khawk20

This thread is borne out of a conversation between Dylan and Dave on Dave's board concerning The High Flyers and what Dave thought of them. Some of Dave's answers are based on him seeing them live. First, the San Francisco AWA cards I found courtesy of Clawmaster's Results Archive. From these records, it seems the AWA did not appear there until 1982. Here are the cards featuring Gagne and Brunzell in tag action: 6/19/82 San Francisco, CA @ Cow Palace Handicap Match Hulk Hogan beat Nick Bockwinkel & Bobby Heenan AWA Tag Team Champions Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell beat Jerry Blackwell & Sheik Adnan Ken Patera beat Ray Stevens dq Pat Patterson beat Alexis Smirnoff Princess Victoria & Sabrina beat Joyce Grable & Wendi Richter Sgt. Goulet beat Buck Zumhofe These teams would have had a pretty nice match ready to go at this point, since they has been at it throughout the AWA for several months at this stage of their feud. 8/26/82 San Francisco, CA @ Cow Palace AWA Tag Team Champions Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell beat Tito Santana & Rick Martel Ken Patera & Bobby Duncum & Jesse Ventura beat Baron Von Raschke & Otto Wanz & Buck Zumhofe Pat Patterson & Ray Stevens beat Bobby Heenan & Sheik Adnan Adrian Adonis & Sgt. Goulet beat Brad Rheingans & Jerry Monti Dave speaks of this in his reply to Dylan and notes Santana and Martel looked like the better, more cohesive team. I have a hard time buying that. Patterson and Stevens on the card would likely have reminded him of what a top tag team "should" look like, so maybe he was comparing the Flyers and the Stevens/Patterson combo subconciously. 3/5/83 San Francisco, CA @ Cow Palace Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell & Mad Dog Vachon beat Sgt. Goulet & Jerry Blackwell & Sheik Adnan Hulk Hogan beat Jesse Ventura dq Wahoo McDaniel ddq Ken Patera Jerry Lawler beat John Tolos Buck Zumhofe beat Guy Lambert Curious 6-man with Goulet being a total throw-in from what I can gather. 7/16/83 San Francisco, CA AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel beat Wahoo McDaniel dq Mad Dog Vachon beat Jerry Blackwell dq Jim Brunzell & Greg Gagne & Rick Martel beat Ken Patera & Bobby Heenan & Jerry Blackwell Heenan was likely subbing for Kaissie here (same match with Kaissie in over Heenan ran in St. Paul later) but it doesn't specifically note that. 11/26/83 San Francisco, CA AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel beat Mad Dog Vachon Special Referee: Ray Stevens Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell beat AWA Tag Team Champions Ken Patera & Jerry Blackwell dq att: 3,500 Probably the identical card that ran on Thanksgiving night in St. Paul, of which there is video on. 12/26/83 San Francisco, CA Ray Stevens & Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell & Mad Dog Vachon beat Mr. Saito & Jerry Blackwell & Ken Patera & Sheik Adnan Rick Martel beat Billy Graham Buck Zumhofe beat Bobby Heenan att: 3,000 They ran a bunch of these 8-man tags around Christmas that year. Nothing with Gagne and Brunzell teaming together after that in San Fran, which the AWA ran card in until May of 1985. So, in terms of regular tag team matches, there are only 3 he would have seen live. The rest are 6-man-plus. The other cards I looked at had some singles bouts with Brunzell and Gagne here and there. Dave would have had more exposure to the High Flyers via the AWA TV airing in that market...very squash-heavy TV. I have a lot of AWA results for Oakland beginning in 1981. Would Dave have seen those cards too? If he would have, I will post them here. I assume he may have seen them in Oakland since he speaks of seeing the Flyers vs. Adonis and Ventura, although that could have been arena tape as opposed to live matches. The High Flyers had some very good matches against The Sheik's army in 1982 and 83, and their St. Paul bouts vs. Martel and Santana were excellent as well. Given the time frames, it's safe to assume the matches seen in the Twin Cities and those in San Fran would have been quite similar. Dave's comments don't necessarily dis the Flyers (his crediting of Greg Gagne as an underrated worker is somewhat surprising, though not as much as his criticism of Brunzell as not being very believable is), but I question whether in this case, seeing the Flyers out of their home market (Twin Cities area for starters), did not do them any favours in how they have been remembered by him. Home turf is home turf, after all.

I'll start a separate thread in the main forum.

Thank goodness.

...to this end, it will not surprise me if Dave viewed Patera's year-long pairing with Jerry Blackwell and the Sheik and their AWA tag title reign as the low point of any dissertation on Patera's HOF merit, outside of his pre-jail comeback.

Wait, Dave saw them live every month? I don't believe that. I think I've made my feelings known previously but Dave never seemed to like or understand the AWA or how they did things, from pretty much everything I've ever read him write about it. The arguments he makes in that conversation drive that home in my eyes. Brunzell never felt real? C'mon now. And Martel and Santana, together for all of two months before their Strike Force days later on, were in no way a better working team than the together-for-the-better-part-of-8-years-when-they-faced-off team of Gagne and Brunzell, period. I don't see Dave ever putting them on the ballot, no matter what arguments or evidence are brought forward. It seems like he cannot figure out how Gagne and Brunzell drew, and refuses to acknowledge how good they really were until he can justify their drawing power in his own mind.

I'm praying he's pretending to be that dense there to confuse his readers. If not....yiiiiiikes.

Where is my "LIKE" button on this thing? Stupid old-school keyboards!

Absolutely. How the numbers fall, if they fall honestly, would make for great discussion. And since they would likely change a bit here and there quarterly, the discussion would change.

Quarterly, perhaps....once every three months.

Awesome.

For fun, every month a selected core of people (any number as long as they commit to doing it monthly, could be the entire board...no criteria to vote except maybe being a board regular as determined by management) submit a list of their top 25 wrestlers at that moment in time. Results are compiled (1st place vote = 25 points, 2nd place =24 points, etc.), and the top 50 or so are posted in a sticky. Next month, re-vote, with movement up and down and new entries analyzed in an accompanying "ratings analysis" style thread. I figure so many people in this thread move people around thier own personal lists on a given day, the ratings would probably change a fair bit every month.

Rick Martel trying to use the Flying Vault as his finisher. It worked maybe 0.01% of the time in matches that mattered.

As an infrequent viewer who caught a stream of the last match tonight, I can't say I'll blame them. I did like the ref holding Ryback's legs part during the fast count, though.

I got mine yesterday. Ditto to the rest, great series and I've enjoyed them all.

Heh, maybe they can have Heyman do something sneaky with the contract to make it an old-school WWF-style cage match, where you only win by escaping. You could have Punk win that in a lot of different ways while taking a shit kicking, and without either guy having to be pinned or submit.

Yeah, quite funny to see Solie as confused as the viewers. I remember seeing him call a women's match on Georgia Wrestling once where he called each woman by the name of the other for the entire match. Ole Anderson finally came out and told Gordon that he was mixing the women up, just as the final pinfall took place. Very lol-zie.