jdw

My recollection is that they went from a 3 hour show that had 2 hours head-to-head with the WWF to a 2 hour show that had one hour head-to-head with the WWF. 67% head-to-head vs 50%, and the ability to concentrate angles / storylines / matches down into a more focused (yeah... I know it's RUSSO!) fashion. Yeah, it's a comp that helps Russo, and that's even before he cooks the numbers by taking a lame duke episode. John

These would be the Carny matches and their sources that are also worth watching: 03/19/94 Korakuen Hall, Tokyo (03/20/94 NTV) League: Misawa vs Akiyama (13:57) 03/24/94 Hiratsuke (03/27/94 NTV) League: Hansen vs Kawada (19:38) 04/01/94 Okayama (Carnival Commercial) League: Kawada vs Akiyama (11:25) 04/10/94 Sendai (Carnival Commercial) League: Williams vs Akiyama (12:26) Especially the Kawada-Akiyama and Williams-Akiyama as a contrast to the Kobashi-Akiyama that's on the set. I think these two are quite a bit more compelling and tighter all around matches for Jun than the Kobashi, but it's worth others seeing them. I feel a bit for Doc that his isn't on there: lots of matches on the set for Kobashi to shine, but Doc-Akiyama might be the best example of how great of a worker Doc was in 1994 when not in with the Four Corners. John

I don't think he has any step kids. I think Dave's own would be too young make him a grandparent, even if Dave was as shitty about teaching his kids about birth control as Sarah Palin. John

Steen last year was interesting in PWG. He was over like snot as an ass kicker even against face such as Davey, Eddie, Pac, etc. But against Generico at BOLA, the crowd was clearly into Generico. John

Yeah, because we would know that within a few days it would come out that he set the fire so that he could play the Hero. John

There's not a lot of it. They came and went through this storyline fast. John

Vince is still a douchebag. John

I think almost all of is was depressing on some level: The decline of All Japan had been going on for some time, and there didn't seem to be anyone young coming up to sustain it. Given how long it took NOAH to develop their next generation (i.e. guys beyond Jun) and the relative success of them, if the split hadn't taken place that all would have been in AJPW and been depressing: Kobashi's injuries, Jun not stepping up, Misawa falling apart, Kawada & Taue teaming forever... blah. The decline of Joshi was hard. There no doubt were pockets of "fun" and "good" and "great", but with all the talent split up and things being on such a smaller level, it really felt doomed long run. UWF-style died, a combo of the move towards MMA and also the promotions shooting themselves in the foot. The promotions behind them... FMW thrilled FMW fans for a while, but it eventually had to feel doomed to even them. Bat-Bat? Just a lot of decline. New Japan was the worst, probably because they were the one best positioned not to go off the cliff if they weren't insane. But... Inoki went fucking insane. John

Pre-newsletter days. It happened in 1982. The WON didn't launch until early 1983. Dave may have mentioned it a bit, and I did Andy comeback at some point in 1983? I never was much of a student of it. John

It is important. Just painful. John

Good lord... why did I click on this thread. It was painful enough to live through that period. Who wants to have that scab peeled back off. John

Ding ding ding. John

We're in the first week of April, roughly 1/4 of the way through the year. Looking at the first post in the thread, there have been 15 "MOTYC" for Dylan. That's a burn rate of 60 in the year. Obviously he won't get to 60 since there won't be 15 matches in the last quarter of the year that he lists as the "Top 10" gets firmed up. Still... 15 in a quarter with the knowledge that a good chunk of those will get kicked to the curb as the year goes on tends to render "MOTYC" pretty meaningless. John

