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I hate Gorilla in the booth. Just dogshit, more interested in getting himself over than the match or who was in the booth with him. Jesse took less of his shit. Bobby was use to playing a manager who got punked out, so he came across comfortable in stooging for Gorilla... but since Bobby is the more interesting of the two, it doesn't make it fun (for me) listening to constantly listen to the better of two people in the both stooge and bitch for a blowhard like Gorilla. John

It's good netiquette whether you criticize or not. For whatever we can say about Florio and the other ProFootballTalk guys, they go out of their way to cite and link to just about everything, even when "reporting" on a story that someone else broke. Schemer has a multi-decade track record of ripping stuff off from the newsletters and not crediting it, except when he wants to rip it. Meltzer... I agree with Keith that his often not good at citing others, and it's really something he should know better. John

I loved that cover. That also was the one SRW a year to get: the one that covered Starcade. I ordering all the Back Issues of the "March" SRW's to get the coverage of the full Starcade cards. Which leads to... Exactly. Those were the big four. Sports Review Wrestling was always the "red headed step child" of the line, but I remember it being my favorite one. It was the sorta step child, though it did get the big bone of Starcade. I also seem to recall it got the Analysis Articles. I want to say that the article that ranked Brody as the #1 All Around Wrestler in 1986ish was in SRW, along with other things like that. As far as the publications, you sort of got a sense of them if you happened to be anal about getting all the Rankings in a given year (or for several years like I did), you ended up with: Monthly Pro Wrestling Illustrated Inside Wrestling Sports Review Wrestling The Wrestler Quarterly Wrestling USA There probably were some other quarterlies... I want to see there was a second primary one like Wrestling USA, and then a few semi-regular picture related ones. But combined that would be 48 rankings in the monthlies, and another 4 from the quarterlies. At the time I always thought it was dumb for them to do four different mags a month and that instead they would be better off taking their anchor (PWI) weekly. PWI sold more than all of the other ones, so get it out there. In hindsight, the points seemed to be: * 4 allows each on a month to sell rather than a week * 4 gets more shelf space * 4 let them put different features in different mags * 4 *might* have allowed you to ignore how behind "current" they were I think the top one was probably the most important. We also probably could look at any given "month" where stuff would be on the shelf and see a cover with Hogan on it... so Hogan Fan had at least one mag at any given time he might want to pull off. Anyway... The other issue I liked a lot at the time was the 1986 issue that covered all of the GAB shows. Thought it was really coll to see how all the cards were laid out, even in those pre-WON years my brain thinking about how they fit together. John

ProWrestlingHistory.com has it as 26:57, which is likely a number from the WON since it's a Sumo Hall card and Dave typically had times for the top matches. I'm trying to remember if this aired on TV originally. I recally the NJPW Tag League each year typically being pretty disappointing relative to AJPW's... but there were 1-2 matches that stood out through 1996. Just can't remember them off the top of him head. I do think one of them was a Usual Suspects type of match like this, but it may also have been a Hash-Hirat vs Chono-Tenzan match... John

Lord I hated Jesse in WCW. Sounded at the time like a guy enjoying cashing a check. There's a chunk of Jesse in the WWF that doesn't hold up great simply because it's not as "fresh" as it was back in the 80s when we were watching it, and for the fact that something like early Vince is more interesting or things like the Dick Graham & Kal Rudman team at the Spectrum was so wildly campy that the Vince-Jesse campiness isn't quite as campy fun anymore. That said, he did seem engaged in what he was doing. He wanted to get over, he pretty much nailed his Heel Commentator role, and he frankly did get over WWF Product as part of the show. In WCW, it didn't feel as much like Jesse cared/worried about getting over WCW Product. John

To be fair to John, no-one's ever really got to the bottom of Danielson's firing. I do tend to believe Randazzo's story in PowerSlam that Linda McMahon's political campaign was behind his firing, but it's not like anyone has confirmed who freaked out and caused his firing, so I can understand someone still believing it was a work all along. To be fair to myself: Danielson was "fired". A lot of people thought at the time that he was Fired, and were pissed off about it. He wasn't. He was "fired". The Pat Patterson equiv. Asked to go away, get out of sight... except... They took advantage of it by having him work indies and play into the concept that he really was Fired so that his return would mean something to Danielson Fans. But really anyone who took 2 minutes to think about it at the time knew that he was coming back as soon as things quited down which would be much sooner than later. Punk isn't Leaving. He's "leaving". He won't even be gone as long as Jericho's first hiatus. Someone (or several someones) will get hurt in key spots and they'll tell him it's time for him to come off the bench. That is if they haven't *already* set a specific date for his return. Which is probably the most likely thing. John

