khawk20

When talking about Japan footage one must note the IWE material that is out there. The last one that came out had some real gems on it, including several clips of "Bobby Slaughter" matches from what was probably his rookie year (1975), really early Sheepherders clips (from 1974), and lots more. AWA stuff from the 70's is not bad but a lot of it is Bob Luce stuff, which is clipped. Not all of it, though.

Thing is, Nash would know that too, so you would think if HE thought he had something to hold over Dixie's head, it would have to be pretty big for it to mean anything at this point. Or it's more werking on his part..who the hell can tell anymore?

Someone has to have sucked the least, though. As such, they should win, no?

I'd love to have seen a Bugs-Baby Kangaroo series, too. Could Bugs bring out the rage in the gentle simpleton, or would the Baby merely fall for all of Bugs' tricks and get squashed? It's either a huge hit or a giant flop...no in-between with that program.

At a certain point in ones career, even the biggest in the biz will do the job if the money is right.

One of the qualities of Hennig's AWA title reign was that, for the hardcore AWA fans, he was a real hope that the AWA could turn things around amidst the Mitch Snows, Soldat Ustinovs, JT Southerns and Rocky Mountain Thunders that we were being subjected to on TV every week. Hennig was great, no doubt, but think about how much better he looked compared to the rest of the AWA TV fare at that time. Put it this way: I enjoyed his early Mr. Perfect bouts in the WWF against guys like Jim Brunzell as much as I did some of his title defenses in the main-event slot on AWA TV shows. It's something to think about, if nothing else.

This is what they did in the Twin Cities.

That's about what I expected. McAdam has always been an AWA hater too, similar to Meltzer..."Another unmarried Marriage Counselor", so to speak.

Rick Martel had his career curtailed by injury, but came back for his run against Booker T in WCW long enough to make viewers realize that he could still go (before he got hurt again). I suppose Martel could be looked at as an example of someone that realized they should stop/cut back a lot when their injuries began to pile up and get worse in scope. In his case, the right time to hang 'em up was when his body told him to...and he listened.

Yeah. Bock ended his AWA run in the first week of August 1987, went to Japan for a few weeks at the end of that month, then segued over to the WWF to do colour commentary for a bit. After Japan, he was basically done in the ring except for the odd special match and his stint as WCW Commissioner. In Bock's case, he could still go when he quit, which is rare in the sense that he was having really good matches only a couple of months before he stopped wrestling full-time. He never got to the point where people were actively talking like he should retire because he looked bad in the ring, or out of shape. He was an anomaly, though. The list of mid-to-late 50-year-old wrestlers that retired from the ring at that point and still looked good is likely a pretty short one.

That's not unusual, there is a lot of AWA "ignorance" on WC. It'll be an uphill climb to get most of the board even interested in the idea of how much Blackwell meant to the AWA. Most seem to be stuck in "Verne was stoopid!!!!11" mode these days.

The thing about that spot was it was done over a few minutes, with three or four attempts to get back into the ring by the face, so it became plausible to the viewer that the face had time to recover his strength and get a second wind in that timespan.

If Lawler's comebacks = Warrior's comebacks, all babyface comebacks = Warrior's comebacks. Yeah, because that's what they all did, no-selling with a little visual gimmick thrown in : Ricky Morton, Tito Santana, Ricky Steamboat, Randy Savage, Brad Armtrong, Atsushi Onita, Chigusa Nagayo, Bob Backlund, Bret Hart... well, I could go on and on. Some did the no-sell routine, it worked for Hogan, Sting, Lawler, Warrior, even Tatanka (oh yeah), but not every babyface in wrestling was about making a comeback by just stopping selling for the heel. I don't care for this stuff, it annoys me every time. The AWA had a simple comeback spot for the faces that almost all of them used at some point: Face gets dominated for a bit, gets thrown out of the ring, and the heel refuses to let them back into the ring (attack from inside the ring, inturrupt the refs count with a kick, etc.). Eventually the face gets mad, slams a ringside table or the apron, and forces his way back into the ring. The Heel immediately begs off and the face goes on the attack. They didn't quit selling for the heels, they just got mad and took over. I always found it both believable and effective.

I think he likely would have done even worse had he done that. I think he was just too small for anyone but his Dad to push. He likely would have done worse for the simple fact that the High Flyers were one of the most over, best drawing and best working tag teams of the 70s/80's and it's highly unlikely that degree of success would have been replicated elsewhere no matter what his degree of talent. One of the great problems with Greg is that his work from 85-90 is abundantly available and has been seen by most people with some sort of AWA exposure. His best stuff was from the era that there is very little film available for by comparison, that being 1974-83. People have a hard time believing Greg was ever over based on how they saw him in the last few years of his career. It's a problem that won't go away anytime soon and it inherently brings down any talk of the High Flyers being a "great" team.

I think you've got it right, although I had a big c-band dish so my viewing was all over the place anyways. I do remember never getting TBS in Thunder Bay for some reason having to do with the tv/radio monopoly in this town that has been in place forever, yet a town of 2000 45 minutes up the road got TBS and a bunch of other good stations in the clear all the time. This was a serious issue with be before we got the dish.

Not necessarily, although it's hard to put some masked wrestlers in context. There was a real aura around most of them way-back-when, and that IMO contributed to their drawing power.

Just awful.

Raw did a 2.7 on Monday. Not unexpected against the return of MNF accordint to Herb (which makes sense, I guess), but still...ouch.

