Reported Features
David Bixenspan
Freelance Writer
United States
David Bixenspan has been writing professionally about combat sports, consumer tech, and more since 2009.
United States
David Bixenspan has been writing professionally about combat sports, consumer tech, and more since 2009.
Reported Features
The wrestling video game license shuffle of the late '90s saw alleged bribes, kickbacks, and lots of legal action. It's never been told in one place until now.
If you're not in Colorado and have heard of Boebert, you may know her as the freshman congresswoman who's been lumped in with Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia as the "QAnon congresswomen." (Boebert's mother is an open ; Boebert has denied being a follower but has said that she hopes the conspiracy theory is real .)
On the internet, there are certain institutions we have come to rely on daily to keep truth from becoming nebulous or elastic. Not necessarily in the way that something stupid like Verrit aspired to, but at least in confirming that you aren't losing your mind, that an old post or article you remember reading did, in...
Going to jail for armed robbery should have ended Nick Gage's career. Instead, it turned him into an indie wrestling icon.
It's not a secret that for the last several years, vinyl record sales have been trending upward - with sales in 2016 reaching their highest point since 1988. Estimates vary a bit, but at bare minimum, the number of records manufactured annually is well into eight figures.
The DA's office and the media certainly failed to do their jobs following Snuka's first horrific assault. But according to newly uncovered police records, Vince McMahon himself may have played a larger role in the events that led to Argentino's later death.
Twenty-year-old Pat Patterson, born Pierre Clermont, was a rookie professional wrestler in Montreal when, in late 1960, Boston promoter Tony Santos came across the border on a scouting trip. One broken English conversation later, and Patterson had a job working for Santos full-time.
Linda McMahon, the former Trump administration official who now runs President Donald Trump's biggest super PAC, presided over a child-sexual-abuse scandal in the 1990s, an Insider investigation has found. In 1992, WWE, the wrestling behemoth that McMahon cofounded with her husband, Vince, faced allegations that a ring announcer sexually abused the teen boys who helped him set up for matches.
Most entertaining is each run-through of the wrestlers getting physical, if just because they look more like kids play fighting than adults in a wrestling match. That's understandable: It's a performance, but a very physically punishing and demanding one, so there's no need to take unnecessary risks or waste energy when the main goal is lining up shots for later.
Note: All quotations are either from original interviews or from deposition testimony in SoBe Entertainment International, LLC v. Paul Wight, Bess Wight, and World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., an ongoing civil lawsuit in Miami-Dade County, Florida. One day in late October 2007, professional wrestling superstar Paul "The Big Show" Wight found himself growing increasingly terrified by the second.
To understand what Frank Deford, who died at 78 this past week, did for professional wrestling, you need to go back to one of his most famous articles, one which profiled what was, at the time, the other most popular entertainment sport in America.
With the VCR being discontinued this year, what happens to the tape collectors who have populated the internet? While you may not know Japanese manufacturer Funai Electric by name, you surely know its products: Funai holds the rights to marketing electronics under the Magnavox, Emerson, Sanyo and Kodak brands.
Slacker figured out how to make internet radio portable. Unfortunately, they did it as the first iPhone was about to drop.
More than anything else, IBM's Watson supercomputer is probably best known for one thing: Appearing on Jeopardy!, the legendary TV game show, in 2011. With an internet connection and the ability the buzz in quicker than a human opponent could, Watson destroyed Jeopardy!'s longest-tenured champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in devastating fashion throughout a week of games at the IBM campus.
There are a few different ways to experience WrestleMania these days. The most basic distinction to make is between is watching at home versus taking a trip to the host city. From there, there are further distinctions.
On Wednesday morning, I trekked from my apartment in Brooklyn to Lincoln Center for Samsung's Galaxy S8 launch event at David Geffen Hall. The opulent concert hall was packed except for the balcony, which was full of journalists from all of over the world who were there to take in the second biggest mobile phone manufacturer event of the year.
In times of crisis, everyone needs an escape-and that often that involves seeking out entertainment. For some people, a 'Law and Order' marathon might do the trick, as bleak as some of the storylines may be. Others find solace in video games.
If you were a fan of WCW, there's a phone number likely burned into your memory: 1 (900) 909-9900. For a price, usually something like $1.99 for the first minute and 99 cents for each additional minute, fans could call WCW's hotline, which, depending on the era, featured everything from legitimate wrestling news to special messages from stars who had their own segments.
