khawk20

I'll be curious as to how the On-Demand stuff is presented as this is apparently an issue with satellite providers, as opposed to cable-based ones.

I hate this as well and the first one I think of is a version of Hogan-Bockwinkel from April 1982 in St. Paul that they released on one of the AWA Kids Classics vhs tapes back in the day. In that version, Lee Marshall does the overdubbed commentary and it just doesn't fit at all. The commentary is terrible, the crowd noise is muted, and the result doesn't seem as significant as it actually was at the time (This was the first Hogan-Bock meeting a year before Super Sunday).

That was me, sorry dude. I agreed with everything you said about him in your rant. Also Heath McCoy's Stampede book is something people should read if they haven't already. Good stuff.

Also, because I've been watching some discs of Pro Wrestling Plus over the last few days, I'll add to my wish list of someone other than Ed Whalen doing commentary on all that glorious old Stampede footage.

Yeah, it would be a helluva lot better. Those two clowns basically projected it would be a draw ten minutes in IIRC. Trongaard I liked in his JIP commentary bits from St. Paul, the arena matches they used to show on the regular TV. His Vegas call was not horrible on it's own, but trying to keep up with Blears and his "Tally Ho! Bobby-Dazzler!" drivel drove him to a place that made his commentary way worse than he could be in the right environment. Also LOL at Lowrance having any flare to his commentary. He would have sounded the same calling Flair vs. Brody as doing play by play at a funeral. Mercer wasn't much better. The idea of Texas, as a whole, having the philosophy of "Everything's Bigger!" made their pro wrestling announcer choices very curious, to say the least.

I can only imagine how much more epic some of those WCCW matches in the mid-80's would have been had anyone but Mark Lowrance been the commentator...or the ring announcer, for that matter. Only Lowrance could make the ring introductions for a blood feud sound like the combatants were there to participate in a colouring contest. EDIT: There used to be a way on the big dish back in the 80's to tune out commentators during hockey games and other sports and just enjoy the game with crowd noise. If only that was a feature with some wrestling shows....wow.

What time frame are we talking about here, out of curiosity?

If it's the Veneno one you're talking about there's a clip of it on youtube last time I checked.

Didn't Schire write that? wagnerpanther, I don't know how early they taped arena stuff but the TV that appeared on 24/7 from the 70's was stuff that I hadn't seen about 75% of.

I wish there was more Heel Mad Dog Vachon from the 50's - 70's against quality face opponents, like AWA title matches against Verne and Crusher, for example. Heel Vachon/Raschke from the Montreal area would also be sweet. There is a lot of Bockwinkel available but obviously I wish there was more, especially more of his and Heenan's 70's interviews. Stevens is another obvious choice for me, if only because he gets such significant praise from his peers in every situation and his footage is lacking. Verne defenses against Watts, Crusher, Vachon, Hennig, Race, and so many others as well.

LOL I thought I was the only one that hated "McDaniels". I find it appears in print on old ads a lot, plus on a lot of TV captions. I assume it never made one bit of difference to Wahoo one way or the other as long as he could cash the cheque.

Name of Workers: Nick Bockwinkel and Bobby Heenan Promotion/Year: AWA, late 1980/early 1981 Why it's great: The eloquence of Bockwinkel paired with the wit of Bobby Heenan and the perfect straight man in Okerlund. Bockwinkel works hard not to laugh out loud here. there is so much Bock/Heenan goodness out there, but this one is in their top half at least: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW3oJXqxTJU (Hey Parv, this opens with an early Steve Regal promo. My apologies.)

Name of worker: Mad Dog Vachon Promotion (and year): AWA 1983 Link to promo: Everything I love about the Mad Dog (and Mean Gene's interview style, for that matter) is encapsulated in this promo.

Hey' it's something at least. At this point I'll take a depository of random old school TV eps and matches over....well, nothing.