogg's wife had surgery for a collapsed lung so he's out tending to her. Davey Boy Smith was in a motorcycle accident last week and Dave says if you know how many times Smith has been in and out of the hospital this year, it would scare you to death.
  
• Four different wrestling promotions have videos in the Billboard Top 20 charts....and none of them are WCW. Of course, WWF is all over the charts with their various releases taking up 12 of the 20 spots. ECW has videos at #5 and #7. XPW, which currently isn't running new shows and doesn't even have a building to run shows in right now, has videos at #12 and #19. And Insane Clown Posse's JCW promotion has a video at #13. All that, but no WCW.
  
• Kurt Angle and Taka Michinoku worked a UPW show in California along with a few other WWF developmental signees who started out at the UPW school (I decided to look it up and see who else of note worked that show: Franie Kazarian, Simon Dean, Rocky Romero, Mike Knox, Vic Grimes, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, and John Cena were all on the card. 2000/2001-era UPW had a ton of future stars come through the doors).
  
• One of the XFL teams is already moving before it even starts. The San Jose Demons have now been renamed the San Francisco Demons and will be playing in San Fran after negotiations with Spartan Stadium in San Jose fell apart. Dave thinks it might be a bad move. San Jose is a wealthier community with a large population and their hockey and soccer franchises do huge business. San Francisco already has a major team in every sport and he doesn't know if a B-level football team is going to draw as well there as it would have in San Jose. He also notes that in the spring, the weather is a lot warmer in San Jose at night than it is in San Francisco, and California isn't exactly the type of place where people want to sit out in the cold weather at night and watch football games. This isn't Green Bay or Chicago where freezing to death for football is almost a tradition (the cities are, like, an hour apart so I can't imagine the weather is that much different? Although I guess San Francisco is right there on the bay so maybe wind? I dunno. Anyone from the area care to chime in?)
  
• A New York newspaper reported that Vince McMahon tried to stop VH1 from airing an episode of "The List" because the show featured appearances by Kevin Nash, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sting, and other WCW stars. VH1 is owned by Viacom, which now owns 3% of WWF's stock and McMahon decided to try to throw his weight around and get the episode canned. Didn't work and it actually was one of the highest rated episodes of the show ever. But he did succeed in getting VH1 to agree to not air reruns of that episode. A WWF spokesman responded to the story, saying, "It is highly unlikely that took place. It's not something we would do." But of course, you'll note that they didn't outright deny it and the idea that Vince McMahon wouldn't do something like that is laughable since he has a long history of doing exactly that sort of thing.
  
• The Slam! Wrestling website wrote an article criticizing the WWF policy of not allowing wrestlers to do interviews with other websites without company approval because they see all other websites as competition to their own WWF.com site. The article noted they had an interview with Gerald Brisco awhile back and Brisco told them he could talk freely about his pre-WWF years but if it has to do with WWF, he'd have to clear it with the office. Jim Ross responded on his WWF website column, saying not a single interview request has come across their desk from any other wrestling websites. Dave talks about when the policy was put in place and says WWF told him he could still get anyone he wanted to interview on the Observer website, but he would need to go through the office first. Since that time, Dave says he's talked to wrestlers who agreed to appear, but when he tried to get it cleared by the office, it stalled and has been pending approval ever since with no answer sooooooo......
  
• WWF is wanting Big Show to drop down to 400 pounds. At his heaviest in WCW he was 505 and currently weighs a legit 480.
  
• Someone writes in with a conspiracy theory. He thinks Shane McMahon's death-defying fall from the TitanTron at Summerslam was done to prove a point given the upcoming Owen Hart wrongful death lawsuit, with the idea being that the WWF side can point to it as an example that, "See! Even Vince McMahon's son is sometimes asked to perform stunts like this and they're usually done safely." Dave responds, saying that normally he'd think that's reading too much into things. But the day after Summerslam, several people in WWF as well as a couple of legal experts he talked to all had basically the same theory and said they wouldn't be surprised if it gets brought up in the trial. But time will tell, Dave says.
  
• Dave Lagana writes in, talking his experience working on "Friends" and talking about how most TV shows are written by writing teams and how stories are crafted in TV writing rooms and so on and so forth. Basically, it leads to the one big question every writer, booker, and performer should ask themselves: how will the audience react to the long-term story? Not how loud the momentary pop is or how much you were able to swerve the audience with a surprise that doesn't make any sense, etc. The point he's trying to make is that Vince Russo is doing literally everything wrong and he has no idea how to write television. He's also pretty fed up with Russo's constant everything-is-a-shoot booking, where they openly acknowledge scripts and bookers and shit in every segment. He's not the only one.
  
