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"Blame Will!" John

This. Also, on Apter, I'll saw what I said before: Put in Stanley Weston & London Publishing. That way Apter gets to go in as part of the group. As an individual, he doesn't deserve it and frankly it's an insult to Weston and the rest of the folks who did the majority of work on those mags. John

Isn't there already a Kane thread? John

The Flair match was before Bock got the title back. Lord knows if SKeith has even seen it since it wasn't on ESPN at the time. Bock vs DeBeers was before Bock won the title back. Bock vs Hansen was before he won the title back. So it's Bock vs Hennig. Which *we* all love. But to most fans in 1986-87 it wasn't terribly interesting. I suspect people like the matches with Ron Garvin, Ricky Morton and Barry Windham. He had the matches with Dusty and Nikita which folks at the time didn't think we all that bad. John

My guess is that SKeith is talking about the 1986-87 run, which is the only "national" one he would have seen as a fan. And... if we're honest... while we might like his matches in that run... in 1986-87 opposite NWA World Champ Flair and WWF World Champ Hogan, Bock was pretty damn boring to the vast majority of wrestling fans in this country. :/ I don't think SKeith has seen a lot of 1975-84 Bock prior to writing that, not do I think that 1975-84 wrestling in general is up his wheelhouse in terms of what he finds non-boring. God lord, I think SKeith is an idiot on nearly everything he writes. But I'd cut him some slack on that given the likely circumstances and also what lots of "fans other than us" would think.

What's amazing about the match is that it's not short. They go 10+

I'm not entirely sure what Lynn has to do with my comments. John

Dump was the one who would get her comeuppance, since she won the first one. There are a lot of things in pro wrestling that I've found uncomfortable. Dump-Chigusa wasn't one of them. John

Espectrito was so much fun live... just a helluva worker, regardless of size.

