jdw

http://www.luchawiki.org/index.php?title=Los_Diabolicos http://www.luchawiki.org/index.php?title=Marabunta

Los Diabolicos: Angel Mortal, Marabunta and Mr. Condor. Terrific team. John

In general, I agree with the principle of that... even if I'm pretty shitty about practicing it. On the other hand, there are things like in the middle of the worst of Russo WCW where you kind of need to be a dick to get across just how shitty it was. I think we all have plenty of things where we were a dick and wish we weren't... some more than others. *raises hand* In turn, my guess is that there are things we wouldn't take back. I don't think I'd take back anything I ever said to RYDER, Mr. Schemer or their goofy sidekicks back in the days of their various tOA run ins. Lots of other dickishness... but that? I think most of us are like that, again some more than others. A number of us probably had a discussion here along those lines about WP and the hammering he took over the years. Justified? That's the rub: everyone thinks a lot of their own personal dickishness is justified at the time. *raises hand* :/ John

Really? In 2011? Muppet Babies has been gone from TV for many years and will likely never be on DVD. The Muppet Show hasn't been on TV since it was on Odyssey when Odyssey existed and is just available in various DVD releases. They haven't had a TV series in 13 years and a movie in 12. Right now they're a nostalgia act for pop culture junkies and the new movie (written by a pop culture junkie) is being marketed heavily to adults as a celebration of the franchise. I have no idea if there are still Sesame Street News segments with Kermit (the only character who overlaps between the Muppet Show and Sesame Street Muppets). If they do I guess little kids could be pretty familiar with him. But Piggy, Fozzy, etc? Not how things are now. At least Fraggle Rock is on Netflix streaming. Theatrical and telefilms The Muppet Movie (1979) The Great Muppet Caper (1981) The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) Muppet Treasure Island (1996) Muppets from Space (1999) It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005) The Muppets (2011) Kermit still appears on Sesame Street, thought nearly all of it is pre-2000 stuff. Several other direct to video. Christmas special a couple of years ago. Go to Amazon to see what's available. Muppet Show is out. Loads of video/dvd. It all depends on what parents buy their kids. We all know kids are going to want to watch what's current and cool. But there was enough initial demand to do the first three seasons of the show. It stalled out in 2008. I haven't googled why they stalled it out, but possibly the general decline in DVD sales and also that by 2009 they had some idea that they were going to do the movie. It's a decent tie in after the movie to roll out the rest of the series. Looks like the last movie was one of the things to start the first three seasons getting out. There are a decent amount of Muppet toys out there. Most of it Kermit, but he's always been the Bugs level draw of the group. I don't think that Muppets big draw when the movie comes out is going to be in your age group or mine, Bix. It probably isn't going to hurt that folks in our age groups (and in between) would be happy to take their kids to it. But my guess is that they'll be targeting kids in general. John

Just was thinking that if you're going to draw Muppet Fans (i.e. mostly kids), is Halloween Night the best night for it? Even tossing out the "Raw is at 9:00 and kids are done trick-or-treating" comment, I don't know how many kids are fired up on Halloween Night to see the Muppets. My neighbors with a pair of 6-9 year old kids got back around 10 (by car so they weren't roaming the streets but out elsewhere like the grandparents)... change out of costumes... work on going through the candy... School Night. Ideal night for it? I doubt the WWE invested in the Muppets to intentionally have it fail and dog the ratings. They gave it a massive pr push. John

BTW... is it a bit strange to do the Muppets on Halloween Night? It opens 11/23/11. Survivor Series is 11/20/11. Perhaps not a huge rush to have it this week, unless the Muppets are booked elsewhere next Monday on the press tour for the movie. John

The Halloween will be interesting in terms of the demos. It's a 9-11 show on a School Night. I think a lot of Kids would be done with trick-or-treat by then. People going out to parties wouldn't, but I think the high school age ones would be due to school the next day. College and older... well that of course is different. We were always more than willing to go to class the next day hungover. There may be some strong DVR movement. It seems like Nielsen and the networks have gotten that Live+1 isn't a worthwhile number anymore given how people DVR and watch. There's a move to Live+7 this season. Anyway, Raw may pick up some viewers that way, especially in the drinking & partying crowd. John

