pantherwagner

For whatever reason I have stuck in my mind this Tony Schiavone quote about DDP being influenced by Rey Misterio Jr. after he used a plancha outside the ring in some random match. What we have nowadays in WWE is a mix of that high flying late 90s WCW style + the table breaking/hard hitting/big finishers attitude era style + the early 00's "finisher reversal" techniques used by people like Jericho to give the impression that you are seeing a classic match when you are really not. I stopped watching US wrestling regularly right after WCW's end but it's likely that it was the Smackdown Six and Heyman who put together those elements.

I don't know about your first sentence. For every praising review by Rob there were two or three Schneider/Tom K./Dean reviews shitting all over the matches. Rob was (is?) very defensive of his opinions and he had a knack for driving people away which is a shame because he was ahead of pretty much everybody else outside of Mexico in discovering new young talent that had a chance to make it big. Ultimo Guerrero and Averno are as guilty as anyone else for NewJapanising lucha libre. You can trace it back to Dr. Wagner Jr. making it big over there in the late 90s/early 00s., and everybody trying to wrestle the big move style to score lucrative Japan tours. At some point in the mid 00's, and for its first time in history, CMLL match falls had to be fitted in certain timeslots for TV to smoothly go through commercial breaks. That's when I started losing interest in modern CMLL. Matches became rushed with no build and as a result I have watched probably less than 20 hours of CMLL during the last 7-8 years.

I think that has been the case for a long time. WWE being around globally has been mentioned and young wrestlers having access to DVDs/youtube is a big factor too. During most of the 90s the WWF wasn't popular at all in Mexico or Japan so you had all the distinct styles more or less untouched. But even a decade ago newer fans were raving about "great lucha matches" with Mistico and Averno that looked more like US indy wrestling than like Santo vs Negro Casas.

Yeah he is strictly anti-Republican (right wing ones for sure). Now that doesn't necessarily mean he's a Democrat although he is a very vocal supporter of Obama. Cornette mentioned in one of his podcasts that he never paid a lot of attention to politics when he was active because he was too deep in the wrestling bubble. He only started hating republicans in the last few years.

Inoki is a neocon (no shit, is anyone surprised) and Hase is a Lib-Dem. For those in the UK, there’s a distinction between our Lib-Dems and the Japanese ones who are more towards centre-right and not centre-left. Onita ran in the same party as Hase though he was booted out of politics after he used government funds to book hotels to have threesomes with a porn star and some other chick. What a guy. Mil Mascaras has spoken politics several times on interviews and surprisingly he’s more towards the left than I’d have ever imagined.

Same issue here (Roku). I had to watch the Texas episode of Legends of Wrestling (2009) by going through the Schedule section. The problem with the years has been partly solved on the Apple TV. Some years show up/have been corrected (WCCW 1993, Old School 86) but several others still don't show up (Old School 1985, Roundtables 99).

I really hope that the new acquisition is the WWC library. There are a lot of gems to be discovered there. Would love to see the full Dory/Flair vs. Abby/Carlos match. Though I'd not mind if it was Memphis and they decided to do episodic uploads of the shows. I don't know if anybody else seems to have the same problem that I have with Apple TV. When they upload any new shows, if they happened during a year that wasn't on the selection choices from the start, they don't seem to show up. I.e., I get all the WCCW no problem, but I can't get the 1999 roundtables, or the 1985 and 1986 Old School shows. However the 98 roudtables or 1991 Old School shows that have been added recently are showing up as soon as they are in. Not a major problem for me though as I can use my iPad (which has got all the shows apparently) to sync the screen with Apple TV. But it's an odd one.

I checked out that Raw segment. It looked too staged and unauthentic, especially when as others have said the real fans in the building could have given a similar reaction. When Bryan tried to position himself on the main even the reaction wasn't thunderous like you'd have expected. But in the end it doesn't matter as "the fans finally get what they want" and HHH/Steph can claim that it was all a part of their master plan.

So what is the genius of Robert Gibson? Teaming with Ricky Morton?

I was 10 years old in 1990 and after I started watching NWA Pro Wrestling (which I did sporadically as it was on a regional channel that I did not get at home) it was hard for me to take the Rock and Roll Express. On one channel you had two flabby ugly and creepy looking old dudes whose biggest move often was a double dropkick. On the other channel I had The Rockers who were the exact opposite: cool looking handsome guys wrestling a fast style. Even comparing them to Tom Zenk and Brian Pillman on their own turf they looked like shit through the eyes of a 10 year old. It took me many years to appreciate them for what they are. Did I hear the name Rick Martel here?

Yes. Spain too. Rey and Batista were the biggest stars. Nobody else was on their level or even close.

Austin as a host would be perfect because all wrestlers seriously respect the man and most won't try to bullshit him too much (there's always exceptions like Flair who can't help themselves).

Yeah I'm curious about an Embry run as a BJ. Can't see that one.

