khawk20

Maybe this is the secret reason Ray Stevens gets praised as an all-time great.

It's a good point, but to be honest at the time I personally was not thinking of the impact their style had moving forward on other promotions and on wrestling in general. It was only later that the idea came to me that taking things to the level they did violence-wise and stylistically would be so hard to dial back. At the time, it had no consequence on how I and my groups watched it or discussed it.

I liked it at the time. Still do now, in smaller doses. I know a few people that had drifted away from watching wrestling on TV over the years that tuned into ECW when it finally came on TV here and were blown away with what they were seeing, and got dragged back into weekly viewing. The thing for them was that it was such a different product than they had been watching when they faded away from it. The initial shock of what they were seeing was enough to capture their interest again. Don't discount the rabid, chanting, nutty crowd and the effect they had on newer viewers either. It was a very, very different vibe than many had left their wrestling fandom on in the 90's.

Watched part of the December 7 1985 Boston Garden show last night. Pedro Morales pinned Bob Orton....seriously, that happened. I had to watch it twice to make sure I wasn't having some sort of flashback.

It was newsworthy enough that I remember seeing/hearing about it on tv after it happened. If Entertainment tonight was around then (I think it was), it might have been on there. Can't recall exactly. As noted, it was all about Kaufman and Letterman as nobody outside of the few of us that bought mags knew who Lawler was, but I will give credit to Lawler for being just about the perfect guy to pull of the wrestler part of it, in terms of being media savvy enough and coming across as being legitimately upset at Kaufman.

It makes me wonder about the different thought processes going on there, too. I mean, The WWE went hard and heavy and paid some good money to get a lot of these old video libraries, and kept all of their own stuff in good shape. Seems like they have invested too much not to pay more attention to it while trying to make the outlet that will actually air that material successful. Is there a disconnect between the desire to acquire and the desire to use it? Unless they've determined that the olderl footage is best suited for specials on specific wrestlers, like HOF presentations and the like, and intend to use it mostly in that capacity. They could be using viewing data compiled from Classics on Demand and what was watched and what wasn't, if such a tracking system was possible for that service. Even then the sample size was likely very small compared to what they could draw on for data from the actual network now that it's running. All I know is between the lack of older footage that I'm interested in and the Canadian roll-out, so far the network has disappointed this particular fan far more than I thought was possible. I guess it can only improve from here....right?

Even if they're talking about the VOD old school stuff, the initial offerings would have already been consumed by those interested, and probably early on (the MSG and Boston shows, for example). I would guess most of us would watch a 1975 MSG show on the network once and that's it. That point would make more sense to me if they were rolling out even one 80's house show a week and had data based off of that. ...having said that, "old school" is such a large lump depending on what era you were watching "back in the day". Are they talking about 70's and 80's stuff, or early-to-mid 90's offerings, or all of them together? For me it's even harder to quantify that argument without knowing what those who are looking at the data consider to be old school.

Expectations must have been pretty low, then.

One from the AWA (where I noticed it most, at least): The times that a wrestler reaches for the ropes and the referee kicks their hands off. Then later on in the same match, they don't. Joe Fiorito, longtime Winnipeg house show referee, did this all the time. It was always presented that you have to be close enough to go through the ropes to get the break easily (basically a whole arm or leg through the ropes), as opposed to reaching out for the ropes and grabbing them from a distance (stretching out the rope towards you), which is why the ref would not call for the break. So, from a rules standpoint it's technically right, but the visual was always the ref being a dick and playing favourites with the face.

That angle made me completely quit watching wrestling for at least 2-3 years. Seriously.

It isn't apologizing for being a fan, it's how many people you knew that you would actually tell you were a fan of it.

There probably isn't anything wrong with it. After watching him for so long in Montreal, It was probably too much of a change for me to ever like or appreciate.

I disagree in the sense they were able to perform many of the same moves that they did in their face personas, and have good back-and-forth matches with other wrestlers, like Bret Hart. Bravo could have wrestled more of his Montreal style if allowed, but with the additional bulk and a "World's Strongest Man" gimmick, I don't think it would have translated very well.

All were factors but most noticable to me was how the power version in the WWF seemed to have his offense dumbed down accordingly, which was probably a combination of the extra bulk and the determination from above on how he should wrestle (read: You're a power heel, punch, kick, stomp, that's about it). The old Bravo could have played a scientific-styled heel (akin to Hennig or Martel, for example) adequately. He was never as smooth as either of those two examples as a face...which I think was part of the reason for the shift to power heel.

The difference between his AWA time circa 1980 + his Montreal time vs. his WWF stint is night and day. Two completely different wrestlers.

It's taken me years of practice to get it down to a smirk.

re: Battleroyals: If you ever get a chance to check out some of the older AWA battleroyals, do so, they ran pretty long and had some cool spots in it. Often they went a good ten minutes before anyone even got eliminated. The Winnipeg ones pre-84 are worth checking out especially.

Guilty Pleasure: The Ultimate Warrior. Everything he did seemed to fulfill a wrestling wish I had right at that time, specifically ending HTM's IC title reign and pinning Hogan and taking the title from him clean. I was also pissed more than I should have been when Slaughter beat him for the title. Guilty Displeasure: I hated when Larry Zbyszko got the AWA title as it signified the true death toll for the AWA. Lawler leaving killed any chance they had of working something out with WCCW and the smaller promotions to stay alive as a competitive entity. Zbyszko was very "meh" as a worker compared to previous champs so, while a competent wrestler and great mic man, he represented the true "last gasp" of the AWA. Being a die-hard, I watched until the end and stayed invested in the product, but I hated that Larry was the only viable option as a champion and it made my self-imposed AWA fandom a difficult experience at best.

At the point Bravo and Bad News came in, it might have been more a case of Vince promising limited or no pinfall losses just to get them there and prevent them from going to WCW or anyone else they were looking to bury. The roster was big enough in the WWF at the time to have them float around the mid-card without losing via pin much, if at all. Duggan was stupidly over from the get-go as I remember, which definitely helped in his case.