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Dave's original write up was pretty spot on: * Jumbo let Mick get pretty much all his shit in * Jumbo sold for Mick's shit * the fans didn't give a shit about Mick's stuff * there wasn't much more Jumbo could do with him * they took it home Frankly, after the backdrop on the concrete and the sick bump off the apron after the lariat, taking it home was the right thing to do. Made sense... and one suspects was the plan. John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNU6Pm18hc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SC-5Iv0jk8 Yes... it's sacrilege. John

"What about my damn career?!?!" John

It's been a while, but I seem to recall that was a girlfriend's daughter with the girlfriend driving another car. Or do I have a different drunken Flair story mixed up with this. Anyway... My recollection of Flair's rep is that he's not exactly one to worry about around a 14 year old like say Jerry Lawler. I seem to recall he very much didn't go for the underage stuff like a number of other wrestlers did/have.

My point is that without Hogan the WWE would still be a regional promotion. Frankly, Vince could have gone public in the 80s and early 90s. But it was an ego fuck of owning the whole thing.

The difference between Bruno and Hogan & Austin is that Hogan & Austin's would be National. Bruno's was regional. A very big region, but a different beast.

I don't think that's quite fair. Hogan built that house. Austin completely gutted it and redid all pipes, electrical and aesthetics. All that remained of Hogan's house were the structural elements. I don't see that at all. National house show business? That was built with Hogan. It went down after Hogan left, but it didn't die. Austin built it back up again. PPV? Hogan got the WWF on national PPV. The revenue stream for the company created when Hogan was there. It went down after he left, but didn't die. Austin built it back up again. National television? The WWF built that around Hogan. It shifted over time as synidication became less important thanks to national cable deals. But Raw was in place before Austin, and an extension of Prime Time that was created under Hogan. We've talked about this elsewhere, but the concept of turning television into Television Content and thus a Cash Cow was actually Eric over in WCW. Vince took the cable property he created under Hogan, used what he learned from Eric (but will never admit it), and cashed in with Austin. Gutted? Not really. They basically built a second level on the place. SmackDown? Vince won't want to admit this, but: 01/08/98 Thunder 04/29/99 SmackDown Yep... Vince got the idea of a second cash cow program from Eric. Then aimed it right at Eric. Wait... back up a second... Vince got the idea from Eric to turn tv programing into TV Content and make a mint off of it. Who did Eric have anchoring that Cash Cow (Nitro)? That would be Hogan. Again, we went through this in one of the various Hogan threads. I love Austin. But he was playing in the House That Hogan Built. Did great with it. Made Vince a ton of money. But Hogan gave Vince the country. John

St Louis was/is a larger metro: Memphis 1970: 834,103 1980: 913,472 1990: 981,747 St Louis 1970: 2,429,376 1980: 2,376,968 1990: 2,444,099 I suspect the overwhelming majority of the population was/is within an hour's drive. John

Two syndication programs. Prime Time and All American on USA (not to mention that still talk show that was on for two years). Cutting promos for the next show in your city. He's not on every card, so you might have him cutting promos every week for a month, then being off a month... unless you're in New York where they were selling MSG, the Meadowlands and Long Island... would be interesting to know how they did promos in New York back then with three shows a month in the area, and you sure as hell want fans going out to Long Island for the Hogan-Orndorff feud. Yeah, someone mentioned the cartoons. Perhaps Austin had more minutes from late 1996 through mid-2002 when he walked out. But it's not as if Hogan lacked minutes. Move beyond that: Hogan anchored the television of the first national promotion. The concept of "national face time" for a national wrestling promotion? Hogan invented it, and built it from nothing. Austin simply was the 1997-2001 major tenant of the House That Hogan Built. More national broadcasts with Raw and SmackDown? Not really. Primetime went 2 hours, Superstars was 1, and Challenge was 1. We can pitch the secondary stuff in each era such as All American, Shotgun, Heat, etc. There really is no Austin equiv of SNME and The Main Event. Hogan's House. Austin just moved in, made some improvements, and the house sold for more. But that land and that house wouldn't exist without Hogan. It's why Austin isn't a candidate for #1. I like Austin more than Hogan, but it just isn't close.

