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Yeah... this pretty much has always been heralded and set out as the start of the feud. It's a much beloved match. "There are many six-man tags that got ****1/2+ from the famous 05/26/90 Misawa & Taue & Kobashi vs. Tsuruta & Kabuki & Fuchi match (which "started" the Jumbo & Co. vs. Misawa & Co. feud) on through 1993." -Pimping Post John

Assuming Sting even makes it to Wrestlemania 6 without blowing out his knee, the Hulkamaniacs would have resented him for beating Hogan just like they did Warrior. He gets the title just in time for a recession. His title run would underperform just like the Warrior's since Hogan will sabotage him by getting the program with the Earthquake, who was the only fresh heel WWF had left at the time. Vince still jobs him to Slaughter for his silly attempt to capitalize off the war. Sting settles into the upper mid card. Vince would have either got rid him during the steroid scandal or Sting would eventually jumped to WCW as Hogan's sidekick. I don't think it would have mattered. Sting wasn't going to be a mega star either way. I think that if Sting went to the WWF in 1987 when the UWF was bought out, that he eventually would have been huge in the WWF. Not Hogan huge... but bigger than any other babyface between Hogan winning the title in 1984 and Austin taking off in 1998/99. It may have been a slow, especially since mid-1987 was when Vince started Dingo around the horn before debuting in TV in October. Hellwig was freaking huge, so of course Vince had a boner over him. But I think Sting had more "WWF 80s It" that anyone after Hogan and would have eventually blossomed into a massive star. In a sense, that's exactly what happened in JCP: they didn't really push him, then he got over huge with the fans at Starcade '87. As 1987 finished and 1988 started, the company didn't really have anyone to run against Flair since they didn't want to rush Flair-Lex until the summer. Sting was suddenly over, got thrown into the breach, and got more over. I think something similar would have happened in the WWF. He would have gotten over with the fans if given even a small push. He just had natural charisma that guys like Lex and Warrior didn't. Patterson and Vince would have noticed. Then an opportunity would have struck, and Sting would have gotten over more to the next level. John

Again, in the 25+ years since the crash, there have been stories about it being Flair-Maggie as well. While not quite "How did David Von Erich die?" level of different stories, there have been both Flair-Maggie and Flair-Nikita out there over the years. My more general point: I don't think Maggie would ever have been "Flair's Heir" nor "JCP's Hogan". I think the mythology overplays how popular he would have been nationally. John

The blackball was over for Vince by April/July 1988 when he used Stan in No Holds Barred. So that's why I go with the notion that if Stan was ever going to work a program with Stan, that was the time: after NHB and most likely after it got released. John

Ki won't go in, or even come remotely close to going in, unless he has a major indy / TNA / WWE run left in his holster. That's seems unlikely given Ki being Ki. I don't see Ki getting more votes than Joe... ever. Joe has the far more idealized / myth making indy resume. We could argue over what was the high point of indy cred in the past decade: Joe's run with the ROH belt or Danielson's. I tend to think that *voters* over the next 10 years will see it more as Joe's since it was first and there is that Kobashi match. Danielson *is* a positive on why he'll go in, much like his run in the WWE, but I keep pointing to this as the reason Bryan was always a lock: Most Outstanding 2006 Bryan Danielson 2007 Bryan Danielson 2008 Bryan Danielson 2009 Bryan Danielson 2010 Daniel Bryan No one has ever done that. No one who has come remotely close to doing that (Flair, Liger, Angle) is on the outside of the HOF. In fact, even the people who've done it twice (Kobashi, Misawa, Benoit) are in. The first *five-time* winner of the award certainly wasn't going to be the first person with 2+ awards to fail to go in. FWIW, Joe won the award once and that's another thing that over time will be a positive for him that Ki doesn't have. Punk will go in because the whole of his career is something that will appeal to voters long term. Perhaps not instantly, by as more of his peers and fans get ballots while older wrestlers and voters either die off or wander away from voting. Danielson and Punk are long term locks, and quite possible won't take a heck of a lot of time to go in. When looking at other indy guys, I'd suggest people look at Joe as a line, though not in a sense of the Murdoch line. More in the sense that if we're looking at an indy guy, if he has a better case than Joe, he's got a chance to go in. If he has a lesser case than Joe, don't even think about him going in until Joe gets in. By "case" I don't mean what we might consider our personal standards, but in terms of how the mass over voters view him. We may not like Edge, but we'd be hitting the bong if we don't admit that he's at about a 98% likelihood of eventually going in. Joe has a stronger case to those voters than most indy workers. John

