jdw

Don't know if he would have gotten over faster: he always had issues while NJPW was in its 90s prime of getting over relative to his peer age group: the Three Musketeers, Kosh and Hase. Kosh and Hase had the issue that they never were going to be pushed at the level of the Three Musketeers in terms of IWGP winners. But they did connect well with the fans and knew how to play to them. Which leads into... There was some goofiness to Chono and Mutoh, but fans bought them. Kosh, for all people want to shit on him in the 80s, kinda knew how to get heat in his matches. There's a lot of silly shit in them, but at times I think we're down at his silliness and goofy selling and match layout the same way that someone looks down at the mystical powers of Pulling Down The Strap and finds it goofy as all hell to the point it ruins shit for them. :/ In the 90s there were still plenty of goofy things there for Kosh, and his willingness to blow off selling when it was time to get up and do moves was still there often. On the other hand... one of the most impressive things I've seen live as a fan was Kosh main event three straight nights at Sumo Hall against three different often tough opponents (Yamazaki, Mutoh, Chono) and pull of very acceptable Major Arena Main Events that sucked the right into them into thinking they were watching excellent matches. I don't think Sasaki could have pulled it off at the time. I think it's more than "nice clothesline, do a cross armbreaker" because Kosh didn't have those things. John

I think Embry had two major issues that hit hardcores at the time: * the book in an era when Dusty+Book=Evil * didn't have the "look" The first was an automatic negative that booker-wrestlers had to always fight back from to get credit from hardcores... unless of course you happened to be Our Hero Ric, when everything was okay with him having the book and Mean Old Herd was the heel. When you start with that negative, then push the fuck out of yourself to the point of revolving the promotion around yourself... you were pretty much fucked to hardcores in that era. Maybe Eddie Gilbert got away with it in the 80s, but his run (in Bama I want to say?) was extremely short and who knows how it would have played out if it went as long as Embry's. The second is that Embry didn't have the look. Little guy, in a bit of not-so-great shape, opposite some big ass guys. As much as Dave railed against juice, there also were all those comments about Race not having the "look" of an NWA Champ, of Jumbo and others putting on weight, etc. Look did matter to a degree. Embry was a little guy pushing himself to the moon... that's well into the "Leans Against" category for hardcores at the time. Not justifying it. But that's a big part of what it was. In addition, World Class had been thought of as a dump past it's prime by that point, and had the unfortunate problem of pretty much all hardcores having watched a chunk of the glory days... and Dave happening to be in town for a run of those hots days. It was next to impossible for Embry to do anything that made people put it in that class. Consider post-Exodus All Japan. It almost doesn't matter how much people pimped Pro Wrestling Love Mutoh or Kawada finally getting a Long Run with the TC. All Japan had a glorious run in the 90s, and there were legendary matches in the 80s... we all saw them, watched through a lot of them... it would be a uphill struggle for people pimping 2001-2005 AJPW to convince some of us old goats set in our ways that it's worthy of being called "great". That's not entirely fair. In a sense, World Class / Dallas by the time of Embry wasn't really World Class anymore. All Japan of the 00's wasn't really All Japan anymore. You sort of have to set aside the past and judge it on it's own. Setting all that aside, I pretty confident there were items in the WON about business being up, and Embry's angles getting credit for it. John

