jdw

I conceptually agree with Todd on this one, but probably would low sell it with a "That's a hoot" rather than wasting much thought on it. John

Yeah, I don't know what is funnier: the "allegedly" or the Gino partying with FFM work. John

I want to say it was either on Prodigy or on AOL GSW. I recall hearing about it, but if it was AOL GSW, he left before I got on there (late 1996). John

You don't really have to "ask" for the schedule. You just walk away. Every year there's a time or two when someone big gets injured, and the WWE needs to scramble to fill the slot. If you're Edge, when the phone rings, to accept that every two years for a nice slot at the top, 4 or so PPV cycle, a nice chunk of change, and then head off. Agree he's banged up. 18 months off / 6 months on heals up a lot of wounds. You just leave the WWE on good terms, and on the way out say something nice to Vince that if he needs a short term emergency patch in a couple of years, you'd be happy to help out the company. John

One suspects: * Edge has been reasonably smart with his money; and * wouldn't mind sliding into that Shawn Role of coming off the bench The second isn't a bad spot to come in every couple of years for a 3-6 month run, get some big PPV paydays, then head back out. Avoids the burn out. He's already spend a fair amount of time on the shelf anyway, so he probably sees what life after wrestling looks like. John

Ratings 46.4 Colts-Saints 42.0 PIT-AZ 43.1 NWE-Giants 42.6 Indy-Chi 41.6 PIT-SEA 41.1 NWE-PHI 41.4 NWE-Carolina 40.7 OAK-Tampa 40.4 STL-NWE 40.4 Giants-BAL 43.3 STL-TEN 40.2 DEN-ATL 44.5 GB-DEN 43.3 GB-NWE 46.0 DAL-PIT 41.3 49ers-SD 45.5 DAL-BUF 45.1 DAL-BUF This year of course will top last year. There has been a long, general decline since the peak with SanFran-Cincy for Montana's first win. It spiked for the 1985 Bears, then began declining again. Relative to the decline, the Giants did good ratings for their two wins during Tuna's reign. The Cowboys spiked things back up for each of their three wins. Even Buff heading towards their fourth straight job, which everyone knew was going to happen, did the best ratings in years. Dittos PIT. I wouldn't go too hog wild about PIT's rating there as we already saw Dallas move the ratings nearly *5* points in their first return to the Super Bowl, then another .4 when facing the same team they beat the year before. PIT doing a +0.5 over the second Cowboys-Bills is pretty small relatively. Ratings started their slide back downward after that. Farve's second trip drew a one-year bump... one can debate whether that was Farve vs Old Man Elway, but I think the evidence is pretty clear that Elway was *not* a ratings draw in his other 4 trips to the Super Bowl, which included against the Giants and Montana going for back-to-back (then again, I think everyone knew the 49ers were beating the Broncs). Anyway, if Farve-Elways drew more than Farve-JobberPats, the air went out the next year I'd add that the decline of the Super Bowl in this period is probably *less* than the average decline of other Primetime and Major Programing. The average rating of say the annual Top 10 was considerably less in 199-99 season that it had been when SanFran-Cincy set the Super Bowl record. What was happening to the Super Bowl was similar to all network programing: downward, for reasons I think we all know about. Anyway, there was a one year spike for the Greatest Show On Turf. If we look at just it and the three below, you'd think maybe the DEN-ATL was the outlier, and STL-TEN was just the SB getting back up to it's normal, declining level. But looking at the next three years, that's not the case. That STL team seemes to have caught fans imagination for one year. Sure did for me. Bottom fell right out the next year, even with the Giants. STL-NWE "held" the rating from NYG-BAL: this was before Brady became Brady, and the buzz for the Rams wasn't quite what it was two years before as people had seen this show not for a 3rd straight year. OAK-Tampa *might* be the turning point. Not a thrilling combo, but a mild uptick. Noteworthy as Primtime and Major programing continues to decline even through today, with the major exception of the NFL. Two more years at a higher rating with NWE, PIT-SEA having a similar bump above that TAM-OAK did over STL-NWE. Rather large jump for Indy-CHI, another bump for NWE-NYG, and a drop of more than a full ratings point for PIT-AZ. Indy-NWE then put up the best rating since the 48.3 of CHI-NWE with the 1985 Bears. This one looks to have pulled a 47.9 overnight, compared to the 46.4 last year. Overall, the *trend* is upward from the 40.2-40.7 range of XXXIII throgh XXXVII (with the exception of the Rams-TEN outlier). One might be able to argue the trend started with XXXVII when a not-very-interesting game did a modest increase on the prior year's game. The trend since then has been up, with the biggest "jumps" forward being the ones where Manning was in it: a full point, and then +3.3 of the prior peak in the trend (ignoring the dip for PIT-AZ). This year's is going to be a nice bump up, but it isn't terribly off the trendline, nor as huge as last year's. The best "draws" in history based on multiple data points look to be the Dallas Cowboys and Manning. The 1985 Bears have just one year, and wasn't quite the bump we saw from the Cowboys in the 90s especially when the Cowboys were swimming against a long current of downward ratings. Manning is part of the upward trend, though arguable a big part of it and +1.0 & +3.3 are pretty sizeable since he doesn't have a Team Brand behind him. The Cowboys were a key team in building the SB Brand in the 70s. They basically took the rating from a 39.4 to a 44.2 in their first two appearances, it then barely peaked above that without them, then they upped it to a 47.2/47.1 in their last two appearances. Of course the Cowboys then "made" the 49ers by jobbing to them with The Catch, helping build up that record ratings. John

