goc

Watching the WrestleMania Today things and I really enjoyed Road Dog on there arguing with Josh Matthews. Dog cracked me up saying that he and Billy "Have never looked better"

One time I was dreaming that I was late to work. In my dream I woke up and realized I wasn't late to work and it was just a dream. And then I woke up for real and I WAS late for work. It was disorienting. I hadn't really been thinking too much about WrestleMania but I'm going to try and get myself hyped up for the show. I'm going to watch some of those WrestleMania Today shows on the Network and see if that doesn't get me a little more excited. I don't think the build has been interesting at all, but I think Brock vs Taker should be good. I'm really interested to see what happens with Daniel Bryan and I still think the Andre the Giant battle royal could be fun. Don't like the Cena/Wyatt feud although I think that match will surprise some people with how good it will be. I DO think that the Shield being stuck with the Outlaws is fucking ridiculous though. I think debuting the Ascension as guys Kane hired to help him would have been a lot better idea and would have not made this result SO obvious.

You would think they'd have learned their lesson after that video game press conference that led to J.R. leaving. I mean you let go of J.R. for essentially not being able to control Flair but keep Flair around and put him in the same situations.

I can't see guys like Quiet Storm and especially Chris Divine getting over in front of an ECW crowd.

My upload and download speeds are great on torrents, but I always have problems with streaming. I always have issues with the Network and I don't even try to watch videos on news sites anymore. Youtube is about the only thing that doesn't always fuck up.

I understand how and why he has so much respect because he was in a bunch of different promotions and the first guy to do it on national TV, but I find Gordon Solie to be one of the most overrated people in wrestling history. He's so NOT the best wrestling announcer ever which was the story on him from so many old time wrestlers and fans for so many years. I honestly enjoyed the team of Les Thatcher and Charlie Platt doing Southeastern a lot more than I like Solie doing Continental.

I love Checkmate. It's a gimmick that would NOT work today because fans would just want you to kick the guy in the stomach when he turtles up, but in the age when WCCW fans would actively discourage the babyfaces from cheating it was good stuff.

So I watched Buddy Rose vs. Sal Bellomo in Portland from like 78 or 79 and then saw Sal in ECW in 1993. Holy shit. He doesn't look like the same guy 15 years older in ECW, he just looks like a completely different person.

Would be amusing if Lawler gets money for the rights to footage he doesn't actually HAVE. Even if he is the legal owner now. Ron Fuller should give them a call and see if they'll buy my terrible quality Continental DVDs.

Are you guys still reading this? I can't tell because if a picture of Bob Armstrong wearing a purple KKK hood doesn't get any responses, I'm not even sure if people are still paying attention.

I really enjoyed that final run as Paul Bearer when they just went all comic book with The Undertaker and had him lose his powers and need to be re-charged by the urn. It's too bad all the Kane/Taker matches from that feud turned out to be such a letdown from how well they booked that storyline.

