JerryvonKramer

Why not Lex vs. Sting like I said? Lex was great as a heel, and kinda awkward as a face. The fans were really getting behind Sting. A portion of fans always want to cheer Flair, don't get that impression with Lex. Build Lex big as a heel champ after winning the title from Flair. Lex-Sting, then Lex-Sid (whatever you say about him, he was crazy over), maybe back to Lex-Flair in 91 or build Windham properly and do Lex-Windham. 9 months or so out of the main event picture wouldn't do Flair any harm, or if the idea is to gradually phase him out, that's how. Eventually put Sting over big for the title.

In an amazing turn of events, the Iron Sheik thread has led us to unearthing footage in which the Farsi / Arabic point is mentioned on air, see here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=5554045 Thanks a lot Pete!

There you go guys, a rare youtube upload from me featuring epic Mooney and Hayes commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTphs668xcU "You can see, Sean, that he looks slow and ponderous in the ring, but this man really is impervious to pain" "Yes, and he can really deliver it" In an amazing moment, Mooney and Hayes mention the fact that Mustafa is speaking Farsi! Mooney: "Is it Farsi?" Hayes: "I believe it's Farsi that these two speak to each other, but they also speak Arabic. They are multilingual, that I do know." Mooney: "Well, you don't need a translation to know what Adnan is trying to do now" Ha ha, classic Mooney. HOLY SHIT, my mind is getting blown watching this. The Farsi / Arabic point acknowledged on air! The pin is a cheap one when Bulldog's going for his slam and Sarge pulls and holds the leg a la Rude vs. Warrior at WM5. Pretty appalling match. Post-match Mustafa looks almost too blown up to celebrate. In the replay, Hayes says "If it hadn't been for that, there was no way he would have won this match on his own".

I think they should have stuck with Flair (face) vs. Luger (heel) for 90 and then somehow transitioned into Sting vs. Luger.

Cuban Assassin, lol. Are you really asking me to fantasy book this Matt? Shit I don't know, Irwin R. Shyster respects Saddam Hussein because he's great at paying his taxes. Earthquake wins the Iraqi Sumo championships and gets a medal of honour from Saddam himself. Gen. Adnan buys out the contract of Demolition Crush who becomes Col. Crush. OR advertise it as "Mystery Partner" and ... Bring in Flair a month early. Bring in Abdullah the Butcher for a one shot. Bring Sid in earlier. --------- In short: anything to make that match look less ridiculously one-sided.

Pete, I've got every single Prime Time from 1991, if I have time later I'll have a look on that show to see if I can dig it up. If it's there I'll upload it to my site and share the link. One of those things that I'm not going to believe until I see it!

Matt - the Summerslam match is surprising to me precisely because of the fact they decided to go with Hogan/Warrior vs. Slaughter + Manager + CIPHER. What the hell sort of main event is that? I am more interested now in whether I've got his career trajectory right: Early 70s - training with Verne and breaking in Mid-late 70s - working his way up the card. He was an upper midcarder by the time he reached New York working as Arab Hussein in 1979. 1980-early 81 - this was his career peak as a draw having a main event run as Iron Sheik with the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight title and high-profile matches with Flair and Steamboat. Also put in main event matches against the big guns in New Japan. 1982-3 Back down to being an upper midcarder in Georgia, although doing a lot of jobs up and down the card by the end of the run. 83 - Brought into WWF and seemngly out of nowhere gets the title from Backlund before dropping it to Hogan 84 - sliding back down the card, although still an upper midcarder feuding with Slaughter and others, but mostly on the losing end 85-6 - transitions over to tag division in WWF, again quite surprisingly gets a title run with Volkoff but mostly used to put over younger talent like The Bulldogs 87 - a lower midcarder by this point used to put over the likes of Duggan, before real-life incidents lead his his firing. 89-91 - basically a JTTS in WCW 91-2 - borderline jobber in WWF 93 onwards - into the Indies and obscurity, he can be considered semi-retired from here. I want to know if his peak run was as short as I am making out. The view I'm building up is that his WWF title run is pretty anamolous in the context of his whole career. He was nowhere near, for example, the level of star that Ken Patera was at any point in his career.

