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Maybe the SNME match with Savage, more so? Boston was a bit more of a slapped together & thrown away thing. It's strange to look at the air dates and programs the stuff from that show ended up on. Big chunk of the prior two Boston Garden cards, and next three Boston Garden cards, had already aired on Prime Time at about where you'd expect them. In fact, going back to the 5/85 card, Boston Garden was always an anchor to Prime Time, with only the 11/85 card getting similar odd treatment. Anyway, this match didn't show up on PT until July, and only one other match on the card aired on PT all the way in October. Strange. Anyway, it felt more like hanging with Savage was a bigger deal at the time. He then got the feud with Bad News starting at Mania in 1988. Seemed like they had thoughts at that time, then he got stuck back in the tags. John

Hack-Gotch II was such an obvious work they wouldn't accept bets on the match. At least it feels that way reading about it. People at the time certainly thought so. The hero worship of these guys, despite people of their era pretty clearly believing they were frauds, is astounding. That said, I wonder how much of this we see because we want to see. Are we prejudiced and see work because we are accustomed to wrestling being a charade? If wrestling in that era was about working the marks for gambling money, then Gotch-Jenkins was pretty clearly worked... and brilliantly done to max ripping off gamblers.. There even was that great quote by Gotch in 1904 to the effect that even if his matches were cons, he was still that champ. John

That's a big one. It's not like business turned around in the Kip Frey era, though we really enjoy the product as hardcore fans. But the company was moving in a certain direction away from the mess of the Post-Flair/Herd Wars Era. Then Watts came and spun it off in another direction, and had certain focuses (including Omni business) and pitched certain things (like the Dangerous Alliance). I get why Frey was tossed to the curb: the company was losing tons, and Kip in a short time handed out some contracts that on the surface were a problem when you're losing tons. It's also not a lock that "quality wrestling" to us was going to draw anymore than it did in 1989. :/ John

I thought Watts tried to capitalise on the prominence of black sporting stars by pushing a black wrestler as a main eventer. Watts saw a trend, created a fad, and kept trying to replicate it with black football players. Watts thought he saw a trend, thought he created a fad, and tried to replicate it. Just because Watts thought JYD drew because he was Black doesn't mean JYD drew just because he was black. After all, this was a promoter who tried to push Ron Simmons on top to try to replicate the "trend" he saw. That failed like pretty much all of his non-JYD attempts to build on this trend he saw in his head. Vince thought Hogan got over due to being juiced up and huge. So he pushed Warrior... Sid... Lex... Nash... Sid again. They failed relative to Bret, Shawn and Austin. Trend? Or Hogan? Well... seemed to get obits That's hardly exhaustive. It's also highly unlikely that in 1998 when he died that he was largely forgotten, anymore than any wrestler of his level of push in the WWF Expansion was forgotten by 1998. We don't know if JYD would have kept drawing in Mid South, That's not my point. We know why JYD stopped drawing for Mid South: he walked out. He left the promotion. We can speculate on why Flair in 1987 started to draw less and less for JCP and then WCW. Flair, booking, bad promoting, weak opponents, fans getting bored of Flair... we can toss around a bunch. With JYD, we know why he stopped drawing for Mid South after doing strong business from 1980-84: he left the promotion. Hell, he even draw after he left: Cornette credits JYD for that last 20K+ Super Dome where King subbed for him. Dog helped sell those tickets. It was a Draw, Daniel. Chiggy and Dump were the draws. They over time left, and the Product was less interesting to the Fans. Business went back up to even higher levels when the Product was something that drew in fans. John

Damn... it is almost 20 years. It was half conspiring with Yohe... and half sticking stuff in to pop Yohe. The great thing about LA is that Blassie was huge in the Apter mags because of being a WWF manager, so it was easy to put in Blassie LA stuff. I'll have to look at the Destroyer stuff, cause that was more trying to pop Yohe. Or getting Rikidozan in with noted gaijin like Lou and Blassie... and then sneaking the Destroyer match in. Pretty sure I also snuck in some Juniors stuff to pop the original DVDVR gang on RSP-W. And of course Misawa-Kawada for myself. Don't recall if I was able to get in 6/95... that might have pushed it too far. John

Dick Allen is probably a bit too good, and too often too good, for a BW comp. Cedeno is a pretty darn good one. I don't think people realize how good he was once he became a "disappointing" player (i.e. after 1973). He was still a head of a player in 1980.

