goc

I have been watching a lot of AWA lately and it made me think about why AWA was such an easy territory for WWF to expand into and immediately do big business in. Obviously taking Hogan and Okerlund, the top babyface and the host of the AWA TV show, was a big factor. But WWF also took Junkyard Dog from Mid-South and that didn't translate into them doing business in Wattsland. I think the biggest reason that AWA did not have the same type of loyalty with their fans that Mid-South or Memphis did is because of their years long abuse of authority figures. I don't know if it extends back before this but I do know that the decision to just hand the AWA World Title back to Nick Bockwinkel after Verne Gagne retired was something that fans still hated enough to write angry message board posts about it 20 years later on WrestlingClassics. Even worse than just that decision though was having Stanley Blackburn be the person to go on TV and explain it. It's AWFUL! He just stumbles and mumbles his way through an explanation of how a tournament would take too long because there are 100s of wrestlers who want the AWA Title. Then you have Wally Karbo going on TV to explain what happened every time there's a disputed or controversial finish and Wally Karbo is also TERRIBLE as an on-screen performer. Making terrible booking choices is bad enough but having those decisions explained on TV in a nonsensical manner just makes the fans start to believe everything is bullshit. In my opinion, WWE is in the same boat now. They've squandered away a lot of their fan loyalty with bad booking choices AND horrible years long abuse of authority figures. The AWA made itself out to be an inept poorly run company through it's use of authority figures and WWE has made themselves a heel promotion that doesn't care about fans. I think their future is actually going to look a lot like latter days AWA. They are already morphing out of being a traditional wrestling company and turning into solely a content creator. They are already, through their own business practices and AEW's more friendly work environment, starting to rely more on green talent that's not quite ready for TV. WWE is never going to be taping TV in a pink room and they aren't going to die the same way AWA did but I feel like Vince is very much in the "out of touch Verne Gagne" stage right now. Modern WWE looks like 1984 AWA to me where stuff is still going strong and there are things to point at that are good but the structural weaknesses are very much there and it's hard to see things getting better.

Watched the match with Lola Gonzalez this morning and it's as good as any big lucha hair match from the 80s. It's unfortunate there's really no sound on the video because I think that has to be the reason the match has not gained more of an audience since being put on youtube in 2013.

Bert Prentice is and has been promoting shows in Jackson, TN for years.

Yea man what a fucking corporate sell out Corey Graves is for being mad that CM Punk, who was such a close friend that he held Corey's first born son before Corey could even do it himself, stopped associating with him because he didn't quit WWE! Obviously the correct solution was for him to leave WWE when CM Punk did.

The Fuller Leglock

Why do a long build to Ronda winning the title? People would just whine about how obvious it was that she was gonna win the title, how she was somehow "burying" everyone else in the division and how she doesn't "deserve" to win because she didn't spend 3 years in NXT before coming to the main roster.

From everything I've read, there was no limit on per-person sales so it's likely that a lot of tickets were bought by experienced scalpers who do this all the time. I've seen way more complaints about the website and the StubHub prices than people saying they actually bought tickets on the official website. The other argument is "But there aren't even that many tickets on StubHub!" which is true but also it wouldn't make sense to immediately put 1000 tickets on StubHub because that would ruin the artificial scarcity mark up they have going on there now that is allowing them to sell ringside seats for $1000+

Anyone who REALLY wants to go to this but didn't get tickets from the official seller should just wait it out for a few weeks/months. Right now the ticket prices on StubHub are crazy because they are taking advantage of the super marks freaking out that "OH MY GOD IT'S SO POPULAR ALL THE TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT, I WILL PAY ANYTHING TO BE ABLE TO GO TO THIS!" Most of the talk about this I've seen on twitter has been about how people who wanted to go DIDN'T get tickets so I think the majority of what was sold went to scalpers. Once the super marks have all bought their tickets at 4-5x their face value, I suspect the prices will really start coming down. I would even guess that if you wait until the day of the event you'll probably be able to buy tickets for LESS than face value.

I think most people who I've seen complain about how WWE has "wasted" Anderson & Gallows are only aware that they were tag champs in New Japan and were not watching during that run to know that they weren't setting the world on fire with their matches nor were they even treated as that important considering they worked a whole feud based around giving the camera men reasons to focus on Maria's ass.

1991 playlist is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8FXHmaF-0otXzRdJePv_TTVH6VpKYEW

If we're gonna unban people who are accused of being trolls and snobbish, then can we at least swap out shodate for stro? At least you could actually read stro's posts.

I mean it's pretty damn simple considering Shane & Bryan both got the shit kicked out of them in two on one attacks by Owens & Zayn and they can easily just decide that those two were the source of their problems with each other anyway so there's no need to continue their beef.

Dave is a stickler for accuracy on attendance numbers when it comes to certain promotions but people have been mocking him on twitter for years about just reporting whatever numbers RoH tells him for attendance in the Observer. It was fairly obvious he was getting inflated numbers in like 2014-2016 before RoH attendance did genuinely pick back up.

Fastlane? More like a 6 car pileup. I'm going to bed at 8 PM to protest the terrible booking of Smackdown by a person I refuse to admit is the biological son of Bob Armstrong. Road Dogg had to have been dropped off at the local fire station and taken home by Bullet Bob.

I would be so much more on board with Carmella using the briefcase to cash in on Asuka and win the title plus end her streak. There isn't any satisfying way to end Asuka's streak at this point. You can't use it to put over someone new because someone "new" is going to be seen as "not worthy" of ending an undefeated streak that's been going on like 2 years. The best thing they could do would be to have Asuka lose the streak in a complete bullshit way and then have Carmella do everything she can to avoid giving her a title match until it finally happens 2-3 months later and ends in Carmella getting completely squashed.

Been quietly working on this for a month or so now (well quietly on this board, if you follow me on twitter you've probably seen me tweet about it) and can now announce that I've taken on the task of converting and organizing the 100 disc WWC set that's been out there for years. I've currently converted and put dates on the last 40 discs of the set and have uploaded the 1990 footage to my youtube channel www.youtube.com/c/ArmstrongAlley. There is a playlist there with all the 1990 stuff in order and I'm currently uploading all the 1991 stuff I've gotten so far as private videos and will make them public as soon as I get the listings & playlist finished. Then I'll go back and tackle the first 60 discs of the set where dates are going to be a little harder to come up with.

Pretty sure it was just the one vignette. People online hyped it up SO MUCH at the time and I have no idea why.

Pretty sure there are only a few hundred message board posts with the same lines of logic regarding Cena from 2007 all the way to 2013.

If Roman Reigns "never really got over" then neither did John Cena.

Brock vs Kane was not the main event.

The most recent crop of guys of got signed like Ricochet and War Machine are on deals for $50,000 a year while they are in NXT so I'm not really sure how much of a paycut that is even for guys who are doing really well on the indies.

They've been putting on good to great 3 hour Raws for a year now. Going back to two hours would pretty much kill the depth of the women's division on Raw and would ensure that slow burn pushes like we've seen for Elias won't happen anymore. And obviously that would stop the trend of having one, often two, really good 10+ minute TV matches on Raw every week.