• Lots of letters talking about what a total trainwreck WCW is. Russo isn't the only problem. From management to marketing, the ball is being dropped everywhere. None of the stories are coherent. Characters change gimmicks or go from face to heel from week-to-week with no explanation, fans have no idea what's happening. Wrestlers themselves are out of control backstage. Merchandising is dead. Basically, the ship is sinking and the worst part is that nobody seems to care. Everyone is just drilling more holes in the ship. Even when they luck into something that works, they always manage to fuck it up immediately. So there's all that. But also, a lot of piling on Russo from a lot of people who think he's killing the company.
  

MONDAY: Raw debuts on TNN, Steve Austin returns, ECW not yet cancelled on TNN after all, WWF Unforgiven fallout, and more...

This is a cross post from a Medium article I wrote about this, I thought it might be interesting as the state election is next week.
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The NSW State election is approaching. I decided it was time to find out what each of the parties had to say about their policies. What follows is a brief summary of all the independents and political parties running stand for. I have done by best to provide a good faith reading of these parties and, when relevant, have attempted to clearly notate any editorial comments.

Legislative council parties:

Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers

The Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers are an agrarian, social conservative, and libertarian party whose policy platform is based around ending the government regulation of environmental protections and standards, as well as laws about maintaining native biodiversity which often conflicts with crop plantings. Their main goal is to remove the ability of external forces (governments, courts, or activists) from interfering with the direct commercial goals of land owners as they prize individual property rights which they believe as violated by land reform legislation. Beyond this, they also aim to assist NSW farmers by pushing for drought assistance to combat the current prolonged drought, as well as pushing for further tax cuts aimed at farmers.
Like many other current right-wing groups, they have coalesced behind supporting the end of renewable subsidies and pushing for the building of more coal power stations. Uniquely, they also want to end the interconnection of NSW power to other states in a pseudo-isolationist move. This also means that they oppose many policies about regulating carbon and other pollutants, however as they also support deregulated fishing they are currently signalling their difference from the NSW National Party by wanting to prevent further mass fish deaths in the Murray Darling River.
As part of their right-wing libertarian streak, this consists of ending most government regulation of gun control, whilst also signalling support of ‘tough on crime’ policies and supporting the police and prison guards.

Socialist Alliance

The Socialist Alliance is a traditional socialist political party who are focused providing a more egalitarian society where wealthy individuals and corporations pay aggressively higher taxes to fund re-distributive policies increase the standard of living for lower income peoples. They also want to expand public transport along with taking privatised assets back into public ownership.
They also want to switch to a renewable energy economy and make NSW explicitly anti-racist and a safe haven for refugees. They also believe that our current electoral system is flawed so they wish to introduce a series of electoral reforms to introduce electoral recalls at all levels, and make all levels of government proportional instead of our current mix of representative and proportional government.

Sustainable Australia

Sustainable Australia is focused on what they see as the issue with our current immigration rate. Under their ideological view, having a high immigration is detrimental to Australia as it causes “over-development”, as their website claims, as well as increasing housing costs, and environmental damage. Whilst not explicitly stating it, they appear to be planning on addressing the predicted losses in economic growth from their policies through diversifying the economy. This anti-immigration view covers refugees, as whilst they will allow them to enter the country they believe they should stay around their local region and work be done to improve safety there.
From their policy platform, it appears as if Sustainable Australia wants to limit overseas trade as they have policies on restarting Australian manufacturingjobs, which would assist our economy if we were no longer utilising low cost overseas manufacturing sources. However, they appear to be on-board with the current environmental consensus as they want to transition to a renewable energy economy and want to protect natural lands.

Greens

As one of the minor major parties, most of their policy platform should be somewhat known. It is dominated by their positions on the environment where they want to rapidly transition towards an entirely renewable energy sector, as well as more general policies about reversing environmental pollution of air, land, and water-bodies. Broadly, they are the most prominent socially and economically progressive party in NSW at the moment. However, they are anti-genetically modified crops [Ed. note — this is due to a flawed belief that ‘organic’ food is better than modified, which is not supported by any current research consensus.]
Of note is a current “civil war” within the NSW Greens between the two faction which respectively believe that the Greens should be focused entirely on the environment, and the other who believe that they should be a vehicle for broader democratic socialist policies. However, there has yet to be any noticeable policy arguments (publicly at least) around this, so the factional struggle may be personality based.

Animal Justice Party

The animal justice party is a leftist political organisation based strongly around broadening animal rights and protections. The majority of their policies are to do with ending the killing, or harming of animals in any way. Seem to want to end the use of companion animals (pets) in general but are addressing that bit by bit by limiting how you can adopt animals. They also view population growth as bad for animals and the environment and thus believe we should keep growth at replacement rate, which implies limiting immigration. However, limited policy detail on environmental and climate action policies, broadly says we need a carbon tax and to shift to a renewable power economy.

