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I know. I clicked on the links to look them up and refresh my memory on them when making that post. By Friday I will have forgotten about them. I barely remember the Brooke Shields show, and only because it was Brooke Shields. On the flip side, I remember this one and likely always will despite not having seen it since it was cancelled 38 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Things_Were_Rotten I was 9 when it aired. It's now out on DVD: http://www.amazon.com/When-Things-Were-Rot...r/dp/B009CI8S6Y Who knows... I may find that it sucks all these years later. It's just a case of things sticking in one's head at certain points in their life. Ask me about 1997-99 AJPW and NJPW, and my brain will get fuzzy. In each, at a certain point, I was increasing unenthused about them. Ask me about 1989-96 AJPW and NJPW, and it's closer at hand in my brain, or needs only a little looking up to refresh. My guess is that a lot of us having things like that.

Some dates: 1957 = Seventh Seal: no one 1964 = Mary Poppins: 7 people (heartbreaking for me!!) 1972 = Godfather: no one 1985 = Ghostbusters = "Have you heard of Bill Murray?": 4 people / 3 people 1986 = Labyrinth: 2 people 1987 = The Princess Bride: 4 people 1991 = Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey: 2 people 1991 = Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: 1 person They're kind of old. 20 years ago is a hell of a long time ago. 18-22 year old. For me, that would have covered 1984-88. 20 years prior to that would have been 1964-68. Godfather is 41 years ago, which for me would have been 1943-47. I don't think *a lot* of kids my age would have know the semi-obscure films like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Bill & Ted and Labyrinth from the 1964-68 range. By semi-obscure I don't mean that those weren't hits (though Labyrinth wasn't). But more in the sense that none of them even had much staying time within their own era. RH:POT was a bit of a throw away blockbuster. B&T was fun for it's time, but there are all sorts of goofy comedy's that come and go like that (such as Police Academy that was a big hit). So... that's not terribly surprising. Maybe someone was a big enough movie fan of 1964-68 to know what their equivs were, but I'm not sure. Ghostbusters was huge at it's time. But I'm not sure that it was still huge in say 1995, other than for those of us who had some fond memories of it. Murray's career ran aground. Ackroyd's went bust. There wasn't any big reason for it to stay in younger folk's minds, other than the iconic symbol. Going back further... not may at the age of 18-22 would know the equiv of Godfather from 1943-47 in 1984-88. I'm looking at the Oscar nominated Best Picture movies from 1943-47, and Casablanca stands out to me as the most likely to be known by my peers in 1984-88, though there are other great films. Kids in the UK in that same time frame would have a lay up: Henry V, because it's an iconic movie. But going beyond those... how many 18-22 kids would have cared much about those older movies, to the point of knowing riffs from them? Not many. :/ I think sometimes we think what we know, or how we are, is what others probably know or how they are. I toss out Animal House references at work, to friends, on boards, etc. But... it was a 1978 movie. I was 12 when I saw it for the first time. Most of the folks on the board weren't even born at the time. They have their own Animal House... and since we have so many different ages, there are probably several different Animal House equivs for the posters here. It's at times jarring that people don't know that, or who Rod Carew and Reggie Jackson are, or for whom Fleetwood Mack is an oldies group. [insert joke of me going to a John Fogerty concert a couple of weeks ago and having a blast] My past, your past, or collective past... it doesn't mean much to folks today. But my father's past growing up in the 40s and 50s didn't mean a whole helluva lot to me, other than the really big things (WWII, Korea, etc).

The Hogan vs Magic & Bird & Montana & Gretzky would be compelling if it weren't for guys like Maradona and Carl Lewis and Plantini who were known for global sports rather than largely in the US. I mean, if you gathered up 1000 French folks randomly and asked them who was a bigger star in the 80s, Hogan or Plantini... Hulk is kind of fucked. In England if you asked them Gary Lineker or Hogan, then Terry is fucked. We could do this in every country, and Hogan would be stoned. Is it a positive for Hogan that he crosses boarders? Of course. But then again, we've all been saying: Hulk Hogan = Pro Wrestling Even Maradona didn't equal Futbol, despite being the best player in the world at the time. Folks in England were getting woodies for Lineker, Barnes, Robson, etc and not watching Maradona regularly like we now watch Messi (as in I was able to watch 95% of his games for club and country the last two seasons). John

