Bix

Not really. And I'm not sure what makes him one of the most respected trainers in the business.

The Koloff record book is missing, at the bare minimum, his run in Australia in 1970, which fits since there's a big gap that year. He was brought in w/ a $1,000/week guarantee; only a few of the established main eventers ("the $1,000 club") were paid that much, and Gary Hart said in his book that "Ivan was one of the highest priced guys that Jim ever brought to Australia." That's in a territory with little to no road expenses (Barnett flew you everywhere and reimbursed you for your meals if you filed an expense report), too. He's a guy I'm most likely voting for. He was: - A draw in a major market (Montreal) as soon as he took on the Koloff gimmick. - In money spots in money territories for a good two decades. His smallest territories were JCP during the George Scott transition as it was blowing up, Florida, and Vancouver when it still mattered - Booked into all of the "cherry-picking" cities (St. Louis, Toronto, and Houston) and foreign destinations (Japan and Australia) as a top guy. - Was a big enough star to both hold Vince McMahon Sr. up for money (his coup w/ Ernie Ladd and Superstar Graham) and work in the IWA as co-top heel with Ladd. - The guy who beat Bruno. Even if you don't consider it a tangible positive for his candidacy, it was a huge deal he was supposed to have more of a Graham-length run until the whole "save him from being murdered" thing had to happen. His last JCP run isn't the type of thing that screams HOFer on his own, but being the Satanico to Nikita (whose matches he was often calling from ringside, including during the best of seven series with Magnum) and Krusher's Guerreros Del Infierno helps his case,, If you subscribe to the Dick Murdoch as measuring stick idea, Koloff wins out aside from stardom in Japan and in-ring work, which he was no slouch at. Well, Murdoch was also a bigger star in St. Louis but that's not the be all and end all.

I can't rate Gorilla in good conscience knowing he was trying to get himself over at the heels' expense even if I enjoyed him. Caudle I can't really quantify beyond I'd want him to be my grandpa if not for the Jesse Helms stuff.

Nassau and Freeport in the Bahamas were regular stops for the Florida office.

I've been talking to Dylan about Lewin the last couple days. The more I think about him, the more he seems like someone who *could* be a really strong candidate with more research, but his career is "mysterious" with his best runs are in far flung corners of the world that aren't well researched. You could say the same about King Curtis but he had a fairly long run anchoring Hawaii and Lewin didn't really have a home base after he left Buffalo. 25 year run as a worldwide main eventer at the bare minimum (if you use the formation of the team w/ Don Curtis and his '83 run in New Zealand as the start and end points, respectively), but you could argue longer easily both before (teaming with his brother) and after ('84 Maritimes run as top face, Purple Haze, WCCW run w/ Brooks & Gang). Dylan made a comparison to Ivan Koloff, which kind of makes sense, I'm under the impression he still wrestled regularly in Asia after that (he's listed as retiring in 1998, the hype for his shoot interview says he wrestled almost the entire second half of the century), too, and since he married into a rich family, so it wasn't out of necessity. The big negative would be his rep as a booker: Bring in King Curtis and Big Bad John, use a lot of blood, get business sky high, business dies when fans get sick of the blood and he can't adjust. How much of that is BS, though? The territories you always hear associated with this are Detroit, Calgary, and Australia. Calgary I can believe, both stylistically and because I trust Ross Hart's assessment of that type of stuff. Detroit being burnt out on blood seems unlikely for obvious reasons. Australia did fine after, Barnett still had no problem using him and Curtis as talent so I'm skeptical it was THAT bad, and Barnett selling had little to do with wrestling. I guess there's some research into Australia & New Zealand I could try to find, but what about Hong Kong, Singapore, etc? Are there attendance figures for Detroit?

I'm more optimistic about Jimmy Hart's chances than Dylan is, but that's because he's so well-liked within the business as opposed to people voting strictly on merit.

With the Bastien discussion I also find myself wondering if all of the CAC and related work should strengthen his candidacy, because it's definitely a positive impact on the business. Similarly: I've seen some people throw out Chris Nowinski's name, and he turns 35 at the end of the month, and while he absolutely doesn't have the resume as a performer, he has a greater positive impact on the state of the business.

Got my ballot last night. New 5 person limit on non-wrestler candidates my first year? BOO! Other changes: - Johnny Barend was moved from historical to Australiasia/East Asia/Puerto Rico. - New to the ballot are June Byers, Rip Hawk, Ciclon Negro, and Dutch Savage (Historical), Bob Armstrong, Ken Patera, and A.J. Styles (Modern), Yuji Nagata (Japan), Hector Garza (Mexico), Jim Breaks & Billy Joyce (Europe), Killer Karl Kox (Australiasia/East Asia/Puerto Rico), Dave Brown, Jim Crockett Sr., Howard Finkel, Jimmy Hart, Takashi Matsunaga, Gene Okerlund, & Stanley Weston (Non-wrestlers).

