JerryvonKramer

Everyone on that panel including JR seems blind drunk. Flair being the worst of them, but Ross is clearly not with it from the start. I just skipped about but they are mostly sozzled. Apparently Flair is recording a podcast with Austin in the next couple of days, should be fun at least.

This: http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/highspotsukstore

The Good - They don't skip over the Crockett Sr years. It didn't feel tremendously substantive and I'm not sure it reveals anything we didn't already know, but we get a decent picture of the man and his promotion. - Things really pick up in the last 30 minutes. You can actually pinpoint it: the moment Ron Garvin makes his first contribution. The last 30 minutes -- a dissection of "what went wrong" -- are really fantastic. What makes this section really compelling is that all the interviewees are not on the same page, as they go through each of the factors. Kinda reminded me a little bit of our big debate over the decline of Mid-South. Speaking of which, the handling of the UWF takeover and the booking of Starrcade 87 in Chicago are treated in some depth. - Of all the guys interviewed, George South was surprisingly lucid, he added a hell of a lot more than, say, Jimmy Valiant. - Every time Ivan Koloff talks and isn't Russian. - When he had to go to old shoots from Flair and Dusty, it tended to be super-relevant and generally seamless. - Jim Crockett Jr in general. He's very candid, unromantic in his assessment and I have a feeling that the full interview is likely going to be better than the doc itself. - David Crockett seemed a little more opinionated and obviously hasn't left the business behind in his mind the same as his brother has. Good contributions though, his take isn't always the same as everyone else's. - Jackie Crockett's contributions were also pretty good. - The footage. But it did seem sparse, because they kept going back to the same Dusty vs. Piper match again and again, but some of the Wahoo vs. Andersons 70s stuff looked insanely good. - They covered the period of George Scott's time in charge in good detail and this was the section during which I felt I learned the most that I didn't know before, especially the stuff about John Ringley. - Jim Cornette's office wall and JJ Dillon's office wall. You'll see what I mean. The Bad - Feels harsh to knock him, since he did a tremendous job in securing the interviews and even getting a documentary like this out which is of great value to me the wrestling fan. However, this does have quite an amateurish feel in the production, editing and general direction. Some of the directorial decisions made me scratch my head a bit: there's a bed of soft country or cheesy keyboards under the whole thing, completely unnecessary and distracting. The talking heads are shot with a "soft focus" frame, which couldn't look tackier. Some of the sections consist of 8 or 9 different people saying exactly the same thing, which is an editing technique used in docs I'm not fond of. This sounds like a burial, but I do think the material could have been weaved together more deftly. I also think there is a tonal inconsistency, where the film can't quite decide what it wants to be -- Ole Anderson doesn't help here, naturally. - The post-Scott period during which Dory Funk Jr was booking is kinda skipped over, as are the NWA politics and Flair becoming world champ. We skip from Steamboat vs. Flair in the 70s to Final Conflict. This could be because this stuff is dealt with by the National Wrestling Alliance documentary (which you can get for download at HS for $10), but I was a bit disappointed because I recall having some interesting exchanges with Dylan about Flair's transition to World Champ and its significance for the promotion and was keen to get some perspectives. It wasn't really discussed. - There are also moments where different guys talk about business being up or down or recovering when it hasn't actually been established in the narrative thread that business did go down, or when exactly it did. We're told that business was down in 84, but it seems like it was also down some time in the late 70s. This was fuzzy and I would have liked greater clarity on it. The Ugly - Plenty of Robert Gibson ------------ Don't get me wrong, this is really good, but I do think it could have been better. I haven't watched any of the bonus interviews or extras yet, but I can imagine it's going to really fun to go through. The DVD packaging is also really nice. There's basically NO reason not to get this if you have an interest in JCP or just wrestling history in general.

No, Highspots are currently charging UK customers over $60 in shipping just for single items, so I had to go via their UK-based proxy and they are selling everything for over-the-odds prices. I was a bit annoyed because HS were doing a great deal on Meltzer's books where you could pick up both Tributes books plus Top 100 Wrestlers for $4!! But then they wanted $80+ for shipping. I will say though -- to answer jdw's question from before -- that Mid-Atlantic Gateway get "before the title" thanks on the doc so I'm guessing that's why the stuff is not on the site anymore.

I don't know about "destroys the myth", plenty of guys point to him except for the Crocketts themselves. I'll need to listen to that Meltzer show now, which means having to endure at least 5 minutes of Alvarez. Some of the unearthed footage looked pretty exciting, and Valentine is put over pretty strong as an important guy. I'm going to try to put together some spoiler-free semi-reviewish thoughts and maybe we can talk more after you've seen it.

