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On the discussion Jingus is having with others on whether the WWF would have failed if Mania wasn't a big hit... The WWF wouldn't have failed. Vince wouldn't have gone under. Slow down and think a bit about how Vince has dealt with later declines in the business: He's cut costs He's cut talent He's cut shows in less profitable place He's cut back to the core areas of success Then go and look at the Vince & Hogan vs The World thread and find the places where Vince already had hit success by the time of Mania. He had the pre-existing core of the old WWF "territory", which was far from dead. He had California. He already made strong in roads into AWA Land, while the AWA was already starting to get shakey (though not completely collapsing yet). He had the USA Network in hand. He had set up national syndication. It would have been easy for him to cut costs, and cut talent down from 3 crews to 2. It would have been easy to drop from running 12 (or so) shows in Los Angeles to 8 (or so shows). Same in other markets that popped big gates for Hogan, and less great gates for non-Hogan cards. Dittos with eliminating syndication buys from cities that weren't making money. Vince had already bought out his old man's partners, hence Gorilla's deal to stay on the payroll as part buyout. If he actually owed Gorilla any remaining annual payments, does anyone think that Gorilla would send the company under by demanding payment... or work out new payment terms with Vince? The "everything was rolling on Mania" myth is just that: a myth that no one has spent more than 5 minutes thinking about. Did Vince have a lot rolling on it? Sure. Had he run up a debt? Sure, though probably less than the myth has made it out to be. Would a failure have hurt? Badly? Probably not that insanely bad, as they would have pulled back to areas of success before financially on stronger ground... and then pushed forward again. I did a longer, better version of this on the Torch boards last year when this came up... and probably here as well.

I'm not sure how to read Bix's comment on #3: 35% Pro Wrestling / 65% MMA or 65% Pro Wrestling / 35% MMA

That he couldnt talk about but was bracing for it mentally. WWE Network? Vince stepping down? MMA crap? Any more clues? John

Couple of things about the stretch run to the first backdrop driver: Misawa went on a three minute run of thrashing Doc, to the point that Doc was out of it: * counter roll into the facelock * elbows + blocked rolling elbow + rolling elbow = near fall + Doc selling the shit out of it * Tiger Driver = near fall + Doc selling the shit out of it * Tiger Splash = near fall + Doc selling the shit out of it * Senton + Tiger Splash = near fall + Doc selling the shit out of it None of that my turn, your turn shit: Misawa rolled off a submission which wore Doc down, then ran off four near falls that Doc really put over not just with the timing of his kick outs but also how he sold them. The last got across where they were at that point: Misawa really good after it, on his back looking up into the rafters with that Calculating Misawa Look of "okay, that didn't work... need to go deeper into the arsenal to put him away... let's try..." Doc is fucking fantastic, flat on his stomach looking like he's out of it, with Wada down deep checking him out, and you can see the crowd edging forward and up in their seats trying to figure out just how far gone Doc is. There is a major buzz that Misawa is about to plant Doc with the next move, and he goes for another Tiger Driver. Doc drops down to a knee to try to block it, Misawa drags him back up, Doc back flips him but Misawa is up on it and just nails the fuck out of Doc with an elbow that drops him to a knee. He knows he's got Doc rocked, sets to put him away with the rolling elbow, Doc almost on instinct "knows it's coming", ducks and as Misawa spins around grabs his waist for a counter backdrop driver. Despite being "attempted", blocked, countered and avoided earlier in the match, it wasn't used here in the fashion of a grand plan to put Misawa away or coming after a few Doc nearfalls to be the finisher. It was desperate near-flukey near-instinctual countering when Doc is getting his ass handed to him and another rolling elbow might just have been it. There are three things to watch here: Misawa, Doc and Wada. Misawa of course grabs most of our attention. He's toasted by the backdrop driver. He isn't playing it that he's "escaping" to the floor, which is what silverwidow was seeing. Instead, he's down for a couple of seconds prone and motionless before his scrambled brain tells him "I'm okay... get up... I'm fine" grabbing the rope to try to haul himself up, barely gets to two feet before his body says, "Nope... you're fucked" and collapses. He sells it like an *uncontrolled collapse*, down and through the ropes to the floor. It's damn near old school boxing selling where a fighter has been knocked down lethally but the brain fires "get up" before the legs say "oh shit" and shuts down. *Wada* sells it that way as well, instantly getting across that Misawa is screwed up by diving out of the ring cat quick to check on Misawa. And Misawa is totally fucking out. They are both off the charts great here... but rewind and watch Doc. First he's down flat on the mat, still out of it himself, once again getting across that Misawa was probably one and no more than two trusty moves from putting Doc down for the count. It's 40 seconds before he's even able to get to his *knees* He doesn't even know where Misawa is until Wada tells him. Of course we then get my favorite thing in the match, and one of the great moments of All Japan in the 90s to contrast with the 80s: Wada is explicitly getting across to Doc to get Misawa *back in the ring* to finish him, because in 90s All Japan you aren't winning the Belt(s) with a count out. There are any number of 90s AJPW matches that I like better than this one, as great as it is. But I think that might be my favorite moment: the point from the second Tiger Splash until Doc tosses Misawa back in. * * * * * * When you watch this match, you get why Baba did the traditional thing of having the Ace put over the New Top Gaijin, with Misawa going through Kawada before dropping the belt to Doc: * no one else putting over Doc has the impact that Misawa doing it does * Doc at this moment is off the charts good to the point that it's really hard to think of any other gaijin possibly being a better fit opposite the Four Corners * given Hansen's age in his career year of 1993 (43/44) and Docs age in 1994 (33/34), Baba is thinking he has a new top Gaijin for another decade to come * it's a good reward for how hard Doc busted his ass to improve after Gordy went out There are others, but on those levels it made sense from a Baba-think perspective. John

