khawk20

Bump for this bit from meltzer's update today (and I suspect more gems will be coming over the next while as his Hulkmania tour takes shape):

FWIW Lance did this a lot, even in matches that didn't go to a draw.."five down, 55 to wrestler" and whatnot. More a standard of his announcing style than trying to give away the draw aspect of it. I always hated matches that counted down the minutes, personally. It provides for the odd surprise (8/8/82 Martel vs. Brunzell saw Martel score a pin at 29:57 of a 30:00 match, for example, right in the middle of the final five second countdown), but mostly it voids the match of suspense that someone will actually win the thing. Bockwinkel vs. hennig from 1986 was really, really hurt by this, IMO. Blears and Trongard pretty much called the draw way before the halfway point in the way they discussed the match. The WWF title match between Backlund and Valentine from 1979 that went 60 minutes didn't do this, as I remember, and it made when the bell did ring for the draw that much better.

American XXXtasy and the big C-band dish. Awesome. That's the setup I had as well.

That your username is "cox" makes this statement even better.

Wanz's reign was bought and paid for, with little logic attached to it other than the "SURPRISE! Anyone can beat anyone on a given night" mindest being reinforced. Whether Jumbo's reign was paid for or not (and I don't know if it was or not, to be honest), it at least had sense when you looked at how things flowed after that. Jumbo won the title from Bock, then Martel beat Jumbo for the title. Meanwhile, in the previous year Martel had been unsuccessful in beating Bockwinkel for the title. Suddenly, Martel vs. Bockwinkel had an element of doubt: Perhaps Martel would only be a short-term champion as well, and Bock would regain the title and continue as the Champ, same as it had been for nearly a decade. The initial Martel-Bockwinkel matches with Martel as Champ were very good and you could hear and feel the element of not knowing who would win in the crowds.

The most obvious place to look for it next is hockey. Why? Because a high sticking penalty goes from two to four minutes automatically if it draws blood. It can be the tiniest nick and it applies. It wouldn't surprise me if hockey players are already trying to bite their lips when a stick comes up on them. They need a blade incident to happen in order to examine and fix that rule..put some ref discretion back into the mix.

See, I think he does get the credit he deserves and isn't under-rated, but I also hang around online with a lot of AWA guys who see Bock the same way I do. I also grew up with Bock as AWA Champ in the 70's and early 80's, so that skews it somewhat for me as well. A Bockwinkel Promos dvd....I like, I like. I am going to explore what it would take to do this.

The short answer is that he was having those fun matches at 50+ years old. That should speak of his abilities as a worker throughout the body of his career, even if you have not seen any of it. Bockwinkel as a wrestler was the real deal. He seemed to be able to have good matches with anyone...matches without a specific formula, just a nice ability to adapt to the opponent's style, not to "submit" to the opponent's style but more the ability to shape his own strengths around the work of the opponent. This speaks nothing of his tag work with Ray Stevens in the early 70's. There are many examples on video I would recommend you check out at some point. Some of the workers he had really good bouts with include Billy Robinson, Rick Martel, Ric Flair, Jumbo Tsuruta, Tito Santana, Hulk Hogan, Jim Brunzell, Crusher, Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie, Jerry Lawler (Bix has a great comp showing all their goodness)..there are more but those are the first ones I could think of. Add that he was a killer interview, made even better in tandem with Bobby Heenan, and there were few champions in wrestling in the 70's and early 80's that fans wanted to see lose their titles more than Nick. Bockwinkel = Complete Package.

The ballot for nagasaki might be interesting...I wonder how many voters will even know he's a seperate performer from the Nagasaki that graced the U.S. as a Ninja-type for so many years? Will he be given even less consideration on first glance from the voters because of it? Will any UK stars get enough votes that anyone would even notice that?

That match actually exists. It aired on World Pro in Japan a few months after it happened and just recently found it's way intot he trading circles. Somers seemed to have a real love/hate realationship with Verne. He quite and came back more than once, and he actually ended up doing Verne a favour and filling in for Zurkov when he moved to the WWF while still AWA tag champ. Soldat Ustinov and Somers lost the tag titles to Lawler and Dundee in October 87.

They (High Flyers vs. Strike Force) rematched on 8/29/82 in St. Paul. Almost the entire match is available for that one (sans the opening 5-7 minutes). Another classic, not as frantic as the 8 minutes of the first bout but it's great action. The ending is really stiff.

Ted Grizzley of Toronto/WWE Jobber fame comes to mind first. AWA jobber Nacho Barrera was my next thought.

