Mad Dog

I think the Attitude era is an easy scapegoat. The problems in the WWE right now are booking related and a lack of effort put into building the next generation of stars. The effects of the Attitude Era were pretty much gone by the time 2003/2004 had rolled around. The big downturn in business for them was booking related. As far as moves not meaning anything, again that's not true. The WWE actually did a really good job of scaling back their style and then letting guys like the Wyatts and Shield push the boundaries with a few riskier moves to great effect.

6 episodes in on 1985 World Wide Wrestling. Terry Funk and Ox Baker couldn't get the job done so JJ Dillon brings in Dory Funk Jr. to try and take out Dick Slater. I have to say I love this angle. It's interesting to see who Dillon digs up on a weekly basis. I didn't care for the Kernodle/Steamboat vs. Russians match but the crowd heat for the match and the segment where Kernodle fights them off from the Russian flag was pretty intense.

Uber fans are weird to me. This guy was in front of me. Waited all that time to meet Foley and then asked something completely stupid about what the boys in the back thought about Linda trying to run for Senate. Then literally babbled the whole time and I think Foley got in 4 words the whole time. It was just weird to see.

Yeah, he told us that he met Tiger Woods and that was the first thing Tiger asked him. My wife is sort of a fan but she demanded I find her the match from WCW where he debuted and dropped the elbow on his tag team partner when we got home. He talked about that.

My wife came and had a really good time but she was a fan in her younger days. He's a good storyteller and he's funny and it's not all wrestling so I think she'll get sucked in. And failing that, it's a comedy club and you can get her boozed up first. It looked like he was signing things people brought. I wish I had brought his book. The 8x10s are $10 and the t-shirts are $25. A picture with him was free.

Foley's show was really good. Not much new ground was covered if you've read his books but it was really fun. He did some Q&A afterwards. I got my picture taken with him afterwards, got a signed picture and talked with him for maybe 30 seconds. Overall, really fun evening and worth checking out if he comes to your area.

I'm going to be about 5 feet away from Foley for his show.

Social media creeping into promos is one of the worst things to ever happen to wrestling.

I wanted to throw David Crockett out there for the underrated category. I'm not talking about the screaming David Crockett that started poking his head out in 1986. I'm talking about the David Crockett in 1985. The guy who didn't scream, the guy that loved Ric Flair even when he was being a dick. I watched an episode of World Wide Wrestling where Dan Spivey put Paul Jones in a full nelson and Crockett was just taunting the injured Jones afterwards and it was pure awesome. Also the first time Tully Blanchard brought Baby Doll out he played it up perfectly as being totally awe struck by her. I admit he got annoying but there were times where he really added to things.

I knew it was some configuration of that. D'Lo/Jarrett was 99 then.

It hurt WCW a lot when they cut an hour off.

They'll never scale Raw back to 2 hours. The loss of ad revenue would kill their bottom line. You're talking about cutting their main ad revenue source by 33%. They'll continue to water down the product before ever giving that money up.

You at least had good matches in 1998. 1995 was brutal as the summer set in. The worst PPV main event ever in Diesel/Mabel and WCW was just an absolute mess as they were WWF-lite.

Summerslam had D'Lo/Jarrett, Rock/HHH, Pac/Venus and Taker/Austin as solid to good matches. WCW had Golberg/DDP on PPV, the DDP/Raven/Benoit feud, Jericho, Chavo and Pepe, Luger/Hart, Martel and the Horsemen return. WCW had 4-5 decent to good PPVs that year. They also had Tokyo Magnum as the lackey for Disco and Wright which was good.

Summerslam 98 was a pretty good PPV.

Yeah, I think it was LeRoy McGuirk.

1995 was pretty bad.

I don't think Watts was racist. I think a person's actions should speak louder than their words do. I think he might be ignorant but that's not the same as being a racist. People like to blast him but that's because they don't understand the philosophy behind why he was always looking for black wrestlers to push. The green meant more than black isn't necessarily true. Watts talked about how the old owner of Mid-South complained that there were too many black wrestlers and fans at the shows. I can't for the life of me remember his name. Watts essentially told him that their money was just as green. I honestly think it would be easier to argue Vince Jr. is a racist.

I knocked out the first month of the 1985 World Wide Wrestling show. Really loving it, wish I had access to the Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling show. I was also dismayed to learn that I'm missing the last two shows from the 1985 World Championship Wrestling set I have. Now I'm going to have to figure out how to replace those. Really bummed about that. Anyways, I'm loving the heel turn they did with Wahoo McDaniel here. He's playing this bitter heel and his promos are some good stuff. You can just tell that he believes every word coming out of his mouth about Ric Flair. They've slowly started adding in the Magnum TA stuff and the way he's dismissing Magnum TA as a challenger is great. I also love the angle where Dillon has a wanted poster on Dick Slater. The Terry Funk attack was awesome and I'm looking forward to Ox Baker showing up now. I got this set because I wanted more context to their start on World Championship Wrestling and I just can't stop watching. I'm even considering going back and getting the 1984 set and watching that now.

1. He's referencing the Colon title change. What I always had heard with the Veneno match is that Flair had Veneno beat him on the fly because he was legit scared that the crowd would kill him if he won. So Flair let him pin him, crowd goes home happy and Flair leaves with the belt and no one was the wiser. That might be bullshit, you never know with those stories. I think video does exist of that title change. 2. I'm guessing it was a "this match is so huge we need a former NWA World Champion to referee it". The NWA loved using former champions for things like that.

I was watching the 1/12/1985 episode of World Wide Wrestling. Holy shit, that Flair promo after Wahoo attacked him was super intense. That might be one of the best Flair promos I've ever seen.

I'm a month in on Superstars and Wrestling Challenge. I saw the famous British Bulldogs squash from Foley's book. That's an interesting watch if you remember what Foley wrote about it. One of the things they do that I hate is teaming up a mid-carder with an obvious jobber. They love doing that with Billy Jack Haynes. It was also weird seeing them debut Koko B. Ware to a loss on the first episode. I'm past those awful Gorilla, Jimmy V and Ernie Ladd Challenge episodes, thank god. Now I just have to wait six months to be rid of Bruno Sammartino. I'm hoping I can keep up with this because I really do want to watch the WWF tv of the late 80s and early 90s.

I'm going to see Mick Foley's one man show on Tuesday.

The silver lining in all of this means he can't ruin Jarrett's new promotion right away.

I think Kurt was at his best when he was starting out in 99 and 2000 when other guys were calling the matches. Look at his TNA work, his best stuff was when he had to let someone like Jarrett or Sting call the match and they made him slow the fuck down. Angle has always thought a good match is throwing as many bombs as possible. I agree on the mid to late 80s WWF tag team division being overrated. I was thinking about my top 10 tag teams of the 80s and the Hart Foundation, Rockers and Arn/Tully were the only teams I was considering.