Al

I'm going back through the book and making a list. The lucha stuff in particular has been a blind spot in my wrestling viewing, I think the only Lucha matches I had seen are Chicana/MS-1 and Atlantis/Villano. And current century indy stuff, though I'll admit when it comes to stabbing I nope the fuck right out of there.

Just finished this. The illustrations are really top notch. And quite a few matches I'm interested in checking out for myself.

In our state we're going full capacity next month. The minor league team in Reading is advertising "feel NORMAL again!" If that's up north with our democratic governor, Florida doesn't have a prayer.

I've only seen pictures of Ramos, but I like that comparison.

Kevin Owens strikes me as a modern day Jerry Blackwell, though I think a few here will see that as heresy as well. No one is Harley. If they were they would be world champion right now.

I’m down on the match as a whole, but in fairness the commercial breaks don’t matter to the live audience.

The commercial breaks have really killed the rhythm.

Marko Stunt and Alexa Bliss are roughly the same size and I want to see them go 50/50 in a match.

Andre was as good a third party wrestling bio as I’ve ever read.

Read the Gary Hart pdf and certainly there's a lot to take away. But Hart may be the only person in the industry who had a higher opinion of Warrior over Sting.

I pictured Alexa Bliss' character gaining enough weight to wrestle like Wyatt and more or less came up with Bertha Faye. Rhonda would've deserved better too.

It's a job designed to take heat. WWE can't brush off their human resources department as a rogue element of a good company. That culture comes from the top.

Flair/Von Erich from Christmas Star Wars '82. Take a largely one-off appearance by Flair and spark the hottest feud in wrestling.

Between Mildred Burke and the Fabulous Moolah American womens wrestling went nearly fifty years without the champion doing a high profile job.

Remember the story of Ray Traylor getting his hand slammed in a limo door and not selling it?

My daughter completely destroyed my YouTube algorithms. It’s painful.

Legends inductees: 2020 Ray Stevens Brickhouse Brown Steve Williams Baron Michele Leone Gary Hart 2021 Pez Whatley Dick the Bruiser Ethel Johnson Buzz Sawyer Paul Boesch Their minority selections are getting bizarre (Johnson excepted, her story is worth highlighting).

Rounds lasted until a fighter was knocked or thrown down. It could be a few seconds or several minutes. Fights ended up being a mixture of boxing and collar-and-elbow wrestling. When John L. Sullivan fought Jake Kilrain in the last famous bare knuckle fight, Kilrain would slip to the ground as strategy to avoid punishment. Sullivan’s insistence on fighting future fights under Queensbury rules established them as the norm. A lot of those reforms such as doctors, maximum rounds, etc. came about in the 1920s as states such as New York created rules where boxing was previously banned. What’s interesting about wrestling is that in the 19th century a lot of it is that aforementioned collar-and-elbow style. Wrestlers would lock up and the object was to throw the other to the ground. Remember that prize fighting was outright banned in many states in that era. So a publicly exhibited wrestling match might actually have somewhat strict rules.

Gotch and Hackenschmidt in 1908 had an undercard. I found references to preliminary matches as early as 1902, typically just one match before the main attraction.

I remember reading accounts of Ernest Roeber around 1900 where they're clearly working angles. Here's a note from an 1880 newspaper. Wrestling is mentioned along with other sports. It would be awfully naive to think that every sport was crooked/fixed EXCEPT wrestling. The difference in that era was that wrestlers could compete if they HAD to. Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, May 22, 1880, Image 2 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress (loc.gov)

Deliberately tanking shows when you have a cartel imposed monopoly on a territory is one thing. Doing it post-expansion is insane.

That's a hell of a bribe honor

At this point it would be Triple H

Pro wrestling could use more step-family storylines...

And the Hall of Fame