JerryvonKramer

Graham where's the 5/9/80 Hansen vs. Inoki match? The only one from that series I thought was really awesome, and it's the only one that didn't make your top 20, lol

With this, while I do believe what I said last night is something close to how it went down, I don't think we can categorically rule out the HTM story / original WMIV plan simply because it was without precedent. This was a time when Vince was sort of trying out new ideas and doing some things differently. For a start, the tourney idea itself was new. Then, the Million Dollar Man gimmick was new for him. It was a "special" gimmick and unlike anything he'd tried before. DiBiase wasn't coming in for a regular top heel run, this was a bit different. In the past, Vince had used talent with established characters from elsewhere (Piper, Orndorff, Kamala) and then pitted them against Hogan. Even with guys he "saddled with gimmicks", it was more or less bringing in Terry Funk and sticking a cowboy hat on him. This was not the same. Vince had the concept for the gimmick and character first, then he thought of who might fit and Ted was the top of the list. There was talk of Bockwinkel playing the role. There was talk of some other people. This is a break with how New York had done things in the past, because here was a character that was 100% a Vince concept, which he had plans for, and the worker was brought in to play that part. It was sold to Ted as "the heel character Vince himself would like to play". Then when he accepted, it came with additional perks such as first-class flights, top hotel rooms and even his own locker room in some arenas. It's a world away from bringing in Kamala or Sika for a few MSG shows. So, if Vince was prepared to think this "differently" for the MDM role, maybe he always had the idea of him buying or cheating his way to the title. It's conceivable at least that he entertained giving him the belt at WMIV. As I've said, my view is that the reaction to Savage made him change his mind, but Vince was kind of experimenting at this point.

WWE.com has been brilliant for the best part of a year. They've unearthed some absolute gold. Assuming Joey Styles is behind this - good work! Fair play, this was great. I too have loved some of the coverage on that classics site this past year. I've been listening to too much rap recently though because I read it as "Wrestling's Whackest Group" for ages. The line "That was like putting bicycle wheels on a Rolls Royce" is good, not heard that phrase before. Nice to see someone not shitting on Luger for a change. I honestly had no idea some of these guys were in the Dungeon. Bossman I have no recollection of being there. Konnan? WTF? Braun the Leprechaun, bloody hell. This on the Loch Ness run was really interesting: I've come to the view that wrestling has the scope to be BOTH Hamlet and silly walks. Also this was funny: lol, as if his 1989 work was any better!

Does that mean Savage was originally double booked to be in the tourney AND the IC title match? I would love to see this as the title of a mini-youtube collection.

Yeah I'd go along with that entirely. And in a weird way, Ted did have a little 2-week run with the title, so Vince could kind of say he kept his promise anyway. I am smiling to myself right now at Jack Tunney's sternness during that whole affair.

DiBiase himself has said many times in shoots that he was promised him the world title back when they first offered him the role of Million Dollar Man. We've talked about this before somewhere, but DiBiase was the key asset in UWF and he could have gone to Crockett at that time. I'm pretty sure I've heard other people tell versions of this same story before too (Pat Patterson? Gene Okerlund? Can't remember now). The main source for the HTM story is HTM himself, of course. I believe that DiBiase was promised the belt as part of that initial negotiation but (as described above) later Vince changed his mind and used the HTM situation to get himself out of the promise ... the Million Dollar Belt is the result. Like others though, I don't believe by the time WMIV actually comes around that the plan was still for him to come out of that with the belt.

