Taking your thoughts and feedback on Raw coverage from any of the top sites from around the web, how they covered the show, provided analysis or any news coming out of Green Bay. Send your thoughts, comments or tips to Les@sheetsandwich.com.
We’ve got an article on the site today taking a look at F4Wonline’s Raw coverage, and how it’s taken a steep decline since Jeff Hamilin took on the task of recapping the show.
Also up today is a comparison of early coverage between the Torch and Observer sites on how they carried the death of Verne Gagne on Monday night.
This weekend’s feature story takes a look at the timeliness of coverage on major stories like above, and what members of premium pay news sites should be able to expect from their coverage.
We’ll also have the first in our 10-part series taking a detailed look at the top 10 wrestling news websites (as ranked by Alexa), breaking down not just the sites included, but the glaring omissions, too, including a look at why one of the biggest sites you’d think should be included aren’t being tracked.
Tuesday News Update
** Lots of coverage today of Verne Gagne’s death on the various websites, though the standout continues to be the work being done over at F4Wonline.com, where Dave Meltzer’s brief obit and Karl Stern’s Classic Wrestling Audio spotlighting Gagne’s career really shine.
** According to last night’s Wrestling Observer Live, this week’s “Do Wins & Losses Matter” Meter is set to YES. Meltzer & Alvarez talked at length about how a win for Neville in the King of the Ring tournament would make a big name for him, while also discussing how much the loss mattered when Ryback got that monster push a couple years back, and comparing that to Reigns’ prolonged title chase.
** Wade Keller was back on the Steve Austin Show today reviewing Sunday night’s Extreme Rules event.
** PW Torch has a really good compendium of Gagne coverage from WWE and other sources here.
** Incidentally, one of the pieces cited therein was a Jim Ross blog post about Gagne. Verne’s death must have really shaken Good Ol’ JR up, because he ended up misspelling the name of his own podcast when announcing PWInsider.com writer/podcast host Mike Johnson on. “Join Pro Wrestling Insider’s Mike Johnson and me tonight at 9 ET for a new, Ross Repot Podcast”
** Could anyone have predicted how popular ex-wrestlers and ex-wrestling executives interviewing dirt sheet and wrestling news site writers would end up being?
** And if you DID predict such a thing, did you ever think there would be a site dedicated to covering the coverage by these news sites and dirt sheets?
** WrestleZone has a story up with a Paul Heyman update they attribute to F4Wonline.com saying that he will be off screen until July, but for the life of me I can’t find any mention of it on F4Wonline… perhaps it was something that was mentioned randomly or briefly in a daily update or on one of the podcasts, but it’s strange to see a site like WZ present it as such a high profile article, cite F4Wonline, and then the source material be so obscure.
** Speaking of WrestleZone, as bad as Jeff Hamilin’s Raw coverage for F4Wonline.com has been lately, nothing is worse than the sort of Raw coverage where you have to click “Next Page” through all sorts of slides covering each segment separately. This approach needs to be abolished.
** Haven’t had a chance to listen to both shows yet, but Sandwich reader Scole send this: Interesting story coming out of Review An Impact. On the previous week’s show, when discussing Taz’s TNA tenure and departure, criticism quickly became particularly sharp, especially from Brian Mann who when Milton flippantly invited Taz onto the show immediately declared he would “never have Taz on the show” and closed with “go fuck yourself, Taz”, with more venom than humour in his voice.
Well, turns out that Taz listened to the show and confronted Mann and Milton on Twitter, starting from apparently just 20 minutes after the show was uploaded! This produced an awkward segment where Mann apologised to his audience (but not Taz), cited Taz’s supposed homophobia and transphobia as reasons for his distaste of the man and thanked his co-host Milton for defending him when Taz was DM’ing Milton complaining. Milton then went off on a semi-rambling promo about journalistic integrity before Mann, with a distinct note of fear in his voice, reminded Milton that, whilst he lives in Virginia, Mann lives 5 miles from Taz, or “a 20 minute cab ride”. (Thanks to Scole).
** Today’s News-to-Plugs report on F4Wonline.com — News: 1146 words. Plugs: 3524 words
The Heyman quote was from a recent mailbag when someone asked when Heyman was coming back and Dave said he’d be back in July, but there’s always the chance he’d come back sooner. I think the mailbag questioner suggested that Heyman should be sent to NXT to work si young talent. I think it’s the same show where one of the first mailbag questions was “when did the referee for WM get the finish of UT/Brock?” And Bryan/Dave talk about how scary it would have been for the ref in that situation. Maybe the Filthy Tom show?
Thanks, Mookie. I wonder if there would be any sort of SEO / traffic benefit to taking some of the more noteworthy bits from the radio shows and turning them into news articles on their site.