No name? He wrote the #9 and #11 box office hits of 1983. It earned him enough of a name that Universal gave him $6M+ to make, while it doesn't seem like much was about the same Footloose got made for and more than Police Academy... and likely more than Purple Rain got made for. As far as actors gaining notoriety in 1985, as the "Brat Pack", that's certainly the case. But Sheedy got her notoriety in 1983 with WarGames. Hall got his with Molly in 1984 with Sixteen Candles, if not already getting notice as Rusty in Vacation the year before. The people it broke were Nelson (who did nothing before it... and ended up being nothing anyway), and Emilio... though he was part of the similar kid-packy Coppola version of Outsiders in 1983. This wasn't a bunch of unknowns when it got released. No one is saying that the film doing business wasn't a success, or that it was a blip on the ass of hollywood that year. It wasn't. But for those of us who actually went to movies in 1985 and can testify, it wasn't Back to the Future or Rambo. It wasn't Hughes' biggest hit of the period (Ferris was), nor of his career (the Home Alone's were). John

I think that's a 2001 picture with Nishamura. Here's what Dory looked like in this match: http://www.dory-funk.com/arena-2.html

Yep. The thing is... does Ken admit to those being "worked", or did he just see it as Ali-style of giving the crowd a match rather than knock someone out in the 1st? John

Brutus Beefcake = Bill Wennington

This is a bit of a tough one. I think both at the time and in hindsight were overrate how big those Molly movies were: $24M Sixteen Candles (1984 #44) $46M The Breakfast Club (1985 #16) $24M Weird Science (1985 #38) $41M Pretty in Pink (1986 #22) $70M Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986 #10) $19M Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) The big movies of 1984 were Beverly Hills Cop and Ghostbusters, while Gremlins ($148M), Karate Kid ($90M), Police Academy ($81M) and Footloose ($80M) were among the ones that toasted 16 Candles. The big movies of 1985 were Back to the Future and Rambo, with a number of adult movies doing better than the Hughes movies: Color Purple ($94M), Out of Africa ($87M) and Witness ($68M). Cocoon ($76M) was a bit of a cross over movie as all generations enjoyed it. As much as I loved Ferris, I'd have to admit the big movies of 1986 were Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee, while Platoon got the Oscar run to rack up big money. Back to School and Aliens topped Ferris as well. Pretty in Pink was down there. By Some Kind of Wonderful, the bloom was off Hughes and he movied into adultish movies. His return to younger movies were his ture hits: $286M Home Alone (1990) $174 Home Alone 2 (1992) Anyway, back to Molly... I knew girls for whom those movies were a big deal. Hell, I knew boys for whom those The Breakfast Club was a big deal... though admittedly I was stoner when it came out, and thought it was faker than fake, more full of bullshit than deep thoughts, and was basically a big giant pussy of a movie when dealing with real issue kids were dealing with at the time. But yeah... there were kids who thought it was The Shit. Just not as many as who flocked to Back to the Future or Rambo that year. Was Molly bigger than Hogan in 1985? Or more to the point, was 1985 Molly bigger than 1987 Hulk, which was likely his peak in that era? I'm not entirely sure. But we all would admit that the start of Back to the Future was bigger than Hulk, as was the star of Rambo, as was the star of Beverly Hills Cop, as was the star of Ghostbusters (though he kind of pissed away that stardom), as was the star of Top Gun.

