jdw

So some folks don't like FIP. Let them, especially if they're willing to explain why they don't like it. That's kind of the point of discussions on a Pro Wreslting Discussion Board. We all have things that we like that not everyone else does... or things we don't like that quite a few other folks like. Jesus... the whole Davey Richards Sux Cox Brigade is largely in response to another brigade thinking he Fucking Rulz!!! If it's a discussion that one actually gives a shit about, it's useful for people to explain themselves. It's vastly more embarassing if they don't explain themselves. John

From the thread that pre-dated this one, I want to pull this in to get across the New York Market and how Hogan was used. We all tend to focus MSG, but that fails to tell the whole story. The earlier post: * * * * * * *

I'm not sure there's anything that Russo was fully responsible for that I've liked as much as Shyamalan's Unbreakable. John

I stand by that statement. I don't enjoy cornball Southern wrestling, so Midnight Express matches with stooge spots and comedy bumps do nothing for me. And the WWE has generally treated its tag division as something that workers with potential are supposed to graduate from, which limits the potential for high-end matches on that front. I'm sure you stand by it. But one person in a multi-page thread saying something that Loss though was over broad isn't a great reason for Loss to go: "This thread is getting a little ridiculous. [...] Embarrassing." I suspect that he'd admit that while he disagrees with your POV on that one, that he went overboard in his response. He probably read that at a time where it just hit him wrong and he snapped. John

So Mr. Schemer rips Wade for an interview Wade did with Russo. Wade points out that Scherer is only 180 degrees removed from reality: Poster later in the thread toss up this, which is a fucking hoot: You have to love that Bang A Different Broad Every Day pop up. John

I must have missed Dusty pushing the Steiners as a tag team before getting fired by Turner in 1988... John

What a strange Rumble career he had: 1988: Royal Rumble 1989: Hart Foundation & Jim Duggan vs Rougeaus & Dino Bravo 1990: Royal Rumble 1991: Royal Rumble 1992: IC Title: Roddy Piper (sub) over The Mountie to win the title 1993: WWF Title: Bret Hart vs Razor Ramon 1994: Royal Rumble + WWF Tag Title: Quebecers vs Bret & Owen Hart 1995: WWF Title: Diesel vs Bret Hart 1996: WWF Title: Bret Hart vs Undertaker 1997: Royal Rumble Which doesn't do justice to it: 1992: IC Title: Roddy Piper over The Mountie to win the title He was suppose to job the title to Mountie here if I recall correctly. Instead they did the quickie at the House show since Bret was having contract issues (possible jump to WCW talked about at the time), then the quickie sub of Piper at the Rumble winning the title. In the end it all worked out well: Piper-Bret at Mania was a good, smart match. 1994: Royal Rumble + WWF Tag Title: Quebecers vs Bret & Owen Hart The "tie" between Lex and Bret, along with Owen's heel turn. 1997: Royal Rumble Final Four set up with the creative finish. John

It's a little over a year ago, but I thought for Modern Wrestling, the 10/09/10 Generico vs Ricochet had good psych. Selling can be spotty, but it worked for me. John

