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Deserve what? Is that in reference to anything I wrote? I thoughy my post was just describing what Flair-Bob would have been, and didn't take any shots. Bob vs Harley wasn't terribly different from what you'd see in any number of Bob or Harley matches. Perhaps a bit more face dominating than you'd see in some of Harley matches, but that came across as touring NWA champ coming into MSG to make the local hero look strong. Seriously, the complaint about the match is that Bob dominated it far too much, which kind of hurts the "Bob let Harley get in on the action" concept you're trying to get across. That said, there weren't any "liberties" that Bob failed to take against Harley that you seem to think he took against other wrestlers. Pretty typical Bob performance, and it's not like he took liberties against any of his opponents like say Billy did against Inoki. I think that if folks watch Bob-Harley from MSG, they probably could imagine Ric in a nearly exact match *more* than they can see Harley doing it. Really, it's closer to a Flair Match than a Harley Match. That's probably why some are disappointed: they expected/hoped Harley could get to flash more, while there isn't any surprise in Flair constantly getting bitched out by Kerry / Sting / Dusty / Face X. John

Was against it at the time it happened, and that it was trashing Hash. Pretty loudly... which is probably what Jon is remembering. The WC threads were probably a few years after, but captures it. John

WrestlingClassics discussions. One of the first times I *really* pissed Dave off, as we had wildly different views on Hash-Ogawa. Probably could search over there with my User ID and "Ogawa". Might be a couple of threads, but there was one longer, more detailed one that sent him off. John

They worked before at least once in Toronto several years before. I suspect they got along fine. Bob and Harley got along fine in their MSG match. Whether it was any good... who knows. Bob typically tended to work Bob matches, while Ric would work Ric matches. The might make it a little disjointed at times, but probably not. Ric was more than willing to bitch out, and if one looks at the Harley-Bob match, Bob dominates it even though Harley had a fair amount of stuff left in the holster that he could have done to fill space if he'd been on top more. Suspect Bob would have done a lot of controlling with something like the headlock and ground headlock. Ric would have cheated to be on top, and bitch out to go back on the defense. John

That's laugh test material. John

Good stuff on Texas/Houston, Bix. John

Dynamite over Aja for Big Red in August. Dynamite was 0-3 going in. Basically the point of putting the belt back on Aja so quickly: having meaning for Dynamite's win, and then set her up for Toyota in December. Frankly they pulled the trigger on getting the belt off her so fast, but by that point the working relationship was fading. I'd also put in the Grand Prix final of Toyota-Hotta. Basically three big singles matches in a week or so: Dynamite-Aja, Toyota-Hokuto, Toyota-Hotta. They make for interesting contrasts. John

Are you sure about that date? Tenryu didn't meet with NJPW's front office until late August / early September to get the working deal together. I think the feud started with Koshinaka & Kimura working the 9/15 WAR show, underneath Flair-Tenryu. If it hasn't been mentioned, the Dojo Sign Feud in New Japan is pretty interesting/fun, and pretty much the start of Koshinaka's push as a heavyweight after several years of being lost after leaving the juniors. John

Yeah, and Tom is spot on. Top Chef has tried to mix things up to not be so obvious about it. You use to be able to tell at times by which chef was really in the weeds on a dish, especially if there was just one. Now they use that as a twist: chef is worried because they rushed through slapping shit together, but judges end up liking it. And the "featured chef" gimmick where they'd show a lot of a chef because it was the last time we'd be seeing them... they've really away run from that quite a bit as it use to be a bit too obvious. John

Might be two different levels/types: * Guys who had "it" but self promoted themselves to epic levels * Guys who self promoted themselves far beyond their level The first group would have someone like Inoki and Hogan. Obviously terrific bullshit artists who self promoted themselves, but they also had tools... they pretty much had it. The second group... isn't Onita one of the definative in that group? He literally had nothing. Small, not chance ever of being a heavy. Thrown a bone as Jr. Champ, but pale compared to how over Sayama was. The horrible injury that killed his career. He had nothing there, and for years. And then... magic, right? Russo would be high on the list of the second group. I'm not a huge Heyman fan, and do think that he's vastly overrated by hardcores. But he self promoted himself to: * a good paying job with WCW * getting punted from that * his own promotion/territory * that went bankrupt horribly * a good paying job with the WWE * burning his bridges there left and right That's not really epic. John

Yeah, I understand they moved from Manassas to Richmond. Was trying to get that across in my "ROH runs Manassas and now Richmond irregularly" comment, but could have been clearer. I happened to be on the east coast for the last one in Manassas and the first one in Richmond, so saw the transition. One can understand the move. As you say, bigger city to draw fans from. The new building has a lot of space in it to grow (i.e. put more seats in) if demand increases. John