Letting him kick out of the Tiger Driver showed Ace was worthy of being in the mix. Misawa let lots of people kick out of the Tiger Driver. Instead, Misawa pinned Ace with the move that pinned *Baba* back in March: the diving neckbreaker drop. That's actually kind of cool. There was a stretch in here where Misawa was trying to get that over as one of his various finishers. It's Misawa, so he doesn't always sustain a thread. But watch the finish of his dropping the TC to Taue in 1996. What's he trying to hit? Taue "sees it coming" and counters it... and the lights go out for Misawa for a flash finish far earlier than the fans would have expected. That's also pretty cool. I can come across as critical of Misawa at times, and it needs to be done because none of the Gods of Work are perfect. But... I liked at the time, and like on running across it two decades later, where he went with something like the diving neckbreaker drop, flashed it just enough, and had two really nice moments with it: * pinning Baba (as it's a more moder variation of Baba's own finisher) * getting countered to get pinned by Taue (as Taue has the perfect counter when one things about it) We're right in the period where AJPW started heading off into more head dropping and generally escalating the stiffness and danger. When one looks at the diving neckbreaker drop in hindsight, one really wishes they came up with more safer finishers like it that were regularly used and treated as "dangerous" finishers in the sense that if Misawa hit it, the opponent was in deap shit of getting pinned. Anyway, glad this made it. Rare match despite being "shot for TV", and is a nice first shot in the Misawa & Partner vs Doc & Ace series of matches that took place in 1994-96 as a comp to not just the Misawa & Patner vs Kawada & Taue matches in 1993-97, but what other folks were doing in tags at the time (say like the Action Zone tag).

Im thinking this was the one that got ***** at the time, while the other one got ****3/4 or something like that. The other one is talked about because of the J Cup being one of the traditional gateway drugs to puroresu.

God did I hate that Hogan-Flair at the time. I like Hogan a hell of a lot more now than back then, but I'd be really surprised if I like it now. John

Yeah, it and 4/16. Quite a year. I wonder if it has quite the December climax as some other years, though. 1996 had you popping a lot late in the year, and not just for 12/06/96. John

Glad to see this picked up. Would love to see folks who watch it chip in. There a ton of great stuff in this Era. John

For what it's worth, I suspect if I dig my RSP-W Convention / Get Together / ECW Show tape out of whatever box it's in, we'll see idiots like Scherer tossing around Internet Wrestling Community or something very close to it back in 1995 before the term became overused. They did it in a more idealistic and delusional fashion rather than Fan vs Fan slagging. But it was equally stupid. John

They said the same shit about the newsletters / dirtsheets before the internet took off. It's the same old shit. John

KRONE~! Christ... I'd forgotten about that. What I loved was his inability to pronounce Meltzer, instead saying Metzler. John

