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I could swear the story has been around for years that it was Arn who was drunk off his goard that night. To the point that I was surprised watching the match on Will's set and thinking it was pretty decent. Despite the coke test result in the WWF, I don't recall stories through the years of Tully being "in no condition to perform" in either Crockett or the WWF. Like the rest of the Horsemen, he seemed to save his partying for after the shows, and pretty much always came to perform on the cards. John

Not unique in those days. Squash the young guys, work the match with Spivey. By that point they likely knew they weren't going to have much access to him in the future. Looks like they just wanted a special attraction to throw onto the Budokan. John

He toured for All Japan just one series, and only part of it: 06/03/89 - 06/08/89. 06/03/89 Sting over Taue (4:55) 06/05/89 Spivey over Sting (7:39) 06/06/89 Sting over Taue (3:53) 06/08/89 Sting over Nakano (2:36) I believe only the Sting-Spivey aired. John

That said, the Dems do need to get their own polling out to get a strong pulse. Like I said above, the Dems have a deep bench and if Blume is toast, they need to move fast by the end of next week. I'm not sold Linda is the one who can take advantage of it. After all, ponder Vince's age, and his strong record of service in Nam. John

It's Ras, which means it's wise to wait until polling from other firms comes out. John

It wasn't Inoki/Shinma vs Fujinami/Choshu. It was largely Inoki vs Fujinami, with the network and the rest of the shareholders watching what happened with attendance and ratings. Choshu wisely sat on the sidelines waiting to side with whoever won. Inoki won, Fujinami "quit" in a sense. Choshu actually came out of it with long term power as he ended up getting the book by 1989, and more & more of it as time went on. And was pretty brillant in making *everyone* happy. He humored Inoki through the years. He also put over Fujinami, including personally. Shinma was always Inoki's strategist, going back to the 70s... I've seen folks point to him all the way back to practically day 1 of New Japan. He took the fall back in 1983/84. I recall him taking heat for Inoki's later political scandal. John

The positive is that if Blumenthal pulls out (or if forced to pull out, or gentely taken out back and smacked around until pulling out), the Dems have a deep bench in CT to draw from. Especially if Linda wins the nomination. I suspect a lot of people such as Rep. Chris Murphy or Gov Candidate Ned Lamont would be happy to slide in. Murphy probably doesn't want to open up a seat in the House to more risk, and likely looking towards 2012 when: * he can target Lying Lieb for a Senate race * Obama in on the ticket * those combined would help down ticket with the replacement Dem Rep nominee So Murph may not. But Lamont may see a run opposite a crazy person like Linda as being more attractive than a gov primary and then a gov general election, along with the pull of the Senate: six years + high incumbent re-election rates. Anyway, this isn't good for Blume, but not a disaster for the Dems relative to Linda if they figure out the potential damage to Blume and act quickly if the damage looks to be a campaign killer. John

My guess is that Todd would have known Buzz Aldrin from schooling. It's some of the pop culture folks that pass him by. John

I don't think they sold out Budokan for the Brody Memorial.

Did Irv put up the "original" version on his website, or the published version? It would be interesting for one of those who is in a little contact with Irv to see if he has the original, extended, writers cut of the piece. John

What Al said: these are always great reads, Loss. John

Don't disagree with that one. But suspect he would have draw the line with FMW. More obviously over the top, while Southwest wasn't terribly far removed from Memphis, where Lou worked in the 70s. FMW was those things taken to 11. Lou's relationship with UWFi died in 1995. He died in 2002. He continued to have contact with Japan up until the point he died. I think that if there was a chance he'd work with an FMW-style promotion simply because they waved $10K in his face, it would have happened. I didn't. Not saying that makes Lou noble. It doesn't. He was more than willing to work for a lot of promotions for $$$, and the notion of him never doing anything to expose the old style of work has been proven a myth long ago. We've all seen the dog bone spot. John