In the 80s? Of course. But so were Austin, Rock and Foley in the 90s and early 00s. Seinfeld averaged about 30M+ viewers it's last 5 seasons, across 116 episodes. How many times did Austin, Rock or Foley draw 30M+ viewers for even 30 minutes of Raw or SmackDown? It's actually worse than that. The final episode of Quantum Leap drew 20M viewers. QL never was a season ending Top 20 program. For all the talk of wrestling being mainstream in 1997/98, here's a look at what was really drawing: 1 Seinfeld (34.1m) 2. ER (30.2m) 3. Veronica's Closet (24.4m) 4. Friends (24.0m) 5. Touched by an Angel (21.8m) 6. Monday Night Football (21.0m) 7. Union Square (19.9m) 8. 60 Minutes (19.8m) 9. CBS Sunday Movies (19.4m) 10. Home Improvement (18.4m) Hell, I don't even remember Veronica's Closet and Union Square, which was *cancelled* despite being the #7 show that year. Good god, my head hurts remembering that Touched By An Angel was a Top 10 show in four seasons. Was anyone in pro wrestling in the 90s as big as Garth Brooks? Mariah Carey? Nothing in wrestling was bigger than The Lion King, or Jurassic Park, or Titanic, or The Phantom Menace. Four Harry Potter books were released during the height of the Attitude Era. We can do this through all of pro wrestling history: $270,775 Johnson-Jeffries (1910) $87,053 Gotch-Hack II (1911) Boxing's biggest match routed wrestling's biggest match. Then it got far, far worse: $455,552 Willard-Dempsey (1919) $1,789,238 Dempsey-Carpentier (1921) $1,188,603 Dempsey-Firpo (1923) $1,895,733 Dempsey-Tunney (1926) $1,083,530 Dempsey-Sharkey (1927) $2,658,660 Tunney-Dempsey II (1927) $96,302 Londos-Lewis (1934) Is it possible that some or most of those numbers are worked? Sure. But it's also likely that if we had the unworked numbers, that boxing's biggest gate was 20 times larger than pro wrestling's. Wrestling has always been a garbage form of entertainment drawing weaker numbers than either sports or entertainment. No wrestling promotion drew as much in the era as Gone With The Wind did... or Godfather or The Sting or Exorcist or Jaws or Star Wars. Wrestling wasn't as watched as Roots, or the Super Bowl.

This. In the 80s and well into the 90s, Hogan = Pro Wrestling. It's hard to come up with a parallel, but it pretty much was 1992-98 Basketball = Jordan after Jordan won his first title, Magic retired, Bird wasn't relevant, and no one really stepped up to be at Jordan's level. Each addition thing he did marked Jordan = Basketball, to the point the basketball spent years after his retirement looking for The Next Jordan. Hogan did thing after thing from 1984-87 to stamp himself as wrestling, with the Rocky III thing being a bit like Jordan's pre-title accomplishments. Then Hogan won the title, expanded, Rock 'n' Wrestling, Wrestlemania and eventually Wrestlemania III which kind of was like Jordan's 72 win season: you just ain't topping that.

There were also Pancrase matches that we more gym sparring than shoots. There was a Shamrock match where it just felt like Ken was doing the Ali-job: carrying a guy longer than he should, not going for finishes, letting the kid look good, then taking it home when it was time. I don't recall if it was the 1993 Yoshiki Takahashi match or the 1994 Ryushi Yanagisawa match, but one along those lines where it just didn't feel like Ken was going full out to win until he felt it was time to go home. The opponent knew he was going to get beat, Ken knew he was going to beat him, and they spared until it was time. I have a feeling more of those would stand out now if one went through every match and every card from the start. We're 20 year removed from the fresh uniqueness of Pancrase and us not having seen something like it before. Since then we've seen a ton.

Rings was Maeda's promotion, not Tamura's who joined it after UWFi died. Basically the top guys in UWF 2.0 went this way: Maeda --> Rings Takada & Yamazaki --> UWFi Fujiwara & Funaki --> PWFG With the younger/lower guys spread around.

Boy that book is going to suck.

You're getting there!

And here they are: Good lord. Dory is only 2 years older than Terry. I know that he's always looked older than Terry, but Dory looks about 90 there.

Four weeks ago on Twitter, when getting asked about it on Twitter, Meltzer replied that he would do those bios when: "Rey when contract with WWE expires, Cena when he's closer to end of career." This sort of makes putting active wrestlers on the ballots while they're still in their prime years a bit silly. Yep.

I think we've gone around this block before. There isn't anyone who Vince could have expanded like he did with Hogan. Vince was the right promoter to do it. The WWF was the right regional promotion to launch it from. Hogan was the right wrestler to anchor it with. 1983/84/85 was the right time frame to do it. Stars aligned. But Hogan was as essential as the rest of the things. John

There is something entertaining to see Cena break his tie for the record of WWE "world title" reigns with Trip, not 14 vs 13. On the other hand, it's sad to think of what a flop Orton has been for most of his career and he has 11.

