Mad Dog

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised this doesn't happen more often. The parts with him saying he's going to take her to heaven are especially creepy. It is. There's the whole ring rat culture and all of that. There's just no real issue because the boys get some easy pussy on the side and no one is really complaining.

Chikara is a lot of fun. You won't see anything all time classic or anything but it is ridiculously fun. One of my favorite Chikara moments was Demolition in the 2008 King of Trios and the fans singing along to the theme song as they came out. You can honestly watch a lot of the backstage stuff on Youtube and see clipped versions of matches with their weekly podcast. Osaka Pro... you're not missing much. Dragon Gate and Chikara took a lot of the Osaka concepts and did it better.

Portland, Texas post 1986, AWA pre 1984, RoH after about 2005, Georgia and Detroit. Florida is also a hole but I've tried and tried with Florida and I just can't do it. Even when the promotion was still in relatively good shape, I didn't enjoy it at all.

The ESPN Classics stuff essentially picks up after Pro Wrestling USA fell apart and I don't recall ever seeing Backlund on any AWA show that's been on there.

For starters, I fucking hate Cole so more of him was a bad thing. It was really just with the regular announcing. He wouldn't shut the hell up. He'd be trying to do play by play and do his gimmick and it felt like every second of every show was devoted to him. It felt like he was just derailing and distracting from everything going on.

What is this a response to? Someone mentioned on the previous page that Benoit worked on the fly and had trashed DDP's match notes before a PPV match.

I like DG and everything because it tends to be mindless fun but wow, I think I threw up a little in my mouth reading that article.

I never thought Eddie Guerrero as Black Tiger was that great really. He had a good run in the junior tag league in 93 but other than that I can't really name you anything memorable he did under the mask. I don't think Dean Malenko was that great in any of his Japanese tours that I've seen. I disagree slightly on Samurai though. I've never bought a tape or DVD solely for an El Samurai match but I think an El Samurai match could sway a decision to buy or not buy something I was borderline on. He does deserve more credit though. A lot of the higher praised guys have fallen to the wayside in relatively quick fashion and El Samurai keeps putting on quality work a decade after the fact.

You're talking about the early 90s though. El Samurai didn't really reach his full potential until about 1996. Before that his performances tended to not stand out as much. But even then. El Samurai wasn't a flashy guy. He didn't have the same athletic ability as the guys you mentioned. His physical tools were a little more limited than them. So you won't see him do things as amazing as a Liger, Dragon, Sasuke or Ohtani. You won't have an El Samurai moment in your head. You'll just realize after awhile that he's been in a crap load of good matches over a really long period of time.

El Samurai: I'm really down on Bret Hart the worker currently. He's so utterly predictable in the ring that he's almost painful to sit through at times. I think I could turn on a Hart match, close my eyes and call his spots with a fair amount of accuracy. I think he had a lot of talent and was content to just get by more often than he should have. Hart also really shined in a promotion that was really devoid of talent during his biggest run. El Samurai on the other hand. I feel like he wasn't a really athletic guy and kind of awkward at times. With that said, I think once he hit his stride as a worker around 1996 that he really turned into an excellent worker. I think it's a testament to how good he was that he managed to stand out as a junior in New Japan. On Ultimo Dragon. I loved his J Crown semi-final match with Shinjiro Ohtani.

I think had Wrestlemania not been a drizzling piece of shit that year that it would be better remembered. I also think it would have been better remembered if Road Dogg hadn't lost the belt before it really effected anything other than the Wrestlemania card.

I tried watching WWE programming a few times this year. Heel Cole was so awful I never lasted more than a couple of minutes on any given show. I don't know how anyone in creative thought heel Cole was entertaining or deserved to go on for as long as it did.

Has anyone ever given a reason why that happened? Gunn was supposed to win the IC belt at the Royal Rumble but showed up late for the show and was punished by not getting the belt. I think literally Russo did that switch on a whim the day of that show.

How about Otto Wanz with the AWA Title. The fans were dying to see Hulk Hogan as the AWA Champion and instead they got him. On that note. Does anyone know what Wanz paid for his title reign?