That they called people at 11 PM on a Wednesday night sounds like the most annoying possible way to get Quack's stupid angle over.

I don't think Vince gives a shit about "FS1" bidding. He cares about "Fox" bidding. He really doesn't care too much about which Fox channel he airs on. John No concerns about the placement of FS1 on the dial vs. USA? Assuming its an issue, how much extra do they need to pull in in rights to compensate for a channel that's not as easily found as USA and the consequences for ratings / PPV that it may cause? Obviously we're at the stage where TV money is probably more important than PPV, but I'd think this issue is at least batted around in discussion. With the numbers UFC did on launch day, I doubt that's an issue. FS1 needs non-UFC programming that people will actually watch.

From TNT Times #117 in 1979:

LOU ALBANO DEBATES JEFF BLATNICK:

That match is actually kind of ok. They even bump for each other! Cirque Du Bollea is now my favorite YouTube uploader. He also put up Lou Albano debating Jeff Blatnick:

When I saw the result in the newspaper, I thought it was a DQ or count out win being misreported as a title change. Then Bret showed up on TV with the belt the following Saturday and I lost my mind.

Are we counting pre-long hair John Nord as a Brody tribute/knockoff act? The Barbarian in Mid-South was definitely more consistent than Brody. Duggan is clearly better.

Fuck, I actually liked that feud, too. Granted, it was mostly Kamala, but Brody at least sold in all the matches I saw, and the lumberjack match was probably his only match from that run where he actually brought something more to the table than, say, Big John Studd would have in the same situation. I was actually borderline on nominating that. 6. Is there enough quality Brody out there to construct a single-disc comp of him with which you could trick people unfamiliar with his work into thinking he was good? (My position would be that there's enough decent performances and good/great tags where he's hidden behind better wrestlers that you could convince someone he's good...probably not enough to convince people he's great, or anything near what legend suggests) Single disc? Definitely enough matches w/ Abby, Blackwell, the Funks, Gordy, and Jumbo for that, plus one offs like Sawyer and Lawler.

The settlement Joey mentioned led to Sullivan, Sherri, & Pillman (subbing for Austin) working the show two weeks after November To Remember. I honestly have no idea how Arn & Eaton came in, unless it was part of the initial deal to get Cactus Jack.

Billy Gunn is purportedly an amazing teacher, FWIW.

I wasn't necessarily saying analysis should be fun for Austin. Just for me in direct response to Johnny's line. I do think Austin does really love wrestling though and he really loves figuring out what works and what doesn't. He's well known (even past what he says) for being a guy who always watched all the matches on the card early in his career even when other guys would be doing anything else. I was especially amused by the discussion he had with Scott Hall about the best powerslams, clotheslines, etc, like I'm pretty sure I had the same powerslams discussion with Naylor waiting in line outside a ROH show.

I was doing flips before the Mexicans.

Normally I'd agree, but: - Flair is a guy who adored Brody and has a greater sense of dudebro wrestler comradery than, say, Hogan would, to start making shit up about that. - It's kind of a sacred cow among wrestlers. I'm racking my brain to remember if anyone else has tried to use "oh yeah, I was there that night" as a shoot interview tall tale and can't really think of anyone. Maybe Manny Fernandez? If you told me Hogan said it, or Black Bart, or anyone else who hasn't put themselves on the friend of Brody mantle, I'd agree that it seems more likely this is just carny bullshit. But aside from Brody's closest friends like Stan Hansen or Gary Hart, Flair is one of the last guys I'd have expected to do it.

BTW, I agree that it sounded more like a warning sign that his brain is fucked than that he was trying to bullshit everyone. And didn't Austin say he brought it up because Flair had mentioned it the night before? Why would he try to work Austin about something like that?

Larry's fairly open to doing interviews about...anything, really. I'm sure that if me or Dylan/Dave asked him, he'd do it. As for Gary...yes, he was a pretty hardcore fan going back many years. Someone (Indikator maybe?) found a letter from him to one of the old newsletters as well as an ad for his own annual bulletin or something like that which he put out himself but I can't find it right now. He also owned a satellite dish store in the '80s, as someone alluded to, so he probably saw a decent amount of stuff. One big problem he had was booking guys who he knew little to nothing about and using the results as a crutch. He'd do a show with say, Ross Hart, and the whole thing would be Gary reading off results and asking "Who's this guy?"