I don't think it increased his stature all that much. He always was going to get a push, and already had been pushed rather strongly at that same level (tag champs). The tag reign ended up being largely a waste with very little of it standing out or being memorable. The certainly pushed them over a lot of natives early, but no one cared. They pushed them against the Jurassic Powers, but no one much cared. He was held out of the 1993 G1, instead having the feud with the Jurassics. He got the push to the Finals at the 1994 G1, and ended up having the first really disappointing Final... and it was Koshinaka if I recall who got pimped by the press and fans as the guy who stole the show, while Chono going Blackjack was the story. Coming out of the gimmick, he was a total after thought in 1995 and into 1996 when freaking Tenzan got quickly over after coming back to the company. I watched his four matches the following year at G1, and he was stunningly *not* over. Even the Teacher-Student thing that the A Block came down to didn't matter much to fans. Wait, it gets worse. Here's the order of the G1 matches that year: 8/2 Masa Chono beat Satoshi Kojima (13;46) via submission. Kensuke Sasaki beat Hiroyoshi Tenzan (15:03) via submission. Kazuo Yamazaki beat Keiji Mutoh (13:39) via submission. Riki Choshu pinned Shinya Hashimoto (17:14) 8/3 Kensuke Sasaki KO Junji Hirata (5:08). Keiji Mutoh pinned Satoshi Kojima (15:21). Riki Choshu pinned Hiroyoshi Tenzan (5:12). Shiro Koshinaka pinned Kazuo Yamazaki (13:50) 8/4 Kazuo Yamazaki beat Satoshi Kojima (9:56) via submission. Hiroyoshi Tenzan pinned Shinya Hashimoto (11:27) Shiro Koshinaka pinned Masa Chono (22:10) 8/5 Masa Chono beat Kazuo Yamazaki (12:25) via submission. Riki Choshu TKO Kensuke Sasaki (15:13). Keiji Mutoh beat Shiro Koshinaka (11:59) via submission 8/6 Satoshi Kojima pinned Shiro Koshinaka (10:33). Kensuke Sasaki pinned Shinya Hashimoto (9:13). Masa Chono pinned Keiji Mutoh (24:43) Riki Choshu pinned Masa Chono (13:45) to win the 1996 G-1 Climax The "mains": Riki-Hash, Kosh-Yamazaki, Koshi-Chono, Kosh-Mutoh, Chono-Mutoh/Riki-Chono Riki wouldn't even let Sasaki have a sniff of the main event in the series. He had confidence the he and Hash could follow Mutoh-Yamazaki, but didn't think he and Sasaki could follow Mutoh-Kosh despite: * it was effectively the "final" of the A Block * it had the teacher-student vibe I always thought during the Hellraiser era that it was the worst thing for Sasaki's early career. He lost a chunk of his career of learning out to work and sell and tell stories in top singles matches. John

On teams working numbers, there's plenty of that, and always has been. Teams often would inflate half houses to large numbers. Part of this is due to Season Tickets, and those people not coming. Part of it was jerkoff owners like Sterling when the Clips played in the Sports Arena. On the other hand, we knew what capacity was in the Sports Arena. Sterling could announce whatever he wanted, but if he said he put 20K in there we knew he was full of shit: he couldn't fit that many in there. John

I would be interested in exactly which cards Dave is talking about. Nitro, Thunder and the PPVs by 1998 had a stage and stuff blocked off. What non-Nitro/Thunder/PPV cards can he point to that we can go look up the capacity of that same arena for the NBA. I don't recall WCW averaging 12K a card in 1998, and it certainly didn't in 1998 (peak month that year was 7,649, which was 1K higher than any month prior to that in the decade for WCW). They were drawing strong on the PPVs and TV, and did do well on certain house shows. But specifics. John

But Vince knew he was banging Steph. You don't honestly think that Steph was lying to Daddy about that. John

They needed singles wrestlers, wanted to get Sasaki over, Jumbo had just died for the other company (I guess from a career standpoint that's accurate), so... They draw Sasaki in a gimmicked and limiting tag combo from late 1992 on into 1995. Yeah, that will get someone over as a singles. He did get some IWGP challeges in there, but they weren't exactly the most memorable of the era. John

