JerryvonKramer

Sign me up for my black shirt! Here's a thread for this discussion: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/28262-montreal-screwjob-who-do-you-side-with/

Who do you side with? I categorically side with Vince. 100%. Arguments here.

What difference does it make? Flair was fired by Herd for not accepting a paycut of 50%! He didn't refuse to job to anyone, he was fired. Flair didn't do anything wrong, he was fired. Bret walked out on WWF for more money, and refused to job to Shawn. We all know the details of the Screw Job. Vince was in the right. Why is Bret discussion infecting our WTBBP threads?

In addition he technically owned the belt, WCW didn't have any right to it. In addition Flair is the GOAT and Bret is a twat.

Titans Xtra - 1981 Roster Analysis Part 4: South West, South East, WWA https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-xtra-1981-roster-analysis-part-4 Parv, Kelly and Dylan continue to trawl through the murky backwaters of US wrestling territories in 1981 and where the hell have they ended up this time? Joe Blanchard's South West Championship Wrestling (SWCW), Ron Fuller's South East Championship Wrestling (SECW), and Dick the Bruiser's sorry sorry WWA out of Indianapolis.

I would like more responses to the question for the listeners, because I'm really interested to know what people would have done in Jim Herd's spot. The Flair situation in 91 is one of the most interesting cases we've covered in these shows I think -- probably since we did the review of the JCP: Good Old Days documentary and went in-depth on the causes of JCP's decline back on WTBBP #47.

http://placetobenation.com/where-the-big-boys-play-65-great-american-bash-1991/ In this bumper edition, Chad and Parv welcome Will to celebrate the two-year anniversary of Where the Big Boys Play taking an in-depth look at a show with the reputation of being one of the worst PPVs of all time: Great American Bash 1991 aka the We Want Flair show. - [8:33] Wrestling Observer and PW Torch roundup: who wrote into PW Torch in 1991?, Dr Zahorian and Hulk Hogan, PN News: behind-the-scenes disaster zone, and all of the details surrounding Ric Flair's firing by Evil Jim Herd, the fallout and fan reaction. - [58:12] Review of Great American Bash 91: more discussion of Flairs firing, PN News in a scaffold match, DDP: a dedicated follower of fashion, reassessing Morton vs. Gibson, El Gigante and some gothed-up midgets, Tony Schiavone as colour analyst, Parv puts forward an alternative way of booking the world title match, and, of course, the burning question: is this the worst PPV of all time or even in the conversation for that title? - [2:59:18] End of show awards and question for the listeners: would you have fired Ric Flair in 1991? AND be sure to check out Matt D's great companion piece at PTBN: placetobenation.com/the-great-amerid-of-spartacus/ 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.

I can scarcely believe that W2BTD has said that.

I don't think PWO is a monolith at all, but here's the thing: PWO has a lot of people who have watched an awful lot of wrestling. It has a particular type of poster who has gone back and watched hours and hours of footage from territories and from around the world. And ... it just so happens that those sorts of fans are much less sold on, for example, the idea of Shawn Michaels as GOAT than your pure WWE fan who rarely ventures to watch anything outside of WWE. Part of it is education / exposure to footage / approach to fandom. That's just a basic truth. As people's horizons open, their opinions change. As they watch more stuff, their once WWE-centric views get adjusted. That isn't to say that everyone draws the same conclusions or that PWO necessarily has consensus on anything OR even necessarily to say that someone who watches a ton of old footage is going to come to the conclusion that HBK isn't in the GOAT conversation -- it's just to acknowledge that the main different between here and a lot of other places is that people bother to watch lots of stuff that is off-the-beaten track. Just being brutally honest, the typical poster here doesn't even speak the same language as your average WWE-centric "smart" fan. It's night and day. Those types of fans aren't really going to post here because they aren't the sorts of fans who watch anything outside of their comfort zone anyway. They don't want the reality of their vision of wrestling challenged, so why would they come here? The sort of guy who is going to come here is typically someone who is ALREADY DISPOSED to widening their horizons. Hope this makes sense. I don't think it's a consensus thing at all, it's an approach thing.