Disagree. Not remotely close. One could say that all of the Attitude Era wrestlers combined weren't/aren't bigger than Hogan. Hulk Hogan was Pro Wrestling on a national level in the 80s. Stone Cold, Rock, Taker, HBK, Foley... collectively they were for a stretch in the 90s. Excepting of course that when WCW topped the WWF for a stretch, it was that Hogan guy who was WCW when they were winning. John

There's money to be made in cable channels. Lifestyle Media is Scripps' unit that manages HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and GAC. $1,554,422,000 Advertising Revenue $667,741,000 Network affiliate fees revenue (i.e. carriage fees) A WWE network isn't the equiv of those six channels, two of them who are a bit of powerhouses. On the other hand, HGTV and Food are "successful" networks pulling in an average of about 1M viewers in their primetime hours. [Yeah... I get what I said about the Divas above doing 1M viewers not really mattering: it doesn't, since the true hit Food programs do well over that (such as Paula Dean in her prime). If the Divas were the hit for the WWF, there's a problem if the other 20 hours of primetime a week pull in a 200K average. That was my earlier point - Divas isn't really that mosterous of a hit to anchor a network.] The WWE is always going to have some advertising issues just because it's pro wrestling. It's also a new channel, so it's not going to pull in a good carriage fee... and it will struggle to get onto basic, where the real money is made. But... Get into 80M homes on Basic at $0.07 per month * 12 months a year = $67.2M in revenue. That's not chump change: the WWE's domestic rights fees last year were $88.9M. Advertising on top of that is gravy, and they likely could joint venture with some existing cable player to administratively handle the advertising for X years for a cut. The WWE can run "low cost" because they have so much existing content in the vault. Obviously you'd look for create "new" programing for the network, but that's not as complicated as one thinks: they were doing cheap ass versions of it for 24/7 like the Round Table, and have done cheap ass recap shows like All Star and Primetime in the past. In addition to things they're already doing relatively cheap things that have little domestic revenue return like NXT, Main Event, Superstars and Divas. I've thrown out in the past, probably even in this thread, that they could do a cheap, live house show on Saturday Night. The start up costs that aren't cheap: getting a channel, staffing. Times are lean until the revenue starts coming in, and firms up. But long term, it gives the WWE a place to land SmackDown and/or Raw if the bottom falls out of what the USA Networks want to pay them. That's why you get a network: if the other cable channels try to squeeze the WWE on rights fees despite the WWE bringing 3-4M viewers to the table. Not saying that it will be a cash cow. But for long term security, it really is something that long ago should have done and move towards now. I can't get across strongly enough how stupid those $532M in dividends have been, especially the $316M in 2007-2010, when that money could have been used to establish a WWE Network by now.

...and there has been some grumbling about that. I don't really have a problem with that. It would be like grumbling able Royal & Duncan selling the Title Histories book which a ton of people helped them with. Those of us that helped thought it was great that the info was out there and available, and even more so because we got to see all the stuff they got from other folks. John

It's 1M fans for 1 hour of programing a week. They're doing a 15 episode "season", and perhaps can figure out how to do two "seasons" a year... which is 30 hours of programing in an entire year. The WWE Network will being doing 30 hour of programing in primetime content every 10 days. Total Divas is a blip on that ass. Worse, it's likely something that has a short shelf life in interest as far as drawing "big" ratings. It already finished down 33% over the last three episodes. It's not really a concept that's going to pull in big numbers for 6 years. I don't think the Divas have much to do with the WWE getting carriage deals. You have to wonder, in the streaming era, why they don't simply sell an online version of 24/7? I would gladly pay whatever the current 24/7 fee is ($10 a month?) for access to the content. And obviously, they're capable of doing something more expansive as well. Other than Netflix, who really is making $100M a year from streaming stuff? Or $50M? Setting aside the sports leagues, where they've done deals for digital rights but it's not clear yet that the people paying big money for those rights really have made a ton of money off them. We can talk about ESPN3, but it doesn't operate in a vacuum: we get it through ESPN's deal with the carriers, not as a stand alone entity. As far as online content on their own, the WWE has tried to experiment with subscriptions on their website. While the content has been pretty limited, there hasn't been a major move of people to subscribe to incent the WWE to go in that route. What you really want is Channel + Digital Delivery, where the digital delivery is provided for free to the folks whose carrier has the WWE Channel. Then over time you can track how many people are watching on the mobile devices / computers. But getting people to pay for it? Even the porn business is taking a hit because of all the free stuff out there... and porn use to be the one thing people would pay for online. John

