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Cole's Man Crush on Miz

Hey Scott,

Why, or when, did Michael Cole stop loving the Miz?  For years he was Miz's biggest chearleader, and at some point in the last year or two he completely turned on him.  What happened?  Did he disapprove of Miz going Hollywood?

Thanks, brother.

Festq

​As Motley Crue once wrote, "Seasons must change, separate paths and separate ways.  Can't blame it on anything, so let's blame it on the rain."  ​
​So we'll blame the rain.  ​

Comments

  1. Cutting ties with WWE might be good for everybody health. At least for a while.

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  2. I personally have never had a problem with WWE bragging about their charitable work, mostly because the mainstream media doesn't do it for them. So they are doing everything they can to spread out the word that Rasslin' is more than just a dirty, corrupt, scum of the earth carny business. Basically, they are saying "We are not the root of all evil!"

    So I'm just saying I understand why they do it.

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  3. This is not to judge whether Komen is a good charity or not, but you are vastly underestimating the idea of getting the word out to people. Look at the ice bucket challenge...if the person who started it had "donated money and shut up about it", they would have raised many millions less.

    I don't know why "Fuck WWE for pushing a charity!" is the hill people want to die on. There's plenty to criticize them about, we're gonna go with "trying to raise money to fight breast cancer"?

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  4. Wasn't Cole pretty much a heel announcer pre-Lawler heart attack? I think since then he's gradually changed his tune about Miz, Daniel Bryan etc

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  5. I agree, and while bragging about it can seem self serving, it also gets the word out so other people can donate as well.

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  6. Yep, and let's face it, almost everyone who donates to charity is at least semi doing it to brag about it. The Bill Gates example that Scott gave is probably very rare. WWE is basically guilty of what 99% of other charity donors are. They just have a bigger spotlight to brag about it.

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  7. The Ghost Of Meekin's MoobsOctober 3, 2014 at 8:03 AM

    Why donate to fund research, when the research is happening anyway? All you're doing is subsidising the big drug companies. If you want to help then donate to a small local charity, or better yet give up your time to volunteer. I can't be doing with all this big corporate bullshit and the army of 'look at me' do-gooders that take part.

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  8. It's not that they are pushing a charity, it's that they are putting themself over sonstantly while doing so.

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  9. Thanks for answering my question Scott. As someone who actually sits through most 3 hour Raws, I thought they'd at least run a segment or something to explain Cole's change in attitude.

    But, as you know, they're extremely pressed for time during 3 hour Raw's.

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  10. As Vince Jordan says below, wrestling is seen in the mainstream as being a violent, stupid industry for rednecks, so the WWE bragging about their charitable causes for PR is understandable.

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  11. That's alright, that's okay. Cole & Miz were walkin' through some youth, smilin' through some pain...

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  12. For all of the E's love of the entertainment side over sports couldn't they have done an 80's-style video showing Cole's change in attitude? He sees a shrink or something? They could've done something funny with a pre-taped segment that took up 3-5 minutes. Short of that, what would be wrong with just having Cena give him an attitude adjustment that suddenly works? Cole's a heel announcer, takes the AA and is suddenly face announcer Cole. Stupid? Yes, but it's better than "Hi, I'm Michael Cole. I was in love with Miz and hated Daniel Bryan, but because Miz is a midcarder that flopped in the main event I'm no long in love with him. Bryan is now a main eventer and I'm suddenly back in love with the faces, so go Daniel Bryan!"


    Did they even ever really say why Cole was a douchey heel in the first place? We make fun of WWE for once having Edge and Booker T feud over a shampoo commercial, but at least they provided a reason for that match. At that same Mania Kane and Angle faced off with no real feud, but they basically booked it because they each wanted to get on the card and didn't have an opponent. Weak storyline? Sure, but at least it made sense and had a quasi-reason. Now things happen without even a small explanation. Like why would the loser of Cena-Ambrose want to face Orton in the Cell if they really want to face Rollins in the Cell?

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  13. Lawler nearly dropped dead and shit got real.

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  14. It would be totally fine to talk about their charitable work if they weren't so goddamn heavy handed about it. It's the real life equivalent of how they book John Cena with the whole "if you boo him you hate soldiers and sick kids." if you don't like WWE, then you must want everyone to get breast cancer and die.

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  15. Cole as a heel was one of the reasons I stopped watching for awhile. It was the true definition of X-Pac heat ... i literally wanted him to not be on television.

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  16. So why not focus their charitable efforts on something that actually relates to wrestling, like people fighting heart disease or concussions? I'm pretty sure that if they threw this kind of PR blitz behind trying to clean up their steroid-riddled image again, for example, no one would have a problem with it. But instead they're just jumping on the trendy bandwagon in October with a totally unrelated cause that they shoehorn in with stuff like "Titus O'Neil had a grandmother who died of breast cancer."

