khawk20

That Russen channel sounds like fun, thanks.

For AWA 1984, I'd recommend my 1984 Year in Review set instead of individual episodes. Those Heenan/Race promos and many like them appeared on the St. Louis block that featured AWA, WCCW, Central States and WWF. Charles Warburton picked them up and got them out there for the most part, and he got the original tapes from Steve Munari.The quality is superb for the most part. That is also why Harley is cutting an intro promo with WCCW music in the background...it was one he probably cut specifically for that block of TV. I'm personally more a fan of the Minneapolis-aired shows since the promos are closer to home and featured hype for matches at the Civic Center, but those are harder to find in decent quality. There are a few AWA eps worth watching as-is if you can find them...the one where the Sheiks damage some jobbers after getting challenged in-ring by the Blackjacks before that match...Late April IIRC...also the ep where Brody kills the High Flyers...mid-April sometime for that one...The early March TV should feature some promos and highlights of Nick losing to Jumbo which are fun...The post-battleroyal TV from June has a lot of stuff surrounding the Blackwell face turn. Mid-summer should have the Fabs-Bock/Saito confro stuff from TV, and later on nearing September is the promos for Heenan's last AWA tour promoting the great Weasel Hunt matches. I'm not sure what all that channel has and where the tv is culled from will make a difference. there are St. Paul,. Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis sources out there and each has unique promos. Hope that helps some.

Kevin and David had to be pretty green at that point, no?

I need to get this book, but buying it for my ereader was still pretty pricy the last time I checked. I have heard and read nothing but good things from old school fans about how it is written and the level of detail. Sounds amazing.

Dammit Parv, you need to put a SPOILER tag on posts like that!!!!!

Really? If he does he's the only one. That has never made it out to trading circles. Maybe he has some other rare Backlund as well? If someone is successful in getting that match from Backlundfan please let me know. I do have a collection of Backlund filmed matches from the 70's that I would be willing trade (amongst other things) if he is looking for something return. Blackwell mark that I am, I would LOVE to see him and Bob wrestle, even though the Blackwell in the WWF pales character-wise to the Blackwell of the AWA.

Fight hard, man...and stay as positive as you can.

Watched a ton of Brick's WWF 1987 set today. Great stuff. I may crank 88 up tonight if the Hawks-Canucks game ends up sucking.

I suspect the reasoning behind not doing that is they wouldn't want you or I to look at the schedule, not see anything being added in the next three months that we like, and then cancelling our sub until we do see something we want or like.

I can't believe I'm older than he was. Puts things in perspective pretty quick. RIP

Began watching the next AWA Superstars episode. There's definitely a sense of "Verne left for the evening and we are unsupervised" feel to the wraparounds, as the next episode begins with Larry Nelson sitting on the floor with a woman named Kathleen (another Gagne daughter?) who is covering his face with Shamrock stickers because it's St. Patrick's Day. It's been said on many a shoot by different former AWA guys that Verne didn't even watch the TV when it was hot. So, Nelson et al doing whatever they pleased makes a lot of sense. Why not have fun with it?

You know, Larry Nelson talked about what I think was this show in his book, and I remember thinking to myself at the time "I don't remember ever seeing that show", especially with how randomly weird it seemed to be in terms of presentation with Larry. My guess is it was something syndicated in small doses, perhaps in the Minneapolis area so the "home" Base had some sort of different or local content, but that show, besides what Larry talked about in his book, is unfamiliar to me.Talked to one other big AWA guy that I know and he's never seen it either. Would love to see a match/segment list if anyone wants to break it down when they watch it.

So is KHawks. My heart explosion is being saved for if they go back to 70's and 81-83 TV uploads. This is very encouraging though.

Yeah it was pretty brilliant on Vince's part. It was common practice to send footage or interviews from an area a wrestler was leaving to the area he was going (There is a Greg Valentine interview conducted by Vince talking about Greg coming to the AWA, for example, that has appeared on some AWA specials over the years). So, when Vince came calling to showcase footage from other areas on his All American show, I think a lot of promoters didn't think twice...better exposure for their own current stars in major markets, right? Then after Vince had introduced a bunch of those wrestlers via footage sent to him, he promptly took them from their other promotion. WWF fans were already a little familiar with them because of that. Even more brilliant was not just taking footage of guys he was planning to poach. Gagne and Brunzell, for example, were not leaving Verne for new York. It's also why you get footage from other areas in libraries that don't make sense sometimes. There was an Iron Sheik vs. IIRC Butch Reed match on an AWA PPV years back, for example. It's why Bruce Tharpe has AWA studio matches and maybe a few others in the Houston Library...sent along to promote someone incoming.

JIngus: Can't use the quote function at work for some reason, but I did not mean it to come across as "If you weren't there you wouldn't get it" or that general vibe. The division was there back then too, I concur, but in the present tense there are less of us that are in the "Camp 1" Gagne-supporter group as opposed to when the AWA was running full tilt. It's a great point about Heenan and other workers of the day, and it extended to fans too, no doubt. It actually helps the argument about how Divisive opinions on Greg are, and were.

Excellent idea!

Greg Gagne. There are two distinct camps with Greg: Camp 1 states that Neopotism is the only reason he ascended to the top of the tag ladder with Brunzell, that he was not believable as a worker, and so forth. A lot of this camp were first exposed to Greg in the dying days of the AWA (when Greg was past his prime but still prominent...he could be trusted not to bolt, after all). Camp 2 are people that both saw Greg actually wrestle back in the 70's and early 80's (admittedly there are less and less of us around now) and recognized that while he was Verne's son, he was a good worker and a good talker in his own right, AND people that have watched his footage with a critical eye and found him "not nearly as bad as they had heard, and cast just about perfectly within the AWA structure of wrestlers" in that same 70's/80's time frame. Each camp is a loose representation of what I have encountered over the decades in terms of people's attitudes and opinions about Greg and the AWA in general, but trust me, for AWA guys, there has never been someone that had the "He's great/he sucked" dynamic argued over more.

I'm old. Sometimes it helps.

I cut this from the Bockwinkel RIP thread, I was about to talk about this at the very end, when we got cut off, to close the show... *** Back about a decade ago (maybe a little more even), I sent a tape of some of Bock's matches to a friend that lived in Vegas to give to Nick at one of the CAC weekends that he was going to. Nick actually took the time to videotape a personalized thank you note to me after he got the tape from my friend, on the spot, in the middle of everything else he was involved with at the CAC. Extremely classy to do something like that and it confirmed that his style and class wasn't just an act, it was a real thing. RIP Champ.