It is definitely a "must have", but ... well, I'll share some thoughts in a bit. There are also a ton of extras I've not digged into.

Just watched it. I'm not going to be effusive with praise, honestly think it is a mixed bag. More thoughts later once I've gathered them.

No, if something is airing on one country's version of ESPN Classic, never assume it's airing on another country's ESPN Classic. The American, Canadian, and British channels have all aired different wrestling shows. I've now got the new BT Sports and UK ESPN channels and ESPN is showing lots of Baseball, NASCAR, AFL, college football, poker and ... UFC! BT Sports seems to be very "soccer" orientated. They've picked up German, French and Italian football to compliment their EPL stuff. Also ... MLS! They have signed JvK hero James Richardson to front European coverage so I'm amped about that. Since they seem to be nudging towards some UFC coverage on these channels, surely there might be an opportunity for wrestling too. In fact, I wonder if this might not be where the new World of Sport ultimately ends up.

Excited.

Funny enough James, this is EXACTLY what stopped me playing a while back too. "Bobby Eaton and Jim Cornette have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever" And then after a Midnights match a message: "Bobby Eaton: I would be better off without Jim Cornette as my manager". I tried to roll with it by having the MX turn face after Cornette double-crossed them and started managing Butch Reed and Ernie Ladd, but it was no good -- kayfabe was broken and I had to stop playing. That part of it, the chemistry, I believe is randomised by an algorithm and is down to luck of the draw. Nothing the mod-makers can do about it.

I've been playing CM/FM since 1996. I just play one career per iteration. Tend to work out my squad on pen and paper and then starting XIs home and away at the start of each the season and then work out transfer targets and so on. In my mind I was one of the best managers ever and did things in the game like win the European Cup with Swansea. However, since about 2011 or so my old forumulas haven't been working as well and it's been taking me longer to find success. I'll never start in the EPL, always at least one division down. Got my mojo back in the 2013 edition and did big things with Leeds before moving to Bayern ... bit I find that I have very long periods now where I don't play, whereas from 96 to about 2009 it was a basic way of life. Weirdly, I think it's PWO and wrestling watching in general that has gradually replaced my Football Manager habit/addiction. There are probably people on this board who wish I'd fall off the wagon and get back to it ... TEW started in 2005 after years and years of the Extreme Warfare games. It's had a few editions (05, 08, 10, and now 13). It's the sort of game where you have to set your own goals and make your own fun really. Some of it only reveals itself after like 3-4 years of booking, it's kind of hard to explain. There's a strange sense of something when you go back and look at the history you've made. Weird things, like the 2-month title run you gave Bill Dundee 4 years ago or how you took Ron Simmons from being a young job guy to a nationally popular maineventer or whatever. The game never says "well done". Any odd sense of accomplishment is entirely your own. It's the narratives you make for yourself -- FM is kinda like that too really, most sandbox-y simulations are. It's a combination of imagination or make believe and staring into the fire. The main problem, I guess, with all such games is that they are prone to holding your attention intensely for maybe a month or even two or three, but there usually comes a point where you go off it or forget about it for a while too. There is no natural end so "drifting off" is going to be common. A bit like playing with Lego or model trainsets or something.

The Football Manager series is the ultimate for this, divorce cases. Crossface -- TEW is pretty much the ultimate example of "great game buried under poor interface". The newest one uses a bit more drag and drop, but it's still not as smooth as it could be. The BEST change is how storylines and angles work, all a lot more forgiving and fluid -- so no more failure to advance the story because step #456 wasn't followed. Since so many of the games I play are unique concepts (see also Covert Action, Gangsters: Organized Crime, Europa 1400: The Guild, The Clue! (aka Der Clou), Dwarf Fortress, so many others), I've learned to deal with, or at least put up with, poor execution and interfaces. Even with improvements, things still feel like they could be done more quickly in TEW. That said, since everything takes so long, I can't tell you how proud I felt when I got Mid-South onto Telemundo 2 and shown on Mexican TV!

Re: TEW 2013, some of the kinks and fiddliness have been worked out, but it's still ... fiddly. I've really morphed as a gamer over time though and realise that I'm part of a niche of a niche of a niche these days: I like to play games "without moving parts" and in which you kind of make the narrative yourself. I'll typically have a pen and pad next to me. I take a lot of time over it. One of the advantages of being an insomniac is that you have an extra 5-6 hours in the day. I play slow, strategic or what some might call flat-out "boring" games. To get the most out of something like TEW2013, you probably need a mindset like that. At some point in the future I'm going to do a top 50 or even top 100 "unique and obscure games" list for PTBN which will feature a lot of games like this, so look out for that. I realise that most gamers don't have the time, patience, inclination or even the right sort of personality to play games like that though. The other thing I'll say about TEW2013, is that the 1983 database that has its roots in the Death of the Territories mod is absolutely FANTASTIC and the stats are usually fair and measured. For example, the guys in the game who have A* "technical" ratings are people like Billy Robinson, so the young Bret Hart doesn't have stupid stats. I have no idea who made the database, but it's definitely someone who belongs on this board. Sometimes I'll be watching an old match from the 80s and see some jobber I've never heard of ... I'll go into the game and there they are with a bio and a picture. I'm tempted to say it's worth getting just to browse the database. I can imagine many other fan-made mods being awful or smarky, but that one is as good as you could really hope for.

