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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Professional Wrestling Demographics"

26 Comments -

1 – 26 of 26
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Steve,

Do you have any comment on the rise of the UFC ?

4/14/10, 8:19 PM

Anonymous rob said...

"the World Wildlife Fund's lawsuit that maid it change its acronym"

Nope, made it change. Feel free to delete this and the dozen others you'll get like it.

4/14/10, 8:43 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Korean cellist Yo-Yo Ma"???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma

4/14/10, 8:50 PM

Anonymous Rudy Maneras said...

Well Steve speaking of pro wresting...i.e. kabuki dance...i.e. staged drama...

Here's a link to the infamous Zero Hedge finance blog with commenters discussing the Iran-Israel war plan in the most earthy terms:

Perspectives From The West Bank: "Israel Is Definitely Planning A Strike On Iran, Which I'm Told May Happen This Summer"

Do you realize we can't even get accurate translations in the USA of what the Iranian leadership are saying? That the big networks in the USA are deliberately repeating ad nauseum the mistranslations?

And that interesting little factoid about the Persians never waging wars of expansion/aggression in their very long history keeps popping up. I guess they just don't have enought hegemonic dominance in the blood -yunno the Right Stuff- the stuff that makes all those guys at CIA and Mossad tick.

Anyway I was reading that thread and thinking how Steve could -yeah- maybe offer his komment kontrol services to the untidy folks at Zero Hedge. So many posts over there would never make the grade in iSteve's world. They really need to raise themselves up to a civilized level of discourse.

4/14/10, 8:52 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Return of Wilding?

An Unwelcome Easter Custom in Times Square: Violence
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/nyregion/06timessq.html

Don't ignore racial aspect of Plaza mobs
http://voices.kansascity.com/node/8600

(Black) Flash mob victim's untold story
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/90813449.html

4/14/10, 9:06 PM

Blogger Garland said...

Thanks to this article I have now plunked down an hour reading about McMahon and the WWE. It is the most surreal thing theatre I've ever heard of. It makes Pirandello, Beckett, Artaud, Jarry, Kafka, all look straightforward and guileless. I don't know what I am going to do with the knowledge that I have been missing it for the last twenty years.

4/14/10, 9:17 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you're a white man who still thinks the Democrat party gives a damn about you, your'e clearly dumb enough to enjoy pro wrestling.

4/14/10, 9:28 PM

Anonymous Pissed Off Chinaman said...

Well count me as a center-left Democrat who loves pro-wrestling and openly admits it...although only during certain eras....i.e. the 1980s-early 1990s and the Attitude Era of the late 90s early 00s. It sucks these days. I was also suprised pro-wrestling (very southern and rednecky) was not more conservative in its voting patterns. And yes, few people in my left wing professional circles will openly admit to watching the WWE although many of us do.

4/14/10, 10:30 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yo-Yo Ma is actually Chinese.

4/14/10, 11:24 PM

Anonymous RWF said...

"Only then did I notice that we were moving haltingly because the people in line ahead of me were politely waiting for a man with a crippled leg to haul himself along with his arms."

Well that's pretty cringe inducing.

4/15/10, 4:23 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"It makes Pirandello, Beckett, Artaud, Jarry, Kafka, all look straightforward and guileless."

Yeah, that's about the size of it. Enough material for a thousand Modern Language Association seminars.

As for the rise of the UFC, after Americans became exposed to all these foreign fighting styles from Bruce Lee onward, the question of "Who would win in a fight: a _____ fighter or a ______ fighter?" became really interesting.

4/15/10, 4:40 AM

Anonymous OneSTDV said...

The apogee of pro wrestling popularity was probably in 1998-1999, not 2001.

4/15/10, 5:09 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speaking of "the return of Wilding," we had one of those flash mobs of black youths here in Chattanooga a month ago. It was in Coolidge Park, the premier gathering spot in an upper-middle-middle class neighborhood in the heart of down town. Four people got shot. There was lots of red and blue.

Is this some kind of national movement? How long before whites start shooting back?

4/15/10, 5:30 AM

Anonymous Galactic Overlord said...

Steve,

Rocky Johnson isn't African American, although he is descended from African Americans. He's a Black Canadian, more specifically Black Nova Scotian.

While the vast majority of blacks in Canada today are of Caribbean or recent African origin (IIRC, about a third are of Jamaican origin alone), Nova Scotia and southwestern Ontario still have substantial black communities descended mostly from people who fled the US as slaves or freemen before the Civil War. In fact, the first race riot recorded in North America took place in Nova Scotia.

4/15/10, 6:37 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gee, maybe the point is that overall, people do get along.

4/15/10, 8:57 AM

Anonymous Prof. Indiana Jones said...

