Bix

The stuff Max picked up? Why? Because they think that AJPW & NJPW will have the Yakuza hunt them down and kill them?

I haven't listened yet but oddly enough Court Bauer of all people tweeted a link as he really liked it.

Jingus, it's slightly more complicated that because the people who aren't part of RUDOS who are pissed that RUDOS is gone are mostly people who were using them as a source for current Japanese TV, which you can only get legally by being in Japan and getting the right satellite services. Just about everything else is already covered by other groups. If you mean the RUDOS statement, then yeah, I basically agree: It's one thing for them to be upset, but righteous indignation?

It's worth nothing that RUDOS had gotten some flack recently for a few things. Since they were the fastest supplier of Japanese stuff, they had a big following among that fandom, which really put them on the map beyond just providing the usual high quality DVD rips and caps of American TV/PPVs/iPPVs. A few months ago, new Japanese stuff mysteriously stopped appearing on their site while a DVD download site called GaijinPuro opened up. Between paid members of RUDOS site being upset that they were now double dipping, an offensive tagline ("You give us eggroll, we love you long time"), and antagonistic posts at DVDVR & F4W shilling the site while bashing the other main source of Japanese DVDs, a lot of people were angry. They brought back the regular RUDOS releases of Japanese stuff pretty quickly, but instead of offering the usual unprotected MP4 files that would quickly be torrented elsewhere, you needed to get a Roku box and use their channel. In theory, that doesn't sound terrible, but: - Getting an official Roku channel, even a private one, would leave a trial to their identities, so it needed to be installed in "developer mode" - RUDOS felt their source code was valuable, so they would only provide the channel it if you let them do a remote session on your computer so it could be installed over your home network. - A lot of people were not crazy about letting a warez group access their computers. Thus, their site has been a target lately even among piracy-loving wrestling fans, to the point that it appears they were even hit by a distributed denial of service attack on Sunday. Also, their Japanese stuff was still showing up elsewhere, just captured from Roku boxes instead of being the same files RUDOS released.

Same Gary Hart.

I would throw in: Kane vs Albert IC title switch, and not just because OMG DID YOU JUST SEE KANE DO A FRANKENSTEINER Kane vs Big Show weird chain wrestling match from Raw that Vince demanded Kane vs CM Punk ECW title match All of the stuff from the recent feud with Punk & Daniel Bryan. Some of his other ECW Title defenses. MSG last man standing match w/ Cena if it's on YouTube or they did more around the horn that shows up. I think that what it comes down to is that working monster style, he's not going to be a dynamo in the ring working matches doing what's expected of Kane in that style. As a de-powered babyface, babyface ECW champion working title match style, working with Punk & Bryan where he knew he had to work their style to make the match work, etc, he's going to give you good matches. I thought that was pretty clear from the Punk/Bryan feud since he immediately stepped it up and kept up with them really well.

More Dave on Vince/Paterno: Also, let's go back to 2009 for a moment.

At the first Bash house show of '92, JYD headbutted him, shattered the glasses, and helped him get to the hospital to save his eye. Hughes turned face, became The Big Cat again, and teamed with JYD out of mutual respect.

I was actually going to bring this up myself today after a discussion with a BR writer about how the onlne resources generally have buy rate percentages for older shows as opposed to actual buys. I think we have access to enough old PW Torch and WON back issues to get it done, but it would be easiest if a bunch of us chipped in with some work for specific shows. Also, for each WrestleMania where it would be applicable, we should also include CCTV numbers.

Honestly, with how inconsistent the Anonymous Raw GM's decisions wherein terms of helping heels and babyfaces, "it was Hornswoggle because he thought it was funny" is far from the worse choice.

I presume you're considering the first UWFI Shootwrestling PPV an anomaly (it did one of the best non-big 2 wrestling PPV numbers ever, IIRC) because it was a fluke (huge ad budget that was subsequently dropped, different PPV landscape, etc) and the buys nosedived for shows two and three?

It's even worse when you factor in that the CSC were working as babyfaces everywhere else basically doing a Gay Hit Squad gimmick. RF has...issues.

Anderson out-trolled Chael. "Let's show Chael that all Brazillians have manners!"

