JerryvonKramer

Will - if you or anyone else can find me the date of that Vegas Primetime show I'll upload it. Sounds awesome. Was Little Matt D actually khawk? He was one hardcore AWA fan. Badd Company vs. Rockers Must pause here to note that I am PUMPED for this, because The Orient Express vs. The Rockers were some of my favourite matches from WWF in the early 90s. I don't know what the consensus is on them now, but my memory of them is that they were legit great. I also love me some Pat Tanaka. God this crowd is thin. This starts out much slower than the match we've just seen, bit surprising considering who is involved. Disappointing for me. Very surprised at Badd Company getting a win here or winning the titles the next night. C

Adonis and Orton vs. The Rockers If you squint your eyes a bit, Orton could pass for Hansen with that hat on. Adonis is very fat at this point. Strange that Orton would go to AWA from WWF. Another enjoyable FIP sequence with Shawn as Ricky Morton. Orton and Adonis have still got some goods in their offensive locker. Orton dishing out the suplexes and Adonis with a bulldog. I can hear a woman on commentary who gives 1988 ‘Pet of the Year’ Patty Mullen a run for her money. This is a pretty specific and obscure reference but she sounds A LOT like the digitized version of Mike McGuirk from the WWF Wrestlefest arcade game. SLINGSHOT INTO A CLOTHESLINE! Cool double shot Shit, Adonis dives stomach first onto Shawn's knees. Cool spot from Orton from the top. He's been great on offense in this match. Adonis with a running shoulder slam now. AWESOME neckbreaker by Orton. He's been amazing in this match. I recall really liking Orton at Starrcade 83 and he's a guy I'd love to see more of. I love great offensive workers. This was similar to the Original Midnights match only the heels had much cooler and more innovative offense, especially from Orton's end. This might be one of the real revelation matches of this set. Totally unexpectedly great, out of nowhere. Double count out doesn't detract too much. A- Wow, loved it!

Can we have 80s Project posts back? This is the most important thing. We need them to compile our ballots.

Original Midnights vs. The Rockers Again, I'll make the point that for whatever reason, Randy Rose looks a lot less jobber-y here than he does in his NWA run. I think he lost a bit of weight in NWA and grew a disgusting mullet, and shaved his moustache off. HILARIOUS selling of an atomic drop by Condrey. Heyman is rubbing it now. LOL! Condrey is one of the best at this sort of shit. There's bit a lot of schtick and not a lot of action so far. A long shine sequence this and getting tedious. Jannetty looks good doing his flip from the arm wrench. Nice Condrey backbreaker on the outside on Shawn after a big bump. Suplex from Rose. Another Condrey backbreaker. Enjoying this control segment. Side slam from Rose. Neat little knee from Rose to cut off the hope spot. This is one of the better Randy Rose performances I've seen. I think easily Doug Somers > Randy Rose though. Condrey is in his element during this FIP sequence. Hot tag to Jannetty. Insade cradle! Thought that was it. No. Suplex by Condrey gets a ref bump. Confusing double pinfall sport. Rockers win! This was a very solidly worked match at a measured, steady pace. Should be top 50. B

The finish line is in sight. Agree with Johnny that W.C. Fields should be considered Basic Cultural Knowledge, even for the youth of today. Wahoo vs. Cool Curt And man does he look cool. Hennig is not happy about the idea of Wahoo chopping his throat. Wahoo would make a great stereotypical American cop eating donuts in a 50s musical. He has the perfect face for that. Some Mr. Perfect-style bumping now. I don't care what anyone says, I prefer Hennig as a heel. Pace of this is quite slow. Hennig tries to target Wahoo's leg, he responses with stiff chops before getting posted. He gets colour before long. A boy in the crowd is bored by Hennig's headlock. Hennig is aggressive now with a flurry of forearms and strikes. Eats a suplex. This match is a little meandering for my tastes, no real direction or flow. And slow on top of that. Hennig does some Arn-style drunk punch selling that doesn't really suit him. AWESOME suplex by Wahoo, sort of strange in that it seemed to hit side on. Snapmare. Insane bumps by Hennig off these chops now. The keynote of this match has been disjointed moments of excitement. INSANE Hennig bump from the slingshot over the top turnbuckle. The slug it out outside of the ring, obviously Curt comes off second best. He's been selling his ass off for Wahoo. Double count out. Think Wahoo was booked very very strongly here for an old guy, but what a perfromance from Hennig to make him look as good as that. Very wandering sort of match with a poor finish, so ... B-

Would have been hilarious in 2002 if Vince came on TV replayed the footage of that match and insisted Flair leaves the arena.

