goc

I've been watching a comp of Kevin Sullivan in Florida lately and it seems like he, or some combination of his group is beating up Jimmy Backlund every week. Seemingly every squash match on the comp (and there are a lot) features Jimmy Backlund teaming with someone to get destroyed by Sullivan, Bob Roop or Mark Lewin. Other than that, his devil worshiper gimmick is such a mixed bag. There's cool stuff like the angle where Blackjack Mulligan says Sullivan has no real control over people and it's all an act and Sullivan responds with Luna showing up to be his follower and them shaving her head in a really good segment. But there are just so many promos where it feels like all he's doing is spouting gibberish about Abudadein, the cosmic cookie and the 13th step of the 13th pyramid blah blah blah.

I can't speak to the original ECW as I've seen very little of it. But for a couple years WWECW was the only wrestling I would regularly watch, and not just watch but usually be excited to watch. After JBL left Smackdown, ECW was the only wrestling I was watching outside of goodhelmet comps probably right up until the time that CM Punk started his feud with Jeff Hardy. I loved ECW because it was SIMPLE. They stayed focused on a few storylines, and had such a small roster that they had to keep everyone fairly strong. Even Stevie Richards had a win streak at one point. Plus it would probably have as much wrestling or more in 1 hour than Raw or iMPACT would have in 2. With a roster that at different points included: William Regal, Finlay, CM Punk, Evan Bourne, Christian, Matt Hardy, Mark Henry, Goldust, etc. ECW was also great as a starting point for bringing new guys into the company. Guys who started on ECW and went on to success on Raw or Smackdown include: CM Punk, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger. It was also a big boost to careers of younger guys like John Morrison, Miz & Zack Ryder who were given time to develop characters that they probably wouldn't have gotten on Raw or Smackdown. In closing, I still miss ECW and wish I was watching Drew McIntyre as ECW Champion instead of a part of 3MB.

The reason I really don't buy it is that it felt like they did next to nothing with Chavo during that time period. It felt like he could have at least had a good babyface run with the U.S./I.C. title at the time but the crowd reaction he was getting never seemed to materialize into a push.

Matt Hardy might not be a bad mention at this point. He got a lot of credit at the time for being good, but the pendulum seems to have swung firmly to "Matt Hardy sucks" based almost solely on his personal issues.

uh That's a wrestling term, and I believe just a general fighting term, for dominating a guy.

Has Butch Reed ever been on the ballot? It's a guy I've never even heard in the HoF discussion, and while I'm not sure I would say he belongs in the HoF, I think he at least deserves a place in the discussion.

That makes it the best set as far as content goes, of course. But I think it also had the best matches of the sets I got as well. I'd watch Nightmares vs Fire and Flame over any Flair/ Terry Taylor match from Mid South for example, if given the choice. I'm still bitter about how those Flair/Taylor matches all finished fairly high when no one seemed to even like them that much when commenting on them. EDIT: Ok I take that back, I just went back and looked and it seemed like most had 1 match out of the 3 they really liked and 1 out of the 3 they thought sucked. I didn't really care for any of them and didn't think any of those matches should have been in the top 20 but at least Jake/Flair finished higher.

I think if we had more footage of Dibiase from St. Louis then maybe we could see where the technician label came from. He may have really been a great technician in St. Louis, but we can only judge him from the Mid-South and WWF footage. In Mid-South the only real "technical" style matches were the rare babyface vs babyface match and he was always a heel in WWF where the most "technical" heel I can think of during that time period is IRS just because you remember him always doing that abdominal stretch w/the ropes spot.

There are a LOT of people that look back on Goldberg's streak ending and point to it as the moment that killed WCW. I doubt there were a whole lot of people saying that AT THE TIME, whether on the internet or in the business.But I don't doubt that Heenan actually said it then because Goldberg was like the one thing he still seemed to care about in WCW at that point.

I was watching some of the film from Mid-Atlantic Wrestling from 73-74 otherwise known as the "Cornette garbage tapes" today. It's so weird watching wrestling where people are lighting up and smoking in the crowd.

Bill Watts talked in his shoot about making Ted Dibiase and Paul Orndorff do an hour broadway as babyfaces. He said they hated him for booking it but went out and had an awesome match. If that made tape and was as good as Watts said it was, it would likely help shore up the "Dibiase as great technician" defense. But looking at Mid-South, that kind of technical style was only really done in babyface vs babyface situations and it just wasn't something they were going to be doing a whole lot of.

On WWE Classics they have current guys giving "gifts" of old matches by their favorite wrestler. John Cena's favorite wrestler is apparently Dick Murdoch.

I saw you say you don't have the Mid-South set, have you seen the match where Terry Taylor turns heel on Chris Adams in UWF?

Terry Taylor is a weird guy in that the large majority of the time he DOES suck. He was easily my least favorite guy on the Mid-South set as a babyface. But that turn on Chris Adams was incredible. The piledriver on the floor and the post-match interview where he comes off as completely self-delusional and can't believe that Magnum TA and Jim Ross aren't happy about the way he won was one of the highlights of the entire set. I realize not wanting to go all out and say "Terry Taylor sucked" off of an incredibly short heel run in post buy-out UWF is pretty much the definition of defending a guy by saying they "didn't achieve their potential during their careers." However, it does make me want to say he was a guy who suffered by being miscast as a babyface until his career was killed off by being made the Red Rooster.

Watching Starrcade 96 I had to come and post about Rey Jr. vs. Liger. I actually really liked this match but it's hurt by such a bad crowd. I don't even understand why they're so dead for this match because they were really hot during the Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon opener. Maybe they just don't know they're supposed to boo Liger or don't care to. But the match itself is awesome with Liger working like a methodical bully and Rey taking a nasty beatdown, getting hit with a bunch of nasty powerbombs. I especially liked Liger blocking Rey's top rope frankensteiner leading into the finish. Also dug Liger's "holy shit" reaction to Rey getting ready to kill himself on a dive and running up to catch him.

You have to watch some pre-WWF Dino Bravo and he'll change your mind.

I'm pretty sure Taylor was employed as a trainer at some point, maybe it just wasn't a good fit. Morley probably has more to do with the weird youtube videos.

I saw clips of the match where Terry Funk won the NWA title from Jack Brisco and it looked like the whole match would have been an all-time classic. What was there in the clips was amazing. Unfortunately I don't see it on youtube anymore, seems like the person's account was deleted.

Please tell me this is not too far down the list of comps you plan to make.

Even if you hate the Paul Bearer schtick you can at least justify the praise because of completely different that character is from his Percy Pringle work.

How can you not put Magnum TA in the Hall of Fame? He would have beaten Ric Flair and become the JCP Hogan!