Jingus

I can't imagine that Bryan never actually saw the first Starrcade, it's too historically important an event to ignore. I think it's probably just his memory sucking again. Alvarez might as well be called Alzheimers for his amazingly awful memetic abilities. I've seriously known lifelong stoners who have much better long-term memories than he does. Which kinda feeds into his personality. When he calls something "the best/worst _____ ever!", he's clearly not speaking literally, but he does say it a whole lot. I sometimes have similar problems remembering if I've watched something before or not, but I haven't seen nearly the immense volume of wrestling that he has. I'd imagine that having to watch every wrestling show every week, for purposes of work instead of entertainment, can be a hell of a brain drain.

I still think it's funny that HHH managed to loophole himself way up high on the list, by basically being the only top WWE guy who was pushed on top so consistently during a time period of taken-for-granted good live houses. And over what turns out to be a surprisingly large period of time when we put on our hindsight glasses. I can't think of anyone else who had a decade-long run on top of a nationwide American promotion. Also probably helped that his only significant time off was from injuries, he never had that tendency to vanish for months at a time like most of his lifer-level peers. Yep. Crowds in 96 weren't too good, and that was the only year he was in the main event more often than not.

I'm not saying he was bad. He was certainly a master of the relatively narrow range of psychology he employed, getting a hell of a lot out of frequently not doing very much. Somewhere deep in my tape collection I possess two full VHS comp tapes of nothing but Bruno matches, six hours apiece in gloriously grainy EP mode, that I actually paid money for. I'm just laying out the reasons why I'd understand if someone else wanted to make that argument. Some folks just can't stand watching the sort of worker who is flagrantly pulling their punches and often barely making the most ginger of love-tap contact, which describes quite a few workers from that era besides just Bruno.

I'd like to know exactly what the formula is and how he weighted it. Is it just live attendance, or did he include ratings, buyrates, merch sales, and other variables like that? Some of those names just don't look right in those spots. HHH is probably the best example; would anyone seriously argue that more fans deliberately bought tickets in order to see him, over Stone Cold and every single other star in the past dozen years? He may have headlined more shows than anyone else in the WWE for the past decade, but it seems faintly awful to claim that fans wanted to see him more than everyone else. Trips has historically been the guy who works with the guy who draws money, not the draw himself. And of course any wrestler who is also the booker should be listed with an asterisk. Leveque has always been pretty clever at pairing himself with whoever the hottest current talent is. He's not The Man, he's the man you gotta beat in order to be The Man... and the WWE has had a revolving door of various new Men who all had to feud with Hunter to be semi-officially considered a true main eventer.

Your mileage may vary on that one. Bruno usually tended to work an extremely formulaic match, even by Main Eventer In New York standards. He knew exactly what his audience wanted to see and could drive the MSG crowd into an unholy frenzy, of course. But compared to the top guys in other territories, well, Bruno's stuff looked awfully phony. I know he had to be extra-careful in the ring because of his crazy caveman strength, but his offense could often come off as being ridiculously light. If you grew up in a territory with guys like Johnny Valentine or Jack Brisco on top, it's easy to see how Bruno's wacky theatrical style could seem faintly ridiculous in comparison. I don't wanna bury the guy, he could certainly change it up when he really had too; the one-hour draw with Baba is a good example of that. (And being a Baba mark, I'm hardly in a position to knock anyone at that time for having can't-break-an-egg offense.) But I understand if someone with a less heat-drawing, more movez workrate-oriented attitude would find Sammartino very underwhelming.

The Herc show was smack in the middle of the buildup to Mania III, and Minneapolis isn't that far from Detroit. Could that have made a difference? Barring that, maybe some kind of new television syndication deal or something along those lines which could have tipped the balance? Could there have been some other factor we just don't know about? Was Thanksgiving traditionally a huge wrestling holiday tradition in AWA country? Did they maybe just promote that Savage card a hell of a lot harder than the others? Because, yeah, the card alone doesn't explain it at all. I don't have the numbers in front of me, and didn't live through the period myself. But from anecdotal evidence from my buddies, Memphis was the toughest nut for Vince to crack in the WWF in the early days. It was the hometown of the last major territory, and the local fans were awfully loyal. Allegedly, the WWF could do about as well in much smaller towns like Chattanooga or Murfreesboro as they did in Memphis. Until they hired Lawler, anyway, and the hardcores were then more willing to come out for the Fed. But it seemed like Nashville was always relatively strong for them, considering its population size. Nashville had long been home to a truly obsessive equal-opportunity wrestling audience who would happily show up for any promotion which ran there. WWF, Crockett, WCW, CWA, USWA; it didn't matter. Even ECW drew a nice house when they ran their only show there, in late 99. In the late 90s and early 00s, there were plenty of indy shows in the area which routinely drew hundreds of people on a weekly basis. But then TNA worked its magic upon us, and KICK WHAM TOWN ASSASSINATED nobody ever drew nearly as well there again. Also probably didn't help that the WWE ran the infamous Katie Vick sketch there live around the same time, too. When TNA recently ran a house show there with Jeff Hardy in the main, it was considered a freakin' miracle when they drew 1200; even though it's Jarrett and Dixie's hometown. This thread has made a stronger case for Hogan than any I've ever seen in the eternal debate. Still, it's awfully tough to compare the two since they were in such completely different circumstances. If the WWF had someone in 84-86 who was as insanely popular with the general public and oddly innovative with his gimmick and presentation as Austin was in 98-99, Vince would have had a decent chance of pulling off the same stunts he did. But, they did have someone that popular and relatively innovative right there already with Hogan, so the argument is kinda moot.