In 1979, he's mainly with WWF working as Hussein Arab. The story of his 79 is that he has lots of wins over the likes of SD Jones but then fails to beat Backlund for the title or Ted DiBiase for the North American title. On April 6th he wins a battle royal to become number 1 contender, but it seems to me that during this period he is either number 3 or 4 heel behind Greg Valentine, Ken Patera and possibly Pat Patterson. Before this from November 78 to Jan 79 he has a brief stint in AWA during which he does little of note except lose to Billy Robinson and Steve O. Records on Cagematch are sketchy for 78. There's one loss vs. Buck Zumhofe for Portland from September and that's it. From what is on there, it seems like he hit his peak in terms of positioning on the roster in 1980 in MACW. This makes sense from a political point of view. Iran was friendly with the USA under the Shah during the 70s, but the hostage crisis in 1979 would have put a rocket launcher under Sheik in terms of heat during the early part of the Reagan era. It looks like that first run against Jim Brunzell was the debut of the Iron Sheik gimmick since before then he worked as Arab Hussein. Even with this behind him, it seems like he lost momentum while with the Crocketts and was done as a main event draw there by 1981. There's little about the 82-3 Georgia run that suggests he was positioned as the top heel. And again little in the run up to the actual title switch vs. Backlund in 83 to suggest he was the top heel in WWF. From all of this I conclude: Iron Sheik's run as a main event draw of any sort was incredibly short lived. Roughly confined to 1980 in MACW with some extra crumbs in 81-3, including what must have been a very surprising transitional run with the WWF title. Is this too harsh an assessment? khawk or someone with greater knowledge of what he was doing in the 70s in AWA or elsewhere may bring some extra facts to bear.

