Dylan Waco

Cena match easily. How about Tony Anthony? I'll go with The Thugz v The Gangstas from the SMW Charlotte Memories card

Had no clue Hayes was that strong during that period. Agree on Detroit. Detroit was a gamble for anyone really because when wrestling was killed off there it was REALLY killed off there. One of the most notable cases of a town dying you can possibly think of as it collapsed from being one of the hottest offices in the country, to being "can't draw flies" town in relatively short order. I always thought Verne could have and possibly should have made a run at it. But then I see stuff like this and I don't know. The WWF opened it up and got the first sellout there in over a decade with Studd/Patera v. Andre/JYD and Tito/Greg up top which I think says a lot about both of those feuds.

The best stretch of Rotundo's career were those fifteen minutes with Doug Somers in 1986

Pour some gasoline, light a match, run like hell

The last few days have had Foucault and post-colonial guilt discussions. I have generally avoided interjecting my own academic interests/specialties, but starting to consider a thread outlining a mutualist critique of IP and how it relates to modern net piracy, or Mark Henry as modern personification of Robert F. Williams.

I'm indifferent to Kamala. What was your IRS argument again

I think there is truth to that. Obviously I've had to talk about it quite a bit with a variety of wrestling interviewers and old timers. It's such obvious self loathing. Who could really wrestle? Who cares? The business wasn't about that. I'm often asked about whether Hulk Hogan was a tough guy. People looking for a snarky answer I suspect. But come on—he was 6'5" and a jacked 330. I'm guessing he was a handful and is to this day. I sure wouldn't want to test him. I think it's hilarious that people ask that about Hogan. What a fucking bizarre question in this day and age. On the same token when I was a kid I visited Minnesota for several weeks. I was in the Northern part of the state visiting my grandparents and great grandparents (incidentally family legend is that Thesz "hooked" someone in my great grandfather's place and broke his arm - I suspect this is bullshit lore though my great grandfather did know Verne fairly well and it's probable that Lou was actually a visitor at his home). On that side of my family Nagurski was something of a tough guy legend, with the story of him knocking the bricks out of the wall behind the University of Minnesota endzone being retold like it was a family legend. This was the Summer of 1990 and my great grandfather, grandfather, uncle and father still talked up Bronco all the time. Anyhow I was at this major festival that spanned several lake towns in Minnesota. Lots of Paul Bunyon worship and drunk Scandinavians and Germans as you would expect. I was with my grand dad and we got into a conversation with a group of men that ranged in age from about 25-60. The conversation was best athlete in Minnesota and it was amazing because everyone of them to a man was talking about how Bronco was the greatest and toughest ever almost on cue. I said something later about it to my grand dad and how I couldn't believe so many people knew who Bronco was. He stopped a guy on the street by a table hawking books and Native-American trinkets. He asked this random dude - who was middle age and very likely part Indian - "Who is the toughest Minnesotan in history?" About five-tenths of a second later the reply was "Bronco Nagurski."

You could reasonably argue that Rose/Somers v. Midnight Rockers drew better than any feud in WCW that year. Think about that.

Two things on this: #1 - totally agree The number of different places, even in the core, where they drew insanely bad, was pretty jaw dropping in the early 90s. It wasn't just 1993. They drew for shit in a lot of places in 1989-91 as well before Flair left and in 1991-92 before he came back. There were things that drew "well", but it usually was only relative to the total shit they typically were drawing. 5K vs 1K. Then on occasion something like Flair-Luger or Flair-Terry would draw, but it was nothing like 1986 or remotely close. Those charts that Dave would do that showed the monthly averages over the course of several years... they were bleak. In that same thread I talk a bit about how the Cornette talking point about SMW drawing better in some markets than WCW during that period - which sounds like complete bullshit - is actually true. They drew better in a lot of the smaller West Virgina towns, plus the TN tri-cities and Knoxville consistently. Their best domestic show of the year in 93 was in Asheville which was SMW country and had the RnR's v. Bodies on the undercard. Normally I would say that was just a coincidence but in this case? I wouldn't rule out that being a factor of note. I looked at Flair opponents for that Sting thread too and what you see is a pattern of Sting lagging pretty far behind even there. GAB 90 did well, but not meaningfully better than the run up to that point with Luger (not better at all really). Shit falls off hard right around the time Sting gets his run and it doesn't really recover until what you talk about in point 2. It's pretty astounding and massive knock against Sting as any sort of HoF candidate or even near the star he is remembered as being. This is probably a subject for a different thread and has been covered somewhat before, but the lesson of all that to me is that Flair not dropping the belt to Luger when he was hot was probably a major mistake and that if anyone was fucked by WCW booking, bullshit and politics in that period it wasn't Sting or Flair - it was Luger. This is true and I should have made that distinction. Hogan is the catalyst that got business turning around. It doesn't happen without him and damn sure doesn't even approach the high it approached. But Flair-Savage was the first house show run of note to do anything since Luger-Flair in 90.

