Al

The Chavo/Punk match worked because they had a place where the Gulf of Mexico met some sort of spillway rather than a beach. Fun match for tv. Michaels/Jericho from 2008 might be my second favorite Ladder match ever.

Andre's a tough one to judge. How do you book a sometimes attraction in this era? Andre was quite successful in part because he wasn't overexposed. Dusty Rhodes would've had a far longer run (or runs) as World Champion. I'm guessing Mil Mascaras probably sneaks in a run as well.

Hmmm, I thought he was down to JTTS level, he was in the WM2 battle royal but at the Big Event he jobbed out pretty quickly to Harley Race. I looked it up on Wikipedia, though, and it looks like he made it all the way to the finals of the King Of The Ring that year, so I guess he still had some name value at that point. There's a level above the JTTS. The wrestler who is over but in the midcard. He is not getting pushed. While the JTTS puts over a wrestler in a single match, the next level of wrestler puts the other over in a feud. Usually to set up a feud against a higher wrestler. Thinking of Chief Jay Strongbow in the 1970s, Jake Roberts in the 1980s, Santana in the early '90s. The JTTS match is rarely hyped. Usually it's filler.

The B-crew was in the Midwest. Harts vs Bulldogs, Savage vs Steele. Sheik and Volkoff on cards. Piper only wrestled twice between Wrestlemania 2 and September 7th. I assume he was shooting a movie. He returned and started the feud with Adonis.

Tito's cage match IC title victory against Greg Valentine is oddly underhyped. Probably the greatest finish to a cage match in WWF history. Also a blowoff to a fairly hot feud with Tito getting hurt, having surgery and cutting a promo from post-op, and coming back to reclaim his title from the man who hurt him.

It's more of a showcase, IMO. The JTTS match doesn't give a rub to the up and comer necessarily. Rather, the up and comer is getting an extended look thanks to a more competitive squash match. The wrestler gets 5-15 minutes of television time, gets to show off more of his arsenal and wrestling skills, becomes more familiar to the audience when he wrestles a competitive match. Plus it has the benefit that you can put a competitive match on a syndicated show without shaking up the landscape. Randy Savage vs. Koko B. Ware. The audience gets a ten minute match, they pop a bit for Koko, the Macho King wins and nothing has changed. But you've filled a spot and kept interest during the rest of the show with its jobber matches and interviews.

Tito rode a seven match Wrestlemania losing streak. Funks, Hart Foundation, Demolition, Martel, Barbarian, Mountie, Michaels. Forget if he won the dark match against Papa Shango at Wrestlemania IX.

Andre was hyped for the Rumble. His picture was even in WWF Magazine's Royal Rumble preview. WWF quietly removed him from the match about a week before the event, saying he was injured in Japan. The "who will manage Andre" angle came later in the year, IIRC.

Wasn't he still doing the El Matador gimmick at the time? He was in the dark match at Summerslam, jobbing to Papa Shango. No fuckin' way he was getting anywhere near the title around that time. Something weird I was reminded of: Tito was also Eastern Championship Wrestling heavyweight champion at this time, while still working for the WWF. Was it common for them to let their guys work a whole bunch of indy shows like that? Most likely. A bunch of WWF guys were working Memphis. Plus with houses so low, it probably helped to let workers make money on their own.

Wright is 36 years old. He's only two years older than John Cena. It's a shame he went back to Europe after WCW closed. Relatively speaking he'd still be in his wrestling prime.

What an awful idea. One of the reasons professional wrestling is worked in the first place is because no one wants to sit through a five hour match.

I actually think it has to do with music distribution rights. It took FOREVER to get season three out. All those songs that they perform need clearances. From what I've heard it's a huge pain in the ass to get them. WWE can cover up music in their dvd releases and not destroy the overall product. The muppets don't have that luxury.

I think so too. My girlfriend and I went grocery shopping, it was downright deserted.

Jim Henson's death really hurt the Muppets. He wasn't just a great innovator and puppeteer. He was a great performer. Looking back at the Muppet Show of the 70s, you get a really good repour amongst the Muppets you just can't see these days. Nowadays it feels like talented performers imitating the Muppets. Which is fine, but it's not the real thing. I thought the show was entertaining enough. I watch Raw about once a year, this one pulled me in. Obviously suspension of belief is required, but I feel wrestling has gone so far off the deep end that it hardly seems to matter anymore. They didn't do anything that had me wincing as far as credibility. I do see people complaining about Cena/Miz/R-Truth. People aren't going to buy Survivor Series because they think Miz/R-Truth are an unbeatable force. They're buying it for the novelty of the Rock. It really doesn't matter who they put in on the other side.

Savage was trying to defend Elizabeth against four men. I think he was thankful for the backup.

Would wrestling for TNA count as stupid babyface behaviour?

The point about ECW, and maybe it deserves its own thread because it's a bit of a tangent. If we considered ECW a territory along the lines of Portland, Florida, Georgia, Texas, etc., where would it rank? ECW never ran a show over 10,000 in attendance. If we take the most charitable definition of existing, it was around less than ten years. For all the attention and pimping that ECW gets, they really didn't get that high. As far as Buddy Rose, I'm interested in seeing this thread. I always saw him as "strong candidate" but not necessarily a Hall of Famer. I could be coerced otherwise.

Let me show an example of the problem of too many candidates on a ballot. Here's the 1960 Baseball HOF voting. http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_1960.shtml No one garnered the 75% necessary for induction. No one reached 60% either. 40 of those players eventually made the Hall of Fame. Lefty Grove got 2% and he was one of the greatest pitchers of all time. With so many deserving candidates and only so many votes to go around, no one gets elected. Not to say there are 40 deserving candidates for the Observer Hall, but there are clearly good candidates getting passed over.

Was Masami/Nagayo face vs face?

Dylan, I wouldn't suggest taking the chopping away from the voters. Quite the opposite. An ideal re-worked process might carry these three parts. (I say might because there's several ways to skin a cat.) 1. A solid nomination process. At this point wrestlers are added randomly at times. Perhaps a petition where 5% of voters, or a portion of Observer subscribers can nominate a worker for the ballot. This actually could be an excellent way to get the general viewing population involved. 2. A runoff. Take the current ballot as an example. Have your voters take a poll on them, and the top 20-30 go to the final ballot. That's the same voters as now, just a different process. Not Dave and company deciding the ballot. 3. Those 20-30 on a final ballot, flat 60% for induction. What you do here is not change the standard for induction. You still need 60%. What you do is streamline the final ballot. Otherwise you get an issue where there are so many qualified candidates that no one can reach a consensus. You get few qualified inductees, a backlog forms and eventually there's a backlash and the backlog gets admitted alongside candidates that are not as qualified.

Hall of Fame debate really needs to start with "who is the best deserving candidate?" rather than "is wrestler X deserving?" The latter question leads to a Hall of Fame ballot like this one. Look at next year's list. 71 candidates! My god, that's overkill. At this point I think the process needs an overhaul, specifically creating a method of paring the nominees down to 20-30 total. A runoff perhaps.

Hart/Michaels is easily a good match. I think the debate is generally whether it's a great match.

The referee I could never stand is Gilberto Roman. He's the third man for the Andre/Hogan Shea Stadium match, among others.

Dick Woehrle was the older referee. Dick Kroll was probably in his 50s at that point.

That looks ridiculous at first. There's no reason it should work. And damned if the crowd doesn't completely eat it up. Fantastic.