Two people paid for Low-Ki's webinar. Fightful.com was one of them.
FSM: What are some good ways for wrestlers to become more expressive with their selling?Ricky Steamboat: When I went to the WWF [to coach] around 2005, I taught Rey Mysterio a little secret, and that's using your hands because you're wearing a mask.
Lance Russell, the professional wrestling announcer best known as the voice of the sport in the territory surrounding Memphis, Tenn. for decades, as well as for his stint in WCW, died Tuesday morning at the age of 91. He had broken his hip in a fall on Friday shortly after his daughter, Valerie, died in a Memphis...
Four years ago, fans watching some of the independent shows in New Orleans via internet pay-per-view during WrestleMania weekend got some strange news. Announcers mentioned that the piledriver had been banned by the Louisiana Boxing and Wrestling Commission, and so would not be seen in any of the events. It's one...
Image: Amazon One of the best things about the internet is the sense of community that exists around your niche interests. Hobbies and fandoms are uniting forces, bringing together people from across the world who wouldn't have otherwise known each other.
The United States Olympic Wrestling Team deserves some time to chill. Just look at what it's been through. Three years ago, there was a brief period where it looked like this year's games would be the last to feature wrestling, one of the original ancient Olympic sports.
As a mainstream athlete, Antonio Inoki is probably best known for battling Muhammad Ali to a draw in an actual on-the-level fight-albeit one restricted by last-minute rule changes-after The Greatest backed out of plans to lose a traditional entertainment wrestling match. But Antonio Inoki is not a mainstream athlete....
Clarifai's UI. Image: Clarifai When you have a photo and want to find a higher resolution copy online, you can use tools like Google Image Search and TinEye. They work in a very specific way extracting specific patterns and how they contrast with their surroundings.
Select Tech Writing from SlashGear
The audiophile world has exacting standards, which is fine when products live up to their promise. But sometimes they didn't, and it got ugly.
While the CD market may seem like a blip in audio history, it created quite a stir in the market in the 1990s.
The Internet Archive has been involved in a lawsuit from book publishers to determine how its online library handles book loans. Here's what's happening.
DVD Audio and Sony's SACD were poised to be the next big thing for audiophiles, but both formats failed spectacularly once they hit the market.
Apple plus HP -- sounds like a marriage made in tech heaven. Or maybe not. The iPod+HP turned out to be just a blip in both companies' history.
While the format continues to regain popularity, collecting vinyl can still be an expensive hobby. Here is how you can keep your records clean on a budget.
Other Original Reporting
According to court records that LawNewz dug up, it turns out not only was Morrison actually diagnosed as HIV positive seven years before the revelation of his status cancelled a fight, but he bragged about hiding his illness from boxing commissions and from women with whom he had unprotected sex.
In the months after The National Enquirer broke the story that one of two Hulk Hogan/Heather Clem sex tapes not sent to Gawker revealed the Hulkster going on a bizarre, racist tirade, I often wondered: Why did Hogan continue to be so protective of the FBI records of the investigation into the people who tried to extort him for said tapes?
In the new lawsuit filed by Audience of One Productions against TNA, there's a note about how the debt that TNA (technically the Impact Ventures parent company) owes Aroluxe Media is on file with the Tennessee Secretary of State.
This is a bit of a surprise. LawNewz, the website founded by ABC Chief Legal Correspondent Dan Abrams, broke an interesting story today when it comes to the whole Hulk Hogan sex tape mess.
Yesterday, we broke the news that on Monday, as part of a "town hall" meeting among staff at TNA investor/financier Anthem Sports and Entertainment, CEO Leonard Asper had some advice for employees. That advice was to be careful what they tell some co-workers about business matters, because those who work for the company's news arm might be obligated to report it.
Thursday night's release of a trove of raw JFK assassination intelligence by the National Archives seems as if it was deliberately released in such a way as to comply with the law while ensuring that it's as difficult to use as possible. The PDFs of the documents have not been made searchable, their metadata are...
This past weekend, the annual BET Awards were highlighted by an all-star tribute to the recently departed Prince, featuring Sheila E., Janelle Monáe, Wonder and Tori Kelly, Jennifer Hudson,The Roots, Erykah Badu, Bilal, and Maxwell. It was the talk of the event and was, other than the "Game of Thrones" finale, pop culture's weekend highlight.
It's not a secret that there's a mass shooting problem in the United States, but trying to find a way to fix it is where it always gets... contentious, to say the least.
