TH's Fair to Flair Archive

One of my many subjects at Fair to Flair
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Wrestling writing hardly inspires the kinds of statements generated for praising longform journalism or prestige writing on subjects that are considered less lowbrow by modern American society. Outside of a few examples trying to raise the discourse, wrestling writers generally fall into two categories, dirtsheet writers who affix star ratings to matches and obsess over dollars and cents or dick joke blogger-types like myself. Once upon a time, however, Sawyer Paul (before he got the K out), Jason Mann, my blogging Brohemian PizzaBodySlam, and Razor of Kick-Out!! Wrestling fame got the idea to band together and raise the game on wrestling writing. Fair to Flair was the project that was to have three prongs: a published quarterly, a monthly compendium podcast, and a regularly-updated blog for everyday writing. The aim was simple; the quartet set out to evolve wrestling writing so that the rumors and jokes weren't the only options one had when reading about pro graps. I joined the party a few months into it, and my contributions to the site were numerous. If you're a longtime reader of TWB, you remember the links each time they went up.

Anyway, Fair to Flair was a concept ahead of its time, noted by the sheer fact that no one has seemingly tried to emulate Paul's vision for the site since the sites untimely cessation of posting at the end of 2011. Since no one else is doing it, why not revisit the site and what it has to offer, or at least, what I had to offer it when I wrote there. Make time for an old friend today and read some of what I had to write back before I became gnarled and jaded by time, circumstance, and CM Punk. Some of the posts may be dated, others are evergreen, but I hope you find them worth reading. Note, if you want to delve into the whole archive, follow this link, but be cautioned that the hyperlinks on the page are dead. You'll need to manipulate them by putting ".tumblr" between the "fairtoflair" and the ".com" if you want to get directly from the source. Also, the podcast links may be dead, so if you wanted to listen to audio, you may be out of luck.

• The Improbable Survival of the Wrestling Industry - On wrestling surviving in spite of itself and its self-destructive bookers
• Learning to Live with Triple H - Being resigned to live with a man born to hurt me
• Wrestling Fans Are Reverse Hipsters - On fans' desires to hate the mainstream and yet want the mainstream to book to them
• You Are NOT Getting Followed - A takedown of the shitty You Are Not Getting Booked meme that was somewhat popular a few years back
• I Enjoy Wrestling - Self-explanatory
• Why Do We Care About Ratings? - On the biggest fool's errand in wrestling journalism and fandom
• Alberto del Rio and Taking It Slow - Kinda funny to read that del Rio was in his "first act" in 2011 with how everything turned out since then, isn't it
• Learning to Forgive Triple H - Whoo boy, I wrote this before I learned the Summer of Punk's payoff was Trips vs. Nash
• Your Match of the Week, 7/25-31 - A look at a World of Sport classic that happened right in suburban Philadelphia
• Differentiation and Integration - On the art of analysis and breaking things down to build them back up again
• CM Punk's Happy Ending - A post about resolutions in wrestling, and one before, well, everything else happened that followed Money in the Bank '11
• Your Match of the Week, 7/11-17 - A look at the red Money in the Bank ladder match from perhaps the most infamous WWE event of all-time that didn't end in a legit screwjob
• Your Match of the Week, 6/19-25 - Breaking down the match that arguably kicked off the second Summer of Punk
• Why Botching Isn't the End of the World - I had a lot of self-explanatory article titles, didn't I?
• Your Match of the Week, 6/11-18 - Christian vs. Sheamus on pre-death spiral Smackdown? Yes yes, y'all
• Does WWE Need CM Punk? - Oddly prescient article, that one was
• Your Match of the Week, 5/23-29 - Back when Zack Ryder was relevantish!
• The Macho Man and Letting Go - Why Randy Savage was a special case in an industry of hangers-on
• Your Match of the Week, 4/25-5/1 - Odd foreshadowing of the Real Americans, right here
• Contemplating the Irish Whip - Maybe the post I go back to the most often, a must read, especially for stans of "realism" in wrestling
• Embrace Regression - My Fair to Flair debut