JerryvonKramer

Chad is a new father, and so we have to see how his schedule pans out over the next few weeks. I think the old shows will be re-edited and cut down rather than re-done -- I will just try to fix sound levels and cut out the play-by-plays of matches, which I think were tedious and just a rookie mistake by me when we were starting out. What is missing from the early shows mainly, are the run throughs of the Observers, which, as you know, have become a real fixture of WTBBP. What we'll probably do, is just do a series of special stand alone recordings running through the WONs for 1984, 85, 86 and 87 until whenever it was in 88 that we started running them down. The one other thing that I might do is to pull out reviews of key matches (e.g. Magnum-Tully, Flair-Steamboat), which also happen to be some of our better analytical moments, and perhaps link them them in one of Loss's sub-forums. I realise that some people might only want to hear the reviews of one or two matches and not sit through however many hours of audio to get there.

http://placetobenation.com/where-the-big-boys-play-66-clash-of-the-champions-xvi/ Chad and Parv review one of the most nondescript shows in WCW history, Clash of the Champions 16: Fall Brawl - [3:14] Wrestling Observer and PW Torch roundup: a lot of people leave WCW, why hasn't evil Jim Herd been fired yet?, Bill Watts interview in the Torch, Chad runs the rule over Meltzer's mid-year Observer awards for 91, and more on the Flair situation. - [54:46] Review of Clash 16: Ranger Ross! (briefly), did Cactus Jack's crazy bump adversely affect the rest of the card?, Ron Simmons: man of the people, and Parv rants about some of Dusty's booking policies. - [1:59:17] End of show awards AND be sure to check out Matt D's great companion piece at PTBN: http://placetobenation.com/the-column-beyond-a-dotted-line-through-the-georgia-brawl/ The PWO-PTBN Podcast Network features great shows you can find right here at Place to Be Nation. By subscribing on iTunes or SoundCloud, you’ll have access to new episodes, bonus content, as well as a complete archive of: Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling Super-Show, Good Will Wrestling, and Wrestling With the Past.

But it seems like there is a certain amount of choking allowed, (4 count? 5 count?). Heel Andre springs to mind most readily in exploiting that rule. I did see a match recently where the guy was DQ'd for a closed fist, but can't for the life of me remember what it was. Possibly one of those Dory matches I watched.

What are the exact rules on choking and punching?

By all accounts Ivan beating Bruno in 71 would top the all-time list probably followed by Brock beating Undertaker at mania. The "deadly silent" reaction is uber rare.

I have always thought there was value in having two "featured" matches on any given card. I've pointed before to cards (some here have poo pooed this notion) that have "co-main events". In 1980, the hot feud in WWF was Bruno vs. Larry Zbyszko while Bob Backlund was champ taking on various challengers. Even if Bruno was the bigger drawing card and had the hotter feud, the title still meant something and could headline cards in its own right. In 1990, Warrior was champ but the hot feud was Hogan vs. Earthquake. Some might argue that Hogan vs. Earthquake hurt Warrior's run as champ, because it made Warrior vs. Rude (a feud that had been at IC level the previous year) seem secondary. Perhaps that's a less successful example that might point to some of the "dangers" of this. In 1992, they ran Hogan vs. Sid as the hot feud into Wrestlemania, while Flair vs. Savage were competing for the title. Then later on, it was Warrior vs. Savage into Summerslam but Bret vs. Bulldog was in the headline (two different audiences, main event for American audience vs. main event for live crowd). In 1993, they ran Hogan and Beefcake against Money Inc into Wrestlemania, while Bret vs. Yokozuna was for the title. And we all know what happened at the end. In WCW around that same time, you also have a lot of cards with Ron Simmons vs. challenger somewhere in the mid-card with the Sting match on top. The situation comes up when you have a huge star (Bruno, Hogan, [sting*] -- and, as you pointed to, Jumbo) who happens not to have the title. I think it can work, but you have to keep the title picture strong. I think you could argue that Bruno overshadowed Backlund in 1980 and Hogan overshadowed Warrior / Flair / Savage / Bret in 90-93 and Sting overshadowed Ron Simmons ... from that point of view it looks like the promotion doesn't have faith in the current champ to carry the card, so they are going to go with the old established draw. But I still think it can work -- Summerslam 92 is a good example of it working -- because promotions can play to different audiences. I don't see why there has to be just one match that is doing the drawing, why not two points of interest? They can help each other out, i.e. I get to see THIS match AND this one? Wow, I'll buy! Not necessarily a bad thing in my book, but I think there's scope for it to devalue the champ. * I know, I know

