Mad Dog

Kobashi was pretty brutal to sit through after about 2001. People were going easy on the guy because he was considered "old" for his big GHC reign.

Isn't everyone kind of frustrating to watch in NOAH?

His series of matches against Vader in WCW were good.

I've seen a lot of Ultimate Warrior matches and promos the last year or two. It's fun to make fun of the Warrior but I really feel like people jump on him a little too much. His promos are goofy and out there but he gets the point across. You have to pay attention but you usually know what he was talking about. His matches weren't all that bad in the 1989-1991 range. He had good matches with Hogan, Savage, Rude, Slaughter and even a few of the Undertaker matches weren't all that bad. I'm not trying to claim that the Warrior is this hidden gem or anything. Just that he has a little more merit than most people are willing to give him credit for.

The Gilbert/Funk feud has been really good. The shows are surprisingly watchable considering the roster.

Well yeah but I consider that more of a stupid "run before you can walk" decesion that hopefully they'll learn from. The numbers in their usual markets still seem to be decent or better, they just need to realise going into a new place after only a few months of tv isn't a recipee for huge success. So long as they avoid stuff like that I don't see why they won't slowly grow. They still haven't learned their lesson. They're trying to go to markets like Cincinnati instead of Columbus. They're not showing a desire to learn from their mistakes.

They've never had a clue on who their target audience was. Jerry wanted it to be family wrestling when it started and show 1 had the Johnsons wandering around. So yeah, they've always been counter-productive with that. Honestly, it seems like they're more popular overseas at this point. I think RoH is even more clueless about their target demo though. It should be interesting to see who goes under first. TNA is in bad shape but they seem a little more stable than RoH at the moment.

Cox mentioned it above. It was about making some extra money by keeping regulations like that up. State athletic commissions will still get involved with wrestling. I think one state commission was trying to make it illegal to blade a couple of years ago, I don't recall the state though.

I think they could if they completely stopped running PPV, stopped traveling and running house shows and tried to live off of DVD sales and the international rights to Impact. They'd need to dump dead weight talent too. Rob Van Dam, Hogan, Bischoff and guys like that can go. I would keep Sting and Angle out of that highly paid crowd though. They were making a profit around 2007-2008 range from what I remember. But then, people were still buying the PPV and they didn't go crazy and bring in a bunch of high priced guys either. But I think they need to operate more like a tv show than a real wrestling promotion. Run one date a month, tape 4-6 episodes of Impact at a time. Run with a tighter crew of 30 guys. Sell advertising on the ring. Maybe develop a secondary show to bundle with Impact so you can charge a little more in the international markets. Try to get in with more markets. I think if they had anyone that could remotely think outside of the box and go away from what they think a wrestling promotion needs to do they could survive. They just need to stop dumping on money that a wrestling promotion is supposed to do.

A peak can be long or short. Some guys it might be as short as a couple of months, other guys like Flair would be several years. This can also be effected by injuries, promotion moves, other external stimuli.

I had mentioned Rude in another thread. He really figured it out around the start of the Warrior feud in 1989 and started putting on good matches. How about Vader? Even as the Baby Bull Leon White in the AWA he was putting on good matches against Buddy Rose and Doug Somers and Hansen. He wasn't even wrestling as the super stiff guy he became. He was working more as a big bumping, big man that did some high flying moves to wow the crowds.

I think outside the ring is at the discretion of the referee.

NWA Hollywood currently does the over the top rope DQ rule. That's the only promotion I know of that currently does it.

Rebel has worked with more competent talent thus far than Johnny Hotbody has. Hotbody seems decent but he's feuding with Tommy Cairo. I'd say he's top 5 for who they have. I still have a long way to go so that idea might change with time.

Armando Estrada. He did Colt Cabana's podcast in the early days. He was running a restaurant but it closed due to the economy. I think they got pissed off at him for getting too much of a face reaction.

Todd has a radio show in New York now. Still pretty fucking terrible.

More ECW still. Jay Sulli and Stevie Wonderful are such terrible announcers that they're making me yearn for Joey Styles to show up in a few months of television. There have been some real gems though. Sulli must have a word of the day calendar or something because he gets fixated on a different word every week. One week he kept saying despicable and sounded exactly like Daffy Duck while saying it. My favorite exchange from them so far was during a Sandman match. Sulli was trying to hype him up: Sulli: "He's a great wrestler that goes both ways..." and then he yammers on for another couple of minutes. Wonderful: "Goes both ways huh?" They also fuck up a lot. They announce the wrong matches, they forget what week they're on during tapings. And god help you if they let Sulli and Todd Gordon in the booth alone. So far the Rockin' Rebel has been the stand out worker of the early days. He's easily the third best worker on the roster after Terry Funk and Eddie Gilbert. Speaking of Gilbert, he plasters himself on television a little too much. One week he had a match, like three promos and an angle. It was just too much. Still enjoying it though the last episode totally sucked.

If you think Tim Horner, Bland Low Card Guy is bad, just try to watch the period where he was main eventing in Smoky Mountain. They tried every trick in the book to get him over, and he was still colorless Timmy Horner. They had him saving kittens from trees and helping old ladies across the street in vintages too. He got lots of promo time too. He'd do all the talking and have several guys standing around him that could talk better. He really is a low point of early SMW.

ECW Hardcore TV... well the show that evolves into ECW Hardcore TV eventually. It's kind of creepy seeing the Sandman play a surfer and cut do-gooder groveling babyface promos. The Rockin' Rebel breaking the surfboard over his head was great and Funk cut an awesome crazy old man promo on episode 3. So far, I've found it to be a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting.

It never felt like Rude "got it" until the Warrior feud in 89.

Steamboat even cam back as an old man for a gimmick match with Chris Jericho and still looked good. I've seen some sub-par Steamboat matches here and there but I wouldn't say I've seen a bad Steamboat match. I've certainly not seen a match where his work was bad. I can't even come up with many times I've seen him blow a spot. Even his WWF squashes in the 80s had good execution on his part.

Michael Jordan had his fair share of sucky performances too. It doesn't mean he wasn't the greatest player of all time. Sure, anyone with a 20 year career is going to have tons of bad matches to their name. That's just part of being human. The question here is could you depend on Steamboat to go out there and give a good performance 9 times out of 10. As an aside to that, just because a match is bad doesn't mean that a particular wrestler gave a bad performance. You can go out there, put on a great performance, do nothing wrong and have your opponent totally ruin the match.

Sabu is the king of hit or miss. So many things that can go wrong. He might blow a spot or get pissed off. You tend to know when you're in trouble during a Sabu match. Jeff Jarrett is really consistent across his career. Doesn't have great matches but puts on the same level of solid matches with just about everyone.

Armstrong I think was a better overall package. I don't think he's a no-brainer as Horowitz has a lot of merit though. Watching SMW, he pulls out a huge variety of moves on a weekly basis. I really don't like him as Jack Hart though.

Weird side note to this. I have always assumed that Japanese wrestlers called their matches in English. Liger is very verbal in his matches and he almost always calls stuff out in English. I know I've heard other guys use English during matches too.