I suspect that most folks don't. There's a reason the WWE's business is down from the salad days: they've driven off many of their fans. That said... This is all a very old conversation. It's the same statement that people like RYDER tossed at us when we watched and were critical of WCW under Russo: "If you don't like it, don't watch it!" And that Mr. Schemer tossed at us when we were critical of poor things that ECW did: "If you don't like it, don't watch it!" And that SKeith and other WWF Hardcores use to toss at us when we thought the WWF in 1996-97 did a lot of batshit crazy ass stuff (Fake Diesel & Fake Razor, anyone?): "If you don't like it, don't watch it!" Well... that's a really useless statement. We all in life are critical of certain things that we don't: * stop watching * stop doing * stop being a part of * stop talking about I think there are issues in the country, like why our troops are still overseas in massive numbers. "If you don't like the U S of God Bless America, get the fuck out!" I kind of think that UGA's football team has been spinning it's wheels for the past few years, and not for any really good reasons. "If you don't like watching UGA, turn the fucking TV!" I kind of think that season 2 of Justified was inconsistent and disappointing relative to a very strong season 1. "If you don't like Justified anymore, stop wasting your time on it and watch something you like!" I'm not terribly happy with Manchester United's defensive line, they haven't don't a good job of dealing with central midfield, and that tactically they probably have regressed in the past three years. "If you don't like ManU, find another team to root for!" I'm rather annoyed to come into work this morning, pop into my office, see the booklet for the company's benefits program for the next year dropped on my chair, and eyeball it seeing that the employee share of the package has gone up at a higher rate than the salaries of _anyone_ in the company. "If you don't like working here, get the fuck out!" I'm kind of annoyed that my Mom was working the guilt trip on me coming down at the end of October when I'm going down there for two weekends in November, and staying an extend time on one of them. "If you don't like your folks, get some new ones!" Look... we are humans. We think critically. We complain about a lot of shit. An Unfucking Believable Amount Of Shit. Anyone here who claims that they don't is not being truthful. We complain about a lot of things that we actually like / enjoy / love. Everyone of us who is a sports fan has gone through stretches where we've complained every bit as much about out teams as folks on here talk critically of the WWE. Kris: if you thought back from 1985-90 that the Braves where a horrid team and you thought and talked about ways that they could (i) stop being so embarrassingly shitty, and (ii) could become a contender... it didn't mean that you weren't a Braves Fan. You were just a kid being honest that they weren't good, thought about how they could be better, and wished that they would become better. You would have been a baseball fan, and wanted your team to do better. We Are Wrestling Fans We follow wrestling. We'd kind of like the "local promotion" not drive us out of our fucking mind. If it does, we, like fans of a sports team, are highly likely to say that something was bad. Unless the alternative is to be myopic fans like Raiders Fan who every year thinks they're a Super Bowl Contender. John

Exactly. I've been scratching my head over people looking forward to 2011 Muppets in the same way that Flair Fan looked forward to Flair going to TNA because "he could still go". I too loved the Muppets. Back when they were at their peak. I'll grant that the Top Chef spot was quite good. But look at who they brought on. It wasn't the Muppet Show muppets. It was Elmo and Cookie Monster carrying things, and the Chefs and Padma 100% selling for and enjoying them. Different beast. The Muppet Show muppets? It's like watching 60+ year old Flair get tossed off the top or take the back drop these days. Then add WWE Creative... yeah, that worked. :/ John, thinking it's like looking foward to the Original Cast of SNL doing SNL this season...

Regularly heeled out of Memphis was staying a face in Memphis.

