goc

I don't know exactly what it was about Derusha that I didn't like but I remember being annoyed by him at points during the AWA set. I know for sure that there was some match on the set that saw him get his ass kicked, I think by Hansen, that I ended up ranking higher just for that.

I think if any of them join the Wyatts it will be Ambrose.

Sometimes I find myself clicking it for a post but then remembering we can't like posts here. And that's fine. Sometimes that encourages people to try and just outsnark each other and this isn't a board of one liner posts and I wouldn't want to see that change because of people trolling for likes.

My Continental footage has big gaps so I just watched a week near the end of June and it was much better. There was a real fun match between Roy Lee Welch and Tim Horner with Roy Lee Welch apparently having faked a knee injury in a match the previous week and spending a lot of the early minutes protesting his innocence and asking for a handshake from Horner. Of course he eventually blasted Horner with a punch instead of giving him a clean break and then won the match with a handful of Horner's tights. Honestly, one of my favorite matches is the "newly turned/in the process of turning heel pretends to want a fair match against a babyface before inevitably cheating" so this was right up my alley. Then Jerry Stubbs is doing a Mr. Perfect gimmick where he offers $1,000 to anyone who can last 10 minutes with him, and apparently $10,000 to anyone who can beat him and/or last 30 minutes with him but I'm not sure on that part. Anyway, Frankie Lancaster barely survives the 10 minutes then rolls outside the celebrate and grab the money, even though the match isn't over and Stubbs' Continental Title is still on the line. So Stubbs goes out and kicks his ass. Stubbs hits him with a chair and when Frankie goes under the ring to do his blade job Stubbs tosses the chair after him. This ends with Stubbs killing him with a brainbuster on the concrete floor and Brad Armstrong running out to make the save, if you could call it that after the guy's already suffered a 5 minute beatdown ending with a brainbuster on the floor. Bob Armstrong is feuding with The Flame still but now he is "El Fuego" I like Bob Armstrong but this seems like the Bullet gimmick would have had a shorter shelf life than the length of time it ran for, especially with all the guys like The Flame and Mr Wrestling II coming in to take the mask. Adrian Street is still here, now feuding with "Wildcat" Wendell Cooley. Street debuts a hilarious music video of his own original song "Something Very Strange about a Cowboy" which I loved. Found it here if anyone wants to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNBOWLP7rrk Then a Wendell Cooley match has Wendell Cooley coming out...in a Wildcat Jacket!

Just watched the first four episodes of Continental Championship Wrestling from 1986. It was ok, but definitely not as good as the Southeastern from 1981 I watched a couple months ago. It was actually kind of confusing to follow, I'm not sure if the dates were wrong on the files I have or what, but it seemed like a guy would lose his title and the next week have it on TV again with no explanation. I saw Norvell Austin beat Adrian Street twice for the Southeastern title, with no explanation for how Street ever got it back. Bob Armstrong is fun doing The Bullet gimmick, and is so bad at keeping "the secret" talking about "my son, I mean Bob Armstrong's son coming out to help me." But watching him do goofy dances at ringside before beating up on some jobber was worth watching. Other than that, there isn't much here I was real interested in. Norvell Austin feuding with Adrian Street over the Southeastern Title and The Rich Cousins in what seemed to be a never ending feud with The Nightmares over the tag titles weren't doing anything for me. Definitely not as good as Saito/Condrey/Rose vs. The Armstrong Family or even Jimmy Golden vs. Tennessee Stud Ron Fuller.

I expected to watch a lot of wrestling when the Network hit. I just didn't know it meant I'd free up a ton of hard drive space and end up watching a lot of Portland, Memphis and Puerto Rico. I've watched like 5 matches total on The Network. I still like it for the fact that I can go watch any PPV in good quality at any time, but I really wish they'd start putting up some Nitros or more TV episodes in general.

This. Not every promotion had BJ wrestlers. They can't just be someone female fans like, it has to be a guy or a team that is marketed towards bringing a female audience to the arenas. From the AWA that I saw, no one was presented that way in the AWA.

Been around the world a little bit today, started off this morning watching some early 80s Memphis with Jerry Lawler vs. Joe LeDuc with 10 Lashes for Lawler or Jimmy Hart on the line. Also a lot of promos from Lawler and The First Family. Then I watched some Portland from the 70s (not sure exactly when) but I watched a 6 man tag between Sheepherders & Rose vs. Ron Bass, Piper & Red Bastien. Also watched Buddy Rose wins his first Pacific Northwest Title from Stan Stasiak and saw a lot of promos between Rose and Piper who as far as I can tell have not had a singles match yet. I liked this stuff but Stasiak was not that good so watching him do long 2 out of 3 fall matches wasn't the best scenario. Then I watched some early 80s Puerto Rico (I think 1983) with the TV show I watched hyping a big cage match between Ox Baker and The Invader. Lots of American guys there like Ox Baker, Buddy Landel and Terry Gibbs as tag champs, JJ Dillion wrestling Pedro Morales, Ron Sexton, Frank Dusek. I liked this episode a lot and thought the announcer Rickin Sanchez was a real pro doing those on the spot translations for the Americans' interviews.