The Smoky Mountain of Honor talking point is BS aside from the ether soaked rag and The Headbangers coming in. It's just something people who have never seen are using to say Cornette is out of touch. There's definitely an argument that, depending on how much credit Cornette deserves for his WCW booking committee stint, peak OVW might actually be his best work.

Break even is apparently 750 tickets so most/all of the new markets have been failures.

It's mentioned on the Kickstarter page but it's worth noting here that 1977 was the year that Jarrett broke away from Gulas to form his own office.

As for the original topic, Arn Anderson wasn't *terrible* for the Invasion stuff but he clearly wasn't comfortable as an announcer. And even if you didn't like Dusty Rhodes on commentary, he did a tremendous job being Dusty Rhodes as a wrestling announcer.

You didn't expect there to be a difference between Michel Hayes in his mid 30s in 1995 WWF and Michael Hayes a decade younger produced by Bill Watts while teaming with Jim Ross? Like Loss said, you have to keep in mind where they're working and what persona they were given. Jerry Lawler in the USWA was excellent on color. Heel WWF Jerry Lawler could be good at the wisecracking heel color commentator role but was generally too reliant on his jokes. "Puppies" Lawler was abominable. Babyface WWE Lawler who finally wears street clothes when he announces is wildly inconsistent depending on who he's partnered with (he seemed like he was having a lot more fun when Punk was on the team and was much better than usual), what he's given to call, whether or not he's paying attention to Smackdown, etc. Hayes never did commentary in WCCW. It was mainly the UWF, WCW, and the WWF. He was excellent in the UWF. In WCW, he started out about the same when partnered with Ross and then did some tremendously entertaining work with Jimmy Garvin & Lance Russell on WCW Pro. As the Freebirds gimmick makeover (d)evolved, he also suffered as an announcer and his stint hosting Main Event wasn't any good. I THINK he might've ended up on Worldwide eventually but it was during a period I didn't see the show due to time slot issues. Then in the WWF he was a completely different character being produced by Vince McMahon with one of the goals being intentional self-parody.

So as you may or may not know, the surviving Beach Boys reunited for their 50th anniversary, recording a new album and going on tour for the first time in many years. Normally, there are three separate touring acts: - Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, and a backing band as The Beach Boys, since Mike is the one who licenses the name. AKA the shitty tour that mostly does really insipid versions of the early stuff. And "Kokomo." Though in fairness they've started to do their own takes on the Brian stuff that, going by the YouTube videos I've seen, are much better than you'd expect. - Brian Wilson with The Wondermints as his backing band, who did the Smile album (well, the Brian Wilson version) and tour a few years ago. - Al Jardine & the Endless Summer band. Which is probably good but nobody ever talks about them. Anyway, the tour ends in late September, and Mike has started booking his Beach Boys dates for the beginning of October. One venue cancelled when they realized what he was trying to pull. Malcom McLaren is looking up from Hell in admiration right now. Well done!

Tito:vs Savage (No DQ from Toronto, whole feud is really good) vs Valentine (any if their IC Title or '88 matches) w/ Martel vs Islanders (Boston match from DVDVR set) vs Ron Bass (MSG match from DVDVR set) Dustin: w/ Steamboat va Enforcers (Clash 17) vs Bunkhouse Buck (Spring Stampede '94) w/ Windham vs Doc & Gordy (WCWSN title change) vs Vader (Clash 19 & subsequent TV match)

I think it was more a matter of "Greg Gagne-itis." Dustin just didn't have it. He's a fine wrestler, nothing more, and to pretend he was held back by the man doesn't seem quite right. The truth is, if he wasn't Dusty's son, no one with his look/physique/ability ever gets his spot. He wasn't held back by the man in terms of smart taste making or whatever, but he was unfairly treated like an Erik Watts type who had no business getting any kind of push. His spot was mid card guy who was usually the underdog. He basically had Windham's body type. Not as good a look overall, but he was a tall midcard guy who was a very good to great worker who was a great fit for WCW at that point. (Also Greg Gagne was a very over tag team wrestler whose peers considered a great worker that was carrying a spot machine partner while being held down by his dad. He just got really out of place really fast when wrestling changed.)

