flyonthewall2983

What was the state of Superstars after 1996? I thought it ended sometime in 97 when they were doing Shotgun Saturday Night.

Lanny Poffo and Mr. Perfect. Heenan should have been with him right from the beginning.

Probably behind on this, but I noticed that they had the full Terry Funk retirement dinner as seen in Beyond The Mat. Is that new or has it been on awhile?

What's really great about this is that now you can skip through matches and segments where you couldn't (I couldn't at least, with Amazon Fire) with a lot of these programs.

Shawn Michaels' last run. I really thought he was finished, but it was cool to see him end things without the baggage which consumed him before his injuries did. The whole Raven gimmick for Scott Levy. Scotty Flamingo was not an inspired gimmick, and Johnny Polo was never going to be an in-ring talent. The new more up-to-date gimmick made both WCW and WWF notice him and (WCW at least) gave him more consideration when he came back to both companies.

Bobby Heenan hasn't been mentioned once, other than the story of Rude hating being managed by him. I never saw him with The Missing Link, but I would guess that counted maybe?

Hiro Matsuda managing Ric Flair. Could have made sense if they had him feuding with Great Muta as a face, but just barely.

Michael Bay?

It's kind of fascinating because it was clearly designed to get the French audience to boo Andre, and by the end it works.

I have no trouble believing Hogan thought about turning heel against Warrior, even going as far as to say he had the Hollywood Hogan character in mind at that point. I've got to think it was at least on his mind some during this time, if he even considered it an irrational business move. And when the time came several years later it was probably he just had it in mind to call himself that, even if his movie career was going down the tubes, compared to 1990 when he could at least be in something which had a life in theaters.

I only ever saw him at the tail end of his in-ring on camera career, managing Vader in WCW. He was the very definition of a working manager, because he bumped for pretty much everyone I saw Vader work big matches against during that time. From what I've read and heard in interviews, he was a calming force in Leon's life professionally, and it's no wonder that within the year of which Harley was unceremoniously fired from WCW that they would lose one of the greatest big men of all time. In my mind, Harley could have possibly squelched the heat with Orndorff and the whole trainwreck that was Vader's WWF career could have been avoided. The most eloquent I have ever heard Ric Flair speak was at Harley's induction ceremony to the WWE Hall of Fame in 2004. His love, respect, admiration and gratitude came through and Harley's acceptance is one of the most heartfelt things I've ever heard in my life. He gave every bit of blood, sweat, tears, love, frustration and knowledge he could to the business. What little I have seen of his promos as NWA champion should be shown and studied to guys today, as how to act as the top dog and I'm sure some of the best have certainly done that.

Anywhere between two hours and just shy of three.

The ones who seem to be more incredulous about the existence of pro wrestling are sports-types, of which I admittedly am not. Especially in the media, though that may not be as much the case now when marks like Bill Simmons and others are important voices in that world. But certainly in the 90's there seemed to be more than a whiff of condescension about it's place in culture by Sports Illustrated and definitely ESPN (specifically when Nitro and Raw were starting to be a ratings threat to Monday Night Football). Compare that to Hollywood, where wrestlers might have gotten a bad rap as bad actors for awhile (Roddy Piper in They Live and Andre in Princess Bride excluded), but someone like Sylvester Stallone who other than being a fan had a heightened respect for what they did.

Psych made several wrestling references I believe. I wasn't a big fan of the show but I did watch a little and remember one referencing Kamala's real name. One of the strangest was on Homicide: Life On The Street between Richard Belzer(!) as Munch belittling his partner Ned Beatty's taste in pro wrestling.

ESPN has NBA Wednesday nights.

He's looking better

Superstars and Challenge were back-to-back on our CBS affiliate opposite SNL. Not sure if that was the case during the SNME days because I started in 92. There was USA of course, which looking back even then could have done a lot more as it seemed they had very little to offer besides reruns and old movies. We had TBS and ESPN so there was also WCW and Global too, so we had a healthy dose. I remember WCW Worldwide on our Fox affiliate, Saturday afternoon's originally and then late Saturday night/early Sunday morning-ish once Fox got the NFL. In 1994-5 our public access channel started getting ECW. They didn't really schedule it that solid so it was hard to keep a beat on what was going on. A bit later on they started getting Memphis, which is where I saw Dwayne Johnson for the first time as Flex Kavana. I'm quite envious of how in some places the previous generation to mine could watch several territories in a whole marathon block on Saturdays, specifically the northeast which is how Cena and Triple H got hooked into watching it as kids.

How soon they forget...

He could work out of Florida for them in some way couldn't he?

https://www.wwenetworknews.com/2019/07/17/exclusive-wwe-network-hidden-gems-set-to-continue-ecw-theme-with-trio-of-early-rarities-from-1992-including-full-tv-pilot With regards to recent uploads from 94 and 95, what's been the holdup?

One big thing about this compared to Conrad's other shows is that this will be the first one with someone who has in-ring experience comparable to Bruce or Eric or Jim's experience on the business/creative/TV side.

Things like this are why I always say I am from Northern Indiana

The Mark Henry interview is very good. I don't know if it's Steve's best but of what I have heard, it's certainly up there.

It's a good move. The television landscape has changed in drastic ways since the MNW, and the whole notion that Vince had in 95 of worrying that it would split the audience is something they might have taken heed too, as far as going on Monday or Tuesday nights.