Wrestling Podcasts, A Mine Of Information
A MINE OF INFORMATION
As far as gathering information about professional wrestling is concerned this is a tremendous time to be a fan of professional wrestling. The debate about whether professional wrestling today is better or worse than it was can be had another time. Right now we’re going to focus on one way to gather that information and that is the medium of podcasts.
There are numerous wrestling podcasts out there but there are two main networks of podcasts out there and they belong to Conrad Thompson and Brian Last. Conrad Thompson focuses his wrestling podcast network around getting wrestlers and wrestling personalities to explore various aspects of their career and has used his wealth as a mortgage broker to acquire a star studded stable of wrestling talent such as Tony Schiavone, Eric Bischoff, Jeff Jarrett, Bruce Prichard, Arn Anderson, Jim Ross, Kurt Angle, Matt Hardy, Ric Flair and until fairly recently Dax Harwood and William Regal. I’ve listened to some but not all of these but regardless of which ones of them I’ve listened to you have a number of interesting stories even if there are too many adverts for my tastes and constant plugs for ad-free shows.com to get you to subscribe. There is a particular format amongst these shows that works well. With the executives such as Ross, Prichard & Bischoff they will focus on particular wrestlers and what they were like to work with or particular pay per views to focus on and stories around them. Conrad tends to use Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter for a lot of his research and from my impressions tends to be a fan of wrestling starting from around the 90’s onwards and tends to take his guests words for things even if on the face of it it seems ridiculous what they are saying. Regardless of that, there are some fascinating nuggets of information in Prichard’s podcast even though he does just tend to toe the company line and parrot whatever Vince McMahon’s viewpoint on things is. A particular highlight that made me chuckle was when he claimed that Terry Taylor didn’t achieve the heights he could have done as The Red Rooster because he didn’t embrace Vince McMahon’s vision of the character. I do like Jim Ross’s podcast as now he is not at WWE he is more honest about people that were difficult to work with or why some wrestlers in his opinion weren’t as successful as they were expected to be. I’ve listened to a few of the early Jeff Jarrett ones and it was interesting to hear him give his opinion on what happened the night on insisting on getting his PPV payoff upfront from Vince McMahon before his last night in the company before leaving for WCW. The other major podcast network takes a factual, historical approach to the professional wrestling business.
The other major professional wrestling podcast network is the Arcadian Vanguard network of Brian Last. The podcasts that Brian Last are involved with involve a deep dive into the wrestling business, treating wrestling extremely seriously and trying to get to the facts of the matter thereby letting them speak for themselves. These deep dives can be hours long in the case of the majority of the podcasts on the network but they are all the richer for the hours of content as so much is learned in that time. The various different ones are the 6:05 Superpodcast which was frequent but is now infrequent which becomes obvious considering the amount of detail put in and the hours of content in each one, Stick to Wrestling hosted by John McAdam which is around a hour long and sometimes slightly over that which has him and a different weekly co-host cover a variety of different topics every week such as reviews of particular cards in wrestling history, a list of top wrestlers in a particular year throughout wrestling history or profiles of particular wrestling territories, The Wrestling News which is a short daily podcast covering what is going on in professional wrestling which is strictly factual and only covers what can be comprehensively proved and the two podcasts involving legendary wrestling manager Jim Cornette: The Jim Cornette Experience and The Jim Cornette Drive-Thru.
The Experience tends to cover whatever is on Jim Cornette’s mind with Brian Last as co-host and they also review current WWE and AEW programming with Jim often breaking down what works and what doesn’t work in each programme, match or segment and telling you why something works and doesn’t work which tends to happen a lot but once you analyse what he’s saying you realise that he’s right. The Drive-Thru involves Jim Cornette with Brian Last asking him questions sent in by listeners via email and Twitter interspersed with more reviews of modern wrestling programmes plus Jim’s opinion on life in general. There are adverts that Jim reads off but often Jim will hilariously make stuff up that the product doesn’t do with Brian having to correct him. Jim Cornette ranting about things that annoy him is incredibly entertaining and is often hilarious. They mostly stick to wrestling but considering both of the Jim Cornette podcasts are hours long they will veer wildly off topic and do disagree on occasion with Brian sometimes disagreeing and challenging Jim which I find Conrad Thompson doesn’t always do to the same extent with his stable of talent on his network. For me, I have to give the edge to the Arcadian Vanguard network. They have a generally more serious approach to the business of professional wrestling and in my opinion make more of an effort to get to the heart of matters and establish the facts.
There are other podcasts out there of various topics within wrestling and hosted by a variety of personalities within wrestling and fans who want to put forward what they think. These are just my thoughts on wrestling podcasts. Find what you like, what entertains you and let others know about it. The professional wrestling business as a whole will be all the better for it. Until next time ………
Conrad Thompson Will Host A Live Super Show From The IMPACT Down Under Tour.
As part of the announcement of IMPACT Wrestling coming to Australia, they will also be joined by the Podcast King of Wrestling and creator of Starrcast– Conrad Thompson.
Conrad will bring a live show to Australia as part of the launch of Oceania Pro Wrestling and as a precursor to a future Starrcast event in Australia.
Tickets go on sale for the Super Show from Thursday 18th May 7.00pm Sydney time at www.intix.com.au.
The “Business of Wrestling” will be a live show with Conrad Thompson and his special guest, IMPACT wrestling President Scott D’Amore.