That is the single most defining moment of Trip's career: He was the first person to use his position (Banging The Boss's Daughter) and his manipulative skills to con Vince into letting him be the first Heel to beat the Top Babyface in the Company at Wrestlmania. Dude *pinned* Foley *and* Rock when it was Rock vs Foley vs Trip for the last 31+ minutes of that match. That was and always will be The Triple H Moment. Granted, things like working a racist angle where Book's only payback to racism could be winning the title at Mania... and Trip fucking him over by pinning him... that was pretty rich. My favorite was probably Trip's big Babyface Comeback From Injury where he'd have his shinning moment of winning the World Title... and no one gave a shit about it and instead treated Rock-Hogan as the main even... I mean, that was great. But pinning Rock and Foley two-on-one (after Giant went out fast) to be the first Heel to win the Mania Main... that's the Trip we all know and hate. John

Which I see CFCW pointed out as well. I'd go beyond just sports, since you see the same thing with people complaining about the New Kids On The Block while putting over their favorite indy band. John

Corrected. People like to associate behavior to "smarks" that is exactly what we see in all hardcore fandoms. You see it in sports, politics, movies, books, music, etc. John

What was the context? Jumbo worked for the other company than the one that the Hellraisers worked for. The Hellraisers debuted in late 1992, right around the time Jumbo finished his career. But what does "singles wrestlers" have to do with that? Was he talking about an offer by All Japan to take the RW's after their WWF gig ended in 1992? And that they wanted singles wrestlers? That doesn't sound right, since they didn't end up signing any gaijin singles wrestlers of note after Jumbo got sick. Stuck with Hansen, Gordy and Doc as the only ones at the top level. Ted came in the following year, but it was to give Stan a partner, not to get a singles wrestler. John

I basically think it's impossible to think there were 77K in the building for Brasil and 78K in the building for Mania when there were tickets sold on the field for Mania... and obviously not for the World Cup. Here's the thing. I've been to the Rose Bowl for: * Rose Bowl games * UCLA football games * Olympic soccer matches * World Cup soccer matches Setting aside that I've *played* on the field. I know what the building seats. FIFA didn't work it when they gave attendance figures between 90K to 94K for the eight games there. I've actually been in bigger crowds in Rose Bowl, such at the 1984 Olympics. If FIFA wasn't working the Rose Bowl, where they had no desire to work a number to top the 100K+ that saw the 1984 Olympic Final, they weren't working the Silverdome crowds. They simply didn't give a fuck. The 1994 Copa was known that it would top the all-time attendance record for Copas even before the first game was played: demand was that high, and the size of the various stadium collectively topped what prior hosts had been able to roll out. So... 77K for the World Cup is a real, not-worked number for the Silverdome. And articles prior to the WC were reporting that the Silverdome and other stadiums were having their capacity reduced by needing to meet FIFA pitch size requirements. So pre-World Cup, the seats in the building were more than 77K. I agree with the notion that "we'll never know" how many people were really there. That's not what folks like Bix and I are saying. I agree with the notion that "the WWF worked the numbers". That's not what folks like Bix and I are saying, and frankly we probably though that long before Dave game up with The New Number. What we are saying is the 78K is flat out wrong. The photos aren't Photoshopped. Dave admits every seat in the building was sold, and more could be put in if they could. We know there were 78K to 80K seats in the stands alone, and none of them look to have been blocked off or impacted. So 78K is the baseline before we start counting the people on the field and the suites and wheelchairs. Set aside the pope. All the pope does is get us to he same ballpark that Sold Out Regular Seating + All Those Fuckers On The Floor + Almost Certainly Some Number for Suites + Almost Certainly Some Number for Wheelchairs gets us: comfortably more than 80K, into the mid-80s. Pretty much any number between 84K and 88K would sound reasonable to me. Under 80K? Just not possible for the number that was really in the building. John