My own theory is that this booking was changed a lot earlier than is often stated. I have no doubt that at one time they thought of Ted being world champ, but the booking with Hogan and Savage from that SNME in October 87 seems to foreshadow the idea that Savage is going to be a major player soon too much for me to think that the WM 4 booking was a last-minute change of plans. Besides, if you listen to those crowds at that time, they were nuts for Savage. My thought is that Vince changed his mind about putting the strap on Ted because he saw more money in Savage. It's the WWF way to have a face champ anyway, so he went with that. Not saying that the HTM story isn't true, but just that it seems likely that Vince was half-thinking about Savage anyway and that situation tilted the scales. Vince would have (conveniently) presented himself as a victim of circumstance to Ted and he wasn't the sort of worker to kick up a fuss anyway. I'm sure that's closer to how it went down. Vince wanted it anyway and HTM gave him a convenient get-out clause that wouldn't piss off DiBiase too much. I reckon he was thinking of a Hogan vs. Savage WM main event as early as 1987.

With that plan, you have through the summer Ted vs. Hogan on the "A" tour, with Ted getting cheap finishes around the horn (a la Dusty chasing Flair), and have Savage vs. HTM headlining the "B" tour, with Savage going over HTM clean everywhere. By the time you get to Summerslam, maybe you could have built up someone like Rick Rude to take on Savage. But then what happens to Warrior? The butterfly effect ripples large with this one.

I've thought about this topic in the past, probably more than is humanly healthy. My take is that the tournament was the perfect way to get the title off Hogan without him jobbing, so my thought would be that you book everything the same in terms of the tournament (Hogan vs. Andre draw, DiBiase getting into the final cheap via bye). The only thing that needs to change is what happens in the Savage half of the draw. I'd do it like this: Steamboat over Greg Reed over Beefcake Steamboat over Reed Steamboat over One Man Gang DiBiase over Steamboat (with cheap assistance from Andre / Virgil) MASSIVE heel heat. Then while he's celebrating, Hogan runs down and beats him up or chases him off for a pose down as Jesse loses his shit on commentary. OR Switch it up so that the IC title match goes on last and the fans can at least go home happy seeing HTM beaten. Then at Summerslam you can put Hogan over Ted clean to win the title back.

lol, I understand what you're saying OJ and I don't hold it against them too much. I am prone to being grumpy and curmudgeonly, it's one of my MOs, and I'd hope the students see it as an endearing trait of mine rather than a genuine value judgement against them. Who knows, one or two of them might go and watch The Seventh Seal this weekend. And the internet will probably make it possible for them. I actually think the internet is amazing ... but you have to know what to look for. Anyway, how did we get onto all of this. Oh yes. Loss can't count on everyone knowing the Breakfast Club, but everyone does know Hulk Hogan. Since we've mentioned my work, one of the things I have to do this year is act as Programme Director for this old course that is being put out of commission in 2014. About two weeks ago, walking down the corridor, I made a joke to a passing colleague that "I'm like an undertaker with this thing" and he turned round and laughed "Knowing you, I assume you mean the wrestler". This marks the only time wrestling has ever come up in a work context. He'd probably seen the Andre, Virgil and DiBiase facebook cover photo I had at the time.

I'd be surprised if they knew any of those guys either OJ. I don't think they could pick out any of them in a lineup. My main point is articulated towards the end of this post. In short, I think the internet has "de-centred" culture to the point where pop culture is (much) less ubiquitous than it was. Do you disagree with that?

This looks really interesting. Can I ask, how did you go about selecting your matches? The choices are eclectic and interesting. I'll check this out soon.

WTBBP is back on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/ptbn-wr...ork/id715657490

All the same except coming from an African-American which holds its own weight in American history. Wow, I didn't know Sanford and Son had a racial element. I've never seen it, only ever heard about it. British sitcom is traditionally all about characters being trapped in certain situations and seemingly destined never to break free of that situation. I don't know if the American sitcom has the same conventions, the ones I know well don't seem to. I might watch Sanford and Son to see what they did with it, this has perked my interest. In case anyone is interested in Steptoe and Son, this is not a bad summary I found written by someone on IMDB: The old man's manipulations and the lengths he goes to to stop Harold leaving (and the extent to which he ruins his plans) can be heartbreaking as much as they are funny. It's a very bitter-sweet show. On the flip side, Harold is sometimes quite mean to his father and ... probably isn't even close to being able to achieve what he thinks he can. This guy put it well: We're a long way from Hogan at this point.

