JerryvonKramer

I don't wish to be a negative Nelly, but excessive nearfalls are one of the things that I really dislike about WWE Main Event style over the past few years and it's one of the reasons I really don't like the Taker vs. HBK matches that so many people rave about. But this is perhaps part of of the ways fans are conditioned: i.e. that matches can ONLY finish with a signature move. The nearfalls in the Flair matches that Loss is talking about are more effective because it is CONCEIVABLE for a match to finish with, for example, a backslide. I'd make a distinction between nearfalls of that kind (see also Savage vs. Steamboat) and nearfalls that are mainly *GASP* kicking out of finishers. The second variety do my head in.

Try now.

How about Ricky Morton vs. Robert Gibson from GAB 91?

Meltzer reports the Ross apology in the 25th February 91 issue. He did it on TV on a Sunday, which seems like 02/10/91. That looks like this edition of Main Event. Find it funny that Graham notes this: Ha ha

http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrestling-26-the-kallies-1980-award-show/ On this very special show, join Parv, Pete, Kelly, Johnny, Kal Rudman and a star-studded lineup of guests for the first annual Kallies Award show! Awards include Best Hair, Hottest Blowjob Wrestler, the Fashionplate Award for Most Fashionable Man of the Year and Jobber of the Year, as well as the biggest awards such as Wrestler of the Year, Match of the Year, and the Lifetime Achievement Award. Don't miss this memorable and emotional night! 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.

The dream has been realized! Parv and Chad are back reviewing WrestleWar 1991. http://placetobenation.com/where-the-big-boys-play-61-wrestlewar-1991/ In this episode: - [14:30] Wrestling Observer and PW Torch roundup: Flair gets scalded by coffee in McDonalds, farewell to Sandy Scott, the amazing Terry Owens Football Card, and Big Josh's debut. - [1:02:20] Wrestlewar 1991 review: Can JYDs waistline get any bigger?, our first look at Dustin Rhodes, Dusty's gonna b-b-b-bite ya, Stan Hansen tells Missy Hyatt to get her "big butt" out of the locker-room, Sexy Lexy puts in a great performance, and WARGAMES! - [2:13:30] End of show awards and Question for the Listeners: Did Oliver Humperdink / Big Daddy Dink ever do anything worthwhile or memorable in his career? 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.

This is very much the Jerry Lawler show isn't it. If there's any doubt about it, Lawler is still pissed off about having the water thrown over him.

The lists on Solie.org have a lot of mistakes on them.

DDT on the floor!

Yeah, he reminded me of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka after Augustus Gloop falls in the chocolate river. Ha ha. This was a great 15 minutes of TV.

That might be true of some fans, but I wouldn't say it's true of the PWO crowd.

Who else loves watching genuine marks in action? Currently watching Dan Spivey vs. Lex Luger from Wrestlewar 1991 and there's a fan in the crowd is so pumped up. He's punching every fist. Love seeing the marks!

Nothing to do with that for me funkdoc. I just much prefer the atmosphere and feel of old wrestling to more recent stuff. It's purely a style and presentation thing, nothing more. 2012 could have been the best ever in-ring year in terms of matches and I wouldn't give a shit, because it's not "quality" in that sense that dictates why I prefer the old stuff. I also really like exploring obscura, especially 1970s stuff and even older. The wrestling of today might be incredible, but it bears little relation to the territories, the sorts of interesting and weird carny characters that inhabited them and the smoky venues they played. It's not even a case of rose tints -- I wasn't around in the 1970s and I grew up 1000s of miles away from most of the promotions I'd watch. It's not a nostalgia thing, but a particular aesthetic. I know my boy Ricky Jackson knows what I'm talking about here.