I think Dusty by 1988 was running a bit on fumes... Some other problems as well: * declining talent roster in terms of being fresh as talent migrated to the WWF * fairly to pull much out of the UWF * pushing himself a bit too much To a degree, yes. The Powers of Pain were created in 1987. They did have the big angle with the Warriors, which was pretty effective. They jumped to the WWF in 1988, not even making it out of one feud in JCP. The Varsity Club also was created in 1987 with Sullivan and Rotundo, with Rick joining in 1988. It was a real good gimmick, and a lot of fun. Hard to say it was capitalized on in 1988 as Sullivan had the unending feud with Jimmy Garvin while the other guys weren't massively focused in feuds. It did build well to Rick getting tossed out and that massive pop at Starcade when he beat Mike for the TV title. I don't think we can credit Dusty for that specifically since one of his last bright ideas was for Rick to beat Flair for the title at Starcade. I liked the Varsity Club a lot, but it just seemed that they didn't take off as much as the could have and two of their better storylines (the long awaited feud with the Warriors and the Rick TV Title Reign) were just killed off way too soon. I get the killing off of the TV Title because it had to get to Sting which in turn led to the Muta feud... but still. And the Warrior feud was a clusterfuck. That actually was Cornette begging to get a fresh set of quality opponents and lobbying for the Fans. I'll have to go back and read the Corney/MX book, but I don't think much of any of the booking of it was Dusty-esque. It's pretty much rehashes of stuff that the MX did in Mid South, with possibly the exception of the handicap matches. Probably also noteworthy that: * the Fans has literally *nothing* to do after the MX feud... as in there seemed to be no plans * Dusty really had no good "save" for the MX once that MX vs Arn & Tully feud went to shit It actually was Corny who came up with the MX vs OMX feud, and while he gives props to Dusty for some of his help on it (having just Corny juice in the intial angle), it's really Cornette's feud and angle (before it got fucked up by the post-Dusty bookers/agents). Lex as a main event face really wasn't a master stroke. They could have brought him in as a top face in 1987 and dropped him against Flair and fans would have bought it. The master stroke was more in 1987 by letting him be a Horsemen so that the turn would have a bit more impact. Of course Dusty had to feud himself with Lex, and beat Lex, before Lex turned face and slow rolled towards Flair. It certainly was a good program for Dusty, but I'm not sure it was a great program for Lex... and over in the corner Barry kind of jerked off after his program with Flair ended in early 1987. Might actually have been a better feud for Lex to work with Barry: someone he was comfortably with, and also an exceptional hand to help him develop even more on the job. Also gave Barry something to do... and Barry beating Lex for the title at Starcade would have meant something for Barry... and played even stronger into: * Barry coming to Lex's aid when the Horsemen turned on Lex * Lex & Barry putting aside their differences to team * Barry then turning on Lex to go Horsemen Wait... I'm forgetting that Dusty doubled down on his 1987 US Title feud with Lex to have a 1988 US Title feud with Barry, which... just seemed really forced. They actually lucked into this: Sting got over at the end of 1987 and they literally had *nothing* else to toss at Flair since they wanted to hold off on Lex. They tossed Hayes at Flair, it wasn't so hot... Sting angle... it took off. I suspect if you got an honest answer out of them, they would admit that (i) Sting at Starcade '87 surprised them by how over he got with the fans with no real push, (ii) they didn't have much else, (iii) things broke well for them to find something to delay going with Flair-Lex until the Summer. Did they hit it out of the park? That's really hard to tell and know. Flair-Lex drew really well. Flair just got the title back at Starcade '87. So I know they couldn't really have put over Sting for the Title. But... he really was hot in a way that a "fresh" wrestler hadn't been in a long time in JCP. I think in more modern PPV cycling might have seen a "good" booker trying to strike while Sting was hot and give him a run with the belt, with Lex in reserve for a push leading into Starcade. WCW didn't really "live" after Dusty left. Granted, 1989 was a load of fun on some levels. But Flair-Steamer, Flair-Terry, Sting-Mutoh, Steamer-Luger... those weren't Dusty booking. The Steiners getting over as a team weren't really a byproduct of Dusty's booking. I think Dusty was pretty great in 1986 where it seemed like almost every match on the card had a reason for being there. I usually point to Boogie Woogie vs Paul Jones as a feud that lots of folks thought was horrible from a Hardcore Fan Standpoint. Set that aside and you realize that it was a match on a card that had a reason for being there: Jones and Valiant HATED each other, with Jones stopping at nothing to put Valiant out of wrestling, and Boogie on an eternal quest for revenge for the latest evil inflicted on him by Jones. It actually was a pretty well booked feud as well, with all sorts of people turning on Valiant over time, leaving him almost an island against Jones' misfit toys. It's a feud that On Paper lays out pretty well, and the fans in the building "got" their little matches. That to me is a sign of a *really* good booker: it's not just that the stuff on top is drawing well, but that when you dig deeper into the card, there's other stuff that has a good deal of thought put into it rather than just thrown at the wall. That level of detail was starting to slide in 1987 and into 1988. While there might be a storyline for an undercard match, they often felt more thrown together rather than worked on. I saw a Sting vs Mike Rotundo match at the 1988 Bash in Los Angeles. It was a really solid match, and I thought it reflected well on Rotundo for laying out a good structure to it. But... it really was a thrown out match. It's possible that the two had a minor storyline... but it really didn't hit home even to someone like me who watched everything from JCP that year. It certainly didn't have a storyline like feel to it similar to seeing a Jones' Army vs Boogie Woogie match in LA back in 1986: 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 As a fan, you knew why that was there. I wasn't a huge fan of Boogie... but for a prelim, the fans got it. Sometimes you'd get a non-finish at the end of a short or crappy JCP match. I do think over time it was a problem even in the top of the cards matches. In contrast, Hogan was beating his opponents. Flair wasn't winnnig... and the faces weren't beating him... and his feuds didn't resolve in the face eventually beating him for the title. It was a drain. In a modern style booking, they could have gotten around it by having Ric drop and regain the title a lot more. At the time... it wasn't done. John

