Dylan Waco

Episode 26 of the Wrestling Culture Podcast is an Observer HoF discussion and includes lengthy Lucha talk, lots of love for wrestling magazines of old, me going on and on and on about Buddy Rose and our guest Vandal Drummond (Kurt Brown) adding great personal stories to it, Dave Musgrave putting over The Sharpe Brothers, and a whole ton of other awesomeness. Great show. http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkC...2658&cmd=tc

Kane's anger management speech was similar in tone and how it was shot to George Costanza's pitch for the apartment on the Seinfeld episode where he was competing with his tragic story against the survivor of a shipwreck

I think it's funny that Brody always seems to result in the crankiest responses. More so than TM, DK, Flair or others who have been criticized more in recent years than previously.

Got it. I just heard from a third party that Patera had come up and Dave had responded in a pretty dismissive way. I have no clue what goes on at that board. Does anyone even try and use that forum to advance arguments for candidates? I have my reasons for not subscribing despite generally thinking Dave is easily the best at what he does, but I would almost consider subscribing if there was any serious discussion on that forum that allowed for advancing discussion of candidates. From everything I hear though there isn't.

To be fair I would never accuse Dave of blackballing Patera. He has blackballed JYD, but not Patera. Would be nice for Musgrave, KrisZ, jdw, et to ask for him to go back on the ballot if that's all it takes.

In news no one other than me will care about Matt Farmer ended up voting for Buddy Rose after all. Maybe my pestering is making an impact. Probably not. Also Meltzer supposedly wrote some dismissive thing about Patera at the website.

I didn't see it? Who wrote it? I know Musgrave had a piece up the other day on The Sharpe Brothers which I found really interesting. I wonder if I wrote something on Buddy Rose if he would take it?

Looking at something you sent me a while back and DeGlane also headlined one of the biggest drawing shows (up to that point) in Maritimes wrestling history in 1932 v. Charlie Stack. Obviously you can't build an HoF case on that but it's notable as it shows he had drawing power even in various territories and regions.

Mike Mooneyham has a full length column on the documentary in my local paper this week. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/2012...s-in-the-making

The WWE does not own the footage they are using.

Bumping this up a bit to note that they have started putting exclusive content on the kickstarter page for donors. You only need a ten dollar donation to get access to that stuff and for thirty you get a DVD when the project is completed.

Kofi works even lighter than Karagias I've stayed out of this thread because I said my piece in that thread you referenced Jingus, but I generally don't want to see tag formula fucked with, like it, think it works well for a reason and don't know of any alternative model that could be consistently worked as effectively.

Just to be clear, Apter may not be Schmidt or Cena either. But I think he is closer to them than he is to Jack Tunney or Stanley Blackburn. Setting that aside for a moment, over at Classics Steve Yohe says Meltzer told him he dropped the pre-1950 candidates from the ballot which is why DeGlane vanished. Apparently he is making some sort of vet committee concept official policy. I'm hoping this means Sonnenberg gets in this year and I have reason to believe he will. If Pat LaPrade shared his DeGlane in Montreal research with Meltzer it's possible DeGlane gets in this year too, though I am doubtful of two quasi-fiat inductions in a year where I suspect multiple people will be voted in (Cena and Schmidt I think are going in at minimum). If DeGlane doesn't get in this year, I'm guessing the release of Pat and Bertrand Herbert's book on Montreal could make his case more visible with Dave and get him in next year. Either way I think a certain podcast co-host of mine needs to send over the stuff he's dug up on DeGlane in the Maritimes to Meltzer for a future bio.

