khawk20

I have a fair bit of that "set" that I've accumulated over the years. VQ ranges up and down on what I have, no idea if this set is an improvement. The bulk of what I have is 80's material so there isn't a ton of Brisco on it from what I remember. I especially like the drama that played out surrounding Dusty Rhodes' first title win in 1979 over Race, with Terry Funk interfering and breaking Dusty's arm prior to the rematch, setting up their war in that area. There is a studio segment where Jos Leduc comes out because Dusty is taking his interview time while they review the film and Dusty loses his shit and lays him out, followed by a freak-out Promo. Also Dusty, despite having his arm broken by Funk before the rematch, loses the title when he flips Race over the top rope due to the NWA adding the stip that if Dusty is DQed he loses the title. A broken arm (which Dusty sells completely during the entire match) was not enough of an excuse for him to lsoe the title back to Race, believe it or not. I always remember that one when peolpe talk about other wrestlers losing titles in screwjob finishes that stand up. Rhodes first NWA title loss is easily the worst.

I'm a huge Vachon mark so I'm biased, but his body of work over 36 years to me speaks for itself and puts him into the top ten pretty easily.

My kids are pretty rotten so I'd be fine with that. They are also full-grown and very large so good luck. I will try at some point to get in on one of these...I don't think tonight will be an option but I'll see.

When you get the book, on the inside are instructions on how to get it on Kindle for free, as long as it wasn't a limited time offer. I got mine on Amazon so maybe it was an exclusive to them, but if not, you can have both.

I remember us getting that show. It appeared very randomly and then it was gone. I wondered if they were trying to get a live show here but once it fell apart they just stopped showing the TVs here.

He has more Winnipeg stuff from that era, the local tapings and interviews, but he has no time to convert more of the tapes. He would not sell them to me. It took about three-four months for me to cajole this stuff out of him. I'm watching it right now and it's fun. All the interviews surround the previous Winnipeg arena show and the upcoming Winnipeg show. The note he sent said was that this stuff begins at the very first tv taping they did at the Norberry Auditorium, as opposed to their other venue (Not sure where that was, it may have been the same Minneapolis studio stuff we saw on the Minny tv, no idea) that they used previously. The tv matches are really short squashes, but there are tons of interviews, and some arena matches. They are showing the Martel-Bock 8/16 title match from the arena as I type this. Nice to see the post-match promos after it setting it up from karbo, Bock, and Heenan..with more to come to set up their 9/20 rematch, I'm sure. Lots of fun. **EDIT**--Heenan just said Blackjack Lanza looked like that mule that pulls the milk wagon. I love this stuff. **DOUBLE EDIT**--same promo, Heenan's in a lather and says "The Fabs look like they fell off a wedding cake from San Francisco". lolololol

Made a really nice find that arrived today, a 4-hour dvd convert of the first Winnipeg AWA TV from Norberry Auditorium in August 1984-onward. Arena promos galore for the Winnipeg shows. Quality is so-so but I've never seen a lot of this before and it doesn't appear to have circulated before. I picked this up from a guy that had some of the clips up on youtube. I don't usually have much luck with youtube guys for things like this (with a couple of exceptions), and it was like pulling teeth to get even this, but for an AWA guy like me this is a real score.

Martel's matches vs. Jumbo in Japan with Rick as AWA champ are very good. Martel also had a match with King Tonga in Montreal from 1984 that I put on my 1984 set that is decent.

Yeah, Tolos was in for a bit. He battled Lawler on the Super Sunday show the following month. Superstar Graham appearing for a few months from the end of 83 through January 1984 was, to me, more bizarre than Tolos coming in.

It would be interesting for folks to see that match with the original commentary (IIRC Rod Trongard did it live) to see if it changed their opinion/ranking of the match itself. While I'm confident that the posters here are adept at fighting through bad commentary and properly reviewing a match, seeing that one with the live commentary would certainly add to the experience when viewing it.

It is possibly the worst AWA commentated match ever.

Spent some time in Indy teaming with Dick the Bruiser, so there's that. Some of it exists on the Bob Luce films.

Been a while since I've seen jdw really "go".