Thought this was pretty interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/23685153 We might think about it in a pro wrestling context too, especially when we think of Hogan and Cena, but I stuck it in Mostly because it says interesting things about quite a few sports. Any thoughts?

My impression of Sid is that's he's the bonafide "gets cheered when he should be getting booed" guy: in his early Skyscrapers run, vs. Hogan in 92, vs. Shawn in 96. I don't know what it says about him though. That he couldn't show ass? That he couldn't get over effectively as a heel? That he was really over? I don't know. Pretty sure it never translated into box office. Think Sid is also a guy who was so bad in the ring, and known to be such a problem out of it, that no promotion is ever really going to trust him in the top spot for any amount of time.

1. The best wrestling game I've ever played is Total Extreme Wrestling (the modern derivation of Extreme Warfare). This is basically "Football Manager" for wrestling nerds. I spent the most time on the 2008 version with the excellent 1983 Death of the Territories mod, but the 2013 version is even better. And although Death of the Territories no longer exists, there's another 1983 mod called "War to Settle the Score" that more or less recreates it. I've never played the game without these mods, but the depth of the rosters from the guys who did them is incredible -- actually better than several pro wrestling encyclopedias I have. I will admit that it is this game that inspired my patented letter ratings for the DVDR set rankings. Actually I may start a game with Georgia soon to see if I can play out my ridiculous Ivan Koloff fantasy booking. 2. Wrestlefest. I grew up in a small town by the beach in South Wales historically famous for its fun fair. Back in the day, we had lots of arcades down the fair. Some of them had machines going back to the 1970s. I remember there was an original Nintendo cabinet with lots of games from 1984 on it. I spent a lot of time down the arcades. Street Fighter 2 was the big game, but there we'd spend a lot of time on stuff like Final Fight. There was this one little arcade in this small room kind of away from the rest that had, among other treasures, a Wrestlefest cabinet. I probably legit spent over £100 in 20ps with my mate playing that thing. You'd need at least £5 to beat Legion of Doom. "Snack on danger! Dine on Death!". About a year or so, I went back to my old haunts and almost teared up to find that all the old machines -- ALL of the old machines -- are gone and have been replaced with slots and gamblers. I was a bit gutted. It kills me to think of what happened to some of the cabinets they had there. 3. No Mercy. Like everyone else I played this into the ground. My brother and I had a Friday ritual: we'd watch Raw and Nitro eating a chinese takeaway. So we'd play a best of 7 or best of 9 series on either Smash Brothers or No Mercy and the loser had to pick up the tab for the Chinese. Since my brother was 6 years youngrt than me, he'd pull the same shit every week. I'd win, he'd start crying, I'd end up paying. Should have been harder on him and taught him a valuable life lesson I reckon. He's 25 now and I reckon he'd still pull that same shit today! 4. Superstars from 1988. This was the predecessor to Wrestlefest and we did have one in my town, in a different arcade again right next to the Ghost Train. As kids we just thought it was inferior in every way to Wrestlefest so never much bothered with it, although naturally I thought it was cool that Ted DiBiase was one of the end bosses and this might be the only game to feature Virgil. The most time I ever spent on it was when my parents took us on a holiday somewhere and they had this at the resort. Again, you'd need at least £5 to clock it, and you better hope and pray that DiBiase never tags in Andre! 5. WCW / NWO World Tour - like others here, I was a big fan of this engine and the roster on this one was cool as hell. However, this saw less time than No Mercy because we were generally annoyed at the fact that you could suplex The Giant and other such super heavyweights. --------- Man, sometimes I think about stuff: William Wordsworth's memories of childhood were about going on long walks and connecting with nature, mine are literally all about video games, and TV shows, and films and pro wrestling! Still waiting for the day I'm going to grow up, but 30 years in and it just doesn't look like it's going to happen

My observations are based soley on watching matches from 1980 to 1990. The "real single competitor sports" analogy comes from the fact that they often seemed happy to cheer both guys in a given match. Just like in real sports, they'd have their favourites, but it wouldn't stop them popping for their opponent if they did something cool. This is why I mentioned Wimbledon, because even your die-hard Federer fan will still clap Nadal if he does something great. There seemed to be something of that dynamic in the All-Japan crowds of that time. Crowds since then may well be different.