I get your point John but I think if we are being honest the extreme examples you are offering are pretty silly. There is literally no reason to believe Apter = Stanley Blackburn. I know of no one who believes that Apter was purely a figure head who did no actual work besides pretending to take pictures at ringside (which would be the correct analogy to Tunney or Blackburn) and giving out kayfabed awards on tv. We do know enough to know that Apter took a lot of photos for the mag, worked directly with a lot of promotions and wrestlers (there is enough available in shoots to verify this and I myself know of one promoter who directly dealt with Apter when working with the PWI people), wrote a fair amount of copy and was of course the public face of the company. I get that you don't want to let someone in who has a light resume. But Apter's had a 40 year career. He's not Angle. He's not Ultimo. He's not even Shawn when Shawn got in. If it would be a mistake to induct him, it would be a different category of mistake. I would like to know more about Apter and Weston in general. It would also be nice to have more Hans Schmidt matches on tape and to get an idea of how well he drew for all of those NWA title matches. It would be nice to have real attendance figures for the Portland territory. It would be nice if we had raw data on merch sales for John Cena. That's not to say Apter is Cena or Hans or Buddy. But lack of knowledge is always an issue to one degree or another. The question is do we know ENOUGH about Apter to feel confident in putting him in....

Not to discount Saks entirely as I get his point and think it is a reasonable way of looking at things as a rule, but how would we treat that quote if it was say Jim Duggan talking about JYD era Mid-South with Watts as Weston? Or Paul Orndorff talking about Hulkamania with Vince as Weston? On the specifics of who was actually the head honcho on the masthead/theoretically on top of the heap, I can tell you from working with magazines for several years that that means very little in the scheme of things. There is a fairly prominent magazine I have written some things for that was founded by one extremely well known personality and two other fairly well known people in political media circles. There job as editors/publishers was by their own admission to show up, sign checks, talk to advertisers here and there and generally occupy space. All of the real work fell on the Associate Editors. Even after two of the other three left and other more professionally experienced editors were hired in their absence the vast majority of the work fell on the shoulders of one guy in particular who has been promoted to a Senior Editor now, but is technically still below one person on the totem pole. The point is not that the same could be said for King/Saks and Apter. The point is that those guys being "above" him means little about the day to day operations. John is right that in an ideal world we would no more about those operations, but at this point most of the info is murky with the general feeling being that Bill was the public face, Bill was one of the more common photo guys, Bill had the tight relationships with certain wrestlers/promoters, et. Again I have no problem with Weston/London Publishing going in as a group. I just think it is highly unlikely that will ever happen

Someone else noted this at Classics, but apparently Henri Deglane was randomly dropped from the ballot this year, which is either a "oops" ala Wagner Sr or an overlooked historical candidate hat tip? Pat Laprade certainly made a strong case for him on the show Dave and I did regarding Montreal wrestling

The Midnight Express were effectively inducted as a team like The Freebirds

I talked about that some in my Blackwell stuff. Verne fucked himself with that expansion project

I would have no problem with inducting all of PWI/London Publishing/Whatever term you want to put on it, but there is one problem with this: Unless we are counting the Dusek's who were fiat picks and maybe The Freebirds there has never even been a group on the ballot, let alone one voted in (I'm exempting the Birds, because they were brought in more as a unique three man team than anything else). The idea that the test case for this would be a business enterprise and not a group of performers is something I see zero chance of happening. In fact the idea of group inclusions ever taking place strikes me as highly unlikely. No one seems to be arguing against the notion that the magazines should have some representation, but the argument is that we don't know who did what and why should Bill get credit for everyone? On top of Loss points which I generally agree with, the other question you have to ask is is it right to totally exclude the magazines forever because Dave won't put groups on the ballot? To me at this point they are most glaring omission, but I tend to think they were effectively brilliant promoters that made fuck tons of money for people territories and wrestlers all over the country. If we want to say Apter gets to much credit that may be true, but I think it's also silly to pretend he was just a guy they trotted out there for public appearances because he was so nice (frankly you aren't going to find many more people less photogenic than Apter). In the Schmidt thread at Classics John argued for picking battles regarding the issue of Sonnenburg who he now seems to think will go in by fiat (I think John is right to be honest). I think this is another clear case of picking your battles. Is it more likely that Meltzer is going to open things up to groups particularly a fucking group of magazines or that Apter is a silly pick because we don't have a shit ton of inside analysis regarding what went on at London for his run there? I have zero problem with Apter getting in as a placeholder for the mags, particularly because I tend to believe he was far closer to the "majorly involved" end of things than the "peripheral presence" end of things.

