Bix

With all of the WFWA I have, how do I not have THAT?

Not that I know of?

Loss is right, it's Al Madril. If he was getting pushed as a top heel, you were fucked. Portland, Dallas, San Antonio, Los Angeles..am I forgetting any territories? Madril was still a far superior wrestler and talker to Brown, though.

Zbyszko was a great worker and a good promo. There was just no reason for him to be a top guy beyond family loyalty. Bob Brown had no redeeming qualities. He couldn't work. He wasn't a good promo. He wasn't a beloved local hero who was way over the hill like late period George Becker or someone like that. What makes it all more ridiculous is that not only did he homestead his best friend's territory, but when it closed, he rode his nephew Kerry Brown's coat tails into being booked all over Canada for another 6-7 years. Kerry wasn't a great worker anymore, but he was a good veteran hand who was valuable to Stampede, WFWA/IWA Winnipeg, Grand Prix in the Maritimes, etc, and Bob followed him everywhere until he retired in 1996.

I'm running across a guy named "Gas House" Gilbert on 70's WWWF stuff. I think his name is Doug. Dumb question, is this guy Doug and Eddie's father? Nope.

Mike London was another local promoter, he booked talent out of the Amarillo office. Most town promoters were just affiliates, not members. Ward had his own TV so he makes more sense than London, though. The Maritime territory paid really well, it just didn't run year-round. It was definitely above KC in stature, connection to St Louis aside.

Also available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1cjpFfC My copy arrives today. Can't wait.

I'm not trolling by invoking it, but I'm both mortified by and giddy about the possibie comments that will result from me using the term "rape culture" in the intro of a slideshow that talks about both Kane/Lita and Dawn Marie/Torrie Wilson: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1732277...nes-of-all-time Hmm...off the top of my head and checking BR (I'll look more at Cageside tomorrow) This might be my personal favorite; The story of the fake Stan Lane and others who have duped newspapers and family members: http://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/3/17/205...ther-pretenders Nothing new to you but I think my Sin Cara vs Sin Cara/Mistico vs Mistico backstory article is one of my best pieces in that I told a good story with the information but did it fairly concisely: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/873964-...ara-vs-sin-cara The Cena slideshow I did this week I think turned into something really cool as far as talking about the evolution of fan reactions to him: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1725398...enas-wwe-career I love this one, the most interesting excerpts from wrestling related lawsuits and such that I could find online: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/883214-...ilings-case-law Fake/replacement masked wrestlers: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/794366-...-is-nothing-new Chris Masters profile from after his second firing: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/793868-...spat-out-by-wwe And yes, a great wrestling articles reference thread must happen.

What, no "(and Kevin Quinn)" joke?

I can't find it right now but there's a really good McAdam post (I think at WC and probably under his alias) where he tries to explain how shocking Sheiky's title win at the time due to his standing in the business at the time. It was just a year earlier that he was a prelim guy in Memphis after only getting to work a week or two with Lawler.

NICE! They did randomly air some USWA shows in the GWF Legends spot, so that makes sense. Any GWF branding in wraparounds or is it just a straight up USWA Legends of Wrestling episode?

Was told to get down to a less ridiculous physique when WWE signed him. Subsequently, he was much smaller and less cut than he was in OVW/the early part of his WWE run during the first few years he was on top (go look up the JBL matches, RVD match, etc). Then he slowly evolved back into whatever he is now.

Everyone who is a wrestler, is on the road, working matches, working through injuries and has a body like that has always said it was from hard work at the gym and a good diet. For 30 years. We can do some side by sides of Bryan from his ROH days to his early WWE days to that "I'm happy to show off my body next to Cena's" clip. It's the same type of changes we've seen for years. And in turn, the same lack of changes that saw Hero get in the dog house. It wasn't lack of changes that got Hero in the dog house, it was changing before he got signed and then sliding back, and now is apparently not using his gym time. I have no idea if Bryan is on the gas or not, but since you mentioned Cena, can anyone pinpoint when he stopped looking like a vaguely normal human being? The difference between the 2004-2006 stuff I was watching for that BR slideshow and the Total Divas wood chopping contest is startling. As in "Oh, I forgot there was actually a reason some people thought he could be clean."

Start with Marty Jones vs Owen Hart and go from there. Usually the best jumping off point.

They did shoot dark matches, look at the stuff that showed up on the Horsemen DVD. To be fair to JCP/WCW/THE, it was several years before Coliseum started using longer tapes for WWF PPVs. The Coliseum versions of the first two Survivor Series PPVs, especially, were heavily edited to fit two hours. I think Survivor Series '88 also had the matches out of order.

Recently I noticed that a lot more non-public domain and non-Creative Commons photos had shown up on Wikipedia, including promotional photos from old TV shows. When I clicked on one of the photos to see its info page since it didn't seem like something they'd classify as fair use, it was explained that since it was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice, it was public domain. I googled and found this page that's on Cornell University's website. For our purposes, the important part is that from 1923 to 1977, anything published without a copyright notice is public domain, and from 1978 to March 1, 1989, anything without copyright a notice that wasn't registered in the subsequent 5 years is also public domain. So it occurred to me that there's probably a fair amount of older American wrestling footage that qualifies. Memphis at least didn't run a copyright notice (either nothing or "produced by" Championship Wrestling/Jarrett-Welch Promotions/Jarrett Promotions/Warrior Sports) and I doubt they registered any of the footage. Quickly checking some full shows I have on my NAS, these, for example, absolutely don't have copyright notices during the show closing: Through 1977: "Wrestling Champions" from Chicago (Fred Kohler) IWA (Einhorn) Wide World of Wrestling (Knozville, John Cazana) 1978-3/1/1989: Memphis/CWA (A-show and B-show) Southwest Championship Wrestling (the USA version, no less) Mid-South Wrestling (but only some older shows) So...someone explain to me if there's any reason why the first set wouldn't be public domain, and how reliable the official copyright office site is for finding registrations from the second set? It seems unlikely to me that they were ever registered, so shouldn't this stuff be in the clear?

Yeah... I get how editing can be a pain in the rear. As far as long... once I scroll past the text on the first window, look over the the right hand side and see how much more there's left in the article by gauging the lack of significant movement in the scroll bar, I'm all: "Woo-hoo~! Long in depth article! Awesome!" It's one of the ironies of the online world of reporting: Newspaper articles get shorter and shorter, while a lot of the better long form writing has moved online. If it's good stuff, people will read it. I know there's a balance on standard reporting (such as writing up a UFC card), but with Feature Writing... editors gotta let their writers go. Some tightening up when it's rambling (wait... why is everyone looking at me), but more info is good. Anyway, I like when you've been able to stretch out like this and the item on UFC contracts. Online writing doesn't mean folks need to dumb it down into USA Today length all the time. I'll chime in to note that easily the most successful (traffic and comments) piece I've done at BR since returning (actually, maybe ever at BR) was that mishandled WWE developmental prospects slideshow, which was, while broken up, also really long. There's absolutely a demand.