I think we would probably need to split up what we're talking about: * Nostalgia Shows * Irregular Spot Shows * Regular Shows The first we can pretty much toss aside since they don't have much bearing on talking about creating a Large Indy Promotion (in a sense what ROH is) rather than a Regular Local Indy Promotion (which is what PWG is). Nostalgia shows don't really tap into the crowd of either of those things, plus they typically are one-off things even if they're annual. Coming out to a one-time thing, or a once-a-year thing isn't the same as running a promotion. The second is a bit tougher. ROH runs Manassas and now Richmond irregularly. 05/09/08 Manassas 08/01/08 Manassas 01/16/09 Manassas 06/12/09 Manassas 12/18/09 Manassas 05/07/10 Manassas 08/27/10 Richmond 01/14/11 Richmond 07/08/11 Richmond 2-3 shows a year. Less regular than they do NY and Chicago, and probably the other cities that are a bit more of their "home base" cities. PWG and a lot of smaller indies do Regular shows. PWG will probably be between 10-12 shows this year in LA. Creating a promotion that combines regular and irregular shows that draw _and_ give enough work to the stable of wrestlers takes a fair amount of resources. Kind of need a money mark. Or a parent company. Honestly, if I were the WWE, I would have created a circuit a long time again to develop talent. John

LA has a lot of indies. One key thing it's lacking is a good money mark like ROH has had. PWG has run regularly for years, but it doesn't run all over the place. Tends to have a home base, especially now, and runs roughly once a month unless they have a back-to-back like BOLA (and one coming up next month). There are other small promotions. They often run the same weekend as PWG, and will get one of the outside talents to come in. There are a _ton_ of other ones: we're always finding cards for shows on our cars coming out of PWG shows for promotions we haven't heard of. That's not even getting into the various lucha ones. No one really has tried to make an Ubber Indy... frankly because it costs money. Beats the hell out of me how PWG makes a go of it, and what the heck they're paying guys. Can't be much given how many are in the building (which isn't a ton different from the pair of ROH spot shows I've been to in Richmond and Manasas though). Your point on fans... there is some truth there. There is a core of fans... the folks who come to PWG are pretty rabid. I suspect we have as many wrestling fans in the LA metro/CSA as most anywhere other than New York simply because the metro/CSA is so massive. But it's not really focused/rabid enough on the indy scene where you'd have confidence that an Ubber Indy could promote monthly in a 1000 seat building, while also running shows in say OC and Riverside and Ventura or SD in between to give people regular work. Let alone then bust up to take the Bay as well. Maybe they could... just doesn't seem likely. Though I don't know if ROH could monthly draw 1000 in Baltimore and Richmond and Carolina, etc. Ubber Indy is pretty much a pipe dream as ROH has shown. John

Yep. I think I've rolled out the numbers on Vince's pre-Expansion home base and then the cities Hogan & Vince added to the base. I think I used the 1980 Census for pre-expansion. The % of the population those base states would make up was larger back then, as a lot of the growth of the country has come elsewhere. I also used a bit of that for a discussion recently on the Torch boards about the story that the WWF would have died if Mania 1 bombed. Among the many things Vince could (and frankly would) have done until getting fully back on his feet would have been to pull back into profitable cities and ease off promoting in cities that weren't doing well. There are a lot of other obvious things he would have done, especially given that he ended up doing most of them through the years when faced with different financial ups and downs. Anyway... that base of the WWF was monsterous. I think in the end on California the reason a super territory didn't come out of it was that the north and south had their own reasonably successful promotions. We've all seen that a lot of promoters don't want to give up power even when times are rocky. When you're cycling through periods of things going well, you really don't think things will ever get so bad the promotion is dead. When things are good, those promoters were making really good money relative to era. Hard to have guys like Shire and the LaBelles get together and say: * we can trust each other * we can make more money together * once we firm up in CA, we might be able to expand into other nearby states Never would have been a massive expansion, but AZ has some good cities that wouldn't be bad for bi-monthly "tours". Portland was a no-go, and it's hard to get to WA (Seattle) without having OR. Hell... I'm trying to remember if anyone ran Seattle in the late 70s / early 80s. Denver was out because that was an AWA town if I recall. So there are limits to expanding into a larger territory. The biggest problem becomes that first part: trust. Not likely. Only way it might have happened would be if one or the other wanted out of the business and sold to the other one. John

Any my points: The feud was shit. The match was wildly disappointing. John

Randy gigged him. No way in hell did he gig Ric without Ric knowing he was going to do it. John