Advance

Advance is actually a coalition of the Advance Australia Party and the Motoring Enthusiasts. Their policies goals seem to be addressing housing affordability, increasing Sydney’s desirability as a tourist destination, anti-gambling — specifically Barangaroo, desiring the return of the Sydney Monorail — which appears to be driven by their distaste of the Light Rail, pro-electric cars, and “fixing the roads”. Not sure on their political alignment, appear to be a centrist neoliberal party without a social justice platform or any re-distributive policies.

FLUX

Ah, FLUX. FLUX is not a political party in the traditional sense as they have no actual policies in of themselves. They’re a single issue party, which wants to more or less end our Representational Democracy model and replace it with an electronic platform which is a mix of Direct, Representational, and Delegate Democracy where you use ‘an app’ to either directly vote, or nominate someone to vote for you on every piece of legislation in parliament. Legislation, which I assume is also crowd sourced?
[Ed. note — INTERESTING. Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow (real person) who has been a candidate for the Science Party (formerly the Future Party, now running as the James Jansson group) for the last couple of elections has moved to FLUX and is the candidate for Willoughby. You may know him as the dude who put the OPAL chip inside his hand.]

LaboCountry Labor

NSW Labor has a typical modern centre-left policy platform. However, of note is their recent moves to ban single use plastic bags, phase out single use plastics, invest ~$140 million into local recycling projects, and of particular note they claim to want to seek a treaty with the NSW indigenous peopleswhich would replicate similar treaties in Canada and New Zealand. This treaty would cover: recognition of historical wrongs, addressing health and education services, and language rights.
This election, NSW Labor is trying to differentiate themselves from the Liberal Party by emphasising their goals to decrease housing and hospital costs, as well as addressing industrial concerns, such as wage theft and underpayment, as well as providing increased services such as more education facilities and free public transport for children. Another policy difference is their goal to divert the currently allocated funds for stadium redevelopments towards other policies such as renewable powered air conditioning for public schools.
They also wish to legislate 10 days paid domestic violence pay, in addition to investing $158 million towards building new domestic violence and sexual assault courts, increased victim compensation, and increased funding to shelters and advocacy groups.

Liberal/The Nationals

The Liberal/National coalition will be running this campaign based on their record over the last eight years which has constituted increased building of private toll motorways as well as the building of more commuter lines, specifically the light rail and North-West Metro. The party however has been dogged by their more draconian policies around nightlife and music policiesin general. This has been paired with their alleged failures on environmental policies based on the recent spate of mass fish deaths in regional NSW resulting from widespread rorting of water resources by the large commercial cotton farms.

Australian Conservatives

The Australian Conservatives are a factional splinter of the Liberal Party of Australia. They were started by Cory Bernardi who left the party because of his views of the “corrosive left” of the Liberal Party. As such, they are an extremely conservative party. Their policy agenda does not meaningfully move away from orthodox right-wing business politics, and government regulation, as they are libertarian on this front. Their main focus is on ‘white resentment’ politics. This is as their most detailed policy statements deal with ending “gender reassignment” and “political indoctrination”. Their main goals is to realign Australian with their conservative views on what it means to be an Australian, that is to be white and hetero-normative [Ed.]. Broadly they are quite similar to the current Republican party in American in terms of their social and economic views. This party is part of the current wave of populist(whilst not actually being populist as their policies will benefit the 1% primarily) “Western Civilisation” politics based around Nationalism and anti-leftism.

Keep Sydney Open

Keep Sydney Open appear to be a civil libertarian party based around getting the government and its regulation out of the music scene and Sydney nightlife. Their main party agenda is the end the Sydney Lockout laws and the current government’s policies around policing music festivals. Have no really stated political goals outside of this niche beyond some language around a stronger ICAC, and introducing 24 hr public transport. Of note, not actually running a candidate in the Seat of Sydney, where the lockout laws apply.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats are an aggressively libertarian party whose only elected member is David Leyonhjelm. The main thrust of this party is promoting “individual liberty”, which is mostly expressed as reducing the ability of governments to enact regulatory legislation, and letting businesses pay less tax. They see effectively no place for the government beyond Defence, and maintaining property rights.
Editorial: the Liberal Democrats use a very American strategy of campaigning, which is “triggering the left”. They’ve also engaged in sexist and racist behaviours in their effort to gain votes from the same constituency of One Nation, Australian Conservatives, and Men’s Rights Activists.

Voluntary Euthanasia Party

The VEP are a single issue party, and that is enacting legislation for voluntary assisted dying. They appear to be a party dedicated to ensuring quality of life up until death through both allowing death to happen on your own terms, increasing palliative care, and improving access to medical cannabis. Beyond that, they claim to be a moderate progressive party and will vote on a case by case basis for all legislation under that framework.