One additional thing, which I think may go past Dave because he doesn't work for a corporation or know anything about corporations financial systems. The "I saw the WWF's computer printouts" in 2001, and that they reflected data going all the way back to 1986 (i.e. Hogan-Orndorff) is a hoot. The WWF wouldn't be working off the same finacial program in 2001 that they were in 1986. They're not like Dave still working off Word Perfect or Word. My company is larger than the WWF. We handle more transactions than the WWF. I can't get "computer" data going back to 1986/87. That wasn't the last system. It wasn't two system ago. It was three systems ago. When I have a subpoena or discovery request, I can get data off one of our current systems going back to 2001. Our prior system, which is now a legacy system and only accessable by restoring back up tapes, goes back to 1997 the last time I had to go back that far, which was a couple of years ago. It likely doesn't even go back that far now as the need for earlier data is done and we purge older data. The system before that? Gone. The one used in the 80s? Long gone. I have limited hardcopy summary data in binders going back to the early/mid 90s. Those only exist because I took possession of the binders when finance was going to pitch them once they were outside their audit requirements. 80s hardcopy data? So long gone that it's not even funny. When we had cases in the mid-90s and hard to go look for that stuff, it was already gone to shreding once any IRS needs had passed. Unless someone sent Dave a shitload of old "computer reports" generated back in the 80s, what Dave is working off of is something that someone *later* put together. I suspect that what Dave is going to say next is that the WWF/WWE has been keeping an ongoing master spreadsheet (or more advanced relational db though that would go over his head) of all house shows going back forever, with attendance, paid, gates, merch, etc. Somehow I doubt that. But if it exists, I sure wish that Bix and others could use their contacts in the WWF to smuggle that out of the building. It sure would make stuff like Matt Farmer's research and Kris' WWF vs The World thread a hell of a lot easier. John

Futbol attendance at the WC: http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/editi...051/report.html 18 June 1994: United States 1-1 Switzerland 73,425 http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/editi...062/report.html 22 June 1994: Romania 1-4 Switzerland 61,428 http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/editi...068/report.html 24 June 1994: Sweden 3-1 Russia 71,528 http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/editi...080/report.html Brazil 1-1 Sweden 77,217 Capacity was listed by FIFA as 77K, which they hit with the big draw of Brasil. There is an article here: Fifa Dictates Sodden Changes For Us Stadium That indicates the Silverdome capacity (along with other stadiums) was being lowered because of the pitch size difference between futbol and football. So a drop from the football config of 80K to 77K for the World Cup isn't odd. Also not that the attendance figures vary, and they didn't try to fluff the Team USA game into a sellout attendance. There's a shot of the Who's concert in this thread: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f203/wall-sound-441274 Bix: I'd recommend grabbing it and putting it in your photobucket for future reference. Who knows when that board might die. People are packed in the infield, and any of us that went to any of those old festival setting gigs in stadiums know that it was SRO on the field. The field was fucking packed. On the other hand, the stage blocks off the entire end of the stadium. No one back there. Zep put more than The Who into the stadium: http://www.oldbuckeye.com/pontiacsilverdome77 Zep's own site: http://www.ledzeppelin.com/show/april-30-1977 The best shot: http://www.ledzeppelin.com/image/photos-ho.../pontiac-1977-0 Again, a massive amount of the seats blocked off by the stage, as was standard back then. But they also pack the field. Of course those figures were likey worked on some level But we're talking about a stadium that in the non-field portion sat 80K for the Lions, 81K for the Super Bowl, and 77K when *lowered* in seats for the World Cup. We have Dave often saying that the WWF sold all their tickets and could have put 125K in the building if there were enough seats. The pictures show all of the non-field seats looking packed. The *baseline* is 77K to 80K in the stadium seats, less about 1500 for suites and wheelchairs... though I don't think any of us doubt the WWF / Promoters / Stadium wouldn't want to sell those 1500 suite and wheelchair seats as well, especially when it would be easy to pipe the PPV feed into the suites and those are freaking highroller suites. So a baseline of 77K to 80K, plus all those people on the field for Mania. 78K for Mania is off. John

