khawk20

The AWA in 1984 is a personal favourite. A changing of the guard and new direction in the title picture, big names being brought in, the WWF invading the Twin Cities and seeing how much busier the AWA got on a lot of fronts with different angles, the Blackwell face turn and the emergence of the Sheik's army, The LOD-Fabs matches (at a time when they were possibly the two top tag teams going), Slaughter coming in...it was a very promising time for the AWA, even in the face of losing a lot of the old stalwarts like Heenan, Jesse, Vachon, and of course, Hulk Hogan.

If they haven't specifically said what that target is it's smart because if they need the bump for their "million subscribers", they can use it and claim that those foreign subs were factored into the number. "Spin to Win", so to speak... What that might mean for the overall network success expectations is another thing.

Man I hope that 1971 episode of AWA TV with a very young Andre the Giant on the card survived. Also Carpentier vs. Robinson on the evening arena show would have been a ton of fun, I bet.

Too bad they don't think they have the audience to have Martel cover 1984 or 1985 in the AWA, when Martel was the champ, the promotional war was in full flight, the advent of Pro Wrestling USA, losing to Hansen, AWA Freebirds stories, the impact of long-term guys leaving and the effectiveness of the new guys coming in, Brody and all the fun he had...soooo much good stuff there. There are probably lots of guys that could do 1981 WWF, but not so many left that could do 1984 or 85 in the AWA. Again, I get that they probably don't see an audience for it, but it's a darn shame nonetheless.

No, no, they will TOTALLY get 2 million+ subscribers if they put up weekly AWA TV. Hunter, if you're reading this, you NEED to add AWA TV to get the subscribers! You'll get a million new ones for every year of AWA TV you show before 1981, guaranteed!

On the Time Frame referenced (20 years), absolutely not. On the Money being huge, I really have no idea. I'm sure they did ok at the gate when they wrestled but nothing really spectacular.

Watching some IWCCW lately. Some of those shows were very diverse, which makes for an interesting watch 25 years later. For example, the disc I popped in a couple of nights ago had the Midnight Rockers vs. The Maxx Brothers from the AWA and Missing Link vs. Kerry Von Erich from Hawaii, with IWCCW promos and matches interspersed throughout. It's fun since you never really know what's coming up next.

Just noticed this but was this thread really started in February 2007?

WWC Anniversario 1987. I enjoyed the Pogo vs. TNT match a ton.

The thing I noticed in the AWA versions of this spot is that it tends to happen early in the match in the majority of cases, which means the heel hasn't really had much of a chance to cheat yet. In any scenario it doesn't make good sense.

Some referees (Joe Fiorito in Winnipeg is the first one I thought of) used to kick guys hands off of the ropes when they reached it while their opponent had them in a hold. It was explained once that he did that because the wrestler wasn't actually at the ropes, and he had to be actually in the ropes with more than just a tenuous grasp on one rope for it to make the old he was in breakable. It always looked stupid and made it seem the ref favoured the face, and at the end of the day the spot was too arbitrarily applied to make sense. Fiorito seemed to do it every match. Drove me nuts.

The AWA had sleeper matches between Greg Gagne and Nick Bockwinkel where the referee was counting when a pin was attempted, despite it being noted that pinfalls didn't and wouldn't count. Of course, the wrestlers going for pinfalls was also noted and explained as an instinctual move in the heat of a hard match, which could also be a fabed explanation of the ref counting as well, I suppose. ...on the other side of the coin, the smartest referee call I may ever have seen in the AWA was the Zbyszko-Bockwinkel texas death match (no rules) from 1986 in St. Paul. Zbyszko hit referee Scott LeDoux with nunchakus as Bock entered the ring, then hit Bock several times, KOing him. The substitute referee climbed into the ring and counted the pin while everyone was going "WTF?" and it was explained that because it was a no-DQ match, all that stuff Larry did counted and the match was over. I think they made it a no-contest after the fact, but I always thought that was pretty cool, mostly because it was a ref call that made sense for a change.

Do you know him, Bix?

I'd try to contact Hoops Johnson and see what he knows about it. Hoops is the guy that converted the Buddy Rose tapes some years back. ...and if this guy is, in fact Hoops Johnson (he might be for all I can remember), then it's a worthwhile investment.

I was really hoping for a Butch Reed - Rick Martel series for the AWA title in 1985, but Butch bolted before they could get it off the ground. Was he really set to get the IC title from Steamboat or is that an Urban Legend?

Holy LOL...why would they ever have let that air?

Better?

I have a clip of Solie calling a women's TV match in Georgia where he mixes up the names of the women for the entire match, calling each by the other's name. Ole Anderson finally comes out and corrects Gordon on camera just as the pinfall happens. I'd have loved to have been backstage when Solie and Ole met up after that bit....Gordon, furious at being corrected on National TV after looking like a fool for five minutes, vs. Ole who would have been through the roof at having to come out and correct his ace announcer like that. I've never been a Solie fan. "There's certainly no question about that!" has a lot less traction with me as an announcer catchphrase than most others, and he spit that one out over and over and over. His voice reminds me of the owner of the Box Factory in that one Simpsons episode, and that isn't a good thing.

More than likely just someone trolling the faithful.

Not taped , although some Flair promos leading up to it survived and are available. Talking to people that were there, they said a lot of the wrestlers hung around and could be seen watching the match as it happened. Robinson also challenged Martel on the November 1984 Thanksgiving show in St. Paul, so April 1st was not his last AWA title challenge.

LOL I know JYD was decently built at one time, but come on. (PS--trying to use the quote function doesn't work. Not sure if that's just me)