goc

Ok Dylan and others in this thread are going to get me to give ROH another shot. I'll check out the last 2 weeks of TV and give my thoughts.

Even more surprising to me that Abdullah worked Montreal as a babyface was the fact that Austin Idol worked there at all. Montreal must have been a good pay day for notorious hater of airplanes Austin Idol to work there.

For some reason I suddenly really want to see the Usos face off against some new team of Wild Samoans.

As soon as I posted about watching USA Championship, I stopped watching it I haven't really watched anything for a few weeks but have watched 2 DVDs I have of Montreal stuff over the past 2 days and I really enjoyed it. The Rougeaus vs. The Garvins was a really good feud that I'm glad I got to see. King Tonga (Haku) looks really good as a babyface and I need to see if the match with him & Bravo vs. The Road Warriors is in full anywhere because the non finish TV version has Tonga looking like a bad ass against the LOD. Speaking of The Road Warriors they are really good in Montreal and their work here is a good argument against "The Road Warriors never sold/just gobbled up their opponents." First time seeing Hercules Ayala and yea, he sucks.

So...Abdullah the Butcher was a babyface in Montreal? Sure seems that way with the crowd cheering him against Brody and Abdulalh battling the Creachman family

Been watching some Montreal stuff lately, and they are much better in their home territory as fired up babyfaces than anything I've seen from them when they were in WWF. Jacques especially has a ton of fire and throws some great punches. I just watched the matches with the Garvins yesterday and neither guy looked out of place trading punches and chops with "Hands of Stone" Ronnie Garvin. Have no idea if any of that stuff is on youtube but if it's not out there and there's interest I could put it up. I don't think there is enough for me to put The Rougeau Brothers on a Top 25 but they definitely look like a "What If" team if the WWF hadn't killed the territories and they'd been able to keep doing their thing in Montreal.

I always thought their long term plan was to have Rusev go over Cena so he can be the next big bad for Roman Reigns after slaying Brock Lesnar.

The Road Warriors don't get the credit that they deserve, I really don't buy the whole "they never sold for anyone" story. I haven't seen a lot of them from later in the 80s but the stuff from the AWA set and the Montreal matches I've seen have surprised my by just how much they give their opponents. They weren't doing Bruiser Brody type no selling at all when they're selling for much smaller guys like Greg Gagne, Jim Brunzell, Jacques & Armand Rougeau. They also relied quite a bit on Paul Ellering interference and cheating which is another point against the argument that they just "gobbled guys up." No, they were not working like the Rock N Roll Express, The Midnights, The Fantastics or The Nightmares~! but two big guys like Hawk and Animal were never going to be able to work that style anyway. And it wouldn't have worked for The Road Warriors.

With my current interest in WWE at kind of an all time low, I watched this (well just the last two matches although I will go back and watch Goldust vs. Stardust because it's actually the only storyline that I care about) without any real emotional attachment other than liking all 4 guys. I thought Rusev vs. Cena was really good, not great and the matches problems were really kind of on Cena's end as his timing was off on taking some of Rusev's stuff. Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan was one of the better WWE main events in recent memory. I think these guys have a lot of chemistry working together and I'm sure we'll see more of them together once Reigns wins the title. I don't really have a problem with WWE pushing Reigns over Bryan and so I have to give them a lot of credit in going all in and making Reigns look like a star at the end of the night.

Why would the secondary title be able to be the A-show main event? That's kind of the point of it being the secondary title so you have a main event for your B crew.

I am pretty sure J.R. only took over as the lead because Vince couldn't really do commentary anymore after the Montreal incident and especially once he fulled embraced being Mr. McMahon. I'm not sure if Vince ever really envisioned anyone but himself as the lead announcer for his programming.

For matches with no commentary, it definitely helps for the crowd to be loud and into it. For the 70s and 80s though this usually isn't a problem with what they bothered to film anyway. I DO have a really big problem trying to watch wrestling with no sound at all or with over terribly overdubbed commentary that drowns out the crowd noise. Wrestling without the crowd noise or the sound of the action is just not the same thing.

Good commentary, or commentary at all, isn't necessary for me if I'm just watching matches for something like the 80s project. If I'm trying to watch a run of TV from something, THEN it's pretty important. It's one of the reasons I've never really gotten into WCCW actually, I don't like Mercer at all and Lowrance isn't much better (except for the small period of time he was with Terrance Garvin) Late 80s AWA was always going to struggle but having Trongard and James Blears constantly blathering didn't give you any reason to watch their rapidly diminishing talent pool.

Yea I don't think pointing at Crockett having a ton of titles and going "look it worked in the 80s when they did it" is true. Most of those titles didn't mean anything at all. Terry Taylor & Black Bart fighting over the National Title? Krusher Kruschev & Sam Houston in the finals of the 1985 Mid-Atlantic title tournament? Yea they had way too many belts, even if they did manage to make to make 3 singles titles and (sometimes) 2 tag titles work.

I also thought it was kind of silly for Flair to doubt Triple H because he's not a full time wrestler anymore when, as far as WWE is concerned, Sting hasn't wrestled since 2001.

Been reading Gary Hart's book. Didn't know where to drop this bit where he breaks down why the Amarillo territory died but I thought it was interesting:

Having Daniel Bryan come out before Roman Reign's match and get the first entrance, hurting Reign's reaction, wasn't a very smart thing to do to a guy you're trying to make your next ace. Seems like I'm the person most interested in where they go with the Stardust/Goldust deal. If they actually let Dustin carry the feud in promos it could be really good. I wouldn't mind seeing them do a throwback to those sit down interviews he did back in like 97 where he took off the makeup and talked about his family. There is enough real stuff there he could talk about like not talking to his dad for years and doing crazy things like trying to get Vince to pay for implants for the Goldust character that would work better coming from Dustin than Goldust.

Watched this based on the reaction (although not many seemed to watch it) in this thread and REALLY enjoyed it. I have a lot more confidence in Roman Reign's as a top guy after that tag team turmoil match and am really looking forward to his match with Bryan. As an aside, Big Show was really great in this match. His matches get better the more he gets to talk trash.

I don't think Lawler is going to be bragging to a stripper about hidden money in a jukebox. It's not like he would have gotten drunk and been out of his mind so it seems pretty out of character. He doesn't come off as a guy who flaunts his money around. Regardless, the whole thing ends with a crooked cop going to jail so it sounds like a net positive.

So what are you guys' thoughts on the Goldust/Stardust break up? I thought they kind of dropped the ball on Cody becoming Stardust because they never really did anything with it but I'm actually kind of interested to see how things are going to play out with the Rhodes family reunion on Raw. Goldust taking off the paint to try and bring his brother back from insanity would be a pretty cool way to finish up his career.

Has anyone ever seen a good Killer Brooks match? He's EASILY the worst guy in the 1983 Georgia set I've been watching off and on, with even guys like Iron Sheik and Paul Ellering looking like they have more to offer in their squash matches.

Don Leo Jonathan is a guy who I am fascinated by after watching him wrestle Lou Thesz from the Chicago Archives.

Neither Ziggler or Jack Swagger were ever main eventers.

I'm not even a huge Seth Rollins fan but I feel like he has enough talent to be more than "Edge 2.0" But then the WWE always loved Edge way more than I did, I suppose in part because he was an easy guy to book shitty finishes around.