The date for this show is 10/18/86. We start with Gordon talking over a video of Jimmy Golden being stretchered out of the arena last week. He is in the old studio with Ron Fuller and Continental has set up a special feature because of the first half of the show being pre-empted by news last week. Ron talks about his brother Robert already having surgery done on his wrist due to what happened to him last week. They re-show how Ron Fuller got suspended from wrestling but Gordon lets us know that "The Tennessee Stud, whomever he may be, CAN compete." They get to the replay of the Singapore Suicide match. It's a triple threat tag, but only 2 teams at a time. They have a coin toss to see who the first two teams are (how does that work exactly?) and then when one team loses, the team that's out comes in. You have to win 2 falls in a row to win the match. Headhunters start with Fuller & Golden. JIP, and I'm not sure how far into this because Fuller is busted open almost immediately. Headhunters end up winning the first fall by pinning Golden and then Bullet & Steve Armstrong come in hot. They go to a commercial and when they come back Steve Armstrong is busted open and getting his ass kicked in the Headhunters' corner. Steve Armstrong makes a comeback and ends up getting a sleeper on one of The Headhunters. Bullet cuts off the other from making the save but Kevin Sullivan hits Steve in the back with something and he gets pinned. Headhunters win in 2 straight falls. All hell breaks loose as Fuller & Golden attack Kevin Sullivan and the Headhunters. Bullet, Fuller & Golden kick their asses until the very American looking Sheik Abdullah and Kris Von Colt run out and save Sullivan. One of the Headhunters pulls out a blow pipe and shoots powder into Golden's eyes with it. Kris Von Colt holds Fuller's arm over the timekeeper's table and Sullivan smashes a chair over it. Bullet gets thrown over the top rope and then they all beat the shit out of Steve Armstrong. Sullivan's crew take off and leave everyone laid out. This was a pretty strong angle. We go back to Ron Fuller & Gordon Solie in the studio and Gordon talks about what a big deal it is to have 3 top guys taken out in one night. Ron Fuller talks about how Sullivan had it all planned out and it's why The Stud has decided to come back. We get a promo from a fired up Robert Fuller who says he's already had surgery on his hand and they didn't even put a cast on it because he needs another one. But he thinks it's fun because he can't wait to beat on Sullivan with that cast. The camera pans out and Jimmy Golden is laid up in a bed with sunglasses on. He says he can't see out of one eye and can barely see out of the other. One of these days he's going to be coming back and get his revenge. They show a promo from Kevin Sullivan standing on the beach. He talks a bunch of mystic crap about Abudadein and being strapped on the Tree of Woe in the Temple of Time. He says Ron Fuller has evil in his heart because he is lying about being The Tennessee Stud. Abudadein has shown him that one day Ron Fuller will kneel by his side and beg for forgiveness. They re-do the deal with Mark Lewin rising from the ocean but it was a lot better the first time in Florida. I don't even know if Lewin comes in? Ron Fuller talks about how when he was gone Kevin Sullivan was here saying he was working for Ron and in his home. Ron doesn't know how all that happened, he doesn't know who Sullivan is, but he knows that the war is just beginning and he has some surprises in store for Sullivan. Gordon says that even though Ron is suspended from wrestling, as far as Gordon is concerned he is welcome on TV any time. They finish with their studio special and go to Gordon in the Boutwell Auditorium with Sullivan, Sheik Abdullah & Kris Von Colt. Kolt has a Nazi symbol on the back of his vest. This is such a goofy collection of guys. A devil worshipper, 2 New Guinea Headhunters, a Sheik and a Nazi? Sullivan is angry that The Headhunters were banned from the podium and threatens Gordon about it. First match of the show is DWB vs. Wendell Cooley. I have no idea why Wendell Cooley is pretending to be a Texan for this territory that runs in Alabama and Tennessee. The guy is from Florida. They immediately start trading punches and I like Cooley when he's throwing punches. Cooley is about to hit the Bulldog out of the corner on DWB but White Boy stops it when the get in the middle of the ring and hits a belly to back suplex. DWB had fantastic wrestler hair, it's unfortunate what time did to it. Cooley ends up busted open from punched in the face. Video quality makes it tough to tell but I believe that might be hardway on the eyebrow. Cooley makes a comeback and hits a clothesline that sends DWB out of the ring. White Boy pulls Cooley out with him and it turns into a brawl outside. White Boy grabs a chair but ends up having it taken away and he gets hit with it. Now both guys are bleeding. They end up brawling in the middle of the ring and Cooley tosses the ref when he tries to break them up, then White Boy punches the ref when he comes back again. Another ref comes in and he gets pushed around too as they keep beating the hell out of each other. Cooley sends DWB out of the ring and then one of the refs almost pulls Cooley's tights off holding him back from going out after DWB. The two refs finally get it broken up and the official decision is a Double DQ. This was good stuff. They have Adrian Street out to do a promo on Rip Rogers and someone with a sheet over their head is standing on the other side of the podium. After Street's promo we find out that the guy with the sheet is Bullet. They do nothing to explain why he has a fucking sheet over his head instead of his mask. The main event is Tennessee Stud teaming with The Bullet against some scrubs. These two teaming up seems like something that would be a big deal to long time fans. Sullivan comes out and tells the jobbers to leave and tells Bullet & Stud he's about to give them a real challenge, 5 opponents at once. Suddenly The Nightmares run out and toss The Headhunters into the ring who get beat up but Bullet & Stud. It turns into a wild brawl and eventually the faces clear everyone out. Somehow the 4 of them get announced as "the winners of the match." The show ends with the faces cutting a promo at the podium. Bullet thanks The Nightmares for the help and The Stud promises the war has just begun, the 4 of them are ready to take out Sullivan's army.

I agree. He was such a cartoon up until that point you didn't really see that heel turn coming. They did a great job of pacing his feud with Taker too. It was May when Paul Bearer started dropping hints about the secret in Taker's past that lead to them revealing he had a brother. It wasn't until October that Kane debuted and it was WrestleMania before he and Taker ever wrestled.

I don't know if that's really all that grumpy, I kind of agree with him that there's no point in him coming back to just get stuck in the Battle Royal or something. I DO think it's hilarious that he takes credit for Fandango being super over on the Raw after WrestleMania. His entrance music was over, that's it. They could have booked him better but it's not like he ever had a chance to be anything more than a new era Honky Tonk Man.

I think the announcers or other wrestlers calling him Hulk is different from promoting a match with him as "Hulk Hogan." Still, I feel like he should have gone back to Real American the night he came back out in red and yellow.

