JerryvonKramer

How far does one take it though? I loathe jazz with a passion and, despite recognising the greatness of Miles Davies, I would feel totally dishonest including him in any top 100 of mine. I can see some scenarios like that coming up on wrestling lists. There are certain styles that some of us don't care for.

I'm all for baseline entry requirements, because if I'm going to watch 00s and 10s shit, then other people can bloody well fill their gaps too!

Hold on, aren't you from the UK?

- Ric Flair shoves Tommy Young who shoves Flair back, sometimes with a Ric taking a bump. - Ted DiBiase goes for an Irish Whip into the turnbuckle, but it gets reversed sending Ted into the corner. He comes charging out of it only to take a shot to the stomach which sends him over 360 into a forward roll. I think you can see this in the infamous "reverse / charge" audible during his exchanges with Bret at Survivor Series 90. Variation on this is when the opponent is prone but standing and he goes for the second turnbuckle move that never connects and takes the stomach shot there instead going over 360 -- Arn Anderson also does that spot. Another variation has him doing that insane 360 "over the head / neck" bump, but this is more common on an Irish whip reversal to the ropes. - Harley Race did the failed bodyslam / crossbody spot quite often where he'd catch the babyface, go for a slam, but the babyface ends up falling on top of him for a near fall. He'd also very often get his gut-wrench suplex or side salto reversed, which is a spot that comes up in Race matches more than anywhere else I've ever seen. It's almost like he'd use the gut-wrench reversal as a transitional move, or sometimes even as a hope spot.

Services to 57Talk.com?

It also exposed the fact that Irwin R. Shyster was secretly Mike Rotunda. NWA-style Ross was completely wrong for WWF. I haven't seen WWF from 93 for ages, but did he ever bring up Luger's 4.0 grade average when calling Narcissist matches? Not that it would have ever happened, but I'd love to have heard David Crockett call some cartoon-era WWF matches. I think he would have been perfect in many ways. Imagine how much excitement there'd be in a Vince-David Crockett commentary team!

Serious question: do you factor in Terry Funk piledriving Flair on the table into the greatness of either guy? I think it's an important question.

The thing is though, I'd want to include guys like Bruno Sammartino and possibly even a Dusty Rhodes or someone like that on my list, and what made those guys great does not strictly come down to "work". I think if people are going to include someone like Riki Choshu on their list, at least a part of it would be his undoubted charisma and aura, the way he carried himself. So does that mean that it's "fair" to take those aspects of Choshu into consideration? What I'm saying is that making a rule like this puts a guy like him at an advantage because we're sort of taking his non-work aspects into consideration while crippling the main strengths of a guy like Dusty.

Flair vs. Steamboat (Chi-Town Rumble): https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/wtbbp-rewind-ric-flair-vs-ricky-steamboat-chi-town-rumble

Yeah, seems pretty much mandatory really -- aside from the obvious, it could also help push Jumbo and Hansen up further for me, and maybe finally help understand the fuss about Steve Williams (for example). I'm also going to have to do at least a cursory viewing of post-2001 stuff too, just for due diligence ... trying to think of a way to do it. I've got a lot of Grimmas's half-year MOTYC 2014 picks ready to watch, and Will once accidentally sent me a MOTYC 2010 set. But I might have to have a little mini-project at some point to do a general watching of stuff with some PWO guidance. Imagine a baby Popeye being force-fed his spinach by Poopdeck Pappy -- that'll be me watching pimped matches from the 00s and 10s.

This will give me some impetus to finish my Dory Funk Jr and Harley Race projects. I'm not ruling out the possibility of putting out a "why Dory should be in your top 100" show one day.

How big was that New Japan / WCW Supershow? If the gate is to be believed, it's not a million miles from WM3. A cheat, of course, but that was one of the biggest shows period for ages.