Oh lord. One person said the first thing, and it's not like the was a long line of people running in to agree with him. On the second one, I don't think anyone said that. But honestly, if you think too hard about Pro Wrestling and compare it with other good/great forms of Entertainment and Sports... well... wrestling is kind of... um... it's... er... really poor/shitty. It's OUR shitty dumbass form of entertainment and we love it for what it is. But serious, take whatever pieces of entertainment that you think at Great, and stack them up against your average good-to-great pro wrestling and... yeah, we accept a lot of silly, goofy, dumbass nonsense out of pro wrestling... even in the *best* of Pro Wrestling. Again, it's OURS, we accept and love it... but come on, we love a lot of dumbass shit about it. John

I'm older than you guys, and at the time we thought it was one of the dumbest things ever. I suspect that I wouldn't be as annoyed by it *now* because it would strike me as the writers being intentionally campy. Wrestling Writing in 1994 wasn't like that, they weren't trying to be campy, and it was just amazingly bad. John

John

I thought it was creative meetings that have been mentioned in the past. I recall hearing about racism in creative meetings back during the Book-Trip feud. John

Gave you a Patera leg. Have no real dog in the Rose fight. The Hart one... I don't get McAdam's critique, but see no point getting into a pissing contest with him on that since others have it covered. John

1. Hayes' racism has been an open secret online for years 2. Court pointing to it might be a case of a Safe Target, similar to folks ripping on KEVIN DUNN!!!!! In other words, it would have been more interesting is Court pointed to the racism / bigotry of someone who isn't as outed on it. And yeah... I know you know all of that, rovert. Just making the point in general for anyone if they think this is a new topic. John

I keep trying to get this point across: There is no such thing as "No Psychology". We can argue whether psychology is good or bad, dumb or brilliant, pedestrian or sublime, goofy or creative, etc. But you really can't argue that there isn't any psychology. People who argue that a Davey match doesn't have psych are flat out wrong. People who argue that a Davey match has bad, dumb, pedestrian or goofy psych... those folks may have a point. And that's coming from someone who doesn't hate Davey as much as the Davey Richards Sux Cox Brigade. I'm pretty tolerant/indifferent of his goofiness, at least live. Now Eddie Edwards, on the other hand... John

What is that? In the day, WWE'ers use to miss 5-6 short lariats a match to transition from offense to to defense... or simply to Do-Si-Do around. Again, it use to be like You Can't Power Bomb Kidman where it was so obvious that they were going to miss the short lariat that they'd just wag it in the general direction of the opponent. John

FWIW, I come down on the pro-FIP side though not as absolutist about it as Dylan. I think we can get to narrow on Peril segements in defining them as FIP. I suspect if we sift through 12/03/93 we'll find Misawa or Kobashi in peril... but that's not at all the peril that makes the match what it is: Kawada's knee injury and his peril / fighting against the odds (and his performance in doing so) are what make the match. Is Kawada a face in that? In turn, Misawa having to go it alone for 13 minutes down the stretch of 12/06/96, playing well off all the times he saved Jun's bacon in the year, is a key in making it memorable. But is Misawa really a face by this point? Kawada & Taue might be the rougher duo, but Misawa is more the near-Unbeatable Ace by 1996 than a pure babyface like he was in 1990-92 opposite Jumbo, or even in 1993 opposite Kawada & Taue. He's morphed / developed / grown into something different, higher, beyond that. Jun... I kind of get him as a Face in 1996. Kobashi.. well... sorta... hmm... something beyond just a face as he had the Triple Crown, and wasn't exactly the face opposite Hansen in September (Stan was a bit more face as the aging gunslinger having the arm worked over yet again). But Misawa? Not really an old school southern face working a southern tag against Ole Kawada & Gene Taue there. But Misawa is clearly in PERIL in that segement, increasingly as it goes along, dramatically as all hell. I'm pretty pro-Peril. My sole dislike of it would be 80s WWF-style Heel In Peril in tags where you get way too much Heels being put in peril and just not enough of the time being spent with the faces in Peril. That's just poor stuff. John