On Thursday, Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, was one of many guests at Code Conference, which is Recode's "invitation-only event where top industry influencers gather for in-depth conversations about the current and future impact of digital technology on our lives - at home, at work, in our communities and the world."
The conversation around the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker Media lawsuit's impact on the media is about to get a lot deeper, as it appears that a team of creditors is attempting to get articles deleted from Gawker's websites as part of the sale of the bankrupt company's assets.
Last Friday, in between the closing arguments and verdict in the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker Media civil trial, the 2nd District Court of Appeals in Florida released nearly 2,000 pages of documents that they unsealed earlier in the week.
On Sunday, the South China Morning Post reported that Foxconn is "culling" 60,000 workers from its factory in Kunshan, with robots taking over much of the workload. Other outlets, like , characterized the move as layoffs in preparation for the reign of our new robot overlords, but the truth is that the reality is less sexy, much less an indictment of Foxconn.
Breaking News & Media
The next to last question at Thursday's wild news conference from President Donald Trump dealt with racism and anti-Semitism from Trump supporters, moments after Trump had brushed off a previous inquiry about the topic by calling himself "the least anti-Semitic person" one could find.
"They, the people, are choosing, what they want to choose, what they want to see. The responsibility is there in terms of you choose your Facebook, and we make sure that the information being put out there is the information that people want to see."
WATCH: Tensions flare between Sen. Franken and Sen. Cornyn during hearing on AG nominee Sessions - @MSNBC https://t.co/RHjwMGLW7P - NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) February 1, 2017 On Wednesday, as the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General was ongoing, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) took some of his time speaking to make a point.
Misc. Sports & Entertainment
One of the hottest topics coming out of 2016's Super Bowl was how the halftime show, featuring Coldplay and special guests like Beyonce, completely sucked. The halftime show has always featured the most sanitized possible acts that could justifiably perform for a stadium crowd on the biggest television event of the year, but that got more pronounced after 2004.
In the United States of America, there's a time-honored tradition for crotchety television viewers and radio listeners to voice their dissatisfaction over what they deem excessive sex and violence: complaining to the Federal Communications Commission. Between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., the public airwaves cannot be used to broadcast "indecent" and "profane" material.
Before YouTube, internet videos generally couldn't go viral overnight. They had to have something special to pick up steam. They needed a transformative figure, someone like backyard brawler Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson, who, on Monday night, passed away at 42 years of age of an apparent heart attack.
Few relationships in professional wrestling's history have been more bizarre than the long-running and extremely fraught one between The Ultimate Warrior and Vince McMahon and McMahon's wrestling promotion. Over the course of decades, the relationship featured multiple splits and just as many lawsuits, WWE producing a...
On Thursday afternoon, WWE ambassador and creative team member Dana Warrior, tweeted a pro-LGBTQ+ pride message, stressing that she "believe[s] in equality, education, awareness, and this simple fact: love wins... Always!!" In and of themselves, the words would be fine, but because Warrior is best known as the widow...
Music buffs are intimately familiar with "remastered" versions of their favorite artists' catalogs being released time and time again. The implication is that the sounds are much improved (even if it's not said outright), and they're often bolstered by the inclusion of bonus tracks, whether non-album tracks or previously unreleased recordings.
Hunk. Beefcake. That actor who always gets groped when he does interviews. These are all common descriptions of Sabotage actor Joe Manganiello. Even though he's a serious performer who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA in acting and even directed a documentary about Pittsburgh Steelers fans, he's rarely given the respect he deserves.
Meme & Video Explainers
For a while now, one of the most secretive projects in tech has been the work of Magic Leap, the Florida-based augmented reality startup. They haven't shipped anything: there's no dev kit, no nothing... but it's raised $1.4 billion. There was clearly something special being worked on, but it hadn't been seen publicly until today.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) announced quite the impressive invention on Monday: Artificial intelligence that can generate the appropriate sound when fed a silent video. While there are limitations to the software, the results indicate yet another advance in the rapidly developing field.
Everyone loves videos of animals being wacky. Especially kittens. The latest viral video of an animal being wacky is completely unlike any you've seen before, though. The Alice Springs Reptile Center in Australia's Northern Territory posted a video that the staff felt "deserves to go viral" in the form of a snake shedding its skin, "accidentally enter[ing] its sloughed skin," and getting stuck, repeatedly going around and around in a perfect circle.