khawk20

Mr. Davis has proven to be quite polarizing in the initial commentary I've seenacross the boards on this footage. Most of the comments until now have revolved around people wanting to get in a time machine and go back in time to punch him in the face because of his commentary on these gems. It's not like Davis is a new, unheard voice, but it is new that there is a specific body of work everyone is checking out at the same time, which is concentrating the reactions here and elsewhere.

I've known Jim online for well over a decade. Great guy all around. I'll miss him.

Jose: I had to ask Steve Yohe about the Carpentier-Gagne match myself. He figures that the decision was changed after the film runs out since it went into the record books as a "no contest", but the video leaves off with Verne being proclaimed World Champion.

Verne vs. Carpentier has people going pretty nuts. Carpentier is billed as the World Champion, and Verne beats him for the title. There is a Thesz-Rogers match up there apparently from Wrigley Field on June 21, 1950 as well. Ken Viewer on Classics noted that a year ago all 200+ hours they had converted could be had on dvd for around $14000. That give syou an idea on how much some folks were playing for a match or two on dvd before now. All I can say is "wow".

If whoever putting that up is getting it right from the Chicago Film Archives, he is paying a lot of money for each match. Without clicking on any of it yet, I assume commentary is all in English? Many of those matches also appeared on the Encyclopedia of Pro Wrestling discs put out in Japan several years ago. Very nice to see it all in one place like that.

Just a thought/comment... I've always thought that the 80's project would culminate in the top ten (or whatever number is deemed acceptable) from every completed region thrown onto a set (along with a pre-determined amount of "wildcard" picks to add matches from each reason cutoff with a top ten slotting for automatic entry) with the same voting criteria as the regular 80's set, which would take care of the Greatest Matches of the 80's portion of a project like this. That, of course, should it ever come to pass, is eons away, but the 80's projects that are completed should serve as a good nomination center for matches from that era for the purposes of what you are proposing. A good starting point in that regard would be a simple re-listing of the voting totals in each completed region. If nothing else it's potentially a baseline for people to start watching.

This concerns me a bit in that this seems like it will invariably exclude some wrestlers deserving of consideration.

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.