What about when the Horsemen beat up Dusty in the parking lot? What about when the Horsemen turned on Sting in 1990 and then again in 1995? What about the Black Scorpion's magic tricks and the debut of Oz (both of them legit made me say "oh my god" recently)? What about "SHE LIKES IT, SHE LIKES IT!" What about Nikita decapitating David Crockett with a sickle? What about the Rock n Roll Express turning up and winning the tag titles in a big upset vs. The Russians? There are more, but there's a start.

http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrestling-33-unspecial-too/ Join Parv, Pete, Johnny and Kelly to celebrate the one-year birthday of Titans of Wrestling for this sequel to the first Unspecial: Unspecial Too! On the docket tonight: - Dr D David Schultz, Lou Albano, and various others shout at Jim Wilson and Thunderbolt Patterson on the Morton Downey Jr. Show, circa 1989 - Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ric Flair and an errant mole appear on Baywatch, circa 1995 - Vince McMahon Jr performs "Stand Back" at Caeser's Atlantic City, December 17th, 1987 - Legends Battle Royal at the Meadowlands, November 16th 1987 The PWO-PTBN Podcast Network features great shows you can find right here at Place to Be Nation. By subscribing on iTunes or SoundCloud, you’ll have access to new episodes, bonus content, as well as a complete archive of: Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling Super-Show, Good Will Wrestling, and Wrestling With the Past.

Titans Xtra - 1981 Roster Analysis Part 5: ICW, LA https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-xtra-1981-roster-analysis-part-5 When Parv, Kelly and Dylan said they'd leave no stone unturned, they meant it! They look at the two active US promotions from 1981 that they haven't looked at yet: Angelo Poffo's ICW, and Mike LaBell's LA promotion.

Who else was expecting this to be the Top 50 One Man Gang moments?

I'd argue that Bravo -- theoretically -- was treated as an upper midcarder, especially during the Earthquake run in 1990. He slipped down the card in 91-2. I think he was protected to maintain his drawing power in Canada.

I quite like Vince's brand of dickery though, it's acceptable to me because I find it entertaining. We are quite far off topic here.

Just think he's hilarious, completely bonkers, visionary, lives for the business, etc. So I guess all of what you said. If I appreciate, respect, and and enjoy someone the net result is that I generally like them. Do you dislike Vince?

While I do somewhat regret starting this thread and did so originally in bad faith, I think it has had the positive outcome of giving some of the newer members of the forum a place to flex their argumentative muscles. And I think that's a good thing. The truth about this is that I only really side with Vince and against Bret because I like Vince and dislike Bret. That's all there is to it. Everything else is window dressing. Bret was in the right legally and probably morally. We can debate whether or not what Vince did was best for business (with or without hindsight bias). But all it boils down to ultimately is that I think Bret is a dick and instinctively side against him. The brutal and honest truth. Tell me yours.

Where is it explicitly stated that "reasonable" means "by mutual agreement"?

I think much of the case would rest on the wording of "reasonable" in the contract. Was it reasonable for Bret Hart to lose the WWF title in his last match in Montreal? Prosecution: "Your honour, I put it to you that Mr. Hart had good reasons for not wanting to do this. He disliked Mr. Michaels who had been uncooperative in the past on several occasions. He is, as you know, from Canada. And Montreal is in Canada where Mr. Hart feels he has a special connection to the fans. It was unreasonable to expect him to lose to Mr. Michaels in front of these Canadian fans. He was, therefore, well within his rights to refuse the loss." Defence: "Your honour, forgive the expression but Mr. McMahon is not running a home for the psychological well-being of his employees. Part of a sports entertainer's job is to lose sports entertainment matches. And, by the terms of the contract, such an act is entirely reasonable. Mr. McMahon did not ask Mr. Hart to do anything wildly inappropriate, morally offensive, or compromising, but simply something that is part of his everyday job. If you'll excuse me the luxury of an analogy: let us suppose that a postman had such a contract with 'reasonable creative control'. It would be like a postman refusing to deliver a letter to a house simply because he did not like the occupant of that house. Would any postal service accept that the delivery of a simple letter is 'unreasonable'? I put it to you, your honour, that the loss that Mr. Hart was asked to perform in the sports entertainment match at Montreal was akin to the delivery of a simple letter. The request was entirely reasonable, and therefore Mr. McMahon was not in breach of the contract agreement on the grounds of the creative control clause."