For what it's worth, Watts maintains he never did anything with Dark Journey. He said he wanted to but she wasn't into him.

If you guys hate that nomination so much just nominate something else

I just watched the clip of Robert Fuller and Lawler brawling in the bleachers and Lawler taking that crazy bump from nearly the top of the bleachers all the way down. I can't believe he can still wrestle, much less walk after some of the crazy bumps he took, those wooden bleachers looked hard as hell.

Without looking I'm almost positive the reason those don't count is because they weren't head to head. I think there was basketball that pre-empted Nitro at the time.

I loved the Fantastics when I watched the Mid-South set. I actually think I liked their matches more than the RNR Express stuff. But in Memphis they feel like really bad Fabulous Ones ripoffs. I guess they wanted to try and get a hot babyface team going with The Fabs leaving but they should have told them not to do the gimmick with the vests and bow-ties in the Memphis territory. I don't think know if that's why they didn't draw, but they didn't. I'm looking through the results I see by the middle of February they were drawing less than 1500 in Memphis with The Fantastics as tag champs and Austin Idol challenging Dundee for the Southern title. All that said, I thought the Fantastics doing the old "win a date" contest was good, just because it gave Buddy Landel a chance to come out and steal the idea and declare he was going to run his own contest to win a date with The Nature Boy. Buddy was so good, it's a shame he couldn't get it together and have a sustained run somewhere. And just as an aside, the weirdest thing I've seen them book so far is Pat Rose come out and talk about how his partner Tom Pritchard and his girlfriend Sherri Martel ran off together as a way to explain them leaving the territory. And then Pat Rose just floats around randomly teaming with other people and losing all the time. It just seemed odd to have the guy cut that promo before pretty much turning him into another Tony Falk.

I just stumbled upon this book on Amazon, by Mark James, and immediately bought the kindle version, of which I have done 0 times previously. Oh my god this is an amazing thing. Some years are a little more complete than others, but this is still a very thorough list of results for the Memphis territory from 1980-1989. I did a search for the author's name and didn't come up with anything, I'm kind of surprised this wouldn't have gotten talked about before on this board. I will get so much more enjoyment out of continuing my watch of Memphis 1986 now that I have results for all the Memphis shows and a lot from Louisville, Lexington and some different spot shows. I wish I had found this before I'd finished going through 1985. If anyone has anything they'd like me to look up for them, let me know. http://www.amazon.com/Memphis-Wrestling-History-Tennessee-1980-1989-ebook/dp/B00H5VTOIG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1394194609&sr=1-1&keywords=memphis+wrestling+history

Just watched the first episode of Memphis TV from 1986 (unfortunately not the actual Memphis feed) and it's fun seeing Dundee & Mantel gloat about Lawler being gone. But the introduction of Big Red Reese as the first challenger to Dundee was VERY weak. I don't have any numbers or anything, but I remember reading that attendance really dropped off for the 2 months that Lawler was gone in the beginning of 1986, and staring off with challengers like Big Red Reese certainly couldn't have helped. I wonder if they knew the Fabulous Ones were going to be leaving when they planned for Lawler to lose a Losers Leaves Town match? They shouldn't have been surprised at a drop in attendance losing Lawler & The Fabs at the same time

I remember actually not getting into this match when it first happened, even though it got a lot of praise on the internet so I'm going to nominate: Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. HHH "Three Stages of Hell" No Way Out 2001.

I've finished 1985 Memphis and my god they ran Fabs vs Sheepherders to death. TO DEATH. Every kind of stipulation you ever heard of and some they seemed to just make up at random like the Rugby Scrum match. There's a football in the ring, two guys fight over it with their partners handcuffed in the corner and if you can get the ball and give it to your partner then he can get unlocked from the handcuffs. And the fans are expected to throw the ball back if it goes in the crowd. Doubt that match got taped at the arena after the debacle that was the TV demonstration match. My guilty pleasure is Tony Falk. I like how they debuted with him a little fanfare, but not a lot. Then he loses every week and starts getting more and more desperate to end the losing streak, talking trash about guys and making open challenges, all the while continuing to lose.

EDIT: Shit I posted my idea before I finished reading the thread and goodhelmet beat me to it

I think that was more of a "hey let's throw something at this crowd really hard and fast and stop any dumb pre-planned bullshit"

Judging by the crowd's sudden silence while he did that, I think it might have gone into the crowd.

It served it's purpose however, which was to try and move the crowd beyond the CM Punk stuff. Or at least throw them off.

The crowd doesn't even know how to respond to this trolling.

We have no idea whether CM Punk kept getting paid while he was out. They had every right to stop paying him royalties since he breached his contract, so I'm not sure if he's gotten paid since the Rumble.