The Cowboys won 3 Super Bowls in 4 years. The Pats did the same a decade later. It simply takes a while for deep thinkers to come along and figure out how to make the cap work. The other key thing is that the Cowboys were still a relatively young team (i.e. not that far out of college) when winning those Super Bowls. The reason the cap impacted them was that by 1994 they were hitting the career stage where they had opportunities to increase their contracts. Jimmy was rather brilliant in playing within the rules and knowledge base of the NFL in the era. Things got out of control once he left, Jerry took full control, and they made an idiot the figure-head coach. Pretty confident that if there were a cap created in 1984 rather than 1994, Jimmy would have figured it out. Especially because it would have likely impacted the Cowboys top *rival* more, despite their reputation later as great capologists in the 90s. John

I remember at the time putting over this promo over HUGE as an example of just how great Hogan was. They thought they were moving past Hogan, and he just turns everything back around himself, and is so strong on the mic that the marks would go, "Yeah... that's right, Hogan is The Man in WCW despite Sting having that belt over there." Sort of evil brillance captured in one moment, probably better than any single moment in that era. I suspect there were more evil moments after that, but the promotion had peaked by this point... sort of the resolution of the peak. John

*snipping the stuff on parity booking since it's old news in the NFL* The NFL also espanded it's playoffs well ahead of baseball to get more teams into the post season, which in turn keeps more teams having shots at the post season deeper into the season. Farve is an obvious one. Brady could have beed one if he wanted to. He seems not to. On the other hand, the media has pushed him enough that he is. Vick is a pop culture star, thanks to the dogs. But even setting that aside, he was rather large before that. Historically, the top stars in the NFL have been very big. There are other big stars in the past 40 or so years: the occassional heavyweight box champ (Ali and Tyson, Foreman late in life), the rarer lower weighted boxer (Leonard the true exception, though ODLH could be argued due to the hispanic crossover), the every few year Olympic Stars (Bruce, Mary Lou, etc) and of course NBA's biggest stars. The NBA and the shoe companies have been rather smart in pushing NBA stars, probably the trend setters in that. But the NFL has run laps around MLB. This year, Giants-Pats or Giants-Jets would have drawn a better rating than Pack-Pitt. And a much better rating than Jags-Bucs. That said, the NFL cares *less* than other sports. Their Super Bowl ratings don't fluctuate as much as other spots depending on the match up. The Super Bowl remains the biggest event in the country. On the other hand, Fox would have loved Cowboys/Giants vs Jets/Pats/Colts over the game they got. The higher rating has value to the network more than it does to the NFL. John