There's lots of conflicting stories on what would have happened, including Starcade '86. Would it have been Flair-Maggie, or Maggie-Nikita? Who knows at this point as the car wreck has transformed reality into mythology. I don't think Maggie would have been the guy to take JCP to the next level in their battle with Vince & Hogan. I don't really think nationally he would have been any bigger than Lex and Sting got, and look at the limitations of where they got JCP/WCW to. I also suspect that if Maggie blocked Sting/Lex, that one and/or both would have ended up in the WWF and been vastly bigger than they were in JCP/WCW... especially Sting. It's pretty funny given how much Vince invested in the Warrior that he would have been much better off grabbing Sting when the JCP/UWF merger happened. Anyway, I'm in agreement with those in the thread who think the potential of Maggie has been totally overrated in the mythology since the crash. John

The generally proper time for it would have been after No Holds Barred, where Hansen played nice with McMahon and Hogan. I'm not sure if 1987 coming off Hansen's issue in the AWA would have worked. Hogan went off to film No Holds Barred between later April through roughly mid/late July. He had some matches with Andre, DiBiase, Haku and Bad News before his major fall feud with Bossman started in mid/late September. That was pretty much his feud all the way through Mania the following year, at which point it transitioned into Hogan-Savage. No Holds Barred opened 06/02/89. Hogan-Savage went on forever, including Hogan & Beefcake vs Savage & Zeus at SummerSlam and the No Holds Barred PPV. Hogan vs Bad News started a small series in Oct, while Hogan vs Perfect/Genius started in Nov/Dec. One could argue that Hogan-Hansen would have been a good feud instead of Hogan-Perfect, and instead continue Perfect's winning streak to set him up for Warrior. The problem with that is this: 11/17/89 - 12/06/89 Real World Tag League 1989 Hansen is going to have to be on the series. Now you could time Hogan-Hansen into the slot after the tag league is over. This was a time when gaijin, including Hansen, didn't work every series. So he could skip the first series and show up for the second series which was late Feb through early Mar. All Japan's series in this time frame were: 09/30/89 - 10/28/89 October Giant Series 1989 11/17/89 - 12/06/89 Real World Tag League 1989 01/02/90 - 01/28/90 New Year Giant Series 1990 02/21/90 - 03/06/90 Excite Series 1990 03/24/90 - 04/19/90 Champion Carnival 1990 You could arguably shoot an angle between the October Giant Series and the Tag League that would air later to start the feud: WWF @ Topeka, KS - Expocentre - October 31, 1989 WWF Superstars taping: 11/18/89, 11/25/89, 12/2/89 Saturday Night's Main Event #24 - 11/25/89 (Hogan-Genius) WWF @ Wichita, KS - Kansas Coliseum - November 1, 1989 Wrestling Challenge taping: 11/19/89, 11/26/89, 12/3/89 You certainly could have shot an angle on one of those two. Typically they shot Superstars first then Challenge the next day, but they *could* have flipped them here if they wanted to give Hansen an extra day to get back and in good mind. Rather than Hogan-Genius, give Hogan a different opponent and left Hansen interfere and chop Hogan's head off. In addition, you could have Hansen on the 12/2 show cutting a promo... and give him a manager like Heenan to do most of the talking. The next set of tapings: WWF @ Indianapolis, IN - Market Square Arena - November 20, 1989 WWF Superstars taping: 12/9/89, 12/16/89, 12/23/89 WWF @ Ft. Wayne, IN - Allen County War Memorial - November 21, 1989 Wrestling Challenge taping: 12/10/89, 12/17/89, 12/24/89 Would see Hansen in Japan: 11/17/89 - 12/06/89 Real World Tag League 1989 But they're easy ones to insert replays of the SNME angle into, along Heenan doing mouth work for him. WWF @ Nashville, TN - Municipal Auditorium - December 12, 1989 Wrestling Challenge taping: 12/31/89, 1/7/90, 1/14/90 No Holds Barred: The Movie / The Match - 12/27/89: Hogan & Beefcake vs Savage & Zeus (Cage) WWF @ Huntsville, AL - Von Braun Civic Center - December 13, 1989 WWF Superstars taping: 12/30/89, 1/6/90, 1/13/90 Hansen would be back from Japan for those. Doubt one would want to have him interfere in the NHB match, but you *could* have Hogan go into it in a neck brace to sell the lariat. You also could run another angle on the Superstars taping the next night (an example where they flipped the taping order) that could start airing on 12/30. Then try to cram it into mid-Dec through mid-Feb: 01/02/90 - 01/28/90 New Year Giant Series 1990 02/21/90 - 03/06/90 Excite Series 1990 03/24/90 - 04/19/90 Champion Carnival 1990 You might be able to get Hansen in between the Excite and Carny series, but who knows. Issues: * you don't have a feud to bridge Hogan to Mania * would Hansen be willing to job around the horn to Hogan * you don't really have a blow off It's Hogan... it's potentially a lot of money... maybe he would be willing to job... maybe not. In the end, it's hard to book Hansen around his obligations to All Japan (both the series he had to work and his willingness to job) to fit into a typical long Hogan Feud of the era. I kind of like what we got: one big match, in a big setting, with a clean finish that reflected decently well on both Hogan and Hansen. The feud I would have rather seen that we missed was Dusty vs the WWF after the Dusty-Backlund match in New Japan was so fun. John

