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This is the most embarrassing thing I've seen on PWO since Resident Evil went bye-bye. John

*ding* *ding* *ding* I didn't articulate it as well when I tossed out that Bruno of New Orleans comment. Folks wanted to pigeonhole Bruno initially as an ethnic draw, but then he kept drawing... and drawing... and drawing. It clearly was more than just ethnic fans coming out for either. John

I just want to be very clear on my own comments about the Product. JYD leaving is one of the elements of the Product Not Drawing. I really don't care to have my view on what killed Mid South / UWF be lumped in with hot shotting. That is a subset of the Product, as are how it was booked, who was pushed, who was brought in, who was bounced, who left, etc. I'm being expansive, not narrow. 95% of the time companies drop or die, it's because of the Product. It stops pulling in the fans. In turn, people in the Business are always looking for reasons to avoid blaming the product for the decline. John

I doubt Larry means "believability" to mean "Juiced Up Big Man". I took it to mean guys who could "wrestle" and game across as believable in the ring. Is Hulk really believable for Larry, or just a cartoon? I mentioned Ric because there isn't anything more believable about Ric in the ring than Lawler. Ric played stooging bitch for the vast majority of his prime years. He was as believable as Gorgeous George. That was my point. Lawler was believable to his fans. Hogan was believable to his fans. Flair... well he was believable in what ever role the fans paid to see him in. Except... It's fucking pro wrestling. It's FAKE! John

It was aimed at Dave and Larry. It seemed clear to me from the text I quoted that you thought they were being a bit goofy (i.e. the word "fudge"). John

Kobashi needed someone to work with. Everyone singled out Jumbo. Kawada singled out Taue as well. If it's Misawa & Kawada & Kobashi vs Jumbo & Taue & Fuchi, what's Kobashi's plan? In turn, Fuchi is going to have a tough time heeling it up with Kawada, and Misawa's the top guy on that side picking his spots. It sort of falls to Kobashi to get heeled on. Plus... Kobashi loved that shit. John

I get the drawing analogy, but baseball is a problem on an individual comp. The M's lost a SS who hit .316/.420/.606 in 2000, and essentially replicated those numbers the following year somewhere else. In 2001, the M's won 25 more games. A-Rod as a "negative draw", so that when he left they got magically better? I know it's a great joke on A-Rod, but it's not really what baseball is about. The M's fell back to A-Rod level anyway in 2002-2003, before falling off the cliff after that. In turn, the Braves won division titles in 1991-93, and none of their position players were as good as 1982-85 Murphy, let alone 1987... and probably weren't a load better than 1980 Dale. In wrestling, a Hogan can draw huge money with Kamala. It's kind of hard for Dale to carry a baseball team. Not advocating Dale should be in the HOF. There are worse CF who are in... and better ones like Jimmy Wynn who aren't. It wouldn't break my heart if Dale goes in, and wouldn't break it if he doesn't... though admittedly his idiot son annoys me. Dale > Sting John

I think there's been a lot of talk about JYD here on PWO. My guess is that Dylan and others have done a lot over in the HOF thread, if not other places. They've put a lot of thought into it in the past, and can probably point you in the direction of what they've written in the past. As far as "fair weather fans", I'm not sure where that comes from. One has to ponder at which point Dog stopped being a "hot local star" and became the "Bruno of New Orleans": August 2, 1980 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 30,000 ($183,000) Junkyard Dog beat Michael Hayes (11:20) in a "steel cage dog collar" match. April 18, 1981 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 22,000 Junkyard Dog & Dick Murdoch beat Michael Hayes & Terry Gordy (9:00). Junkyard Dog & Dick Murdoch beat Ernie Ladd & Leroy Brown (6:00). The Grappler & Super Destroyer beat Junkyard Dog & Dick Murdoch (8:00) to win the vacant Mid-South Tag Title when Grappler pinned JYD July 4, 1981 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 18,000 Mid-South Tag Champs Dick Murdoch & Junkyard Dog beat The Wild Samoans Afa & Sika (21:00). Junkyard Dog beat Paul Orndorff (5:30) in a "lights out" match. November 26, 1981 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 18,000 Mid-South Tag Champs Junkyard Dog & Mike George beat Paul Orndorff & Bob Orton, Jr. (46:00). July 7, 1982 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 22,800 Mid-South North American Champ Ted DiBiase DDQ Junkyard Dog. Mid-South Tag Champs Mr. Olympia & Junkyard Dog beat John Studd & The Super Destroyer. November 25, 1982 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 15,000 Stagger Lee (Junkyard Dog) beat Ted DiBiase to win the Mid-South North American Title. April 16, 1983 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 21,400 Junkyard Dog pinned Mr. Olympia in a "steel cage" match to win the held-up Mid-South North American Title. November 19, 1983 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 8,000 Mid-South North American Champ Junkyard Dog beat Butch Reed Note: this always has looked odd, in the sense there must be a reason it dropped to that degree relative to other shows in this 4+ year stretch. The two matched up to draw big again in 1985. April 7, 1984 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 23,000 ($176,000) Stagger Lee (Junkyard Dog) & Bill Watts wrestled The Midnight Express (Eaton & Condrey) in a "lights out" match. June 16, 1984 in New Orleans, LA The Superdome drawing 21,700 ($166,000) Junkyard Dog pinned Butch Reed in a "ghetto street fight." Those are just the ones that have data listed over at prowrestlinghistory.com. There are other cards, like the July 16, 1983 card where JYD-Reed and Duggan-Ted were the co-mains where data isn't given. He was a big draw in 1980... 1981... 1982... 1983... 1984... and then jumped to the WWF while still hot. It's a bit like trying to pass away Backlund or Bruno drawing in MSG for four years as some fad. If business goes down after them, it tends to indicate that they were Draws rather than Fads. John