I'd be fascinated to know how that would hold up in court.

I think you're imposing your ideas of what wrestling should be onto a product that derived from Vince's idea of what wrestling should be. Vince from the start (83-4) was wedded strongly to the idea of wrestling as entertainment, and as being a TV show in and of itself. After his TNT experiment failed, he hit on something that worked in Prime Time. The back and forth to-camera studio segments between Gorilla and Bobby Heenan on Prime Time were designed to inculcate the feeling of an established TV show. Not necessarily a wrestling show, a TV show. On such a product, the announcers are less salesmen and more characters, part of the internal universe that Vince created. And the whole package is what sells your house show. It's moving from the hard sell of something like your Georgia TBS TV show and towards a more subtle "soft sell". I would think of Monsoon and Heenan on Prime Time as being like a mutually antagonistic Statler and Waldorf commenting from the sidelines, only with a bit more schtick. - Heenan is putting across the suspect heel version of events and to tell gags and keep things generally fun - Monsoon is there to roll his eyes and say "geez, would ya listen this this guy?", which is a vital component in the double act And this is where I credit Vince with being a kind of marketing genius, because all of that shit keeps the viewer invested in whatever is going on. You can show lots of jobber matches in that sort of environment, because people (and kids!!) are tuning in to see their favourite characters, not necessarily to watch wrestling matches. The entertainment is the hook, the house show is the bait. ---------- TBS show model: 1. Squash 2. Promo - COME TO THE OMNI 3. Competitive looking match 4. ANGLE - usually a heel beatdown 5. Promo - COME TO THE OMNI YOU FUCKERS!!! COME TO THE OMNI 6. Solie - "did I mention about the Omni yet?" Hard sell. PTW model: 1. Gorilla and Heenan talk about the latest goings from the last Superstars 2. Squash or match from a house show 3. Gorilla and Heenan talk about the wrestler featured in the match, they bicker over his merits and defects. Monsoon champions the babyface and rags on the heel; Heenan vice versa. But this is really fun to watch for people at home. rinse-repeat Soft sell: WWF would have spots where guys would run down upcoming dates, or drop ads coming in and out of their commercial breaks. It's a more subtle approach. Monsoon and Heenan were more a kind of framing device, at one level of remove from "the main action" (which tended to take place on Superstars and SNME). But that framing device has the psychological net result of making all the guys they talked about seem like massive stars. Vince was a master at making his guys seem more important. What can make guys seem more important than having two guys doing armchair analysis of them? It's almost like Monsoon and Heenan represented two guys sitting at home giving their take on the product. And that's a way of drawing someone in. And I'll always go back to the point: did it work? It's not SIMPLY going national and scaling up whatever had been done in wrestling before, it's producing something that is going to work for most of the markets, most of the time. It's producing a national TV show that can get over with just about anyone. Monsoon was an integral part of that in the overall presentation. He excelled at being that armchair pundit representing the guy sitting at home. I've noticed that US TV loves to do that in general -- we don't really have it as part our TV culture here. It's interesting in a way. Vince was putting existing TV tropes into his show. I'd argue that the Monsoon / Heenan roles aren't quite the same as, for example, Lance Russell and Dave Brown. It's a different thing -- although they too are characters in an internal universe as much as they are announcers in the sense that Loss was outlining.

I don't believe Vince wanted to humiliate Bret, I think he was paranoid about Bret either going into business for himself, or hightailing it with the belt. Let's not talk about how Shakespeare would have written it, because Vince, Bret, and Shawn would either all be dead or married. Flair just did what was best for Flair, he wasn't going to help a company who had just fired him. It's business, people are going to leverage whatever advantage they have. Flair 1 WCW 0 If Vince was stupid enough to let him get away it, but Vince being Vince and not Jim Herd made sure it didn't. Vince 1 Bret 0 I'm not misinformed, I know the facts, I've heard them a million times. Shawn is a non-factor here in the way I look at it (see above). Did it HAVE to be Survivor Series? And Montreal? No, but better do it there with maximum exposure on a big PPV than quietly on a house show. Of course Bret doesn't want to lose in Montreal. Of course Bret has an ego. He's a pro wrestler, so what? Vince was thinking about the title and the day after Bret's gone, why should he give a shit about Bret's ego or career? It's business. He dies. Of actual murder. That day.

