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Which means a Shields loss. I also confess that I don't get why they would blow stealing another promotion's "middleweight champion" and having him job to your own welterweight champ. It's a but like Shinma stealing Rusher Kimura from IWE and booking him first to job to Tiger Mask. Granted, you don't want to reward Silva with anything at the moment. But before Shields runs the risk of losing to anyone else, wouldn't you want to put him in with your own middleweight champ? He can always then move back down to his old welterweight. So what you're basically telling me is that Shields-Mayhem *will* be a Fight Night match in 2 or so years. John

Sorry about that, then. They're both fun workers. One of the enjoyable things about watching the stuff in the two WWF projects is to get to see a lot of solid stuff of theirs. John

My point: it makes for a Tough Comp with Bret Not that Bret was more versatility, since it's not a word I dropped in there. But that we can comp Steamer with about 60% or 2/3rds of Bret's work, but don't really have something from Steamer to compare with the other 33% to 40%. I saw a very good Heel Champ Bret vs Tough Guy Babyface Shammy match live in 1997. I don't know what of Steamer's that I can comp it with. Nothing, really. The absense of such a match from Steamer's resume doesn't mean he sucks, or wasn't great, or wasn't better than Bret. It just means that there's Bret stuff that is very difficult to comp with Steamer because there isn't isn't the equivalent stuff for Steamer. It's just a really hard comp for me because of that. If you think it's a piece of cake, more power to you. John

The difference is that Dana doesn't typically bring someone in with a "hot" storyline and throw them right into their hot opponent. They always seem to want to make people "prove" themselves in UFC, almost akin to the old WWF bullshit. So Dana isn't going to sign Mayhem to throw instantly at Shields. At the moment, is there any reason to think Mayhem could go very far in the UFC Middleweight division without getting his clock cleaned? At which point a Mayhem-Shields fight ends up headlinging Fight Night rather than in a selling position on a PPV. That was my point: if Mayhem runs of some success in Strikeforce (such as beating Henderson), then sure... Dana & Co. will sign him for a match with Shields. But they'll also likely see both of them lose before it happens. At which point we're back to it being a TV match rather than a PPV drawing match. Unless you all think Mayhem and Shields are far better than I do, with Shields quickly winning the Middleweight title and Mayhem working his way up to be what UFC considers a #1 contender. Sheilds may surprised me, but I just don't think Mayhem is any good. Given the way UFC books fights, Mayhem would quickly fall into the Chris Leban range... might actually start there. John

I roll out Meltzer. I don't have a huge desire to pull out the 1993 WON's and find what Dave has to say about the team when Ted left the WWF for All Japan. I do recall it dawning on Dave that time passed Ted by in All Japan, and that it hadn't passed Stan by in 1993 (which was kind of obvious). I think even in those you'll see the comments of how they were a good team in the 80s, but not anymore. Again, I'm not saying he held them up to be Brody & Hansen. Dave didn't think *anyone* was quite that Legendary. But you'll probably find more WON positive comments for Hansen & DiBiase than for Jumbo & Tenryu. Positive comments for Jumbo & Tenryu tag *matches*, but as a team they didn't get much run. John

If you look at the list of title matches from the 60s on through the 90s, you see the Big Stars among the gaijin. You also see how they're stratified by what belts they go after. You'll see two stars come over like Snyder and Hodge, you'll see how they get treated in the tag title matches, which one gets to challenge Baba and which one doesn't. It gets very clear which one is the bigger star. Then if you see them get later big matches, it's very easy to see who are the bigger stars. Fritz for example relative to Snyder and Hodge. If you actually have the series results, which exist through Scott Teal for the 60s and first few years of the 70s, you can actually track things even closer as the series progresses and how things are set up, and again who gets the title shots. Murdoch made 43 trips to Japan for JWA, All Japan and New Japan from Feb 1968 to Aug 1989. 21+ years. One challenge of Baba's top belts from 1968-81 in 19 tours. One challenge of Inoki's belt, though he likely would have gotten one bite at the NWF if they hadn't shelved it. If you doubt it, I'll be happy to walk through the 19 series in JWA and All Japan and who got the title shots. In New Japan, since Dan has translated all the TV from NJPW through 1988 and I have the JWJ covering Dick's one series in 1989, I'd be happy to walk through who was getting the big Inoki matches each tour. Folks might find it enlightening that the long await Dick vs Inoki match was blow off on the 2nd tv show of his initial tour with NJPW, that on the first show Dick lost to Tiger Toguchi to set Toguchi up for a bigger match with Inoki later on the series, and that actually "big" singles matches for Inoki that series were against Toguchi (the main event of the card with Andre-Hansen that folks are fond of), along with Inoki's 800th matches against Hansen and Andre. That's pretty common for Inoki vs Dick matches: they never were really that big of deals in New Japan. Their "big" match in the IWGP Final came about only because Maeda cracked Fujinami's skull open, which: * prevented the planned Inoki vs Fujinami final where Inoki would get his pin back; and * left them with a choice of Murdoch or Maeda to book into the revised final They couldn't book Maeda into it due to the pretty famous lack of desire of Inoki and Maeda to work together in a singles match in those two years. So Murdoch was it. The other "big" match for the IWGP Title is largely a throwaway: a name on the list. Lots of wrestlers are on that list one time. Sid is. Dick might be a more well known "name" to people you talk to because he wrestled in the showa era when wrestling was on primetime slots with bigger ratings. But I'm also talking about other people from that era who were big. Robinson, Abby, the Funks, Mil, The Destroyer, Tiger Jeet... these were bigger stars. Backlund had more big matches in Japan than Murdoch did. John

