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Because it wasn't made part of the regular PGA Tour until the mid 90s or so. But even casuals were still well aware of it -- Jack vs. Watson at Turnberry alone towers over any PGA Championship moment past or present. Being part of the PGA's "tour" really hasn't matter: casual fans don't grasp or care whether a Major is part of the tour or not. They don't even get that the Masters is off in its own little world that and everyone else puts up with it's kookiness because it's The Masters~! I was watching golf in the 70s. I've got loads of memories all the way back to '73 with Miller's great year, his staggering 4th round at Oakmont, and for all the world looking like he was the heir to Jack. At the time, Watson beating Jack at the British Open in '77 didn't resonate much with casual fans as you think, nor was the PGA as minor as you think Granted, as someone who was also a baseball fan that summer, Carew chasing .400 was a HUGE story. That said, SI couldn't break out of their Carew story to put what Jenkins pimped as the greatest two rounds of golf ever on the cover. They also could pimp the PGA winner later in the year. The Open was much more of a Hardcore thing at the time. Here in the US, things like Jack's PGA win in 1980 after the earlier US Open win, and Trevino's 1984 PGA win when a washed up 44, got more casual run. Paul Lawrie (no name at the time but still a solid player) won in a playoff with Van de Velde and Justin Leonard. My girlfriend at the time fumed at me for a week for insisting on watching that spectacle instead of paying attention to her. It's quite possible that I watched it with my girlfriend, just as we did the Open this year when Phil won. John

On the Aussie... Bill is probably just a bit too young to remember that people skipped the Aussie and the French left and right in the 70s, and it really was Martina who put the Aussie back on the map (chasing Slams and Court), and to a degree the French. It's staggering to ponder Martina (11) and Chrissie (10) skipping loads of Aussie and French Opens from 1975-80. Borg played just one Aussie, none in his true prime. Connors never played the Aussie after going to back-to-back finals in 1974-75, and skipped five straight French Opens in his prime (and he wasn't a piker on clay). Mac played just two Aussies in his prime, late (1983 & 1985), and skipped a trio of French. I get the feeling that the French really only got over with *current* casual fans with Roger's quest for it, coming off Pete's inability to win it. But let's be honest about the French: it's not like Chang's thrilling win in '89, or Mac's epic choke in '84, made casual tennis fans think, "I need to always watch this shit!"

The funny thing is that when Bill was younger, fewer people gave a shit about the Open than the PGA. The TV push of it and folks waxing poetic about it is a more recent thing. Not saying within the Golf Community, where Palmer winning in 61 & 62 and Jack *always* playing it from 1962 on and winning in 66 and 70 established it among US pros. But among casual golf viewing fans, which Bill isn't even at that level, the Open wasn't any bigger than the PGA until the last decade or so. I'd as Van de Velde's collapse was a turning point, but I doubt many casual fans could even tell you who won that year without looking it up. I'm not a hardcore golf fan. But it does annoy me when people who are even more casual than I am (or worse: non-fans) have their great ideas on how to "fix" a sport. The worst are non-futbol fans going off on how to fix that boring soccer... but you get the same with people who don't follow baseball much having grand ideas to fix it, etc. So... No, Bill... Golf doesn't need another 4th major. If you'd like to fix a sport, why don't you look at NASCAR when one race blends into another other than the First Race Of The Year. It's a sport that did have Crown Jewels, they got lost in time, and even something semi-cool like the Brickyard that felt majory has dropped to feeling like most other races. And this is coming from someone who has watched a lot of NASCAR going back to the 70s: even I am open to idea of how to get me to give a shit MORE about some of the races in a year, rather than not really feeling like I need to tune into ANY doing the year other than Daytona and maybe the 600.

Kawada beats Misawa for the first time in a singles. He beats Misawa (#1 in the promotion) and Kobashi (a bit more clear at this point the #3 in the promotion) on the Same Night. He wins the Carny for a second time, which Misawa (1) and Taue (1) and Kobashi (0) haven't. Yet... Yeah, it really means next to nothing. Worse: March 28, 1997 Champion Carnival: Kenta Kobashi pinned Mitsuharu Misawa (24:09) So they already gave that one away on a non-TV, non-taped match. Okay, so it means less than nothing. I think this was the point at which it was clear that AJPW's booking on Big Stuff had gone to total dogshit.