That's pretty common with teams that have a strong fan base. Ones with weaker fan bases can have them complete crater. The Braves in the late 80s were in the tank in drawing. That's to be expected: * the team was mediocre-to-poor for pretty much all of the 70s * Bobby Cox turned things around * Torre inherited it and got the one division title in the era * they quickly feel back... * ... and then got really bad The fanbase that might have gotten excited in 1982 didn't have much to hold onto when it went back to being a bad team. John

That gives more weight to JYD being a fad. If other black wrestlers couldn't draw then it shows there was no trend of black wrestlers drawing. I believe one of the points made earlier is that JYD can't be dismissed as just drawing the Ethnic Fans (i.e. Black Folk) to the cards: JYD draw blacks, but he also drew lots of fans across ethnic lines. Hence the references to Bruno, who also was more than just drawing "Italians" to WWWF shows. Watts is the one who got caught up in it being a Black Thing. He still was hung up on that in the 90s. He really didn't get his own fanbase, and what it was that connected the Dog (or even later Duggan) to the fans. The Monkees = Fad The Beatles = moved past Fad into having staying power The only reason JYD stopped drawing in Mid South in 1984 (after drawing there in 1980 and 1981 and 1982 and 1983 and early 1984) is because he jumped to the WWF. He had staying power. John

Reed didn't get signed by Vince until July 1986, debuting in September. He'd been out of Mid South since January, working KC which is where he hooked up with Slick. He also had an AWA run the prior year in the middle of his face run in Mid South. John

They do have a loyal fan base. That loyal fan base did this in two years: 36,119 --> 28,814 --> 22,294 A large chunk of that old loyal fan base in their EPL days views the product in a way that causes them to stay home. That's similar to what happened to Mid South. But do futbol analysts in England pull out of their ass that in 2004-2006 the local economy caused Leed's attendance to drop 20% in one season, and 38% over the course of two seasons? Or to they go: "Well that was fucking obvious. They played poorly, got relegated, and the flood of talent away from the club increased. Teams lose fans leave when that happens." Even ones that you cite as having loyal fanbases. AWA failed. Why? JCP failed. Why? WCW failed. Why? WCCW failed. Why? TNA as intially planed failed. Why? TNA under Plan B failed. Why? TNA under Plans C-F has failed. Why? I'd actually like to see the pro wrestling promotions that failed for reasons other than their product, especially relative to other product available to their wrestling fans. We can go back to the NoCal and SoCal promotions in the 60s - early 80s that failed without even having competition. They failed because the product got increasingly poor / uninteresting to their fans. Did GCW fail for reasons other than the product? Even that one is unlikely. Business was declining when the Brisco's and the other partners sold Ole out. They saw the chance to take Vince's money as better than getting $0.00 later. So yeah... I'd be interested in you offering up some real proof of promotions dying for reasons other than their Product. John

I saw what you wrote in that post, and the earlier one where you directly responded to Dylan's post: I can't speak for him / her (lol, yeah right "her"), but I think the idea is that if you look at films for example, it's frequently the case that poor films -- which even the people going to see them don't think are very good -- do very well. And, of course, the inverse. The same is true across most forms of entertainment. To the extent where the relationship between "the product" and its popularity almost seems random. To the extent where films that almost no one likes (or admits to liking) make all-time boxoffice lists. I don't know if the "50 Shades of Grey" craze has hit the US or not, but I've literally never heard a single good word said about that book by anyone. Not in life, or on TV. But it's a smash bestseller. A "product" that virtually everyone shits on, a product that is by all accounts putrid. And yet it's a smash. Why is wrestling different from that? You're narrowly focused on people shitting on 50 Shades or Transformers, and worrying about "quality". We're trying to tell you that "quality", and what *we* think is "quality", aren't terribly important on whether it's Good Product. Vince tried to push Warrior like Hogan. Tried really hard, for quite a few years to get him to that point. The WWF Fans didn't buy Warrior like they did Hogan. Warrior just wasn't as good of a Product to WWF Fans as Warrior was. This is fairly similar to the JYD and Reed comment posted earlier. We could look deeper into why Hogan and JYD connected and why Warrior and Reed didn't to that level, but it doesn't change the fact that two of those guys were monsterous draws for their respective promotions, and the other two weren't at that level. Here's where you get lost: There actually are a lot of people who think Transformers and 50 Shades are good and worth paying for. You might not know them, and might not read posts and articles by them, but the numbers don't lie. I fucking hated the Lord of the Rings adaptations. But I'm not so delusional to believe that they weren't good product, because a shitload of people watched them. Those folks clearly liked them because they came back for the next one... and the next one... and the first of the three next ones. John

