khawk20

Jeff is wrong on the date. It was the 74 bout. I think this is stuff from Dan and the recent IWE dvd releases. John Awwwwwwwww. It'll still be fun to watch. I love the old IWE stuff, some real gems have come out of those releases. Some really early career matches of some guys too, like Sgt. Slaughter and the Sheepherders. This set also has a Bockwinkel-Ashua Hara match I don't think I've seen before.

Just ordered the latest IWE Chronicles set from Mr. Lynch. This one has a listing for a Verne Gagne-Billy Robinson match from 11/20/79 in Japan. Jeff said it's about 40 minutes with full ring intros and national anthems, the whole shebang. I had no idea they wrestled after their 1974 series so I'm really looking forward to seeing it. EDIT: I have realized that this could also be their 1974 bout from 11/20 labeled wrong, but there is lots of other decent stuff on that set anyway so no problem if it is. Verne was on tour in the IWE during that part of November in 1979 so it might very well be new.

Those four entries are the obvious ones.

Understand that I'm not advocating him as a HOF candidate, but I do think he was more of a star than he sometimes gets acknowledged as.

He had a good run as the top challenger to Verne in 1974-75. I've always sort of thought of him in the same vein as Ivan Koloff: He could have filled Koloff's role as the guy who beat Bruno and had three weeks as WWWF Champion. One of the reasons his switch to face in the AWA as the avenging angel for an injured Mad Dog Vachon was so hugely received was that he was such a consumate heel for so many years before that. I doubt that helps much, but Raschke was a pretty big name for a long time.

I thought of you when I saw they actually got some votes.

Curt Hennig should be mentioned if he hasn't been already. His work was highly thought of in the AWA until he started seriously climbing the ladder in 85-86. FWIW (not much to me), Meltzer used to point to him as the best wrestler in the company in 1984, when he was being used in the midcard or below. I suppose it depends on when you think his peak was.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL That is some unintentionally funny stuff, right there.

I've gotten this a lot as well.

I used to love it when the face got thrown out of the ring after a period of being dominated by the heel, and the heel would not let him back in...punishing him back to the floor with various kicks, punches, and assorted fouls. After the third or fourth time, the face would get mad, find a way back into the ring, and quickly get the heel begging off. The face would then go on the offence with various corner whips, backdrops, dropkicks, etc. The crowd, of course, went nuts the whole time. It was also usually a sign that the end of the match was near...not always, but most of the time. If this is still done with any regularity, I'd be curious to know if it works on any level. I don't picture it being an effective spot in a match of this era....but that's just me.

At some point you should track this one down for comparison: Tito Santana (WWF IC Champ) vs. Adrian Adonis (Keil Auditorium, 15:30 shown) There may even be a longer version via WWE On Demand around now, I can't remember. The bout is from 1984, pre-Adorable gimmick. There is also a Santana-Adonis bout from the AWA that I know was filmed (or at least parts of it were) as that film ran under the end credits on their TV in some markets. I think that would be a fun one to see as it would be from 1980-81-ish. ...also for some odd reason that Santana-Orton match from MSG is one of my favourites. It has always stuck with me and I have no idea why. I've never been able to explain it.

The possible answer to the point about the WWF mishandling it (and why there was no blowoff) is that this feud was designed strictly to elevate Martel as a heel. I don't believe Santana won a single match in this feud (this is what I remember, I have not looked up the match results). Tito was beaten pretty definitively around the horn. If I'm right, the WWF didn't have a blowoff because it was strictly an upward push for Martel. I think you're looking for this feud to have had some sort of back-and-forth to it like Jannetty-Michaels did when they had their breakup. That never seemed in the cards for Santana and Martel.

Pre-WWF Bravo was a very good wrestler, and a legitimate star in Quebec.

I will check and see if they give a venue, but I don't think so.

..and you can't spell "Psychology" right?

I believe it was Savage-Tito no DQ from Toronto, and it aired on Classics on Demand. Bix wrote up a short blurb here when it came out, IIRC.

Heh, I actually have a couple of tapes of that. Doink, Jim Brunzell, Iron Shiek, Bill Irwin, Derrick Dukes all listed as featured. My tapes are listed as "Ken Patera's All-Star Wrestling Alliance".