I think both in terms of in-ring and character, Flair was good until 1996 and specifically upto the NWO angle. There is obviously decline from 89 to 96, but there is still good work in there, vs. Savage in 92 and especially in 95/6 which is some of Ric's best ever character work, vs. Vader in 93, vs. Steamboat in 94. I think there's plenty of good to great stuff from that portion of Flair's career. I think after 96 he's more or less done though. I was never much of a fan of INSANE Ric from 1998, y'know, elbow dropping his jacket and so on. Although even there, I do like the promo he cuts on Bischoff.

I can't be friends with anyone who picks "after".

Try watching any (W)WWF card from the 79 or 80 where Dick Kroll or Dick Woehrle is ref. The calls are so arbitrary that they are basically random. You can go from a match where a guy uses a chair in the ring in front of the ref (no DQ) to one where a guy is DQ'd for not breaking the 4-count by the ropes. Quite funny at times.

Rick Rude too, became a much bigger star as IC champ.

Been a busy couple of months for both of us, and it's always hard to record when Chad's away during accounting season. Hopefully back to a more regular schedule soon.

I have an interest in that 76 Jumbo series. Looks amazing, although suspect the Robinson and Brisco matches will be too mat-work-y for me.

This has some potential to be an interesting thread. Pick any two guys who were around at the same time who you don't recall having a match and ask "did they ever face each other?" You can answer the question yourself if you like, this mainly out of interest. I started thinking about this with the talk of the recent roundtable on Warrior (which I've still not seen): did Ted DiBiase and Sgt. Slaughter ever have a match? When and where? Well, sure enough, first hit on Google: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xy3sbi_sgt-slaughter-vs-ted-dibiase-st-louis-1977_sport A match from 1977 in St. Louis. Looks clipped to hell and no audio, but firey babyface Ted goes over after turning over a small package in a back-and-forth affair. Did they ever wrestle again? According to Wrestlingdata.com, they did, on at least 19 other occasions: 1 Show @ St. Joseph 1. April 1977 @ Auditorium in St. Joseph, Missouri (United States of America) Ted DiBiase defeated Bob Slaughter [2 out of 3 Falls Match] 2 Show @ St. Joseph 15. April 1977 @ Auditorium in St. Joseph, Missouri (United States of America) Ted DiBiase defeated Bob Slaughter [Texas Death Match] 3 Show @ Des Moines 11. Mai 1977 @ Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa (United States of America) Bob Slaughter © vs. Ted DiBiase ended without a winner [NWA Central States Heavyweight Title Match] 4 Show @ Kansas City 12. Mai 1977 @ Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas (United States of America) Ted DiBiase defeated Bob Slaughter 5 Show @ Chillicothe 25. Mai 1977 @ Chillicothe, Missouri (United States of America) Bob Slaughter © vs. Ted DiBiase ended without a winner [NWA Central States Heavyweight Title Match] 6 Show @ St. Louis 16. Juni 1978 @ St. Louis, Missouri (United States of America) Ted DiBiase defeated Bob Slaughter - this is probably the match on Dailymotion Interestingly, Ted and Slaughter would not cross paths again for the entirety of the 1980s. They next met in 1991, after Slaughter's face turn in a string of house shows in December of that year. Looking these up elsewhere, they all look like DQ losses for Ted. 7 WWF @ Anaheim 6. Juli 1991 @ Convention Center in Anaheim, California (United States of America) Bret Hart defeated Brian Knobbs and Hulk Hogan and Jim Duggan and Jimmy Snuka and Louie Spicolli and The Mountie and Paul Roma and Sgt. Slaughter and Shawn Michaels and Ted DiBiase and Virgil and ??? and ??? and ??? and ??? and ??? and ??? and ??? and ??? [20 Man Battle Royal] 8 WWF @ Pensacola 5. Dezember 1991 @ Pensacola Civic Center in Pensacola, Florida (United States of America) Sgt. Slaughter defeated Ted DiBiase 9 WWF @ Houston 6. Dezember 1991 @ The Summit in Houston, Texas (United States of America) Sgt. Slaughter defeated Ted DiBiase 10 WWF @ Denver 7. Dezember 1991 @ Denver Coliseum in Denver, Colorado (United States of America) Sgt. Slaughter defeated Ted DiBiase 11 WWF @ Los Angeles 8. Dezember 1991 @ Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California (United States of America) Sgt. Slaughter defeated Ted DiBiase 12 WWF @ Sacramento 8. Dezember 1991 @ ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California (United States of America) Sgt. Slaughter defeated Ted DiBiase 13 WWF Royal Rumble 1992 19. January 1992 @ Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York (United States of America) Ric Flair defeated The Barbarian and The Berzerker and Big Boss Man and Col. Mustafa and Davey Boy Smith and Greg Valentine and Haku and Hercules and Hulk Hogan and Irwin R. Schyster and Jake Roberts and Jerry Sags and Jim Duggan and Jimmy Snuka and El Matador and Nikolai Volkoff and Randy Savage and Repo Man and Rick Martel and Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter and Shawn Michaels and Sid Justice and Skinner and Ted DiBiase and The Texas Tornado and The Undertaker and Virgil and The Warlord [Royal Rumble Match - WWF World Heavyweight Title Match] Here in 1992, and it looks like Duggan and Slaughter were some chump challengers for Money Inc's titles. Two TV tapings here. Wonder if they are on tape anywhere. 14 WWF TV-Taping @ Toledo 7. April 1992 @ Toledo Sports Arena in Toledo, Ohio (United States of America) Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster © defeated Jim Duggan and Sgt. Slaughter [WWF Tag Team Titles Match] 15 WWF TV-Taping @ Kalamazoo 8. April 1992 @ Kalamazoo, Michigan (United States of America) Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster © defeated Jim Duggan and Sgt. Slaughter [WWF Tag Team Titles Match] 16 WWF @ Rosemont Looking this up on Graham's site, seems like the Toledo match made air on Prime Time, 7/6/92 -- I actually have that episode of Prime Time here. I might pull it up and give it a look. The only other encounters are lazily-booked 40-man battle royals, one of which is on that same episode of Prime Time.