Dave thought highly of them at the time. December 1985 rankings: 1. MX 2. Bulldogs 3. DiBiase & Hansen 4. Choshu & Yatsu 5. R'n'R 6. Jumbo & Tenryu 7. DiBiase & Williams Of course he had DiBiase as the #1 male worker in the world at the time, with Hansen #6. In the Who's Who, which was written in the middle of 1986, he had this in the DiBiase piece: "His tag team with both Stan Hansen and Steve Williams have both been rated amongst the top in the world as well." They fell as 1986 went on, but I'm pretty sure we'd find more stuff since then where Dave talked about them being a major and legendary team, though not as major and legendary as Hansen & Brody. Suspect looking at stuff when Hansen came back to All Japan in 1993 would give some insight, and it's probably up on the WON site (or shortly will be). Again, my comments in the early post shouldn't be read as me saying that people rated them with Brody & Hansen. We all know that team had special love back in the day. But Hansen & DiBiase got run, which in hindsight was a bit too high of praise. John

Don't know how I'd exactly rank people in an order, but guys like Kiniski and Bobo were bigger stars in Japan than Dick and Ted. Abby, Tiger Jeet, The Destroyer, Thesz, Gotch... it's not hard to get 30 of them. Lots of touring NWA Champs, along with Bockwinkle. Bock even challeged Jumbo for the Int'l Title after his last AWA reign. Ted never challenged Jumbo for the Int'l Title, nor Baba for the PWF. He was a UN Title challenger, and once Jumbo won the Int'l Title, Ted transitioned instantly over into being a guy to put the next native UN champ (Tenryu) over. Here's a contrast: 03/01/82 PWF Title: Baba vs Gordy 04/01/83 UN Title: Jumbo vs Ted 06/18/83 UN Title: Jumbo vs Ted 10/14/83 UN Title: Ted vs Tenryu 10/23/83 UN Title: Ted vs Tenryu 03/24/84 UN Title: Tenry vs Ted 10/29/84 Int'l Title: Jumbo vs Gordy 06/04/85 Int'l Title: Jumbo vs Gordy 03/10/86 Int'l Title: Jumbo vs Gordy 04/26/86 UN Title: Tenryu vs Ted 05/17/86 PWF Title: Choshu vs Gordy Ted was UN Title level, which was the #3 belt in the promotion by the time Tenryu got it. Gordy instantly was at the top level, and stayed there. He wasn't as big of a star as Hansen, who was winning the PWF and Int'l titles. But Gordy was clearly a bigger star. Ted's biggest run ever was as Stan's partner from 8/85 to 7/87. It's not exactly a legendary team like Hansen & Brody. Heck, are there any memorable defenses? Historically they're most known for Misawa's first heavyweight title coming with Jumbo against Stan & Ted. They had just three title matches in 1985-86 combined. They had five in 1987, *four* of them on their final tour including the two title changes. Frankly they're a pretty overrated team. The buzz was for Jumbo & Tenryu vs Choshu & Yatsu. John

I think you actually saw examples of Austin as a heel in the stuff that he did with Double Chris, not just in the ring but also some of the backstage stuff. I recall one promo where he was told he'd have to face one of them again, which was after facing them on the prior show. He's sore, wore down and wondering what the hell the promotion is doing to him. His commentary during the Benoit-Angle cage match was excellent as well in nailing the heel character. I would have scratched the Angle comedy entirely. I enjoyed the Vince-Austin "hug" stuff at the time because they'd already screwed up nailing the heel turn perfectly and I simply was looking for anything entertaining out of it by that point. But I would have skipped it as well. I don't think pairing him with Vince at Mania and immediately after was a bad idea: Vince was over as a heel. The two of them pairing up to screw over Rock made sense. It's the Trip stuff, and yet another feud with Taker so quickly (rather than building towards it) were the biggest mistakes. John

