khawk20

Dylan may have recently watched enough of these guys to give them a try here: J.T. Southern Soldat Ustinov The Russian Brute Tommy Jammer Mitch Snow

I've always been a big fan of this match. I'll also second the Adonis/Murdoch vs. the Briscos match from 12/84 at MSG.

Bobby Heenan, 1980-81, AWA. For starters. I was watching some 80-81 AWA stuff last night and even though I've seen the matches and angles dozens of times, it never fails to amaze me how hated Heenan was in that time frame....and that might not even have been the worst of his heat (his Chicago stuff from the 70's, for example).

Everybody has their own personal line for stuff like that. Mine was the Papa Shango-Ultimate Warrior Voodoo angle, which put me off of watching pretty much any wrestling for two or three years at least. Everybody's brain is wired differently in terms of the "this is too stupid even for me and I feel embarassed watching it" signal. We all have it, though.

The matches came from all over, Arena matches from MSG, Philly, Toronto, and Boston (most frequent), to some other odd arena matches here and there, to some matches that were clearly filmed during a tv taping but not broadcast on regular WWF TV. You got some bouts of PPVs after the fact sometimes, and lots of PPV promo "update" segments in and around those events. With there only being 4 PPVs back then, there were stretches without PPV promotion interwoven into the show...pretty weird to think about compared to how things progressed with PPV later on. How many arena bouts vs. Squash matches changed over the years. The last few years of the show in the early 90's are almost unwatchable, imo. The 80's shows are the way to go.

Out of interest, was he the one getting squashed or was he squashing? (considering he was main eventing the the Mid-South Coliseum in 86) He was squashing. I think he was only in for one taping and lord only know what happened after that. This was a real problem the AWA had at the time, I don't think they always exactly knew who was going to be there from taping-to-taping themselves, but it made for some interesting TV at times. True on all counts. The AWA often stretched a single taping someone made in Vegas into a month or two worth of TV, makign it seem like the guy was there for a longer period. Nikita Koloff's AWA appearance in 1989 was only one or two tapings worth, but it seemed like he was a regular the way the presented it on TV, for example. Landell was presented like he was going to be a player in the AWA, but never came back after that one taping. ....off-topic: "RodTrongard'sHair" = great username.

I always found it amazing that a guy who was such a highly regarded powerlifter/weightlifter was able to morph into such a different kind of wrestler than others with a similar background before getting into the business. His dropkick was a thing of beauty. RIP.

Montreal Bravo was a very different wrestler than WWF Bravo, and in my opinion a whole lot better in Montreal. I can't comment on whether Montreal Bravo is better than HHH. I dislike watching HHH matches and pretty much always have, so my opinion isn't unbiased. ..but Montreal Bravo >>>> WWF Strongman Bravo. No question.

Mad Dog Vachon doing a segment on WWF TV in Canada in or around 1984-85 called "Brunch with Mad Dog". The segment aired for several weeks and basically consisted of Vachon asking different WWF stars what they liked to each for Brunch. Really, really odd. Buddy Landell's 1 or 2 squash matches in the AWA in 1987-88-ish. He seemed very out of place to me there, even in squash situations.

Will this mean that the Classics On Demand service will not be disappearing in a few months, as has been previoulsy speculated/reported?

I don't think so.

Do you have a link for this? I saw El-P mention it a few days ago as well and wanted to check it out. The preview I watched on youtube was good for what it was, but I can't find anything other than that. Check your PMs.

There is a preview up on youtube for it Dated November 2011, so it appears that it was released in late October-Early November.

This is why it always surprises me that Verne Gagne saved tape from as far back as he did (at least 1966, hopefully earlier). Must've cost him a fortune not re-using tape...unless the format he was using couldn't be used twice. Even then, the foresight to try and save the footage is unusual in wrestling from that time frame, I think, at least in North America. Now I have heard that his storage methods were sub-standard and a lot of what he had is no longer usable, which sucks. But again, at least he tried to hold onto it.

Watching the Jim Brunzell shoot on youtube...Jim mentions that he understood Rick Steamboat was in ill health. Anyone know what that is or was about?

Would WWE have enough foresight to have a backup date booked, just in case?

Did this ever lead to any Crusher vs Freebird matches, singles or tags? I'd dig seeing Crusher vs Gordy atleast. There was this one from Winnipeg: 14 AWA The Freebirds vs. Larry Hennig, Baron Von Raschke and Crusher I don't remember thinking much of it, and I'd have to watch it again to see if Gordy and Crusher actually hooked up during the bout.

I think of it along the lines of Raschke being hired by Vachon to help him get revenge on Blackwell and Studd. Since Vachon was already out, he had to contend with both guys for a while. Something like that.

I'm imagining Bruiser Brody working today as I read that.

Zurkoff and his Manager, Chris Markoff, were pretty effective in Winnipeg even after the cage blowoff. They ahd that great little tag match against Bockwinkel and Vachon, a quick singles bout between Mad Dog and Markoff, and even the Road Warriors were brought in to take them down. By contrast, Zurkov and Markoff were fed to Sgt. Slaughter in a two-on-one match in St. Paul since Zurkov wasn't deemed an effective enough draw to have a singles match with the Sarge there. Booking those guys so differently in two different major cities in the territory was still somewhat plausible at the time since TV wasn't completely all-encompassing. Still interesting to see happen, though.