We're neglecting to mention the week before. New Champion Lesnar comes out. Taker and Trips get into a brawl and Lesnar fled from them in fear.

How about just about every Shawn Michaels title reign out there. He was notorious for vacating the belt instead of losing to another wrestler. I think it hurt the WWF Title greatly until Austin won it in 1998. HHH also strikes again because the Rock essentially won their feud by pinning Vince McMahon in a six man tag to win the WWF Championship.

Punk got in that public brawl with Teddy Hart and got fired as a result.

I think you have to ask yourself one question about on-air Authority figure HHH and then you'll know if it will work or not. A heel/face punks out Authority figure HHH on the opening of Raw. Think Austin with the beer truck. How does HHH respond: 1. He shows up with a neck brace next week to sell what happened to him. 2. He misses a few weeks of television to sell the attack, maybe does a vintage where he talks about it. 3. He comes out on the next episode of Raw, pummels them mercilessly then kick, WHAM, PEDIGREE. 4. Before that episode of Raw, KICK, WHAM, PEDIGREE. 5. This scenario would never happen because no one would dare mess with HHH because he's such a bad ass. 6. This scenario would never happen because HHH would outsmart them before they attacked him. 7. HHH fights them off and Pedigrees them. 8. HHH shows up next week, a little battered but okay and puts the face/heel in a match that is intentionally stacked against them. If you answered with roughly 5 of those answers, it won't work. The problem I see here is that if HHH is a face, you'll have a heel like Punk. HHH will get behind every face and stack the deck in their favor and the face will ultimately fail. Rinse, repeat until HHH has to come out of retirement and ultimately beat the heel. Similar way in reverse to the face. I have no faith that this won't happen. I can see everyone under him looking impotent until HHH saves the day. I have roughly a decade of television to back that theory up.

Shark Boy and the Hulk Hands were hilarious for the couple of weeks they were doing that. I also believe they backtracked really quick after the tit incident because AJ Styles was really pissed about it and I think even threatened to quit over it. Styles/Sandman around February was a really good match. Probably the best Sandman match I've ever seen. I thought Styles was really on a roll that year. I also really liked the XXX/Lynn/Red title change.

I disargree. Gorilla loved Bret Hart, Koko B. Ware and Tito Santana. The Rude dig was at his gimmick and personality. It was an easy way to get under Heenan's skin. Ron Trongard was basically done as a wrestling announcer by 1988. So he was overshadowed by the irrational hatred of David Crockett. The AWA doesn't really count though. Being a sucky announcer was a requirement for the AWA. Eric Bischoff was probably the best announcer they had on ESPN and that's by default. Both Gagne's sucked, Larry Nelson sucked, Lee Marshall sucked and Ray Stevens might have been the worst announcer ever.

Since Cox got me watching SMW with his thread. I really like Bob Caudle and Dutch Mantell as a team. Mantell is really a good color commentator. Caudle, I honestly used to hate Caudle but he started growing on me several years ago. I've really grown to like his no nonsense approach to things.

Horner was booking for awhile but to quote Cornette "he couldn't book the fart after a meal at Taco Bell" so that all fell apart fairly quickly. I don't know how far or wide his actual booking was though. Horner had a stake in ownership too.

Horner still had the book around this time so that probably answers several of the questions to how they booked that feud. The whole Horner feud seemed to be trying too hard.

Every Misterio/Psicosis match I've seen in that 95-96 has been Psicosis trying to keep Misterio on the mat. Even their 95 J Cup exhibition was Psicosis trying to keep it on the mat. It just feels different than Malenko because Psicosis could kick it up a notch and do some high spots while Dean ultimately couldn't. Malenko always had to slow it back down because that's what he could do whereas Psicosis would switch gears and start doing big moves as the match heated up. That's typical rudo tactics though. Keep it on the mat, brawl, team up and bully on the tecnico.

Found my lost disc. It was hiding in with the 1986 World Championship Wrestling DVDs.