I suspect it's been more used by members of the IWC to slag other members of the IWC than it's ever been used by people in the business. You know that admin tool that lets you **** curse words and the n-bomb? Every wrestling board should throw IWC into that tool. IWC, marks and smarks: the holy trinity of useless wrestling fan terms. John

The use of the term "IWC" has always been the dumbest ass thing on the internet. I'm sure that if I read enough baseball or futbol blogs I'd run across the phrase "internet baseball community" or "internet football community". But when I read Michael Cox at Zonal Marking, or in the wide variety of places he freelances such as ESPN and the Guardian, I don't see anyone calling Michael a leading member of the IFC. Is Bill Simmons a God of the Internet Sports Community? Folks really need to put it to bed. It's just dumb ass shit. The whole world is on the internet now. For fucks sake, when the Egyptian government was falling and folks were tweeting and blogging about what they were seeing outside their windows, did we really give a shit if they were members of some Internet Egyptian Blogging Community? Or were they just fellow folks writing about what they were seeing? John

1998 was the tipping point. He had more things wrong with him by the end of Carny than Shawn Michaels did, and frankly just as serious. Shawn sat out until 2003. Misawa missed a few *series*, when the original plan was for a longer break. Then he didn't want the belt back, and publicly talked about not challenging, but Baba booked him into the 10/98 match with Kobashi... and made Misawa take it back (quite the opposite of the power play bullshit meme that folks built up long after the fact). There were signs earlier of Misawa working through injuries. But if the promotion laid down things smarter earlier, at that point they could have worked things to give him the time off and not flopped. John

There were windows for Misawa losing the title: * here * mid-1996 * mid-1998 We all agree mid-1998 was too late for Kawada, even if they hadn't run the 1997 Carny they was that they did. 5+ years into the chase, being the #2 guy in the company with your #2 spot being pushed more by Kobashi than Kawada was pushing Misawa for #1. After a year with the belt, Misawa was ripe to drop it again in 1996 and it looked like "Kawada's turn", which ended up going to Taue. Does it work there? It might, but by that point we're three years into Misawa dominating the rivalry. I'm not as sold that it would have elevated Kawada up onto a stronger rival than he already was. 1994 was the first time Misawa was ripe for dropping it after Jumbo went out. He'd run the table of everyone, with Kobashi not yet at that level and instead better off saved to get his first challenge later. If Misawa is going to put Kawada over for the belts and have an impact, this really was the only chance. Set aside "how they worked the match". If Kawada was going over, they would have laid out something a little different. But even if they didn't and instead picked a different end run to this starting at some point after the 30th minute, it would have been fine. Misawa-Williams has a sudden, furious turning point from which Misawa never could come back. We're talking about Kawada in this match: if anyone could have come up with a similar turning point in this one, he could have. Transitions were his strong point in this period of 12-24 months. John

Your comment on the long term was in response to the only post in the thread that mentioned long term, right above it... which mentioned it directly in terms of Baba being wrong in the long term. The other top promotion in the country where they drew well when the belt came off Hash. There's nothing wrong with the belts going back to Misawa in May 1995. After all, All Japan drew well with the belts going Jumbo --> Tenryu --> Jumbo --> Hansen/Gordy/Hansen --> Jumbo --> Hansen --> Misawa, with the last just a pause where they were going back to Jumbo until he went out ill. Then they drew well when Jumbo went out because they had established Misawa well, and used Jumbo going out to flip Kawada to the other side. You're telling me about interpromotional matches? I was discussing it about All Japan, and Baba's isolationist mentality, before you even watched your first puroresu match. John

Not really. Tenryu won the TC from Jumbo. Jumbo won it back, and was still the Ace. As far as Daniel's comment about the long term, there was a point at which Baba needed someone else to run on top while Misawa was out for quite some time recovering from years of working injured. Kawada had been burned to the point that the fans didn't buy it, and Kobashi wasn't at the point where he could carry it. The promotion was Misawa-centric, business tanked, they went from one panic move (getting the belt off Kawada to Kobashi), to another (rushing Misawa back way too fast), to another than Misawa didn't at all want that quickly (having the belt go back from Kobashi to Misawa). The handling was dogshit. I know Daniel wants to cling to his notion that the booking when to shit when Baba got the cancer. We've been down his road before and the reality is that the big picture long term booking went to shit when Baba was healthy, much earlier. Daniel likes to ignore it when it's pointed out, then pop his head up a while later like here to go back down that road. John

Yes, my math was bad.

