I have to rant about Shoemaker.
He went to the DGUSA show on Sunday, and tweeted a pic from the venue "Pro wrestling from Brooklyn". He made two other tweets, lame easy jokes like (paraphrasing) "who is this Chris Hero guy ripping off the Kassius Ohno gimmick!", and "This Trent (Barreta) guy is going to make it someday!". Those guys were in WWE, get it, get it? Cutting edge humor, I know.
This is what makes me mad about Shoemaker. He, even more than Meltzer, has the loudest voice in mainstream wrestling journalism. He has the biggest & highest profile platform. He's a good writer, if you like the new age conversational writing style that Bill Simmons has popularized. He is CLEARLY a nerd fan like we are, and knows damn well what DGUSA is, and who the rest of the people on the card are. I know this because he casually mentions indie shows all of the time, and is familiar with guys when WWE signs them.
Yet instead of helping spread the word on the cool wrestling that is happening out there that isn't WWE, he does this "too cool for school" act and stays as mainstream as possible to retain his "hey, I know I write about this stuff, but at the end of the day it's just silly wrestling and it isn't to be taken seriously, especially these indie geeks" aura.
He could have talked up DGUSA, informed his followers of how the WWE roster is loaded with its alumni, or maybe even talked up Ricochet or AR Fox or Johnny Gargano or The Young Bucks...
He could write a column about it.
But he won't. But maybe that's why he makes a living writing about wrestling, keepin' it easy & taking no chances.
He never even bothered to type the letters DGUSA or Dragon Gate USA. "Pro wrestling in Brooklyn"
I'm fired up, I think i'll write something for VOW and rip him to shreds.