Yeah... "generalities" as Loss says, and also "themes". He'd have his storyline (coming across as being fed to him) and would talk it. On play-by-play, as in calling what people were doing in the ring, I thought he kind of sucked. The thing is, he came across as polished and professional, so you kind of thought he must be good. I don't need my pbp guy to call every spot. But I thought Vince in the solo booth circa 1980-81 was really great at calling both the Action and also the Storyline while getting across the Themes developing in the match, and tying it all together... and it wasn't like the point for him was always to tie it all together. It happened sometimes, and other times the match would go in a direction that he followed along. Lance seemed to effortlessly do all that, to the point that any of his calling of the Action felt like it was just the storyline... and weaved in with what the guys were doing in the ring. Ross *tried* to do that in his Mid South/UWF and early WCW days, but stort of tried too hard. It worked, but it didn't come across as naturally as Lance did... Ross was trying really hard. It's a little extreme of a comp, but Ross even a his best felt like DDP working: trying too damn hard to call a classic or call this match/angle exactly like he thought it should be. Lance would be like one of those natural wrestlers where it just kind of flowed out. John

I kind of thought I was reading a Quebrada there... or one of my old pieces. That's not a positive. And I like a ton of the stuff Bix is doing at Cage, and I'm not feuding with him and having for years. Big fan, and not looking for ways to take shots. But it came across as trying to justify "Why I just lost my shit" way too hard. It would be. Do you think *this* is leading directly to it, 9 months out? That this is a launching point to it? Or that they'll just pull something out of their ass at the last minute like they did for Rock-Cena-Mizz? Does this strike anyone like a company that can sustain *anything* for 9 months on a clear storyline? I frankly think they tossed out Rock-Cena for next year so that they would tie their hands down to something, not get lost along the way, and force themselves to go with it. I only half joke. I've been there, done that for the past 15 years. From Sully to Eric to Russo to Steph to Trip and on and on, various goofballs booking and writing this shit have been trying to "shoot on the fans" (and the boys on occassion). Russo is a prick. I hate listening to him on the mic. I hate Hogan. But in reality, Russo shooting about fucking over Hogan (Hogan-Jeffey) frankly was Really Big: It pretty much killed off Hogan in WCW. Sent packing. Kind of memorable. But we all couldn't give a shit about it because... It was Russo. And Jeffey. And Hogan. I think the reason why this went over is because: Hardcores love Punk. Punk "shot" on a WWE that we hate to some degree. Heyman and Ross did the same thing. In the end, it meant nothing. Good promos, though. Well executed. I liked Punk's thing. Was entertained by it since it was delivered well. The words meant nothing to me, because I tend to see all of pro wrestling promos as bullshit these days. Good delivery, good acting (rater than yelling and screaming), some funny lines, and I'm entertained. It's that GPE that makes me shake my head a bit. It's like WWF fans *at the time* thinking DX going down to Nitro was the greatest skit ever... because they hated WCW and wanted to believe in their WWF. John

Totally agree on this. I'd recommend people watch it again from a Production standpoint, and see how pretty well they nailed it. They hit their marks right as Punk did. The one "flaw" they had in it was the attention given to Cena, but even from that it was a Production item to help draw attention back to Punk-Cena. My thoughts are that people are telling PWI that it was totally off the cuff / no one knew what he was going to say / the WWE was taken totally by surprise by it for the same reason Sully-Pillman was worked to the boys: They want people to "believe". John

Or that he'll even stay gone for long. People has suspension of disbelief when Danielsen was "fired" and took indy bookings. I think a lot of us jaded fucks knew he'd be back, sooner rather than later. I'm not really buynig that he "maneuvered politically" to get to shoot on the WWE if the WWE didn't want him to shoot on the WWE. It's a good promo. That leads to... what? Shouldn't the GPE lead to something more than a Nice Send Off? Rock's promo on Cena led to a nice big buyrate. Great promo? Well, pretty solid at the least and frankly rather strong given how instantly it ran circles around the typical shit on the WWE. People are jumping for joy like this is going to be a promo that the masses of WWE Fans will be talking about in 10 years. I think the reality is that more people talked about the Beer Truck/Bath ten years after it happened (let alone the This Is Your Life skit that we all thought was goofy) than will be talking about this one. Hell, for all we circle jerked about "I Respect You Booker Man", it really didn't mean dick in terms of memorable to the mass of WCW Fans compared to the Hogan Turn spots (post match on the PPV and the mic spot the next night on Nitro). :/ John