We have plenty of templates. Sammy-Otani provided one. The 06/03/94 Misawa-Kadawa actually had a long base of the match around (i) Misawa's "injured" neck/upper back going back to Carny, (ii) Misawa's ear getting injured, and (iii) Kawada's knee going back to the prior Tag League. Same general thing as 01/20/97, though both of them are actually longer than one would want with a template: 35-40+ minute matches still make you Know that all of the Good Shit is once they get up and go on that 17+ minute run to the finish (or whatever we'd come up with on the clock for 6/94, 1/97 and the 5/94 tag that all have some decent "body work" sections). In the end, the wrestlers didn't care to go in that direction. The promoters could have tried to reel them in, but there never seemed that desire either.

In addition to the 1999 match, they also had the draw the following year: 06/27/98. That was the one pimped at the time more that the two that bookend it. Edit: they are worked matches.

I don't think anyone hated the Original Series in 1997. It's the Later Series that has a lot of hate associated with it. Considering they wanted Shamrock for this match, thought they had him and had plans, this was a pretty decent "save" by NJPW and Hash to have a match that drew and fans didn't think was a dog. This is something that gets across how good Hash was at the time.

From all I remember, Bret liked Austin a lot at the time and would have been willing to put him over when the time came. But this was also before the era of "I pin you this month on PPV, and you pin me next month on PPV." So at the time, there really wasn't the expectation that Austin would pin him in the next few months. There's also another hindsight element: It's hard to watch this feud/rivalry now and get a proper 1996/97 mindset because we all know how huge Stone Cold became. It's different watching him as Stunning Steve in WCCW or WCW, because he looks different, acts different... he's not Stone Cold. In this series, and specifically this match, we're at the epicenter of Stone Cold Iconography... Except he wasn't *that* level of over yet. The WWF's business in 1997 was such that Vince was thinking about getting out from under that Bret contract. The massive cash machine of Stone Cold actually started the next year. But... but... but... this still always sticks in out mind as launching him, along with the KotR comments the prior year. There's enough gap the prior year before he does anything of note, and it's also so early in his "Stone Cold" character that it's easier to split off. But this match... it's etched in everyone's mind. So when we think about Austin getting his win, it's half because within a few years that's how the WWF booked all the time... and it's half because we sense with this match and series that Stone Cold is at the Bruno-Hogan-Stone Cold level... when he really hasn't gotten there quite yet. I'm not sure how many matches / wrestlers are like that.

Because JCP bounced up and down. People can tell you about a poor year in the 80s. They can also tell you about a hot year. Same happened when they went national: The "core" was hot in 1986, but even the core cooled off in 1987... quite a bit. Even within years. Flair-Lex and Flair-Funk did really good business in a relative sense. So if we're looking at Greg or Patera, they worked in JCP in very specific stretches. It doesn't matter what JCP drew in the years when they were in the WWF: it's not relevant. Nor should we make an assumption that JCP drew the same amount every year.

As far as venues, I've dropped the Gateway a number of times: http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/resource...venue_index.htm Again, there use to be more info easily to find on the site. It might be worthwhile to look at the Wayback Machine to see if earlier versions of the site have some of that useful stuff. Yep... that's what I was looking for: http://web.archive.org/web/20070814211037/...r_promo_ads.htm Now where in the heck is it on the current site... http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/Almanac/...r_promo_ads.htm Looks like it was up on the site until some point in 2012: http://web.archive.org/web/20120320171141/...r_promo_ads.htm Then was removed later in 2012. Of course it's kind of funny that the ads are still on the site: http://midatlanticgateway.com/images/Promo..._Greensboro.jpg Sadly, not as much attention was given to the other cities as Greensboro. You kind of wish that the Gateway people hooked up with someone as "active" as Graham is over on his historyofthewwe.com and related cites, but you could give him a mass of stuff and he'd get it up quick... and then just keep putting up everything else that anyone sent him. :/

Could be. I don't know if that person is affiliated with the Gateway. If he isn't, they he really couldn't stop the Gateway folks from putting up results and the ads/posters.

