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Has Apter been with PWI recently? Thought he left ages ago for some new start up mag that is also long gone. If folks are serious about Apter (it's hard to tell from the comments), I wonder if there isn't someone in the generation before him that warrants going in first. Apter didn't invent wrestling mags. Frankly I'd like to see someone write up a history of wrestling mags so we know a little bit about them first. We all call them Apter Mags because he's the name hardcores associated with them, and he got a fair amount of face time relative to other guys in the mag business. But do we really know anything about that side of the business other than we picked read them at the newstand? John

I was inner circle at the time, and I'd have to go back and check, but could swear we road tripped really soon after the trial... in fact it may be way Dave didn't stay around until the end while Wade did. Anyway... his spirit wasn't broken by it. Zero change in how he looked at the business. I think what had greater impact on his was: * death of ECW and WCW * death of loads of wrestlers, many of whom were part of his age generation The first two were things that could be seen coming, but it still just left one promotion in the US. TNA didn't exactly fill the same place. Japan also died in the same period, which had been a key part of his wrestling interest from even before the WON started. When any one promotion sucked or drove him crazy from 1983-2000, there always was some alternative out there doing things well. From 2001 there hasn't been a lot of counterbalance when the WWE had fucked things up. Even when TNA or ROH didn't things well, he also could see they didn't have a pot to piss in, were limited in what they could do, etc. It's a bit like covering the American League in the 1950's: it would have been extremely boring. The deaths likely hit him harder than any fan: he knew a lot of the people, dealt with many of them, and was close to a few. So many, so regularly, the business doing very little about it, Dave even taking heat for making a "big deal" out of it. Perhaps more difficult is that it wasn't an easy problem to clean up, as Dave wrote about often: there was no magic bullet to the problems. That's more than a bit draining for someone covering it. Those both reached a tipping point through the first half of the 00's. In the 90s when I dealt with him, there was very little changing in his interest in wrestling. The one thing that did change was the workload stress of the Monday Night Wars, the increase in PPVs to Monthly (with ECW eventually having a few), and the addition of Thursday TV. While he watched a lot of stuff in the 80s, he didn't have to "write them all up". Compare what he wrote about WCW SN or World Wide in the 80s with what he did about Raw, Nitro, SmackDown, Thunder, etc. He copped to it being a pain in the ass by the end of the 90s, and it was clear even earlier than that. My guess is *that* is what people are seeing when the think there was something going on with the writing in the second half of the 90s: it was a grind. But the melancholy is more a 00's thing where he's openly talked about the shrinkage of the business being bad for wrestling, and at times has even comes out hoping that TNA doesn't die regardless of how awful it is because it would be bad for the business in terms of jobs for wrestlers. I don't recall Dave saying anything like that when SMW was going in the tank. John

What Sorrow said. Boxing and other sports. I don't watch the volume of MMA a week that I watched of wrestling a week. Weekly New Japan, All Japan, WCW, WWF, ECW with a variety of stuff mixed in when it popped up like All Japan Women, Lucha, PPV's, etc. Other stuff replaced all those hours. Those wrestling things faded in my viewing rotation long before I started watching each UFC PPV again. Irony is that I watched all the UFC PPV's from UFC I through the late 90s before dropping watching them because I got bored by the sport. Didn't pick them up again until the Chuck-Randy and Tito-Sham era when I felt I needed to check it out again. Then didn't start watching all of them until my Mom became a big fan and it was something I could watch with her when I visited my folks. John

That's true. Most people who use the "coked out" phrase have never actually seen someone doing coke, so it's not like they can be certain what it tends to do to a person. I tend to think it's a waste of time to project what people might have done or seen and their knowledge of such stuff. I've had people think I was stoner years before I ever drank or smoked, and others be utterly surprised finding out decades later how far I went off the bend in college. I was taken back when my mom was surprised on Saturday night that I smoked a ton in college, thinking it was pretty freaking obvious... and editing myself from discussing anything stronger I did. That one off handed comment didn't go over very well, even 23 years after the fact. I find myself doing it as well. I've been gobsmacked several times by friends who grew up in the same era as I did and weren't exactly church going straight edge kids in all *other* aspected of their lives tell me that they've never smoked. And that's just me projecting my own experiances onto other people. We know very little of what any poster has or hasn't done or seen on a board like this, even with a relatively small number of regulars. John