I do enjoy AJPW fetishist being tossed around as if an AJPW Fan tends to only like AJPW and not, say, something like Backlund-Patera or Toyota-Kong or some flippy-floppy juniors. On the topic, I've long thought the term MOTYC gets tossed around too much, rendering the term meaningless over time. The 1/93 Kobashi-Taue match is a good match, better than people expected at the time. Folks should see it. Historically it's a good lead into the 2/93 Misawa-Taue TC match since it is a "next challenger" match. It almost certainly better than a number of matches that made the 1993 Yearbook, but got cut because of space and there being so much stuff from 1993. Should some of us jumped up and down pimping it as a MOTYC? No. It was just a real good match, pretty damn entertaining, really worth people checking out. There were three matches from that series that made the 1993 yearbook: a six man, and two tag title matches. The tag title matches were #31 and #42 on Loss' year end list, and the six man off the list. Are #31 and #42 truly MOTYC? Does anyone really sit down at the end of the year and go that deep into their list to figure out who they have 1-2-3 as their MOTY choices? I never did. I liked the All Asia Tag Title match a helluva lot at the time. I had a sense that it wouldn't be one of the candidates by year's end. Dittos the World Tag Title match, which I had just a shade below the AATT match simply because watching the rookie Akiyama "fit in" was a bit more compelling that another (all be it great) Misawa & Kawada vs Gordy & Doc match which I'd been watching since 1990. I just sensed that while they were terrific matches, they didn't have that extra something that lifted them into that small circle of realistic MOTYC. That something you get (if you were an AJPW Fan in 1993) watching say Hansen-Kawada, Hansen-Kobashi, the final match of the year, etc. Or as an AJW fan what you got watching Hokuto-Kandori in 1993 or the Toyota & Yamada vs Kansai & Ozaki the prior year. When one tosses 40-100 matches into the "MOTYC" blender, it tends to render meaningless the MOTYC tag being applied to those 5-10 matches that come December you truly are rolling over in your head to determine which really are Win, Place, Show. That's just me. But somehow I've been able over the years to get across 01/24/93 and 12/03/93 as being matches folks REALLY need to see, while also getting across that one of them is a MOTYC while the other is a fucking fantastic wickedly fun match that's a bit mind numbing when you consider one of the guys in it has been working for just 4 months and he really doesn't miss much of a beat in it. I know it's semantics. But words and opinions do have meaning and value. John

So if someone on here says that Sid sucks, you're free to call them on it because "They never stepped foot in the ring". That would be horseshit. If a film had bad camera work, Ebert would point it out even if he's not a member of the ASC. Must not be if you know it. John

We're wrestling fans. It's what we do. What you're basically saying is that if Sid botches the first five moves he attempts, none of them being things he *should* have attempted, We Fans are lame for say: "Sid sucks. No, it's not just that he sucks. He's a dumb fuck for trying the diving headbutt, moonsault, space flying tiger drop, 450 Splash and the leg drop off the top through a table. He should have known that he couldn't pull any of them off." -Wrestling Fan "wrestling fans like jdw offering technical advice on how to put a match together in that setting is the lamest thing ever" -aceman Makes sense? No... not a fucking bit of sense. That's what this whole board is about: for Wrestling Fans to toss out our thoughts. We're full of shit on plenty of it, as I'm sure some folks can point out in this very thread. We're on the mark on others of it, as again people can point to in this thread. But not tossing out our thoughts? No... that would be lame. Christ, some of the dumbest comments I've ever heard about laying out matches has come from wrestlers who happened to be lost too far in their own punch that they didn't get that their Super Genius approach was didn't make a bit of sense and confused the fans... or that their Super Lazy "The Fans Will Eat Up Anything" approach caused the match to get no heat other than the fans getting pissed in the wrong way. Roger Ebert doesn't make movies.* The folks who made Ishtar did. Does that mean that he can't point out that Ishtar is a steaming turd of a match, and why? John * I know Ebert wrote one movie.

"special diet" That's a hoot. This is probably around the time another person who was juiced out of his mind explained to Dave that his great conditioning was due to a "good diet". Dave and I used "Good Diet" as a running joke about juiced up guys for most of the rest of the decade. Dave's response there was a classic non-apology apology. John

Yahoo Mixed Martial Arts Opinion & Analysis Don't know if that's just coded to have people dropped off if they're not active, or if they cleaned it up. Can still manually find an archive for Dave's pieces this way: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/expertsarchive...or=Dave+Meltzer Has Dave landed anywhere else, either as a free lance or as part of a site? Or is he just WO-4 now? John

Maybe time for a thread on the next Mania.... I'm thinking that card might draw a bit. John

Nah. If it was Liz-Savage-Flair, Jericho would have talked about how was banging one of the women in wrestling that has been associated with Punk. One storyline dealt with people who were all involved in the business and had sexual overtones. The other dealt with people who aren't in the business nor on TV and has an addiction/drug storyline. It's a bit like saying the storyline of Drugstore Cowboy makes me nostalgic for Debbie Does Dallas. They're not the same thing. John

Talking about Punk's family *was* "I'm shooting now!" stuff. And was played as such leading into Mania. More power to you if you enjoy Jericho and Punk working in storyline elements about Punk's family of addicts. That stuff bores the fuck out of me, especially when two guys were earlier trying to get across that their central storyline was Best In The World. John