Mitchell linked to this in his forum in a thread on great promos: John

So this is the Greatest Promo Ever if all it does it lead to Punk getting his title shot at the MITB PPV? That's a pretty low threshold for GPE. My comment on Lucy and the Football is more along the lines of: * no one thinks the WWE would let Punk go "shooting" (scripted or unscripted) if he wasn't sticking around the company long term * which means that even if he leaves, it's the old Danielson fake-leave thing again * which means that They Have Really Big Plans for Our Hero Punk Do we all agree on #1 & #2? If we do, my point is that that third item isn't going to be as Big Of A Deal as folks think. Take a step back and dream up what would be a Really Big Deal. Mania against Rock? No happening since that's Cena, and making it a threeway only makes it a muted Big Deal: Punk gets invited to dinner, but Cena and Rock are the big guys and Punk is the kiddy involved. Mania against Taker and ending The Streak? That's a Big Deal. Happening? Honestly? You're kidding, right? So go down the list of other potential Big Deals, and how quickly do we get to the point where they're not really a Big Deal and instead just the same old shit the company has been rolling out for the past few years. My thought is that by the time we get to #3 on the Really Big Deal list, we're already at the level of the same old shit they've been doing. John

I do wonder if it was totally unscripted with Production not having a clue what was coming, why the cameras had the perfect shot for Punk's waves to the folks at home? Was this a taped show with post production where all the cameras were rolling and they could cut it together picking out the best shots? John

Charlie is the one who ends up bumping on his ass: But of course the real Charlie Browns here are the fans who liked this. They think it will lead somewhere for Punk, and instead the football will be pulled away. John

Probably easy to do since Punk already was sitting on his ass in the promo. John

I think my favorite promo was Bret breaking up the Davey vs Owen match. It's as much old school corny carny as new school workshootfabe, which for some reason makes it hold up better than all the more famous "I'm Shooting Now, Brother" bullshit. Owen breaking down crying... and almost laughing because the stuff is so good but trying to hold his shit together in crying mode. Then the total icing on the cake: the group hug, the fans booing their asses off, Bret looking up from the group hug out at the crowd with that "Yeah, exactly what I'm talking about" look. I think it opens Disc 4 on Will's HF '97 set. We played it at a KOC, wondering if it held up after all these years... and we were floored by how cool "pro wrestling" it still was. Give me that any day over Punk taking a (deserved) crap on the WWE. John

So Ric signed some autographs (which he could easily have done ages ago) and found a fanboy to payoff Highspots to keep him out of the slammer. Ric avoids hitting rock bottom yet again. I look forward to the next stop on the trainwreck. John

I'm not a Davey fan... but I really don't care for Eddie pretty much every time I've seen him. Glad to see Will focus a little on his shit. John

