jdw

This is *late* JCP Era, largely when they were going / went national. It's Tony's wheelhouse and what he had affection for. But just pull open a title history, look at the major JCP titles in the early 80s and back into the 70s (US Title, World Tag Title, Mid Atlantic Title), and try to figure out how much of that stuff made it into Tony's "history" droppings on the air in the second half of the 80s and in the 90s when he returned from the WWF. His history fell into two areas: * the extremely narrow stuff he loved * what he felt he had to mention On the stuff he loved, it would be a bit like someone going to a college (say USC) and being a big fan of what was happening while you went there (say the 2002-2005 Pete Carroll teams that went 48-4, won three bowls, two national titles, and were runner up in another year). You were a massive fan of it... but stopped following after you graduated and really never cared enough to look up the history. So if someone asks you about USC Heisman Trophy winners, you know all about Carson Palmer & Matt Leinart & Reggie Bush and can reel off a ton of stuff about the guys who won three Heismans in four years (which is wacky awesome when you think about it). Now you can toss out Mike Garrett, OJ Simpson, Charles White and Marcus Allen if you have to... because you know the names. But you didn't care enough about the history to really know much about them, like Garrett & OJ & White winning national titles, Marcus setting the rushing record, etc. In turn, if someone asks him about the 2008 team with Brian Cushing, Rey Maualuga and Clay Matthews anchoring a wicked defense and Mark Sanchez as the QB, he might be lost because he just wasn't paying attention. That's Tony. Just to be clear: That's not a massive knock on Tony. Wrestling in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s fucking HATES its history. Vince spent years washing it away and ignoring it. JCP and then WCW has limited care for it. So few of the announcers other than Ross really gave a crap about it to inject it into their match calling. For the most part they did when forced, which is Tony. John

I don't disagree with it... but Ross was a MARK for sports. And grew up listening to sports announcer toss out stuff like that, loved it, and wanted to be the same. It's just Jim. I agree with Jerome that it eventually got annoying as all shit. But it was Jim being Jim. Big match with Flair's career on the line, so he's going to toss out Flair Career Stuff because it's what he's suppose to do. That's my point: Tony does what what he thinks he's suppose to do. None of it is natural. Pop in some random match, and how much history does Tony toss out that isn't cliched or "he's suppose to say it"? Christ... JR would bring up old shit all the time, like Brisco and the Funks and Race. Except that he didn't really delve into that past a lot. During a US Title match, did he wax about Wahoo vs Johnny Valentine? Slaughter vs Wahoo? In the 90s after Maggie wandered off, how often would he say during a feud over the US Title that this might be headed in the same direction as Maggie vs Tully? His heart started when he started calling the stuff, and even then it was limited. Vince during the SNME era isn't that great. He's not as bad as some made him out to be at the time, but not that great. His role shifted a bit, he was effective at it, but it was more than just pbp at that point. He was promoter of his product, and using his mic for it. John

Not a thrilling match, and yeah... disappointing given Kawada's first TC win. They really tried to do way too much in these two Doc defenses rather than just go out there working strong 20:00 matches. 6/94 was the "peak", 7/94 a nice resolution (Misawa having run the table falls to potentially the new top gaijin)... and just clusterfucked these two. John

What Flik says. They were the dominant AJW team from 03/20/92 through 10/09/94, close to three years. They clearly had plans for Toyota the following year as a singles. Time was right to move Toyota out of the tag champ role, and a good spot to slide Kyoko in and have a natural new dominant team in the Double Inoues. Made sense. John

