pantherwagner

To say nothing about his unwillingness to learn or grow as a "character." Perfect example, the reason Heyman is back despite a severly burnt bridge between Paul and the company, as well as Paul being DONE with the business, moved on and was in a healthier place to the point that he was never going back to ANY promotion. BUT Brock hated talking SO much, and didn't want to start fresh with a brand new mouthpiece, he demamded they bring back Heyman. It worked out of course, with Heyman adding more credentials to a HOF career, but it was only because Lesnar wanted nothing to do with talking and needed Heyman specifically. I'm curious but do you think that a talking version of Brock would be a better character? I understand the promotion's goal is to churn out TV to sell to all the different markets but my problem with characters like Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins or Dean Ambrose is that they get too much talking time. Even Heyman is very repetitive and he is one of the best talkers out there.

I imagine that Vince would have booked Bruiser and Crusher like a protected version of the Bushwhackers.

Wrestling does seem to bring out the worst in people. Twitter has completely killed the mystique of Kevin Nash. Only a few years ago he was considered to be one of the most brilliant and calculating negotiators ever in the industry. Now it's hard to see him as anything other than an insecure man who is still making great money and should have an awesome life but often feels lonely and gets drunk and rants (with terrible grammar) on twitter about stupid shit. That's when you realise that he was such a great negotiatior because he was a good looking, tall, muscular, eloquent and personable guy. That does not mean that he was smarter or a better negotiator than Sid.

I stepped away from the JR and Cornette podcasts for a while and in the latter case it was partly because of Alice. I have listened to a few Cornette podcasts lately and she's not nearly as terrible now. She's still pretty bad but she is more restrained and doesn't feel the need to give her two cents on every single matter. As others have said, Jerry, posting the pictures makes you look really bad, like the videogame dudes that hate women. My current answer would be whoever runs the WWE Network, because it kind of sucks. I really had great hopes for it as an easy way to watch seasonal wrestling in high quality while on the go (due to work I usually travel a lot). Other than that I don't hate anybody in wrestling anymore because for me a big chunk of the emotional part is gone. I can't get hung up on booking being terrible nowadays because there's always some old shit that I can watch on youtube that I will enjoy. Before I had a long wrestling lapse my list would have also included Russo, Inoki and Pena as I considered them responsible for ruining the type of wrestling that I loved. Nowadays it does not matter because those styles would have died anyway.

The Japanese really had the best instrumental themes of all AJW Beautiful Challengers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEFV2rMU4fE NWA World Heavyweight Champion theme (Galaxy Express) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9TPzNKNSuA Devil Masami https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73wP2Xgtms

I haven't looked for it in forever but I could never find Akira Hokuto's theme, Oro de Ley, without lyrics. Easy to find with lyrics and there are some karaoke CD instrumentals around but they are not the real deal. Also never seen a perfect quality complete version of the classic early Wrestlemania theme. Pretty good yes but not perfect. Maybe somebody's got one. My greatest find was the NWA Pro Wrestling 1990 TV which is a stock theme called Touchdown. I even bought that from iTunes years ago.

The removals are odd but I understand them not wanting to create 6 or 7 new categories to have a show or two in each. I can't see them adding any new WCW Pro or GWF in the next couple of years. It's a shame that the Bobo, Ladd and Atlas HOF shows are gone though.

Until the late 90s I didn't actually watch a lot of wrestling in English and it never stopped my enjoyment. I watched AAA/CMLL in Spanish, which I obviously understood. AAA was terrible all through the 90s. Nowadays it is much better. I watched WCW/WWF in German (except for video tapes I would buy or trade) as I'd get the shows via satellite from either RTL2 or DSF. Of course all Japanese wrestling I watched was in Japanese, except for the short run of NJPW Ring Warriors on Eurosport in the mid 90s. I loved Gordon Solie / Craig DeGeorge on commentary. Humperdink/DeGeorge was atrocious. I concur with previous comments on this thread that Hugo Savinovich is outstanding ... but some of the people he had to work with in WWC were atrocious.

You'd love to understand Pedro Septien. He's the Mexican Walton.

I know there's got to be some rich drug baron that had a VCR in the late 80s and taped all the Juarez lucha libre. Negro Casas vs Eddy Guerrero dammit.

Holy shit T-Bolt is still alive???

I guess that he divorced because if I remember correctly his wife is Japanese (or at least the lady that he was married to when he retired). Kayfabe, I know, I was also let down that he didn't have a big fat wife and nine kids.

