Mad Dog

I have a hard time being objective with Tanahashi. I've followed NJPW regularly from about late 2000 until now. So his rise to IWGP Champion marked the turn around for the company in the mid 2000s so I'm grateful to him for that. I remember the first time I saw him on a tape, probably in 2001, I had him pegged as the future ace of the company. I would agree with good, not great for him though.

No. I don't like what he was doing to NJPW in the early 00s and he's hit or miss with me as a worker. But hate is too strong of a word for it. I hate HHH and Randy Orton. I don't have that level of emotion toward Inoki.

The one appearance he made on Simmons podcast, I was stunned about how little he seemed to know historically. I don't consider myself to be on par with most people here when it comes to my knowledge but there were 6 or 7 times in a 30 minute conversation where he had me almost screaming at my Ipod over things he didn't know. The only one I remembered off the top of my head was he didn't seem to realize that Curt Hennig was injured when he dropped the IC belt to Bret Hart.

Hasn't Road Warrior Animal had a pretty normal life outside the ring?

I'd love to see where both would be if they didn't stray from their "reasons for notoriety." I.e. if Tyson hadn't become such a train wreck with the rape, the arrest and some of the batshit stuff he's done and said since, and being someone that TV show and movie producers would bring in as a cameo or whatnot (BTW, Mel Gibson was dropped from Hangover II because of his antisemitic and off the rails drunken tirades rubbed the actors the wrong way, which is fair, but they'd rather do scenes with a CONVICTED RAPIST?) Train wreck was part of the deal with Tyson from early on. The Robin Givens interview came when he was still clearly the No. 1 boxing star in the world. There was never a version of him that wasn't headed down that path. I was thinking last night about whether Tyson is clearly bigger than Hogan. He probably is, because he was such a huge figure both for straight sports fans and in tabloid culture. Particularly surreal is his third act as a beloved old crazy, touring the country with a one-man show. That I did not see coming, though perhaps I should've, because Mike was always super-engaging in doses. I think Hogan is a little bigger now. I've had to explain to more than one younger coworker about just how huge Tyson was at his peak.

Mike Tyson

My 11 year old niece who has never watched 5 seconds of wrestling knows who Hulk Hogan is. She probably doesn't know who Arnold or Tom Cruise are off the top of her head. She definitely doesn't know Kathy Griffin. I would say in the 1980s, he was almost as big as Tyson was. Even the kids who didn't watch wrestling knew who Hulk Hogan was.

The WWE is actually putting out the best alternative product to itself in NXT. They've completely stolen the thunder of the indy scene this year with that show.

I don't think Cena is part of the problem. He's stale on top but he doesn't go out of his way to undercut the guys below him.

I'll still watch NXT because that show is awesome but the regular product stuff I probably won't unless I'm after a specific match.

This PPV was kind of the end of my watching again. I lasted 14 months. My biggest frustration with the modern product is there are all these interesting guys kicking around on the roster. DB, Punk, Ziggler, PTP, Cesaro, etc. and you have to constantly deal with the stop/go pushes and the fact that you live under the constant threat of HHH ruining things. They handled the Orton/DB feud as badly as they could have possibly handled it. I don't see why they couldn't have gone with Orton/Big Show for a couple of months and just have DB destroy HHH's minions on PPV every month. You can't sustain momentum by wrestling a stiff like Orton on a monthly basis. He's not that over and he has a habit of dragging his opponents down with him.

That DDP/Savage match was really good.

Here's a couple of IWA videos I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzryg-dBed0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYDAuTt3tAA

Looking over some WCCW results looks like he had wins over Chris Adams, Matt Bourne, Abby, Jack Victory, Black Bart, Buzz Sawyer and Killer Brooks. Bruiser Brody beat him on both of their meetings.

Columbus, OH has the IWA. They seem to disappear every so often. They never stop running shows as far as I can tell but you kind of have to be in their hardcore fanbase to really keep up with where they're running a show at any given time. They seem to run mostly bars anymore. It's run by a guy named Wild Bull Miller who's biggest claim to fame was doing jobs on TBS in the mid 80s as Aaron Star. This promotion has been kicking around since 1988 and I have no idea how they've pulled that off. My biggest exposure to them was in the late 90s. They ran television on the public access channel here. Just a total low rent deal. They were running a building at one point where they couldn't do top rope moves because the ceiling was so low. They have a fake Doink the Clown.

She couldn't bump was part of the problem I think. I fucking hated her King of the Ring year where they were hyping her finisher as the low blow. God, I hated that year. I think the NAO were over, Road Dogg at least was. Gunn also had the crowds behind him when he was feuding with Shamrock in early 99. X-Pac was obviously leaps and bounds more over than any other member of the group.

Flash caught the first one wrong but it's Will Clark.

Even in the expanded DX, I always thought he was the least essentially and least over member of the group. Billy Gunn might have been less over than him but that's a big if to me.

I remember liking it but I sat through a show of really shitty wrestling before I got to it. So I might have overrated it at the time. I haven't seen that match since XV aired.

Was it? I haven't seen it in a long time and the rest of that show was so shitty I must have remembered it incorrectly. Okay, point still stands. Main events quickly went downhill after Summerslam 1998.

I actually think the main events started going downhill at that point. The Foley/Rock stuff wasn't good inring wise as the Rock wasn't quite ready in the main event slot yet. You had the good Austin/Rock main event at Mania and they went back to Austin/Taker. Except the Taker's hip problems really drug the quality of his work down and Austin was starting to struggle a bit too. HHH didn't help matters as he wasn't very good in 1999.

I think the only memory I have of that HHH IC title reign was him doing an episode of the Drew Carey Show with the belt.

I thought Trips got hurt almost immediately after that ladder match and essentially vacated the belt pretty quickly.

I send a lot of long shots out there which brings my overall rate down. Jerry Rice is a tough guy to get as most sites list him at about a 20% return guy. So I took a big risk with him and it paid off for me.

About a 62 percent success rate.