I've always been willing to believe somewhere between 85K to 90K depending on how many are in the infield. That shot you have below is up in the corner... and it's packed. All of the other famous photos of the event show: * packed * no obvious group of empties * no obvious group of impacted/blocked/blocked off seats While there may have been empty seats in the building, all of the pictures tend to indicate exactly what you'd see in looking at pics of a sellout: no obvious empties, in the sense that if anyone didn't come they are so few that the empties are nearly impossible to see. Dave's own reporting at the time, and I think what he's said since, is that it Sold Out. That other thread has him saying that it would have drawn 125K if they could fit that many in the building. So there were no unsold seats according to Dave. The pic below isn't the best for seeing the infield, but it's enough to remind me what we thought at the time: That's a shitload of people on the infield. I'd forgotten just how widely they put seats down on the floor. I've seen a number of stadium shows since, such as Shea, that in my head the notion of "not too many seats" on the field with loads of grass showing is what I think of. The Silverdome had a ton of people on the floor. I think what we were generally tossing around was 78-80K in the stands (based on whether suites and other things were counted in), and 8K+ on the floor. I think someone even did an attempted seat count on one of the easier blocks of seats on the floor, and it wasn't a small number. The rounded numbers stand out as odd, but that also may be *Dave* rounding. Dave's / the WWF's number do include some comp: 2600. That sounds pretty reasonable. But do we get from 86K/88K down to 78K? Skim? Local Promoters / the stadium owners getting 8K to 10K as their cut? In a sense an old school version of PPV revenue where the PPV companies get their cut of the revenue? John

It's a good thread, and certainly a good place for future posts on the "watching old footage" topic when it comes up. Please resist the urgue to lock it. If that detour is/becomes an issue, just split them off into a Boneyard thread where it can go to die. Too much else in here that's good. John

Despite what ended up #1, it's very much *not* a Usual Suspects list. John

Lord did I hate all of these back in the day. John

Baba had already asked Kawada to leave Misawa's group and "join hands" with Taue. In a sense, they were ending their feud with a hand shake, and mutual respect. At the time it struck me as the perfect finish to the feud for these two guys. One of the points of the next series is how they get along as new team. No tease of the old feud, they get right down to business as teammates, climaxing with winning the titles then defending them against Misawa & Kobashi. John

Didn't happen. Their next match was the 1995 J-Cup. John

He's said something similar in the past about how it was the 80s and all that entails. Not sure that Vince cops to doing any of that stuff in the 90s. John

Here's one of the issues with Tiger Mask Sayama: It was 4/81 through 8/83 that he was on TV. His time in UWF 1.0 doesn't amount to anything: it wasn't on TV. His martial arts stuff after that doesn't amount to anything. NJPW Pro Wrestling was massive at the time. But... it was *at the time*. The most watched TV show in US history prior to this past Super Bowl aired in that period: the finale of MASH in Feb 1983. 106M to 125M people watched it. Exactly how over is MASH now? It means very little to those who were born after it, or became aware after it. On the other hand, Baba was on TV all the way back to the 60s. People who were kids in the 60s by stopped watching by the time of Tigeryama knew who Baba was. He also was still wrestling in 1998, and his death in 1999 was a national event of major news. Tigeryama means something to a generation of fans, and was known by those people who watched New Japan for Inoki or Fujinami or Choshu. Baba was known by *generations* of people in the country. On can try to debate the others, but putting Sayama over Baba would be a mistake. John

I love Queen, but I don't need to see JYD coming out to enjoy the song. Where as Power Hall + Choshu Entrance + Fans Going Batshit = Great Wrestling Entrance Song. John

Even if they were taken by scalpers, they would then have been "sold". Scalpers typically resell tickets, not get handed freebies to in turn sell. Again, I don't think Dave has ever said the event had Paper, and I don't recall him ever saying that there were 88K in the building by 10K were "comped" (which again would be an insanely high number of comp tickets). He wrote at the time, and a number of times since, that it was Sold Out. John

Yes. John