The impact of Hogan was more than 1983-86. Mania III (Mar 1987)? That would be Hogan on top. We can say that the War was essentially over at that point. Survivor Series launched to damage JCP's attempt to get in PPV (Nov 1987)? That would be Hogan in the main. WWF in Prime Time for what is I still think the most watched wrestling program in history (Feb 1988)? Hogan mained that. Summer Slam launched to encourage people to save their money from the Bash and spend it on the WWF (Aug 1988)? Hogan anchored that. Rumble goes PPV rather than free TV (Jan 1989)? Hogan anchored that. Hogan anchored the launch of the entire Big 4 PPVs, all of reached PPV maturity after 1986: I seem to recall Mania did more Closed Circiut business in 1986 than PPV revenue, whereas PPV grew considerable in 1987, 1988 and 1989. That not even covering a number of the cities and territories that saw the focus increase on house shows in the 1987 and on period. It's not easy to say when Hogan's impact stopped. In fact, his leaving had an impact: business when to shit when he left against Mania in 1992. Austin main evented Mania in 1999 and 2001, and it was Austin that was the bigger draw. Rock-Trip the year between, even with Foley and all the McMahons involved, didn't draw as much. John

Honestly don't know. That was my off hand comment: #3 is closer to #10 than to #1 & #2 (Londos and Hogan in some order). I've really gotten away from "ranking lists" on a lot of things, so there really isn't a knee jerk name that pops into my head for #3. We were talking about how the Other Guys in the "Top 11 - Kiniski" were all pretty decent picks for a Top 10. Ordering them... don't know. John

I think these two hit it: Since it's a US Only list (or US + Canada), we can ignore the rest of the world. I believe that Londos and Hogan were the biggest national draws in US wrestling history relative to what other people were drawing at the time. It very much was Londos and Everyone Else. In turn, it was Hogan and Everyone else. I don't really think anyone else is close. We can point to what Austin drew, but guys over in WCW had a stretch of drawing very well, and the WWF Machine drew well in that period when Austin was on the shelf. I just don't think he was as big of a draw as the other two. Nor as impactful as Hogan, which is something we covered over in the Vince & Hogan vs The World Thread is detail. John

Love the Mad Men one. Wonder if Harley would fit into any 70's shows? Replacing Reuben Kinkaid as the manager of the Partidge Family? Mixing it up with Dingbat and Meathead on All In The Family? He'd have to be a stooge heel on MASH. Mod Squad is almost too easy. John

Which pic? And do you mean Rios is off base, or not off base?

Classics thread on it, with a run in from Dave: http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbc...ic;f=9;t=057596 This part is a little off: Someone else was at ringside: Shawn was actually ringside at a fair number of the Diesel-Backlund rematches.

This is kind of interesting. Known Backlund-Hall matches in 1995 from Graham's site: WWF @ Baltimore, MD - Arena - January 26, 1995 (2,500) Razor Ramon defeated Bob Backlund WWF @ Philadelphia, PA - Spectrum - February 12, 1995 (5,500) Razor Ramon defeated Bob Backlund via disqualification WWF @ Bethleham, PA - Stabler Arena - February 13, 1995 Razor Ramon defeated Bob Backlund WWF @ Robinsville, MS - February 17, 1995 Razor Ramon defeated Bob Backlund via disqualification Kind of interesting because the first one happened right after the taping of these two matches the night before: WWF @ Ft. Myers, FL - Lee Civic Center - January 25, 1995 Action Zone - 2/19/95: Bob Backlund (w/ Owen Hart) defeated Davey Boy Smith (w/ Bret Hart) via disqualification at around the 12:30 mark when Bret attacked Backlund as Smith was caught in the Crossface Chicken Wing, moments after Owen assaulted Bret outside the ring; after the match, Bret attempted to get at Backlund before Owen pulled Backlund from the ring and the two left ringside Action Zone - 2/26/95: Bret Hart & Davey Boy Smith defeated Owen Hart & Bob Backlund at around the 18-minute mark when Smith pinned Owen with the running powerslam as Bret applied the Sharpshooter on Backlund outside the ring; after the bout, both Smith and officials had to convince Bret to release the hold I seem to recall Loss liking the second one a hell of a lot. It appears that some people could work with Bob, and others couldn't. Bob does work a certain way.