It did lead to a running gag in A Hard Day's Night that went over any American's heads. Paul keeps referring to his "grandfather" as being clean. The actor was Steptoe and was always referred to as a dirty old man. Yeah this is very funny.

Yes, but how big was Airwolf. That's the question. Did you get Alf? I bet you would have liked Time Trax and Kung Fu: the Legend Continues. Yeah we had Alf, and also Big Foot and the Hendersons, and Dinosaurs. See my Duggan guest spot confusion from before. To answer your question ... Other Brits may give you a different answer here, but my sense is that I don't know how "big" any of these shows were. Rather, they were "just on". You could pick up an audience of 4-8 million just by virtue of being in a certain slot. Four channels only, not much else to do. This goes back my main point: I don't think shows can be relatively popular now through being "just on". People cherry pick a lot more. So you get shows like Breaking Bad that are big (not even on a channel in this country!!! Netflix) and people go out of their way for. But incidental "just on" type viewing must have declined drastically.

I could write pages and pages about Steptoe, but can't imagine it in an American setting. Like many British sitcoms it's ultimately quite dark: all about class, confinement, dashed dreams and crushed hopes. Harold and the old man are chained to each other and trapped by desperate and grim poverty. I can't imagine how that would play, as comedy, to the American sensibility.

Here is something odd that I wonder about though, there is a podcast (non wrestling) hosted by two Brits (one early 30s, and one early-mid 40s) who love dropping the Airwolf theme song into their show every now and then. Thing is, Airwolf is an AMERICAN show (IIRC its Knight Rider, only a sophisticated helicopter (and I don't think it talked) that lasted about two seasons in the early 1980s. Could just be odd quirks about American entertainment. What is your record when it comes to more UK based stuff, besides Who and Potter of course? They showed both American and British shows here. We had Airwolf, A-team, Quantum Leap, Knight Rider, this show called "Highway to Heaven", Murder She Wrote, Baywatch, ummmm ... lots more. Guys in their 30s and 40s would probably remember watching all that stuff in the 80s with nostalgic fondness. There are lots of UK shows too of course, but I guess there is no point naming them. Where the disconnect has come with the 18-22s is in the comedy shows. There's a grouping of shows the BBC has re-run almost constantly: Dad's Army, Open All Hours, Steptoe and Son, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses, Blackadder, quite a few others, and you could now add The Office to that list as the last sitcom "the nation" kind of enjoyed together. That stuff is just a cache of stuff that "everyone knows". But not now, because they don't watch TV in the same way. There are fewer shows of this kind. I entirely reject the idea that this is just "the same" as the generational gaps between other generations. Why? Because there aren't any new ones being made. There aren't any new shows of this "type" -- that EVERYONE knows -- and by everyone I mean everyone, people of all ages. The Office was 2001 now. I can't think of a sitcom since then that has had any sort of cultural purchase. I know a guy who is 22 who has told me before he's never watched a single episode of Friends. I mean what the flying fuck? How? Where's he been? What's he been doing? I'll tell you what's he's been doing, he's been on the internet. The shift from TV to internet is entirely different from other shifts (e.g. radio to TV). Radio and TV were both mechanisms where everyone would watch or listen to broadly the same stuff at the same time. The internet is a mechanism where people watch and do different stuff at different times. I don't expect the nuances of that to get through certain thick skulls, but as I've said, I think that difference is plainly self-evident and we are still seeing the consequences of it of play out.

Murray has done a lot of indie films directed by Wes Anderson in the past 20 years, so you could make the argument that choosing to do smaller critically acclaimed films is akin to blowing one's stardom. I don't agree though. He almost won an Oscar for Lost in Translation which made over $100,000,000 . And a case could be made that 2003 was Murray's peak year as a marquee star. I recall his cameo in Zombieland being raved about at the time. But Steve, why bother getting into this? It's what happens when you engage with tedious people, you get into tedious debates where you're somehow trying to prove Bill Murray was still a star after Ghostbusters. Do you like being punched in the face over and over again by a poisonous and criminally boring dwarf? It's easier to just say "go fuck yourself". Which is what I've done and will continue to do forever more concerning that particular member of this forum.