Garvin would have been moving around some at that time. He came into the AWA shortly after that and won the TV title, and departed for the WWF in what, early 89?

To restore my credibility a little, I've been following the AWA Set talk from afar and have enjoyed virtually everything I've sampled from there - Rockers/Rose & Somers feud, Bock/Hennig, High Flyers/Sheiks cage, Hogan/Bock, Guerreros/Badd Company, etc. Just messing with you a little. If you ever decide to invest further into watching stuff from the area, shoot me a PM. There's lots of goodness there that didn't make the 80's set that is, IMO, worth checking into.

I know that there were a lot of face and heel interviews complaining about Bock getting the title on a silver platter in the months immediately after it happened (Jerry Blackwell going off about it in an interview comes to mind right away, with Bock and the Heenan Family coming out later to present a rebuttal), so they were smart enough to work what would be the normal, natural reaction of the other wrestlers in the area into the TV right after it happened. From a 'fabe standpoint, magazine wise, I don't remember the mags going off on the decision too badly but it was there. The mags were written so much differently that even if the writers of the mags were doing a head-shake at the decision, they would have mostly kept it to themselves. Editorial opinion was limited. From a fan standpoint, there was a lot of eye-rolling and, to a point, I believe it affected business a little bit. Bock's first title defense in the Twin Cities after getting the belt back was in June 1981 against Baron Von Raschke, who had just re-entred the area as Mad Dog Vachon's avenger against Blackwell and Studd. H was white hot as a face, so the matchup should have drawn a big house. It did not (The Minneapolis Auditorium is noticably empty for this matchup). Subsequently, Bock was programmed into a series against Sheik Kaissie (White hot as a heel wrestler, completely hated by everyone), which was able to draw sympathy for Bock as the default-face in their feud (they hated him less), and thus legitimize his claim to the title in the fans eyes. After that, fans were more forgiving and when Hogan came in a few months later and turned face, things got "back to normal", so to speak. The decision is looked at now as being awful with the full benefit of hindsight on any message board discussing the AWA, but, at the time, it only had a limited effect on business in the AWA and how the fans viewed the title.

Never mind those Lucha dudes, just never say anything bad about the AWA and you'll be fine.

In terms of kayfabe presentation, my recollection of mag portrayals of both pre-1986 (if a bar needs to be set, time-wise) falls in line with what you're trying to say.

Jerry, I don't know if you are old enough to have read the Weston/Apter mags (PWI, Inside Wrestling, etc.) from the 80's, but what you're saying here is almost exactly how Flair and Bockwinkel were portrayed by those magazines in kayfabe terms back then. What those mags never talked about were Bockwinkel's clean wins in blowoffs (by design, of course, to reinforce their portrait of his championship reign). Their writing angle was Bock only retained the title by cheating, at all costs, and that he couldn't win a match cleanly to save his life. Obviously not true but the idea behind their stories was to build the face challengers' obstacles they faced in trying to win the AWA title from Bock (from Heenan interfering, to Bock always disqualifying himself, to refusing to grant deserving guys title shots). Flair, on the other hand, was portrayed as the greatest thing since sliced bread from 1981-83. You'd have thought he was beating two guys at once in every title defense going by the articles of the day (and they always seemed to note that Flair actually DID beat guys, like Race, DiBiase, and others that you never heard about taking a pinfall loss cleanly, without something unusual happening to cause it). Where I think those mags ran into trouble was the WWF Expansion, where they literally had to start portraying the NWA as the vastly superior territory, and, by extension, built Flair into even more of a "greatest wrestler ever". At least for a little while. As Flair became more visible as Champion during the 84-88 period, it was impossible to hide his in-ring antics/cowardice/cheating from their articles, but the mags always implied that Flair could beat them on his own if he chose to do so. I therefore conclude, after reading Jerry's arguments in this thread, that JerryVonKramer is, in fact, Bill Apter (or maybe Steve Farhood).

I think someone that looked like Hawk took Jerry's lunch money at school every day while he was growing up.

I don't think so, personally. I've always seen Bockwinkel as more "foiled" than "weak" when he can't get any offense in, or his opponent is dominating him. As a compatriot of the ever-cowardly Bobby heenan, this is almost expected behavior in some respects.