sek69

No place else for him to go in the shape he was in, IMO. Didn't Vince fire him for not dressing in company-mandated attire while travelling? Verne brought him in because (a) they were desperate to have name talent on their cards and he was that (along with Bob Orton, Tommy Rich and Dick Slater, who came in during that time period, as I recall), and ( Verne knew what he could do from past experience during his two kick-ass years in the AWA from 1980-82. Adonis was clearly unhappy he was in the AWA at that time, though. Some of his promos are so sarcastic that it doesn't even pretend to hide the contempt for some of the towns he's been booked in. Adonis getting fired is probably second only to the Savage Situation on the list of things nobody ever provided a clear answer to. From reading between the lines it comes off like he hated the Adorable gimmick (maybe even that it was punishment for his increasing weight gain), and the dress code violation was just a cover to fire a guy who was unhappy. Considering it was right after WMIII, I always assumed he told them to go fuck themselves after he got his big payday. I found his only WWF appearance after Wrestlemania 3. Seemed like they were setting up a feud with Brutus Beefcake. It did seem like Vince was burying him on commentary. They were clearly building a feud since he accidentally cut Beefcake's hair during a six man tag match, then Brutus cemented his face turn by helping Piper shave Adonis's head (poorly). Knowing Vince like we do now, it's easy to believe he was probably disgusted at Adonis's weight gain and wanted to either force him to quit or find something to fire him over.

It's getting written about a lot by Dave, but it seems like the whole deal with All Japan about to explode due to Hate apparently getting beaten in the locker room leading to a stroke should be getting more attention. This could be a huge story if the police get involved like they've been threatening to do, since due to the culture in Japan the usual "it's only wrestling" bullshit probably won't fly. Muto offering himself up as a sacrifice by resigning as President while still being on the board (and part time wrestler) is a pretty big "wait, what?" as well.

No place else for him to go in the shape he was in, IMO. Didn't Vince fire him for not dressing in company-mandated attire while travelling? Verne brought him in because (a) they were desperate to have name talent on their cards and he was that (along with Bob Orton, Tommy Rich and Dick Slater, who came in during that time period, as I recall), and ( Verne knew what he could do from past experience during his two kick-ass years in the AWA from 1980-82. Adonis was clearly unhappy he was in the AWA at that time, though. Some of his promos are so sarcastic that it doesn't even pretend to hide the contempt for some of the towns he's been booked in. Adonis getting fired is probably second only to the Savage Situation on the list of things nobody ever provided a clear answer to. From reading between the lines it comes off like he hated the Adorable gimmick (maybe even that it was punishment for his increasing weight gain), and the dress code violation was just a cover to fire a guy who was unhappy. Considering it was right after WMIII, I always assumed he told them to go fuck themselves after he got his big payday.

Don't forget Shawn stomping Vader in the face and throwing a hissy because Vader was positioned wrong for an elbowdrop.

How about Adrian Adonis going from being in the #3 match at WM III to feuding with Greg Gagne over the AWA TV title by the end of the same year?

Pretty sure he means real as in on the same level as football/basketball/baseball/hockey, rather than real in the "worked" sense.

I took it as more of a knock on Spike than anything else. He was just pointing out how different the mindset is there, any other announcer for any other major sport would have been fired n a heartbeat because they're on major networks with advertising worth billions. UFC gets away with having one of their main announcers repeatedly calling female reporters cunts because Spike's the Manly Man Network for Men who are Manly and somehow it's like "well of course someone on that channel would talk like that". Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't done something with him before. Dana's so concerned with UFC becoming an accepted mainstream sport, you'd think he'd make sure one of the voices of the company isn't someone prone to random, intense, lashouts at women. Go on YouTube and search for him responding to hecklers while doing his comedy act. A lot are female, and while being heckled is lame and the people doing it should get verbally smacked down, he seems to use each time as an opportunity to vent his frustrations on women. I get the feeling he's going to be the UFC equivalent of someone pulling up the Trish Barking Like a Dog segment when they want to embarrass WWE.