Christian Democratic Party

Otherwise known as the Fred Nile Christian Democratic party. A Christian religious party aiming to “glorify God in government”. Under that framework, are pro-business. Their main niche is ensuring that NSW remains a tacitly Christian state by legislating SRE classes (they’re the ones who made SRE mandatory and that you have to specifically opt out, whilst also making information about that hard to find). This party is extremely conservative about sexuality and gender identity and believe that there is only two gendersand you should only be heterosexual, and thus want to remove the Safe Schools program.

Small Business Party

Another neoliberal business party whose policy focus is on cutting business taxes and regulation, claiming they’re a drain on the economy. This extends to wanting to reduce housing Stamp duties and power prices. Also are anti-immigration as they claiming current NSW immigration is unsustainable and there is no place for them here. [Ed. note — current immigration rate is reason we’re not in a recession at the moment.]

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation

One Nation is the most prevalent of the current Australian mainstream populist (whilst not being popular) ‘white resentment’ political parties. Under the NSW leader Mark Latham — who has a colourful past — the party has taken a specifically Men’s Rights Activist lens as it has explicit platforms on their idea that white men are being repressed in our society.

Outlaw the new Left-wing discrimination against men, boys, Christians and white people, including a ban on discriminatory ‘employment quotas’ and segregationist ‘safe spaces’ — One Nation policy outline

This platform extends towards explicitly racist policies, and removing recognition of transgender people’s rights. These policies manifest themselves through their anti-Islamist rhetoric, claiming that they’ll end “Islamic Radicalisation in schools”, being anti-multiculturalism, and putting forward a policy that only individuals who “pass” a genetic test [Ed. note — which is bullshit] can get Indigenous peoples specific social welfare.
These policies around Indigenous peoples also extend to the Indigenous Land Reform Councils as they claim they’re hoarding billions of dollars which should be taken. Like other prominent white resentment parties, One Nation also supports pro-business reforms such as protectionist policies to maintain monopolies, and cutting their taxes and regulations, as well as being anti-renewable energy and fixated on coal power.

Seniors United Party of Australia (group G)

The Seniors United Party is pushing forward a policy agenda aimed specifically at senior citizens, such as being focused on increased funding and undoing of Liberal/National cuts to superannuation. They also wants oversight and regulation of aged care providers. However, like many other parties running in this election, they are a anti-immigration party and wants to see reduced in overall migration levels.

Monaghan and Monaghan (group H)

This is a husband and wife duo from the northern beaches and the majority of policies appear to be focused on a “not in my backyard (NIMBY)” agenda in regards to the Northern Beaches. However also wants to ban brothels and 24/7 gambling, and very specifically the Woolworths in Mosman.

Jeremy Buckingham Greens splinter group (group L)

Buckingham is a former Greens MLC who left/got kicked out of the party over allegations he committed an act of “sexual violence”* towards a staff member. This was investigated and dropped due to insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegation. Teamed up with Alan Jones to help stop coal seam gas mining
His policies are a little hard to nail down as his content is limited on his website, but based around his previous statements it broadly aligns with the environmental aspects of his former party, the NSW Greens. Of note however, is his desired collaboration with American Tech Baron, Elon Musk, to build a tunnel through the Blue Mountains from Western Sydney to Lithgow.
\allegation was revealed under parliamentary privilege by Newtown MP Jenny Leong. May have been done as part of the current NSW Greens civil war over whether or not they should be a climate action party or a more broadly socialist party.*

James Jansson (group S)

A re-branding of the Science Party as they aren’t registered at State level. Focused on increased transportation, housing density, etc. Seem to be greenish Radical Centrist party with focus on changing regulation and increasing funding without really rocking the boat or doing anything substantial.

Various Independents

Tony Edwards: no clear policy directions stated, with more of a general anti-right perspective.
Ellie Robinson: Anti-corruption platform and wants to address climate change, disability rights, animal justice, indigenous rights.
John Brett: anti-national debt candidate, focus on removing foreign involvement and getting more people back into trade jobs.
Ron Bogan: pro euthanasia, helping out senior citizens, pro-National Energy Guarantee (therefore neoliberal on climate action), focus on the Shire and Western Sydney. Campaign slogan — “put a bogan in parliament”
John Hunter: no information online about him.
Bryn Hutchinson: “progressive independent” — focus on police accountability and a NSW Human Rights Act.
Danny Lim: this is the guy with the billboard hanging around Newtown and the city who’s billboard said “Tony [Abbott] you cvn’t.” From what I can find, running principles of egalitarianism, anti-racism, broadly leftist, pro-renewable energy, investing in public healthcare, removing private healthcare insurance rebate, increasing refugee intake.
Andre Brokman: found his Medium blog — pro-Council amalgamations to increase centralisation and reduce ‘chaos’ in Sydney planning, appears to be a transportation enthusiast. His bio: “Andre Brokman is a full time city planning student and part time uber driver”