khawk20

Bob Backlund vs. Adrian Adonis MSG February 1982 says "Hello"... ...and probably a bazillion other personal choice Grail-ish matches each of have stashed in our "Please relase the goddamned thing!" pile in our brains...

He's on most of the ones I've seen. He may be a funny comedian (I have no idea), but as a talking head, he's about as effective as any random fan would be - not very. He's a regular on @Midnight with Chris Hardwick, and he's always throwing old-school wrestling references in on that show. Huge fan. He dressed as Ric Flair and did the Flair character for the whole Halloween episode. He's very funny on that show, I like him.

Nick Bockwinkel being assigned as the Special Referee for the Larry Zbyszko-Mr. Saito rematch in St. Paul after Saito won the title in Japan a few months previous. Larry went ballistic because he expected Nick to screw him over (since Saito was his long-time tag partner and he and Curt Hennig had hurt and retired Nick from wrestling three years prior). Then, in a classic bely-to-back-suplex-into-a-pin-combo, Nick counts three and everyone assumes Saito has retained the title...but Nick had actually noticed Larry lift his shoulder at the two count and had, in fact, counted out Saito, thereby allowing Larry to regain the title. The look on Larry's face when he figured out that he had won was great, but the post-match interview with Larry is absolutely fantastic. It's a neat little thing from the end days of the AWA so it doesn't get much love, but it followed a regular thing Verne tried to do...remembering past feuds and playing off of them. Bock-Larry started feuding in 1985, and looked to have concluded finally after Nick was hurt in August of 1987 as noted previously by Larry and Curt...but those underlying feelings and the feud itself were brought back, noted, and even celebrated in this bit from 1990, and Nick holding his intergrity and counting out Saito was sort of a swerve (especially if one remembers the Larry-Bock 1987 Vegas match where Nick blasted Larry with a roll of quarters in full view of refere Scott LeDoux...Nick screwing Larry was almost a given, there was so much glee in Bock's face when he did it in 87) pointed towards how the history of a feud indeed mattered in the AWA. FWIW I think Saito and Bockwinkel ahd a match in early 1991 in Japan (possibly on the same card as Thesz-Chono), but I do not know if there was any sort of reference to their bad feelings after Saito was counted out by Nick. I like to think that if the AWA was still remotely viable by that point that they would have noted it and furthered the history of Bock-Larry-Saito even more. It would have been both fitting and consistent. If that bit is on youtube check it out...especially if Larry's post-match promo is attached to it. Great stuff.

RIP to one of my two favourites of all time. Such a classy man. 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.

A bit of a different spin for myself...Larry Zybysko as AWA Champion. I hated he was the Champ because of how it looked compared to the NWA/WCW Champion and the WWF Champion at the same time. I mean, there was just no comparison, and it spoke volumes to me about how far things had fallen for my favourite promotion, that I hated seeing him out with the belt week after week, knowing there was nobodyaround to beat him that could be thought of on the level Hogan, Warrior and Flair were. Larry's success was a constant reminder of the failure of the AWA, and I hated that he held the title because of that. Larry as the mid/upper card heel without a title was a different story entirely. Him with that belt though....fuck I hated that.

Ox Baker and The Russian Brute, circa 1989-90 AWA. Awful.

I checked on his page, I think the Martel match is from this card. There is no listing for a 9/29/83 Winnipeg card in Claw's archives. 12/8/83 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada @ Arena AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel beat Rick Martel via pin Referee Buddy Lane Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell no contest AWA Tag Team Champions Jerry Blackwell & Ken Patera when Sheik Adnan tired to hit Greg Gagne with his arm cast. Gagne ducked and Adnan hit referee Buddy Lane instead. Bunkhouse Match Blackjack Lanza beat Bobby Heenan Mad Dog Vachon no contest David Shults when Mr Saito & Baron Von Raschke interfered Mr Saito beat Baron Von Raschke Superstar Billy Graham beat Steve Olsonoski Bulldog Bob Brown beat Bill White via pin Att: 5,084 It could also be the 2/3/83 show: 2/3/83 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada @ Arena Cage match AWA Tag Team Champions Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell beat Jerry Blackwell & Sheik Adnan AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel beat Rick Martel with help from Manager Bobby Heenan Wahoo McDaniel beat Bobby Duncum Baron Von Raschke beat Sgt Jacques Goulet Jesse Ventura beat Buck Zumhofe Ken Patera beat Steve O Att: 8,896 Note: Note Mad Dog Vachon attacked Blackwell and Sheik Adnan after the main event tag bout was over. I suppose a cross-refence with the style of ropes and filming with other matches that may be on video might identify it properly. I bolded the bouts on those cards that I believe there is video of (although they could be same match, different year or date with the same participants).

