”The Doc” Chad Matthews has been a featured writer for LOP since 2004. Initially offering detailed recaps and reviews for WWE’s top programs, he transitioned to writing columns in 2010. In addition to his discussion-provoking current event pieces, he has written many acclaimed series about WrestleMania, as well as a popular short story chronicle. The Doc has also penned a book, The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment, published in 2013. It has been called “the best wrestling book I have ever read” and holds a worldwide 5-star rating on Amazon, where it peaked at #3 on the wrestling charts.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve always tried to challenge myself during my time writing for LOP. Back in the day, I wanted to simply write for LOP, and I did (I recapped Smackdown from 2004 to 2006); then I moved onto wanting to write reviews for Raw and pay-per-views and, after I had done that for awhile, I wanted to write columns; I have been writing columns for eight years, figuring out new ways to stoke the fire that is my passion for wrestling so that I could keep engaging you fine folks in a variety of styles (all sorts of reviews, beat-writer-type current events pieces, lists of the greatest, well, everything, a short story series that included a match review written backwards from finish to start…in rhyme); I even wrote an epic non-fiction book (epic as in long to some and as in awesome to others) ranking the greatest wrestlers of the last thirty-some-odd years, and I am finishing another on the greatest matches and rivalries in the present day. Of course, The Doc is a pen name, while the man behind the Matthews runs a private practice and has a wife and two young, very demanding kids.
Truthfully, my energy tank for writing about wrestling has hinged from the start on my enjoyment of the WWE product and, as it stands right now, I do not have the energy to muster up the thought required to write for you really good, discussion-provoking columns. However, the desire to interact with you is still there, as is the desire to put my thoughts on wrestling out there for discussion with the diehard wrestling fanbase; social media and The Doc Says podcast provide me those opportunities, but to be frank they allow me avenues on opposite ends of the spectrum – Twitter for rapid-fire tidbits and the podcast for long-form weekly explorations – while the Doctor’s Orders column offered me a middle ground. Analytically, it takes the average reader about one minute to consume 200 words of text, roughly a few Twitter posts; it would take a 12,000 word column to equal the amount of time spent listening to an hour-long episode of The Doc Says; a typical Doctor’s Orders column is about 1100-1400 words in length, so it should take, on average, about 6-8 minutes to read, which is where this new idea comes into play.
The audio app, Anchor, has given me a new avenue to communicate my thoughts to you. Content-wise, it has created a hybrid of what you would read from me on current events and hear from me in lengthy podcast form. From the moment you press play below, it will take you no more than eight minutes to listen; your eyes no doubt over-stimulated from a long day full of visuals, you will get my column-length reactions to the hottest topics of the week in audio form at your convenience at any point in the day and, should you want to hear more of my thoughts in long-form, The Doc Says will have separate content ready and waiting for when you have more time. I intend to write columns, but these audio blogs, if you will, should serve as a more efficient way to engage with you, allowing me the added time to create better written content until the product again reaches a level that inspires the words to flow as easily from my finger tips as they do from my lips.
So, here we go…
QUESTION OF THE DAY (A): What is your favorite match from the Royal Rumble cards of this decade?
QUESTION OF THE DAY (B): For those of you who care about NJPW, do you think the timing was right for Naito to become the top guy?
Also, let me know what you think of this “audio-column” format please; your feedback absolutely matters to me.
