Dooley

That sounds impossible. I'm Canadian and I always thought it was the greatest thing in the world when they would have one of those "free preview weekends" once a quarter or so because then and only then could I catch Saturday Night and maybe if I was really lucky one of the Clash shows.

Did Shawn have it changed? I thought it was because JJ Dillon jumped back to WCW around that time and Vince didn't want them to know all their booking plans.

This is another talking point that I wish would die. I like NWA stuff, but don't see how it's a no-brainer better than WWF stuff. Like as I said earlier in the thread about announcing, most things in pro wrestling come down to what brand of goofy you like best. Frank Jewett wrote a great post on the old tOA board about how he was in college and was super-excited to show his WWF fan buddies the superior NWA and they were bored stiff. I'd consider the high-end stuff from both promotions to be about equal, so really you're left with whether you enjoy the larger than life characters of the WWF or the good ol' southern charm of the NWA. Diff'rent strokes.

Yup. The full-nelson challenge, with Herc bloodying Haynes with the chains set it up well. They also built it well during the climax of the March 87 SNME battle royal, which drew a record amount of eyeballs for the Hogan-Andre confrontation. JYD was still really over at the time and it was Race's first major program in the WWF. I was at the MLG house show in Feb 87 leading up to WM3 and remember that people were loving it. I think it qualifies. Davis may have been the most over heel in the company behind Savage and Andre at this point. All 3 babyfaces had a reason to want to kill him while he got to play cowardly heel behind the Harts. Just because the tag titles weren't on the line doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of heat there. Warrior's title reign was terribly mismanaged. His first major title defense was against Haku of all people, and was buried at the end of a SNME that was headlined by Hogan-Hennig. That segued into the feud with Rude, which was flat because as you mentioned Warrior had just beaten Rude. That wasn't the only problem though. On the SNME leading into Summerslam, Warrior hit his finish and had Rude beat before being distracted by Heenan and chasing him out of the ring. Warrior still managed to win the match by countout, having laid out both Rude and Heenan. How in the hell is that going to make anyone want to pay for a rematch? After that, the proposed feud with Quake was nixed and Warrior was just kind of in neutral until Savage. With his first challenger being someone he just feuded with and beat, and having two major programs nixed (Quake and Hogan), it's amazing he did as well as he did.

Talk about your all-time backfires. I remember a record amount of tickets (for the time) were sold for WM7 at the LA Coliseum in the week after WM6 both at Skydome and after Jack Tunney's announcement that he would not sanction a Hogan-Warrior rematch for at least one year. The obvious implication being that Hogan-Warrior 2 would happen at WM7.

This is the case. It was being force-fed down everyone's throats despite the fact that no one was buying it, and then WM7 came around and no one bought it.

Muraco was good but I kept thinking Rudman was about to kiss him. He looks as smitten as a teenage girl.

As in with most things in wrestling, taste in announcers comes down to which brand of goofy you like best.

Gorilla: "Standing room crowd tonight in the Garden!" *two minutes late a shot that clearly shows quite a few empty seats around the Garden* John But people were LITERALLY hanging from the rafters!

I think that goes back to keeping the "integrity" of the contest. I can't tell you how many times around the schoolyard the conversation was had "oh man, heel X totally would have beat babyface Y if he had only hooked the leg after his big move". I doubt casual fans watching at home hear Gorilla saying it and think "oh man, Gorilla's putting himself over because he knows they only hook the leg on the real finish".

Can you expand on that a bit? I like Gorilla and thought he was more about keeping the "integrity" of the match, rather than putting over the individual performers. Plus I could listen to Bobby and him bicker for hours and not get bored. I never felt he put himself over too much, as opposed to someone like Zbyszko. I know someone will bring up Gorilla's confrontation with Terry Funk in '85, but WWF Funk was stooging for everybody, he would have stooged for Rita Chatterson if it came to it.

Does anyone have a line on the longer, unedited version of the Heyman promo? Wouldn't Punk be the Charlie Brown in the scenario?

But how many of those people go to wwe.com for their net wrasslin fix as opposed to the observer?

What's all this then? The Giant was scheduled to be turned face long before it actually happened. They taped matches in Orlando for Worldwide to air after the turn. His manager was Ed Leslie as The Clipmaster (as in the closes to straight up calling him Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake besides "Brother Bruti"). The turn was canceled and THE CLIPMASTER never appeared on TV. Was this part of the WCW faction that was supposed to fight the nWo that was going to be led by Beefcake and supported by the Nasty Boys (that was thankfully scrapped)? Or was this something different?

What's all this then?

This is a "star" leaving the company. And he wouldn't be making him work for free. Just dock him that PPV/Mania bonus. Whatever his normal pay rate, give it to him. It's the same thing John. I don't want to get bogged down in semantics. In '95-'96 you've got people bolting for WCW anyway, a locker room full of strife and oh by the way, Vince made Razor work Mania for free on his way out. It's penny wise and pound foolish.

Has Vince ever made one of his stars work the biggest show of the year for free though? Sets an ugly precedent.

I liked the Demos as a kid and still enjoy their matches now but I kind of agree that their physiques didn't match their gimmick. I'm not suggesting they should have roided out or anything, but look at similar gimmicks then look at Eadie and Darsow. Put them in a line with guys who had essentially the same gimmick at the time: LOD, POP, Warrior, Sting. Now play the sesame street "one of these things is not like the other" game. Again, I'm a Demos fan and still think a proper LOD-Demos feud with a big PPV payoff is one of the great lost opportunities of early 90's WWF.

In wrestling? But then Hall gets a Mania payday, which is what Vince was trying to avoid. I agree Vader should have squashed him in 5 minutes at IYH though.

But Flair kept shooting it down. Sting was used as Flair's excuse not to job for Luger. "Really, I'm ready to step aside. But Luger's not the guy. We need to wait until Sting's ready." - Naitch buying himself more time on top

What Jerry said.

To be fair, I was about to write almost the same thing John wrote. The way you wrote it made it seem like you thought PG-13 were a borderline top 10 team then you kept asking "where did i say that"? I'm not a big memphis guy so I haven't seen a lot of PG-13 but I did like what I saw. Calling them top 10 or even top 20 was an eyebrow-raiser for me though. I'm looking forward to checking out the matches Loss pointed out and see if that causes me to re-evaluate.

But then why would Vince go nuts at the very mention of his name?

Wasn't he the one behind all the haircuts in 02/03 because he wanted to be the only guy on the roster with long blonde hair?

Both Pacino and Flair had to do a fake heart attack as part of their character during down periods in their character arc. Technically, Pacino's was a diabetic seizure. Also, both sagas went on far too long and in the end were just hanging on for another payday.