Interested to try to gauge what level of star Sheik was when he came into WWF, I've gone back to look at the sorts of things he was up to before that. He came into WWF only late in 83 around August. Got a decent build going over mainly jobbers plus the likes of Chief Jay Strongbow and (Johnny Sorrow will be pleased to note) Tony Garea before the title switch. One defence vs. the low-charisma JTTS Salvatore Bellomo and one vs. Ivan Putski before losing it to Hogan. After that he doesn't have many singles win, although there is one, notably, against B. Brian Blair. Maybe that's why he boasts about it so much, because it seems like his only actual win after 1983. Before the WWF, he was in Georgia. This looks like a standard "Villian of the month" run where he's built a bit before facing and losing to Tommy Rich. Brickhithouse will be pleased to note that one of the guys who puts him over is Bulldog Bob Brown. After getting his shot at Rich, Sheik puts over Dick Murdoch, Paul Ordorff, Mr. Wrestling II, Ron Garvin and Brett Swayer on his way out before heading to New York. There's no real suggestion from this run that Sheik is a big main event sort of guy. He's doing jobs left right and centre in Georgia. During the 82-3 George run, he went on a tour with New Japan putting over Tatsumi Fujinami, Killer Kahn, Tiger Toguchi, Inoki, Tony Atlas, and Masked Superstar among others. He does record a win over Yatsu however. Hardly treated like a major deal in Japan in 1982 then. Actually, it seems that right after this New Japan tour, rather than going back to Georgia immediately, he had a brief run in Memphis. Built up by wins over Bobby Fulton and Danny Davis, then a few matches vs. Ron Bass and Jerry Lawler. Although brief, this Memphis run seems to position him a bit more strongly than we have seen elsewhere. He gets a win vs. Lawler (2 losses also) and it's 1-1 with Bass, although Sheik loses the pivotal bullrope blow off. In February 82, he has a couple of matches in Florida including a loss vs. Andre -- does the fact he was working Andre at all mean he was considered a top guy? I'm not sure that it does. In 1981, there isn't that much data on Cagematch. But he started the year with Mid-Atlantic. Mostly this is jobs:to Ivan Koloff, to Blackjack Mulligan, to Tommy Rich, to Tony Parisi (!!!!). Although he does record a win over an aging Johnny Weaver. What is notable, however, about this run is that he takes part in 6-mans where his partners are Roddy Piper and Greg Valentine. Mid-Atlantic Championship WrestlingNational Wrestling Alliance Blackjack Mulligan, Ric Flair & Sweet Ebony Diamond defeats Bobby Duncum, Iron Sheik & Roddy Piper MACW @ Fisherville, Virginia, USA Greg Valentine, Iron Sheik & Roddy Piper defeat Blackjack Mulligan, Ric Flair & Ricky Steamboat MACW @ Raleigh, North Carolina, USA From that I extrapolate that he was at least number 2 or 3 heel in the company in early 81. That run in MACW started in April 1980. Jim Brunzell was the MACW champ at that time. Sheik seems to come in straight away at the top of the card with a title match. He records wins over Weaver, Pedro Morales, and Tony Garea. After a string of unsuccessful attempts through April 80, Sheik finally defeats Brunzell to win the title on 11.05.1980. The very next night he tries, unsuccessfully, to defeat Flair for the US title. And loses again to Flair twice. He stays MACW champ all through the summer going over Brunzell many times. He keeps that strap until November 80, when he loses it to Ricky Steamboat. Before the MACW run, he did the New Japan tour. His placement on the card is obviously higher than it was in 1981. Since he's working mainly Choshu, Inoki and Fujinami. That said, he loses every single match. Prior to that, he was in WWF still working as Hussein Arab. A string of defeats vs. Larry Zybysko here, some unuccessful shots at Backlund, a CO loss to Gorilla Monsoon, jobs to Jim Duggan, Tony Atlas, and Rene Goulet. He does get a win over Tito Santana as well as over lower carders like Johnny Rodz. We could put down a lot of these losses down to the fact he was on his way out. So far, the 1980s MACW run seems like his peak run -- everything after 80 feels like he's on the downward curve. 70s stuff to follow.

I've put some more details on the Mustafa run here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=5554000

Iron Sheik stuck around for WCW much longer than you would think. He was there from July 89 right through to January 91. That run includes tagging with Barry Horrowitch and jobs to the Z-Man, Ranger Ross, Norman, Fat JYD, and Terry Taylor. Cage match database has 40 matches on record for that time frame with no wins beyond 89. His has a dozen or so victories over jobbers at the start of the run, but after that it's free fall. His Mustafa run actually started as early as March 91. So there was only a month in between his WCW and WWF runs. This seems surprising mainly because Sheik was rarely seen on TV after 89 in WCW. Pre-Summerslam, Mustafa has wins over such luminaries as Hillbilly Jim, Koko B. Ware, Jimmy Snuka, Johnny Ace and Shane Douglas, as well as vs. jobbers -- but he can't beat Jim Duggan and has a long string of losses to him around the horn. In the run up to Summerslam, he is built by ... 5 jobs to the newly turned Greg Valentine, another one to Duggan and he even returns the favour to Snuka. Post-Summerslam he just jobs to everyone, including randomly Jim Brunzell on March 26th, 92 (Winnipeg) and Tatanka about 20 times until leaving in May 92. After that he flies over to Tokyo for a UWF-I show for a 5-minute loss to Yoji Anjo in October 92. Seems to disappear for a while but crops up in the indys with Century Alliance Wrestling: CWA Heavyweight Title: Vic Steamboat defeats The Iron Sheik © - TITLE CHANGE !!! CWA @ Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA Not sure how he became champ. A month later he jobs to Beau Zane in Windy City Pro Wrestling. This has to be a career low, perhaps not ... In 94 there are no matches on record. By 1996, he's doing jobs to Koko Ware and Preston Steel in "Steele City Wrestling" and in 99 takes part in a "Crackpipe On A Pole" match against Izzy High for Juggallo Championship Wrestling -- at least he won. ------------ What is most striking about his late WCW and WWF runs is just how jobber-y he was. It makes the Summerslam main event even more surprising.