It was debated for the longest time in recent years as to whether this match ever really took place and it was more or less proven on the Kayfabe Board. Dave had this one right. I imagine regal said he was walking out that very night which is why there was no TV (not to mention it was a spot show). It was very similar to the Crusher/raschke victory over Patera/Blackwell, where they only filmed the dressing room celebration after the match but no film of the title change. that would ahve been around when patera had the McDonalds incident and though I believe that the titles were changing hands soon anyways, perhaps that hastened the switch. Still should filmed it, though. This turned into that stellar angle where Rheingans wrestles kaissie in St. Paul, but a big masked guy comes out and saves Sheik. Greg runs in, Masked guy kills him, gets unmasked as the returning Brody, prompting Verne Gagne to run in and save Greg and Rheingans. Good pop but it's pretty funny to watch now. It of course set up the main event (more or less) at Wrestlerock, alluded to by Dave as in the planning stages at the end of the recap. this ties into this bit: According to Nick Bockwinkel, he and Lanza bought the Winnipeg office from Verne in the fall of 1985. You can look at this two ways: One, Verne saw he might get pushed off of TV in Winnipeg and got out while he could, or Two, Lanza talked Verne into selling that office to him and Nick knowing Vince would be coming in. Lanza might have also been able to leverage a position in the WWF out of it if he bought the office with Vince's blessing/co-operation. In other words, Lanza played Verne to make the Winnipeg transition go smoother. Both scenarios have merit, IMO. When the AWA ran it's last show in Winnipeg, attendance was at a two year high the last three months worth of shows. The last AWA show on 1/16/86 was the highest attended in Winnipeg for quite some time. It featured Martel trying to regain the title from Hansen and Flair defending against Bockwinkel. It might have been the last steadily successful AWA office, actually. TSN actually taped the first WWF card in Winnipeg for TSN Wrestling to replace the AW stuff, but Vince apparently wanted to use stock generic TV squash stuff for them and TSN wanted original, higher quality matches. As such the WWF and TSN parted ties after about two or three shows. David had the one Vegas TV match against Hansen which is pretty good, actually. He had one tag title match with Slaughter in January before Garvin and Regal lost the tag titles, too. Other than that, hansen/Jr. might have had one or two matches for the title in the Northeast but that's it, and David never did become an AWA regular. The Rockers were born about a month-month and a half into his AWA time, of course. Verne had brought Jannetty in around the same time seperately. Not sure if this ever made TV as i don't recall seeing it. Also why was Scott Hall going for a foreign object? he was a traditional face. maybe he just had to adjust himself or something. LOL...I love stuff like that.

heenan didn't care anymore. WCW gave him no reason to care, they just paid him big bucks and confused him with suggestions of how they wanted his commentating to come across. he elaborates more in his book (or his shoot, can't remember which). But WCW being such a clusterfuck gave him little reason to do more than show up for his paycheck is the bottom line.

Some of us appreciate the days of the singular announcer. In today's sports announcing field (with thepossible exception of soccer), there is always someone talking, and quite often about things totally unrelated to the action. I preferred the days when the announcer called the action and didn't feel the need to "fill the holes" when nothing signifigant was going on. In wrestling, Vince at MSG was like that. Okerlund, Kent, and Tronngard were like that in the AWA (pre 1986-ish. Thinking of the old St. Paul Arena JIP's they used to broadcast on the TV shows). As a slightly different, non-wrestling example, look at the old pre-game half-hour shows that CBS used to run before Sunday Afternoon Football. Musburger, Cross, George and Jimmy the Greek. They each did their own thing, didn't swing off on wild tangents unrelated to the games at hand, and all were able to convey their points and thoughts without getting drawn into a vortex of strange, inane conversation that may or may not be related to their own points. The 90 minute pre-game shows now seem to have twice the people talking but only half the useful information conveyed to the audience. Maybe it's just me, but more isn't always better when it comes to announcing and commentating.

Thanks. (also "Ewwwwww"....)

Can anyone make this part of that diatribe less "WTF?" for me?

My feeling on that is that Verne needed a real "name" to be his next heel champ, and he decided to take a chance with Hansen. Several of his closer colleagues tried to tallk him out of it including Nick Bockwinkel as they suspected it would end badly. By '86 Verne was probably starting to see the WWF pulling ahead significantly and he was pulling out all the stops.

I don't necessarily disagree but he only got a single title shot as he ended up mostly programmed with Blackwell..and then he started no-showing those so it ended up Blackwell vs. hayes.

The card was actually 7/14. Courtesy of Clawmaster: 7/14/85 St. Paul, MN @ Civic Center Sgt. Slaughter & Greg Gagne beat Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens dq AWA Champion Rick Martel beat Michael Hayes dq AWA Tag Team Champions Road Warriors beat Scott & Bill Irwin Bob Backlund beat Larry Zbyszko Terry Gordy & Buddy Roberts beat Steve O & Buck Zumhofe Boris Zhukov beat Baron Von Raschke Cowboy Lang & Little Coco beat Little Tokyo & Lord Littlebrook Att 2500 The Martel-Hayes match was their second in as many months. The other Birds interfered. That set up promos for Martel/Crusher (back as a surprise partner) vs. Gordy/Hayes in August. Crusher and Verne had one of their famous money/payoff arguments and Crusher was taken off the card and replaced by Curt Hennig. Hennig was not a real star yet but it's not fair to say that the August show was hurt because of him being there instead of crusher...the Hayes-Martel feud just didn't draw. A big part of that was Hayes was too similar to Jim Garvin and that program had just concluded (three matches worth) a few months previous. that, and Hayes was far inferior in the ring than Garvin was so the initial matches between the two were not good. One other note, the LOD-Irwins bout on that card was the first of two (they rematched in August). Both good, bruising bouts, but it's obvious that the bloom was off the rose for the LOD in the AWA at this point, too. If Verne would ahve pulled the trigger on a Freebirds-LOD feud right about here the AWA would have been far better off for it through the summer and fall. I can only imagine how Dave would have went off had they given the title back to Bockwinkel, who was perhaps the only viable option at that point. Hansen was still 6 months away. Martel's main challengers from July through the end of the year included Hayes, Zbyszko, Zurkov, Bockwinkel, and Hansen starting in September. Gordy, Lawler and Jumbo also had shots, but one-offs. Not sure who could have possibly been plugged into the Champion role at that point, unless you gave it to Zurkov and flipped it right away to Slaughter.

If you love it and choose to do it, why even bring it up? I hate this sort of shit.