That makes a lot more sense. Yep: $171,431.78 = some form of sales 25,954 = some form of units sold $6.61 = per unit sales [this isn't listed] That makes some general sense. Dave's number are an interesting example: 90K units at a $6.61 per unit revenue level for the company = $594,469.45 $18K of that is a 3% royalty. I *think* that would be high if it's given to everyone on the DVD, or even the *several* Top Guys. Take Mania where Rock, Cena, Trip and Taker are your Top Guys on the dvd. 12% gets cut out of the company's pockets. Seems... a bit much, since they are likely giving smaller cuts to *everyone* on it. My guess is that the 3% might be closer to the cut that a performer gets on Their Own Special DVD. Such as the Flair dvd, the Stone Cold, the Bret, the Shawn, the Taker, the Trip dvds. In turn, how they handle a multi person special DVD (Horsemen, Bret vs Shawn, Trip+Shawn DX Last Stand, etc) probably would be a division of that 3%... since it's hard to think that all of the Horsemen were getting a big 3%, and several of them probably were happy to get anything. Looking at the titles on Madusa's check, one could run over to Graham's site, look up the Greatest Stars dvd that she was on (suspect it's the 90s), and then count up the number of other wrestlers on it in similar roles that she was in... and take a WAG over what % she likely would have gotten. My second guess is that the WWE contract on dvds like that and Wrestlmania are structured where there's a % "pool" set aside that is split among the performers, rather than each performer getting a % regardless of what DVD they appear on. In other words: * 5% of Mania-type DVD revenue is set aside for the workers * 33% is split among the designated Main Eventers * 67% is split among the other performers on the show Or something like that. In turn, a dvd like the Greatest Performers set has a pool that is split up among all the performers on it since there really isn't a 1-to-4 performers who are driving the sales. It's also possible that some performers who have enough stroke get a straight deal based on *any* dvd they appear on. Hogan strikes me as the only one who could, but it's likely that his original 80s deal (which was likely very favorable to him) would have been replaced by something more standard (though still likely better than standard) when he came back in 2002... or one of his other returns. Anyway, the revenue on there is kind of interesting in its own right. John

I take that to mean that there was no written agreement that TNA had to be mentioned. If there was an agreement between the WWE and the TNA, it didn't include it. Frankly given the way these two do business, I doubt there's a written agreement. More likely, there's a letter from the WWE confirming the understanding between the parties. It would be a stretch that it even is at the level of a Letter Agreement or MOU where both parties signed it. John

The setting does change that. Unless we're thinking Taker-Trip and Cena-Rock is going to be on the June/July PPVs. We watched one of the MX vs R'n'R matches from Philly that was on the Cornette DVD... the first title defense in Philly after the won the title. It was a handheld... good for a handheld but still missing some of the aspects of the work in the match, such as being fully able to see all the elements that went into several of the Distraction Spots. There also wasn't heated audio because it was a handheld. About as close to a vacuum as you can get, since you're not even seeing all those great TBS promos that Corny was cutting on Ricky and Robert and the R'n'R's training bra wearing fanbase. And you could clearly tell it was their Fall Out Of Bed Match rather than them having a extra big setting / stip where they wanted to pull out all the stops. Still... The six of them (including the Ref) worked circles around what Punk and Jericho did. And you could watch the crowd and tell the reaction and their interest in the match. Even when they were slightly off on stuff (there was a spot where Bobby was suppose to eat something, Dennis was off on it, they had to reset it, and then still didn't fully nail it) they saved/reeled things in brilliantly (Bobby "falling off the apron", Corny trying to keep him up in funny way, before Bobby finally falls to the floor). These guys weren't just Doing Shit, they were Doing Shit The Fans Could Eat Up. I doubt there was anything in the match that the MX & Corny *innovated*. A lot of the stuff were things that Yohe had seen various tag teams do in LA in the 60s and 70s, and I suspect folks so other teams do in other territories. The MX & Corny just did a hell of a lot of it well, pieced it together well, and filled up a match that from start to finish wasn't just "solid" but Good... really good. John

The NFL for the Super Bowl had no reason to work the number. It wasn't a record, and they really didn't give two shits about what the number was. They just report it. There were more people at Mania that at the Super Bowl in that building. Many more because there weren't people sitting on the playing field while the Super Bowl was being played. As far as "paid" crowd, I think some of us offered that one up as a leg to Dave when the issue was argued back on Classics: an out for him to agree that there were more than 78K in the building (given what the photos showed and Dave's own comments that it was totally sold out and packed) while still being able to hang some credible explanation of his 78K number. He's never chosen to take that out, and instead sticks with: "There were only 78K people in the building." John