It depends on what we're talking about. If they were alive like Lou was alive when MMA started, they would have acted just like Lou. I don't recall Lou putting over MMA as having much of a relation to what he did, and actually took his shots at it early on while putting over the great wrestling "shooters" instead. Perhaps on the Lou Board he was saying positive things about UFC before dying, but I don't really recall it. In his book? I also wouldn't put much into his support of UWFi: they paid him. New Japan and All Japan weren't paying him at that point. While he might have drawn a line at shilling for FMW, Lou would have put over any promotion that paid him to the degree that UWFi did. For the most part, old timers in all sports and entertainment put over what went on in their day. They're hardly revolutionaries, and any "revolution" they support is to drag things back to how they were in their days. I think if you scratch the surface of people in wrestling who put over UFC relative to the WWE, they're not arguing that the WWE should become UFC. They're talking about taking UFC "elements" to incorporate into Pro Wrestling (i.e. fake worked pro wrestling). John

It would be interesting to chart the high points of Luger's drawing ability. Flair-Luger did very strong business in its first run, especially if one were to chart it relative to Flair-Sting from the same year, say Flair-Barry & Flair-Jimmy & Flair-Ronnie from the prior year and say Flair-Steamboat & Flair-Funk the following year. I do recall Flair-Funk being praised for its drawing power, but it would be interesting to see some city-to-city comps, and also on how they passed through the feuds: 1st match, return match, etc. Then the Lex-Hogan in 1997, even if it was short. We know Lex in the WWF was disappointing, but how so relative to say Nash? I don't know if there's enough there to add up to a Big Draw claim. But there's something that's likely been forgotten over time. Perhaps part of it is that the NWA fanbase (i.e. regular fans rather than us hardcores) were "ready" for Lex to win in 1988, and the promotion got set back by not delivering on it. By Starcade 1988, it probably was too late. Don't know where you would have gone after Lex wins it. I was a Flair Fan, and never gave it thought at the time or since. He did have the storyline with freshly turned Barry, though Dusty didn't put Barry over strong at the Bash. John

That review of Anderson/Angle is pretty disturbing. Guys nearly kill each other several times. One of them is a dude with a history of injuries that helped turn him into a junkie that people (seemingly including Dave) worried would end up dead. Here he is not only putting himself back at risk, but also getting his opponent to be an idiot. I love the notion that the GS was done in a way where "everyone meant something" when not only it by the following ankle lock was blown off with a mic check, which in turn was blown off with an Olympic Slam. Modern wrestling and modern star ratings and modern willingness to ignore all those risky injury inducing spots because it's "fun". I'm thinking Misawa's finally match deserves to be *****+ because it sold the realism of pro wrestling moves. John

What SLL and Dan said. John

Lordy was I quite the prick in that thread. Still... other than the tone, not sure how much of it I would change. John

And to be honest, Dave doesn't really cover Boxing now. He talks about it a bit, but only on the big fight level. How much of this will Dave cover: Upcoming Boxing Schedule Just focus on the HBO, ESPN, Showtime and PPV stuff. How much of that does Dave truly cover? Not much at all of it. Dave doesn't report on Boxing. He just uses it as a comp to what he covers: Wrestling and MMA. John

I know. Just wanted to pull it back in from the Hassman fun. Dixie does strike me as someone who could get easily confused by something like that. Agreed on both. Doesn't sound like something in Eric's head when ratings tank (he tends to look for people to blame), and you're right that Spike would never do something like that. John

On Keith's post... I wonder if I've changed my mind on anything I wrote (which was a hell of a lot) in that thread. John

Darn, I thought there was an easy "split" function that would let you move stuff, Loss. Was even about to suggest it last night. John

Natasha Kinski was pretty androginous looking in Cat People, but kids my age thought she was hot as shit when that came out and were coming up with ways to sneak into that R rated movie. The photo with the snake was iconic. John

Maybe the WWE is going for the teabagger equiv of wrestling fan: those that aren't MMA fans and want "purity" in their pro wrestling. John

The question becomes: who planted this idea in Dixie's head? Or is she stupid enough to come up with it out of thin air? John