What Dylan said: it's fairly easy to find out what the top arenas on the circuit sat. There's available sell out info for some from a variety of sources, and a lot of them have wiki pages that also list seating for different type of events. If a place seats 11K for basketball, it wasn't usually going to seat less than that for pro wrestling. I do think market size for a territory is useful because we are talking about the base from which the promotion is drawing. There are some oddballs: Florida in the CWF had good sized cities, but relatively mediocre in terms of good sized arenas that the promotion seemed to run in. That flip by the time the WWF rolled in, as there were good sized arenas for them to run in, which they did. Some of that is that Florida was pretty late to the game as far as pro sports like the NBA and NHL, which are often the drivers of good sized arenas. The state also wasn't much of a big time college hoops area, which is another driver of arenas getting bigger and bigger. In turn, JCP had a good number of good sized arenas. Here's VA alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Civic_Center http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_Scope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Coliseum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Coliseum Sizes vary, but they're all pretty decent. But then again... it's not like VA is a small state, nor those metros tiny. 1980 Census 1,160,311 Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA MSA 761,311 Richmond-Petersburg, VA MSA 220,393 Roanoke, VA MSA Hampton is also part of the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News Metro, which is "Hampton Roads" metro. The Metro had two good sized arenas. Roanoke stands out a bit from those four arenas in terms of a smaller metro, but you'll find places like that in some territories.

He's here to plug his vlog. That's what all of his posts are. Not a single one that isn't. Some maybe he could open a thread over here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showforum=356 And just pimp them in there. That's kind of the polite way people are pimping their vlogs and podcasts here. Lots of pimping over there, it's in a forum Loss/Will created for it, and no one seems to mind. People could check out the updates of they want, or zone out if they don't. John

Glad to help you from portraying him wrong.

Completely agree. As a side note on something that I mentioned earlier: is it just me, or did the Mid Atlantic Gateway take down or make less easy to find all those clippings and posters they use to have for various arenas? It was the coolest thing on the site.

Yep. One of the things I was trying to get across in the Bob-Greg matches: we think of MSG, Philly and Boston as the Trinity, of which MSG is the Father. But the WWF had a fair number of other good sized buildings they ran in. Many of which, unlike MSG and Philly, we don't have full results for... let alone attendance figures for. The Providence Civic Center sat 12K. New Haven Coliseum was 11K. Hartford Civic Center was 15K. I mentioned the Springfield Civic Center was 9K. Cap Center and Baltimore Civic Center were good sized arenas. Some of those are in major major huge cities/metros. Other are in just good sized cities. In contrast, the long time home of pro wrestling in Los Angeles was probably just a shade under 10K in legit real capacity (as opposed to the worked sellout number). Los Angeles was at various times a hot city/territory all the way back to the 20's when the Olympic was built, while LA was a large city going quite a ways back. So sometimes the city doesn't always match the arena.

Dave didn't go into details all. "I was eating. Teenyboppers showed up and dragged me to Funk." That said, I think I'm probably the only one on this board that has eaten a meal with Dave, let alone several dozen and knows how he went about it. I mean, while I enjoy your "he probably had dinner at some western style restaurant" spot since it so perfectly fits clueless gaijin who only eat western shit while in Japan, I kind of felt the need to point out that it was... you know... bullshit on how Dave eats in Japan.

Maybe PWG's Steen Wolf back in 2011. I can't remember any show that we went to in 2012, though maybe I'm just blanking out. Haven't gone to one this year.

I'm saying that I'm tired of close to 30 years of people saying they don't juice.

On two trip to Japan with him, Dave and I rarely ate at western style restaurants. The majority of occasions that we did were things like: * Ribera's Just a thing for a gaijin fanboy to do in that era * getting dragged out to a western play by puroresu reporters They all wanted to go to an Italian place at the end of the 1996 G1, and who were we to argue Dave loved Japanese joints when I went with him, and was more than comfortable going to Chinese places that Wally would take us to, or Korean BBQ that the wrestlers would like. When we were in Nagoya, after our adventures finding a hotel (which I've described a few times over the years), once we found one and dropped our gear in the room, it was back out on the streets walking around until we found one open and from the dishes in the window looked to have stuff we'd like. In fact, I think Nagoya may have been where I wasn't hungry (behind smart enough to pack some grub/snacks for the show/rides), but Dave was. He felt like sushi, we found a place, and he munched out. It's possible that Dave was more narrow in what he would eat in 1984 than in 1995-96, but that's not really the Dave I know. He was pretty open to trying a variety of things, while I was the more narrow / picky one. So my point... If they were randomly looking for us in 1995 without knowing the hotel, they would have been screwed. Even knowing the hotel, we could go into any sort of joint to eat. Hence my comment above: Dave may have been eating at the hotel if they served food, or was at a place the wrestlers recommended.