I don't recall Tony being strong with stats, facts and figures or history. Granted, the WWF hated history at the time so they blew it off. But if you grew up watching/listening to any announcer who talked about facts, figures, stats and history... well... Tony was shit at it. Ross liked to name drop history, and facts... sometimes forced, but other times because he loved it. You never got the sense that Tony gave a shit about Lou Thesz if he tossed the name out. Again, this was Tony coming in with his Storyline and Talking Points into a match. If the match followed that, it came across okay. Lots of guys did. Ross did it even more than Tony, which is why hardcores loved Ross. They initially liked Tony because he talked it serious... but it's not like Bob Caudle didn't treat it as sports. He just wasn't 80s look & feel like Tony was. He wasn't remotely as good as younger Vince. Pop in Vince calling the 1981 Backlund-Muraco Texas Death Match and he runs circles around Tony in calling a match. See, we come at it from different directions. Vince called moves and holds when he was solo. He may not have nailed every move with a name, but he called the action when needed. Also, I was a sports fan before a wrestling fan... and pbp guys Called The Action. I mean, shit... do you think if Johnny Bench hit a home run that the pbp wouldn't call it a Home Run. "Well now... that was a nice swing by Bench, which will let him run around the bases and score a run. The fans are clapping loudly. Well now, that was a nice swing of the bat by Bench." Or... "Bench take a cut... it's a way back... HOME RUN!!!" Yeah. I'll give you another example: MOM: "That's a Kimura he's trying for..." ROGAN: "He's trying for a Kimura!" JDW: "That's good, Mom!" My mom doesn't know all the holds in MMA... or even a lot of them. But she's seen enough Kimuras, had Joe call them Kimuras, listen to me call them a Kimura, and even asked me in the past to rewind and slow mo through them that she's starting to pick some of them off. Knowing them, and having Joe call them, adds to her enjoyment of UFC. John

I haven't watched that match since the first time it aired, so I don't have any recollection of Tony's call. The "strategy" aspect is what Tony typically worked on because it was Big Picture stuff that he preferred over actually calling pbp of all the action. So I'm not sure I'll dig it as much at you do. Mercer was awful. But the majority of wrestling announcers are awful. Just because Mercer is a steamy, runny, stinky turd doesn't mean that Tony isn't a dried turd. Mercer sticks to you and leaves a mark, while Tony crumbles under the sole of your shoes and is forgettable. He's still shit. :/ John

I'll have to check it out. Cool. I think we entered an era with deep voiced pbp announcers. Thom Brennaman has to be the poster boy for that. I'll take a voice that's off if he can do the job. Chick Hearn didn't have as great of a voice as Vin Scully. But he made it work.

See... that's where we disagree. I felt Tony "acting" to what was going on, even if he hasn't been handed the script of what was going to happen. It was like he was thinking about how he should act, and toss that out. Ross by that era was doing the same, and I thought he started to blow as well as time went by. It was "great" because it fit the moment, but it also felt contrived as all hell. :/ I think getting stories over was Tony's strength, but he also tended to run them into the ground. That is wrestling, so we accept it on some level. But with Tony it just felt like he was getting the story across because he was suppose to get the story across... and we're five minutes in so he needs to remind people of the story... In a sense, he's a lot like Mike Goldberg. Goldy is generally good if you're a casual fan, or if you don't really pay close attention to what he's saying and focus more on the action. But if you do start paying attention to him, he's totally the modern pbp guy of having his Talking Points that he's going to get to and is looking for a way to jam them in and... lordy do they sound forced at times, and occasionally come totally against the run of action in the cage. In contrast, Joe really "reacts" to what's going on in a match. There's no doubt the he comes in with his own storylines/thoughts about the match or fighters, but once it's out of the way, it's the flow... and only drawing in those storyline elements if they actually fit the storyline. With Goldy, you almost get the sense that he's looking down at his note cards for the next item, or if something happens in the ring he's thinking like, "Yeah... this is where I can talk about he's been training with GSP... we talked about that in the production meeting" Tony feels that way. We also have a low standard for announcing in wrestling, just like we have a low standard for acting in wrestling. Stuff we call "good" really is shit. John