Well played. I was hoping for "Worst Blowjobs", but you still did an awesome job. A thread like that may merit some discussion too. Worst in terms of losing money: allegedly Randy Savage/SMH I vote for Bill Watts/Dark Journey. And tell us the Hokuto story. I'm sure you have heard/read this story before, most recently on the Sasaki WON bio. Hokuto and Sasaki hooked up in North Korea while wrestling for that Inoki supershow and everybody on their floor, the floor below and the floor above could hear their apparently very loud LOVE NOISE all night long. The next morning they decided to get married which they did as soon as they arrived in Japan, which got a lot of media attention. Nowadays it's common to see one of them, or both, showing up at random TV shows as guests (or "talento" as they call them over there).

Well played. I was hoping for "Worst Blowjobs", but you still did an awesome job. A thread like that may merit some discussion too. Worst in terms of losing money: allegedly Randy Savage/SMH Worst in terms of bad booking: Mark Henry/tranny Worst in terms of "what the fuck?" shock: Chyna/X-Pac or Hogan/Bubba's wife. Best in terms of attaining mainstream publicity: Hokuto in North Korea. Pretty sure you could stretch the subject to talk about Sunny Days, Fujiwara/the Swedish bodybuilder chick, Ryuma Go's post wrestling career, Buck Zumhofe (too soon?), etc.

Why do you think that it is horrible? Not a DVD I'd pick up but the selection of matches includes enough big names and, on paper, interesting match ups to attract the kind of people who would buy this. But other than deluxe Blu Ray Wrestlemania DVD box sets or 5 dollar DVD's at Walmart or Target I can't see much of a market for the home video division.

I need photo evidence of this.

I was watching some World Class the other day (and again today) and I started wondering if David Von Erich is the ugliest mofo to ever get pushed as a "blowjob" wrestler AND actually get over in the role. I'm sure that most of you know that term or could guess that that meant, but for the younger posters here, a "blowjob"wrestler is a Memphis wrestling term to describe a good looking babyface who is given a decent push and used to draw young females to the show. I know there's Robert Gibson, but while he is a pretty ugly dude, can't say he looks like he's got an extra chromosome 21 or that his mom and dad are cousins. Ricky Santana and El Dandy would be good examples as well. Any others?

I thought my description was creative enough so I will take that one if you weeel.

Since this is a popular match on the set, people might like to know (or alternatively be gutted to hear) that there was a super libre revancha match the following week, as cubsfan discovered on his trip to Mexico.. Man, you're breaking my heart. This reminds me of the story that apparently, a week before the Santo vs Casas mask vs hair match in 1987, they had an even better double bloodbath. Guys. Stop it. Actually don't. It may kill me but I love hearing about these matches we'll never see. I heard that two weeks before the mask vs hair match they had a Misioneros de la Muerte vs Santo, Casas and Black Shadow Jr. super match where Casas turned on Santo, and a week later they had the bloodbath. I believe I heard this from Kurt Brown and/or read it on a Lucha Libre (Ben Mora, who promoted the show) magazine. IF that's true, it was esentially a one week build-up to one of the 80s top classic matches.

Let me rephrase my complaint. I understand that things are rolled out slowly but it needs to be done with some sort of rhyme or reason. No point in watching random episodes of World Class if there's no continuity. I already have DVD's of most stuff that interests me from the network as it is today. At some point having it as "background noise" (as Loss mentions) will grow old for me and I don't care too much about their current product. I also realise that I'm not really the main kind of customer they are looking after. And as John Lister pointed out, I don't see the point of taking things down other than to be cheap with disk space. So I'm hopeful this is just a period they are using to test out the technology.

Since this is a popular match on the set, people might like to know (or alternatively be gutted to hear) that there was a super libre revancha match the following week, as cubsfan discovered on his trip to Mexico.. Man, you're breaking my heart. This reminds me of the story that apparently, a week before the Santo vs Casas mask vs hair match in 1987, they had an even better double bloodbath.

Yeah, same here. I still have three days to decide if I stay after my trial or not but I will probably do so as for the next couple of months I expect that the novelty of having all the PPV's will still be worth the monthly fee. But if by the end of the six months there's not plenty of content available over full time (SNME, all Coliseum Videos, the Clashes, the full MSG run Dave mentioned, territorial stuff as complete as possible to watch it in episodic succession...) then for me it won't be worth it at all.

Not sure if this deserves its own topic or not. Probably not so I put it here. But I was watching some World Class the other day (and again today) and I started wondering if David Von Erich is the ugliest mofo to ever get pushed as a "blowjob" wrestler AND actually get over in the role. I know there's Robert Gibson, but while he is a pretty ugly dude, can't say he looks like he's got an extra chromosome 21 or that his mom and dad are cousins. Ricky Santana and El Dandy would be good examples as well.

Apparently one of the main things that makes them take a long time to get the footage ready is the closed captioning. I'd have thought there is plenty of software that would get the bulk of that done (though it would have to be reviewed later by humans due to the wacky nature of wrestler names). I hope they get some major events from AWA and SMW up soon. And the Clashes too. Sort of related to the network: does anybody know if the Stampede collection has got the raw footage of complete matches? I know that the TV show was mostly edited/JIP.