Yeah but none of the explanations worked. It is usually Hogan dared defend himself with a chair after Savage used a chainsaw. In the case of Savage, it was Hulk trying to bang and steal Macho's wife. Macho was completely justified to get pissed off: most guys don't take kindly to their best friend trying to put the moves on their woman. That is... unless Macho and Liz had an open marriage, and Macho was cool with Hulk having a taste. But I don't think there's any evidence that was the case. Now come on, Vic. If Jerry from these boards started putting the moves on saintly Mrs. Dr. Rev, you'd have a problem with that. John

My guess is that's the air date for 01/30/90. They got all screwed around on that opening series. 1/30 aired after 1/31. The Tokyo Dome had a 90 minute special, then I think other matches aired. It's a little hard that year to piece together air dates. There is no 2/24 match that I'm aware of. NJ didn't have a series between 1/31 and the next one starting on 3/2. Just the 2/10 Dome in between. Owen didn't come back until Jun/Jul. Looking at the JWJ... There's a Pegasus-Owen on the 6/26 Sumo Hall card that didn't air on TV originally, but you have from Local. You have the Bam Bam & Owen vs Doc & Pegasus on the list from 6/30. 7/3 Owen vs Kosh is a handheld you have. 7/5 is Mutoh-Owen, which aired on TV. That's it for Owen on TV in 1990, other than matches back in January. Don't see a Liger match in Jun-Jul. John

Totally agree on that. The spot was best done when the heels used the spot early, and then later the babyfaces would do it as a payback. Fans ate it up, especially if you had good/smart heel "on the apron" and/or a manager sell the crap out of the babyfaces cheating. I suspect you'll see the MX on occasion pull that spot out with Jimmy stooging the hell out of it, with the ref slapping his hands together saying he heard the tag. But yeah... the standard cheating spot was great for heel heat, but was one of many things that made the refs look like idiots. John

And that was my point: it was the equiv of a Wire Clippings section in a newspaper where staffers put bits and pieces of news items together. Did Bill really write it, or was his byline simply slapped on it. John

I have it as: 01/25/95 Hansen b Taue (17:59) #1 Contender - Fukushima Must have gotten it from the WON at the time, unless Koichi faxed it. John

A number of us walked through why Hogan did wrong by Savage, Andre and Orndorff. No contort logic at all. Hulk was a very bad friend. John

I don't recall the Shrek fight as being good. I hate Shrek and look forward to anyone beating his ass in. My recollection is that it was one sided and not terribly interesting. But yeah... Nick's fights tend to be pretty interesting. He's damn skill, well rounded, and not one to lay around doing nothing. John

Paul, You're misreading how Dave has drawn the lines before Pro Wrestling an Sports to be on my TV: Tim Tebow didn't have to "win" to get pushed on my TV today. He's a big star, so his game was the one chosen to be on my TV. Who was on national TV this year more: Yanks or Cards? Nick was the Strikeforce champ. He has a winning streak that warrants a title shot. Condit lost his first match out in the UFC. He's had to rehab to get a title shot. He didn't exactly light it up against Ellenberger. He done well since then, but had two injuries forcing him out of fights which slowed him down. Condit-BJ was to give him a name win and prep him for the title shot, if he won. I don't think Fitch got screwed around withing for his one title shot. If you look back at the division at the time, and factor in Serra's upset, Hughes at the proper person to get the shot against Serra, then Serra's injury and needing to get things cleaned up when he returned... Fitch was given pretty good respect to get the first shot at GSP's second reign. Has he gotten a bit screwed since then? Yes... and no. No in the sense that he got his ass completely kicked by GSP, to the degree that it sits in your mind as a match that you don't really want to see again. Yes in the sense that he's been on a streak since them, and to a large degree has been kept away from contenders since the Paulo Thiago fight. You sort of would have liked to see Koscheck go through Fitch before getting the title shot. But I'd also say that the string of unam dec / non-finishes aren't exactly the thing to get the blood boiling that he's improved to the point that you really want to see him in with GSP again. UFC doesn't do tournies where you can clearly see if Fitch beats Wrestler X that he's getting a title shot. I wouldn't offer up Condit and Fitch as guys who've completely gotten screwed by the UFC. Fitch got his title shot, and got his ass kicked. He's light on critical wins since then, and certainly had a chance with BJ to take out a major star in a major way to make a push for another shit. Condit was being set up in a similar way. Some better analogies? John