Ventura's version of history is usually suspect at best, but on that one he agrees with the consensus. He was planned to have a huge big-money feud with Hogan, since the sheer charisma of both guys would easily be a good enough combination to overcome even Jesse's godawful ring skills. But then the doctors discovered those nasty clots in his lungs, which put the brakes on his in-ring career for good. (Although he did do a few scattered tag matches after that, which never really get discussed.) Of course, Jesse being Jesse, he claimed that his disease was due to wacky covert government hijinks, agent orange in this case. But then again, agent orange really was some hideously poisonous shit, so it easily could have caused that kind of illness if he was directly exposed to it and he might be telling the truth here too.

But they can't possibly all be non-union. Freddie Prinze Jr has gotta be in the WGA, he's got multiple previous writing credits for a couple of other tv shows.

All of which make it even stranger that wrestling programs have gotten away with having no credits for at least the past decade. Tech unions must have specific rules about this sort of thing. That's obvious from the majority of television shows now, where most networks zoom the end credits by you as fast as possible while showing a preview of what's on next. They clearly wouldn't even bother having the credits if they weren't forced to. And certainly all those infamous "Hollywood writers" which they keep hiring must belong to the WGA, which is infamously strict in its credit practices. So how the hell does wrestling make itself the only exception? It's something I've wondered for years, and I've never talked to anyone who could explain it. A cursory google and wiki search reveals nothing helpful.

It's worth noting how, from a workrate standpoint, those WWF cards frequently look downright terrible. Especially when compared to the various competing territory shows, which were almost all far superior. Well, Florida wasn't, but the others were sure as hell putting on better action than the company which eventually beat them. How often did shows with both Hogan and Andre on the card draw less than a thousand people? I know Memphis was the last territorial holdout, but it's bizarre that having Hulk and the Giant can't even get you 10% of a regular Jarrett crowd.

I know wrestling brings a lot of this crap on itself with its wheezy old insistence on clinging to the last shreds of kayfabe, but it still seems odd. Especially when the loudest complainers are usually non-fans in the first place, PTC types of the "why don't these morons understand it's all fake?!" mindset. I do still wonder how they get away with airing their television shows with the entire production crew going uncredited. Pretty sure the tech unions have very specific rules about that sort of thing. Offhand, I can't think of another show on television which never lists any credits at all.

The mid-90s was awfully sissy about that sort of thing. Didn't the Tommy/Beulah/Kimona deal get ECW thrown off some networks? Nobody would give a fuck about that sort of thing now. For a long time, wrestling television shows were held to this weird double standard where they weren't allowed to present "edgy" content like regular television routinely did. The Austin/Pillman gun incident was held to be the most controversial thing on the entire USA network, even though they routinely aired cop shows or spy shows in which people got shot dead on every single episode.

They posted that article before in the free public section of the Torch, which is where I read it. So I doubt anyone would get mad about it being shared now.

The issue was that most of those guys were past their prime. Some long past it, in the case of Dusty. And the Nastys were both either the first and second or second and third babyfaces in the cage, so they worked the majority of the match; and we all know, selling is not one of their strong points. Also not helping was that this was in the Hulkamania era of WCW, where the old Crockett blood and violence was being phased out and certainly didn't make for a friendly atmosphere for a classic Wargames bout.

I remember reading an article Mitchell wrote where he bashed SMW for presenting the foggy old Gordy as if he were the brilliant young Gordy, so he has a track record of saying that sort of thing.