Punk will go in eventually, as will Danielson. Locks. We probably could think of others who will go in. John

It was known before the open of this series (i.e. this card). I don't think it was reported before the prior series finished. It was more that after the news broke the people now understood why Tenryu got broken off into working singles with undercard guys. John

The cutoffs are really odd: 1981-84 and 1985-89. I suspect Flair drew quite well in 1985-86, and really the decline was in 1987-89. Even then, 1987 probably has some good pockets here and there along with some really bad ones due to expansion into poor cities and subpar national opponents (like Brad Armstrong, regardless of what we think of him as a worker). Then JCP went off the cliff in 1988-89. There also were comments in 1986 about the difference between JCP cards with Flair on them and without him on it that we similar to the WWF comments about Hogan vs Non-Hogan. John

Well... it was hardly arbitrary. First show without Tenryu. And yes... I know you mean in the context of the match. John

So Jumbo vs Tenryu from 1989 would count because it was in the "territory days"? Really? John

The WWF was a national promotion at this time, not a territory. It's hard to draw a clear line on when JCP went from being a Territory to being a National promotion. They ran Philly several days before this, and St Louis the day after. They had been running Philly monthly since March. They effectively took over the old GCW territory in April/May which expanded the territory to include not just GA/SC but also OH. Starcade was NC & GA. I think it would be safe to call this as being during their national expansion. All when JCP was a national promotion. John

Tully would be after JCP went national. Flair in the studio is cutting it close, and the later Flair matches would clearly be during their national period. John

Don't have results for 1977. The PWF Title match was at Iwate Prefecture Gym in Morioka. Not a major arena. The 10/21/77 NWA Int'l Tag Title match with Bobo Brazil against Baba & Jumbo was at Yokohama Prefecture Gym. In terms of size, it's larger than Korakuen Hall, but not as larger as their bigger Tokyo venues of that era: Budokan and Tokyo University Hall. [i know very little about University Hall... don't know if it's Yasuda Hall or some other building.] Anyway... the size of the building isn't massively relevant in All Japan - they didn't work a lot of large buildings. Getting a challenge against Baba, and challenging for the tag titles... not a bad push. In 1980, he was just in to work one show: the Budokan headlined by Inoki-Patera / Backlund-Hansen. 1981 against Inoki was Osaka Prefecture Hall. That's one of their major buildings. Looking at Hisa's data from 1981, here are Inoki's matches there: http://puroresu.com/personalities/inoki/re...esults1981.html 02/04/81 NWF Title: Inoki vs Patera 05/26/81 Inoki & Rhodes vs Hansen & Hogan 09/17/81 Inoki vs Andre 12/10/81 Tag League Final Night: Inoki & Fujinami vs Hansen & Murdoch 12/10/81 Tag League Final Night: Inoki & Fujinami vs Andre & Goulet Yeah, that should give you an idea of the importance of the building. I wouldn't say that Patera was a Major Player in Japan. But he was given a challenge to Baba right away. In turn, Inoki brought him in to be a featured main event opponent on a major card. That went well enough that he brought him over for the opening series of the following year, again to main event in a major arena. On some level, that would be the cap on his Career Year: second Inoki title shot coming out of it. I do wish that second match were available. John