I think there are certain PWOisms. For example, few people out there really talk about Jerry Lawler in GOAT terms. Generally the place is down on Bruiser Brody and Dory Funk Jr. Generally it's high on Buddy Rose. And so on and so forth. I do not follow any crowd though. I am my own man!

Ha ha Johnny

Weirdly, in the late 1970s and early 80s when a standard vertical suplex could be finisher, the piledriver seemed to be just another move. We were talking about it the other night, the piledriver didn't become a deathly match-ending move until the 80s.

Do you really think "many" Will? Looks like about 8-10 to me, out of 50. I've also just noticed that KrisZ is another non-listed guy.

I was interested by something Matt said earlier: My gut feeling was that there are more than 30. Here are the all-time top 50 PWO posters (by post-count): 1. Loss 2. goodhelmet 3. sek69 4. jdw 5. El-P 6. Kevin Ridge 7. Matt D 8. Jerryvonkramer 9. soup23 10. PeteF3 11. Mad Dog 12. Bruiser Chong 13. rovert 14. kjh 15. Al 16. Coffey 17. Childs 18. Tim Evans 19. Johnny Sorrow 20. Strummer 21. Marty 22. Jinus 23. NintendoLogic 24. MikeCampbell 25. WingedEagle 26. FLIK 27. flyonthewall2983 28. Ditch 29. Flyboy 30. Cox 31. goc 32. Some Guy 33. Dr. Reverend Victator 34. Dorian 35. Cam Chaos 36. Resident Evil 37. smkelly 38. Ricky Jackson 39. teke184 40. cm funk 41. Zenjo 42. anarchistxx 43. Alfdogg 44. Crucifixio Jones 45. rob 46. Boondocks Kernoodle 47. Slasher 48. Death from Above 49. Superstar Sleeze 50. Log You'll note how many of those guys are active as opposed to inactive or banned. Most are active. However, this list inexplicably does not include some guys with well over 1,000 posts. I don't know why, but they are missing from the listing. These guys include: Dylan Waco Tim Cooke Bix shoe khawk ohtani's jacket Grimmas Phil Schnedier Graham Crackers tim To name but ten prominent "big name" posters who are missing from that list, there are probably more. In addition there are guys who are active who just haven't made enough posts to make the list. Prominent ones of these include: Smack2k bradhindsight SteveJRogers brainfollower Zoo Enthusiast Zero BigBadMick jpchicago23 ButchReedMark Sidebottom JaymeFuture FedEx227 evilclown SomethingSavage BillThompson pantherwagner The Chief DR Ackerman Dooley BruiserBrody Memphis Mark There's at least 20, there are probably more than double that. I'd put a conservative estimate of around 100 active posters and god knows how many lurkers and semi-active posters.

Incidentally Meltzer has been very harsh to Dustin so far in 1991, mainly as an excuse to rag on Dusty more. Keith just copied him.

I wonder of our recent debates about Strongbow might feed into this discussion ...

Yeah, my mistake 73 it was. See my review on the previous page. You'll see that I do give credit where it is due. Incidentally, fact fans, we identified the name of the MSG ring announcer on the last Titans show: Bob E. Lee.

No, I haven't. Fuji seems to be genuinely awful from what I've seen of his from that era. From what I understand though, Pedro's whole deal was getting his ass kicked from pillar to post before pulling out a flash pin, or something like that. Some old-time WWWF fans complain that Pedro was booked far too weak. I might watch it, therefore, to see if that's true and to see what Fuji does with all that offense time.

Kelly, watch that match with Mr. Fuji I reviewed from 1972.

