Mad Dog

I like Nick Aldis and I think he's been a good champion. But he's essentially been their champion for 4 years now. I just need to feel some sort of endgame with him and it just doesn't feel like they have anyone that is going to credibly take the belt off of him.

It's worse. They showed Sandy Parker footage. She's a 70s wrestler.

I mentioned it on a podcast about the return of Powerrr and wished I hadn't. It would be awesome and they really don't have anyone of that caliber to take it off of Aldis.

So I have enjoyed it so far but it doesn't feel like they have anyone that they are comfortable having beat Aldis and it really hampers the product. Honestly, if I was running Powerrr, I would be talking with AEW about some talent borrowing. I think getting someone like Dustin Rhodes to come in and have a run with the belt would be really good.

Like she's just there to yell for an entrance. Why even fucking bother if that's all you're going to do.

It wouldn't be NXT if you didn't have a 40 minute main event with Cole/Ciampa Gargano in there.

I honestly don't know what the fuck they're doing with her.

That's an interesting question. I did some looking into boxing. I know it's not a perfect comparison. But boxing as we know it started taking effect in 1867. Gloves, weight classes, knock down rules, etc. Also, useless addition but I was curious. It looks like the forward pass first happened in football in 1906.

I was thinking too. Could you imagine MMA with no time limit and no ref standing guys up. They could be in the guard forever.

That was in some books I have read earlier as well. I know Idiots Guide To Pro Wrestling had the Gold Dust Trio as the origin of the worked match. I think people that buy into that also buy into the idea that people were more easily entertained back then. I can't imagine people would be super thrilled if they spent their day off to go watch two guys sit in a headlock for 2 hours. It feels like to me if it was a shoot at any point, promoters quickly realized it wasn't entertaining enough to be sustainable as a real sport.

I always found the Gotch/Hackenschmit stuff to be a very obvious angle to work up interest but a lot of historical stuff tries to sell that as real.

What are the most popular theories about when they started working matches? I know a lot of people buy the "Ed Lewis was so good we had to start doing worked finishes" but that strikes me as bullshit. It seems like it was already worked to some degree when he became that mainstay as World Champion.

Did stadium shows ever work out for anyone in the 80s?

They did it with Clash of the Champions I in 1988 and actually hurt Wrestlemania really bad. They had a much better card going against a really week Mania though.

I liked the Trevor Murdoch angle with Adonis this week. Tim Storm was also brilliant with the look on his face when Nick Aldis was dressing him down. Overall, it's been okay. The piped in crowd is bad and I have no idea why they hired Tyrus.

Maybe mid Janaury. I know Crockett had the book for like 2-3 weeks before he came in.

I do think the debut of Steamboat was a good angle and Flair/Windham breaking Gilbert's nose on the cement the next week were good. I believe the Gilbert nose break was a rerun of something they did with Steamboat in the late 70s. But if it works it works. I thought the Michael Hayes heel turn was mostly well handled and he probably booked that. He did kill WCW's relationship with All Japan though.

1988-1989 to me is kind of the birth of the modern era. That's when people like Scott, Watts, etc. all got left in the dustbin of history. Fans began to have different expectations and wrestling became a TV product over a live show model using TV as infomercials.

And to add. Chi-Town has some wonky finishes in there too. I think more than one match has the both guys are pinned, one guy barely gets a shoulder up finish.

A lot of the really well regarded stuff is long after he's gone. Chi-Town Rumble was primarily him and it's not a very good show outside of Flair/Steamboat and Luger/Windham. A lot of really slow paced stuff that got way too much time like Hayes/Assassin or Reed/Sting.

Scott was gone by late March or early April. I think he's done by the time they get to Center Stage.

I also think his bad runs at the end of the 80s doesn't reflect on his work in the 70s or 80s. Everyone has their expiration date. Watts run in WCW doesn't effect what he did in Mid-South and the UWF. In the comic realm. Go read something Alan Moore has done the last 10-15 years. Pretty good shot it's garbage but that doesn't really take away from his really good work in the 80s and 90s.

His WCCW run wasn't particularly good either. Let's remove the pros and cons of his thought process. He failed to understand and operate in a corporation environment. This was early into a buyout and TV people aren't going to accept tanking a rating. And again, if you watch the TV at the time, it's not like he was short term tanking things to build a bunch of young guys. If anything he was undercutting Sting who was his young gun. That match with Butch Reed at Chi-Town is a crime and he should have been fired for exposing Sting on PPV like that.

The TV is brutally boring at the time and it's obvious he just doesn't get guys like Sting. I would say he is fairly portrayed for this time. Bix and Zellner did a breakdown of his brief run and it's just a guy that was out of touch with the times.

It amuses me that Danhausen won both of them over with his Cameos.