CA had two promotions in the 60s & 70s: the Los Angeles based LaBelle promotion and the San Fran based Shire promotion. They both had stretches of being red hot, and some stretches of being less hot. They each were probably closer to something like Florida than the WWWF. I think most of us don't grasp that the WWWF was far closer to a National promotion than as territory. From a population stand point, it was massive. NY, PA, MA, DC, Maryland.. there are solid cities to promote in even the smaller states. We think of it as a region, but it was massive. There just wasn't any push for LA and SF to get together into one territory since both were making good money when things were hot. In hindsight, they probably should have by 1977 or 1978. Someone probably should have taken a look at how the WWWF, AWA and Mid-Atlantic (with its split crew) were operating and made it work. Problem is that Shire and the LaBelle's probably weren't going to leave easy. Vince took both eventually after the territories died. We hit on that in the WWF thread to get across what Hogan & Vince did: they moved into the biggest population state in the country, the #2 metro and #4 or #5, and turned a dead territory into a red hot part of the WWF. John

Okay, got it. I think folks have been crtical of Flair-Kerry for a while in terms of the match itself. I know Frank was when he did his WCCW Digests. Will points out how horrid Manning was, and it wasn't just in this match: he really came across *often* like he thought he was another Von Erich and one of the stars of the promotion. Dylan points out that it's sloppy, which it is. I thought the finish sucked: people disconnect with the Slamming of the Door like it's the finish. It's not. Manning restarts it... and eventually Kerry knocks Flair goofy before Manning stops it with a non-finish "win" for Flair. It always struck me as a match where they had the perfect finish: Kerry gets knocked out by the door, Ric takes advantage of it and covers Kerry... and Manning is positioned where he has to count the pin for Flair: it's a No DQ Match. The angle did work, and it's hard to argue with that part. John

"Because WCW and Flair didn't want to be outdone by the WWF and Bret Hart, out came the blade. When Flair rose from the mat after getting hit with the megaphone, his blond hair was already red as he bled heavily from the forehead." -Wade Keller, PWT #367 "The Jan. 14 Dayton (Ohio) Daily News weekly pro wrestling column by Alex Marvez focused on the return of blading to the big two promotions. Wrote Marvez: "Why would anyone be dumb enough to mutilate themselves, especially considering the AIDS epidemic? Unfortunately, blood sells... There's a segment of the public that doesn't care about the health risks and simply wants gore." While the WWF didn't return the paper's calls, Bischoff said WCW doesn't have a "blood policy," but did say blood will not appear on TBS or TNT. "If someone is cut or decides to creatively get exciting inside the ring, it doesn't matter," Bischoff said. "The director knows he can't shoot it for TBS and TNT. On pay-per-view, everybody turns up the intensity a notch or two. From time to time, stuff happens"" -Torch #370: WCW Newswire I'd be interested to see if the WON had anything different. I don't think Wade was the only one reporting/talking about the IYH connection at a time when the promotions were cranking up their competative war. If something else came out of Flair's shoot, it's just another example of Ric talking out of his ass. Ric actually is a casual, compulsive liar in addition to one who lies when it benefits him. Anyway, Eric openly admitted there was no policy by the time December came around. We know there was a policy back in March, though that was a very selective one: Hogan juiced for Vader at house shows if I recall. Fall Brawl was the first PPV after Nitro debuted. If Ric and Arn went to Eric and sold it to him as a match that needed something (juice or epic Terry-Flair brawling) to seel the match, they could have had a shot of it happening. If not the juice, then perhaps a good brawling war around the building. John

I'll bite. What didn't you and Dylan like about the booking of the Kerry-Flair cage match? John

I'm trying to remember if we ever dated when this was taped in one of the old threads last decade about Barry. I think it was taped after the Clash rather than taped and in the can. Then Barry blew the knee. John

I'm also a little surprised by the "match you wanted" stuff. We _all_ when being critical of matches have through the years talked about how matches could be better, what matches were missing, what matches lacked, where they were weak. We regularly talk about the choices workers make in matches, whether they're good or poor choices. It's a little ironic when we can go over to the Sayama discussion and see Dave making equiv comments ("How dare you tell Sayama how to work") and folks here dropping him on his head. John

The one I saw live convey the hate: Marty wanted to kick the living shit out of Shawn. That said, is anyone saying that Marty and Shawn at that time were collectively as "smart" of workers as people would pimp up Ric and Arn to be by 1995? As said, WCW's policy on juice was pretty inconsistent. My point would be that the whole feud blew, climaxed by a mediocre match. John

Oh lord... is anyone really buying that one? It's up there with Bret's juice against Piper and Davey Boy being "accidents".

Two points: * Terry vs Flair on live TV didn't have juice, but folks seemed to think it got across a aura of violence and hate. * A few months after Flair-Arn, Flair was on a PPV where there ended up being a ton of juice. Company policy on juice wasn't terribly consistent. If they wanted to do it, they likely could have gone to the right person to get it cleared while also creating coverage when people higher up complained. John