Graham is usually really good, but I would worry about that page. 1986 is quite messed up. It was a much more limited series, rather than every card in July. This is probably quite a bit closer for 1986: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_American_Bash#1986 Those would be the correct 13 cards. 1987 was expanded, and 1988 dragged all the way to the August show in Los Angeles. It's a hard thing to nail down. The WCW TV items promoting events that you mentioned are probably the best things to look at for 1987-88. After that... who knows. :/ John

On the JYD-II stuff, we'd probably need to go back deeper on the results to look at 1983 into 1984 on New Orleans to see how it compares. It's simply not evident on the Dome shows: March 12, 1984: Mr. Wrestling II over JYD in New Orleans April 7, 1984 Superdome - 23,000 ($176,000) North American Title: Mr. Wrestling II vs Magnum TA The Last Stampede: Stagger Lee (Junkyard Dog) & Bill Watts vs The Midnight Express (MS Tag Champs) June 16, 1984 Superdome - 21,700 ($166,000) No DQ for the Mid-South Tag Titles: The Midnight Express vs The Rock n Roll Express No DQ for the North American Title: Magnum TA vs Ted DiBiase Ghetto Street Fight: Junkyard Dog d. Butch Reed August 24, 1984 Superdome - 21,000 ($165,000) North American Title: Magnum TA vs Butch Reed The Midnight Express (MS Tag Champs) vs Dusty Rhodes & Sonny King (subbing for JYD) NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs Kerry Von Erich to a DDQ My recollection from the Cornette book is that he credited that gate to JYD drawing while folks didn't quite know he was gone. WWF @ St. Louis, MO - Kiel Auditorium - August 10, 1984 Television taping - featured Vince McMahon on commentary: Georgia Championship Wrestling - 8/18/84: The Junkyard Dog pinned Max Blue at 4:17 with the powerslam (JYD's debut) He'd just jumped to the WWF. I don't really think Flair-Kerry was *that* big of a draw in Mid South to be the reason they still held onto 21K fans that show. Anyway, JYD had been the part of two big draws prior to that. Obviously Watts had a ton to do with the Last Stampede drawing, but JYD was also the "right" partner for such a thing... and don't doubt that Watts didn't know that at the time.

Vince eventually got to that rout, but it took a while. Championship Wrestling had been done in Allentown for ages, while All-Star had been done in Hamburg. Championship got eventually transitioned to Poughkeepsie in the second half of 1984, which was its home until 1986. All-Star got transitioned in 1984 to Ontario (Hamilton, London, Brantford, even one taping in Etobicoke), which was its home until 1986. With the rebranding as Superstars and Challenge, they went on the road. Vince of course was doing squashes and a months worth of TV at a taping, while JCP was doing a squash/non-squash mix with World Wide and their other show (I forget the name of it). Watts was doing a mix of squash/non-squash as well, but as he expanded his TV network he put on bigger matches. Watts still had non-TV "main events" that we didn't get to see. I get why you would want to run your tapings at a limited number of places: from a cost perspective, it's cheaper to have a "home base" for taping. You keep your equipment there, and you probably even use a lot of local people for elements of your crew. Here's the WWF's old set up: The driving distance from Hamburg to Allentown is 28 miles / 45 km It's really easy to do two nights of tapings, back to back, but getting the crew (both wrestling crew and production crew) together. It's also easy in the sense that everyone in the circuit knows that ones a month they'll be making their Allentown/Hamburg swing. Watts doing it in a standard set of towns was pretty common.