Generation? He retired in 1998. He cameback in 2001 and retired in 2003. I don't even think there's a "generation" of fans who started watching in 2001-2003 releative to the folks who watched from 1982 (win over GTown) through 1998. Flair's different. He's the "best ever" based on what he did in the 80s. There were fans who watched his retirement match that hadn't even been born when he was at his peak. John

Silva has annoyed the shit out of me in most of his recent fights. It takes a real prick to make me root for Silva... and Chael is just the prick to do it. And no... that isn't going to make me order the PPV on Saturday. I'll get it in the normal way I do. John

Very entertaining. John

What happened to Anglefire's competitor in free websites from back in the day? John

BTW, the Ryder stuff on that page, if it's true, explains everything about the 1wrestling meltdown. And I'll leave it at that. Someone needs to get that off Angle Fire onto say the DVDVR before AngleFire dies. DVDVR has a domain, and has other HTML files up like the 90s poll results. John

I don't believe any took place. None are on Graham's site. This is as close as one gets: WWF @ Sacramento, CA - Arco Arena - December 6, 1987 Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, & Brutus Beefcake defeated WWF IC Champion the Honkytonk Man, Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart when Savage pinned Neidhart WWF @ Toronto, Ontario - Maple Leaf Gardens - February 7, 1988 Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, & Jim Duggan defeated WWF IC Champion the Honkytonk Man, Bret Hart, & Jim Neidhart when Duggan pinned Hart There's a pretty narrow window between Randy's face turn and Steamboat leaving (after Mania '88). Much of that period saw Steamer out with his son being born, and then working a limited schedule. It doesn't seem likely that Graham is missing a card with Hogan on it that was *taped*. Maybe a dark match at a TV taping that wasn't mentioned? On the other hand, Graham has a fair number of the dark matches listed when they pop up in the WON or elsewhere. John

There's lots of stuff about the decline of Pena in the Konnan bio, but I confess to hitting a wall earlier in the bio and not getting to that point. Someone want to recap the Carlos Version Of Pena's Health Decline? John

What Keith says on Flair. One of the funniest things I can recall on a wrestling message board was Madden going on a bender after I laughed at the notion that Flair never did lines. I could never figure out if Madden was that naive, that lost in hero worship of Flair that he was in denial, or just that protective of Saint Flair that he couldn't handle someone stating the obvious. It's too bad the older Torch Board posts are gone because I'd love to read that freak out on his part again. John

Set aside coke with Vince. Does anyone really seriously want to claim that Vince didn't have a massive addiction to roids? Quite possibly still does for all any of us know. He may have been the biggest roid addict in the business when one thinks about it a bit. Seriously, one has to defend saying Vince an addict? For fuck's sake... for our next trick, we're going to say Shaq is Tall. John

I seem to recall that the lithium crack was based on some reality. Ted copping to bouts of depression/mania and trying to deal with it. Low blow, and of course ironic given Vince's own addictions. John

Some of the early year might not go 10 deep. But I can take a look if I remember tonight. There's no real results for 1980 and 1981, so they should be left off. He does actually have a vote in 1982 on. My guess is that all of the Top 10 would be HOFers, and probably most of the Top 15. John

There were more posts in here once. I'm just not seeing them. I think one or more of them might have explained the point of the board name. John

The Boesch one needs to be edited to replace a few more Boesch's with Quack. Funny as hell list. I've forgotten half those stories from the various Sleaze Threads and am trying to remember who those ones are about.

Cool...

Ah... so he's the one who did these threads in the WON Forum: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimate...t=000462#000000 I thought it was some newer fan, so I ducked them. Knowning it's McAdam, I might make the point to respond to them some weekend when I'm bored. John

Other boards? McAdam goes from vannishing to coming back to multiple boards? Where else other than his old home of WC? John

WTF.

McAdam is using a socko? John

I think it hurts Dave's old slim thread of deniability of just what's he's saying between the lines. I mean... "How about that" comes across as "That sure sounds like they paid his ass off, Dave!" Dave was trying to go with the old way of talking, but Bryan's having too much fun with it. John

That's a classic Dave "read between the lines" moment. John

~! Jhon