Mad Dog

Watts in his interview talked about running Mid-South. The old promoter Leroy McGuirk came to one of the shows and complained that there were too many "n-words on the card and in the crowd" which pissed Watts off quite a bit. But look at the WWE. The Rock is the only black man to have held the WWE Championship. If you throw the world title in there, you can add in Booker T. And if you really want to break it down. Of the WCW/WWE/TNA/NWA World Titles. Vince Russo has put World Titles on the Rock, Booker T and Ron Killings. That's pretty much the entire list of guys minus Bobo Brazil and Ron Simmons. That's really just pathetic that one guy can claim 3/5 for their first world championship.

You could probably get those Thing comics from quarter bins in most shops.

The Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation was one of my favorite Marvel storylines. I wish they'd revisit it at some point.

The main reason was money. NFL players in the 60s/70s didn't make anywhere near what they make now. Most needed an offseason job and wrestling was a good way to make some money. For a hint, the minimum salary for a veteran in 1970 was around $13,000. The average NFL salary for that time frame ranged from 20k to 60k. Not bad for 1970 but you can see why guys would want to moonlight as a wrestler especially if they knew what kind of payoffs you could get. Watts in his shoots said he got into wrestling because he knew Wahoo McDaniel and saw one of the checks he was cashing from just working a weekend. I think he had said Wahoo had made like $3000 for 2 nights or something like that. On top of that, contracts were less restricted. If you remember back in 2004 when Urlacher did a TNA show that the Chicago Bears flipped out and made him stop. Things like Aaron Boone blowing out his knee playing basketball and the various idiots that have injured themselves on motorcycles, a lot of teams have started putting restrictions into the contract of what their players can do offseason, wrestling included. The real answer I think is that wrestling paid more than football in the 60s and 70s and now football is a better payoff. No sense in losing a season worth 2 million because you decided to moonlight in RoH for $750 a match.

I think before.

I think it could work in the context that I think you could get that character over and get the fans to cheer it. There's been several gay characters introduced into comic books over the last 30ish years and the well thought out, well written ones have been well accepted by readers. Kevin Keller didn't create much controversy in Archie Comics either. I think you would just need a younger generation of writers and bookers to come in and for Vince and HHH to not get involved.

Ah gotcha. I think WCW would've been the best bet for developing that kind of gimmick eventually. I don't think the WWE could control themselves with that kind of character for very long.

Here's a link to his original mail-in toy: http://www.yojoe.com/action/85/sgtslaughter.shtml

What about Adrian Street? His gimmick had most of the qualities you're looking for. Okay, so he dressed up a lot but he was pretty straight forward in the ring.

You have to go about 2 minutes in but this is still epic 15 years later and this is probably my favorite Hogan moment of his Hollywood run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIP_x2V3has

I really hate to defend Beefcake here. I really do, but you have to break Beefcake's career into two segments. Pre-accident and post-accident. Beefcake post-accident was an absolute waste of space and completely sucked. Pre-accident Beefcake had a good gimmick and some charisma and had moments of being okay in the ring.

It still amazes me to this day that the WWF had Flair and Hogan and didn't have them face each other in any meaningful sort of way.

I think that shit was Nash more than Hogan. I mean Hogan did let DDP take him out the next month at Spring Stampede. But the original point, that stuff reeked of the utter garbage that the Nash booking had been doing so I blame it on him.

what That was Don Callis in the WWF. He managed the Truth Commission in the WWF.

Even Tito Santana's post-prime years were better than Storm's. Look at 1990. Tito made it to the final of the I.C. title tournament and made it to the final match at Survivor Series. He got a strictly mid-card push that year but I think that year is more impressive than anything Storm did in the WWE. People need to go back and watch that Regal/Storm team to see just how miserable and unover they were.

That's a little offensive to the career of Paul Roma.

I find WWF squash matches to be really tedious to sit through. It feels like the stars are just sleep walking through the match most of the time and it always feels slow and plodding. The matches always seem to go on too long. I find myself bored after about an episode. JCP shows on the other hand, I could sit through hours of squash matches on those shows. Just seeing the way the JCP guys absolutely destroy guys week after week makes me really happy. The JCP shows just feel so fast paced and fun compared to the WWF television.

If you go back to the 85-86 time frame he has a shitload of good matches. Really, his entire first reign had a lot of good matches. I found some random tape in my collection and I was blown away by how good the Hogan matches were on there.

I'll start it off. It still amazes me to this day when I go back and watch Bash at the Beach 1996. The fans were legit outraged at what Hogan did and he then proceeded to just stir the pot and get them even more pissed off. Also from this era, it still seems like Hogan is legit terrified of Sting and it really gave Sting this aura of being a guy you didn't want to fuck with. I loved his cameo in Gremlins 2. I fucking hate that they never show it on tv. Adding to his media roles, I thought his commercial with Alf was enjoyable. Loss has mentioned this before. But his match with the Genius on SNME where Poffo covers his mouth with his hands during the Hulk Up is hilarious. Hogan/Andre is a bad match but has really good narrative. I like how the match is about Andre trying to pace himself and slowly wear Hogan down without punching himself out. The bodyslam is still epic 25 years later.

I'm a sucker for announcer angles. That one is pretty good.

This is exactly why I dislike RoH so much. It always feels self-indulgent and ridiculous when every other indy match has two guys chopping the shit out of each other and no selling it. And it always astounds me how they managed to grab on to the absolute worst excesses of Japanese wrestling. A lot of cartoonists talk about how when you're a cartoonist, you start off by aping the Far Side and then you eventually find your own voice. It feels like a lot of guys like Davey Richards are like those guys that never get past the aping the Far Side phase of their career.

Everyone builds up the black marks in the twilight of their lives. We've all seen that athlete that hung on for a few two many seasons or had that favorite author that wrote a few too many books. It doesn't take away from the accomplishments earlier in their live, it's just kind of the human condition at work.

If you go back to the last 4-6 months of Dusty's WWF run, he's just in a different realm as a talker. Everyone is saying all this cartoony shit and then out comes Rhodes and it felt so real compared to everyone else. He was especially good when they brought Dustin in.

I'm not sure if he was cheating or he just didn't quite understand how to do it right. I really wish they would've capped Ackbar stalling the week before because Ackbar just goes on this huge promo and talks right through the credits of the show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MycGlTq8Bb4 This is missing the week before where Ellering challenged and Ackbar fillibustered until the show faded to black.