...the question of "Who would win in a fight: a _____ fighter or a ______ fighter?"...

The correct answer is always "gun fighter."

4/15/10, 9:32 AM

Blogger J said...

Yet, The Rock looks neither Samoan nor black. Instead, he gives the impression of being some sort of future human, a superbly handsome specimen from a race that will someday evolve from all that is most formidable in existing humanity

Steve, It appears you have you been reading about Vasconcelos's "Raza Cosmica". He wrote that the task of America (the continent) was to create the new cosmic - universal race.

4/15/10, 11:34 AM

Blogger Vernunft said...

"I was also suprised pro-wrestling (very southern and rednecky) was not more conservative in its voting patterns."

RTFA, it's not southern and rednecky at all.

4/15/10, 11:41 AM

Anonymous Pissed Off Chinaman said...

Ma is a Chinese name Steve, You live in Los Angeles, come on. I am so pissed off right now :)

4/15/10, 12:33 PM

Anonymous The Bear said...

I was also suprised pro-wrestling (very southern and rednecky) was not more conservative in its voting patterns.

Like they do with anything that's worth a damn, Yankees consolidated and centralized wrestling in order to turn into a money-making machine and in the process ruined it. From Wikipedia: "In the 1980s, video tape trading and cable television paved the way for the eventual death of the NWA's inter-regional business model, as fans could now see for themselves the plot holes and inconsistencies between the different regional storylines. Also, the presence of stars like Ric Flair on TV every week made their special appearances in each region less of a draw. Vince K. McMahon, who had bought the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1982, used these gathering trends, as well as raids of competing promoters' talent pools, to turn his Northeastern territory into the first truly national promotion."

So now southern, rednecky types who vote conservative are more likely to be college football fans than wrestling fans because it remains a regional sport. (Of course, a southern team always wins the national title but that's anti-climatic compared to winning its conference title.)

4/15/10, 3:07 PM

Anonymous Pissed Off Chinaman said...

Bear,

Vinny Mac is no Yankee though. He grew up in a trailer park in NC and went to East Carolina University. The WWWF (soon WWF and now WWE) was a northeastern promotion, but I would hardly lay the death of the inter-regional system at the door of Yankees. It is something that cable television and video tapes would have inevitably brought about.

4/15/10, 3:23 PM

Anonymous jody said...

as far as i can tell, pro wrestling comes from real wrestling, which was as popular as a spectator sport as boxing 100 years ago in the US.

the problem with real wrestling was that it was a lot easier to fix than boxing, and the sport became so corrupt that in only a few decades it transformed from real fights into a scripted, pre-arranged show which people watched for fun, instead of for the thrill of open competition.

real wrestling is still a much bigger sport than boxing, but spectator interest never recovered.

boxrec.com lists a mere 15000 professional boxers in the entire world, and the worldwide participation rate in boxing is higher in 2010 than it has ever been. whereas in the US alone, there are 250000 high school wrestlers every single year. and the US gets dominated in international competition by other nations, so i'm estimating that there have to be, easily, 1 million amateur wrestlers.

NCAA wrestlers are highly successful in MMA, but the russians, who dominate NCAA wrestlers in international wrestling, are barely even interested in MMA yet. russia could have, without exaggeration, 3 or 4 guys with the size and speed of brock lesnar, and the same or better wrestling background. at least they could, if they wanted, go pro now, versus the pre 1991 era, when it was illegal for communist athletes to become professionals.

4/15/10, 4:47 PM

Anonymous Pissed Off Chinaman said...

Vernunft,

I did read the article and while the industry has broadened its appeal, it does have very rednecky and southern roots. In fact even now I would bet that pro-wrestling is most popular down South.

4/15/10, 7:08 PM

Anonymous klaos said...

Steve - Mixed martial arts (UFC) settled the style-vs-style championship years ago (before it achieved the popularity it now enjoys). Brazilian jiu jitsu for grappling and Muay Thai for striking, with traditional wrestling gluing everything together won years ago. There are a few guys that excel using other styles (like Karo Parisyan, a judo-based armenian out of LA), but they are the exception to the rule.

To over-simplify, the UFC is where collegiate wrestlers go to be professional athletes (as well as international Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai champions). I'd guess over half of the UFC fighters were college wrestlers. Most of the other half are foreigners (including immigrants, like Karo).

4/16/10, 12:19 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's hard to tell the difference between Chinese and Koreans sometimes because they share so many names (Lee, Yang, Huang, and more).

4/17/10, 5:53 AM

Blogger David said...

>Gee, maybe the point is that overall, people do get along.<

No, they don't, dumbass.

4/17/10, 10:38 PM

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