I would highly doubt that Pitt has shown to be a better ratings draw over the past decade as Brady and Manning if one studied the ratings in detail. Overall, NFL ratings were up this year. Not terribly surpriding that it drew a big AFC title rating, especially when the biggest market in the country was in it country. It was up 10% from last year (Colts-Jets), but that was in the earlier time zone. More telling is that Jets-Colts beat the late broadcast of Pitt-Ravens in 2009, and the Ravens are a much better market than Indy. The big jump in the last two years wasn't 2010 to 2011, but 2009 to 2010 especially when one considers the slots. The record viewership is really due to the NFL being insanely hot product in the country. The Cowboys brand is stronger. As is, at the moment, the Pats brand because of Brady. In turn, the Farve Brand was drawing tons of big ratings over the last three years with the Jets and Vikes. I'll confess that it annoys the shit out of me because I loathed having Farve on my TV. But the ratings bore out that he drew. I suspect the Pitt Brand wasn't all that strong of a draw in the "down" period before they rebuilt it around Ben. Probably a bit of a difference with the Cowboys who still draw above average even when they are down. Suspect that a lot of people will stick around to watch them get beat. Yes. He made fun of wrestlers who thought that UFC was worked. John

I agree with Dylan. I don't want to rip on Mike, because he's always been reported to be a very nice guy. But with Flair, Mike is just too close to Ric. John

Koji's faxes were great back in the 90s. Haven't watched the show or match since then getting the tape originally from the video store: watch, write up, return. Looks like I was fine with Tenryu in it, though clearly liked Kosh quite a bit more from the comments. Suspect that my issues were less about Araya getting his ass kicked than about what he did when it was his turn to do something. Don't even remember the finish. John

Yeah... I suspect Dave doesn't get what other people have explained to him. "Who" NFL teams play isn't determined due to ratings. People have walked through how that is come up with. "When" NFL teams play each other, and what time slots they go into, are determined by (i) ratings, (ii) keeping all the partners happy, and (iii) various limitations of fitting every scheduled game into a slot. You simply can't book the first one. People have gone over that again and again with him. The second has major limitations, one of the critical one being (ii): the Best Ratings for the NFL would be to put all the best match-ups (from a ratings standpoint) into Sunday Night Football, and to a lesser degree Monday Night Football. The problem is that CBS and FOX would shit a brick if they lost all their best match ups to NBC and ESPN, which in turn would lower the value that the NFL can collect from CBS and FOX. As some of us have mentioned, the NFL has long been masterful in getting all the major networks to the table to have access to programing. In addition to getting to air the Super Bowl, the key way to keep them happy is to let them have games that draw. Dave, since he doesn't follow football as closely as many of the rest of us, seems to think that the SNF match up each week is the #1 bestest ratings drawing match up of that week. It's not. At times it is, because everyone knows that if it's Pats-Colts that the best drawing match up of the weekend and it goes in Prime Time. Wait... 11/21 SNF Games: NYG vs PHI That as the week the Colts and Pats played. Yes, Giants-Eagles is a big draw because of two major media markets, so SNF got one of the better ratings drawing matchups of the weekend. It just didn't get the best, because the NFL makes sure to keep all the networks happy. It doesn't always give CBS's biggest regular season match up of the year (that one) to NBC for SNF. That one of those limitations we talk about. There are others, such as if there was a ratings draw as big as Michael Jordan in the NFL, his team couldn't be on SNF/MNF every week. The NFL has limits on the number of times a year that any team can appear in prime time. Again, this is done to make sure that CBS/FOX (which are each the "homes" to one the conference) don't take it up the ass by losing their top team to primetime every week. Here's the difference between WWE and NFL "booking": Austin can main event every PPV in a year. Manning and Brady *combined* can't. The WWE can make Austin win every match if they want to. The NFL would much rather have Brady, Manning or Sanchez in the Super Bowl than Big Ben. No, not because Big Ben is a jerk off. Because PIT doesn't have a pot to piss in as market (relative to New York and Boston), and Big Ben has never been the tv draw than Manning and Brady are. The WWE can make Austin's PPV match a barn burner. The NFL have been stuck with more shitty Super Bowls than any of us can remember. That entire era of NFC dominance from Raiders-Skins until Elway beat Farve was loaded with dogshit games... that were only entertaining if you were (i) a fan of the winner, or (ii) hated the loser. If you happened to hate the winner (*cough*Cowboys*cough*), some of those games were nearly unwatchable. John