There were a number of women on RSPW back in the mid-90s. Overwhelmingly male posters, but a few women. But yeah... not many. John

The Jenkins matches were clearly worked, and brilliantly booked. Hack-Gotch II was pretty clearly a work. Hack-Gotch I... been ages since I've read the newspapers. Clearly planned to be a work, as everything pretty much was by that point. In the ring... it read odd when trying to add it up. Doesn't mean it was a shoot, but it always was one that there was so much bullshit around that it was tough to sift through. Haven't read those old clips since the mid-90s, so... John

It's cool you wave that around. Is this where I'm suppose to head over to my PM box and over to FB to count up the various "Jerry's being a idiot (again)" comments? Seriously? I'm having Usenet flashbacks... "I got a lot of e-mail from people thinking Meltzer was totally off base on..." -Mr. Schemer No one does that anymore, and when they do it's just really poor form. John

I really don't know what you're talking about. Leeds United has played at Elland Road for more than a century. It's been renovated several times over the years. Average attendance is in the right hand column here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Leeds..._A.F.C._seasons Their attendance went in the shitter when they got relegated to start the 60s. Revie came in, turned around the team, got promoted, and took the club to it's highest points. Revie took the England job, the club started to decline... and attendance dropped. Leeds got relegated, and it dropped more. It picked up when they won the Second Division to get promoted, and then stayed improved when they got into the First Division / EPL (with the lack of instant "growth" due to the transition to All Seaters and also the whip saw of 1st Division Title to Relegation Battle in the space of a year. Once they established themselves as a quality EPL side, a regular fixture in the Top 5 (7 out of 9 years), attendance grew rapidly and held. Then they got hit with financial issues, a rapid fall from a Top 5 side to dropping *two* divisions in just 6 years... and attendance went to shit. They've moved up one division, but attendance has never returned to the peak. There's a baseline of fans who are Leeds Fans who will go out and support them even when they're shit. There's a larger base of Leeds fans who just aren't going to pay every game to see them if they're shit. That 16K of extra fans aren't all "fad" fans, and frankly aren't even all fair weather fans or casual fans. You can be a hardcore fan and just not want to pay when it sucks to go to Elland Road and watch your team blow. As a fan, you don't owe it to the club to pay them money when they suck. We see this in all sorts of sports. Ask Kriz about how Braves attendance has changed over the years. How many people came out in the late 80s when the club went to shit. Even hardcore fans don't want to go to the stadium when your team is losing 100+ games. So no... wrestling isn't completely different from "sports" or entertainment. Fans of pretty much everything wander away when the product doesn't keep them interested. John

This is the key reason Jerry keeps being clueless when we say "It was the Product, stupid." We don't mean Citizen Kane... which if people care to remember, didn't make huge money when released. We're talking about Product that the Fans buy... and keep buying... and buy some more. Dylan references 1992 WCW as being a Product that he enjoyed and had a good level of Quality. But he also pointed out that his enjoyment and thoughts about it's Quality didn't mean the Product connected with enough fans to be successful. Was JYD a quality worker? Eh. Does it matter? Not really. Why? Because he was a key element in the Product that the Mid South fans bought, and bought, and bought. There certainly were other elements. The promotion was booked in a way that the fans bought. There were heels opposite JYD that the fans bought. There were other storylines and wrestlers that they bought, such as the MX in 1984 and their storylines with Watts (Last Stampede) and the R'nR. What Dylan, Jerry, me, the rest of us think was Quality doesn't have dick to do with it being Good Product for those fans. Jesus... I would swear I referenced Twilight, both as a book series and a movie series. I honestly haven't got a clue why Jerry could even believe that we're saying Pro Wrestling is different from other forms of entertainment where non-highbrow things sell shitloads of tickets. John

