tomk

yes, you finally watched this. Watch the Miguel Perrez Jr v Hurricane Castillo Jr dog collar match already. One of the Kongs spends late 90s early 00's working Texas indys. I wouldn't be surprised if he feuds with Action Jackson. He should get talked up alot more. I imagine if there was a DVDVR 500 in 1991 he would have ranked ridiculously high for his IWA Japan stuff and odd Us indy stuff like the AWF match with Tom Burton.

You didn't like Dusty/Dustin v Flair/Jarrett from Greed?

Is someone going to write up the Bossman v Barbarian series? Remember liking it, although also remember the MSG. boston, whatever other arena were all almost move for move identical which waws dissapointing at time I first watched.

What exactly is the takeaway? Murraco v Orndorf is the same as Morales v Moondog Spot and George Wells v Iron Mike Sharpe from Boston Garden. To not get that is to takeaway nothing from this. And was arguing more with goodhelmet than you.

Yes everyone is in agreement on Hash/Ogawa being disaster. But there is a major disagreement over why it was a disaster. Some people claim that this was a hot angle where the finish to the blow off match (Inoki supposedly changing finish) was the disaster. Other people point out that despite the water cooler conversations and the ratings (and yeah it was entertaining to watch stuff on videos from local Japanese video stores) the actual attendance demonstrates that the problems came long before the blow off. Major disagreement. I mean we also both agree that the Lesnar v Cena feud was blown. You think the finish for the first match blew it, I think that them not running a rematch was blowing it. Other than these disagreements we are completely on the same page. Yipee! It's 2013, was 2012 you try to work the same formula with a crowd that is more hostile to DQs. This thread is really odd in that I feel like I'm talking past you as I point to numbers and examples and don't know if your following at all. I get that you've read a bunch about WWF and 902 NJ but don't know how much you've actually seen. And maybe we need to get certain basic stuff out of the way for this thread to be in any way productive. 1) This is Hector Garza v Scott Hall from WCW. I wish I could find their match against each other from TNA online as well. Hector Garza wins this match. No one was interested in the rematch. If match was worked the same way, except with Scott Hall taking the win...would the audience have been more excited for a rematch? 2) This is Snowden article on Belator: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1488456...mebody-like-ufc Bjorn Rebney says "It's the cornerstone of what makes us different," Rebney told Bleacher Report. "We follow a real sport format like what we're watching right now in the NFL playoffs. You've got to earn it. You have to go through the toughest tournament in sports and if you can win three fights in sequence, you can earn your shot at the world title. It's about real sports sequencing. It's about tournament brackets. It's about going from the quarterfinals to the semifinals to the finals. "There's never been a disconnect in my mind than when watching combat sports and seeing guys able to talk themselves into title fights. Or putting a guy in a world title fight because you think you have a greater ability to sell him to consumers. I've always felt the best fighter should earn his way to a title shot. It should be about winning, not how good your hair looks or how well you talk. It should be about the competition. And at the core that's who we are." Rebney is trying to talk about the difference between the way Bellator is booked and the way wrestling UFC, and boxing are booked. Is he wrong about wrestling? Did Lesnar earn his first match with Cena through going through a ladder of opponents or by attacking him and talking way into match? Was there a point where Vince Mcmahon went title shots, rematches card booking "should be about winning, not how good your hair looks or how well you talk. It should be about the competition"?