This one: You have a double countout followed by a draw, and both matches should have been squashes or at least have some sort of clean finish.

Every babyface made a point of challenging Flair in interviews, and his angle with Flair was more him helping Jimmy when Ric was horndogging over Precious than a world title program. It came off (to me at least) as something to keep Flair occupied until the next Big Angle kicked off, and all of a sudden Ronnie was champ. I think it gets overlooked that no matter how or why he got the belt, it added several years on his career he probably wouldn't have had otherwise. Sure, jobbing to Boris Zuhkov in 1990 or whatever is bad, but I don't think he even gets hired by Vince if he isn't a former NWA champion. Ronnie was winding down as it was in JCP, people forget he was in the business over 20 years by the time he won the title. So the way I see it, it was like a lifetime achievement award that got him a year of WWF paychecks that were probably double what JCP was paying (and even if they weren't at least he could cash them).

Also, I have to mention that early to mid 80s WWF is killing me with the count-out/DQ/Draw finishes in jobber matches. For fucks sake, you don't need to protect Iron Mike Sharpe from doing a clean job.

Few things that struck me as amazing watching WWE 24/7 today: - Watching Sting on the post Starrcade 87 episode of World Championship Wrestling and thinking here we are 23 (!) years later and he's champion of the #2 company in the US. - Why did they have a big angle unifying the NWA and UWF TV titles and nothing else? Sure, the Lightning Express vs Arn/Tully might not have gone over since the LE were mostly seen as jobbers by the JCP fans, but the matches would have been good. Doc vs Flair may not have been a mat classic but I don't see 1987 Flair having a bad match with anyone. At least a unification match would have been a better storyline for Starrcade than giving poor Ronnie a lame duck run. Also the TV title angle was kind of sad because it's pretty much the last time Nikita gave a shit in wrestling, since soon his wife would be sick and he morphed into the crewcut, off-cycle version of Nikita that had zero heat. - Watching Konnan on Nitro from 1998 come out and run through his catchphrases (that were already getting repetitive and annoying). Now he's more or less running the show in the biggest non WWE promotion in the world. - Same episode of Nitro, they have a backstage pull apart between the Giant and Kevin Greene. The Horsemen are holding back Greene and we get the rare un-editable Chris Benoit appearance. The brawl set up the main event, and it was a show long angle that would have made it impossible to follow if it was removed completely (insert WCW joke here). I wonder if WWE realizes deleting all mention of him only makes it that much more jarring when he does pop up on a show. In fact, having been watching the Monday Night War series you'd think the Horsemen don't exist in 1998 WCW since all their segments get edited out. I know the debate is beyond whatever 10 steps past beating a dead horse is, but I just read the results from the original show and saw it featured a Bret Hart-Benoit match that (considering the match before had a long audio dropout) you can assume will never see the light of day again. I think my OCD towards completeness is starting to overwhelm my internet need to stay forever mad at Benoit. Having just typed all that, Benoit just came out in a Mongo vs Stevie Ray match (Benoit/Mongo vs Harlem Heat was a feud at the time). Audio still was cut out, so I guess that's how they're going to address future episodes of Nitro where editing him out completely is impossible. I guess it makes me a bad person, but just stop with the edits already and just donate the proceeds from any video residuals to the family.

Not necessarily a big loss in the technical sense, but it didn't seem like the Road Warriors had the same aura after getting Dusty Finished out of the tag titles at Starrcade 87. I remember at the time among the wrestling fans I knew it was a foregone conclusion that they were just going to murder Arn and Tully, not even a doubt. Not to mention the show was in their hometown and it just seemed line a no brainer. When they didn't get the belts it was like everyone was like "man, fuck this company" and started watching the WWF more. Not saying it was the worst decision Crockett made in that time period (or on that show for that matter), but for my small unscientific data sample it was the beginning of the end for JCP.

