pantherwagner

That's what I thought. By the way, I haven't paid attention to lucha for years, so this may not be a first but the press release for the London Lucha shows names Demon Jr. as the adopted son of Demon Sr. I believe that was one of those things that everybody knows but had never been made public.

Wagner Jr. is Wagner Sr.'s real son but buying the gimmick of being the son of a famous wrestler is a common practice.

Having Austin back is great - Jericho interviewing Undertaker would most likely be a letdown. They also uploaded the ECW invades RAW episode from 1997. I haven't seen that in ages. I remember being blow away by it back in the day and then being upset at the lack of follow up on it. Still waiting for the magical day in which they start uploading non WWF 80s stuff regularly. I imagine that in 2-3 years we'll have threads where we'll discuss eveyrthing that happened during a specific week and month of 1983 (or something) on the weekly TV of every promotion that they own.

The good thing about London is that the 50% percent discounts and 2x1 promotions will eventually pop up...

Oddly enough during early July we will have two lucha libre shows in central London - two of them head to head. Show #1: July 11 - Lucha Libre in the Royal Albert Hall. I saw an ad for this at a Mexican restaurant and seeing that they were billing Blue Demon Jr. in the main event as well as the price (it's the Royal Albert Hall... I imagined not cheap) I was going to skip it, however it looks like it may be a tremendous show. Copied from the press release: Fifteen of the sixteen luchadores are announced: Blue Demon Jr., La Parka , Psyco Clown, Villano 4, Hijo Del Fantasma, Pentagon, Fenix, Texano Jr., Blue Demoncito Jr., Mini Histeria, Octagoncito, Mini Abismo Negro, Magno, Sexy Star, Faby Apache. The sixteenth big star mystery luchador is to be named nearer the time. So we have the minis and women (pretty much a requirement in a lucha show for foreigners) but also several great workers. I imagine Villano IV is there to fight vs Demon and I'm alright with that. I guess that the "surprise luchador" may be Rey or Alberto. Mistico would be the third option and wouldn't mean that much here. This looks like a great workrate show. 22 GBP GA tickets are either sold out or not available and the next tier is at 50 GBP and the rest are 70 and 105 quid. I will have to think about it because that's some decent coin. We have enough hipsters in London to fill out five or six lucha libre shows at the same time but I can't really see them doing well at those prices. I may wait until the last minute discounts kick in. Show #2 or rather second set of shows: 9 to 11 July (four shows, including two on Saturday) @ York Hall, Bethnal Green These are run by Lucha Britannia, apparently a group that runs indy shows 5 mins away from my house and they are doing the whole arthouse/Santo movie/cabaret Lucha VaVoom gimmick. http://www.luchalibreworld.co.uk/#!tickets/c273 Notable wrestlers scheduled are Hijo del Santo, Dr. Wagner Jr., several minis, Cassandro and the ones I'm excited the most about: the Cholitas (the Peruvian or Bolivian indigenious lady wrestlers that do crazy high flying moves dressed in traditional clothes). Several question marks (Santo is supposed to be done and Cassandro had a stroke recently) but the prices for these shows are pretty decent, it's right in my neighbourhood and outside the building there's a great craft beer bar.... most likely going to this one. Is anybody attending any of these?

I expect the stock to drop quite a bit if Vince retires. 15%+ if he suddenly dies without a proper succession plan.

I don't know if that is still the case but Negro Casas and Dandy were on pretty bad terms for ages. It took years for the ex-Promo Azteca guys to be invited back to CMLL, even Silver King (whose brother at one point was the biggest star in the company) but Dandy never got the call. Dandy vs Casas was a fondly remembered early and mid 90s feud that has never been rekindled even on the indy scene. Maybe KrisZ would know but I don't think they have been in the same ring together for almost two decades.

I'm surprised that Scott Stanford has got a job. He's older than the WWE prototype announcer and looks like a wax figure. Maybe Vince likes to hire people with NXT-ready real names (I can't believe Canyon Ceman is a person's real name).

Here's my disclaimer: Mistico/post-Mistico CMLL is not really my cup of tea and I haven't watched more than 10 hours of current non-NJPW Japanese wrestling in the last 7 or 8 years, so I am not trying to disguise my opinion as somebody else's. That being said, I know that there are several lucha fans that are really pissed off at Meltzer for giving so much shit to guys like Volador or La Sombra for doing way too many dangerous spots and rendering them meaningless, but then he seems to give a free pass to Japanese wrestlers doing the same thing.

Also that style of lucha was the fast moving workrate style that Dave likes. He also enjoyed the Mistico run for similar reasons.

I have been watching some late 97 and early 98 Raws from the last batch upload, mostly as background noise while I do other things. I had not watched any of these since they aired and they are as horrible as I remembered them being. Undertaker, HHH and Shawn Michaels are so bad at promos that it is embarrassing.

I don't think Bob ever went. You know what, I may be getting confused then because he was on a Japanese game show called Naruhodo the World w/ Kurt, Fisico Nuclear and Chris Zavisa. I imagined he went to the Universal tour of 1990. I never thought about it but they of course filmed it in Los Angeles (there are also parts where they visit Bob, Kurt and Zavisa's houses).

I've never been to a lucha match that was better on TV than live.

My guess is that they probably think (and rightfully so) that some people wouldn't notice if they were silently uploaded in their folders. It's kind of ridiculous that there's nowhere on the network itself to see what has been uploaded recently. I know that there's a reddit bot and a twitter bot out there... but the latter has got only 3000 subscribers.

Giant upload of 97-98 Raw's on the network. What should I watch?

That is correct. The Santo heel turn would not have worked against anyone else in the world. A common talking point on interviews and challenges twenty years ago was that Arena Mexico was Casas' arena and you don't disrespect him in the arena that he owns. For all the crap that Mexican fans sometimes get for being less sophisticated, many didn't really follow the doctrine of cheering for whoever the promotion tells you even in the 80s. Los Infernales, Perro Aguayo, Fishman or Misioneros de la Muerte were always considered to be cool rudos without having to pander to the crowd. They were bad ass mofos and that was enough.

And if you try to, like Dusty, you get reprimanded and taken off TV.

Also the Terry Funk story NEVER gets old.

Great great show. Was Lance mentioned in the "nicest people in wrestling" thread we recently had over here? What a great man. The mutual respect and the friendship that you have with each other was really shining through the interview. The second part wasn't bad but it fell flat after the first. It should have come first or should have been done as a different mini-episode.

I was going to write something similar to this but you got it covered. Jericho has received the biggest honours an active wrestler can achieve professionally (top billing on a Wrestlemania, constant main event status, multiple world championships) and critically (WON HOF). In 30 years he'll no doubt be considered as one of the best of his generation and nobody in the metal world will remember Fozzy.

I have been to Japan pretty much every year since 2006, sometimes more than once, and I have never been to a wrestling show. That's not my regret though, my regret is that I wish I had gone there when I was younger to at least catch the tail end of the great NJPW Tokyo Dome shows. It must have also been fascinating travelling there in early/mid 90s like jdw, Dave, Bob Barnett, Kurt Brown and others got to do.

Jericho said in his podcast that from his side there's no heat with Goldberg but that he hasn't spoken to him about it either.

I haven't heard Lanny confirm it, although he does speak kindly of Hulk. Warrior called bull shit of it when he did that massive shoot YouTube video on Hogan (the trailer for which was far better than the actual thing). Dave Meltzer has mentioned that people that were close to Savage believe the story to be true.

Maybe I am getting this mixed up with something else but didn't they have a big fight (not a dispute, but an actual fight) and neither wanted to talk about it afterwards?

Rick Rude needs to be in