sek69

Yeah, but that's a World Class show, you'd expect almost everyone on the card to be dead. Also Battle of the Belts had Gordon Solie and Mike Graham, and I bet Gordon was wishing he was drunk for that. It does show that Graham's "hey let's turn everything into a discussion about ME" style wasn't just invented for WWE 24/7.

September 2, 1985--Battle of the Belts in Tampa, FL at The Sundome drawing 7,600: Hector & Chavo Guerrero b "The Crippler" Rip Oliver & The Grappler Cocoa Samoa b "Hustler" Rip Rogers Kendall Windham b Jack Hart (aka Barry Horrowitz) to win the Florida Title Rick Rude (Southern Champ) b Billy Jack Haynes to retain The Road Warriors (AWA Tag Champions) vs Harley Race & Stan Hansen was a DOUBLE COUNT OUT Nick Bockwinkel b Frankie Lane Ric Flair b Wahoo McDaniel to retain the NWA World title in a 2/3 Falls match in 45 minutes First off, this show was the day Hurricane Elena made landfall in Biloxi MS. It resulted in heavy thunderstorms in the Tampa area, which resulted in occaisional power outages during the show. It also changed one of the main events, as it was supposed to be Rick Martel defending the AWA World Title vs Nick Bockwinkel, but the hurricane had other plans so they ended up having to replace Martel with Frankie Lane who was pretty much a jobber. The fans who braved the storm booed the match out of the building since they were expecting a title match, and even Nick had a "lets get this over with" look on his face while the announcers were trying to salvage something of all this. The tag title match was not as good as it could have been since the Road Warriors didn't job at this point, and Hansen rarely jobbed in the US at this point, so it was only interesting in how they were going to get to the inevitable DQ or countout finish. Also, half the guys on the card (well pretty much everyone really except Flair of course) was half assing it since they obviously wanted to get the fuck out ASAP since the storm was getting to the point where thunderclaps were rattling the building.

So who all is actually watching this year's show?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoa'i_family Basically, it breaks down like this: The original 5 siblings are Afa, Sika, Junior, Tumua, and Vera Anoa'i. Their parents considered Peter Maivia a "blood brother" and the kids considered him an uncle, which is where the Rock and his dad come in. Afa's sons: Samu, Afa Jr. (who's in DSW now I believe), LA Smooth, and daughter Monica who married Gary Albright. Sika's sons: Rosey, Joe Anoa'i (who currently plays college football) Junior's son: Yokozuna Tumua's son: Black Pearl (wrestles in Rikishi's Italian fed) Vera's sons: Tama (from the Islanders), Rikishi, Umaga Apparently boxer David Tua is also related somehow, but I'm just happy to finally get the wrestling side cleared up.

Ironically, it appears that Bruno stopped aging around the time he left the WWF.

Bruno can still kick your ass in 2007 as well. Not bad for someone just past 71.

I'm wondering who else was involved, they mention 11 pro wrestlers and only 6 have been mentioned. It says some of the guys are out of the business or in indies (TNA maybe?), I wonder what else gets shaken out from this.

Some fun tidbits in the latest WON, basically WWE could probably still get Mistico if they wanted but too many people think it wouldn't be worth all the effort that would be required. Also, had WWE signed him, Stephanie wanted to repackage him without the name or mask because in her mind there's only room for one masked WWE Superstar (Rey). So basically, WWE decided not to go through a lot of hassle just to change everything about the guy that made him attract attention. I really don't get how this company makes money sometimes.

All I know is that after the famous pull apart on RAW (TYSON AND AUSTIN! TYSON AND AUSTIN!), they did a segment on the local news which I've never seen before or since in my 20+ years of watching wrestling. Say what you will, but Tyson was that one time they got the maximum mainstream pub they hoped to get from every celebrity who gets involved in wrestling.

Ever since the infamous Bob Holly match, the Rumble always has a "dude who has no chance in hell of winning the title" match to give the champ a boost into Wrestlemania. Of course by now most people KNOW that there's going to be a weak challenger at the Rumble, but whatever.

Looks like the deal's off. WWE is pissed Mistico waited to tell them till after the tryout that he's signed to a long deal with CMLL. Their legal team decided it wasn't worth the effort to get him out of it.

I'm thinking this deal's not going to happen if someone points out to Mistico the fact that if he leaves and CMLL has him drop the mask, his career's pretty much over if WWE ends up not using him/releasing him after a few months.

WWE 24/7 is showing Wrestlemania III: Super Hyper Championship Fighting Edition this month. That should get you back to a foam finger waving Hulkamanic in no time.

I'd expect to the the MMA Obsever before a boxing one. It's like Dave is like Vince in that way where he seems embarrassed to be associated with pro wrestling.

Yeah, but there's even odds that he'd end up jobbing on Internet-only shows and being wished the best in his future endeavors. Also, what would happen if he did sign with WWE? CMLL owns the gimmick don't they? Would they have him drop the mask on the way out? Wow, that's a lot of questions in one post.

Watching the Monday Night War for 12/9/96 on WWE 24/7 and seeing an ad for this show reminded me of something I wanted to ask the crowd here: The main event for this show is Sid vs Bret Hart for the title, but the name of the show would suggest that somehow Vader was supposed to be involved. Was this orignally planned to feature Vader or is that just one of those wacky WWF things?

You know, I never did get why Dusty's booking gets slagged on like it does. I mean, it's not like he didn't have some ideas that are still pined over to this day (WarGames), and the "he pushed himself too much" argument would have more force if Dusty still didn't have more charisma than the entire WWE roster save maybe 2-3 people.

Reading in the WON how Dusty has successfully lobbied to get the ECW tag titles revived, combined with his previous work booking Smackdown, can a case be made that he almost single handedly saved tag team wrestling in WWE? You could even argue that without Smackdown reminding people that tag team wrestling still exists, the RAW tag belts would still be jobber fodder instead of being fought for between main eventers (one of which being the WWE champion).

I get the feeling whenever Vince is no longer around we're going to see a CMLL/AAA style split since Shane and Stephanie seem to have completely opposite views on what direction to go.

Unless that play includes driving a stake into Vince's heart, I don't see it working. There's no way anyone, including his children, will ever be able to unseat Vince.

It just seems odd that a company that seems to have yearly firings to lower costs (so they can do things like pay the Diva Search winner $250,000) would want to put forth the money to secure TV/run shows/pay extra wrestlers and staff to run shows all over the world on a regular basis.

Wouldn't the costs associated with running a promotion on every continent kill any chance of this happening for real?