Pretty amazing for the NVAC to say that. John

Let's look at the Bash series: Flair title defense: Dusty Rhodes, Magnum T.A., Wahoo McDaniel, Ron Garvin, Ricky Morton, Robert Gibson, Road Warrior Hawk, Road Warrior Animal and Nikita Koloff (heel). Midnight Express matches: Rock'n'Roll Express, Dusty Rhodes & Magnum TA, The Road Warriors Many of these matches were six-person with Baby Doll on one side and Corny on the other. Tully & Ole & Arn's various matches: Dusty Rhodes & Road Warriors - against the Andersons & Tully (on last after Flair-Magnum) Dusty Rhodes & Road Warrior Animal - against the Andersons (cage on last after Flair-Hawk) Dusty Rhodes & Road Warrior Hawk - against the Andersons (cage on last after Flair-Animal) Rock'n'Roll Express - against the Andersons Magnum TA - against Arn Ron Garvin - a major taped fist feud through the Bash against Tully... lots of matches Wahoo McDaniel - strap match with Arn Wahoo McDaniel - National Title against Tully Sam Houston & Nelson Royal - Andersons Don Kernodle & Italian Stallion - Andersons Hector Guerrero - lower card against Ole Because JCP had such a deep roster, on occasion guys like the Andersons would get stuck with Houston & Royal & Kernodle & Stallion & Guerrero types, especially in a city where perhaps their Bash matches had run before. But those were the exceptions. Nikita's various matches: Magnum TA - this was the start of the Best of 7 Flair - heel challenge on a card that didn't draw flies in Memphis despite being loaded Road Warriors - with Ivan in a double chain match Road Warriors - with Ivan in a cage Road Warriors - with Krusher Road Warriors & Magnum - with the rest of the Russians in a cage Road Warriors & Dusty - with the rest of the Russians in a cage Road Warriors & Wahoo - with the rest of the Russians in a cage Ron Garvin & Manny Fernandez - with Ivan in a Texas Tornado match Mostly opposite Maggy or the Roadies in various configurations. The oddball match against Garvin & Manny was on a card where the Roadies teamed with Dusty against the Horsemen, while Flair defended against Maggy in Maggy's home town of Norfolk. Sometimes your normal dance partners are occupied. Anyway, those were the top Heels of the promotion: Flair, Midnight Express, The Rest of the Horsemen, Nikita (with the other Russians as tag alongs). Their standard opponents: Top Tier Dusty Maggy Rock'n'Roll Express Road Warriors Second Tier Garvin Wahoo Third Tier Everyone Else You could tier a card like this: World Title: Dusty vs Flair Best of 7 for US Title: Maggy vs Nikita Rock'n'Roll Express vs Midnight Express (with for the WTT or in a six with Baby Doll & Corny) Double Chain: Road Warriors vs Russians (Ivan & Krusher since Nikita was occupied) Taped Fist: Garvin vs Tully Indian Strap: Wahoo vs Jimmy Garvin (which was Wahoo's feud at the time) Then you'd get into the bottom of the card such as Boogie's feud with Paul Jones' Army. And those were all actual feuds / storylines at the time, including Boogie's. That was part of the strength of Dusty: there were reasons for all of those being on the card. Then there were secondary feuds even among those guys: Dusty & Maggie against the MX, everyone against Flair, Andersons vs R'n'R, etc. Even goofy Boogie had a focused feud. Anyway, Boogie was below Dusty, Maggie, the R'n'R, the Roadies, Ron Garvin and Wahoo. He just has a focused feud. Not really. You had Wahoo working his "regular feud" with Garvin, but also able to move up into bigger matches including challenging for the World Title. Same thing with Ron Garvin. And if you watched TV at the time, week in and week out, Garvin-Tully was a pushed feud/storyline. Every bit as much as any WWF pushed mid-card feud. Well, considering the main/semi-main went Four Matches Deep when not slapped together (Dusty match, Maggie match, R'n'R match, Roadies match), the cards were loaded. Don't believe me? When JCP went focused into expanded into Los Angeles in 1986, this was the card they gave to fans like me: JCP @ Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - August 28, 1986 (10,000) Debut at the venue Hector Guerrero defeated the Barbarian Jimmy Valiant defeated Shaska Whatley Wahoo McDaniel defeated NWA National Heavyweight Champion Tully Blanchard to win the title Dick Murdoch defeated NWA TV Champion Arn Anderson The Road Warriors defeated Ivan Koloff & Krusher Kruschev Magnum TA fought NWA US Champion Nikita Koloff to a no contest NWA Tag Team Champions Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson defeated Bobby Eaton & Dennis Condrey NWA World Champion Ric Flair defeated Dusty Rhodes via disqualification I never went to a WWF card in the 80s that was a loaded up as that one. Second match had a focused feud: Boogie vs Jones. "Mid card" had the Horsemen in singles, against Wahoo who had been pushed all year and the newly arriving Murdoch getting a pushed post-Bash as a player at that level. Then four big matches. In a sense, we got a Best of the Bash on the card, with the exception of Wahoo stepping in for Ron Garvin to face Tully... and they gave us a title change. Post Starcade card? JCP @ Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - January 29, 1987 (4,750) Todd Champion defeated Teijo Khan Big Bubba defeated Ron Garvin in a Louisville streetfight Dusty Rhodes defeated NWA TV Champion Tully Blanchard (w/ JJ Dillon) via disqualification at around the 9-minute mark after NWA US Tag Team Champion Barry Windham came out to counter the interference of Arn Anderson, with all four men then brawling in the ring and Windham counting a pinfall for Rhodes; after the match, Rhodes was bloodied with a shoe until Windham made the save Barry Windham fought Arn Anderson to a no contest NWA Tag Team Champions Rick Rude & Manny Fernandez defeated Dick Murdoch & Baron Von Raschke NWA US Champion Nikita Koloff defeated NWA World Champion Ric Flair via disqualification The Road Warriors (w/ Paul Ellering) defeated Bobby Eaton & Dennis Condrey (w/ Jim Cornette & Big Bubba) in a scaffold match at around the 7-minute mark Not entirely sure why we didn't get the R'nR challenging Rude & Raging... draw a blank. Anyway, you've got: * Bubba vs Garvin in a Starcade rematch as the second match on the card * Dusty vs Tully in a Starcade rematch as the 3rd match on the card * Arn facing the newly arriving and getting-a-big-push Barry next * WTT defense, though admittedly slapped together * World Title Starcade rematch * Starcade Scaffold rematch Ummm... I'd like to find the WWF cards in Los Angeles in 1986-89 that were loaded up like this. Anyway, by this time, Barry came in to be yet another challenger to Flair, while Nikita was as well. If there was a problem with JCP it's that they had a bit too much talent when putting together "everyone's on the card" shows. The WWF, with their split crews, tended to have Hogan Match + #2 Match + Everyone Else cards, which on non-Hogan cards tended to be IC/WTT Match + #2 Drawing Feuding Match + Everyone Else. John

There's not a ton of pre-1970 stuff. What's probably best is simply to get a list of everything that's available and then cut it down from there. One thing you could do is put a post on the tOA 80s board and ask Steve if he could list everything "official" that he's aware of that exists prior to 1970. He's collected a ton of it. By official, I mean stuff that's in circulation and would be available for a Yearbook. I can poke him a bit to add to it. John

I wonder how much if that is left over from prior liens. John

Not a bad comp. John

On Mid Atlantic... I agree with what Bix said. It was behind the WWF and with the AWA as the next tier of territories in the late 70s through early 80s when Patera was in his prime. Memphis was a metro that supported a territory running weekly shows, and one that drew well. JCP had a lot of metros that were in the range of Memphis or a bit below that could sustain cards, and the promotion used that base metros/cities to build a very successful promotion. It was "small" relative to the WWF, but everyone was. It was small in square miles relative to AWA, and lacked the giant top end metros that it had (Chicago, Twin Cities), but it packed a lot of punch. John