Exactly. I kind of liked Nick in his first run with UFC, but his act got tired by the end of his Diego-Riggs-Sherk trilogy. Crazy Asshole gets tiring when the Crazy Asshole jobs all the time. He got on a roll over the past 3+ years and I was looking forward to him getting back into UFC. The division has been really deep, but GSP has run the table with them. Diaz is an interesting new opponent, and not for the Crazy Asshole stuff. I'd like to see him face Koscheck before Koscheck moves up to MW, though that might be too late... and again, it's for the Asshole vs Asshole stuff, but simply because it's an interesting match up between two fighters. I don't need to read three months of comps to Pro Wrestling. John

No one is denying that. On the other hand, Bret Farve was completely nuts for more of the past half dozen years (if not a hell of a lot longer than that). To a degree, for those of us who aren't Farve Fans, part of the appeal to him has been the utter trainwreck it's been. I've tuned in many a time for that trainwreck, and enjoyed it. Pro Wrestling? I hated the Fighting Irish in the 70s and 80s, and watched them hoping to see someone beat them. Pro Wrestling? Nah. I was doing that before I was a pro wrestling fan. It's just fucking sports. The only people who see it as pro wrestling are: 1. Pro Wrestling Fans who see the world through Pro Wrestling 2. People who hate pro wrestling John

You, and a lot of people, need to stop looking at the world through narrow, Pro Wrestling Goggles. CBS pushed Auburn in 2010. Why? The story developed over the course of the year that they were good and had Cam. 2009 Auburn Appearances on CBS November 27 - (2) Alabama at Auburn, 2:30 (ALA 26, AUB 21) That would be the Iron Bowl, which CBS has carried nearly every year since 2000. Other than that... Auburn was a mediocre team that didn't play much of a role in SEC Storylines. 2010 Auburn Appearances on CBS October 16 - (12) Arkansas at (7) Auburn, 3:30 (AUB 65, ARK 43) October 23 - (6) LSU at (5) Auburn, 3:30 (AUB 24, LSU 17) November 13 - Georgia at (2) Auburn, 3:30 (AUB 49, UGA 31) November 26 - (2) Auburn at (9) Alabama, 2:30 (AUB 28, ALA 27) I'm leaving out the SEC Title Game, which CBS had no choice on carrying it: they simply do. Auburn was a storyline. They ended up making a run to the Title. They got covered. This isn't "pro wrestling booking". It's TV Sports. Go back and look at how many national Sunday Night and Monday Night TV games the Vikings got once Farve showed up, and then how they were flexed onto NBC down the stretch in that first year. Same with the Jets with Farve got there that first year. How much more do the Saints get onto TV since Peyton/Brees got there and turned them into a contender? Dave sees this through Pro Wrestling Goggles because first and foremost in his life, he's been an obsessive wrestling fan. It's consumed his life for the majority of his childhood, and the overwhelming majority of his adult life. He'll claim that he followed other sports, but to those of us who are insane hardcore fans of a wide variety of sports, Dave really is a piker on sports. A lot of us also see some things through Pro Wrestling Goggles because we've become obsessive wrestling fans during our life. But a lot of us have sports perspectives that predate become wrestling fans, and have spent most of our obsessive wrestling fandom also remaining obsessive sports fans. We've seen decades of how Sports Leagues, Sports Teams, Sports Players and Sports TV promote their product. Every time we see something like Shaq vs Kobe being promoted after Shaq left the Lakers, we don't instantly view it from the view point of: "Holy shit... the NBA is promoting this exactly like Bruno vs Larry, with Shaq as the legendary babyface and Kobe being the punky young protege going heel. Stern's even better than this than Vince!!!!" Or look at Farve vs Rogers as some pro wrestling angle. Sports Reality: the Miami Heat got a bigger TV push when Riley & Zo were good there, then fell off when the team slid, then got a monster push when Shaq went there, then fell off when the team slid, and then got the main event push again last year when Lebron went there. It's not pro wrestling. It's the way TV Sports has been covering this shit for decades. Pete Rozell was doing this shit before Bill Watts took over Mid South, and if you look at the ratings... he was doing this shit better than Watts. I got Tebow push today. Like Vick was before him. Like Manning was before him. Like Farve was before him. Like Aikman was before him. Like Marino was before him. Like Montana was before him. Like Fouts was before him. Like Bert Jones was before him. Like Staubach was before him. Like Tarkenton was before him. Like Namath was before him. I'd go back further, but I started watching the NFL in 1971 when I was 5, so it's hard for me to put out more personal memories than that. The thing is: Dave, and you, would think that Tebow getting put on my TV over some other bland team today would be because it's Pro Wrestling Style Promoting. To which I'd say: That's hitting the bong. It's what the NFL always has done. What Dana is doing isn't Pro Wrestling. It's what sports do, and what the rest of the entertainment world does. Pay attention to the Grammys show this year and who gets to perform on it. Then go back and look at the performers over the past 20 years. Current hot stars always get put on it, mixed in with some Legends who might draw their fans. Guys like Christopher Cross have had a hard time getting on the Grammys since he took that big, flukey haul of 5 Grammys one year. Pro wrestling? Or just the music and entertainment business? For the life of me, I don't know why I have to explain this to anyone. It's fucking obvious to anyone who doesn't have blinders on. John