I never said Flair couldn't work face or that fans didn't love him as a face, I said he didn't like to. Refer back to 1990 talk. The reason I don't think Sting would have got over in the same way as Warrior is because of the visuals. Someone else said it recently: part of Vince's greatness as a promoter was providing fans with those postcard moments. Hogan and Warrior nose to nose. You honestly think Sting in that spot would have been *better*? We can talk about Savage as a smaller guy at that time, but he has an advantage over Sting: he was Savage. I just don't think Sting had the goods. Vince's "muscle boner" as you put it for Warrior was one of the key ingredients. What else? The crazy promos, the ability to run to the ring fast to music, facepaint. Sting is on 2 out of 4, and even then I don't think he had the energy of Warrior. Let's say you just push him on his own terms, I still don't buy he would have been more successful -- there's literally nothing in his track record to suggest it. Don't think fans would have bought him as a legit threat to Hogan. The size is a factor. He might have been good for an IC title run, but I don't see him flourishing in a WWF environment.

Sting had way more upside than the Warrior. Vince and Pat of 1987 would have recognized this and pushed him and booked him accordingly. I don't get what this is meant to mean. You mean the Vince and Pat of this fantasy world? Real-life Vince and Pat of 1987 didn't take Sting. This is something I've talked about before: why is Sting seem as a guy whose physique is comparable to the Warrior's or Luger's? He just didn't have that build. Sting: Warrior: Sting: Warrior: Why is it even suggested that he could step into that spot? It's like replacing Batista with Chris Jericho. Sting is a much smaller guy.

I still don't think Flair or his ego would have been easily convinced of this idea. Ted comes in. Takes his spot in the Horsemen. His belt. And we know he didn't like working face.

Death - 100% agreed with you on Sting in WWF. I've actually been very disappointed in him in general revisiting some of his late 80s stuff and watching much of it for the first time. I had a conception of Sting being really rather good based mostly on his early 90s stuff, but it's plain to see that he wasn't all that in 87, 88 or even by 89. Pales in comparison to Luger. Crappy promo. Seems to have timing issues on his comebacks. Can really half-arse it when he's not in the mood. I honestly think the guy lacked X Factor. DESPITE all of that, he was super over. I don't believe he would have been in the more colorful world of WWF. He would have sunk without a trace, you are right about it. jdw - I don't think anyone disagrees with you that Ted is the one lock pick from the Watts roster, but I do think that Ted had some idea that what Vince had in store for him was special in some way. It was definitely sold to him as something out of the ordinary -- or at least that's how he tells it. It's really a case of whether the prospect of that + New York would mean more or less to him than title + money. However, I think Ric would have had a real problem with a guy like DiBiase coming in and taking the spot you've outlined. What do we know about Ted's career? He didn't do politics as well as the other big 80s stars, he mainly just did what he was told -- much less ego than some of the others. You think Ted going into such a political environment would have been able to hold onto the belt for long even if he was given it? I know it's fantasy booking, but this is surely a consideration. Assuming you can lure Ted away from Vince's offer, what do you do with Dusty? How do you placate Flair?

Same for me jdw, although I've still not seen his much pimped Japanese stuff. Doc completely hasn't clicked with me in any of his NWA run. Think he's actively bad through 88, frequently the worst worker on the card, and then merely ok in 89. This will sound too harsh, but if I had to make a comparison, I'd say he was like a WWF Jim Duggan without the heat (or charisma). Definitely a guy I don't "get" when it comes to people's love for him.