Yeah, that was an odd one. The WWWF/WWF that Patera main evented on two runs was the largest in the country. I've said before, it was so big that it was essentially a national promotion in terms of population. Big... really big. Okay, that's just throwing a concept at the wall. How about some numbers? 1980 226,542,199 US Population 55,883,664 WWF Territory (25%) ----------------------------- 17,558,165 NY 11,864,720 PA 7,365,011 NJ 5,737,093 MA 4,216,933 MD 3,107,564 CT 1,297,145 N VA part of DC Metro (major areas being Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William) 1,125,043 ME 947,154 RI 920,610 NH 638,432 DC 594,338 DE 511,456 VT Okay, so 25% doesn't seem like much. That would be wrong. Let's look at this in three ways. Before that, what other states had 10M+ people in 1980? 23,667,764 California 14,225,513 Texas 11,427,409 Ilinois 10,797,603 Ohio -------------------- 9,746,961 Florida That's it. Florida was just under 10M. * * * * * Okay, so looking at it in Way #1: Let's look at how the biggest two of them were broken up: 23,667,764 California = SoCal (LeBell) and NoCal (Shire) 14,225,513 Texas = World Class (Von Erich) + West Texas (Funks) + Southwest (Blanchard) + Houston (Boesch) That's 6 promotions in 2 starts splitting up 38M people. The WWF had 56M people in 1980 under its banner. * * * * * Let's look at it in Way #2: Let's say by magic you could combine a "national" promotion that owned CA, TX, IL and FL. That's big in 1980. You've got the West Coast biggy, the South West biggy, the Mid West biggy, and the Deep South biggy. Huge! 58,437,841 Magic 4 55,883,664 WWF Difference is 2.6M That's a bit below the population of CT (3.1M). Now think about that: when we look back at the WWWF/WWF in that period, we don't really think of CT being all that big of a deal... because it wasn't relative to NY, Boston, Philly, Baltimore/DC. So missing a *second* CT worth of population isn't that much of a difference. It would be just a 4.57% boost in the population under the banner of the WWF. So if it's not clear... A Super Promotion covering California (which had 2 promotions) + Texas (which had 4 promotions) + Illinois + Florida would have been only 4.57% larger than the WWF in 1980. * * * * * Let's look at it in Way #3: We know that the WWF was in an area of dense population. The insanely big New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA CMSA contained 18,905,705 of those 55M people. They... well... let's just lay this out: 18,905,705 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA CMSA 5,790,555 Washington-Baltimore, DC-MD-VA-WV CMSA 5,649,031 Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, PA-NJ-DE-MD CMSA 5,892,937 5,121,673 Boston-Worcester-Lawrence, MA-NH-ME-CT CMSA 2,571,223 Pittsburgh, PA MSA 1,242,826 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY MSA 1,080,710 Hartford, CT MSA 1,076,557 Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA MSA 1,030,630 Rochester, NY MSA I don't think they worked Buffalo much. I do see that Pedro-Patera reopened the Rochester market in 1980. I'd have to study the results and the maps to figure out how they might have services upstate New York. Toss those if one wants to. It's 40,195,454 that lived in Metros where the WWF ran shows... limiting it to Metros over 1M. Up next is 824,729 in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY MSA. 616,864 were in the Scranton--Wilkes-Barre--Hazleton, PA MSA. 1M doesn't look like much next to those 5M of Philly, Boston and Baltimore/DC, let along NY. But... 1,080,710 Hartford, CT MSA 1,076,557 Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA MSA 1,200,998 Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA-NC MSA 971,447 Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC MSA 950,763 Greensboro--Winston-Salem--High Point, NC MSA 761,311 Richmond-Petersburg, VA MSA 744,428 Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, SC MSA 664,788 Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC MSA The WWF's *third* tier Metros were as big / bigger than Mid-Atlantic's. 938,777 Memphis, TN-AR-MS MSA 953,520 Louisville, KY-IN MSA 850,505 Nashville, TN MSA The WWF's third tier Metros were as bigger than those in the Memphis territory. 1,304,212 New Orleans, LA MSA 860,969 Oklahoma City, OK MSA 657,173 Tulsa, OK MSA 494,151 Baton Rouge, LA MSA 474,463 Little Rock-North Little Rock, AR MSA The WWF's third tier Metros were about as big as Watt's #1 metro, and bigger than the rest of them. At their best, those territories did big businees. The benefit of the WWF having so much of it's popultion in major metros is that it was easy to promotion shows to them: good sized arenas, easy to get TV, and easy for people to get to the shows. 72% of the state (+ the non-MD part of DC Metro) populations were in the Metros that I listed above even after knocking off the Buff and Rochester. * * * * * The WWF was so big that you could split it into two: the New York metro and Everything Else, and it would still be two big territories. The population in the WWF's territory in 1980 was larger than all but 13 countries. It slots nicely in here: 56.5M Italy 56.3M UK 55.8M WWF 55.1M France 53.7M Vietnam I could split it even more, but it's overkill. Big territory... HUGE. John