That is also the only one on film.

Possibly, but I wouldn't say that was a for-sure. Even the sharpest promoter I think eventually would have fallen trying to compete with Vince on a national level. Verne had some good talent but not enough to spread out and gain inroads in smaller, non-traditional AWA markets. One thing Vince had was enough wrestlers to run 2 or 3 shows a night. Even if they were shitty shows, it was getting the WWF name out there which, combined with the expanding TV market, gave the illusion that the WWF was the "best" game in town. Vince had some terrible crowds in the Twin Cities after their debut show on 6/17/84, all the way through until Thanksgiving 1985. Still, he didn't pull out of that area because he knew he had to gain the upper hand in the home base of the AWA to ultimately take them down. Vince did not want Verne to have even one fall-back market once his expansion ideas fizzled out...and by 1987, he really didn't with the AWA being down to crowds of 1000 in the ancient Minneapolis Auditorium on a good night. One of the things about the AWA that made it successful before 1984 ultimately hurt it badly after 1984: The old stars of the area (Crusher, Raschke, Greg Gagne, Lary Hennig, Bruiser) crossed over from crafty veterans to over-the-hill very quickly. Nobody could replace Crusher's overwhelming popularity in the AWA, and unfortunately by 1984 he was pretty much a parody of his former self. There were many factors that lead to the demise of the AWA. Verne's business sense in the "modern age" of TV and pro wrestling was a part of it, but not all of it, and I consider it unfair to place all the blame on him.

I believe Bob didn't want to go in becasue he still considered himself an active worker, with a chance to get pushed again. He saw the HOF offer as something for retired wrestlers. So I've heard.

This ties into my last post in the sense that Dave would need a complete reprogramming of his brain to recognize JYD as a HOF candidate. Dave's hate for "Junkfood Dog" was crazy. No way he recognizes JYD as anything HOF worthy unless a lobotomy is involved.

The best way to compare him is probably to find someone else whose career path in the AWA is mimicked by another wrestler in another area. By career path, I mean with a hot debut and a continued ability to be a continuous draw through a changing environment, with different alliances, partners, and feuds, in the same territory. This may be a piece of the definition of a comparable that you're looking for, but in Blackwell's case that may have to be the crux of the whole comparison. I don't know who that wrestler might be. On Dave and the AWA: I think that the older AWA guard that were big in the 60's and 70's is reasonably represented, in so much as Dave saw those guys as much as he would have seen pretty much everyone else (relatively little would be my guess, given the lack of national tv back then and the lack of footage on the stars of the era. We're all in that boat at some point in wrestling history or another depending on our age...). jdw isn't wrong about initial representation of AWA wrestlers compared to other territories from where I sit. From my readings of the WON it has always been clear to me that the AWA was seen in a hugely negative light in the 1984-90 era. If that was the first real tv exposure that Dave ever had to the AWA, it explains a lot...his complaints against the AWA from 84-90 are echoed by many. I also think that part of the problem is that Dave relied on his correspondents from the area to formulate his opinion on the AWA from 84-90. His correspondent(s) never seemed to have many good things to say. If your initial impression of something is negative, it's a more difficult to have your mind changed to a positive impression. As such, the work of a guy like Blackwell from 1980 - 85 has *less* chance of being recognized and championed by Dave and other voters with the same negative impressions of the AWA they may have gained when they started to see the AWA nationally between 1985 and 1990. Buddy Rose is in the same boat insofar as his AWA tag title reign with Doug Somers was seen as a bad joke at the time. Somers being a career jobber-to-low-mid-card guy given the spot with Rose did not help. A lack of quality opponents outside of Jannetty and Michaels did not help. Rose/Somers comparisons to the champs of the WWF and NWA did not help. Was Rose awesome in the AWA? People looking at it with a critical eye 25 years after the fact would likely tell you "yes". The impression at the time that many fans who are possibly now voters would have had would have been less than positive. In Blackwell's case, his face turn and Brody feud is good on it's own but even better when you know the context of the turn...that context being Blackwell's lengthy time as The Most Hated Man on the AWA Planet. Hell, even the Brody feud only helps in a limited capacity given the no-shows and the lack of a clean win for Blackwell when all was said and done. Unfortunately, Blackwell could not keep up the schedule he wrestled from 1980 - early 84 because of his health, and that also limited viewers in the post-84 era to what they saw of him. I believe Blackwell is a worthy candidate, but I understand the challenge of getting him elected, as that challenge is the same for anyone not yet in that had a more solid pre-WON career than post-WON career.

If it's true that HHH embraces the old school, watches it, studies it, and tries to employ old school ideas and techniques in his matches, then I should really like the guy...or should have liked him at some point. ...but I have never liked him one bit, not his look, style, or promo ability. I SHOULD have liked him at some point, even briefly, but I never have.

It all depends on how much of this content you're going to bring over there to argue in favour of Blackwell as a HOF candidate. There are some informed AWA guys over there but not many, so posting information for discussion might be better as opposed to asking for opinions first, and then posting discussion information. Guys whose opinions you will want to seek out over there include Clawmaster, Tamalie, and Chitown Rich if he still posts there. There may be a few others but most of what I reaad on the AWA there is in the "boy they sucked, Verne was stoopid" range of opinion. Perhaps that's different in the WON HOF Forums as opposed to the regular board but I don't know. Alternately I may drag this stuff over to a private AWA forum I frequent, to get opinions and additional information. Anything I gather there I'll bring over here, of course.