Loss

I think it worked because Hogan was able to tap into real frustration. Those early promos especially have a lot of venting. While I did think a lot of the criticism against him was valid, I'm sure that it was awfully frustrating when he would work somewhere and carry a company and allow everyone else to make big money, and they didn't like him protecting himself. Sure, that's a pretty one-sided view of things, but I can see from Hogan's perspective how that would have really bothered him.

Pretty sure Tito was supposed to come into WCW at one point in 1994-1995, but I'm not sure why he didn't.

This is supposed to be a positive Hogan thread and you're using it to take shots at "smart fans" who disagree with you. Not really the point of the thread. Anyway, Hollywood Hogan was such a dramatic reinvention where I'm not sure Hogan ever got as much credit as he deserved. It's fun to watch that week to week stuff and see him hone the Hollywood gimmick until he finally gets it pitch perfect. Those interviews were -- I think -- the best of his career.

He had a once in a lifetime run ... twice. Yes, the second couldn't have happened without the first, but that's still an amazing accomplishment.

He used to post at this board (not frequently, but sometimes) and way more frequently at DVDVR.

That was the plan. But if Vince knew that he didn't want to keep Bret around at Summerslam, he shouldn't have put the belt on him in the first place. If he didn't know, it shows how little long term thought was going into things at that point.

I think it shows how incredibly short-sighted Vince is that he puts a belt on a guy, and six weeks later realizes he needs him to leave the company because he can't afford his salary. What did he learn between Summerslam and mid-September?

I think WWE started threatening legal action when he was making posts about them violating laws in how they bought WCW for a reduced price when other potential buyers were willing to pay more. But the Time Warner employee who negotiated the sale was a former WWF employee. Something like that.

Have you heard him on Wrestling Observer Live? That's the guy who could have become a star. He never showed that on TV.

Thomas Zenk! The guy is such a natural heel that it's weird that he was always a babyface.

Really, the key question is: Why didn't Vince get the belt off of him BEFORE telling him they couldn't afford to honor his contract and that he was free to negotiate with WCW?

He had every intention of doing that. He was going to drop the title the following month at the December PPV. I know the forfeit idea was tossed around as well, but he was willing to put Shawn over on his way out.

As stated many, many, many, many times, the definition of "reasonable" in the contract was that they mutually agree. That's how it was defined. Vince breached Bret's contract by executing a finish to which Bret did not agree.

One that also stated that they must mutually agree on any creative decisions during the last 30 days of his contract.

And even past that, FMW had more of an American-style babyfaces and heels than any other Japanese promotion that I can recall.

Not you necessarily, but I always think people who downplay this do so because they can't possibly believe anyone in Japan learned anything from a promotion that had Jerry Lawler as the top star.

So under the "tree" philosophy, we can trace FMW back to Onita working Tupelo concession stand brawls in Memphis in the early 80s. This would give Onita a similar relationship with Jerry Jarrett. FMW isn't really Memphis-style wrestling, but I think factoring out the death match excess, it's probably the closest to Memphis-style wrestling a major promotion in Japan has really ever been.

The reason I asked that is that I remember Dave saying at the end of 1995 that All Japan was "almost too workrate-focused", or something to that extent, and that he expected their decline to continue into 1996 because of that. So I took that as him saying that All Japan was overly focused on catering to hardcore fans, and I thought maybe the abundance of 60-minute draws in '95 was evidence of that. I agree that aside from occasional high points, the NJ heavies weren't at the level of the top AJ heavies.

How Cornette and Heyman? Do you mean a generation removed?

I'm wondering when Rob Naylor will become Marcus Sheehan or something.

I doubt I'll watch it again either. John, this may be a loaded question, but do you think All Japan was overly geared to hardcore wrestling fans at this point?

Taue is one, but I already liked Taue. Not a wrestler, but Bob Armstrong as a promo is now one of my favorites. PG-13 for sure. Toyota, but really not so much in singles matches until 1995. While he only had one stellar match, Norio Honaga came out of nowhere and I'm interested in seeing more from him. El Samurai should be talked about more, but he was always in the shadow of other juniors. Of the AJ 4, I think I've gained the most respect for Misawa, where I already held Kobashi and Kawada in pretty high regard. Pretty much every NJ heavyweight, with Shiro Koshinaka standing out as a guy who I thought just had some matches with Takada in the 80s and that was his whole career of note. Masa Chono has surprised me, since I was always under the impression that he wasn't worth watching after the neck injury in 1992. I like him more after the heel turn than I did pre-injury because he has so much more star quality.

I think I'm the only fan in the world who for the most part, tried to focus my attention on won/loss records and how good guys were in the ring instead of their personalities when I was a kid. I felt like the personal issues that spilled over on to TV were none of my business and I didn't have a right to form an opinion since I didn't know the people involved personally. (You can laugh. It's funny.) Of course, every once in a while, someone would do something so loathsome that I couldn't help but hate them, or overcome the odds in such a triumphant way that I couldn't help but love them. Those are the legends. But I had this weird desire to be objective, which is probably why I thought I was going to be a journalist at one point in my life.

There's not a promoter out there who has had more good and successful ideas than bad ones. Vince has probably had more bad ideas than just about anyone in wrestling history. But he's still the best promoter ever, because of the good ones.

I think Shawn was better on big shows than Bret in '95 -- in the sense that his top matches were better -- but Bret had more "good" matches on big shows. Does that make sense? It all depends on if you'd prefer to have consistently very good PPV matches, or occasional great ones with the rest of them going all over the place. Flair could still rise to the occasion in 1995, but it wasn't a Ric Flair-level occasion anymore. It was more that in 1995, he was still the best worker in WCW. Ricky Morton was still tremendous in 1995, and from what I've seen, didn't have any disappointing matches. Those four were probably the top wrestlers stateside at that point. Owen I think was possibly better than all of them, but wasn't put in a position to deliver great matches as much as they were, which is why he's just below them. Jannetty and Snow are a level below that, with Austin, Smothers, Pillman and Davey Boy probably being the next group below them. Then, you have people like Cactus, Candido and Bigelow who were capable, but weren't getting much opportunity to put on classics.