goc

No I'm only through the first two weeks of April so far but that sounds like a reason to keep watching. Oh! I didn't mention how often they plug their wrestling school run by Buddy Fuller. $2000 for 8 weeks of training. I haven't heard of anyone ever coming out of this school and becoming a successful wrestler so I'm assuming they tired guys out at the gym for hours in the morning and then stretched them on the mat to try and make them quit in the afternoons.

I have watched about 4-5 weeks of USA Championship Wrestling. That's the Knoxville promotion that Ron Fuller started in 1988 after selling Continental to David Woods. It's really fun with a mix of Continental & Memphis guys with some old Knoxville stars like Mongolian Stomper & Ron Wright as the lead manager. Bill Dundee is the booker and it kind of feels like this is a bridge between Continental and SMW at times. I'd like to say that Buddy Landel is the highlight of the promotion because he's been really fun on promos but he looks a little out of shape in the ring and Ron Wright has actually been the star to me on promos. The Bullet is also easily the best of the babyface bunch with Doug Furnas really struggling at times as they try and push him as one of the top babyfaces due to him being a local star in Knoxville. I almost forgot that Mike Davis has been a revelation as part of the Rock N Roll RPMS. Just a fantastic heel promo and really outshines his partner Tommy Lane in that department. Haven't seen enough of them in the ring yet to really form an opinion but I love all their promos trashing "The Party Boys" Johnny & Davey Rich. Speaking of Johnny & Davey, there has never been a more miscast "ladies men" tag team in any wrestling that I've seen. Johnny makes Robert Gibson look like he deserves to be on the cover of Teen Beat.

That's REALLY stretching to blame him for The Network, I mean there about a 100 more valid reasons for The Network's numbers than "Brock isn't on every PPV" It's not like all his numbers are bad since apparently he has very good merchandise numbers for a heel. I don't think that his part time deal is an impediment to having an interesting character it's just that WWE has booked him terribly, but that's the case for 99% of the guys on weekly TV also. But that's a dead horse to beat in some other thread.

This is why I love this board so much. I couldn't imagine another board, even something like Wrestling Classics or Kayfabe Memories where I could do a thread about 1986 Continental and have anyone interested in it. I have been introduced to a lot of wrestlers & matches that I never would have seen without reading about it here. That doesn't mean I automatically like everything someone pimps on here, the Thatcher stuff hasn't done anything for me as an example, but I know that the people who DO like him and his style are genuinely interested in it and it's not just some "PWO hive mind" thing.

Not to defend Brock, but I think him working in Japan had more to do with his non-compete lawsuit with WWE than it did with him actually wanting to work in Japan. I blame New Japan for giving him that big push without seeing how dedicated he was really going to be. If he hadn't needed to wrestle somewhere else to flaunt WWE's non-compete clause I'm not sure he ever goes to Japan in the first place.

I'm not saying that I think Curt is a top 100 guy, because for me he isn't. But I also had a problem with some of his "technical" babyface work in AWA, thinking he performed much better in his brawls. But I just watched his (from the best of my knowledge) first TV match with Buddy Rose in Portland from 3/21/82 and to me it was Hennig's best babyface work that I have seen. He showed a lot more fire in his armwork than I ever saw him do in the Bock matches and he kept switching things up instead of going back to the same simple armbar liked he seemed to often do in AWA. I have a feeling when I finish the Rose/Hennig series I will feel like Buddy Rose is a better opponent for Curt than Bock was.

Probably Bill Dundee vs. Jerry Lawler due to longevity and how no matter how many times they went back to it, you still wanted to see it.

Happy to see Titus get enough love to make #3 on the Most Underrated list.

I don't think that gimmick works without the red face though. I just can't see normal non face painted Bruce Pritchard having the same effect in that role.

Absolutely not a hill worth dying on. Or even falling down on.

I hate to defend rovert because I generally find him to be annoying and a bit ridiculous but if you were going to pick a board to mention as the "pro-Murdoch" board I'd say this one would fit. Looking up the twitter post it seems fairly harmless and not along the same lines of his "you guys are pretending to like Mark Henry & Big Show matches" stuff.

I say this as someone who grew up as a kid liking Demolition, but will anyone be voting for them that DOESN'T fall into that category?

There are still a lot of places out there where it seems like there's an immediate dismissal of any wrestler that didn't work for WWF or WCW at some point. As if that's the only way to measure greatness, whether a guy worked on national TV.

Just heard Breathe by The Prodigy tonight. I can't hear that song and not immediately think back to the mid-90s and watching Wrestling Power on public access and seeing my first glimpse of wrestling outside the WWF/WCW bubble. God was there ever a song people loved more for wrestling music videos than The Prodigy's Breathe?

I've seen Jerry Lawler & King Kong Bundy have an INCREDIBLE match in just 7 minutes that had a clear beginning, middle and end.

Joyce Grable is pretty good herself, I remember being quite impressed with her against Velvet McIntyre from some Puerto Rico I watched a few months ago. I think it was from 1983?

Who cares if it's been done before, everything in wrestling has been done before but the difference is that more than likely it would result in a more genuine heel reaction for his WrestleMania match rather than the Goldberg vs. Brock type of reaction. They HAVE to try and make a new star off of him at WrestleMania or else what the fuck did you pay him all that money for?

All they would have to do with Brock is just play up the reality of the situation. "I'm the champion, my contract is about to expire, no one can beat me and I'm going to take this belt with me when I go"

It was to Mike Tenay & Don West obviously.

That would kind of make perfect sense for their characters. Why would they care about the outcome at all?

I was defending Ryback against someone who called him a Golberg clone tonight and I mentioned how he should have beaten CM Punk for the title at HIAC. I said that it would have helped Ryback obviously, but even CM Punk would have benefited. It would have been a big moment to end his "historic" reign instead of a foregone conclusion match with The Rock. It would have given him the credit for making a new star if Ryback had taken off or at least he would have gotten credit for the attempt if a big Ryback push didn't pan out. I think it would have helped Punk's legacy, especially when you consider how he departed.