I apologize for my tone, but JYD as a "fad" in Mid South is... dumbfounding. Dylan mentions the Birds. It was one of the best regional runs of the 80s, totally transforming a territory and remembered by the fan base there as legendary. Not in a Dangerous Alliance hardcore fandom way... but in a pure fan away of, "That was the hottest this territory has ever been." The Birds hot run in WCCW was shorter than JYD's in Mid South. Ishingundan's run in NJPW was from either October 8, 1982 (Choshu's turn) or October 22, 1982 (the first Choshu-Fujinami) or January 6, 1983 (the real founding of Choshu's group with Khan's turn) to September 14, 1984. Choshu's Army had a run in All Japan from either November 1, 1984 (when they showed up at a AJPW card) or December 12, 1984 (working undercard dark match) or January 2, 1985 (when they joined AJPW regularly) to February 7, 1987 (when Choshu & Yatsu dropped the tag titles back to Jumbo & Tenryu). Those were two transformative runs in Japan, which drew strong crowds. Each was much shorter than JYD's in Mid South. Four years is a long time. It's not a fad in pro wrestling. :/

My recollection is that they talked to Dave on that section and/or pulled it from their reading of the WON. There's a lot of it's that's pretty clearly Dave-think from the era. Something got lost on some of the conversations or in their reading of Dave's writings. I don't think Dave literally "wrote" it like I did the timeline. John

I actually question this received wisdom. And I question it pretty hard. Have you read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow? Yes. And I'm laughing at you applying it to pro wrestling. Actually, pro wrestling fans tend to grasp at other reasons than the Product for declining business: It's Jim Herd's fault! Eric gave out all those big contracts! Billionaire Ted stole all of Vince's talent and was predatory! ROH is GREAT~! and WWE Fans are too stupid to see it and that's why our revenue sucks! WWE decline when Vince had to soften the product up due to sponsors and the network! The Suits did in WCW by tying up Eric's hands! The Torch Plumblers tried to kill ECW by sending the Mass Transit Tape to the PPV Distributors! Good god... ask around these boards and people will be able to tell you dozens of insane bullshit reasons that hardcore fans came up with to explain why their favorite promotions went in the shitter. In reality, it was the Product. They just don't want to admit that the product they loved or clung to like Linus to a blankey either sucked, or wasn't good enough to get/build/maintain a fan base. I think one of the good things about the posters here is that they sift through those bullshit explanations, and usually find the trail that leads back to something that falls under the massive umbrella of The Product. Who said anything about the hottest feuds and angles. Hogan-Kamala wasn't a hot feud or hot angle. It was a bridge program for Hogan between the massive angle with Orndorff and the massive angle with Andre. Yet... It broke the records just set by Hogan-Orndorff in several cities. Why? Because WWF Product was fucking red hot in those cities. Why? Because Hulk Hogan was the single biggest element of WWF Product, and he was fucking red hot. Because Vince was at the top of his game promotionally, and ran a well organized shit (especially relative to the clusterfucks of other wrestling companies), and the WWF was delivering what their fans wanted to see. Personally... I preferred JCP product at the time the Hogan-Kamala feud was going around the horn. But I've also over time come around to see that the WWF product at the time flat out delivered what that massive WWF fan base wanted. You're thinking vastly too narrow on the concept of "great product" and "awful product". I personally think Twilight, in book and movie form, is FUCKING AWFUL. But I'm not so delusional to think that it's Awful Product. This shit sold tons of books, has a massive fan base, and sold tons of movie tickets. It's Great Product for its massive fan base. Okay... okay... okay... that's not an analogy that works great for you, since you're not a Twilight fan. Let's try another: You think Demolition is GREAT PRODUCT~! I think from a personal taste standpoint, they're shit. In reality, neither of us is fully right. Demolition wasn't strong product for the WWF, such as Hogan or say Savage when Savage was champ. But they weren't Awful... at least until say 1990 when most non-Hogan elements of the product didn't do really good business for the WWF. They weren't kind of good. In pro wrestling? Sure. 95% of the times major territorial or national promotions went in the crapper, it was the Product. I could give a shit about other businesses. We're talking about pro wrestling. This is the most embarrassing thing I've seen on PWO since Resident Evil went bye-bye. Do you think it's possible for you to discuss something with me, just once, with out this crushing condescension? You seem intent on escalating something, I'm only interested in getting to the bottom of this issue. This particular statement is gobsmacking. People took the time to explain JYD to you, making it very clear he wasn't a fad in NO/Mid South, not a fluke. Then you shit on it with that comment. So no... I'm not going to soft sell it. Embarrassing, stupid comment. Who said external factors weren't an impact. Did JYD drop dead? No. Vince tossed a shitload of money at him to jump. That's an external factor that deeply impacted Watts' product. He did the same thing in late 1986 / early 1987 by constantly chasing after Duggan, making Duggan so annoying that Watts finally told his top babyface to head for the WWF if he really wanted to, despite having him under contract. External factor than impacted the Product. My thought would be to look at Hogan's house show figures in WCW in 1994 & 1995, taking out the PPV and Clash numbers, and tell me how they look compared to what he did in the WWF. "Holy shit! Hogan sucked! He was just a fad!" Well, that would be embarrassing as well. It's hardly the only instance where a wrestler left one promotion and wasn't accepted by the fans when he used by another promotion to draw in the same territory. Example? Probably worthwhile to see what the WWF drew in JCP with the likes of Valentine, Steamboat, Piper and other former JCP stars. We have this conception of Hogan going into AWA Land where he had once been a huge draw and in turn drawing huge there for the WWF. That's *Hogan*. It's why he and Jim Londos are 1-2 all-time. They did shit that others couldn't. We can't judge JYD by Hogan's standards. No one here is saying he's Hogan. We're saying he was a massive regional star in Mid South. That's where is fans wanted to see him. As far as 4 years... 1998 Mania: Austin over Shawn 2001 Mania: Austin over Rock That's the peak of Austin. Three years, and that's not even factoring in that he missed a massive chunk of that period due to injury. Elements of the WWF's business started declining after after Mania 2001. Austin was a fad? Or 3 years is just flukey shit? Good lord... No shit. Because it's not relevant to what he drew for Watts. Flair drew a shitload for JCP at his peak. He drew dick for Vince. That he drew dick for Vince doesn't at all mean that Ric wasn't a big draw for a number of years in JCP's core cities. John

