Stuttsy

For some reason imagining Dusty saying this is the funniest thing ever to me.

"You got pretty much the most important man in the world standing right here and you wanna talk to HER?!" - Randy Savage, to Gene Okerlund

What does Jimmy Valiant say about Johnny in his book? I seem to recall reading somewhere (Heenan's book, maybe?) that they didn't get along.

I maintain that Candido was one of the best, most versatile, multi-talented performers of his generation. For me he is easily, easily better than Dean Malenko.

Robert had a dispute with Tony Hunter, the promoter in question, and tried to run the same building in opposition to him. On Hunter's shows RICKY started a new Rock 'n' Roll Express with Brad ARMSTRONG. This was curtailed by Ricky's incarceration for the 2nd half of 2005.

It says this was filed in 1997, but, I wonder if this notion was the reason for Nash initially switching to all red for most of his '96 WCW appearances. If so, good thinking on his part. And yeah, "Plaintiff alleges that WWF programming combines character-driven story lines with skillful wrestling while WCW has no reputation for creativity." pretty much owns.

Can't believe it's been 20 years, I remember watching the VHS the next day that my uncle, who unlike us, had PPV capability, taped for me. To me this is still pretty much the most complete, full PPV card of all time. It holds up very well for me but I too would love to hear what someone watching it for the first time has to think.

This thread is completely wonderful. Is PolishBob someone whose name the general public knows?

I can only imagine how Dave would have went off had they given the title back to Bockwinkel, who was perhaps the only viable option at that point. Hansen was still 6 months away. Martel's main challengers from July through the end of the year included Hayes, Zbyszko, Zurkov, Bockwinkel, and Hansen starting in September. Gordy, Lawler and Jumbo also had shots, but one-offs. Not sure who could have possibly been plugged into the Champion role at that point, unless you gave it to Zurkov and flipped it right away to Slaughter. Of that list Gordy would seem like the best option. Why not?

I think Rick Rude did pretty well.

Touche' You definitely have a point there. But, I don't think (had he lived) there really would've been long periods of time in which Brody couldn't find work. Perhaps my thoughts would have been better expressed by saying he was savvy in that he made himself enough of a commodity that he would be in demand. As long as he was drawing, someone would take the gamble and use him.

I think Brody is a product of a bygone era, like the Road Warriors. He was all about presence and mystique and aura. The actual man I think was pretty childish, paranoid and intimidating, but savvy enough to stick around. Out of context though, when you take away the mystique and aura and examine the matches themselves in the era of snowflake ratings and junior heavyweight spot fests, the matches themselves don't really hold up. In short, I think he was a tremendous attraction for a simpler time.

I totally get what you're going for, but I might suggest switching the order. I can't imagine a crowd in the world that would be with Collyer and Stryker (both of whom I like) after watching Funk & Foley fall into barbed wire and girls get speared and all that.

I definitely agree with this as a candidate for worst period of television, but it really can't qualify as worst wrestling promotion ever from a business standpoint, as the company was still either making a little money or not losing buckets and buckets of it (I'm not up on the business stats) but as far as piss poor programming, definite candidate.

As another thing worth boldface in the "article," the PPV is called No Way Out.

Well said. XPW & MLW too for that matter get a pass from me in this discussion because, frankly, there was never any potential there anyway. Whereas TNA gets far harsher criticism from me for wasting a ton of potential. Now that is an excellent point, I would love for someone to try and figure that out, because I genuinely can't think of any. On the subject of WOW's goofy gimmicks, I personally feel like that's all about context. WOW to me came off 100% like an updated version of GLOW and as such I basically assumed that it was SUPPOSED to be campy and cheesy and the gimmicks were basically supposed to be your most basic level of stereotypical characters. And still, what's wrong with campy gimmicks? That's a foundation of the business. Give me that over all this horrible, horrible bullshit TNA's doing where no one knows who is a heel or babyface or what their motivation is, from a character standpoint.

Bottom lines are way more fundamentally important in wrestling than how many snowflakes Elix Skipper's dumb ass gets. TNA's bottom line financial stats are dreadful. They're only alive because someone is willing to keep pumping money into it, presumably because they're being snowed into thinking it eventually will actually turn a profit. It won't, they'll pull the plug, no more reverse battle royals.

But at least you knew who the champions were.

AWF is the only one that even comes close in my opinion, but, ultimately I'd give the nod to TNA. TNA has squandered every single potential break the company has had and blown every potential lead to gain ground. Some of them have been so gloriously botched that cash cows never produced a dime. TNA is basically a bunch of teenagers throwing a party with someone else's money while the parents are away. Any time they started to gain momentum (I thought for instance that the summer shows were pretty hot for the most part) they almost immediately do something to fuck it up. They're just...inept.

Wait, so Triple H is responsible for Montreal now? I missed that in my Cynical Internet Smart Mark Handbook.

Cena is basically bullet proof. The four-way would actually probably be a hell of a match. Cena vs. Michaels probably would too. Cena vs. Undertaker have had good matches in the past and on the big stage of WM probably would deliver, plus, if anyone actually gets to break UT's streak, at this point it SHOULD be Cena as Batista is fizzing out rapidly. Apparently the latest buzz is UT vs. Cena, Shawn vs. Batista, Orton vs. Edge. I don't see that happening and personally think its the least intriguing of all the options. No matter who he wrestles, I'd totally put Cena over and continue a good WM streak.