In dealing with a contract renewal negotiation, CM Punk brought the world of transmedia storytelling to professional wrestling. Before I dive into this, I need to explain some wrestling terminology. A “work” is something that’s scripted — Wrestler A hates Wrestler B in the ring, but backstage they’re friends and they travel together, for example. [...]
Image via Wikipedia Recently I’ve been reading a lot about story structure, particularly the three-act structure. There’s been a lot of discussion about story structure on various blogs lately (hell, I even talked about it), but one thing I kept hearing about was how that stories are all structured the same way, that any meaningful [...]
A quick wrestling post. Back in June, I ranted about false retirements and Ric Flair wrestling after he got a fantastic retirement match at Wrestlemania XXIV. Last night, Shawn Michaels gave his own retirement speech on Raw, and while I’m sad that he won’t be in the ring anymore, I have nothing but respect for [...]
As I mentioned in my prologue, on June 13, 2009 I watched one of my best friends wrestle his last match. It was Ric Byrne’s retirement match at WWC No Escape 2009 — an “impromptu” four corners match for the VCW World Heavyweight Title against JT Stahr, Ben Kimera and Shirley Doe. It was a [...]
On June 25, 2007, Chris Benoit was found dead with his wife Nancy and their son Daniel in their home in Fayetteville, Georgia. On February 12, 2008, the Fayette County Police Department closed their investigation, citing that Benoit strangled his wife and suffocated his son before hanging himself. The reasons for his actions haven’t been [...]
Prologue I just got back from watching one of my best friends wrestle his last match to about 50 people in Aberdeen, Ohio. Just ten weeks before, I was watching Wrestlemania 25 with tens of thousands of people in Houston, Texas. Over the past few years, wrestling has gotten a lot of attention (admittedly mostly [...]