I've seen American court cases where such rulings were stated. Of course, that was years ago, and I don't remember exactly what cases we're talking about in the "it can be an adult, but as long as they look young" factor. But I know for a fact that some dudes have been prosecuted for having creepy loli manga, which has been defined as kiddie porn. So it definitely doesn't have to be a photograph of a real person, a drawing on paper counts as far as the law's concerned in some states.

Am I the only one who was never impressed with MVP? He frequently seemed awfully sloppy, botching a nearly Kennedy-esque number of moves in various little ways. And he tended to blow up surprisingly fast, usually sucking wind hard by the five minute mark.

It's a members-only board, so it's not exactly open to just anyone who happens to wander by. Don't you need to be a subscriber in order to join? Our weird child pornography laws are stated in an incredibly vague manner, open to vast interpretation. Basically, it means whatever the authorities want it to mean. Some jurisdictions have even ruled that pics of legal adults who look underage can be counted as kiddy porn. It doesn't even have to be a photograph of a real person, drawings have been ruled to count as well. Technically, any pictorial representation of anything which could be interpreted as a child can be counted as porn under some of these statutes. (I'm not using this to defend what sounds like a damn creepy F4 thread, just pointing out that our laws are very fucking strange on this topic.) Not exactly. Bryan was ranting about how great the traditional Wargames formula is, and how it works even when you've got crappy workers in the match; considering that this one included the Nasty Boys and Dusty 1994, he had a point. When it came to Funk, all he said was that Terry looked odd this night, like maybe he was drunk.

E&C weren't really booked as the top heel team at the time, I'd say that distinction went to Road Dogg & X-Pac. Even though they never got the belts, they were the pet tag team of the whole McMahon-Helmsley Factime era. They did fewer jobs and got more face time on television than any of the other teams. DX was the heel team that was used to turn the Dudleys face, too.

Oh, you mean "in an awesome feud with the Rock which made him look like a legitimate top guy" Jericho, not "pathetic toady to Stephanie and no threat whatsoever to God Emperor HHH" Jericho. One did follow hard upon the other.

Not like there's much competition, outside of maybe a couple of the Bret matches.

Heh, I totally forgot about that. He started out in real late '99 as a generic monster heel. I remember seeing Tracey Smothers jobbing to him on Heat one time, before the dancing gimmick started.

Totally agree with that. I've never understood the "yeah he won, but it was boring" complaint about some fights. And? Would you have liked the guys to call some spots in the back before the fight in order to spice it up? "Hey Mir, you go for a powerbomb and I'll reverse it into a hurricanrana". When you're confined in a small space with an athletic badass who's trying to beat the shit out of you, your mind is hardly focused on entertaining the crowd. The fighters have very little control over how "exciting" their fight is, otherwise every fight would be an action-packed edge-of-your-seat experience. There have been a very small number of guys who can actually do that, Sakuraba probably being the best example, but even then there's no guarantee that they won't go out there on the night and turn in a stinker. If you don't stress the importance of winning over all other factors, then it's not a goddamned sport.

Lawler did wrestle all of those guys. I know he beat Hogan by DQ, I assume he went over Savage at some point in their feud, and then I dunno what the finish to his one or two matches with Flair were. Point is, he's close enough that it kinda counts. But Kerry? I don't think he ever so much as stepped in the ring with Hogan or Savage, and any non-casual fan at the time would've known that. That nicely illustrates the difference between acceptable wrestling hyperbole that everyone will tolerate, and a blatant lie which shows contempt for the marks.

They did fuck Test over pretty hard. After the wedding, he had a tepid feud with DX that quickly fizzled out with him jobbing every night. Then he was thrown into the Hardcore division, which was basically an island of misfit toys where they quarentined talent whom they didn't know what else to do with. Then they turned him heel for no apparent reason and stuck him in the T&A team. In hindsight that was actually a good pairing, Albert and Trish were both very green but obviously talented. But at the time, fans fucking hated them and they had zero street cred. He was with the company for years afterward, but did little of note. For a guy who was around and semi-pushed as long as he was, Test got surprisingly few actual storylines thrown his way. I don't agree with the "they didn't make any new stars" talking point. I'd argue that Jericho counted; he was pushed harder in his debut on WWF television than his former employer had ever done with him. Edge & Christian and the Hardys had already been around before the year started, but it was in '99 that they broke out and became names. Towards the end of the year, they actually had a really nice little tag division, with teams like Too Cool or the Hollys who generally had decent matches, plus the Dudleys and Acolytes and probably some others I'm forgetting. The reformed Outlaws mostly sucked, but they were the only glaring flaw in the division. Sure these new guys only got going in the last couple months of the year, but better late than never.