pantherwagner

He was a top star, don't get me wrong. He was a wild brawler with a tendency to bleed, which was one of the big styles of the era, and he was willing to work El Toreo and the Northern arenas which gave him plenty of popularity points (Satanico for instance was very vocal about not wanting to work there and hating the style). I believe that we tend to overrate his popularity because we have been lucky to get several of his classics on tape. But, you are right, I got my timeline wrong and Caras was a tecnico until late 83/early 84. Somewhat related to this: I am not sure how big of a star MS-1 was. I know he was a big star but don't know at what level. Probably not as big as Chicana but not too far away. It's hard to gauge those things 30 years later.

Just to put things in perspective, Chicana was NOT as big a star or draw as Fishman.

I am sure that it was covered in Sims' newsletter but I can't recall the details. As far as I can remember, it was a panic move that made no sense to anyone at the time. Drop a note to Steve because his memory is better than mine for this type of stuff. Chicana was not the hottest guy in Mexico or even top 5 in the early 80s, though he may have been the hottest rudo at Arena Mexico. Satanico probably was perceived as a bigger star. Cien Caras was the same level or slightly higher and same about Pirata Morgan. This is not to take anything away from Chicana... his peak was back when there were more legitimate top of the card drawing stars in Mexico than at any other point in history in Mexico or any other country. The short story on Chicana is pretty much what you already know. He often got in trouble either with the commission or with law enforcement, and he became unreliable due to drug abuse. His output dropped off as well, allegedly even more so when he was not in large arenas. His exodus also had the terrible timing of a switch in power from Herrera to Pena. But what about Estrada or Fiera who showed up to work more fucked up and were also very unreliable? Then I'd have no answer for you. Maybe Paco liked them more on a personal level (and in Estrada's case he didn't have a decline, he's that rare worker that was a top class performed even when coked up).

Yeah... it's been a year and it is like it is. If you want to watch AWA or Mid South or old Nitros buy DVD's or look at youtube/dailymotion. It may take years for any of that stuff to be available in an episodic format. So, I was watching that Mid Atlantic episode with Rufus/Pez vs Koloff/Kernodle and there's this tremendous skit where Flair goes to Blackjack's ranch to ask for help to get rid of Wahoo and Blanchard. Mulligan and Dusty and their buddies ("my family") are around a bonfire drinking beer and holding rifles so Flair rips off the top part of his expensive three piece suit to show that he's one of them. Also Mulligan says that he likes heavy set women and offers Flair a beer (which he proceeds to uncap by using his teeth). This was ten stars even if they keep referring to Wahoo "McDaniels", which is a pet peeve of mine.

I recently was on the same plane to Japan as Mirko and he'd look tiny in the WWE.

Shame that Baroni is old and broken down. His personality is perfect for wrestling. Meltzer reported that Baroni vs Silva may happen (pro-wrestling not MMA) for IGF.

I haven't seen this anywhere but a friend (who visits cut and paste websites) told me that the rumour is that Sonnen has been offered Tough Enough.

I agree, it was great. I liked Ladd's HOF special. It's baffling that they haven't been uploading a lot of these. It requires little to no effort as it's just leveraging content that they already produced and very few people has seen. I also enjoyed the one with Bobo Brazil. The match with Brody made me want to stab my eyes though.

I guess that if you show something from the 80s to a kid they will obviously react like it's uninteresting stuff. It looks and feels old. Late 80s Saturday Night's Main Event may be an exception with the over the top characters and great production values. Have you tried with 1996 Nitro? It's fast paced, cool characters, fun high flying, the matches are not too long and it doesn't look ancient.

Black History Month: Ernie Ladd calling Bobo Brazil an "Uncle Tom" in an interview... At least they didn't put there the Piper's Pit with Tony Atlas, the HHH interview with Booker T telling him to dance because that's what your people do, or that one interview with Ron Simmons and Harley Race.

Silva isn't the brightest guy and I doubt he'll understand the concept of working. Besides, he hates Sonnen... bad idea. Sonnen as an announcer makes sense, though. He's got a lot of the characteristics that they seem to look for in an announcer. They would also feel like they are ahead of the curve on UFC if CM Punk after his fighting career becomes a commentator for them as it was rumoured he wanted to become.

This could actually be awesome.

I have been wondering the same, too. A few TNT's have showed film footage with Gorilla Monsoon (I think vs Professor Tanaka) and Crusher Verdu... they must have quite a collection. There's no chance of this happening anytime soon but it would be great if they brought back the Film Room show from WWE Classics as a way to showcase random films from their archives.

Yeah... I lived in South Africa a few years ago, it's still quite a tricky situation over there even if apartheid has been over for a long time. That type of comments have been quite common back then.

Well spotted. Andre vs Inoki in Brazil, Inoki vs Pak Song Nam in South Korea, a match from Pakistan (it may be the one where he breaks Pahawan's arm, I don't know) and unless I missed it, Inoki vs Flair and Hokuto vs Nakano from Pyongyang are there as well. Around the world with Inoki, if you will.

I believe that they haven't added anything. Their subscription numbers are so low that the only people who have it have got to be current fans. For all the praise the NJPW interface got at launch time I find the video player to be worse than WWE's, which isn't very good itself (on both OSX and iPad 2). They beat the WWE Network at pretty much every other interface aspect though.