Rovert mentioned it to me. I think he confused Zavisa with Yohe. Anyway... I loved Lucha pysch at the time and still do for what it is/was. I was one of the gringos who made the effort to try to talk about *not* comparing it to stuff like US wrestling, and enjoy it for its own greatness rather than get hung up on what "felt goofy" to a US fan. I never compared it unfavorably / directly to puroresu (let alone Misawa). About as close as I got was the Rey-Juve match, where I talked about the *moves* that Rey and Juve had clearly borrowed from the stuff they were watching. I don't think I ever talked about puroresu psych with Carlos. The most remembered discussions on psych that I was around Carlos were: * the famed "But Carlos, the finish was a DQ" discussion where Carlos was explaining the psych of his own booking that turned out quite funny * his explaining the booking of one of his cards at the Olympic in relation to what Lucha fans would accept, which are mostly about quality and finishes than pysch... but some psych in there I always got along well with Carlos. He treated us (i.e. Yohe, Hoback and me) well. He was insanely open to us about his thoughts, even when in WCW when we'd run into him... and there were other WCW guys around. He was open to questions, and if you gave him an honest though about not thinking a match worked or was subpar, he wasn't dismissive and at times would agree that someone had a night off. If he disagreed with you, he'd talk to you about it rather than try to browbeat or make you, as a non-wrestler, feel small or unknowing, and tended to want to hear back from you after. Like I say... I got along with him, and appreciated how he treated us. With the exception of comps to Japanese juniors, which we all did... if there were any other comps to puroresu, it would have been Dave. I suspect if one went through the WON's you'd find something along the lines of, "The was like an All Japan Budokan Hall main event but for Lucha". John

Sting a saber candidate? Yeah... that's rich. John

This will sound a bit rough, but I think Kobashi too stupid to think about whether a company would always take care of him or not. I don't think he made a mental calculation about it: there's a 99.9% likelihood that he was like 99.9% of the rest of the people in the business who don't think beyond current "success", however they personally measure it. I know that folks will point at Baba's use of the Comedy Match as a way to keep shipping some money to some folks, and that Kobashi thought that's where he would end up eventually and continue to make money until he was 60. I'd offer up: * we don't know what type of living those guys made under Baba * there are a finite number of gigs in that spot in the major companies * Kobash debuted in 1988 and had already seen plenty of examples of former "stars" being out of the business or on the fringe * we don't even know if he thought in those terms * it's highly unlikely since hardly anyone in sports or entertainment or specifically pro wrestling does * is there any indication that Kobashi think long term in anything he's done in his career I suspect it's more likely that Kobashi would have been closer to Flair: he can only be KENTA KOBASHI~!, can only work one way, even if Misawa tried to get him into the comedy match he'd still tell people to drop him on his head or dust off the moonsault or something else stupid. Yeah... I'm jaded. :/ But I don't think there's anything more sad about Kenta than say Ricky Morton still working as much as he can to try to make some cash since he didn't save any he made and pretty much has little else he can do in his life. And I'm far from the Morton Mark that most folks are: he's just the first name I could think of.

The term was tossed at Patera on WC. Dylan appears to have been interested if there was any definition of what a mid carder is. The thread tends to illustrated why it's problematic. John

He headlined in the Bama territory before the wrestling world changed. It's a bit like calling Buddy Rose a midcarder. He headlined MSG once, and the Spectrum a couple of times... but was largely in mid-carder in the WWF. Upper card guy in the AWA with the tag titles feuding with the Rockers. But overall, an uneventful career in the Big Leagues (which it would be kind of funny to call the AWA in 1986 a big league). But to focus just on those would be to ignore the fact that he was a main eventer in Portland for a long time. Hence the Box references earlier: it doesn't add much to a discussion to try to wrap wrestlers up into a neat little box. Careers don't tend to work out that way. John

Jerry: I know it seems like we're being hard on your here, and we are. But your points don't seem to be advancing what was Dylan's original question. Hence Loss and/or I banging our heads against the wall. John

I wonder if this is going to be like Sonny Bono. Someone will end up being the Last Wife a/k/a/ The Widow like Mary Bono was. But everyone thinks of Cher as Sonny's wife. Beth will always be Flair's wife because of Starcade '83. John

The next wife. John