That's probably not too bad. John

To me in hindsight, Tony always sucked. He sucked in JCP. He sucked in the WWF. He sucked in WCW. He "sounded good", and like he knew what he was talking about, and that he had his shit together. But he really sucked. He came into matches with what he was going to sell, stuck to it, went to the well over and over with storyline stuff (not match storyline... but storyline), and was really weak at actually calling what the fuck was going on in the ring on a basic level. He just sounded professional compared to Bob Caudle sounding like an old local hack and David Crockett sounding like an excitable fanboy, so we thought Tony was good. He wasn't. Actually Bob was pretty solid in an old time sporting way where someone could have called local Kansas City A's games on the radio and no one would ever have known he was any good because the national types thought he was just a local hack. In turn, David Crockett's fanboy stuff was kind of Harry Carry-ish where it's annoying if you don't go for it, but there's some actual good match calling going on beneath it if you can mentally filter through it. I never liked Carry at all, though frankly most of what I saw was during the tail end of his boozing days and then his post-health issue days where he was clearly declining and not all there. That said, some folks I respect have good things to say about Harry in his prime: if you can filter the stuff that comes across as homer fanboy pbp work, Harry actually had some good game calling at the core. Tony... at a certain point and ever since he's always struck me as the true hack pbp guy. He's got his storyline he wants to talk about for the game. He really doesn't want to think too deeply about what's going on in the game. He sounds professional and what he's tossing out "makes sense" as long as you don't think about stuff to much. He doesn't put himself over, which doesn't draw too much attention to himself as a clown. He puts the product over in his own way. But at the end of it if you try to think of any value that he added to it, there isn't any. Give me Lance Russell or early Vince McMahon any day. John

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=...;entry=75001070 John

FWIW, Loss had this #32 on his list for the year. Some random well known stuff he had below it: #93 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis (ECW Gangstas Paradise 09/16/95) #85 - Rick & Scott Steiner vs Keiji Muto & Hiroshi Hase (NJPW Tokyo Dome 01/04/95) #84 - Bret Hart vs Davey Boy Smith (WWF In Your House 12/17/95) #80 - Bret Hart vs Hakushi (WWF In Your House 05/14/95) #77 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Akira Taue (AJPW 09/10/95) #62 - Eddy Guerrero vs Dean Malenko (ECW Hostile City Showdown 04/15/95) #61 - Brian Pillman vs Johnny B. Badd (WCW Fall Brawl 09/17/95 #59 - Shawn Michaels vs Jeff Jarrett (WWF In Your House 07/23/95) #39 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Gary Albright (AJPW 10/25/95 #36 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis (ECW TV 10/07/95) Not to defend his ratings or anything, but he liked this one a good deal. John

Bangs The Boss's Daughter, Doofus Son In Law, Asshole, Douchebag, That Fuck Trip... He has lots of nicknames other than Levesque. John

I don't think its overlooked here or places like DVDR, and "history" might be overstating it. But i've definatley encountered people online over the years that were adament that nobody apart from Vince and WCW in the 90's has ever had any success. Yes. It was wrong to try and argue with those people. Yep... I'd agree it's pointless. Lots of promoters have had success in addition to Vince and 90s WCW. If they don't know it, it's a waste to argue with them.