That would be me speaking out, originally in the 7/18/94 Observer. Kawada was ready to beat Misawa. On the other hand, one of the jobs of the Ace of All Japan is to put over the top Gaijin. Doc was getting his push to being the top gaijin. Misawa ran the table with Kawada, then put over Doc... who put over Kawada. I get Baba's thinking. On a level, he was wrong in the long term. John

JCP/WCW wasn't really a "southern wrestling promotion" during any point of Sting's career in JCP/WCW. It was a national promotion. Of course JCP drew 8000+ at the Omni in the years prior to Sting's time on top. Pretty sure GCW drew 8000+ for their most successful shows as well. Don't know if Rich's GA site has attendance data for the GCW period. Limited attendence numbers at Graham's site, but you'll find a number in the 70s: http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/omni70s.htm 7 that were 10K+, which are actually the only 7 attendence numbers list. More in the 80s: http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/omni80s.htm Suspect there are a good number of additional ones in the shows that didn't have numbers listed. John

Your post was the 2412th in the thread. Why don't you let us know how many of those have been about the current Dave-Dana issue? It would take 241 of them to reach a 1% threshold. John

I really don't like Arianny. Wish they'd bring back the cute one that didn't get renewed due to not getting along wiuth the pain in the ass Arianny. John

One of the things that might be missed in the straight watching of the Yearbooks is the change in Kawada. Not the change in his height (which never happened), nor his weight (which was grudual enough that it really never was noticable at the time). But in how he was pushed, how others sold for him, and how the crowd responded to him. We don't see it in the Yearbooks because Kawada is already over. He's already pushed strong. He's already being sold for by the bigger guys. The 1992 one is the earliest that's out there and Kawada has two of the bigger Budokan main events of the years: 06/92 vs Hansen challenging for the Triple Crown 10/92 vs Misawa challenging for the Triple Crown in a semi dream match The first was against the "biggest" gaijin in the promotion, and the largest in size of the top pushed wrestlers: Jumbo, Taue, Misawa, Kawada, Hansen, Spivey, Gordy, Doc and sorta Kobashi though his push to the next level came in 1993. Hansen was the largest of that group. And he sold for Kawada, with the fans and writers buying it enough that it was given the Tokyo Sports Match of the Year. The second was a match fans went bonkers for. Granted, Kawada is closer in size to Misawa than the rest of those guys, but still... Kawada is main eventing against the top "hot young star" in the promotion. Flip back to the 80s. Kawada pretty much *always* looked and felt "small" in there with the bigger wrestlers. Even when full of fire and those guys selling for him to a degree, there was something missing in how the fans viewed him and how fully the opponents worked with him. I don't really think it was a case of the other workers treating him like shit, but more how Kawada fit into the pecking order. And at that time, the mentality of the promotion wasn't the same as in 1991-93 where pretty much everyone let Kobashi do his thing to the point that he eventually became a force of nature that you couldn't stop him from putting on the Kobashi Show. Did Kawada get bigger from 1989 to 1992? Not really. In 1989 he was so *not* an acceptable partner for Tenryu that despite the 1988 Tag League that we all look fondly back on, Baba felt the need to put Hansen with Tenryu so he had a real level of partner to face Jumbo & Yatsu. But 1992, Kawada was main eventing against Jumbo and Hansen, and no one among All Japan's fan really missed Tenryu and Yatsu at all. Yeah, I get that's Japan. Was Austin as large as Warrior and Hogan? I think the best way to get a feel for that is to put in one of the two big Austin-Bret matches: 1996 Survivor Series and 1997 Mania. Does Austin look like he's making Bret look small like Hogan had? No... not at all. Bigger than Bret to a degree, but Austin isn't what we had thought of as WWF Main Event Size back in 1990 when it was Warrior-Hogan at Mania... or 1991... or 1992. The perception of size changed. Much of it's relative, but not just in Tall and Weight. A good chunk of that relative nature is how wrestlers are treated by the promotion and by each other. It doesn't matter as much as Size Junkies would like to think. That's doesn't mean that someone 5-0 and 120 pounds can draw like Hogan and Austin. But if Austin was the true heir to Hogan, it's entirely possible that the true heir to Austin will be a guy who weighs 40+ pounds less and is 6 inches shorter. John