Just $436 to go on this. 7 days left. Would be a shame if it didn't happen now. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1244526869/ivan-koloff-the-russian-bear

WarGames 1 from GAB 87 (4/7/87): https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/where-the-big-boys-play-rewind-wargames-1

I got Rumble 88 on VCD from a bootlegger and it was both a revelation and a profound disappointment. I also had a tremendous DiBiase in the WWF comp on 5 VCDs from that same guy and can't for the life of me find it. About as complete a documentation of the Million Dollar Man as money could buy.

Yes, Justin, agreed. I said this the Gorilla Monsoon thread when Fuji was first brought up. It always felt like Gorilla put him over huge. Did you ever have the CHV called "Brains Behind the Brawn"? When I was collecting in the early 2000s, this was one of my sacred gems cos it was very hard to find on UK Pal and it's one of the ones I ended up paying over £10 for. This was one of the very few places to see the footage of One Man Gang becoming Akeem. Anyway, THAT put him over pretty big as well. I think there might be an argument to say that Fuji failed in the role he was put in. I mean, he was put over big on commentary, and featured as a big deal, but always came off as being second rate. One of the interesting things about that tape is that -- similar to the older "Amazing Managers" tape -- the featured managers were all seen on a level parity. It's Heenan, Hart, Fuji and Slick and all four are treated on a par and the sort of schtick of the tape was that Miss Elizabeth trumped them all. Wow Parv - over ten whole pounds! Actually, what was the going rate for vhs's in the early 2000s? Andd how many tapes did you collect? Any chance you could put a few photos up? It would be nice to see what memories come flooding back. The standard rate was about £5 + maybe £2 for P&P. I collected *almost* all of them up to about 1995, and then only the main PPVs until about 2001. Mostly everything from the 89-91 period was very easy to find and you could get lots of a few of them from pretty cheap. I already had most of them from my childhood anyway. But certain ones, especially those released before 1989, were incredibly difficult to find in UK Pal. Some were never released at all. Others we had our own special tapes for the UK market which were absolutely bloody everywhere on ebay, especially Hulk Hogan: Real American and the SNME tape which had the Rockers on the front. You could get those ones for like £1. In the end, I had to resort to using niche bootlegs from guys who had converted American SCART VHS to UK PAL for those tapes which were never released here. These were a mark-up on the regular ones because you just couldn't find them. Virtually all of the non-PPV releases prior to Wrestlemania 5 never came out here. These included stuff like "Brains Behind the Brawn", "Macho Madness", and all of the "Best of WWF" series and "History of " series. Got to remember, no Youtube in those days, so I was picking up those tapes to see any and all bits of angles that I'd never seen. But there were some I just couldn't find, even off those bootleggers. "Country Boys" was nowhere, ditto "Explosive TNT show". Basically some of the older stuff. Then I bought a bulk load of the original SNMEs -- every single one. That's a shit load of tapes. I used to get them delivered back to my parents' place in Wales, and I was here in university. But then the SNME bulk came my dad rang me and was like "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!" Was like a massive sack full of tapes. The VQ wasn't that great on them either, but that's how things were. Just think you could probably find and watch every SNME on youtube or the network now. All-in-all, I must have spent over £2k over about 2 years. I guess nobody at that time could have predicted how the internet would go with broadband, streaming, amazing availability of content etc., and I thought I was planning for the future, grabbing this stuff while it was still relatively cheap and available and while people still actually owned VHS tape recorders. Nice one Nostradamus! Those tapes are still in my parents' attic, next time I'm back I might take a few pics, but it's quite a hassle to go and get them out.

Forgot to mention that I've also remastered the first 10 eps of WTBBP greatly improving their sound quality. Not perfect, but as good as they'll ever be. Flair vs. Garvin from Worldwide 9/26/87: https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/where-the-big-boys-play-rewind-ric-flair-vs-ron-garvin-worldwide-92687

Yes, Justin, agreed. I said this the Gorilla Monsoon thread when Fuji was first brought up. It always felt like Gorilla put him over huge. Did you ever have the CHV called "Brains Behind the Brawn"? When I was collecting in the early 2000s, this was one of my sacred gems cos it was very hard to find on UK Pal and it's one of the ones I ended up paying over £10 for. This was one of the very few places to see the footage of One Man Gang becoming Akeem. Anyway, THAT put him over pretty big as well. I think there might be an argument to say that Fuji failed in the role he was put in. I mean, he was put over big on commentary, and featured as a big deal, but always came off as being second rate. One of the interesting things about that tape is that -- similar to the older "Amazing Managers" tape -- the featured managers were all seen on a level parity. It's Heenan, Hart, Fuji and Slick and all four are treated on a par and the sort of schtick of the tape was that Miss Elizabeth trumped them all.