Kawada vs New Japan, which was large two-and-out on big shows that drew more than the vaunted Hash-Ogawa series. Wait... don't get me started on the Hash-Ogawa series. Fuckers. Dynamite Kansai as WWWA Champ. I know they wanted the year ender with Toyota, and perhaps they thought the fed vs fed stuff was getting played out after two years. But they really had a lot of guns they could have run at Dynamite to make for a chase to "get the title back in AJW" all the way to 12/96. Given the 1996 decline, and then the company breaking apart terribly in 1997, I think they blew a strong year of business. Frankly Dynamite deserved the run after putting Aja over so many times. Stone Cold Heel Turn. I disagree with the notion that it was a bad idea to turn him. We saw Hogan turn, and it was the best run of business in WCW history. Austin's face return from the injury in late 2000 wasn't all that hot. Part of it was a really shitty storyline in terms of crap writing and resolution. But there was something lacking. Heel Austin had a chance to spice up the top of the cards, and we did see during Austin's heel run in 2001 a lot of flashes of both great promos and out of the ring stuff from Austin as a heel, and also in-the-ring stuff. But the momentum of it was just killed the Monday after Mania when Trip joined hands with Vince to lessen the impact of the turn, and then the turn got instantly bogged down in a feud with Taker & Kane. It's kind of sad. Austin-Rock is almost exactly the perfect turn match for Austin. People could probably come up with several for Eddy. It's a far smaller thing, but the BookDust vs UnAmericans title match at SummerSlam 2002 still sticks in my head. One of those times where the fans are really tasting a title change, really up for it, and they get flipped the bird for really no good reason. It's a small thing, but one of the things at the time that struck me as evidence of just how fucked in the head the WWE was becoming. In 1998 and 1999 they would have been far more aware of things like that, and able to deliver. Think of freaking Too Cool winning the Tag Titles in 2000 when Scotty was hot, and they were aligned with Rikishi. John

I think Kerry was underrated for a long time. I do wonder what his equiv of the Sting-Sid match is. Perhaps the Texas set has already come across it, but that's one positive for Sting: what was at the time a pretty watchable match against a pretty horrid worker who didn't have much watchable under his belt. Steamer-Bret is a tough comp because Steamer never worked heel. I'd be interested in whether he even has an equiv of 8/92 Bret-DBS: a "classic" Face vs Face match that goes beyond the usual trappings (and limitations) of Face-Face match ups. I wouldn't offer up working heel or working a strong face-face match as reasons Bret was better. Just that it makes a comp between the two a pretty thin thread. Steamer-Morton (since Morton's heel stuff isn't a significant part of judging his work) and Bret-Shawn are always more viable comps because one can draw the lines of comp. Sano-Tamura is similar. John

I would think Dick would be more highly regarded by "fans" in Japan than Ted, but the gap between Dick and Ted is much less than the gap between them as say Billy Robinson. In turn, Abby was a bigger star than Billy. The gap between Dick & Ted to Harley is massive. The gap to Brody and Stan is massive. I'd again say that Gordy was a bigger star in Japan. Doc reached a much higher peak (winning the freaking TC), and the balance was better than both Ted and Doc (he had *many* challenges of the TC along with as many challanges of the IWGP as Dick). I'm not sold that Dick and Ted are clearly among the biggest 30 gaijin from 1960-97. If they are, they're deep into the 20s rather than in the Top 20. John

I've made the comment before: Ted and Murdoch weren't as big of stars in Japan as Dave thinks they were. They both worked over there a lot. They both had decent tag team runs for a few years (Dick with Adonis and Ted as one of Stan's many partners over the years). But their singles pushes would surprise a lot of people when compared to other people. I know a lot of people won't buy that. It surprised me when putting together my chart of title defenses. But if I were to chart every tour of Ted and Dick, and who got title matches in them, it would become a little obvious. Not saying that they weren't known gaijin on a certain level. But Doc and Gordy were bigger stars *individually* in Japan than Ted and Dick, while their tag work (together and seperately) swamps them as well. And Doc and Gordy is scratching the surface. John