Kris Z and Johnny compliment each other really well on this show. Always learn at least one new thing with Zellner on a show. Johnny's explanation of the entire Magnum vs. Tully feud is fantastic. Also had to laugh at Steven's "there's no one as manly as that in wrestling today ... or on earth!" Amazing, lol.

I am trying to defend Monsoon, but there's no way I'd take him over Vince, who was excellent for about 20 years (70s to early 90s). There is also an argument to say that Monsoon was actually the B-team commentator because Vince did Superstars and SNME. Monsoon fronted Prime Time but his actual announcing duties were usually restricted to Challenge or more obscure house shows with the likes of Lord Alfred. If you watch old Prime Time shows, you get a potpourri of commentators on there cos it was essentially a clip show, showing matches from all over. I've had a thought that Vince didn't fully "trust" Monsoon on commentary as early as 1988. I am not sure why he didn't put himself on the PPVs, but I can only guess it was because he was too busy behind the scenes at the first WMs and Summerslams -- or had too much on his mind -- to commentate on top of it all. He never gave Monsoon the Superstars or SNME gigs. And as soon as he could replace him on the PPVs (see Schiavone in 1989), he did. Then by 1990, Vince himself takes over on some of them. The only reason I mention this is because I'm not sure if this ... ... is quite true. Vince was the voice of the promotion, and the main host. The PPVs, I think, skew the perception on this a lot.

I was in a bit of a pissy mood and wanted to move Montreal talk out of the WTBBP thread. Flair/Bret comparisons seem to have that effect on me. For what it's worth, I do tend to come down on Vince's side, but not 100% (because of the CC clause in Bret's contract, technically puts him in the right). But I think Steve Austin's argument about it is the best one: Vince had gone down all the other avenues and had to do what was best for his company. From all the accounts I've heard from umpteen different people, Vince had tried absolutely everything and all it really comes down to is Bret being precious about doing a job on the way out -- a tradition as old as wrestling itself. He wouldn't, and so got screwed by the promoter, who'd got paranoid -- another tradition as old as wrestling itself. Legally, probably Bret was in the right, but I don't really care about that. Morally, I don't really care in any idealist sense, it's pro wrestling, the game is the game. Consequentially -- in terms that Machiavelli or Jeremy Bentham might recognize -- Vince did the right thing. The net gain of doing it outweighed the net loss. The birth of evil Mr. McMahon is a nice, possibly unforeseen bonus, on top of that.

Seems like the biggest Monsoon debate was here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/14127-tony-schiavone-and-early-90s-wcw-announcing/?p=5476079 I'm 100% with you there. One thing I never got about Meltzer and co ragging on the WWF product of that period for how much they apparently did wrong, is the fact that they seem totally oblivious to the fact that ... This group of people created the most over product of all time. If Gorilla buried people so much just to get himself over, why was practically the entire roster from Hogan to Brian B. Blair and and Dangerous Danny Davis over like rover? Someone somewhere was doing something right, right? Are the Gorilla detractors going to argue that everything was crazy over DESPITE Monsoon? I'm not saying you should like him if you don't, but I think saying he's downright awful or the "worst" appears to fly in the face of the evidence. I can't think of another promotion or period in which the entire card was over in that way and Gorilla was the main play-by-play guy at that time. So he has to take some credit for that. I still think that now. If Gorilla was so bad, why is it only the hardcores who really hate him? Take that, hardcores.

I've massively gone to bat for Monsoon in the past on this board and think too many posters here are way way too down on him. I don't want to rehash arguments I've made before, but I can't for the life of me find them ... While I'm looking though, re: him as a worker, from the stuff we've seen in the 1970s thus far, I'd say he's "a lot better than expected".

I'm wondering when the right moment would be to admit that this whole thread was a work.