Ric Flair always struck me as a "one woman for life" type of guy.

I like Billy Bob Thornton for Billy Gunn.

Cilla Black has the advantage of being "there" twice. She could be part of the memory for her fairly average pop career in the 60s, or she could be part of the memory for all the families who sat and watched Blind Date of a Saturday night in the 90s. Perhaps Sandie Shaw is a better example, or Twiggy? Take your pick The other point I'll make before leaving this is Home Video and then DVD. You can't compare our generation's way of processing these things to people from the 1950s, for example. We were part of a generation sold on the idea of "take home and keep". Many of these "old" films that are being talked about as if no one should give a shit about them 20 years after the fact received a second life once VHS became a thing. I wouldn't look at Godfather 1972 box office figures alone, I'd look at VHS and DVD sales and things like #number of magazine articles about it and #number of times it's in "Top 100 films ever ever" type lists. I feel like this whole concept of a canon of great films or whatever was very big in the 1990s and especially around 2000 when every publication under the sun wanted to make "best of the century" style lists. Right around the time we were all buying lots of CDs and VHS tapes and DVDs. It is entirely disingenuous to pretend that there is no difference between certain "hyper-canonized" texts / films and films that just happened to come out in a given year. Godfather is hyper-canonized. Most films from 1972 are not. This idea that "the young ones don't care because it's from 1972" is not entirely accurate. Godfather doesn't exist simply as a cultural artifact from 1972, it exists as something iconic. Or at least it did in 2000. As I've been trying to articulate, I think the game has irreversibly changed since then.

Jesse, I'd agree with the point that "for the enthusiast" i.e. for the person who is interested and cares and wants to follow things up, there has never been a greater time to be into anything than now. We've seen that as wrestling fans. It's true of just about any medium.

Well, it depends what you mean by "outdated". Is Wizard of Oz outdated or has it become a part of our collective cultural memory / conscious? Poppins? The actor Bill Murray? The Godfather? In my mind, all of these things aren't "outdated" but are "ingrained" in our culture. Seemingly (and sadly), however, it's just in my mind. Firstly, one of these things just doesn't belong here with Bill Murray. I can see how Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins and the Godfather wouldn't be so culturally relevant to today's young people. I doubt very much that kids today grow up on Playschool and Sesame Street like I did. I don't really get why you're so surprised. Peyton Place meant nothing to me when I was a kid, but I remember my parents talking about it a lot. I'm not saying you're wrong about your overall point re: television vs. the internet, but it's not often someone sings the virtues of television so loudly. And from a literature professor no less. I don't really want to get into it on this board, but some time ago I devised a way of thinking about "cultural knowledge" with different levels or strands. Some things are just part of the collective memory. Basic cultural knowledge. Beatles. Some things are only really part of the memory of "if you were there". Cilla Black. Who? Exactly. Godfather is not an "if you were there" picture, it's reached a level where it transcends that. Most people who've seen it were not "there" in 1972. Most people who've heard the Beatles weren't about in the 1960s either. A more succinct way of putting this perhaps is "staying power" vs. zeitgeist. I'm not really extolling the virtues of TV. I'm just pointing out that our mechanisms for "receiving content" have fundamentally changed. When I was a kid there were 4 channels and everyone watched the same shit. Now kids have the internet and everyone is doing THEIR OWN shit. I don't think that change can be underestimated. Culture becomes less monolithic and more diversified. Good or bad, that's been happening. But oddly at the same time knowledge becomes more monolithic and shallower because 99% of the internet is the same shit repeated over and over and over again, and people are encouraged to communicate in 130 characters or fewer. This feels like a digression. Let's leave it there.

What about weaknesses? My weakness is Ted.