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  17. Miz don't go away mad.
    Miz just go away

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  18. Hey, i'm not saying it's not a cheap and predictable PR move. I'm just saying I understand why they're doing it. :)

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  19. Because heart disease a lot better researched and understood than can at is and cancer affects a ton more people and is far more relatable than CTE. There's also the fact that full contact sports don't want to shine too bright a light on concussions for the obvious reasons.

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  20. I think to Scott's point, the WWE is all about the free (good) publicity. That 10 cents per shirt is a small price to pay for them (in their eyes anyway) to give the WWE an excuse to pat themselves on the back, and be all self-serving and self-righteous.....I mean for example, really, does anybody really care anything about the "Be a Star" campaign? But yet they are always patting themselves on the back for it.

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  21. So you decry look-at-me charity work by asking us to look-at-you and what you would prefer people do instead. Interesting.

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  22. I agree. It’s seen as such a sleazy industry, that I can
    understand why they shout twice as loudly about the good stuff they do. At the
    live show I went to, they showed the video of the kid Conor who died, and the
    stuff WWE did for him. I’d never seen that on TV before, has it ever been on
    TV? It was really nice.

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  23. I guess it goes back to my original point. Sadly, nobody else pats their back, so they have to do it themselves. There is obviously an ulterior motive to their charity.

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  24. The Love-Matic Grampa!October 3, 2014 at 8:46 AM

    Like why would the loser of Cena-Ambrose want to face Orton in the Cell if they really want to face Rollins in the Cell?

    Because Being Randy Orton is the IC/US title equivalent of Being John Cena in WWE? Makes as much sense as anything else these days.

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  25. Same here. When I did watch RAW, I would watch on mute. He was that terrible.

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  26. It was a tribute to the Dusty/Magnum/Nikita angle.

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  27. Michael Cole has no personality, no character development,
    and no consistency. He’s an empty vessel used to transport whatever Vince yells
    from backstage. If he didn’t exist, he would not need to be invented. I wish he’d
    go back to the Balkans and be kidnapped by Kosovar gangsters.

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  28. And if given the choice, I'll take the pink ropes and video packages over 18 more Did You Know?s a night using obfuscated/altered/faked statistics about the WWE's ratings. The degree to which this helps is debatable, but at least this helps someone and something besides Vince's ego.

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  29. I remember Miz doing commentary with him on Main Event and joking "Who ARE you?!?" after Cole took a shot at him. At another point, Miz said that Cole used to be a huge fan of his and Cole just deadpanned "Yeah, I got over that."

    Re: Daniel Bryan and Kaval, among others: Maybe he was like Big Boss Man and just hated short people.

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  30. Cole has somehow regressed as an announcer ... if you go back and watch him fill in for JR when he got sick back in late 98-99, it wasn't bad. JR says on his podcast that Cole has a million different things pulling him every which way, so it might not all be his fault. But JR did a very good job just making every match feel really important and Cole and his crew laugh and joke their way through three hours. Not sure if its Cole's fault, because he was good with Tazz also ... but something has to change.

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  31. The Ghost Of Meekin's MoobsOctober 3, 2014 at 8:54 AM

    Don't be a twat

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  32. Im pretty sure Milli Vanilli blamed it on the rain, and look what happened to them...

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  33. Just two kids in love just trying to find a way.

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  34. Yeah, once Lawler almost died on air, Cole pretty much dropped all his heel allegiances.

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  35. I'd assume, if that is the direction it goes, that it will manifest itself by Orton interfering in that match somehow. Since Ambrose and Cena are both obviously at odds with him as well, it'd make sense. I'm not saying it's an awesome storyline or the right way to go with it, but it at least would make sense if that's how they did it.

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  36. I don't watch regularly anymore, so when I caught a bit of Raw a couple weeks ago where a tag match ended with a Sandow distraction (is the gag supposed to be how little he and Miz actually look like each other? Because they don't look like each other. At all) & Cole said something to the effect of "this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen!" I thought two things:

    1) "Sure, Schiovane, more ridiculous than your pumpkin singlet?" And,

    2) "Weren't you totally gay for this dude not that long ago?"

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  37. You don't like being called out, don't do things people can call you out for.

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  38. I know JBL is nominally the heel announcer now, but not totally because he'll say nice things about babyfaces and acknowledge when a heel has "gone too far" or such nonsense. As annoying as the commentary is these days, that's actually an aspect I like: the "heel/babyface announcer" trope is one I'm very tired of.

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  39. >Bill Gates gives billions of dollars to charity and you barely ever hear about it


    Wait what?