Jerry says Except that is not how the WWF worked in the 80s. They weren't rotating their guys that way becuase they couldn't. The WWF was like a premier team that only fielded three strikers and a double below the knee amputee who played goalie. They additionally had a bench of 75 other paraplegic back up goalies. No one looks at that roster and says "These guys are doing so well because of their depth". If that team succeeds it's because of the great strikers and the coaching, not because of the bench. WWF wasn't booked like Kevin Sullivan theoretically booked WCW with hot gimmicks on top and strong workrate in middle. Not booked like Smackdown title in 07 where anytime the champ was injured there were three other guys who could take the role. It was booked with a couple guys on top and everyone else way below. Why? Is your analysis going to be as bad as your analysis of the mania's? Do you understand why your analysis of the mania's seems so laughable? The WWF tag titles regularly changed hands in Allentown, PA which is essentially a TV studio match ( while the IC or world title change would take place in MSG). Meanwhile JCP is headlining its shows with the Steamboat/Youngblood v Slaughter/Kernoodle feud.The Final Conflict card in Greensboro main evented by Steamboat/Youngblood v Slaughter/Kernoodle drew record attendance supposedly caused traffic jams and layed the inspiration for Starcade supercard. The difference between a title that changes hands in TV studio matches and one that changes hands as main event of a supercard is huge. The JCP World Tag Titles and the WWF world tag titles aren't equivalent to each other. In JCP the World Tag belts were essentially the secondary belt. In WWF the Ic belt was a midcard workrate thing closer to the NWA us tag titles. The WWF tag titles would be below that. Jimmy Valiant v Paul Jones army was a midcard feud. You've often talked about four and five star promos and skits. Jimmy Valiant was the king of the 5 star promo, he was amazing at not just the big promos in the feud. but would add little nuances to even the throw away bits Murraco v Orndorf was an undercard piss break. Booked as such by the WWF. JDW is from traditional WWF territory LA, Sorrow from traditional WWF territory Jersey, I watched the WWF in traditional WWF territory DC/Baltimore. We've all said that Valiant v Jones was booked as strong meaningfull midcard angle (equivalent to Roberts v Rude) and yet you insist that we don't know the WWF and Murraco v Orndorf meant more. goodhelmet says I would disagree with this. As I think the term "better" is loaded and unclear if that's acurate. Again two shows I went to back to back in 86 looking closely at the WWF card Pedro Morales defeated Moondog Spot---This was booked with goal of getting audience to say "Hey I drunk a six pack of soda in the van on way to show, maybe should use the bathroom before the real show start" Jose Luis Rivera defeated Rene Goulet---This was booked with intention of being match where audience got back to their seat and thinks "maybe should get some food and drinks and look at merch stand, that T-shirt looks cool" Hercules defeated Lanny Poffo-guy beats up a name jobber after this match ring announcer says next up is "Scott Mcgee v Tiger Chung Lee and Tonga Kid is signing autographs in lobby" Scott McGhee fought Tiger Chung Lee to a draw- Booked to elicit "boring chants, make audience go "Hey, who is that signing autographs again, lets check out merch stand" and to kill heat before main event WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan defeated WWF Tag Team Champion Brutus Beefcake- Hey it's the main event After main event announcer lists program for next show and then announces The Junkyard Dog defeated Greg Valentine via count-out- Booked to be point where audience goes " Hey I need to go to lobby and buy tickets for next event" Cpl. Kirchner & King Tonga fought Nikolai Volkoff & the Iron Sheik to a no contest- Booked because, Baltimore has a large black population who may wait till after the JYD match to buy tickets for next show, otherwise something to watch as you gather your stuff. When you compare that show to the combined JCP/AWA one, the first thing you notice is "Hey when during that JCP/AWA show am I going to get a chance to take a piss break, buy some merchandise, or buy tickets to next months show". Is that really a better use of talent? One of the points that Meltzer always makes is that sports are most succesfull when there is one blow away top superstar: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Tyson etc. Booking one guy as star and everyone else as not being anywhere near that stars level has been a pretty succesful formula. There are of course dangers with putting all your eggs in one basket. Possibility of injury or guy becoming basketcase. Meltzer has said that if Vince didn't go with Hogan, he would have gone with "Kerry Von Erich, and he would have self destructed on the road." There is also the story of 96 where crowd was burning out on Undertaker (as guy way above opponents) and the rivalry with Foley reignited the crowds interest in Undertaker. Connors-Mccenroe Agassi-Sampras Celtics-Lakers 89 broken up Megapowers Hogan-Savage People do burn out on superstars and rivalries deepen audiences investment in people. But still the booking one guy as superstar (assuming he doesn't get injured or flake out) and everyone else as not even secondary is a succesful formula and perhaps a "better " use of talent. Of course one could also look at these two cards and point out how high Hercules Hernandez, Lanny Poffo and Scott Mcghee were rated on the top 100 workers list on the 84 WON annual, or that the opener of Pedro Morales v Moondog Spot was a World Champion v tag champion who could main event against each other at MSG. But that analysis would miss the whole point of how WWF booked it's cards.

Who reinvented themselves/evolved through addition? I mean yes Terry Funk added a moonsault but when people talk about Terry Funk as a guy who reinvented himself they aren’t talking about the moonsault. They are talking about Terry Funk working lunatic brawler gimmick. You can see Chainsaw Charlie/ECW-Terry Funk in Funk’s 70s work. It isn’t the focus of his work but it’s there. He eliminated a bunch of other aspects of his game and concentrated on the nutthouse brawler. Jushin Lyger is a guy who is constantly changing and reinventing himself. Post Brain surgery moved from a guy whose matches were focused around highflying offense to a guy more focused on power offense, and then moved to guy more focused on matt work and striking. It’s not that Lyger added shotei’s and a Thesz press. He eliminated stuff and moved the section of the match that he was most focused on. Mutoh always did a bunch of listless matwork. His reinvention was eliminating stuff and changing the focus of the match. I guess there was no hints of Yasuda’s almost vaudeville chicken shit MMA guy with gambling debts shtick in early Yasuda. That was all added later. But no one talks about Yasuda’s ability to reinvent himself. And anyone who said “Look at how Yasuda is able to add things to reinvent himself. Why can Yasuda do that and not Flair.” Would be laughed at.