The infamous WWF/WWE Missed Clothesline Transition~! I was too distracted at Mania to try to figure out if they still go to the well on this as much as they were a decade ago... and five years ago. The number of missed lariats use to be mind numbing, it was as if the WWF/WWE Style has no other clue of how to transition one guy from bottom to top without it, and at times they were so lackluster in effort they'd practically just wag a lariat to get though it. Blah. John

WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" WRESTLER: *CHOP* CROWD: "WOOOOOOO!" jdw: "Oh for fuck's sake!"

My least favorite new trope that's popping up a lot is that no one every hits the first "attempt" off the turnbuckles: it's countered. Worse, the counter get countered. It's bad enough for guys to be doing the Do-Si-Do in the middle of the ring. But in the corner, up on the turnbuckles? Fuck... it's getting as predictable as You Can't Power Bomb Kidman, and makes you long for someone just simply setting a dude's ass on the top turnbuckle and hitting a Superplex rather than the two mutally masturbating back and forth. John

No... none of that post makes sense. John

Yeah, that was great. Hulk's way to flip the bird at Shawn and make him look worse than all of the shit Shawn was trying to pull on Hulk. John

I initially wrote out a long item on the first AAA show at the Sports Arena. Then re-read it in Preview and thought: "That's a damn good story that will be read horribly wrong and probably get dragged someplace as Exhibit 537 of 'What A Prick/Asshole/Douchebag jdw is." So I rewrote it to have the stuff about the Weekly Pro Wrestling Tokyo Dome and Misawa instead as a boring story I've told before. John

This is a tough one because no single show stands out above the other great one. The first three AAA shows at the Sports Arena were great on a lot of levels. The TJ show with Wade and Bruce, along with UFC in Casa del Yohe, was a lot of fun. Santo vs Rey was pretty much the end of our trips to TJ, and a memorable one to go out on since we thought Carlos would put Rey over... and popped like shit when Santo won (after watch was a very enjoyable match). The two trips to Guadalajara were fab beyond belief, and I kick myself for not dragging Hoback along with the rest of us to that first one. The two trips to Japan had a number of shows and/or matches that were memorable. I'm thankful that I went when I did, before the business started declining let alone went off the cliff. Simple things like JCP's 8/86 card at the forum, when you pretty much saw JCP at the very peak of its expansion. Even simpler things like Bret vs Yoko in a Cage in a very knew Pond, with the two of them working a match load with good things that got comments like "nice spot", "that was nice", "sweet" from us so often that by the end of it we were wondering if it was one of the best house show matches we'd ever seen. It was just that smartly worked, and the three of us can still toss it out and know that the other two will respond with something along the line of, "That was a helluva match." Things that maybe only have meaning to you at the moment, but linger: Onita wandering slowly to the back at the Dome after one of his "last" matches, with the crowd generally not giving a shit and wanting him to get on with it so they could watch the next match. As soon as he was behind the curtain and the light dimmed, the crowd without any music to cue them started chanting: "MI-SA-WA!!! MI-SA-WA!!! MI-SA-WA!!!" Loud. Really fucking loud. 60K+ Loud (or the revised 50K+ load or whatever number Dave is using for it now). Of course someone else came out first, they chanted that wrestler's name loudly... then the next... and the next... until Misawa came out and they blew the roof off. All Japan Fan. The biggest setting "your guys" would be in during that decade, surrounded by talent all over the card. And they were the ones the fans went the most batshit about... just fucking coming out, let alone for their wrestling. Yeah... that was a moment I'd like to go back in the time machine to experience again. John