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  40. My biggest problem is, like Scott said, they are making money by producing pink shirts and only giving away 10 percent of the profits. It's like when Five Hour Energy made a Pink Lemonade flavor to "fight Breast Cancer," but had already decided they were donating like $75,000, no matter how much of that shit they sold. I have my issues with the Komen foundation anyways, but then when you are profiting off of it too? No buys.

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  41. Fantastic post, I was very happy to see a link to an alternative organization. WWE does many commendable charitable things. Their work with Make A Wish and the Special Olympics is tremendous and they should get more recognition for it.

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  42. ...yes, that's the gag.

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  43. No company is going to do charity for the sake of charity. Any time a publicly-traded company decides to partner with a charity, you better believe they are doing so because they believe there is a financial benefit to the shareholders for doing so. And it's their responsibility to maximize that benefit. Otherwise, no person is going to invest in that company. Why would I buy shares in a company that gives its profit away to a charity instead of giving it back to me, the investor?

    The Bill Gates example is different. In that case it is not Microsoft who is donating billions to charity; it is Bill and Melinda Gates who are donating their personal fortune. I'd guess that the Make-a-Wish stuff is Cena, et al. donating their personal time and not an official WWE corporate partnership.

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  44. It's funny that Cole and Tazz were good together at one time, because Tazz is also terrible at this point. In fact, a great way to make the announce team worse would be to replace Jerry Lawler with Tazz

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  45. It humors that people still email Scott questions that he has no idea what the answers are. I don't think he's been on the insider loop for more than 10 years now. The last time I remembered him saying some insider news was him in November saying that Eddie Guerrero was winning the championship

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  46. The gag is more then that. Miz has gone Hollywood so Sandow is his body double and imitates everything Miz does.

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  47. Don't be a twat then.

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  48. True -- wins & losses don't matter, but being HHH, Cena or Orton that does!

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  49. As I recall, WWE did mention that Cena has granted more Make-A-Wish than anybody else.

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  50. No actual twatting going on here.

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  51. It's not an unrelated cause at all. WWE has a substantial female fan base. Many women are at a high risk of breast cancer. So it does make sense.


    Men get breast cancer too.

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  52. Was he ever on an "insider loop"? His thing is that he has an Observer subscription, right? I don't think SK actually has any sources or has talked to anyone who actually works in the wrestling business.

    But looking up stuff in old Observers is cool, I guess.

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  53. I recall soon after Hurricane Katrina hit, on The Daily Show was Samuel L Jackson talking about relief aid. And he said much the same thing as you're saying above.


    Because too often people will just fling some money at the big populist charity and that's it. Often making a big deal about their little workplace charity event (a run, a walk, some kind of sponsored shit), and then sending around emails so everyone can feel like they've personally cured cancer via their office of 30 people raising £67 via one shitty afternoon of fund-raising.


    It's the same with aid packages for far-away countries hit by some natural disaster. People don't care so much about helping so much as they do showing that they care via a donation. Donations that then don't always reach their targets, donations that are sometimes susceptible to theft and/or corruption.


    I entirely agree, anyway.

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  54. Of course in response to the ice bucket challenge many have instead opted to donate money to one of the many charities relating to wastefulness with water.

    It's like if it was called the Abandon A Puppy challenge.

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  55. Was this last November?

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  56. Yea, I think he had hook ups or so he says. I remember him getting comped tickets for Backlash 2004 and his source of Eddie winning the title wasn't Meltzer. I remember him saying he knew someone working there that told him that.

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  57. Yeah, they got fucked over by rain.

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  58. How does one remember this stuff?

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  59. If Tazz were more like his WWE self then I think that'd make the announce team much better. Good ol' yambag.

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  60. Gunther the Nasty LoserOctober 3, 2014 at 10:23 AM

    Didn't Komen recently cause some ruckus with regards to its views birth control, basically alienating a bunch of would-be contributors?

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  61. Because I remember being blown away when he was right. I have very selective memory. I may not remember what I ate yesterday but ask me anything about wrestling from 95 to 07, and I remember all

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  62. I think I would be able to put up with the shit current product if the commentary was even average. But they are so bad it just magnifies everything.

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  63. Probably big lou

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  64. I think Cole sucks. But I respect him for doing that job for so long. That's a lot of fucking travel and probably a ton of bullshit from a million different people.

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  65. Gunther the Nasty LoserOctober 3, 2014 at 10:40 AM

    Hi ironic that this post is from Guest

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  66. Gunther the Nasty LoserOctober 3, 2014 at 10:40 AM

    As only can happen in the crazy world of wrestling, the way Cole handled it turned him face.

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  67. I thought it was Milli Vanilli who said Blame It On The Rain

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  68. Do you know what ironic means?