I guess my talking of it as a great rivalry over the years kind of got subsumed in people's minds by tying it as a element of the Jumbo & Co. vs Misawa & Co. feud, as with Fuchi-Kikuchi (which was a similar and slightly longer element/feud within the Jumbo & Co. vs Misawa & Co. feud). I think even in the Yearbooks I've tried to talk about it being more than Jumbo-Misawa, and probably even blocked out out somewhere as: * Jumbo vs Misawa * EVERYONE vs Jumbo * Kawada vs Taue * Fuchi vs Kikuchi * Kikuchi vs Ogawa And that Kobashi was the one person in the feud that didn't really have a peer/near-peer to pair off with. He wants to prove himself against Jumbo, and to a degree Taue. But it's not quite the same in terms of rivalry as the other four clear elements. John

I was wondering if I was in the wrong year when I saw Loss reference a 30 minute match, since that one was their 1992 Carny match. This goes "thirty" only when counting intros and post match, which when shown in full kind of give these a Big Match Feel that AJPW did about as well as anyone. But the match itself was under 25.

Yep... no doubt I undersold the feud by talking over and over and over about how the feud ended on a handshake before they started teaming. Also talked a lot about how Kawada brought out something in Taue that was lacking in Taue's other match ups. Dave also wrote up their matches positively in the WON: 01/20/91 Kawada vs. Taue ****1/4 05/05/91 Kawada vs. Taue ***3/4 07/28/91 Kawada vs. Taue ***1/4 04/05/92 Taue vs. Kawada (Carny) ****1/4 09/27/92 Kawada vs. Taue **** 04/18/93 Kawada vs. Taue (Carny) ****1/2 That's back before he was handing out snowflakes left and right. He liked the match up a lot. It just got supplanted by Misawa-Kawada and Misawa-Kobashi.

Add in that Kobashi (#3 on the side) also was trying to prove himself against Jumbo in tags and the occasional singles match. Add in that Kikuchi (#4 on the side) was also trying to prove himself against Jumbo in the tags, even as he had his rivalries with Fuchi and Ogawa. He would fire off at Taue as well, but it was taking the beating from Jumbo, firing stuff back, getting Jumbo pissed off with it, and never losing his desire against Jumbo that got some of very good pops from the fans in the feud. I'll never say that you could throw any three wrestlers with Jumbo and the feud would have worked, as those three were the *right* guys for that moment. But Jumbo... we saw what happened when he went out and his side even happened to have Super Rookie Akiyama added. It just wasn't the same dynamic at all. Part of that is from being the Ace for close to a decade, and being on top when those other guys were in elementary school, so he had credibility that couldn't be replaced. But part of it was also how he worked with the four, what he gave them, what he gave back, what he knew about playing the right character opposite them. Masterful guy. John

It was the "turning point" in the match, of there was such a thing: Mick was on a straight path to doom after it with no comebacks. It also was something that Mick clearly fed him, so Mick was happy to use it as a transition after the elbow rather than roll Jumbo back in the ring and try to pin him. John

So how is Jumbo suppose to sell *Cactus'* bumps? I mean... when you throw Flair into the corner and he does the flip over the top rope, is Sting suppose to fall down and sell his own knee? When Flair shoves the ref, and Tommy shoves Flair down for a stoogey bitchey bump, is Lex suppose to grab his own back and sell the damage of Flair's bump? Maybe I'm missing something... * bumps off Jumbo's jumping knee Cactus takes a normal bump there, and Jumbo does his standard OH~! fist thrust. Nothing for Jumbo to "sell" here. * Cactus bumps over the ring barricade This after a reversal from Jumbo. It was a called spot for Cactus to take the bump. That's kind of obvious if you watch it, think about it, and watch Mick's reaction / selling in the crowd after it: this is exactly what Mick wanted out of the spot. There's nothing for Jumbo to "sell" here. What's kind of funny on how little the crowd gives a shit about it, and how Jumbo in the ring actually tries to get the crowd into the match. * Cactus hits the elbow to the floor Partially an offensive move, but always also a bump by Mick. Jumbo sells it. In fact, he sells it perfectly for what Mick wants to do: * Mick feeds Jumbo his back, and Jumbo backdrops Mick on the floor Not sure how Jumbo is suppose to sell the backdrop Mick ate there, but Jumbo is in fact still selling the damage to the elbow... not just on the floor after the back drop, but also when he gets back in the ring holding his head. In fact, Mick is up from the backdrop quicker than Jumbo got up from the elbow, mostly because Mick Has Stuff To Do in this match: * Mick eats a lariat off the apron and bumps to the floor Wait... is that Jumbo in the ring after the lariat selling damage? Yes it is. Obviously not from the lariat or Mick's lariat bump, because that's not something Jumbo would sell. He's just selling the earlier damage of Mick's offense. Mick is fucked up at this point though getting to his feet (must be Jumbo's fault that Mick got up so fast), so Jumbo goes out and rolls Mick back in the ring because the logical thing to do would be to try to finish someone who is fucked up. Can't do that while Mick is out of the ring... Mick doesn't bump for the second Jumping Knee, but that's because of what's coming next: * Mick bumps for the Backdrop Not sure how Jumbo is suppose to "sell" for his own finisher, so instead he does what he usually does when hitting his own finisher in the ring: attempts to pin Mick. Since Mick is an incredibly low ranked wrestler, he sees 1-2-3 on a single backdrop. So... Yeah, there isn't a single Mick *bump* that Jumbo should have sold any differently. Because faces typically don't sell those types of bumps that heels do. John