Hash beat Choshu at the Dome the year before. That was the pattern of their matches in 1989-91: Hash would take the first one each year, then Riki would beat him later in the year. John

I'm pretty sure that by this time they knew Sting would be back in July for the Bash, hence keep it on Lex. Ric already had the moment of turning down the belt going to Lex anyway. John

The Misawa comment, if I recall correctly, was in the post match. I'll have to look it up in the JWJ - it was a Tokyo match, the author would have gone to it, and stuff that wasn't on TV may have ended up in his report. And yeah... it's not a good match. But it is historic. As far as the Footloose, they teamed together in the Carny series. There was a dividing line in the series where it was clear Tenryu was leaving: he stopped working tags and only worked singles matches with low ranked guys (Taue and Nakano if I recall correctly), with the exception of the singles matches with Savage and Jumbo. I want to say that started before the Dome show. Anyway, Kawada & Fuyuki paired up a good deal in the Carny, but there also was a bit of a "Revolution imploding" storyline as well where they were split from Tenryu when he went into singles. Somewhat lost in time is that in this series, Fuyuki was part of Jumbo's original group opposite Misawa. Jumbo's side got crushed by SWS: Yatsu, Kabuki and Fuyuki all jump. If Tenryu jumping was a "positive", cleaning out Jumbo's side was as well. John

There have been more absurd. Don't make people go looking for Resident Evil threads...

10/24/77 PWF Title: Giant Baba vs Ken Patera (10:29, 5:31, 5:50) 09/30/80 NWF Title: Antonio Inoki vs Ken Patera (14:53) 02/04/81 NWF Title: Antonio Inoki vs Ken Patera (12:37) The 9/80 was Budokan with Backlund-Hansen as the co-main event. It's available. I'll have to look at home to see if I have any info on where the other two matches were. Neither is available on tape as far as I know. I could try to see if Yohe's friend has it (or can track it down), but I don't want to push that one too often. John

Dylan: include Winston-Salem because it's part of the Greensboro metro. It's akin to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_Co...tainment_Center WWF @ Long Beach, CA - January 5, 1991 (9,600) The Barbarian pinned Jim Brunzell The Big Bossman pinned Bobby Heenan Sgt. Slaughter pinned Jim Duggan Demolition defeated the Bushwhackers Saba Simba pinned Buddy Rose Roddy Piper defeated WWF IC Champion Mr. Perfect via count-out WWF World Champion the Ultimate Warrior defeated Randy Savage Long Beach is part of the LA Metro. We just tend to ignore it when looking at LA results because the Sports Arena was fairly regular. There's also this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaheim_Convention_Center WWF @ Anaheim, CA - Convention Center - July 6, 1991 (7,500) Jimmy Snuka defeated Louie Spicolli Shawn Michaels fought WWF Tag Team Champion Brian Knobbs to a double disqualification Ted Dibiase defeated Virgil after Sensational Sherri interfered The Mountie pinned the Big Bossman after using his shock stick as a weapon Bret Hart defeated Paul Roma Bret Hart won a 20-man battle royal by last eliminating Sgt. Slaughter after Hulk Hogan made the save to counter the interference of Gen. Adnan; other participants included WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan, Jim Duggan, and many others Which we also tend to ignore. Neither were run super regularly, and attendance figures aren't consistently available. But if data is consistently available for Winston-Salem, I'd treat it like Meadowlands and Nassau Coliseum: additional major arenas in one of the territories key metros. Another equiv would be counting both Baltimore and DC/Landover for the WWF. Sort of the same Metro depending on how one looks at it, and both are big arenas. John

BTW - did the Mid-Atlantic Gateway bury their older massive collection of Posters & Results for various arenas?

