Gone, but not forgotten

That seems to be the case when I think about me and the Internet Wrestling Community – I still see my name pop up on forums every few months, people asking where I am these days and shit like that.  Hell, I get at least 5 visitors to this site for the phrase “scotsmanality” every goddamn day.

Anyhoo D Ray Morgan over at TWNPNews penned the following column I thought I’d share:

Initially my column this week was going to center around competition in the industry. As we all know, there is none (basically). TNA competes with the WWE as much as a fat chick competes with the beauty queen for prom dates with the jocks (i.e. not at all).

However, this week, my tribute goes out to a man who really shaped the internet community (in my opinion – or would that be IMO for you l33t geeks) in terms of style. Like a good SS Soldier, I am faithful to my master (or would that be Fuhrer?) at TWNP. So, here is my tribute to the master of puppets, Scotsman. I’m sure you’re thinking, damn, what about Scott Keith or Dave Meltzer or Wade Keller or the myriad of BETTER writers. To you, sir, I say get your own column. Besides, those guys never once did the ballsiest thing in telling people to send fake news, when we were logging on, to find out REAL news.

Scotsman was a true genius who has all but disappeared from the IWC. He will never get enough credit for crafting the true art of making fun of someone or something. Scotsman’s IWC life essentially ran from late 1997 to about 2003. I could phone it in and copy and paste his web archive here, but its too crass and too long for TWNP; which is the reason WHY to love Scots. At the time, net reporting was in its infancy and a lot of people were along the straight and narrow. Very few would offend any of the majors (hell, even offending the indies was bad, because every net reporter thought this was their shot to the big times. That they could make a career out of reporting on wrestling). But when Scots joined Wrestling Uncensored (WU), he came into his own, using a scorched earth style that was so smart and offensive (yes, its possible to be both and Scots did it with terrific style and wit, week in, week out). Scots even went beyond a weekly column and was posting every couple of days, because of the amount of content on TV at the time. You had Raw, Nitro, Thunder, Smackdown, ECW on TNN and Heat).

Scots’ greatest accomplishment came when he declared war on internet reporters, accosting them of copying and pasting news from sites and not doing fact checking (something that news organizations won’t do these days). His genius was that he would have fans make up some of the most ridiculous news they could think of and email the reporter and see if they would post it. If they did, they would show Scots and he’d keep a running tab of all the BS they posted. It hit every major wrestling news site and soon, rampant, wild news was every where until the worst offenders either begged for mercy or quit the scene altogether. I’m sure you’re sitting there thinking, bore me some more with stories about wrestling internet reporting in 1997, Father Time. If you apply this theory to today’s society, in that we are so overwhelmed with breaking news and gossip in our email and on our mobile phones and TVs in the bus stations; one can’t help but wonder what if we did this to real organizations. If people just started submitting the stupidest possible news so conglomerates will check facts instead of reporting false stories like Gore won, no, wait, Bush won the election, crap, I don’t know! It was proof that Scots was truly ahead of his time.

Sensationalizing an internet reporter is so minute in the universe that it doesn’t even register but to the IWC, he is among the select few that should be remembered for bringing a different style, similar to Wolfman Jack or 1970’s Steve Dahl on radio or Jack Benny in comedy,

Thanks dude 🙂  Fun article to read, and they really were some great times – even if I do look back on it with venom, thinking about all the money I could have been making at that time if I had been smart.