Nintendo L with the run-in We've already been over this. To make this argument, you picked an arbitrary starting point that omits Cena's year-plus reign and his earlier 280-day reign. Not to mention that in 2012, Cena was in the main event of every PPV where he was on the card despite holding the world title for exactly zero days during that period. Divorcing the ace from the world title doesn't constitute not protecting the ace. I didn't pick January 2008-January 1, 2013 arbitrarily. I think those five years offer a better representative of how Cena has been booked than the 25 months between June 05-Sep 07. My argument is that they are indifferent to protecting Cena. There are large periods of June 05-Sep 07 that better represent when jdw talks about deliberate kneecaping (when they were protecting others at Cena's expense) as opposed to indifference. I mentioned 05-07 period in my post but am super willing to walk you through that period if you need. Yes Cena has been in mainevents...but the WWE doesn't traditionally divorce the title from the mainevent. Traditional WWWF/WWF/WWE booking says divorcing them hurts both the title and the maineventer. It also makes the direction of whole fed less clear (is the fed building heels to face Cena, building opponents to face title holders, or just building up guys to be built up guys? One of the advantages of caste society is everyone has role) . That was point I'm making. One of the major ways that the WWE has traditionally protected ace is not divorcing him from world title. Ace with title is the face of fed. We can all agree that from 08-13 that hasn't been the case.

My favorite part of this was that when Chyna turned face in 2000, they still had her accompanying heel HHH to the ring. I'm not sure if this is because the fed didn't have faith in HHH as solo heel act, but that's what it felt like. At the time, the normal set up for the pedigree was a Chyna low blow. It may be that they trusted in HHH's solo charisma and just didn't think he could set up his finisher without her.

I think this is probably Wahoo's APW, which would be one of the top 5 absurd 90s indies that I used to love getting tapes of but noone will ever revisit. Hamrick, Michaels, and Ron Killings all worked there. They had a skinny old guy working a Red Headed Stranger gimmick. They normally had one guy as top Native American gimmicked face, and one guy as top heel Native American and at least once did a double Native American turn.

In 1991 Abrams was convinced (incorrectly) that Steve "Wild Thing" Ray was sleeping with his wife so he paid Steve Williams to break his nose. On some level Vince's cycle of steroid induced paranoid delusions seem to balance out his cocaine induced paranoid delusions. The charm of Abrams UWF was that he was working with just half that cocktail.

Didn't seem to hurt anyone else, feels more like he just wasn't drinking and drugging with the right group of peers.

What are your thoughts on the Austin Idol stuff?

There was also Strongbow jr and Tux Newman...they had a commercial tape I think of their bloodiest matches.

I'm not sure how underated the Hansen v Colon feud is as remember getting both that and the Hansen v Austin Idol stuff early in my tape trading days and I think much later Boston Idol may have sent them to me again unsolicited. On some level people talk about Hansen these days as though he was just a guy with a Japanese career, but he showed up all over the US in the 80s coming in and out of places and probably working series as good as the Colon or Idol ones.

TNA is watchable since Russo left, I mean when I've watched it was filled with stupidity but it was standard wrestling stupidity and not Russo "what the fuck this makes no sense" stupidity. The couple times I've seen, there was nothing thaat hooked me in (the way Rin Ka King does), but nothing that made it unwatchable. So haven't subbed to Won in a while now, but last year when Tanahashi got the Thesz award Meltz complained that NJ was a minor promotion. He essentially makes the same complaint this year in the feud of the year category. AAA was outdrawing anything else in the US in the early nineties. Not the same thing.

The episode of the Slam Bam Jam podcast with Superboy has alot of amusing Wilkins talk including Perro Ruso saying that Finlay and Wilkins were the two best wrestlers he'd ever seen.

It hasn't been ignored. This has not been ignored either. Again super succesful formula. No one is denying that the WWF made a ton more money. The question is what was their formula for making that money. The WWF formula is built around having to find new meat to feed top, forming it into hamburger then when it spit out, you have to get more raw meat. JCP wasn't built around having to constantly go out and find new meat. Being able to mix a set of guys up v. constant search for meat.

I think it's a mistake to think that "Race as Angle" is the current prevailing mindset.