I don't think Dana is going to go after Mayhem anytime soon because he really hasn't proven anything other than he has a big mouth. *If* he goes on a little run of success in Strikeforce, Shields does well in UFC, and Mayhem keeps talking... then Dana will see a $$$ match and grab Mayhem. But right now, Mayhem really comes off as Mitch Green cutting promos on Mike Tyson. It led to nothing. John

I'm thinking Bix needs to get a montage of screencaps for his sig.file. There are some classic facials in there. I don't recall if Mike and Tony didn't like each other. Possible, but I'm fuzzy on it. I do recall that Tony flat out hated Ross. John

Good piece, Bix. Depressing is the right word. It's long past the point of being something to laugh at. It's a really sad and depressing to watch some go so far off the cliff, seemingly with little hope of pulling out of it. :/ John

Mayhem would have more compelling smack if he hadn't just lost to Shields in a fight that wasn't terribly close other than the one choke. I think we also all know that Mayhem would give his left nut to fight again in UFC and have his "rematch" with Shields over there. So he'll be talking smack and cutting promos in the hopes that Dana signs him for a nice payday. John

His contract expires, but I highly doubt he has a "fight" left on his contract. So in a sense he's a free agent already. Bad form? Sure, a bit. But he's essentially done with Strikeforce. He's not going to fight for them again. It's pretty common for folks to look for other offers, including from their current employer, while still under contract. It could open up UFC to a lawsuit. But they have plenty of other things at issue in trying to run a profitable/sustaining business than trying to throw a few million of legal fees at chasing UFC. John

At the debut? Or relatively early in a push? For a debut, you might just be right. Can't think of others in the WWE. Early in the push, the fans didn't like Rock/Rocky. One of the reasons they turned him. It would be interesting to find when Razor started getting some positive vibe from the fans. The WWF turned him because he was getting too "cool". There have been a few others like that, though Razor was probably the most obvious. With Jake in the 80s and Taker in the 90s, it was a little more gradual. Don't recall Jake getting any positive buzz opposite Steamer. John

Shields is no different from Brian Pillman using his leverage to get the best contract possible from the WCW vs WWF climant. Can't blame Shields, especially if one assumes he pretty much locked up a deal before Dana put him on camera. John

Kal *loved* the heels, especially ones who could cut promos. He just loved being in character during the matches, putting over the faces and pointing out how evil the heels were. But watch his interviews with Don Muraco: Kal just loves Don to death, and you could see that Don was having fun playing to Kal during the interview. One of his interviews before a Backlund match is great. John

The shit was starting to come apart with all the infighting. Hogan had taken time of due to the loss to Goldberg and the bomb of the Warrior storyline. Nash had the "book" and was using it to screw over Goldberg. I seem to recall they were picking off a rash of injuries as well. The company was moving into trainwreck mode, which became clear with the Hogan-Nash finger point of doom in January. John

"That ain't right... that ain't right." -Bill Dundee John

He returned on 11/19/07, and they knew several months earlier that he'd be back. The WWE has released the following wrestler sets since then: 11/22/07: Shawn Michaels: Heartbreak & Triumph 02/13/08: The Legacy of Stone Cold Steve Austin 03/11/08: The Undertaker: 15-0 03/25/08: Triple H: King of Kings 04/29/08: Twist of Fate: The Matt & Jeff Hardy Story 06/03/08: The Rock: The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment 07/08/08: Nature Boy Ric Flair: The Definitive Collection 09/09/08: The Life and Times of Mr. Perfect 11/11/08: Viva La Raza: The Legacy of Eddie Guerrero 12/09/08: The Twisted, Disturbed Life of Kane 12/23/08: Edge: A Decade of Decadence 06/09/09: Macho Madness: The Ultimate Randy Savage Collection 10/20/09: Batista: I Walk Alone 11/17/09: Hulk Hogan: The Unreleased Archives 12/15/09: Jeff Hardy: My Life My Rules 02/16/10: John Morrison: Rock Star 03/09/10: Shawn Michaels: My Journey 06/08/10: The Undertaker's Most Dangerous Matches 06/29/10: Ricky Steamboat: The Life of the Dragon Two things jump to mind looking at that: They slowed in doing wrestlers ones last year, which one would think is when they normally would have done one. The two major ones were frankly Savage and Hogan, with just two guys on the current roster getting sets: Dave and Jeff. Still, it's pretty easy to see they could have fit Chris in there somewhere. John

In hindsight, Bradshaw's is pretty offensive. We had, and still have, too much of that. Steph's is jaw droppingly dumb, and offensive in a different way. Centering 9/11 towards her poor victimized Dad... yuck. John