Date is wrong...Verne didn't win the title until July 18th. That match is 2/20/81, St. Paul Auditorium (Roy Wilkins Aud). It's a new upload but the match has been around forever. You likely watched it for the 80's set and forgot about it. Here is the card: 2/20/81 St. Paul AWA Champion Verne Gagne beat Nick Bockwinkel Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell beat Jerry Blackwell & John Studd AWA Tag Team Champions Adrian Adonis & Jesse Ventura beat Tito Santana & Ray Stevens (sub Juan Valez) Brad Rheingans beat Steve Regal Buck Zumhofe beat Bill Howard Curt Hennig beat Kenny Jay The bolded matches all exist on video.

June 28th is right, my bad on the date, but it's the Minneapolis Auditorium. Check out how sparse the crowd is on that match when the lights come up. The date on that Martel match sounds familiar. Winnipeg? If so, good match, not sure if the date is right off the top of my head. That must have at least been reviewed for the AWA set if it didn't make it on, if it's the same one I'm thinking of. Verne-Bock I will have to check out if you can provide a link but I think that might be 2/20/81 from the St. Paul Auditorium, not the Civic Center (adjacent building that turned into Roy Wilkins Auditorium). Decent sized venue, it's where ECW had their PPV where Jerry Lynn won the title in 2000. The AWA ran it instead of the Civic Center sometimes. That match is from I think the same card that we got the High Flyers-Studd-Blackwell match from that aired on WWE Classics. That card may also have been the debut of Brad Rheingans. If I remember later I'll check it out.

I'm guessing the Bock-Baron was from Winnipeg? That would have been from 1985. They had a match on 6/19/81 from the Minneapolis Auditorium too. That one I think scared Verne a bit. Bock had just got the title back by acclaimation when Verne retired, and they matched him up with Raschke, who hadn't been in all that long as the avenger for Mad Dog Vachon and was incredibly over with the fans...probably your #1 babyface singles guy at that moment in time. It was thought that matching Bock against Baron would draw very well (and it should have), but they underestimated how many people were turned off by Bock getting the title back for basically nothing, especially being unable to regain it from Verne for almost a full year prior. The house for the Minneapolis show was pretty poor, as can be seen in the video of the match. I have always thought that scared Verne into realizing how negatively the fans were reacting...which prompted Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie to get the next title match in the Twin Cities. Kaissie was actually a real contender in singles at that time and was in the middle of a feud with Tito Santana after Sheik cut Tito with his sword on TV. The Tito series was cut short (most markets only saw one match in what was going to be a multi-match feud) to plug in Kaissie vs. Bock. The idea was to get Nick cheered by taking on the biggest heel in the territory, and as such build his cred back up as the champ. Sound idea except they forgot that Bock had someone even more loathesome in his corner as far as the fans were concerned...Bobby Heenan. Once that clicked in, Heenan was mostly kept away from the matches with Kaissie so that the heat would stay on the Sheik. In their first Minny match, as I remember it Heenan was bloodied badly in a singles match earlier in the card and couldn't be at ringside. In their No-DQ match after that with a designated special referee, Kaissie attacked Heenan with the sword at the start of the match and had to be helped to the dressing room, bloodied, so he wasn't around either. Heenan would return at the end of the match briefly for a good reason...if Kaissie-Bock with Raschke as the ref from Minneapolis is on youtube I highly recommend checking it out, the finish is quite excellent. The same match went down in Winnipeg a few months later with Vachon as the ref, but it isn't nearly as good or effective IMO. Raschke in the Twin Cities was crazy-over back then, which is hard to picture, I know. After the Kaissie series, Bock had his heat back and it was business as usual for the Champ until he met Otto Wanz a year later. I don't know it for sure but I've always believed that Kaissie-Bock never would have happened if Baron-Bock hadn't drawn poorly and scared Verne and Wally into re-thinking things...and if I'm wrong and Verne and Wally had a long-term plan that went exactly like this did, then it marks some extremely shrewd promoting and matchmaking.

When his voodoo made Ultimate Warrior sick, that was it for me for a few years.

