A NOTE FROM BRIAN BRAKEMAN

After more than 40 years and well over 3,000 pages, it seems time to draw the curtain on the Brakeman Report. It has been a labor of (mostly) love, but its objective from the start--identifying and forecasting the participants in the state meet--has been rendered unnecessary by the explosion of data and data analysts on the Internet. It is a decision, I make with some misgivings since I have always enjoyed the process which lead up to the report. Still, it will now be the first January since 1971 that I will be able to really enjoy without the specter of hard-to-make deadlines.

It has been a privilege to work with the various constituencies within the wrestling community which I hope to maintain in the future. I would like to thank all the folks who have given me so much help over the years, particularly the three principal typists--the late Arnetta Moore, the superstar for over two decades, Kim (Fiftyfingers) Manning, and my own first cousin, the long suffering Nancy Dimitris. And, in addition, I truly have appreciated all my readers and the many comments (both positive and negative) that they have so often provided.