By all accounts the WWE-Bruno spat is 100% on Bruno's side. Vince loves the guy, and why not since he's the one his dad built his company on. Bruno's always spoken of highly when mentioned on DVDs or on 24/7, he's the one that is holding a grudge most likely because he seems to blame Vince for David hating him. Also I still think Vince wouldn't work with Savage not because he believed the Steph stories, but because he knew everyone else did and Vince probably thought it would make him look like a bitch.

Something I always wondered when watching that angle play out: Nikolai was supposed to be down on his luck and poor to the point he wore the same suit all the time, yet he had ringside tickets to WWF shows?

My longest lasting memory was in the letters section of (I think) PWI during Brother Love's run in the WWF. The person writing the letter was SO ANGRY at Brother Love's antics that he wrote "That preacher will be the downfall of the Federation if he keeps his garbage up!" Now long after I figured out about wrestling, I still thought the Apter mags were on the up and up. That letter was when I realized perhaps some of them were "enhanced" a little. Funny enough, I listened to an interview with Apter on WOL or some similar outlet where someone asked him about the letters, and he said for the most part about 75% were actual fan letters and the rest were plants to get someone over as a heel or face to the readers.

I'd say 3/4ths the reason no one gets over anymore is because everyone does even-steven booking which means everyone gets their wins back. There's ego involved no doubt, but guys like Hogan or the Road Warriors hardly ever lost and that helped make them big deals. Hell, I think even Goldberg would probably admit he wasn't the best wrestler in the world but when WCW had him come out and destroy people every week he became a big deal. A lot has changed in wrestling, but if you push a guy and don't have him lose half of the time to whoever he beat the week before, it's amazing how often it works to get them over.

but isn't the TV mindset that wrestling fans are all poor and stupid so there's no point advertising your product on WWE tv?

I'm pretty sure JR has been pretty good with the money he's made in the wrestling business, and even if he wasn't his sauce business seems to be going pretty good for him. That being the case, why does he stay associated with a company that seems to devote an oddly disproportionate amount of time to fucking with him when he's not even a regular TV character anymore? It's almost like JR has battered woman syndrome and can't leave them.

Really? I've never watched one second of this show but even I know she was absolutely clueless at wrestling and only stayed as long as she did because she had some name recognition. The gif of her doing a faceplant trying to do a front bump was on every message board on the internet. Even if she had a shred of ability, I wouldn't trust WWE to do anything with her that didn't involve them revealing she's Mohammad Hassan's long lost sister who declared fatwa on the other divas.

SLL makes a good point. Say bringing in Averno works and gets Sin Cara over like nuts, then what? He still can't match up with anyone in the entire company other than Rey, and they certainly wouldn't want to pair those two up since it would be obvious they want him to be New Rey.

I'm not knocking WWE for making the move, they invested in Sin Cara so why not get a guy who makes him look good? The only guy they had on the roster who could have had a chance of working lucha style had an absolute shitburger of a match with him on the last PPV so they pretty much had to get someone else. Just saying it sucks for CMLL since their business has been down, they lose another upper level guy, and it pretty much just blew the finish for the big match they had to go up against Triplemania (Averno vs La Mascara mask match but who knows if anyone paying to see the match reads the internet).

cubsfan is quick to point out on his blog that this is in fact not a raid on CMLL, but when you go out and sign two of their top guys and are actively looking to sign others I don't know what else you'd call it.

Searching for "lucha" on the cable guide lead me to find two new shows: WWC, which is kind of sad to watch now, and what appears to be the weekly card from Arena Coliseo in Monterrey. The Monterrey show has a ring with a dirty white canvas which makes it look like Memphis and lucha had a weird baby.

from WO.com: I wonder if CMLL will end up like early 80s AWA when Vince decided he wanted 3/4ths of their talent pool. AAA survived all their guys going to WCW in the 90s, so who knows.

Four weeks into the build-up, at Great American Bash, Bischoff asked the question directly "Do you work for the WWF ?" Hall and Nash answer "No." Pretty sure they did that because the lawsuit was already filed, and they thought doing that would end it.