Yeah. Look at Raven. But seriously, this kind of thinking also seems flawed to me. Tons of dull and mediocre workers know what and how to do things. It doesn't mean they do those things very well nor that those things make a great, exciting or compelling match. Hence the "he played his role right" talking point being one of the most overrated lately. I rarely see this pop up much anymore. I think it is a perfectly valid talking point in a business that is almost entirely about role playing, but I really don't see this get talked up nearly as much now as it was a few years back.

This is an aside because I'm not going to look at Crockett numbers now, but ECW was drawing well (by their standards) when they went under.

I think this is another string to his bow, and it's a considerable string for sure. But Flair was the face of JCP during the time he was touring champ as well, there can't be any doubt about that. You make it sound as if 85-88 is the only time we should consider Flair as the lynchpin of the company, that's not strictly true is it. 1. Cable TV 2. Most of the major offices either drying up rapidly or outright dying. You can not talk bout expansion outside of this context. Also my point in talking about Flair as a touring champ is that if I were pointing to an argument for him as a national drawing card it would be that period. Not the ill fated Crockett expansion.

I'm fascinated by Stecher and in many ways it's a shame he lives in the shadow of Ed Lewis who is far more talked about. But I'm not nearly qualified to make an argument for him in a discussion like this. I actually think it's obvious why people like O'Mahoney, Sonnenberg and Nagurski don't get mentioned much in these discussions - they weren't "legit" wrestlers. A lot of fans and historians who are interested in that period put a lot of stock in being able to shoot. As far as I know none of those guys could and Sonnenberg and O'Mahoney were both extremely vulnerable even though they were incredibly important figures. For my money Sonnenberg is a much better pick than several of the names that made Larry's list. Bronco too. O'Mahoney is more deserving than at least a few.

The degree to which business was a disaster before Hogan came in is almost shocking. During the Sting debate at Classics I did this statistical survey comparing dying days AWA (86) to 93 WCW. Note that Flair was back in WCW for a big chunk of 93 too. A friend of mine was looking at this thread tonight and took issue with my claim that 1993 WCW drew at about the level of 1986 AWA. It was an off the cuff remark on my part, though when I reviewed the 93 WCW results the other night that was my initial thought. Still since I was challenged on it I decided to look a bit closer. Using Clawmaster and Graham Cawthon's results I was able to confirm my off the cuff statement. Using the shows we have available attendance figures for the AWA in 86 drew 3303 people per show. WCW in 93 drew 1911 people per show. Now this is EXTREMELY flawed. The AWA ran fewer shows and we are missing a lot of figures from them. For WCW I used the paid attendance figures where available and left off any show listed as all freebies (mostly shows from Center Stage). WCW also ran some small towns/venues that dragged down their average. WCW had a couple more cards with 5k or more in attendance. For the AWA I left off a couple of joint shows where Crockett talent took up a third of the card. If I had included them the number would have been even and that's without figures from some shows that presumably could have been 5k or higher (for instance we are missing some Salt Lake City figures and that was the AWA's last "hot" town in many ways). WCW was also helped dramatically in this area by international touring, where the bulk of their 5k shows occurred. AWA actually had more 10k plus shows (3-2). It's possible that if we adjusted for the much larger number of WCW cards run/with figures and the fact that they were running a couple of very small venues/towns with consistency they could close the gap on average attendance. It's also possible if we had all of the AWA attendance figures there average would go down. Would it be enough to make up the nearly 1400 per show gap? Maybe, maybe not. The point in all of this? How much does "stardom" or "being on top" really matter, when you are AT BEST drawing numbers roughly identical to dying days AWA? AWA Results via Claw http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/10387-4.html WCW results via Graham's site http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/wcw93.htm Obviously the comments included pertain to Sting, but this really illustrates how important HOGAN was to WCW.

This is true, but it goes beyond this when you start talking about expansion because you can't ignore the two obvious things. Flair as the face of a company that was able to run more places is not irrelevant, but it is very easy to inflate it to an absurd degree by ignoring two key changes that occurred between the 75 and 85 dates Jerry pointed to. That's without even going into the problems expansion may have caused for the company (problems FLAIR believed were at the heart of the company shitting the bed, though I wouldn't put much stock in Flair's thoughts on anything related to business/finance). Frankly I think Flair as a real touring champion - which oddly enough ended for the most part after 85 as well - is really a bigger plus in many, many ways than being the face of JCP in 85-88.