The bottom two rows are WWF tapes, Superstars on the left and Challenge on the right. The rest don't seem too dissimilar in labeling, but it gets harder to read. John

Some bullet point quotes of yours: Chono-Chono: "Man, outside of the upset ending I didn't care for this at all." Mutoh-Fujunami: "Good opening and good ending with sort of a soft middle." Chono-Hash I: "Great job of putting over both guys" Mutoh-Vader: "This won't win MOTYC over the big All-Japan six-man but it's a top 5 contender." Chono-Hash II: "my first reaction is that Mutoh-Vader's run as the possible New Japan MOTY has run into a brick wall already. I liked this better than that match as well as the earlier draw." Chono-Mutoh: "Close call but I have to put this as the #1 MOTY. [...] Seeing the growth of Chono in this tournament has been an experience, from his heatless, underwhelming match against Choshu to a guy who looks ready to carry the company on his back. " You really liked Chono the moment the G1 ended, though you did drop this into the Vader-Mutoh match: "Despite not being a fan of his at all, Mutoh has forced his way into strong Wrestler of the Year contention." Though thought the match hit the NJPW MOTY brick wall the next day. I'm not tossing that out to tie you in knots: I loved reading your comments on G1, enjoying you enjoying this legendary tourney. I've often had the same vibe about it: Vader-Mutoh is great, Hash-Chono is great (pick one), and Chono-Mutoh is great... which is better? You throw up your arms as they're all pretty much perfect for what they're trying to do at that moment. I split Wrestler of the Year off more from Worker of the Year than you probably do. Jumbo was the anchor of his promotion. Mutoh wasn't. Jumbo was also a great worker: you've got him as your #3. Big feud. Trio of matches that felt like big moments to some degree: pinning Misawa in the TC, getting submitted by Misawa in the Tag Title, and working a TC match with Kawada in a way the seemed to elevate Kawada from what he'd been before and prep him for what he'd be the next year (Budokan TC challenges against Hansen and Misawa). Hell... I've voted Hogan as WOTY in the past, not caring about his work at all. * * * * * Anyway, if you lived Mutoh's year, there's more stuff out there from 1991. These were the ***+ stuff from TV in WON ratings: 03/02/91 Choshu & Fujinami & Muto vs. Vader & St. Clair & Rheingans ***1/4 04/27/91 Norton & Samoans vs. Muto & Choshu & Chono *** 05/04/91 Muto & Choshu & Fujinami vs. Norton & Samoans **** 07/13/91 Hase & Sasaki vs. Muto & Chono ****1/4 08/03/91 Vader & Bigelow vs. Muto & Chono ***1/2 08/10/91 Norton vs. Muto (G1) *** 08/24/91 Chono vs. Muto (G1 Final) ****1/2 09/21/91 Fujinami & Muto & Chono vs. Norton & Samoans ***1/2 11/23/91 R Steiner & Norton vs. Hase & Muto (IWGP Tag) ***1/2 12/07/91 Hashimoto & Norton vs. Muto & Hase ***1/4 12/28/91 Muto & Hase vs. Hashimoto & Norton (IWGP Tag) ***3/4 Those are TV dates. A decent amount of that stuff made the set, but some of it didn't. That Mutoh-Norton match is worth tracking down: Mutoh really seemed to know how to have a good match with Norton, and it really reflects well on him as a worker. That 5/4 match is pretty highly rated... might want to find the match the week before as I seem to recall they were working a Mutoh-Norton things here. In a strange way, it's Mutoh's big on going feud of the year, from the first half of the year on through the end, and he's good in it. John