AWA Team Challenge Series, actually a decent concept but with poor execution and a constantly shifting roster that made it impossible to follow. Plus a lot of shitty, shitty gimmick matches. I would love to see the WWE try something like that with their roster for two or three months. If they did it right, it could be pretty interesting. At least the rosters would stay intact. Hansen walking out of Denver and Bock being awarded the title was absolutely the worst thing that could have happened to the AWA title in 1986 and really signalled a downturn in the promotion's perception amongst average wrestling fans. It was much worse than Nick getting the title via acclaimation in 1981 since the promotion was doing very well and there was time to get his reign on track after some initial concerns (Bock-Raschke in Minneapolis in June 1981, when Baron was the top face in the promotion, was very poorly attended and set off some serious alarm bells).

In the 80's if a jobber or smallish heel tried to bodyslam a much bigger babyface, the face would just stand there and smile while he tried doing it, and then usually give the smaller guy a finger wag after the second or third futile attempt and then slam him...to show him how it's done. Never liked that spot.

Watched some Southeast from 1981 over the weekend. I loved seeing an "evil referee" angle going on back in 1981. I love the visual dynamic of Southeast at that time. The Faces have the good ol' country boy vibe going on and the heels are just the greasiest looking and acting men you could ever meet...and then you have Mr. Saito being himself in the middle of it all. He seems both out of place and completely in the right place at the same time. I appreciate that they don't shy away from the arena clips on their TV, either, including a Stan Lane vs. Bill Dundee clip from Femphis that was fun. I also viewed some of Ed Whalen's "Pro Wrestling Plus" TV from TSN in Canada back in the late 80's. Basically the same format as the Pedicino show. Biggest negative in these shows were Ed Whalen himself (never a big fan). The clips were maddeningly short for the most part but that's undertstandable due to the nature of the program. One other aspect I thought was interesting was Whalen taking time out during one of the shows to go over some "shoot" wrestling news and rumours associated with wrestlers in the WWF. He was talking in one segment how Muraco and the Bulldogs had left the WWF and were heading into Stampede, and in another how the Killer Bees were fired from the WWF and were rumoured to also be coming to Calgary. Nothing eath-shattering, but at the time I can see it being a real "stop and pay attention" point for the fans.

lol If these guys had come along in, say, 84 or 85, they would have had a development curve in the AWA like the Nasty Boys...Start out getting squashed, eventually getting a gimmick and working their way up the tag team ladder, mid-card type. Whether or not they would have gotten the push right to the top is hard to say, but they would have been much better prepared for that to happen with some real seasoning under their belt, and it would have aided them when they moved on to other areas to work. Their problem, and the same thing happened with many of the latter-day AWA guys, was that there was no more time to allow for a natural development like I noted above. Most of the guys pushed were all that was left, and they were not ready...and I think that hurt them as they moved forward as The Beverly Brothers. I would be surprised if they make many people's list, if any.

Yeah footage..."enough" matches, in terms of length, is problematic. That R and R clip is maddening because it's so short and I think the full match would have been a lot of fun.

Bock vs. Hennig = Flair vs. Magnum Bock vs. Verne = Flair vs. Race Bock vs. Lawler = Flair vs. Rhodes Bock vs. Robinson = Flair vs. Ron Garvin (maybe Terry Funk?) Bock vs. Martel = Flair vs. DiBiase (maybe) Bock vs. Hogan = Flair vs...good question, actually. Vader? Monster Heel vs. Monster face as opponents is the initial thought here...both fighting "monsters" as it were. Also: Bock vs. Brunzell = Flair vs. Morton. Both Champions made you believe that the face tag wrestler might actually pull off a title win, which is an incredible skill to have IMO. These all were the first guys that popped into my head in doing the comparison. There are likely better comparables in a lot of cases on Flair's side of the ledger on that list.

If Gagne is pissed about Nick getting the title back we know it's probably 1981, although Verne wasn't shy to bring stuff like that up well after the fact so it could be later. If he's wrestling Rick Hunter, the TV airdate I have for that one courtesy of Clawmaster's archives is 6/14/81. If it's the Barrera match I couldn't find a listing for it in 1981. Bock sure beat the hell out of Tony Leone on TV a lot that year, though.

Did you see any of his AWA matches against Martel, or his promos around those bouts? He isn't a favourite of mine but I would never have him on a list of "the worst" based on what I've seen of him. His AWA stuff I thought was pretty good and he was a credible opponent for Martel. If you haven't seen him in the AWA check out some of that work and see what you think.

The stories back in the day in those mags were fantastic excercises in creative writing, and I bet they went a long way towards improving the writers' works and style further down the road.

Funny-depressing maybe. I never thought I would miss WWE Classics On Demand with their limited but fresh monthly offerings...but there ya go.

Awesome. I have the Hunter match, it's really good. Early 1980. Hunter was a good one.