This will sound weird, but I think Japanese fans are easier to understand if you think about something like fans watching tennis at Wimbledon. Sometimes it can be quiet, even if they are engrossed, and sometimes they'll go wild if someone does something cool or if there's a dramatic point. I actually think boxing crowd dynamics around the world are closer to the way Japanese fans watch wrestling than US fans watch it. The strong emphasis on face/heel divide and cheering faces and booing heels is what marks US crowds from Japanese ones. Too much is made, I think, of Japanese fans being "quirky". The more I think about it, the more they are just like fans of lots of real single competitor sports and it's just US wrestling crowds that are "quirky" (because of this need always for there to be a hero or a villain).

I've heard loads and loads of old guys on shoots say things along those lines, but often they'll qualify it with something along the lines of "they could go wild too, but work differently from a US crowd". I've seen and heard so many at this point that I can't even think of specific examples. Sure Flair talks about it somewhere or other, either on the 13-hour HS interview or else on one of his (excruciating) appearances on Legends of Wrestling. Ted DiBiase definitely talks about it too. But loads of them do.

My first thought was honestly Scott Steiner as a singles guy. Or to make things easier him as "Big Poppa Pump". His main event pushes almost always seem to coincide with downturns or else TNA (). What are his real main event runs? Some abortive attempt circa 91 in WCW. Then WCW in 2001 and vs. HHH for the World title some time in 2002-3? Then at some point in TNA right? Scott Steiner is my call.

Should note that Matysik's axe to grind is with people who argue AGAINST Backlund as a draw. His entry is overwhelmingly pro-Bob and takes a defensive stance against those who would knock him. It's Greg Oliver and Steven Johnson who include more guys having a go at him (e.g. Billy Graham, Angelo Mosca). On an unrelated note, I am short on SD Jones detail, as well as stuff on Fred Curry, Jose Estrada, and Steve Travis. These guys don't make the books. If anyone knows stuff about them, PM me and I'll be sure to include your contribution in my notes. I do have more "Gentleman" Jerry Valiant stuff for the next show though. I can almost feel the anticipation for it.

Any reason why no one ever talks or seems to care about Central States? Of all the territories, it seems to be the one that literally no one gives a shit about. Apart from Brick.

I'm not really thinking along the lines of what fans would have actually bought or even what they knew. I mean, the storyline is sort of "hyper modern" enough as it is without looking at accuracies. Verisimilitude, that is what conceivably, realistically might have happened in 1983, plays little part in this. I was entertained by the idea of Brezhnev calling up Ivan and that was that. Since the historical inconvenience of his death has been brought up though, I do kinda like the idea of Brezhnev as a kind of symbolic ghost for the sort of USSR Ivan represented. I used him as a kind of facile shorthand for the slightly comical "old Soviet hardline" -- comical for me in my arch, post-ironic 2013 gaze of course, sure it wasn't comical for anyone growing up there or even through the cold war era. However, since I have plans for "the KGB" stable led by Markov, let's see how this runs with the more cerebral KGBish Andropov who I associate with being more on the coldly bureaucratic end of the party. The sort of guy who wouldn't think twice about wiping out a town or whatever because they didn't fill their grain quota. Or in wrestling terms, a kind of nightmare ULTIMATE IRS figure. There are no real plans for the General Secretary to come back into the story, it's pretty much an Emperor in Empire Strikes Back sort of scene. Let's try January Week 1 again with Andropov: January - Week 1 It's GCW on TBS and there is a call from the Kremlin. It's Yuri Andropov. "Citizen No. 3592560. Birth name: Koloff ..." "Yes, Chairman Andropov: it is me Citizen No. 3592560." "I have received reports from the politburo that your win-loss record for the year 1982 fell below the required 60%. This will not do for the official representative of the Soviet Union in the sport of pro wrestling. " [ivan looks tearful] "This record is unsatisfactory to the party. If it is not drastically improved, you will be replaced." "I ... I ... I am old comrade. I am not the man I was" "You must make up the shortfall. Nothing less than 100% for the next 6 months. Should you suffer a single defeat you will be relocated to serve in manual labour divsion 52 of NPO Vektor." "NO COMRADE, noooo!" "You have your orders." -------------- Consider this a George Lucas-style remade scene with Andropov's glasses rendered in crystalline CGI. Readers may choose to keep the original scene with Brezhnev in mind or, should the historical improbability be too much to cope with, retcon it out by inserting this alternate version instead.

If not Bob Brown, then who?