4,000 in July is decent-average in that area if you look at what AWA were doing too. The only thing to extrapolate is that Hogan-Piper wasn't enough of a draw to get people to go to see the wrestling while the sun was out. Seems like around 2,500-5,000 represent your "hardcores" in that area and anything less than that even in the summer is in the bottoming-out zone. And then the BIG gates in Winter go 10,000-20,000+. I suppose that Greg Gagne was saying that you'd never get one of those big gates in the summer, which is borne out by the data for for both AWA and WWF. That doesn't explain Hogan-Bundy though. Who knows. AWA crowds through Jan and Feb 86 in that area before the big Wrestlerock show are also pathetic (sub-3,000). Was it a mini-burn out after this pissed them off? King Kong Bundy defeated WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan via count-out The gates were down that Christmas anyway, 7,000-8,500 are not good crowds for December -- less than half of the normal turnout. Although perhaps we can see there how Vince literally split the crowd - if the two sets of people are different, there's your usual crowd of 15,000+ sitting at two different shows.

Rather controversially I think Williams basically sucked in 87-89.

On the make/break point, I think Ted was more like a mentor to Williams than a best buddy or anything like that. His big friends in the business were the Funks (especially Terry), Dick Murdoch, and Stan Hansen -- he was a West Texas State guy. His other big buddy to my knowledge was Jerry Stubbs (aka Mr. Olympia).

Ted definitely worked for WWF a good bit before the Million Dollar Man gimmick debuted. All through the summer, mainly in Watts towns. But he's always said that the gimmick was planned before that and prior to his signing. He had a secret meeting because it couldn't be discussed on the phone. Vince had reportedly had the idea for some time and even considered Nick Bockwinkel among others for the role before settling on Ted. I don't know why there was such a big gap between Ted signing and his TV debut.

This was very enjoyable. I do like the shows when it's just the two of you discussing a topic. I feel like I've been harping on Luger constantly for the past year both on our shows and on this board. This is another of those things where Dylan and I are pretty much 100% aligned on all issues to the extent where I feel like I've made the exact same arguments he makes on this show at one time or another, especially 1. the turns hurting his career time and again, 2. in the comparison with Sting, and 3. The greatness of the 95/6 tweener-y stuff with Sting which is some of my favourite subtle stuff in wrestling history, 4. some of the unfair reasons for his rep. The Turner take over is discussed in the WONs for months before it actually took place in November 88. There are stirrings of it as early as 87 and a number of false starts early in 88 during which David Crockett is a constant thorn in the side of the deal. The one tiny thing I'd question is when you said that Luger doesn't have anything on his resume to put against the Sting-Vader matches. I'd put a lot of that 88-89 stuff against it. The Clash tag match, the Flair matches, the Pillman match, Crocket Cup 87 final, the Steamboat match. I think there's enough there to challenge the Vader stuff.

About 63 pages into this epic epicness. Must pause for breath. One very small thing Kris: On that recent shoot, Greg Gagne mentioned that AWA could never draw for shit in May through July and it was a downtime for that area in terms of wrestling for whatever reason and started picking up again late August. He claimed that they once did a show in May that Hogan insisted on running despite them telling him this during his hottest period that did less than 1,0000. The figures seem to bear him out and as such the low crowds in June wouldn't have been a big surprise to them. Would be interested to see if the WWF had any sort of record drawing in the Minny-St. Paul area during the summer months. It also speaks to John's point here: Understood. More along the lines of the prior Hogan appearance: Hogan-Piper several months after Mania, drawing "4,500". That one doesn't make a lot of sense. Savage in November 1985 wasn't as big of a star as Piper yet, but attendance went up 11K? I can see the WWF doing poorly on non-Hogan shows, as they do that into 1986 and 1987. But 4500 for Piper-Hogan and 4K for Hogan-Bundy (who had the big push leading up to Mania) sandwiching around that 15K for Hogan-Savage on Thanksgiving... doesn't that strike anyone else as odd? Conforms to the pattern Greg outlines with attendences being down in the summer and up in the winter. Quirk of the area.