If a waiter serves you a plate of chewed up spat out meat, are you going to be excited if he says "This was once a filet mignon"? Drawing record doesn't matter when you aren't being booked as a draw. This is what makes all of the tag title v tag title comparisons so ridiculous. King of the Ring 2000 WWE Hardcore Championship 9 time San Francisco tag champ, AWA tag champion, multiple time Lutte International tag champion and former WWF Ic champ Pat Patterson v. multiple NWA Florida and NWA Georgia title holder Jerry Briscoe FMW 11/12/00 WEW Hardcore Championship Kevin Sullivan SMW jobber Kintaro Kanemura v Balls Mahoney tag partner Masato Tanaka 1-0 is a really stupid way to discuss wrestling cards. Pat Patterson and Briscoe were working a comedy heat killer bra and panties match, the hardcore title was the secondary title in FMW. If the WWF presents a wrestler as a comedy jobber, he is a comedy jobber. If in Febuary of 97 the WWF ran Kikuchi v Johnny Saint v Danny Hodge v Hijo Del Santo in a 4-way match for the Jr heavyweight title in a three minute dark match that ends when Kurggan choke slams them all...it doesn't matter what any of the participants did before the match. They are jobbers and to go "But look at all their accomplishments, so much more impresive than the Jushin Lyger v Ohtani in New Japan"..it misses the point completely. Johnny Sorrow writes in response Someone once wrote: Sorrow says that audience was primed through booking angles, promos, vignettes and so on to care about Valiant v Jones. The audience was also primed to not give a shit about Orndorf/Muraco. Primed to treat it as unimpressive. Sorrow is I think from traditional WWF town Philly. I'm from traditional WWF town DC and occasioanlly went to wrestling with grandfather in WWF base NYC. We both agree that Valiant v Paul Jones was a focused midcard angle that was booked as something you should care about and Orndorf v Muraco was booked as meaningless shit that might be a good time to take a piss break. In the ranking tag teams match thread I wrote about a WWF Baltimore show I went to as a kid http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...p;#entry5528221 Scott Mcghee wrestled Tiger Chung Lee to a draw and it was in my mind the most entertaining match on the card. Scott Mcghee is a journeyman wrestler in the 80s who did superslick almost British "look I have nothing up my sleeves matwork" and result of seeing him live, he became a guy I always search for and will be super dissapointed if he doesn't have at least 10 matches on the WWF 80s redo set. Tiger Chung Lee is a guy who didn't impress as much when I was kid, but he is a guy who will work super crisp and one of two wrestlers Karl Gotch felt wasn't getting pushed enough in New Japan comparative to their skill level. It doesn't matter that I enjoyed the match, it was booked as a undercard heat killer that was supposed to encourage you to go to the merch stand and supposed to kill the crowds heat so much that it would enhance the pop for Hogan in the next match. It doesn't matter if match was good or not, doesn't matter what they've accomplished elsewhere. They were booked as jobbers that crowd shouldn't care about---thus they are jobbers that crowd doesn't care about. And there is nothing wrong with that. The card booked around one or two matches with rest of show booked as meaningless garbage is a formula that was super succesful, made a ton of money. The WWF was built around feeding their ace meat, the meat is then chewed up and spat out. No one cares about a plate of raw ground up meat, you only care when it formed into a hamburger. And if a waiter serves you a plate of chewed up spat out meat, you don't really care if it was once filet or chuck. Once was a big name, now interchangable midcard jobber. Even if he was once kobe beef, regurgitated meat is regurgitated meat.

Dinastia has been around for at least four years probably. The award for rookie is for first year in major promotion. Rey had been wrestling for at least four years before he showed up in AAA and got rookie award, I have a hard time believing Windham didn't work some small Texas stuff before his debut too. What exactly counts as a major promotion is a different issue. The question isn't did ACH work anywhere before, but rather are ROH, EVolve and CZW actually major promotions? Of course last year when Tanahashi won the Thesz/Flair award, Meltzer refered to New Japan as non-major promotion. From stuff that has been posted around the web it looks like IWRG did surprisingly well for promotion of year and Negro Casas and the Negro Casas v Blue Panther feud did better than I expected. Somewhat dissapointed that Isis (the Guerreros Tuareg's valet didn't place at all on the best non-wrestler). And well Linda Mcmahon vs. the intelligence of the Connecticut voters was my favorite feud of the year, as it had a real old school WWF feel to me as it was less about the face's offense and instead all about the heel's endless stooging and bumping. It even felt like they did a heel and manager conference on the apron and bump heads leading to finish run finish. It was an entertaining old school feud, sad to see it relegated to the bad promotional tactic category. Also the links don't include all the categories and miss Shooters winning the best pro wrestling book award.

There is a Bad Attitude v Arn/Steamboat return match from main event on dailymotion that I think people here would really enjoy. Arn is a super fun FIP worker and Eaton is just constantly doing stuff.

So haven't watched Steiners in maybe six or seven years but last time I watched memory was that matches weren't structureless. Built really in the Jackie Fargo/Roughhouse Fargo, Brett Wayne Sawyer/Buzz Sawyer...more technically sound wrestler trying to control his nutthouse brother format.

Yeah, I think there is enough Verne footage to get him in consideration.

I think you can do an 80's Central States top 4 without Mike George. Bulldog Bob Brown is #1. Rufus R Jones #2? fuck...who next?