Not sure what you mean by "bunching"... I assume you just mean that you'll include both from those cities, at least in terms of the major arena (i.e. not the Sportatorium, but the bigger places run in Dallas/FW). Norfolk needs to be in. It's actually the largest metro in the Mid-Atlantic and clearly got big cards regularly. Winston-Salem is part of the Greensboro metro, so I would only include it if it was the host of a big arena with big attendance like the Meadowlands and Nassau Coliseum were to the WWF in 1985-89. They were part of the New York Metro, and while we can take a look at who main evented at MSG to get a decent idea of what was headlining in the market, we really need to include those two other buildings for a full picture (i.e. to see the Hogan Feuds that didn't play in MSG). The Roanoke metro doesn't have a pot to piss in: 199,629 in 1970 and 220,393 in 1980. It's an easy one to drop off given Norfolk, Charlotte, Greensboro and Richmond are larger and give a good representation of what was headlining. Greenville/Spartanburg, Raleigh/Durham, Charleston and Columbia all should be ahead of Roanoke in consideration. On the other hand, if it's a big building getting packed all the time... I can see it as a money maker. Hampton Roads is part of the Norfolk metro, just the 4th largest city in it so it's not named in the metro. John

Raleigh is part of the Raleigh–Durham / Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill metro. It's quite large now, about 1.8M. Much of that growth, though, is more recent: Raleigh–Durham 1970: 446,074 1980: 560,774 1990: 735,480 But it wasn't insignificant in the 70s while he was there. A couple of other references: Providence 1970: 612,362 1980: 618,514 1990: 654,854 Tulsa 1970: 525,852 1980: 657,173 1990: 708,954 So not terribly far behind Tulsa, which was a "big" town in Wattsville. I tend to think Providence and Raleigh are borderline: they're clearly not the "major" cities in the territories, but they're not really small. Anyway, JCP looked a bit like this with metros that reached 400K+ by 1980: Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News 1970: 1,023,598 1980: 1,160,311 Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill 1970: 840,347 1980: 971,447 Greensboro--Winston-Salem--High Point 1970: 742,984 1980: 851,444 Richmond--Petersburg 1970: 676,351 1980: 761,311 Greenville--Spartanburg 1970: 473,454 1980: 570,210 Raleigh–Durham 1970: 446,074 1980: 560,774 Charleston 1970: 336,125 1980: 430,346 Columbia 1970: 322,880 1980: 409,953 One could see a reasonable argument that the cut off is Richmond and above, though the folks you talk to who were in the area back in the day might give you more insight.

I disagree. One of the problems when creating a massive data dump is the people's eyes glaze over and they scroll past it fast. You're trying to not only give people information, but also in a way that is easy to work through. You don't draw people over to your view point with a mass of it that they simply eject from. My degree is history. In addition, I was a sports stats junkie from about the age of 6 eating up the back of baseball and football cards. You've seen me post at length about minutia in pro wrestling. But... Even I don't care to see a lot of this: WWWF @ Pittsfield, MA - Boys Club Gym - February 25, 1977 (1,200) WWWF Tag Team Champions Chief Jay Strongbow & Billy White Wolf defeated Ken Patera & Tor Kamata in a Best 2 out of 3 falls match, 2-0; fall #1: Strongbow pinned Kamata at 14:15; fall #2: Patera & Kamata were disqualified at the 21-second mark when Patera gave a forearm smash to referee Mario Savoldi Patera main evented at the Boys Club Gym in Pittsfield, MA in Feb 1977... well... okay. The problem with including all of those, or even a hundred like this: WWWF @ Portland, ME - February 15, 1977 Ken Patera defeated Ivan Putski via count-out Is that it while eyes are getting glazed over by a mass of them and folks start scrolling past the data, they're missing Patera main eventing MSG *4* times against Bruno. Or these: WWWF @ Boston, MA - Boston Garden - April 16, 1977 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino defeated Ken Patera via disqualification WWWF @ Long Island, NY - Nassau Coliseum - April 18, 1977 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino fought Ken Patera to a double count-out WWWF @ Philadelphia, PA - Spectrum - June 4, 1977 (13,797) Bruno Sammartino fought Ken Patera to a double disqualification when both men began to box one another WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham pinned Chief Jay Strongbow at 10:07 Where it's pretty clear that Bruno-Patera would be the main of the last one. It's far better to look at a territory and figure out what the major arenas / cities are. Then look at those cards. You can always point to the full data set by providing a link, and a comment that he main evented even more cards in the second & third tier towns. John