What are the Martel/Bravo and Martel/Hayes matches worth watching? I've seen the Martel/Hayes from St. Paul with Crusher at ringside but I didn't like it very much. That Crusher at ringside match was supposed to segue into Crusher/Martel vs. Hayes/Gordy the next month in St. Paul, but the idea went over very poorly. It ended up being Hennig/Martel vs. Hayes/Gordy, though I'm not sure if the switch with Crusher was done because nobody wanted to see it or if Crusher and Verne had another one of their blow-up-walk-out sessions. anyhow... The one before that in St. Paul is the first one I think of for Hayes. The whole dynamic there is that the average fan believes that Martel should handle Hayes with ease, yet he doesn't...Hayes gives him plenty of trouble even before pulling out knucks to score the win. It's compelling in the sense that you are made to spend the whole match muttering "C'mon! how can he be losing to this bum!" to yourself. There are similar matches with Hayes in Chicago and IIRC Vegas in that vein, along with a Buddy Roberts-Martel match with the same dynamic that is actually pretty good (Roberts won a coin flip with Hayes to get the match as a sub for either Gordy or King Tonga, I can't remember which one no-showed). It was a similar dynamic to Martel vs. Garvin, although the matches against Jim were a lot better to watch from strictly a back-and-forth match standpoint, IMO. The Bravo matches in 83 were extremely big in Quebec. Verne in Martel's corner, Brito (I think) in Bravo's corner...felt really important. Both were faces at the time. It had the vibe of, say, Hogan-Warrior at Wrestlemania, in the sense that both had their backers, and those that liked them equally were torn on who to root for. There are parts of at least one and I think two matches available. I believe those matches were big enough that Verne at least partially based his decision to give Martel a run with the belt on the emotion that they generated.

Martel: 1) Bockwinkel 2) Tsuruta 3) Dino Bravo 4) Santana 5) A many-way tie with guys including Hansen, Hayes, Garvin, and Tama(Tonga Kid, whose matches with Martel in the WWF are really compelling to me for some reason)

Gary DeRusha, the AWA's referee of note in the last few years, was really loud on all of his rope counts and pinfall counts, and his break the hold counts...to the point of "holy fuck, shut UP already". Ruined a ton of matches for me, almost as many as Lee Marshall's commentary did.

Bobby heenan's later body work is so well thought of by everyone now, I sometimes think people forget how great a flat-out heel he was in the AWA and WWA. The best example of this for me is the Kaissie-Bockwinkel series in Fall 1981. The AWA was trying to re-establish Bock as the champ and decided to match him against someone even more vile than him (kaissie). The idea was to gt Bock over in that series and then the fans would accept him back as the champ again since he got it after Verne retired (FWIW fans stayed away in droves for a Bock-Raschke title defense in Minneapolis in June 1981, and Raschke was the top face in the promotion at that time). Problem was, Bockwinkel couldn't get over with the fans for that series with Heenan coming to the ring with him because he was so incredibly hated. As such, they had to run some angles to get heenan eliminated from ringside (once via kaissie's sword, other times using "he's too hurt to come out" after he was in an earlier match on the card) so fans could get behind Bock...because they just couldn't do it with Heenan there. Considering Kaissie was the vilest motherfucker you could imagine at the time, it was extremely impressive that Heenan was even more hated...and not in a comedy-manager way, if that makes sense.

Nope. Heel.

Keep in mind it could just be Dave taking *another* dig at the AWA in his own way. If he says 5 positive things about the AWA without some sort of dig or sarcasm attached to it in the entire run of the WON between 1984-90, I'd be surprised.

FWIW his finisher when he was a smaller, more agile wrestler was the Airplane spin. I wonder what other moves were "available" that he could have used in it's place...maybe all the good ones were already being used in the WWF, and that was all he/they could come up with as a power-finisher.

..enough of one that he got an IC match against Savage and won by COR in MSG. From Graham's site: WWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - August 25, 1986 (22,092) Pedro Morales defeated WWF IC Champion Randy Savage (w/ Miss Elizabeth) via count-out at 7:19