Dustin was only ever not well received because of the collective newsletter reader/writer hate boner for Dusty back then, which has thankfully subsided for the most part. The WONs from the early '90s heavily inflated how much of a push he had while discounting his work. If he just happened to be a tall guy WCW liked who wasn't Dusty's son, he would've been heralded as "the next Barry Windham" by the same people. By his last year in WCW it seemed like he was getting more respect, but the rumors of him unifying the world titles (which sound a little weird since he wasn't positioned close to that level) were still written up as this awful dreadful thing. It wasn't necessarily a great idea but he was over amd I think would've done fine in-ring at least

Syndication was the norm so it varied if those shows aired on Saturday or Sunday. Florida TAPED on Wednesday. CWF and whatever the B-show was named at the moment aired on the weekend. UWF was the A-show. PPW was the B-show, consisting of recaps, old matches, matches from other territories to hype newcomers, and house show footage. At the end of October it became the same type of show as UWF, just taped in Fort Worth. It was still the B-show but important stuff happened on it at times, and it was also pushed to TV stations as "Texas style wrestling," an alternative to WCCW since they raided the boooker/roster and were taping in the same market. Also, in addition to syndication, PPW aired nationally on cable on Tempo Television. Also, "Mid South Classics" was on in some markets. The WWF had just radically changed their syndicated TV for the new season. The A and B shows were taped on the road every month at different major arena each time instead of the same small building in NY or PA. They also changed the names of all three shows: A-Show "Championship Wrestling" became "Superstars of Wrestling," B-show "All-Star Wrestling" became "Wrestling Challenge," and C-show (recaps with some exclusives or matches otherwise aired only on USA Network) "Superstars of Wrestling" (Yup) became "Wrestling Spotlight." As for the USA Network shows, Prime Time was still on Tuesdays I think. TNT was still on for a few more weeks, having been moved to Thursdays IIRC. All American always had the late Sunday morning slot. WCCW also had "Championship Sports" on KTVT Forth Worth (a Southwestern superstation), a long running Saturday night show, and "WCCW Classics," old episodes that aired in handful of markets. The main show also aired on a delay on ESPN. Crockett's Saturday morning TBS show (Championship Wrestling) is missing. I believe this is also when the weekend evening shows became "World Championship Wrestling: Saturday/Sunday edition). They may have still had a third syndicated show (East Coast Wrestling I think) at this point showing old stuff and house show matches. Also, they took over production of Bob Geigel's territory out of Kansas City a few weeks earlier, added it to their syndication package as NWA All-Star Wrestling, and sent in some of their talent (Bill Dundee to main event and book, sometimes Big Bubba, various prelim guys, and sometimes main eventers). Texas/USA All-Star Wrestling aired locally in Texas and nationally on Tempo, but the office was about to close and briefly be replaced by "Texas Championship Wrestling," which was the WCCW crew doing tapings at Gilley's that didn't really have anything to do with the angles on the shows taped in Dallas & Fort Worth. I THINK Polynesian Pacific Championship Wrestling was shill chugging along both locally in Hawaii and nationally on FNN. Dubbed recent All Japan Women shows were airing weekly on Tempo. EMLL had a one hour show on Univision that was taped at Arena Mexico. All of the CWA/Memphis shows were called Championship Wrestling. In Memphis, the studio show was 90 minutes long and aired live. For the other cities in the territory, it was edited down to an hour, had local promos added, and aired the next weekend, so the other towns were all a week behind. In cities (like Tupelo or Jackson) that picked up WMC or where there was room for a second show (Evansville a few months later), they got the B-show. Same opening, same name, but it generally aired house show matches. I'm not sure if it was still the case in '86 but the cities outside of Portland in Don Owen's territory (mainly Seattle) got "Big Time Wrestling," a shorter show with different matches from the same taping. Capitol Wrestling taped in Salem maybe have been on around this time too. Continental Championship Wrestling had their weekly show taped in Alabama that also reached into north Florida and east Tennessee. The Savoldis' weekly ICW show aired in syndication and on Tempo.

Japanese wrestling was shot by network TV sports crews. Big difference.