He lost me at this: Can you get anymore cross over than this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo5gbTirdn4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIj-wsUinc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elxpr7pzZTc Wait... let's make this easier. My gf loves him, so I've listend to probably every single one of these get put over through the years: That high five one might be her favorite of all-time. Anyone remember the Mama McNabb commercials for Chunky? For fucks sake. WWE wrestlers haven't had dick on cross over compared to NFL players. Hulk Hogan, Rock and Austin... the biggest "cross over" wrestlers of the past 30 years, don't have a pot to piss in compared to guy like Manning, Farve, Joe Willie, etc. Christ... Hogan would have loved to have the massive, long term endorsement campaign that McNabb had with Chunky. John

Daniel: was that a handheld or was it pro-shot for something?

Lord knows I spoke well of Kosh back then. I certainly put over Chono's Blackjack persona, and how the fans enjoyed him as a heel... and that he was solid in the ring. I suspect most of my G1 reviews were positive, though they were in the context of tv reviews of matches I'd seen live. Suspect I also said nice things about any number of other heavyweight matches, various spot show tags (such as the stuff leading up to Hash & Hirata vs Yamazaki & Iizuka), along with stuff like that tag title change. But... It's very much what Ditch is saying. The reason that All Japan got the run as heavies is similar to WWF vs Crockett/WCW in the 80s: they high end AJPW stuff stood out, while the NJPW heavies were more often "solid" and "good". I know I pushed the NJPW heavies as being solid / good / watchable in this era, but AJPW's best was a cut above. I recall a pretty funny post by Frank on tOA riffing on my willingness to enjoy NJPW heavies, and he punted me around pretty good about it. Anyway, the point would be: I think a fair number of people have found the 80s WWF stuff a bit of a surprise that there was actual good wrestling in the WWF in the 80s since it never gets pimped. I think it's probably more correct to say it got "less pimped" in the 80s that the promotions that were hot with hardcores, and then as we moved into the 90s just about anything positive said about 80s WWF got forgotten. But if we look at the WON, there are a number of comments by Dave calling a number of the matches we've "discovered" good matches, or excellent matches. One or more of the Tito-Greg matches, for example. They just got buried in time by all the more wicked things he said about the WWF like Junkfood Dog, Anabolic Warrior and Injectable Vitamins. It's closer to the truth that there were people, including Dave, who said some nice things about some of the WWF matches in the 80s. In turn, there are some folks in the 90s, including Dave, who said some nice things about NJPW heavies. I think if you look at this: http://www.otherarena.com/z_jdw/njpwlist.htm in 1996, you'll find a lot of heavy matches that raise above the *** ("good") level for Dave. That's an incomplete list for the entire decade, and I probably have Chris' full list for the 90s buried somethere. The other years are pretty similar. Sure, Dave sprinkled a lot more stars on the juniors. But there's also stuff like this: 04/13/96 Ishizawa vs. Nagata ***1/2 Hell... I don't even remember that match. Okay, I like that one. The entire show was heavy-centric: Wasn't terribly positive on Match #2, though I ws usually positive on Hash+Hirata matches. Like #3, wasn't negative on #4, liked #5 other than Aroya. Overall a pretty watchable show even without the juniors. On the other hand, the show the week before (Muto & Sasaki vs Hashimoto & Hirata, Fujinami & Koshinaka vs Chono & Tenzan, Fujinami & Koshinaka vs Muto & Sasaki) was extremely flat and way below what one would have hoped for / expected for the guys involved. One tends to miss that when watching something like this: there was a fair amount of NJPW that was flat, even when the "big guys" were involved. It's understandable when spot shows are flat, and this was a period when AJPW matches in Korakuen Hall weren't very thrilling anymore. But this wasn't really a case of spot show matches: those were part of a mini tag tourney going on. I'd love to have Ditch upload the 4/20/96 World Pro show. Folks can watch it, then watch the AJPW match what was on TV the same weekend: 1996 Carny Final between Taue and Doc. That's the thing that kind of hammered home the differeces. When it came across the fax that Taue-Doc was the Carny Final, it was a pretty big disappointment: that's not the match folks wanted to see. I remember being on a conference call with two other people who got the same fax, and it was a groan. Yet it ended up being a pretty good AJPW Budokan Main Event. John