Third on Hash-Choshu from the 1996 G1... simply because I was in the building and it worked extremely well live. NEXT: Aja Kong Picked her because there's likely to be a lot of variety among choices. Mine: 08/30/95 Aja Kong vs Dynamite Kansai title change. Just really love her performance in that one. She's the "right" one to lose it to Kansai, it's the "right" climax to their series and Kansai's efforts to beat her, and Aja's selling is awesome.

There are a number of other Bob In Tag matches out there: 07/25/74 Backlund & Roop vs. Baba & Tsuruta (AJPW) 05/30/78 Backlund & Garea vs Fujinami & Choshu (NJPW) 10/10/78 Backlund & Maivia vs. Arion & Rivera (tv turn) 07/21/79 Backlund & Putski vs. Johnny & Jerry Valiant (Spectrum) 05/23/80 Backlund & Fujinami vs Hansen & Rhodes (NJPW) 08/09/80 Backlund & Putski vs Samoans (Shea) 12/05/80 Backlund & Inoki vs Singh & Ueda (NJPW) 12/10/80 Backlund & Inoki vs. Hansen & Hogan (NJPW) 04/10/81 Backlund & McGraw vs Inoki & Choshu (NJPW) 05/29/81 Backlund & Rhodes vs Hansen & Hogan (NJPW) 06/04/81 Backlund & Rhodes vs. Duncum & Slaughter (NJPW) 03/20/83 Backlund & Andre & Snuka vs. Studd & Afa & Albano (Spectrum) The AJPW match is when he's green, so low expectations. I haven't watched the two Spectrum tags yet. The Maivia turn is an angle match, so you're not going to get a normal tag performance out of it. The Shea match has trainwreck aspects and good aspects, but overall isn't very good. The NJPW split between stuff on Classics shows and things that Ginnetty grabbed over the years. How much of it's easy to find on DM and YT... I don't know. I don't think any of Dan's "misc" stuff like this ever has been uploaded.

I appear to have really hated that match: I also hated the match with the Briscos, though I massively toned down my write up for that from what I'd originally drafted. John

Doubt it. Suspect he (and people with input in the matches) saw it as more effective. I don't want to say that he didn't work "comeback attempts + cutoff" after a certain point. But the pure Hulk-Up... that became a bit clearer defined in house shows as time passed (as opposed to PPV matches that went 15-20, which was quite a bit longer than he worked house shows in the PPV era). When Hulk started shaking in a certain way, started looking around, wagged the finger... you knew that he was Hulking-Up and it was a run to the finish. Other comeback attempts didn't have the same characteristics, and I suspect if you waft through two dozen in that era, you can call "cutoff" early in them since they're clear not The Hulk-Up. John

I like Vader-Inoki. Largely a one man show, with the other guy willing to take anything Leon was willing to throw at him.

Did Brock start it? I can't even remember the first time I saw it or used it. Been around a good while.

Tanahashi is 11 years older, has worked for the company 5 more years, and has been on top since 2006. Okada got up there in 2012. The person who likely makes close to Tanahashi is Nakamura, who has been up there as long. The WWE isn't going to "match" Okada's deal in New Japan. They would blow smoke up his ass on the promise/potential of more money in the US, and of being a Star in the US, which gave some people a hard on (Inoki and Sasuke) and really didn't matter to some others. They also aren't going to rocket launcher up his ass. You could count on one hand the number of times they've done that to a newbie in the last decade, and still have fingers left over. Brock... Batista... it's getting colder... John

I wasn't responding to anything you wrote. I saw these comments: And thought they were pretty damn humorous. John

Rousey isn't Hank Aaron. Good lord... next he'll be saying she's the Jackie Robinson of UFC. John