AJPW ran 8 "series" a year, with breaks between. They would have 4-6 "tapings" per series... maybe more if I went and counted, but six is close to the high end. The "tapings" we a mix between early in the series cards / matches that built to later bigger shows / matches, and then those bigger cards / matches. These were all House Shows. So what aired on TV were House Show matches. They weren't squash matches. So in a sense, think of the WWF in 1986 if they didn't air tv taping squash matches on Superstars and Challenge, and instead aired house show matches? At the end of 1985 through the middle of 1986, how match Savage matches would we see where he was facing Title and how many facing Hogan? A ton. Now Vince got around that by pretending that the only matches that Really Took Place for Savage in 1986 were those that appeared on TV. So if you're in New York, these ones too place (ignoring the squash matches): 12/27/85 Nassau Coliseum: Randy Savage defeated Danny Spivey 12/30/85 MSG: Randy Savage COR World Champion Hulk Hogan at 9:55 01/04/86 SNME: Randy Savage pinned George Steele at 4:06 (taped 12/19/85) 01/27/86 MSG: Randy Savage COR World Champion Hulk Hogan at 8:33 02/03/86 PTW: Randy Savage pinned Scott McGhee at 6:18 (taped 01/18/86 Cap Center) 02/17/86 MSG: World Champion Hulk Hogan pinned Randy Savage in a lumberjack match at 7:36 02/26/86 PTW: Randy Savage pinned IC Champion Tito Santana to win the title at 10:29 (taped 02/08/86 Boston) 03/16/86 MSG: Tito Santana dq IC Champion Randy Savage 04/07/86 Wrestlemania: IC Champion Randy Savage pinned George Steele at 7:08 04/22/86 MSG: IC Champion Randy Savage pinned Tito Santana in a No DQ match at 18:52 05/08/86 Meadowlands: Santana & Tonga defeated IC Champion Savage & Orton 05/19/86 MSG: Tito Santana NC IC Champion Randy Savage at 9:59 06/14/86 MSG: IC Champion Savage & Adonis COR Bruno Sammartino & Tito Santana at 9:40 07/12/86 MSG Sammartino & Santana defeated IC Champion Savage & Adonis in a steel cage match at 9:51 07/17/86 Meadowlands: The Junkyard Dog COR IC Champion Randy Savage That a little less than seven months (12/27/85 - 07/17/86 in "TV" and "New York Area" time). And you'd get: 3 matches against Hogan 4 singles matches against Tito 2 tag matches against Tito and Bruno 1 other tag matches with Tito 2 singles matches against Steele 1 singles match each with Spivey, McGhee and JYD Remember: in Japan, Jumbo and Tenryu and Choshu were on TV all the time working non-squash matches. Here are Jumbo's TV matches from the same period: 01/02/86 Jumbo & Tenryu v The Russians 01/11/86 Jumbo & Fuyuki v Windham & Rotundo 01/14/86 Jumbo & Ishikawa v Yatsu & Teranishi 01/25/86 Jumbo & Ishikawa v Choshu & Hamaguchi 01/28/86 NWA Int'l Tag: Jumbo & Tenryu v Choshu & Yatsu 02/05/86 NWA Int'l Tag: Jumbo & Tenryu v Choshu & Yatsu 02/15/86 Jumbo & Tenryu & Ishikawa v Kabuki & Hara & Tsurumi 02/22/86 Jumbo & Ishikawa v Choshu & Yatsu 03/01/86 Jumbo v Tiger Jeet Singh 03/04/86 NWA Int'l Tag: Choshu & Yatsu vs Jumbo & Tenryu 03/13/86 Jumbo v Animal Hamaguchi 03/10/86 NWA Int'l: Jumbo v Gordy 03/29/86 NWA Int'l/AWA/PWF: Jumbo v Hansen 03/31/86 Tsuruta & Baba v Kimura & Tsurumi 04/19/86 NWA Int'l/AWA: Jumbo v Hansen 04/26/86 Jumbo & Ishikawa & Tiger Mask v SS Machine & Takano & Saito 05/02/86 Jumbo v Super Strong Machine 05/10/86 Jumbo vs Tiger Mask vs Hara & Tsurumi 05/16/86 Jumbo & Fuchi v Kimura & Hara 05/24/86 NWA Int'l: Jumbo v Race 05/30/86 Jumbo & Tenryu v SS Machine & Takano 05/31/86 Jumbo & Tenryu v Yatsu & Hamaguchi 06/05/86 Jumbo & Tenryu & Tiger Mask v Choshu & Yatsu & Kobayashi 06/07/86 Jumbo & Tenryu v The Road Warriors 06/12/86 Jumbo v Tiger Jeet Singh 07/04/86 Jumbo & Ishikawa v Hansen & Dibiase 07/05/86 Jumbo & Tiger Mask v Yatsu & Teranishi 07/10/86 Jumbo & Tenryu v SS Machine & Khan The dates are almost all match dates... there may be a few where Dan didn't get the match date and went with TV. I left off the Tag League from the year before because it would have finished before the 12/85 Hogan-Savage in MSG. Anyway, that batch of Jumbo matches is fairly close to what New York fans saw of Savage. Not as many matches, but then again the WWF didn't put on 50-52 weeks of non-squash matches back then (like they do now). All Japan was a wrestling promotion rather than a Sports Entertainment one, so they weren't going to have Jumbo's "appearance" of the week be on Pipers Pit. Some matches got run hard. Jumbo & Tenryu vs Choshu & Yatsu was an obvious match through 1985, yet Baba set it aside: after an early match up that actually set up a bigger Choshu & Saito vs Jumbo & Tenryu, they didn't meet again until the 1985 Tag League. That "heated" things up, then they went full tilt in January with match to set up the Tag Title matches. They cooled it after the rush of tag title matches early in the year, then came back to it later in the year: another tag title match, the Tag League match... and Choshu's departure forcing two more matches in 1/87 and 2/87 to get the belt off of Choshu & Yatsu. So yeah... a lot of matches, but the real issue / feud between the two didn't get rolled out until a year after Choshu & Yatsu jumped to All Japan. This is a bit similar to Hansen vs Jumbo. There are a lot of singles between them in 1986. Hansen jumped to All Japan in 1982. Baba avoided a singles feud between the two in 1982... 1983... 1984... 1985. There was at least one singles match between the two prior to 1986, but it was a bit of a throwaway on singles night during one of the tag leagues. In 1986, Baba went full tilt with it. It's one of those things that doesn't make sense when first look at Japan in the 70s and 80s... then when you see it enough, it's just one of those things. A bit like the MX vs R'n'R Express in Mid South and then JCP. Tons of matches.

