flyonthewall2983

^ That is awesome. Hope you killed it that night Speaking of Albano, was he any good in Wise Guys? I only bring it up because I saw a clip of it in the De Palma documentary.

I'm more interested if a company can truly compete with WWE on the level that WCW did in the 90's, and what would be necessary to do so in order to avoid the traps TNA and others have fell into.

I wonder if they would have turned heel if they stuck around. With the Steiners coming in in 1993 and having those two feud around the horn would have been cool. Hell, I wonder how their fortunes would have changed if they came in as heels.

I think it's the one show on WWE Network that has Ricky Steamboat's original theme music (Alan Parson Project's "Sirius") left intact.

I watched a little of the Monday Nitro I attended in 1998, the show after that year's Souled Out PPV. It was the first time they had the Nitro Parties. It looks so cringey now, seeing the Nitro Girls and Okerlund in the middle of a college frat.

It's funny because ESPN did essentially run hit pieces on wrestling during the Attitude Era, and would highlight the portrayals of those things on television and their effect on kids. But it all had the mindset of Disney eating sour grapes over the fact that wrestling was kicking Monday Night Football's ass in the ratings.

The song doesn't even fit. He was best known as a heel.

Hasn't the standard been 90-second intervals since 1996-7? Bruce Prichard talked about how they felt having it be every minute just made it too quick. I'd think an 80-85 minute RR wouldn't be too bad if it's going to have that many guys in it. I'm intrigued by the idea. You could literally have 30 men fighting it out at one point.

This week's episode was quite good. Interesting hearing about all the work that went into promoting the '97 Royal Rumble. That was an exciting show for me because the PPV scramble was so low we decided to tape it on VHS, so we got it basically for free.

I don't think living in the Vince bubble allowed much anyone to have perspective. Hall and Nash at least had the good sense to realize that their family and financial needs were more important than everything else. Bret and Shawn may have felt they were under-utilized for so long while the lumbering beasts like Hogan and Warrior were allowed to be the faces of the company, and that being in their place at that time meant that they had to fight hard to keep those spots. Add to which, this is Bret's legit family business and I'm sure with regards to Shawn's behavior he played over and over again in his head what his father would have done if he were in Vince's place. I believe Vince allowed Montreal to happen, in part because he had some passive-aggressive misgivings about the possibility of losing Bret to WCW in 1996. Almost as soon as they had him back on television, the Hitman character morphed into this guy going down a spiral of jealousy and resentment. Granted you had Steve Austin slowly building momentum towards being the top guy (at the time, you could argue he was the single most interesting character on either WWF or WCW programming), and the seeds of the Attitude era being planted that Bret couldn't ever find his place in. Maybe those things were allowed to happen because the idea of Bret just even talking to Bischoff was enough to make Vince feel like he was being spited. Not to psychoanalyze it too much, but it's an insecurity that clearly speaks to the fact that Vince grew up in a hostile, abusive environment.

Just starting to watch Twin Peaks. The guy who plays James looks like the forgotten Steiner brother.

The flippiest guy of all back then was Lex Luger

Wasn't there a reliability problem with Butch? I heard that being cited as to why he didn't win the IC belt from Steamboat in '87, and some of his runs later in WCW attested to that a little.

Will she need to face the Senate for approval?

money money money money money moneeeeeey

Fair enough.

But he always targets SNL. They are not the only ones making fun of him.

I wonder if he's kayfabing being mad at SNL

Linda McMahon in consideration to head up the Small Business Administration

Tatanka losing his undefeated streak to Ludvig Borga might have ruined his momentum into being a top babyface. He was out for awhile and didn't do anything of note until the feud with Lex Luger where he turned heel. Not sure if he could have gone further even if it hadn't ended that way, but I think that was the moment he was bound for mid-card status forever.

Things are a little different now. By purchasing Marvel and Lucasfilm, they've narrowed the focus a bit and are seemingly less concerned with putting out the kind of films they did with Touchstone (which may very well released it's last movie this year) and helping invest in what Miramax did. I think about the only thing they have left that isn't at least partially aimed at a young audience are ABC's original prime-time dramas. But as it was in the 90's, I could have seen them get in the wrestling game. ECW, even owned by the same Disney company that helped bring Pulp Fiction and Michael Bay to the masses, would have been considerably watered down. They probably would have just wound up doing with it what WCW was essentially doing around this time, remaking itself in the WWF's image.

Another Mulholland Drive connection, the guy who played the hitman was Rip's brother in No Holds Barred.

Does anyone know of anyone else who quit watching because of the Rock n Wrestling-era WWF? Surely (depending where in the US they were) they had several other options to watch, but I wonder if there were fans so disillusioned by that stuff that they quit it entirely.