I wrote the timeline. I'm pretty sure the second one, taking their intial kind of lean & goofy one, pitching the goofy and adding a lot of additional historical stuff in, and some Japanese stuff sprinkled in. I'd have to pull my copy off the shelf to refresh my memory, but I tried to round it out: * get Japanese stuff in by tying a lot of it to gaijin It's easier to be accepted if it's a Misawa match in if he's losing the TC to Doc or winning it from Hansen. Do enough of those, and you can slip in 06/03/94. I'm pretty sure that I slipped in both the Super J Cup and Kawada-Doc with an "across town" reference. * switch the older US stuff from being so MSG & World Title focused Pretty sure I slipped in a good deal of Los Angeles stuff (which played to Yohe quite a bit), and also tried to balance out stuff from being so NY-centric, and tried to get more than just NWA title changes in there. It was interesting to write, because as you're writing it you have to instantly flip each entry to read it as a PWI editor: is this something that they would think was cool or interesting or acceptable. I've written in the past year when we were talking about Apter: Stu Saks was a really nice guy to work with / do a project for. Very receptive to what you wrote, very good at explaining PWI's viewpoints/objectives without turning you off. Just a really good guy. Would have to look at the year after that to see if I just added another year's worth of stuff. Just don't remember working hard on it again, so it might have been a sparse thing like that, or just bowing out. I want to say that JMK did a refresh of it a couple of years later, but I don't recall. John

Bob only spent one year in Japan due to Collusion. The Cards then insanely signed him after Clark jumped to the Yankees... I seem to recall Bill James writing at the time that it was an indication that Whitey was losing his power in the front office because it was about a 180 from the type of players Whitey liked. The analogy to Bob would be a wrestler who had a hot start, but couldn't stay healthy and didn't have the career expected of him. Perhaps BW... though it seems insulting to BW.

I like that this made the set. My guess would be that if Dustin & Austin had this match on a Clash, or Shawn & Bret had this match on SNME, folks would remember it as a classic of those two promotions. With Kobashi and Kroffat, it's just a good workrate match. Which... isn't inaccurate, but also shows that expectations for AJPW are pretty skewed. John

Jason Hervey was on a better show than Sting ever was. And of course one of the reasons it was a better show than Sting was ever on was due to: * Sting was often the lead of his show * Hervey never was the lead of his show Errr... this isn't helping Sting... John

JCP didn't draw in a lot of cities. It's meaningless. John