That would be the Kawada Crab. When he first started doing it, he would start with the full two legged crab, then let go of one leg, then stand on the head. John

I'm not sold New Japan was the most successful company/promotion in wrestling *history* pre-Attitude. They were, as Kriz says, possibly the most successful promotion in the world at the time in the years just prior to Attitude. I don't think it's overlooked: it was talked about at the time (think my King of Sports piece in the Torch ran with the theme), and some of us have talked about if a number of times since. Kind of thought it was the obvious thing to mention in putting over Choshu, so wanted to hit briefly what his strengths were. John

Trip and Steph aren't smart. The question is whether Vince "retires" and gets them to understand what Dunn knows, or if he dies suddenly and Trip & Steph go all Night of the Long Knives on their perceived enemies once in power. John

If Dunn is smart, he will be setting up retirement at that point. He's 51/52. Barring death, Vince isn't going to step down today. 5 more years, Dunn is 55+. Rather than taking a fulltime gig, he probably could do consulting / advisory stuff with production companies.

Riki Choshu from 1989-97ish was quite good. He wasn't an all consuming booker who did everything, but was smart enough to surround himself with smart people and let them do their own thing as well. They also seemed to learn from him. He dealt with egos, suppressed his own very well (which just a few years earlier had been knocked), and adjusted from mistakes. In a sense, what I would want out of a wrestling-booker if I were an Owner. John

From Bahu's fmwwrestling.us site: After rewatching the match for the first time in ages thanks to youtube, I'm still not much of a fan of the match. I always hated Pogo's scythe... symbolically always came across as a rape tool, and probably was the intent that Pogo was playing for even if it went over the head of most of the fans. That said, Gannosuke's dive onto Pogo to take them both out... that's one of the better elimination spots ever. The finish come quick after it and is so sudden a turn around for the faces that it takes a lot of the thunder out of it... but it's a really great spot that you sort of wish a better promotion and match figured out how to use.

I seem to recall Onita doing one of the greatest 0-60 juice jobs ever: bell rings, Pogo wacks him, Onita goes to the blade. It was something like Ferrari fast in under 4 seconds or something.

Anyone remember when Nitro in the early years would do that Spring Break show (I think) where they were at some place that had a pool? Could you imaging Eric seeing this over lines of blow with Hogan, and then wonder who they might book into it and how they could slip it by the sponsors? Hogan: "We're going to need a bigger pool, brother." John

From Graham's site, this is the one Loss is talking about: WCW @ Atlanta, GA - Center Stage Theatre - October 4, 1994 (785; sell out; all freebies) WCW Saturday Night taping: 10/15/94: Sting defeated Vader (w/ Harley Race) via disqualification at the 13-minute mark when Race grabbed Sting's foot from the floor, allowing Vader to hit an elbow drop; after the bout, the Guardian Angel made the save, punched out Race on the floor, handcuffed Race to the bottom rope and grabbed a steel chair until Doug Dillenger appeared and prevented him from hitting Race with the weapon Not just last match to air, but also looks like their last match. Went through the rest of 1994 and through 1995 and don't even see a house show match. John

To be fair - Dave was on this, I just can't remember the issue. I think the general concept of it was always out there: Trip has been groomed to run aspects of the business. That was guessed at for about as long as he's been banging Steph. It just got more explicit when things like Corny's comments came out, and again last year after MitB. As far as Johnny taking it in the shorts, or appearing to, that's mild news and probably worth someone digging deeper into like MKJ. John