Dr. Wagner Jr., Hijo del Santo and Cassandro announced so far. 9th, 10th & 11th of July - York Hall, Bethnal Green, London Tickets on sale from Friday 20th February: www.luchalibreworld.co.uk

Do you think there's any of this on the AWA tape library? Were the 70s WWE 24/7 shows "new" to you at the time that they were released?

How great must have been this guy in his day? He was pretty good for a senior citizen in his Arena Mexico retirement. I also forgot to say: more Rene Guajardo, Ray Mendoza and especially Karloff Lagarde. Unless I'm blanking out there's only one Lagarde match on tape.

It would be amazing to have mid-to-early 80s Toreo undercards with young guns Black Terry, El Matematico, Black Man, Ultraman, Solar, Super Astro, Blue Panther, Mano Negra and others. Black Terry is one of those guys that, similar to Navarro, really found his thing doing the maestros style. There's a decent quantity of early 90s footage and I haven't revisited this in decades but I used to prefer Jose Luis Feliciano over him. Both were what I'd call great mechanics but I'd have never imagined we'd be talking about either still being a super worker two decades later. Steve Sims, who used to go down to Mexico a few times a year back then, used to refer to Feliciano/Terry as the most underrated tag team in the world.

I'm curious: why Leon Chino? He was one of those guys I'd see on magazines and think "this guy has got to be awesome" but everything I have seen from him as either Leon Chino or Katana has been kind of underwhelming. Have I missed anything? I remember back in the early 00's coming back from partying at 2 or 3 AM and watching Monterrey wrestling on a crappy quality stream back before streaming was even a thing. Charles Lucero was a real discovery, one of those guys that looks old as fuck but can go (he may not be all that old). It's great that 15 years later he's still going strong.

I was surprised by that so I checked his age and he was born in 1947 so he'd have been in his mid 30s back then.

Not a bigger star than Faraon - another guy whose stock fell dramatically and was completely forgotten a decade later.

Negro Casas and Pirata Morgan. I'd love to see more prime Perro Aguayo too. Anytime somebody finds a new tape of pre 1989 lucha the world is alright for a while.

I haven't watched in ages whatever early Fishman there's on the NJPW World website... and I can't recall any great Fishman matches either from Mexico, World Class, Los Angeles or whatever appearances he had in the 80s that we have on tape. People in Mexico tell me he was very good but I have never seen any evidence.

If anything Ross deserves credit for seeing something in skinny 16 year old kids brought by the Italian Stallion as a con to make money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA4P4kV5fHg&feature=youtu.be Short video about WWF and WCW filiming shows in "Special Locations". Back in the day I used to think that it was really cool that WCW sometimes filmed shows at the beach, Club La Vela and other places. In my teenage eyes it made them seem cool, thus more important. Shame that Vince McMahon hates the concept (Michael Hayes has mentioned a couple of times on Legends of Wrestling and other shows that he thinks that WCW debuting Nitro at the Mall of America was "cheesy" so we can pretty much safely assume he's parroting Vince/Kevin Dunn on that one) because it would make their tired production values seem fresher on those occasions. Maybe they just want to save it for Tribute to the Troops or something.

Fishman would have a bigger standing if they had done the Perro Aguayo vs Fishman hair vs mask match in the mid 90s because that one would have been huge. Fishman couldn't bump anymore but he still was a charismatic rudo.

Is Fishman a viable WON HOF candidate? He's someone I would definitely like to learn more about after reading OJ's Lucha History thread. Obviously there are a lot of Lucha guys already on the ballot that deserve to go in but I'm curious if Fishman is someone who should be looked at in the future? That is if the ballot ever clears up. Fishman should be on the ballot and definitely deserves a look but I'm not sure who could gather all the information to put a case for him (not me... don't have the resources anymore). Seeing how other Toreo era wrestlers have done in the HOF voting I'd not give him much of a chance. He was a legitimate main event star by 1976 and a gigantic star by 1978. His tag team with Solitario first and Aguayo later was one of the top attractions in the country, and he had tremendous singles feuds with Villano III, Aguayo, Chicana, Faraon. As usual with lucha libre the lack of definite drawing records hurts him. Without the insight of how big he was at the time it's very easy to dismiss his accomplishments as he was simply lucky to be in there with the right people (the Akira Taue argument) as the majority of WON readers know about him from AAA when he was slow and washed up.