khawk20

I just can't buy that they would have gone off the air of the biggest event they had with a heel celebrating as champ. It just wasn't they way they did things back then. I will say that they surely considered it, like they would have looked at things from every angle...but I really don't believe it would ever have passed the idea stage. I'm also very glad I never saw the WWF mag cover or heard anything about it before the event. That would have sucked.

That was just constipation.

DiBiase himself has said many times in shoots that he was promised him the world title back when they first offered him the role of Million Dollar Man. We've talked about this before somewhere, but DiBiase was the key asset in UWF and he could have gone to Crockett at that time. I'm pretty sure I've heard other people tell versions of this same story before too (Pat Patterson? Gene Okerlund? Can't remember now). The main source for the HTM story is HTM himself, of course. I believe that DiBiase was promised the belt as part of that initial negotiation but (as described above) later Vince changed his mind and used the HTM situation to get himself out of the promise ... the Million Dollar Belt is the result. Like others though, I don't believe by the time WMIV actually comes around that the plan was still for him to come out of that with the belt. I'd offer that DiBiase would have got the title a few months before Mania somehow and lost it back to Hogan, or Savage, at IV. ...and by that, I mean cheating to an actual pinfall win over Hogan somehow. The Twin refs/loss to Andre/give the title to Ted is something someone thought of that was seen as better than the original way Ted would have won the belt, whatever that was. I think they would have been actively searching for a way for Hogan to job without really jobbing, pretty much exactly what they came up with in the end.

I've never bought this theory simply based on how the WWF Champ was booked in the 80's. Heel Champs didn't get much if any time with the title, and ending a WrestleMania with a heel winning the title just seems so..."anti-wrestlemania" in that time frame, so to speak. I think the plan was simply executed as it was laid out...Savage comes out with the belt, Hogan endorses his title reign, and Savage runs with it until the next WrestleMania, where Hogan could re-assume his place on top as Champ. I've never really seriously thought any other ending was in play, to be honest.

Your next project, perhaps?

Fan? He's Doink the Clown's half-brother. Not Doink, Krusty!

this is the best typo but not really ever Trips + HBK. I'm not going back to edit that, though. That really is too hilarious. If "buys" had somehow become "Bi's" you'd have won the internet.

Bad Weed?

I think it was Georgia, actually.

I have a disc worth of Tito in the AWA from 1981-82, and there is a decent amount of his 79-80 WWF run out there. Only maybe a match or two from before 1979 that I can think of, from Texas. I'm blanking on where he was in 1983 at the moment.

I see what you mean now and I can agree with that. My perspective, unfortunately, is probably different than most simply because of my age when I was watching them in the 80's, and seeing them all first-run, so to speak. My stock in each was set a long time ago, so it doesn't apply to your idea...but your idea does probably apply to more of the board. The Steamboat-Flair series in 89 was magic but the clincher for me on how much I appreciated Steamboat was both his 86 bout vs. Bret Hart in Boston and his GAB match vs. Lex Luger. He helped reveal Bret to me as a real potential singles star down the road, and what he got out of Luger in their match was a huge WOW for me. Martel I watched chase Bockwinkel in 82-83 through his 1984 title win and I followed him closely after that in the WWF. He was more of a whole picture type of wrestler to me, one I followed career-wise and always enjoying the matches he was having (Bock bouts in 83 and 84, Tsuruta, Garvin and Hansen in 85, singles bouts vs. The Islanders in 87 plus his tag work with Zenk and Santana, his heel turn and Model days afterwards...enjoyed all of it). Santana was fun in his feud with Kaissie in the AWA (brief but intense) and his singles challenges of Bockwinkel, plus his initial teaming with Martel, his awesome stint as the IC Champ vs. Valentine, Orton, and Savage, and then being the perfect partner and spurned friend-type for Martel after the Strike Force run. The three of them are almost interchangeable to me based on my viewing experience of them during the time I was most into pro wrestling. There is no wrong choice.

This is probably true to an extent, but in my case Steamer has been slowly losing some luster for the last ten years. So going back to my answer above, are we talking about people that didn't see each man in their "prime", which IMO is the 80's, as it happened? If so....damn, I'm getting old.

Pre-existing how? As someone that watched all three closely during the 80's, I found each had their own dynamic that I enjoyed immensely regardless of the stage they were conducting their matches on. This is a group beyong most others in the sense that they are able to look past the "big stuff" and dig deeper. With each having merit in the context of the question, there is no obvious answer, and nobody is suffering in their vote total because of it. EDIT: With Steamboat winning the poll by a decent margin, I don't see how you think he is suffering in that same poll. Is it because he isn't the unanimous choice? I voted for Martel but Steamboat winning is as right an answer as Martel or Santana. IMO.