He's a viable candidate. I haven't figured out my 10 yet, so I don't know if I have a slot for him or he just misses the cut. I also might have to make a strategic choice. There may be someone that I think is slightly more deserving, but (i) not get close to enough votes to get in while (ii) getting plenty to stay on the ballot. In turn, Patera may be at risk of falling off the ballot due to a low number of votes. In that case, I might have to vote for Patera to keep him on. That can be a bit tricky as it's not exactly a "wasted vote" on that other person. With perhaps the exception of Ventura, when guys reach a certain % of votes, they tend to go in within the next few years. So there is value in trying to help candidates you think are worthy of getting up into the 50%+ range, especially the 55%+ range. It's a bit of a tricky thing. I wouldn't take a vote away from Schmidt because I feel the need to keep pushing that % as high as possible to keep him on the cusp of getting in (or putting him over the top). On the other hand... I think Koloff is probably more deserving than Ken even though I'd rather watch Ken any day. Ivan is going to have plenty of votes without me. Ivan will eventually go in, and we all can predict the "no later than" time for him going in. So when I sift through a 10, it might be someone like Ivan that I don't vote for an instead try to make sure Ken stays on the ballot. John Patera isn't on the ballot this year Buddy was put on and I have reason to believe it was largely because of some things I said to a voter who is in pretty good with Dave and has said he would vote for him. Patera is my pet project to get on the ballot, not because I think he should be recognized but because I think he SHOULD be in the HoF. In the case of Patera I don't even feel I need to qualify that statement, though I acknowledge he's not a slam dunk level guy (but then at this point few are). I'd vote for Schmidt over him for sure and I think he'll get in this year. He'll get the death bump and I know of at least one new voter this year who definitely voted for him and another new voter who I think is likely to. He missed by two votes last year as I recall (though the electorate could be much larger this year for all I know). Ivan I would vote for but I'm not sure I'd vote for him over Patera. I think they are fairly lateral. I could certainly see a case for Ivan and it's possible if I had researched Ivan to the degree I have Patera my view could flip. In the performers category the people I would vote for before Patera that are currently on the ballot are Carlos Colon, Cien Caras, John Cena, Hans Schmidt...err....umm....... There are other guys I would consider lateral perhaps and I don't know enough about Torres to be fair (I would lean toward maybe giving him a slight edge over Ken, but I would want to look into it more myself), but I actually think Ken would be one of the absolute best guys on the ballot if he were on this year. Regardless it is cool to see someone else who would vote for them, albeit depending on the situation with the ballot. Of course I don't have a ballot so it's largely irrelevant who I would vote for

Some people prefer having the tangible product in hand. If I'm just doing general research a scan works, but for anything more than that I want the real thing

I don't even think Apter was on the ballot until two or three years ago. Weston has never been on the ballot

Really the magazines are by far the biggest/best promoter not already in. I know John and others want to know more about the role of Apter before they support him, but it really seems silly that PWI isn't represented on some level already. Probably the single most obvious case of a "group" that should be inducted.

John since you are up and in the thread are you up or down on Patera at this point? I know you think he is a viable candidate, but are convinced and if not what would it take?

There was never a point during his pre-jail run when Patera wasn't immediately credible when he was brought in. He debuted with the WWF in MSG v. Bruno. He debuted in Oklahoma v. Watts. He was brought into Memphis to work Lawler. He was brought into GA to work Tommy Rich at the height of Rich's popularity in 81. He had matches/feuds farmed out to various territories with Atlas, Andre, Dusty and Backlund. Hell, He was working semi-mains and even some mains v. guys like Billy Graham and Ivan Koloff almost immediately upon his debut.