That's kinda why I'm surprised that Ted of all people is going to be on the panel. It puts him in an awkward spot. The ONLY thing I can think of is if this is part of a wider WWE move to "bury the hatchet" so to speak, with Ted a kind of representative for the controversy Warrior caused and at the same time an emblem of how they've now put all that behind them and accepted him as part of their history. Given that Warrior took a "parting shot" at Ted during the Hall of Fame speech, and Ted's very recent comments about Warrior being undeserving of a HoF spot (see here: http://sportzwiki.com/wwe/ted-dibiase-thinks-ultimate-warrior-is-not-worthy-of-being-in-the-hall-of-fame), this is the perfect time for WWE to try to show themselves "rising above" all that. All that said, given how public and well-known this feud has been for years now, I still think it puts Ted himself in a weird situation. I mean what's he actually going to be able to say beyond speaking in general platitudes? Seems like a strange booking all round to me.

Hard to imagine that the answer to this isn't "Ric Flair" and any one year from the 1980s. I don't even know if 1989 is the lock, he had amazing years in 83, 85 and 87. I think if you made a "top 20" sort of list for this thread, Flair would occupy about 5 or 6 of them just through the sheer number of good to great matches he had against different opponents in different territories in any given year of that decade. Pick any year and there's stuff that you forget about in the context of Flair's career. The Kerry matches. The matches with Jumbo. The matches with Martel. The match with the DiBiase face turn. The Garvin matches. The Windham matches.

This is going to be very interesting, because Warrior was one guy Ted consistently buried on shoots, on WWE-releases and so on. I don't actually EXPECT him to about-face too much because he's said so much and he's smart enough to know that it will be hypocritical. I think the only way to play it for him will be to be respectful of the guy's death but to stick to his guns on the other things he's always said. I'm kinda surprised that A. They asked Ted to do that one and B. that he agreed to do it.

Here's the topic you couldn't find: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/16397-a-week-in-tv-in-1986/