The pay disparity in Mexico in between main event wrestlers and true-drawing card main event wrestlers is also staggering. I can't comment on pay rates nowadays because I'm so out of touch but back in the early 2000s you could book Blue Panther, Atlantis, Mr. Niebla and Negro Casas for less than you'd have to pay El Hijo del Santo. This is one of the reasons why people talk all kinds of shit about Mil Mascaras but still would go out there and basically work a long squash match with him whenever it was requested. If you main evented with him you'd get double or triple pay depending on the city, with a nice bonus on top if it was a singles match for the IWA title.

The major remaining territory era North American libraries that they do not own (ignoring Mexico) are: Memphis Wrestling: by far the most valuable collection! They will buy this as soon as the ownership deal is settled. World Wrestling Council: it was rumoured that WWE wanted this last year. The Colon’s promotion is cash strapped so this will eventually end up being owned by WWE whenever they decide that they need footage in Spanish language. This may be a gold mine if the older stuff has been preserved half decently. Savoldi collection: Jarrett WCCW, Wild West and IWCCW, as well as probably a lot of random shit: they may have WIN masters (1989 lucha libre promotion), Venezuela wrestling tours, early 90s Carolinas indies (NAWA/SAPW) with Shamrock and Tatanka and other low value stuff. I just hope that someday somebody finds a pristine copy of the WIN bout with Eddy, Mando, Chavo and Hector teaming together. St. Louis: only the last few years are available. Not sure who owns this. Matysik? Houston Wrestling: not sure who owns this but apparently somebody does. I wonder if they still do have film of Lou Thesz vs Kintaro Oki. ClassicWrestling.com: this is owned by Todd Okerlund and partners so it will end up owned by WWE someday. Basically it’s the old PM Film library which has been marketed for two decades in different forms: Blanchard’s Southwest, Einhorn’s IWA, whatever survives from Bruiser and Sheik’s territories, Abrams’ UWF, Poffo’s ICW, some Memphis, some old Black and white wrestling and they may own the few tapes from Hawaii/Polynesian wrestling that are still around. I believe they also own Texas All Star and mid 80s Central States (WWA) because bits and pieces of that used to be part of the old PM Film tape lists. Canadian Wrestling: whatever survives from Montreal (International and Grand Prix) apparently seems to be owned by Scott D’Amore. This may include Canadian AWA and indies like Tony Condello’s promotion. Anything else, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, comes from private recordings and not actual masters. I don’t believe there’s anything left from the Welch/Fuller territory either. Besides that there are private owners of individual masters from Memphis or Mid Atlantic: Jim Cornette may be the biggest individual owner. Also, there was a quick mention in the Observer a few months ago of WWE acquiring the tapes of a gentleman who shot his own handhelds and may or may not have the only Flair vs Andre match on tape.

No. The Von Erichs owned the pre-SuperClash World Class footage, which is what WWE owns. The footage after the Jarrett buyout (from Ken Mentall, who had bought World Class from Fritz), and the USWA Texas footage, ended up in Max Andrews' hands after Jarrett closed shop. Andrews produced Global and Wild West and my guess is that he sold all of this to the Savoldis. WWE likely owns GWF and USWA because of early Cactus Jack, Booker T, Sean Waltman, JBL and most importantly Steve Austin. My guess is that WWW and post 88 WCCW were not of prime interest to the WWE at the time. The Savoldis and the McMahons are close so I'm sure that the footage will someday all end up being owned by WWE but acquiring old minor libraries may not be one of their main priorities at this time unless they can produce a DVD or two (Memphis would be an exception here obviously).

May have been Flair, he is one of those that always said McDaniels for both Wahoo and Mongo.

It's Mad Dog Boyd.

Came in here to post exactly these two things. When did the WWE get the rights to the GWF? I would LOVE all of those episodes to end up on the Network eventually. I know the moon rock stuff would be shit on today (and probably was back then by Meltzer and sheet readers), but I loved the hell out of "Maniac" Mike Davis. Our resident library expert (Bix) probably knows the right time but it looks like the GWF and USWA Texas footage has been part of WWE since at least 2013. I don't know if they acquired it from the Savoldis or Max Andrews. I'd love to watch the USWA Texas shows restored on the network for similar reasons: I caught a few episodes on a European sports channel when I was 12 or 13 and I used to have a commercial tape with a Chris Adams vs Steve Austin match that ended with Austin splashing Chris and Toni Adams off the top rope. That was quite a HOLY SHIT moment for me back then.

I often wonder if Wahoo was either mildly annoyed or if he didn't care that most of the wrestlers referred to him as Wahoo McDaniels instead of Wahoo McDaniel.

Hopefully its a episode where Waltman wrestles Lynn. No, it's an episode where Chaz ends up looking like a total idiot (I guess that's every episode with Chaz though) and a lot of Ebony Experience/Harlem Heat. They have uploaded a very varied and cool mix of stuff... I'd advise anyone that wants to watch this to do so during this month... the 12 Days of Attitude christmas section has seemingly vanished with all its videos, though that may be temporary. Either way it's quite a treat to watch some of this old stuff in such beautiful quality.

They once showed the "I saw the ground in 3D!!!!" quote from the Bungee Match in their old youtube "Are you serious?" show.