What two obvious major differences are there between 75 and 85? These are very important differences, to the point where you can't have any serious discussion about wrestling expansion during the period without mentioning them and recognizing what they meant to the general landscape.

In fact I would go so far as to say that "he built WCW" is pretty much the WORST possible way to sell Flair's historic impact as a star and draw

I don't think Flair is an unimportant historical figure. But he's not Austin when it comes to impact and I think you have to stretch really far into the realm of Harry Turtledove-style alternative theory reconstruction to get to that point. Also while I love Flair he was not the equal to Hogan for Vince in MACW from 77-87. Not even close

I think that's easy to say in hindsight. If that's not impressive, there is nothing at all impressive about ECW, AWA, Mid-South or any other US promotion you care to name not called WWF. It's one of only two wrestling companies ever to go truly national in America and it's not impressive to you? How about some perspective here? I agree that we should have perspective, which is precisely why I don't think it's all that impressive. WCW didn't "go" national. It was a company bought out by a television empire. Saying they went national implies something that is not true - i.e. that they were a successful company, that made lots of money and grew and expanded through solid/good/great promotion. That's generally not true and is particularly untrue of the period where Flair was the top star. WCW's ability to expand and grow occurred because of Bischoff (as much as we hate to admit it) and Hogan. Is it possible that Turner never buys from Crockett if Flair isn't part of the package deal? Yes and I think at points we've all heard stories about Turner seeing most of the value in Flair. But WCW was only a profitable company for a blip in time and it's height had little to nothing to do with Flair. I'm not sure how much credit you can really give Flair in a "what if" game like this.

I don't think "building" WCW is really that impressive to be honest

From this weeks Observer: Kenta Kobashi did a public training session on 2/23 to build his 5/11 retirement match at Budokan Hall. Kobashi said that he wanted Toshiaki Kawada to come to the show. Kawada now works at a Ramen noodle shop.

I've said my piece on Raven a thousand times, but after watching all the ECW under the sun there are very few wrestlers who I would rather watch less at this point than Raven. As a character I am close to agreeing with Loss. I would deviate a little in the sense that I think Raven had a good look for the era and body language that fit well with what he was going for. Most of his promos I found boring when I was watching ECW in real time as a teen, and absolutely horrid watching them back years later, but I will grant that some people have an attachment to them. I agree that the guys around him added far more to his act than he added to theirs. Yes you could argue that Richards would not have "gotten over" as a big enough star without Raven (I don't really agree, but I don't think it's impossible to argue the point), but Raven wasn't making Richards more entertaining and watchable. I will say that the common ECW talking point of "fun at the time, but the shit does not age well at all" did not apply to me at all for the most part, but with Raven I find it to be very true. I didn't loathe him as a kid, but I was disinterested in him. Looking back I can see the argument that he was a "timely" character, but it's not a character that plays well in 2013 at all. In the ring? I can't think of any Raven ECW standout performance. This is particularly amazing when you consider how much ECW I watched. Even Lance Storm who I thought was transparently shitty had one match I can point to offhand where I thought he had a really strong performance (v. Dreamer Hardcore Heaven 99). I can think of Raven performances where he was decent, but nothing standout. I can't think of any run of really good Raven matches or even GOOD Raven matches. I can't think of a single thing Raven did particularly well in the ring. Was he as awful as your Tiger Jeet Singh's or Bob Brown's? No. Was he bad? I would say yes and he certainly was a lot worse than even I was expecting. I am not really a fan of Raven in WCW, but I have argued many times about the fact that he was very over and it seemed to me that they didn't go far enough with him. I think his best run as a worker was there too though even then he just seemed like a guy who was in good situations. I still can't put to a marquee Raven performance. Maybe it exists but nothing stands out and I'd have to be convinced. WWF stuff was not very good by any metric as I recall. It's possible if I went back and watched WWF b-shows my mind would change. Unlikely. Oh and why Sandman wasn't a great wrestler, I think he was much better in ring than Raven

I agree with Loss. The problem with the part timers isn't that they are part timers. The problem is that much of WWE booking appears centered around promoting them at the expense of others. And I don't just mean "I LIKES THE CM PUNX HE SHOULD HAVE SQAUSCHED ROCKY" either. I mean that they should be building guys in a coherent, meaningful way while also using the part timers for what they are worth. Otherwise the part timer talking point won't be bullshit in a few years when there aren't any part timers left that are willing or able to work/draw money and no new stars to fill in the gaps.

He was pretty shitty in Portland in 88. I don't think he really got any better at any point. I think it's pushing it because his career wasn't really that long, but he definitely wasn't any good

To be clear I know mileage varies on Raven, but he's at least a guy who I think is career length wise eligible for this thread. I disagree with Golden because even if I thought he was dull as piss, I don't think he's nearly bad enough to fit in this thread.