I agree with that. There never was much logic in the punching of the refs either, or the rule of tossing someone over the top rope. Wrestling basically needed their fans to be as stupid as the bookers. John

Bill wasn't the only person taking pictures that made the cover. In fact, we don't even know if he took most of the pictures that were on the cover. They had other photogs on the staff, and also got photos from quite a few people not on the staff. Again, he wasn't the guy always on the ground taking photos. There were simply too many shows around the country in the territorial era for him to be at all of them, taking shots of everything. Come the Expansion Era, the WWF tossed non-WWF photogs out of ringside for ages. You really think Bill took that classic picture of Hogan's head on the spear to put over Kamala, or that someone back in the office did the equiv of photoshop. There really is no inference that he was the only one dealing with all the promoters around the country to put together the pieces. The difference is that we can actually see Walton on all of those TV shows. With Apter, we're pulling it out of our asses. It's a bit like giving Tunney all the credit for the WWF in the Expansion Era as the Pete Rozell of the WWF. Except... we've have the WON's of the era to clue us into Vince being the real Rozell. With the Apter mags... we've got dick. I know: you said that earlier in the thread. Beyond Weston, we don't know enough about Weston's mags to give 100% or even 50% or even 33% of the credit to Bill. * * * * * On Kevin's point about Apter's columns... I don't even remember them at all. Matt Brock and Eddie Ellner were the only "authors" who really carved out any clear writing style in the mags. Brock was fake, and Eddie was an act. The rest was largely interchangeable, be it the newswire stuff (which no doubt staffers cobbled together similar to the newswire sections in papers) or the articles on wrestlers/feuds/matches. They all came across like the office put together, even stuff under Bill's byline. I wouldn't put to much credit onto Bill for anything that ran under his byline in the magazine if we're trying to claim he was spending all his time on the road taking all the pictures that appeared mag. It's a bit of a catch-22. These weren't the days of the net where Bill could send an e-mail with his article. The glory days were also in the days before faxes were widely available, and it's not like Bill on the road travelled with a typewriter that he could slap something together and fax it to New York. I think there's a generation of us who read them before moving onto the WON and other sources who have fond memories and want to give credit to "someone". Since he was the "face", Bill is the one folks want to give it to. It's far better to simply give it to Weston and be done with it. He goes back a long time on doing those mags, especially to an era where it would have been rather hard to send Bill out to the west coast to cover Blassie vs Destroyer and Stevens vs Pepper. John

Dana changes the welterweight title match "If this reads like Cowboy Bill Watts in 1985, it's because it was exactly like it." We're going to get months of this shit. John

By that logic, every title match where a heel is defending and can't lose the title via COR should go like this: 1. bell rings 2. heel *instantly* hops out of the ring and goes back to the locker room 3. ref counts heel out 4. babyface wins via COR 5. heel keeps title 6. Underpant Gnomes 7. Fans LOVE IT~! Well... except that #7 is a problem even the Underpant Gnomes would have a tough time overcoming. But there is Logic there for the Heel to exploit the rules to keep the title. See, that's the problem with the Money Inc Finish. If Money Inc were simply exploiting the loop hole, they would do it at the start rather than risk their title over the course of 10+ minutes. So no... it's not smart. John