I've never heard this before Kris. What makes you say that? The way I've always heard it told by Ted himself, Pat Patterson and others is that it was put to him around the time of the All Japan tour. That he flew there for a secret meeting and that was the basis of his signing. He worked dates in late 87 before the debut of the gimmick, but I think he and they already had the idea in mind and had discussed it before then. He signed to work the gimmick. Perhaps that is a myth they've spun after the fact, but it's always been told that way.

Crockett could have gotten Ted but they didn't want to pay him what he wanted. If it came down to it though, he had a choice between going to New York and playing "the gimmick McMahon would want to play himself" with all the perks that entailed vague promises of a world title run, vs. ... well, what were Crockett offering? Was Flair really up for letting Ted have a run with the NWA title during his peak period in 1987? I can't see any less than a lot of money + a guaranteed world title run for DiBiase to opt for JCP over WWF at that stage. I seem to recall that he was in Japan while a lot of this was going on and more or less had a choice on his return. I think it was assumed he'd be working in the NWA with all the other UWF guys, but no formal offer had been made, and Vince nabbed him. Ted leading the Horsemen vs. a face Flair is probably the most run fantasy angle I've seen. I feel like I've seen it over and over again.

In this thread, I'm going to pursue one of my worst ever ideas by booking Ivan Koloff first into Race's spot at Starrcade 83 and then into Iron Sheik's spot in December 1983. Consider this a trailer.

It it should be pointed out that Ted in the 1987 scenario is not realistic: have to assume Vince would have the same ideas and make the same plays. Crockett couldn't get Ted.

My argument is that if you look at the trajectory of his career, he wasn't treated like a main event guy in Japan or in Georgia in 81-2; so when he came into WWF the plan was surely not for him to be top guy. The argument about heels never winning in the 80s is true only to an extent. A top heel would lose or draw to top faces, but not to faces up and down the card as Sheik was doing in Georgia and even towards the end of his Mid-Atlantic run -- and pretty much from mid-84 onwards in WWF. He was in the right place at the right time to get the WWF title and that may have elevated him for a 6 month period after that with the Slaughter feud. However, I'm not buying that Sheik was a bigger deal than Piper or Muraco in that same time frame. You can say wins count for nothing, but Piper had lots of them in 84 vs. Rocky Johnson, Ivan Putski and Jimmy Snuka. Muraco seems to have been better protected and booked stronger as well. Their careers were on an upwards curve, Sheik's was going in the other direction. Sheik and Volkoff beating the US Express was treated as a major upset. How about this: it was the very first Wrestlemania and they wanted to have title changes on it, which is why they are dropping the straps back to Windham and Rotunda by June in a match that lasted less than 4 minutes. They were interim champs. After about September, they are solidly midcard fodder and arguably tagteam JTTSs by 86 used to get guys like The Fabulous Rougeaus, The Islanders and The Bulldogs over. If they were a top tagteam, it wasn't for very long. Again, you can say wins and losses count for shit, but you can also compare the way the Dreamteam were booked as champs to the way Sheik and Volkoff were Dreamteam got tons of wins against established teams on TV and at house shows, Sheik and Volkoff jobbed to the US Express around the horn. The spread of wins and losses in the Dreamteam's feud with the Bulldogs is much much more evenly spread too. They were consistently booked more strongly.

Frozen Yoghurt seems to be getting over a bit in London too, as do smoothie joints which have traditionally struggled to stay open for 6 months in this country. There was a Milkshake shop that opened in my local town here and I said to my wife "I give that place 5 months". And sure enough it closed in that time. There was a smoothie place too which also lasted 6 months. And a place in the next town which stretched to about 9. Those businesses aren't viable outside of central London and I'd warrant the Frozen Yoghurt ones aren't either. Core product isn't enough of a draw and the footfall just isn't big enough. The thing I've always wanted to see is a "Dessert Cafe", a place where you can go for cakes, ice creams, and so on. The US seems to have many more of these. Places like The Cheesecake Factory in Chicago or just your traditional Mom and Pop's Ice Cream place. We don't have them at all. This has wildly digressed, apologies.