Find my general announcement about "Rewind Month" on the PWO-PTBN feed here. Over the next month, I'll be pulling out key matches from the review archive to give people a quick and easy reference point, and also as a kind of service for new listeners who might feel a bit put off by the prospect of listening to 100+ hours. And maybe some long-time listeners might enjoy reliving some "highlights". Kind of like bite-size podcasts, or podcasting fast food. The idea is one a day, but I can't promise that. First up is Magnum vs. Tully from Starrcade 85: https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/wtbbp-rewind-magnum-ta-vs-tully-blanchard I'll post new ones in this thread as a general catalogue. Eventually, I'll get a linked archive page built over at PTBN.

I got a little sneak preview of this and listened last night. It's fantastic! One of Will's best ever shows. Johnny P in particular is really switched on and up for it and the three of them make many excellent points. Just a few notes: 1. Where were you bastards for this thread? Remember? When I was fighting back jdw and his hordes on how fans and their attitudes towards the product have changed? Remember? Making many of the same arguments you articulate here? Well? Thanks for nothing!! 2. The phenomenon you are talking about when you'd buy old tapes on expert recommendation and compel yourself to like them is known as the "sunk-cost fallacy" and is also a bit of confirmation bias. You are predisposed to like it because you've already made the investment. 3. Johnny P's point about fans not really watching for the enjoyment of the thing itself but always already to share their thoughts with their "friends across the world" was very well made -- and something I've often wondered about myself. Part of me absolutely hates it and hates the tendency of instant feedback in our culture. Event X 1 second later "Here's what I think" "Well here's what I think" "Here's my tweet on the subject, everyone must know what I think" "And here's what I think" I mean, honestly, I fucking hate it. But that's the way the world has gone. I found myself doing it massively during the world cup, as anyone who has the misfortune of being Facebook friends with me will know!

I can kinda relate to Tony on that though, I'm absolutely terrible at keeping in touch with people and sometimes it gets to the point where it would seem almost intrusive to do so. I was going "meet" my old college mate from New York the other day for a talk on Skype, but I had to go out and so bounced it, and said we'd re-arrange, but then haven't got round to it, despite Facebook being right there. And we have no beef. Now I've said this I'll probably make an effort, but the more usual thing would be to let it drift. A week goes on. A week after. Soon the idea of the call becomes a distant memory. But I'm not really a phone guy. If a friend phones me, sometimes I'll just leave it ring because the idea of taking it seems like an ordeal. I don't like just "having a chat" over the phone. Do I look like a girl to you? If there is no purpose to the call, I tend not to like it. Tried to change this a while back, but have now reverted to type. Can't do it. I'll talk to my mum or my girlfriend on the phone, but not to my mate. If I see someone every day in work, or in a regular thing, it's a bit different. But if they've moved away, I see a call as a massive "to do", and basically would rather not. If Tony is like that, and he seems like he is, you can see how he might not pick up the phone.

What's the time-frame you talking here? I remember watching Prime Time from 1985 and thinking that Jesse wasn't yet at the races. But then Jack Reynolds was truly atrocious and gave everything a very stilted air.

Can you elaborate on that? What has bothered you about Jesse? I consider the guy almost untouchable and permanent contender for MVP on every show he calls. Me and you aren't on the same page today Mad Dog, lol

I felt like there was a real disconnect between Hart and basically everything else going on in the promotion. He seemed like he was going into business for himself and on top of that didn't really know what was going on. Not really surprising that he was fired mid-storyline.

What did he do well?