Lucy with the Football. John

I haven't read the WONs in ages and don't have a clear memory, but... I think he may have gotten hurt after the Furnas match, hence not showing back up until the Fake Sting run in. Then he got hurt in mid-1991 and didn't comeback until early 1992. Well, let's dig up the old CMPunk NWA/WCW listings. These was from a massive comp set someone put together several years back, not just of matches but of promos and angles. There's a decent amount of stuff missing, but it's been a pretty decent overview of a lot of stuff that aired. I've chopped the promos, angles and jobber matches. 1990 Windham/Anderson vs Road Warriors NWA Sat 6/2/1990 7:33 Flair/Arn/Windham vs JYD/Orndorff/King NWA Sat 6/23/1990 6:19 Horsemen vs Orndorff, JYD & El Gigante Bash 90 7/7/1990 9:40 Windham/Arn vs Steiner Bros NWA TV 7/15/1990 8:57 Windham/Arn vs Armstrong/Horner NWA Sat 7/28/1990 13:00 Barry Windham vs Brad Armstrong Main Event 8/12/1990 5:06 Barry Windham vs Lex Luger NWA Main Event 9/29/1990 8:09 Windham/Anderson vs Doom (street ft) Starrcade 12/16/1990 7:19 That's pretty consisent with him getting hurt, though it was in the fall. That Arn & Barry vs LX match always looked interesting. Matches with both the RW and the Steiners, and a singles with Lex. 1991 Horsemen vs Sting/Steiners/Pillman Main Event 1/20/1991 16:20 Windham/Anderson vs Morton/Rich (Doom) NWA Pro NY 1/26/1991 16:40 Windham/Anderson vs Renegade Warriors Clash 14 1/30/1991 7:29 Windham/Anderson vs Armstrong/Horner NWA Sat 2/2/1991 16:39 Barry Windham vs Ron Simmons World Wide 2/9/1991 3:20 Windham/Sid/Arn vs BA/Horner/Eagle WCW Sat 2/9/1991 12:07 Windham/Anderson vs Doom WCW House 02/14/1991 5 mins Windham/Arn vs Armstrong/Horner WWW 2/23/1991 7:16 Barry Windham vs El Gigante (Flair) Power Hour 3/2/1991 43 sec Barry Windham vs Ron Simmons (JIP) WWW 3/3/1991 3 mins Windham & Anderson vs Chono & Saito Japan SS 1 3/21/1991 7:45 Barry Windham vs Ricky Morton WCW WWW 3/24/1991 3:39 Flair/Windham vs Morton/Big Josh WCW Sat 3/24/1991 12:23 Barry Windham vs Brian Pillman (JIP) Power Hour 3/29/1991 1 min Windham/Arn vs Pillman/Gigante (Flair) WCW Pro 4/27/1991 9:19 Anderson/Windham vs Pillman/Eaton WCW Sat 5/11/1991 3:02 Barry Windham vs Brian Pillman (Taped) SB 1 5/19/1991 6:08 Windham/OMG vs Pillman/Rhodes WCW Sat 6/1/1991 51 sec Flair/BW/Nikita/OMG vs PN/Pillman/Rich/Gigante WCW Pro 6/1/1991 4:47 BW/AA vs Pillman/Gigante (loser leaves) Clash 15 6/12/1991 3:08 Lex Luger vs Barry Windham (Cage) Bash 91 7/14/1991 12:25 Windham/Arn/Hall vs Rhodes/Eaton/Dog WWW 7/20/1991 11:41 BW/Dustin/Hayes vs Arn/Austin/Zbyszko WCW Sat 11/9/1991 7:41 The focus was on the Pillman/Yellow Dog feud. There's a promo where Barry left the Horsemen on the 3/3/1991 WWW, but there he is wrestling with Ric a couple weeks after and Arn through July. WCW was a mess back then. Barry gets attacked several times after the July matches... several confrontations, but there isn't another match on the list until that Nov one, then not again untl Clash 18 on 1/21/92. Anyway, there's another long Arn & Barry vs LX match. I recall the Eight-Man Tag in January was a really heated tease for Wargames... but I could at the time just have been digging all that talent being on my TV for free, and rather than a good match from a lay out standpoint it just was spotty. My recollection was that Barry-Pillman to start the 1991 Wargames was the best opening 5 minute segement (as opposed to the later, shorter 2 minute opening segments) that I'd ever seen. I think I read someone commenting on it in the past few years saying the same thing: the two were really quite good. John

Barry's tours prior to the knee injury: 11/25/83 - 12/12/83 AJPW Tag League 01/09/86 - 02/05/86 AJPW 02/21/90 - 03/06/90 AJPW 03/21/91 NJPW Dome Show 08/06/92 - 08/12/92 NJPW G1 Matches available: 11/25/83 - 12/12/83 AJPW Tag League 11/25/83 Hansen & Brody vs Windham & Fuller 12/05/83 Tenryu vs Windham 12/08/83 Tsuruta & Tenryu vs Windham & Fuller 12/10/83 Kabuki vs Windham 12/12/83 Mascaras & Caras vs Windham & Fuller 01/09/86 - 02/05/86 AJPW 01/11/86 Tsuruta & Fuyuki vs Windham & Rotundo 01/14/86 Baba & Tenryu vs Windham & Rotundo 01/25/86 Yatsu & Teranishi vs Windham & Rotundo 01/31/86 Choshu & Yatsu vs Windham & Rotundo 02/21/90 - 03/06/90 AJPW 02/21/90 Taue vs Windham 03/06/90 Tsuruta vs Windham 03/21/91 NJPW Dome Show Anderson & Windham vs Saito & Chono 08/06/92 - 08/12/92 NJPW G1 08/06/92 Mutoh vs Windham There may be more available from 1992... I don't really have a good list of what may have been covered in the various Classics/Sammy from that year. The Mutoh match was from the G1 commercial tape that had the decently cool Hash-Rude match. John