Nicely said (I didn't make that comp, FWIW). *** I voted for Martel, although any of the three could win the poll and I would have no argument. They are all in my top tier of all-time favourite workers.

...and there has been some grumbling about that.

1) Thanks for the plug. It needs an update since I did it but a lot of my older comps do at this point. Someday that'll happen. 2) I don't think 89 would have been any better without the TCS. The gimmick matches, as silly as some of them were, helped distract from the limited talent pool. Add in a Larry Z title match or a tag title bout to a program concentrating on the TCS, and it was better than the usual TV squash fare that would have prevailed. Plus if you seriously tried to keep track of the teams and scoring of the TCS it kept you focused on the show, since it was very difficult to follow at times. 3) I think the Texas Hangmen were used just fine. The Destruction Crew was the best AWA tag team they had in that stretch, and the Hangmen were a comfortable second on the heel side of the tag teams. Had the AWA carried forward another year or two, they would have eventually won the tag titles and had a run on top. It was a natural progression for them up the card, IMO, that was cut off with the end of the AWA. The whole 89-90 era of AWA wrestling was so hard for a long time fan to watch (those of us that stuck around, at least). Operating out of a singular arena that had maybe 200-300 in it on a good day (mostly a lot less), old time AWA stars getting older and/ or retiring, new guys being thrust into more prominent roles they weren't ready for, the convoluted nature of the TCS...Not as painful a ride as El-P's run through WCW, but it wasn't good. I wasn't sad when they ran out of first-run TV programming and went to an all-classic match format for several months in 1990, even though I knew that reagular AWA TV was not coming back.

I'd relate this to the idea that "The Champ" appearing on TV was treated as a special event in most areas, so the appearances were kept to a minimum (Verne as Champ was like this in the AWA as well, for example),whereas Rodz et al were getting fed to someone on TV in some capacity weekly.

Fear not! All will be forgiven after you witness the spectacle that is THE TEAM CHALLENGE SERIES!!! (....oh, wait, wrong dying promotion. Carry on, then...)

I forgot I ran out of juice when I hit 1988. If anyone has any questions about 88 & 89 please ask and I'll do my best to answer.

Not sure if it survived the board change. I may have it on one of my PC's, though.

At times he could, yes, but more often than not he seemed to get lost in expressing his sentiments midway through his promos.

Jim Brunzell was pretty bad on the mic, but it never really hurt him as he primarily was a tag wrestler. Greg Gagne was a decent talker so he could take the lead most of the time. I do wonder if he was a decent talker if he would have been moved more towards being a singles wrestler, though. His time in MACW and his bouts vs. Bockwinkel indicate that he probably had it in him.

I had the same investment and enjoyment in the Rose/Somers stuff that I did with the High Flyers vs. East/West Connection in 1981, maybe more because it really was something to hang onto in the time frame it happened in, with the talent loss becoming more of an issue. That feud felt very AWA-ish to me, and I applauded it and did my best to convince my wrestling friends to invest time in watching it. It isn't unfortunate that so much of that feud finished as high as it did, it deserved it, and it also validates AWA wrestling from a time when everyone basically shit all over the AWA in general. My AWA memories are consistent from the late 70's through to the end in that it was the AWA and I immersed myself in it, no matter how high or low it got. My tightest connection would be from the earlier part of the 80's, partly because it was the only wrestling I could see weekly along with Montreal (at some points). The more there was to watch, the thinner your investment would get (in a natural way) simply because there were other things to pay attention to. The AWA was always the primary point of interest for me, regardless of how much wrestling I was watching...and I had a C-Band satellite, so there was TONS of wrestling to choose from every day. Good times... My connection with most of the matches on this set runs pretty deep, probably deeper than most, and that makes me remember the matches differently as I lived through all the backstories and builds of the matches. Some angles resonated better than others, and it led to a greater anticipation and enjoyment of the matches born from them, even if the matches weren't that good. Best example I can think of right now is the Brody-Blackwell Lights out match from 10/20/84. Not a match highly regarded on the set, but it was such an incredible moment for an AWA fan to see Blackwell hug Greg Gagne at the end of it that the mark it left on my (and others) fandom makes it an absolute must-see match. I think you can only get those sort of connections if you watched it unfold live, which is good and bad...bad for ranking a match in this sort of format, if that makes sense. ....and FWIW Regal losing the title to Buck was actually a decently big moment when it happened. I shit you not.