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  69. Gunther the Nasty LoserOctober 3, 2014 at 11:01 AM

    The OP basically talks about having no identity, just like "guest" account here have no identity.

    There ya go, chief.

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  70. I've got TimeandtheRani as the poster... but I haven't refreshed this yet either.

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  71. They're the number one reason I don't watch. I end up screaming at my tv because they won't shut up for five fucking seconds.

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  72. He mentioned "someone in the know" informing him about Benoit's push ,as well.

    I mean, he might just be full of shit, but he has referenced sources.

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  73. I love you Scott. You have another career in social commentary

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  74. The man crush stopped when the king had is heart attack and cole became a face again

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  75. They also did. But the Crue said it in a little number called Don't Go Away Mad.

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  76. They aligned with Planned Parenthood, which basically just a referral warehouse for Komen.

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  77. Lawler is awful. Cole and Bradshaw had worked together in the past and where outstanding together ... their call of the Undertaker-Batista WM23 match was epic stuff. But they are just drowning in Lawler's pointless comments and product placement.

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  78. I wouldn't say Lawler is bringing them down. Lawler is unmotivated and bored, but Cole & JBL are flat-out disruptive. They're too chummy (which I never realized could be problematic in commentary). They just go off on tangents into whatever and giggle at each other. Like, get a room you two!

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  79. Well, THEY didn't say it...

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  80. Knowing how Vince is in the ear of the announcers, I'm not sure I can respect someone who can sit there and take it the way that Foley and Styles describe the experience. How much of a bitch can you be?

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  81. Ironic, adjective: Using words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.

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  82. I just assume it's all about living in the era of the low information crowd that Vince and the WWE caters too. I'm a Cancer survivor myself (stage II melanoma, thankfully caught it somewhat early before it spread) and when I mention that I had skin cancer people sort of brush it off like sorry but that's too bad then go outside and tan for 5 hours. However when I mention that my grandmother died of breast cancer the room changes and people go "awwww", give me hugs, tell me they're sorry, etc. So I get it. Don't like it but I get it.

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  83. If WWE was in the 1940s, then, could Steph compare the Nazis invading Poland to when Randy Savage...oh never mind!

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  84. Those fucking pink ropes... Could you imagine the Lesnar/Taker bloodbath or Foley being slammed threw the roof of the cell with pink ropes surrounding the ring?

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  85. Ryback in his "Pink Ryback shirt" trying to be a menacing heel all but killed it for me

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  86. Or he just likes to defend them on every decision they make

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  87. It didnt ruin WM29 for you? That was the most disjointed and poorly time-managed show I have ever seen thanks to their endless charitable, look at us non-sense

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  88. I know wrestling fans can figure out a way to complain about a sunny day, but christ this is pathetic.

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  89. If his analysis is accurate/reasonable, who cares how much of a "WWE apologist" he is?

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  90. Virgil's Gimmick TableOctober 3, 2014 at 12:51 PM

    It's not about complaining about a good thing. It's complaining about a bunch of disingenuous, exploitative assholes. You know, like shitty internet writers who act like they are legitimate because they shortly corresponded with a great critic who has now passed on.

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  91. They aren't what people claim they are though. All the complaining comes down to ignorance and people takin other people's words rather than looking it up for themselves and seeing the truth. Everyone has an agenda, it's your job to do the research instead of following blindly

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  92. Virgil's Gimmick TableOctober 3, 2014 at 12:55 PM

    Oh here comes the other one. Jesus Christ.

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  93. Hey if you want to be ignorant more power to you. Just as long as you decide it on your own and aren't doing it because so and so told you, I'm cool with it.

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  94. Are you against the NFL's pinkwashing campaign?

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  95. Bullseye. I had childhood leukemia, but I'm not constantly harping on that, either. And heart disease is a way bigger threat to women, too.

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  96. The Love-Matic Grampa!October 3, 2014 at 4:26 PM

    I would think, considering Komen's relationship with the NFL, they don't need much help "getting the word out". WWE needs Komen far more than Komen needs WWE in that regard.

    WWE just wants a corporate relationship with a reputable organization to rehab their own image...much like the NFL!

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  97. The Love-Matic Grampa!October 3, 2014 at 4:27 PM

    Me too. I just wish they weren't so obnoxious about such things. LOOK AT US, WE'RE DOING CHARITY, indeed.

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  98. one could argue that by overdoing it, you are accomplishing the opposite (or at the very least lessen the appeal it would those tv spots etc. would have if they'd be more "moderate" about it).

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  99. YEAH WE NEED MANLY-COLORED ROPES WHILE WE DO MANLY THINGS LIKE SWEAT AND GRIND AGAINST EACH OTHER IN OUR TIGHTS.

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  100. Eeek, overreaction.

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  101. Who cares about that? I don't think that has anything to do with the point...

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