I'm surprised we don't have video of someone stalking his building for TMZ catching AJ going in or out if they're really living together.

Real American is all he ever needs to come out to for the rest of ever and ever.

That's the big point. WWF essentially gave up on syndication and focused pretty much exclusively on cable in 1996 due to the costs of syndication being so high. ECW didn't have that option and had to pay to be on TV their entire existence. It seems kind of impossible for them to have expanded and remained profitable at the same time because putting TV in a new market was so expensive that it seems like they would have needed to run bigger arenas than what they ran to make it work.

No, because those players aren't even asking for pay yet. If and when it gets to that point, it will be a long way off, and the amount that they get paid will be very little. The players from Northwestern are asking for guarantees that they will receive medical coverage for injuries suffered playing sports for the school after they are no longer students.

Just read the WON from post-Mania and it was just time constraints. There have been quite a few last minute WrestleMania cuts over the years. Now it usually just gets bumped to the pre-show if it was supposed to be on the main card.

Steph isn't the equivalent of a manager, she is an authority figure. It is a well established, separate role from Manager. There have been plenty of authority figures who got their "comeuppance" without ever getting beat up. Vickie Guerrero has been humiliated numerous times, and they had a ball humiliating Eric Bischoff on his way out when he was Raw GM.

Both those statements can be true if only 2 wrestling promotions in America were profitable.

The date for this show is 10/11/86. Not sure what's going on with this show, it's like 20 minutes short and it seems to start in the middle with Wendell Cooley & Tom Pritchard cutting local promos for singles matches against Dirty White Boy and Roy Lee Welch in Columbus, Mississippi. *Ok so what we missed is apparently the entire "Singapore Suicide" match they hyped last week between Fuller & Golden, Steve Armstrong & The Bullet and The New Guinea Headhunters. Something pre-empted the show so they had to spend a bunch of time next week recapping it because it includes a big angle. I'll get to that on the next review.* The first match, for us at least, is Tom Pritchard against THE KING OF WRESTLING Roy Lee Welch! The announcer mistakenly calls him the "self proclaimed" King. Unfortunately Roy does not take the time to correct this peasant Freddie Miller. Freddie announces it as a non title match, and then Tom Pritchard talks to him and he announces that is IS a title match. Roy Lee Welch goes crazy, and I can't blame him this is clearly a conspiracy. I still don't like Pritchard as an opponent for Welch, he needs more of a whitebread babyface but Horner went to JCP along with Brad Armstrong around this time in 86. Roy Lee Welch gets Pritchard outside the ring and won't let him in so while Welch is arguing with the ref, Pritchard loads his boot, runs in and hits the enziquiri and wins the U.S. Junior Title! This is more of a conspiracy than the Montreal Screwjob! Gordon must have missed the beginning of this match as he is confused by Pritchard leaving with the title and being announced the new champ. Gordon calls Kevin Sullivan out to the podium to tell Kevin Sullivan that The Headhunters are stripped of the tag team titles. Then they have a phone call from Ron Fuller who says Sullivan shouldn't be suspended he should have to face Fuller's "close personal friend" The Tennessee Stud. Kevin Sullivan says "Are you telling me if I don't wrestle The Tennessee Stud then I have to leave!?" Well no one really said that but Gordon says yes and there we go. Sullivan cuts a promo backstage flanked by The New Guinea Headhunters and a very white looking Sheik and Chris Von Colt. He kept saying to be a king you have to kill a king well he has taken Ron Fuller's kingdom. Wendell Cooley & Gordon watch a replay of last week when DWB attacked him after his match. I enjoyed that angle, it worked really well since they hadn't really done much to establish DWB either way as heel or face. Cooley cuts a pretty standard promo about kicking DWB's butt. Adrian Street wrestles some jobber who looks completely inept when Street tries to do little wrestling exchanges with him. Street wins with a crucifix pin and then kisses him after the match. The show ends with The Bullet being given back the tag team titles. He doesn't like to be given anything but he'll take the titles back because he knows the Headhunters are going to be coming for them. Bullet has never rooted for the Tennessee Stud before in his life but he hopes he takes Kevin Sullivan apart. Then we see Jimmy Golden being loaded into a stretcher with an eye injury, we hear about Robert Fuller having a broken wrist and Steve Armstrong having a concussion. Kind of a nothing show, but that's unfair to say because we missed the first half which was a big match and angle. But that gets recapped heavily on next week's show so we'll figure out what happened then.

I've been watching Survivor Series 92, and Yokozuna vs. Virgil has to be one of my favorite squash matches ever. I've never seen it before and Yoko looks like such a beast. I'm tempted to go on a Yoko spree now, because he looks REALLY good here before his weight got out of control.

I wouldn't have minded seeing Atlas/Putski vs. The Hart Foundation but the rest of that looks entirely skippable.