flyonthewall2983

I remember how goofy Triple H looked turning his WrestleMania 31 entrance into a quasi-commercial for Terminator-whateverthefuck was in 2015. The match itself, of course, was dredging up all the ghosts of the Monday Night Wars and rehashing their victory yet again. Wrestling is steeped in nostalgia, more so than ever now. I remember listening to the director of the Andre documentary talk about interviewing Vince, and mentioning something about the 80's being their "halcyon years", with Vince responding "what do you mean, halcyon years pal?" (something like that), suggesting that he still thought they were as relevant as they were in the Rock & Wrestling days or the Attitude Era (which while I am not so fond of it, I would argue was the only time they were even close to being ahead of the pop culture curve). Reading all this makes me realize there is, within the product, a push-pull between the nostalgia for when things were better, and the denial that things aren't the same now.

Between the Goldberg incident and his brother dying*, I think he's done. And with how they built the match up, breaking kayfabe, is probably as good an indicator that he's done with the character and found some finality in being closer to himself than he even was in the Attitude Era. *such an eerily fitting coincidence, considering the circumstances around his first match, with Bret Hart's brother dying just the day before. Can't speak to his state of mind, but it wouldn't surprise me if that isn't lost on him 30 years later.

It's interesting that the whole Starrcast drama was brought up. His body language regarding the fallout makes me think that (at least at the time he was being interviewed) the whole thing had not settled in his mind. Reddit is picking apart the moment after the Extreme Rules tag match where he goes up to Vince after and says basically that's it and Vince appears to subtly beg him to reconsider that position. Towards the end Triple H talks about the buzz of performing being an addiction, with clips of Ric and Shawn talking about how difficult retirement was. This kind of thing is usually portrayed a bit more heroically but it felt particularly sad considering that moment he is chasing through this whole series.

Hugh Dancy on the last season of Homeland is almost identical to CM Punk.

The 24/7 on Flair's WM 24 weekend was good. But I imagine it could have been a hell of a lot longer, or perhaps even being the basis of the career-long retrospective I fantasized about on the last page. Tough seeing the footage of all of his kids together in the front row watching him.

He refused to be interviewed for it

I remember the Nitro in January 98 I was at when Davey Boy Smith returned, and faced Mongo. They did a small angle where he was playing ugly American to Smith and the two had a blow-off match. It was responded to rather politely (bordering on tepidly, or so I remember it), since DBS' return was not a surprise to anyone at this point since Bret was already there.

Fill in for Ludvig Borga, who quit. Would have loved to have seen Tenta sit on a Nazi.

Better in the ring than in the broadcast booth.

Is it WWE's book?

I heard the new Andre book is pretty good. It's written by one of the producers of the HBO doc on him from a few years back.

They just put up a video on Sting, taken from backstage footage of him at Slamboree 95. Just about to watch it, but this is going deep into WCW archives which is interesting for them to do at this point.

The AWA doc that is on the Network from 2006-7 shows Hogan's rise as a babyface and shows that Hulkamania pretty much started in the Midwest. The thing Vince can claim is that his father came up with the name. The ESPN Flair film is mostly about his personal life with the Reader's Digest version of his career to pad it out. They wouldn't need to get Arn for such a thing since they surely have tons of interviews with him for past programs anyway.

I wonder what would have happened if they had more time to change up this match, if they could have gotten Hogan in the Mr. Perfect spot. It could have been a good continuation of his quasi-angle with Flair before leaving earlier that year, and working with a new promising character like Razor could have given him a bit more shine then if it was a babyface Mr. Perfect coming back.

Worth a watch

I'm really interested in just how much backstage stuff they have. Not just recently but going back to the 90's when they would film stuff at MSG, or the behind the scenes stuff at WrestleMania 9. It's so funny I remember someone on reddit just randomly asking for the Network to put up the Yokozuna slam challenge on that aircraft carrier and maybe even the same day the Network announced they were putting up a three hour doc on the Lex Express.

To do that format on individual careers, as opposed to specific eras, would be great. They not only have the footage of entire careers, but by now have done tons of interviews with. All just a matter of doing some editing and maybe new interviews. Guys like Flair and Hogan are the obvious choices, but surely it could apply to a few others like Shawn or Bret as well.

They must have liked working each other enough to have such a more even finish, since they would have a feud nobody remembers at the end of 1992, that took many direct cues from Martel's program with Jake Roberts. The lull in the matches between the two main events are pretty obvious now. I guess it was charitable to such a large crowd to have essentially a long piss break.

There's probably a lot more to this than meets the eye but I don't understand why they just didn't put the belts on the Disasters in the first place, and kept them heels. I am purely guessing that Dibiase wanted to work tag team instead of singles to lighten his load, and that a team with him and Rotunda makes perfect sense because of the gimmicks. Still, Earthquake and Typhoon as dominant heel tag team champs would have been more fun to watch.

Who was the bigger heel in The Last Dance, MJ or Jerry Krause?

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For someone supporting such things I find abhorrent, he seems to me to be a very tolerant person, to have stayed quiet this long. If it's all just in the shirts he wears or subtle tweets like that then I'm good with it. By virtue of the fact he has worked with people of different ethnicities, sexualities, and other social status and almost no one has a bad thing to say about him whatever way he swings politically doesn't matter in the face of that. I'm the one person in my family who doesn't support those views myself so I know all what it means to break bread with "enemies". It is hard not to be cynical of the "rah-rah" stuff and being aware of how much of Vince's Kool-Aid has been imbibed by him. Then again that is a major factor in having fueled his performance and competitive drive. Same with Shawn, Triple H, and plenty of others who came after them too. It's at the heart of the company's success, something that might be lost in all the flash and bang (not to mention "creative") they do in presenting shows like WrestleMania.