The Rock and John Cena are no match for an online leak. Credit: Getty Images
Always be careful when making a user name. You never know when an online sleuth will out you. No, changing the year you were born in your user from 1983 to 1984 won’t fool your girlfriend when she accidentally logs onto chat roulette and begins wondering exactly who “AlwaysStiff1984” is.
So tread with caution “Dolphins1925.” You could very well end up with a pack of Stamford, Conn. lawyers on your trail.
Today, fans of the “sports entertainment” world of pro wrestling are playing user name detective, trying to figure out just who Dolphins1925 is. The online wrestling forum reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle has been the home base of Dolphins1925 since February as the site regularly follows pro wrestling, specifically WWE, and asks its users for predictions on big matches.
It’s important to note here that pro wrestling has become less predictable than it was in the Hulk Hogan era, when every Saturday morning, a 280-pound, out of shape, hairy-chested jobber would land just one offensive maneuver (usually a closed-fist to the face) in an entire match against the Superstar du jour. Today, the “jobbers” can actually be guys that have held a title belt in the past few years or so (The Miz, for example).
The most notable example of this trend of unpredictability came at last year’s WrestleMania (WWE’s biggest event of the year) when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson beat WWE’s current Hogan, John Cena. Not many saw it coming considering The Rock is busy making movies throughout the year and Cena was and looks like he will continue to be WWE’s biggest star through the next five years. It made little to no sense that WWE would bury its biggest current star in favor of a star they made 15 years ago. What we didn’t know at the time: The Rock’s one year “return” run in WWE would turn into two years, climaxing with a title run.
So, yes, pro wrestling is less predictable than it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But, really, it’s still extremely predictable. When the powers that be at WWE see even a small group of fans get behind a wrestler (like when fans on a New Jersey train playfully started singing Fandango’s theme music after this year’s WrestleMania), they can’t wait to exploit the matter. Fans quickly catch on to what WWE brass is thinking and they often know who is and isn’t going over. You could place the odds of a smart fan correctly predicting an entire wrestling pay-per-view card at somewhere around 3-1. It’s certainly doable.
But for someone to predict four straight pay-per-view cards perfectly is nearly impossible without some sort of inside knowledge and that’s exactly what user Dolphins1925 did on reddit, starting with February’s Elimination Chamber PPV right up until last Sunday’s Money in the Bank event. In fact, he (or she) is 38-for-38 in that time.
While pro wrestling obviously doesn’t have to deal with a gambling scandal, it is a billion dollar business and keeping storylines and the results of matches in house is an extremely big deal. It’s like if a writer for Mad Men rattled off everything that’s going to happen to Don, Joan, Roger and Pete five days before the season premier. There’s big money involved in keeping the results of a big-time TV show secret and with four million viewers each Monday for its signature TV show, RAW, WWE qualifies as big-time TV.
So who exactly is Dolphins1925? My first thought was that he is extremely old, with a birth date of 1925, and is a Miami Dolphins fan. No, I will not be accusing Don Shula of being the snitch, but I will be wondering how close Dolphins1925 is to Vince McMahon in the coming days. If Dolphins1925 nails the results of SummerSlam in a few weeks, the WWE could have a mammoth problem on its hands. Like, one that’s not fake.
Follow Metro Boston sports editor Matt Burke on Twitter @BurkeMetroBOS
