JerryvonKramer

Can we please not have "likes"? They are so lazy. I think they'll discourage posting in the long run.

Steamboat as US champ (70s) would be an interesting person to compare the WWF champ to. He can show vulnerability and make OTHER PEOPLE look good while maintaining his popularity and position as champ and getting over the idea of him as a world-class wrestler. The WWF champ was solely in the business of making The WWF Champ look good. No I'm not having that because Hogan made his opponents look good and I've not seen Bruno as champ. And Bruno made Larry look good in that feud. I'd take Hogan as a worker over Bob at this moment in time.

Steamboat as US champ (70s) would be an interesting person to compare Bob to. He can show vulnerability and make OTHER PEOPLE look good while maintaining his popularity and position as champ and getting over the idea of him as a world-class wrestler. Bob was solely in the business of making Bob look good.

And so my conclusion is that I don't like how the WWF booked their champ. Not a style I care for at all. I think Hogan showed shit tons more sympathy during heel beatdown sections than Bob Backlund though.

My problem with Bob isn't his lack of bumping or selling, it's his lack of vulnerability when doing either of those things.

It's certainly going to be something I'm going to keep an eye out for when we watch late-70s Bruno. I IMAGINE there are Bruno vs. Ivan Koloff matches which are 80%+ Bruno because Ivan worked underneath alot and Bruno worked dominant. The Bruno we saw in 80 showed vulnerability like Bob hasn't shown at all yet, but maybe 75, 76, 77 Bruno is a different beast. Let's see.

Dusty probably didn't invent the Dusty finish either though.

Story of Rocky vs. Clubber Lang is that Mr T was used to winning quick knock outs so Rocky lets him wear himself out in rounds 1 and 2 to take it when he's out of gas. Batman example doesn't work. The "heat segment" is the crime caper in the first place culminating with Batman and Robin getting tied to the conveyor belt headed for the rotating saw blade, the "come back and pay off" is Bats kicking ass at the end of the two-episode arch. Hackman's Luthor is weak, I'll grant you that. He kinda looks a bit like Harley Race too. But Luthor's MO was never to go toe to toe with Supes but to outthink him. Luthor in the Reeves movies is kinda toned down and made into more of a comic foil. Zod is the threat in 2. 4 as I recall is awful and all about that nuclear bomb. Also, even Superman has kryptonite to slow him down. Backlund doesn't have any kryptonite, he's probably the real Man of Steel.

Yeah I get it Brad, I just don't like it as a narrative. You never watch a sports film where the narrative is "Rocky just went out there and destroyed Apollo Creed / Mr. T / Ivan Drago" because film producers understand that as narratives go, that's just not very compelling. I understand that wrestling isn't a movie, but it's not real sports either. In a way, it's cool that they created the perception that -- just like in real sports -- something like this could happen. But honestly, I think that's to give the bookers and the workers involved here too much credit. Backlund works dominant always, Race works from underneath always. Vince Sr books his champ as being Superman always. So this wasn't a turn up for the books, it was ENTIRELY predictable. And that's why I hate it so much. If Race had kicked Backlund's ass to within an inch of his life and Bob had come back heroically -- that would be unexpected, a different narrative to the one that Bob's been giving us for going on 18 months now.

I'd take Ted's powerslam over that any day of the week. The problem for me is that it's designed 100% just to look cool rather than to hurt someone. The moment of transition when the momentum shifts in the opposite direction is not only stupid in trying to defy physics (the powerslam is carried by momentum this is fighting against it), it looks awkward as hell. It's an impressive feat but as a move it is stupid, makes no sense and looks awkward. YEAH!

Should anyone do a bio, a while back we starting coining the term "the George Scott finish" which is basically where you get the situation of two guys' shoulders being on the mat at the same time and it not being clear who pinned who (for example from a bridging German suplex). In his 1989 WCW run he used this finish over and over again. I don't know if he's the originator of that finish, but he sure did love using it.

Back before the Soundcloud days, I used to do the .xml sheet for the iTunes feed for WTTBP manually and iTunes doesn't accept any of those characters either -- and if I made a single mistake it would cause all the episodes after the mistake to not show up or even make it so that no episodes showed up. Receiving PMs about how the feed had messed up and then hunting down the offending character was a constant source of irritation for me. It didn't like the ampisand ("&") sign so posting match-listings from Will with tags in them I'd have to change that to "and". Elipses are another one, that's your three periods in a row ... which can become a special character. Trying to think of some other ones. The pound sign. The dollar sign. Stuff like 1st, 2nd, 3rd when the letters go little. Bullet points of any kind. In some circumstances even just a space can become a special character. I think the current PWO is more forgiving than iTunes but until the upgrade I'd recommend typing all your stuff in NOTEPAD not MSWord. That's plain text and doesn't automatically format stuff. Also make sure formatting is not on when you use "Add Reply" (as oppsed to "Fast Reply"). Ok, I'm off to play D&D. EDIT: Pound and dollar sign caused an IPS error in making this post.

It's any special character that isn't standard plain text that causes the error. Curly inverted commas, the long dash, anything that isn't standard.