Ali "worked" in/with the WWWF. "Wrestled" might be a tricky one. Not the Inoki match, but the stuff with Gorilla... and at least one other, though some of that was with the AWA if I recall. John

Dave used it a lot. Of course Dump started off as a Dump clone. Bull was Dump's sidekick, and another clone. As OJ points out, Dump was in a line of monster heels in AJW. Dump was able to take it to the next level for whatever reason. Both Bull and Aja moved out of the Dump Sidekick/Clone role into being extremely credible World Champion personas. Calling Aja a dump clone without explaining how she moved strongly beyond it is a bit like saying Fujinami is a junior and leaving it at that. They both had careers that went well past the earlier stages where they first made their marks, in ways that were pretty obvious to anyone watching their careers. John

I think Omori might have been shot in 1997, but back in 1994 he was fine in the role. Asako was as well. All Japan fans weren't really buying Fuchi much when they flipped the Misawa-Jumbo feud over into Four Corners. They had a brief moment of semi-getting it in early 1994 of Omori opposite Jun, and Asako moving into the Kikuchi role. Blew that quickly... I'm a broken record on that. John

Been round for decades: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=163007 The IT stuff at the top isn't actually the earliest use. Read lower and you'll see Mensa folk using it 30 years ago. Probably some bleed between Mensa and IT given common people in both. Probably from IT into project management. Suspect it far predates that use at the Mensa convention... probably started at an academic level. Sounds like something a professor would say. John

I'll have to listen. General gist? Was Wade pushing? John

I seemed to like this one a good deal back in my Torch review of it. Possibly due to the decline in the number of good "regular" six-man tags in 1996 (and 1995 and 1994) once they cut to the show to 30 minutes. I think when either you or Will asked, my comment was that it warranted being on as nod to the old six man tags that anchored the spot show tapings in the first half of the decade, along with a decent comp to them. John

Have the JCP ever gotten out? I know the Cornette stuff that came out was 8mm and all JIP if I recall. There is the Lawler-Race match. I guess the worry is that there's so little that it's skewed: * to WWF because that's where most is * pretty much everything gets on There stuff like the second Backlund-Valentine in first MSG feud that's pretty pedestrian. But if you're struggling to get 50 or 100 matches, it goes on. It wouldn't make the cut in the 80s... and I'm not even sure how many of the 80s Backlund-Valentine matches make it. Something like their 1984 match is better than the second 1979 match, but the 1984 might not be worthy of making the 80's cut. The draw, of course, is terrific. But I'm not sure if the 24 cards MSG/Spectrum cards that out there average between 1-2 match worthy of getting on. John

I'll have to track down that Savage-Tito in Toronto. Can someone shoot me the down low via PM as it's not among the other Savage or Tito matches that I have. John

Yeah, Europe might have more than the US. There is some US stuff that aired in Japan, but not a ton. How much Portland goes back to the 70s? Mid Atlantic was mostly handheld. Some Florida. Is any of the STL stuff of note that's not handheld from the 70s? There's some AWA out there, but I wonder how much it's representative of big AWA matches. :/ Looks like about 19 or so MSG cards and about five Spectrum card from the 70s are out there. Some misc WWF matches that have popped up. 13 of the MSF cards are from Jun 1977 on, while all of the Spectrum are from 1978 (1) and 1979. It would be a very skewed look at the US in the 70s, not in terms of bias but in what's available. Japan is a bit more interesting. There's a fair amount missing that could be choice (Baba & Jumbo vs Texas Outlaws is my current holy grail). But there's a lot that's available. Pre-1970 world wide would be interesting as well. Probably one big bucket there, and perhaps not a bad idea to simply do whatever is available. Probably not 150 matches, but a lot of it hasn't been collected into one set, or widely circulated. John