Dale Murphy was a better baseball player than Sting was a wrestler. He also had more peak years, and more quality years. John

I would be cautious on reading too much into the numbers above. That's not because of Kris, but it's due to the lack of even reasonably close to full cards. Look just at New Orleans: for 1986 it's just the Super Domes, while in 1984 there are a few non-Dome cards. You can't compare Super Dome shows to non-Super Dome shows, but those non-Dome shows are also important indicators of the health of the promotion. They simply tell us what we know, the single thing everyone involved agrees to: business went down in 1985 relative to 1984, and continued to slide over time. Not every card was an utter bomb, but the business trend was a decline year over year into 1985, then into 1986, and into 1987. I wouldn't put much on expansion. The company was already falling off badly when Watts made his short experiment to promote outside the territory. Those didn't break him, but instead convinced him that it was time to get out if he could find someone to buy him out. Which he did. John

I don't think they were booking Gordy as a declining ex-champ. Carny Beat: Misawa, Kawada, Doc Lost: Hansen, Taue (1st) Drew: Kobashi Sapporo Lost: Kobashi (1st) June Budokan Beat: Hansen The June Budokan has the first Four Corners tag on top, which set up Misawa-Kawada on the next Budokan. Gordy was getting the Triple Crown challenge on the Budokan after that, where Misawa would look to avenge his only non-Hansen singles loss since becoming Champ. A bit of the standard practice of Taue and Kobashi getting "firsts" close to each other: Singles win over Gordy: Taue - 1993 Carny Kobashi - 1993 Sapporo double shot Singles win over Hansen: Kobashi - 1994 Carny Taue - 1994 Carny Singles win over Doc: Kobashi - 1996 Carny Taue - 1996 Carny Final Triple Crown win: Taue - 1996 over Misawa Kobashi - 1996 over Taue Anyway, on Gordy... This was his first push to a TC shot since he overdosed in July 1990 and vacated the title. He actually was getting a push in here. Just that Kobashi was too with Jumbo going out and Kobashi having to move up to be Misawa's regular tag partner.

The elbow had been put over in the title changes as being able to knock Hansen clean out. Not just knock him goofy for a pin he kicks out of late, but completely out. The facelock was one of Misawa's finishers. Something that Jumbo quits to is something Hansen might quit to. The problem with Misawa-Hansen match ups is that a number of Misawa's high impact moves are out of the picture because it's hard for him to do them on Stan. Haven't watched this in a while, but at the time it struck me as their best match together, and a heck of a match. The standards of the Kawada match earlier in the year and Kobashi match later in the year are hard to match. But this fit great in between them. John

I didn't think it was a 15 minute walk from Budokan to Korakuen Hall. It seemed like 15 minutes simply from the subway up to Budokan.

On ratings... what Bix says. With the exception of SNME and The Main Event shows on NBC, ratings in the 80s are utterly meaningless: * they don't tie to drawing or revenue * cable penetration, and channel penetration, were far from 100% The NBC shows are a different beast because they were on NBC with near total penetration and things we can comp to: other network TV shows and Saturday Night Live. Even the "impressive" numbers that various Clash cards drew were largely meaningless. John

Not a comp that I would make, for reasons you touch on: Colon ran a territory that didn't have competition in his prime, which wasn't a short period of time. Onita ran indy in a country/territory that already had two major promotions and a strong niche promotion (UWF 2.0)... not even getting into AJW since it's audience was different. To carve out a successful promotion in the face of that in 1989-95 is extremely impressive. It's similar to the reason why I feel less embarrassed over time by the quick Pena selection in 1996. I do wish that we waited on some level, though one also wonders how voters would have treated him post-boom. But what he did, creating a national promotion out of thin air to take on a massively established national promotion with institutional advantages, to not only get key TV but also draw extremely well, and get over loads of new talent... it's one of the most impressive promotional achievements of the past 20 years. It would be like TNA actually getting over in the 2004-2006 period from scratch as big as WCW did in 1996-98 Monday Night Wars era. We would have been gobsmacked that someone could go up against Vince, especially after WCW failed (and the Lucha equiv was UWA fading). Colon is Lawler. Icon in a territory, who is impressive not because he beat back challengers or carved out a new niche withing an area, but for longevity of staying on top and drawing impressively. From a stylistic garbage wrestling super baby face hero to his fans perspective... I get the Colon-Onita. But it's not one I'd make because it's not really why Onita got in. Does that make any sense?