What it was, was kids -- kids who don't know any better, kids who lack critical judgement and taste, kids who are basically little idiots -- cheering for a man in a colourful outfit, marking for the dancing and then maybe doing the wardance around their living room. Same reason that Brutus Beefcake was over. Anyone who was an actual grown up thought Beefcake was lame, and I'm sure the same is true of adults seeing Strongbow. From what I've read from the old guys over on Kayfabe Memories, the only people who had good stuff to say about him were kids at the time. But are we kids? No, we're hardcore fans who analyse stuff and make assessments. Since when does a guy like Strongbow get a pass? Beefcake sucked hard, and Strongbow sucked even harder. I particularly object to Johnny's argument that "he was over, therefore he was [charismatic / a good worker / doing something right]". It's to confuse cause and outcome / correlation. Logical fallacy 101. My take then on WHY Strongbow got a good reaction was that it was kids and their parents trying to appease their kids. "Hey Timmy, look it's Chief Jay Strongbow, yayyyy". Little Timmy pops cos last week he was dancing around his own room doing the wardance. It's a pop but it's the hollowest variety of pop. Bottomline: sometimes kids are idiots, and sometimes shitty stuff gets over and sells. Not a single part of it was down to Strongbow being good at any aspect of his performance.

Unoriginal: Strongbow ripped off both his name and gimmick from Jules Strongbow, who was a genuine Cherokee and ran the LA promotion in the 50s and 60s and was a big star in the 1930s and 40s. As this clip shows, Jules Strongbow was a better worker than Joe Scarpa in every single way imaginable. Chief Jay Stronbow was a two-bob rip-off merchant of the lowest order. Outdated: As the above clip also demonstrates, Strongbow was using a 1930s gimmick in the 1970s. That's a bit like someone working an evil Nazi gimmick in the 2010s. Offensive: Joe Scarpa, as everyone knows, was not a Native American but an Italian. He disrespected the Cherokee people every time he did his shitty epileptic-fit war dance. I saw him recently work a match during which he started walking sideways like a crab. This was Scarpa literally mocking Cherokee people by depicting them as being almost sub-human. Disliked: Chief Jay Strongbow was hated by his peers in the industry. Not one person has anything good to say about him. Billy Whitewolf famously FLED THE TERRITORY despite him and Strongbow being tag-team champions, because he hated Strongbow so much and couldn't stand travelling with him any more. Think about that: Strongbow was such a douche that someone would actually give up a run in New York with the tag belts rather than hang out with him. Unimaginative: Strongbow pretty much only had one match that he worked over and over again. He had four standard spots: - Criss-cross and then going under the legs - Shitty wardance no sell - Chop - Standing up straight and sticking his moobs out Never any variation, never anything new, never anything different. He even worked this match inside a shark cage. Unambitious: He was just content to play gatekeeper for Bruno or Backlund. I think he only had 2 feuds in 6 years in WWF between 75 and 81 (with Patera "for running Billy Whitewolf out of town" and with Valentine for the leg-breaking angle). Lazy: Strongbow didn't give much to his opponents but as I've outlined never did much in the way of offense either. His job for arch-conman Vince Sr was to fill up time on lazily-booked cards while people went to get drinks or take a shit while they were waiting for Bruno to come on OR to wrestle the boring-ass curfew draw tag match while people shuttled off home.

The guy has zero charisma. Watch the Pow Wow skit from TNT or Ernie Ladd desecrating his feathers from Georgia -- both of which I know you've seen. I've seen fucking rocks with more charisma. Don't talk shit now Johnny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation "Cum hoc ergo propter hoc" -- that's you talking about Strongbow that is. That's right I said "cum"! "Oooh Strongbow, cum propter, all over me".

More 81 roster analysis next week, but for now ... Titans Xtra - Three Wise Men Samplers In the 1970s, one of the secrets of Vince McMahon Sr's success in running a hot promotion was his utility of The Three Wise Men. We will be discussing managers in an upcoming show. Therefore, in order for listeners to appreciate what each "wise man" brought to the table, the Titans of Wrestling are happy to present these three "samplers" of their interviews and promos featuring rare and difficult-to-find audio from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Captain Lou Albano: https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-xtra-albano The Grand Wizard of Wrestling: https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-xtra-wizard Classy Freddie Blassie: https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-xtra-blassie

How is TNA doing in the UK these days?

That would be a good argument if Strongbow wasn't such an awful promo and generally uncharismatic douche bag. Ted is one of the best workers of skits ever, Strongbow is one of the very worst, if not THE worst.