I think we all agree on that: booked as heel vs heel, but not at all worked heel vs heel in the pre-match or match. The promos are probably on youtube, and the vibe was just a bit more heelish on Macho while Jake was sliding closer into his face-ish role. John

I think we walked through this in an earlier post. Looking at Graham's site, Jake was sort of in tweener-ville after the Steamboat feud. That was blown off with the 10/04/86 SNME (taped 09/13/86) where Steamer pinned him in a Snake Pit Match. There were Steamboat matches after that one was taped, but that was pretty common in those days: a feud would run here and there until the blow off aired, and might have a match or two here and there after that. He had some George Steele matches in October, but that looks to be filler until his next feud. They looked to be setting up a feud with JYD, and there are some matches out there... though JYD was also flaking out a bit around that time. They did have a Snake Pit moment on the 10/19/86 Challenge. Hogan was on the Snake Pitt on 10/12 and 11/23: Does either of those strike one at the "DDT" moment? Or did the WWF simply bury the tape of the DDT? Or is the source for the DDT from a Jake shoot where he's making shit up? Anyway, back to what he was up to... Matches with Savage on 10/22/86, 10/23/86 and 11/03/86 at the very least. These are in advance of the 11/29/86 SNME (taped 11/15/86) Jake vs Savage match. The WWF liked to do dry runs of matches, but three of them are a bit much... especially that far out. Tito matches popping up, at least one of which is in circulation. That's also the type of thing that the WWF would roll out as fller: toss Jake with a solid face hand on a card when neither of them have much going on. Some Slater matches, though that looks to be in prep to their TV match which was pretty much a throwaway. For the clearest sign that he's in tweener-ville and they're trying to figure out what to do with him: 11/21 vs Harley 11/22 vs Harley 11/23 vs Tito 11/24 vs Tito 11/26 vs Tito 11/28 vs Tito 11/29 vs Hercules 11/29 vs Koko 11/30 vs Savage Tito is sort of his "primary"... but it's not very clear. By January it's a little more headed face: 01/01 Savage (cage) 01/02 Haynes (Tacoma) 01/03 Haynes 01/09 Steele (cage) 01/10 Bundy 01/11 Bundy 01/13 Reed 01/19 Bundy 01/21 Kirchner 01/22 Orndorff 01/23 Orndorff 01/24 Orndorff 01/29 Hogan 01/30 Garea (sub for JYD) 01/31 Piper 02/22/87 Challenge (taped 01/27): HTM guitar shots Jake He gets some Kamala in Feb, but also gets legdropped by Hogan *after* SNME airs. Anyway, looking at the results, he drifted into tweenerism after Steamer. It looked like they had some heel ideas (opposite JYD and potentially Hogan) but some face ideas as well (Savage and running him against quite a few others). I honestly don't think Vince and Jesse were truly "surprised". The company was so careful of what they threw out on NBC, and had so much time to post produce it if needed, that they knew Jake was going to work the way he did. In fact, my recollection of the promos before the match were a bit of a hint where things were headed. Why they left him hanging so long as a tweener, which was something I can't think of them doing to that degree very many other times? That's an interesting question. Don't know if we'd ever get a straight answer from any of them a quarter century later. :/ It's really strange to look back and see HTM winning with a pin at Mania over the fully turned and semi-hot Jake, who had Alice Cooper as his sidekick. About as clear sign as you can see that Vince had plans for HTM. John

Probably what one would have expected. John

Barry did a few. He worked one of the Tag Leagues teaming with Fuller if I recall. Nothing memorable there. That was back in the still-territorial days, and Barry was one of the young guys on the list of "he could be something down the road" (i.e. like the champ), so you get a trip or two to Japan. I suspect his pre-WWF size hurt him. Tall skinny rather than tall big. His size by the time he went to JCP was better, but it was also a time by which JCP didn't do a lot with Japan unless the guys had their own deals (like the Roadies). Don't know if there was ever a chance of him going over there as a semi-regular... JCP/Dusty always had big plans for him, so there wasn't the chance for him to go work 4 series a year as the regular gaijin did in the 80s. Crockett just couldn't afford to have Barry go that much, plus he was likely making good cash. John