This is possibly something that Snowden might have touched on in his article that may have hurt Flair's career in some way: from 87 to 91 it seems that JCP/WCW crowds are basically GAGGING to cheer for Flair. We will talk about this more when we do Clash 10, but it seems to me that from the Garvin feud to the moment he left for WWF, the partisan NWA crowds wanted to cheer for him. They kept him heel all the way through 88 vs. Luger, by 89 there were loads of fans cheering Flair vs. Steamboat. They turned him for the Funk feud and then only gave him 6 months as a face before turning him again in 90. This was surely a mistake. The fans wanted him babyface, but they kept him heel. Given that Flair himself was part of the booking committee for that period, he may have to take some of that blame himself. I'm not clear on whose decision it was to turn him again in Feb 90. Look at the numbers when Flair was face. Bash 89 did 12,500. That's a good crowd for them in 89.

Steamboat vs. Flair was very badly advertised. We gave it some coverage in our Clash 6 show (WTTBP #34), it's about 16 minutes in when discussing George Scott quitting / being fired in with some further discussion of it here. Remember this wasn't some pissant venue, they were in the New Orleans Superdome -- 900 tickets sold pre-show for a 70,000 stadium. As I said there, I refuse to believe that more than 900 people wouldn't want to see that match in 1989. They did 8,000 in Chicago in February. As much a logistics (why the Superdome?! Why Nola?) and marketing fuck-up as anything else. Scott was not well equipped to book in the TV era -- some have said Scott deliberately sabotaged Clash VI because he disagreed with giving away matches free on TV. With some competent marketing that match should have done 10,000ish at The Omni or Greensboro easily. All that said, Steamboat definitely wasn't as over as he could have been in that run, the crowds are pretty firmly split even by Wrestlewar and they are popping more for the tremendous match than for Steamer himself.

Apologies if this is covered on this board already somewhere, but what is this?

All of this stuff is really good and I'm grateful for it. Territories and cities die. It's always happened in the history of wrestling. Even New York died in the late 30s and took more than a decade to rebuild. It's common any just about everything. Products die. Sports teams die. Televisions networks go in the tank (look at most of NBC). Etc. There's no reason to think this doesn't happen in wrestling. Just wondering how it happens. For example, the Detroit example says Sheik pissed off the fans by being an unbeatable heel for too long. So when someone else tries to promote a show 3 years later without the Sheik on the card, what's stopping people from going? Every person in the city is just completely turned off wrestling and won't even entertain going to a show? When long-lasting products die, it's often because something else comes along to take their spot and they can no longer compete. For example, in this country old-fashioned plate-service chain restaurants (see Wimpy, Lyons Corner Houses) were killed by fast food once McDonalds turned up -- just as Music Hall was killed by radio and TV. The product goes out of favour because it didn't move with the times, not because anyone had ill will towards it. Indeed, the passing of the product is met with a feeling of sadness and you'd expect to see campaigns to save it. The wrestling burnout example isn't like that -- the logic is that the promoter breeds ill will in the fans and turns them off the product and then, somehow, that ill will stays for a number of years to "kill" the town. I cannot think of examples of sports teams dying due to low crowd turnout bred from ill will. Most football clubs here have been running for almost a century and failures come down to financial mismanagement such as overspending on players (see Portsmouth). This is why I asked if things are different in the US. Which sports clubs died from breeding ill will?

Good stuff John. Tomorrow in work I'll print out the Vince vs. The World thread and read it in full, assuming I'm not sacked for wasting university resources. I have two questions: 1. Why CWF rather than, say, Watts? 2. I find this notion of a town "dying" strange. Everyone always says that Detroit was completely dead by the end of the 70s. How does that happen? In the US does this ever happen with other sports? I mean let's say if someone ran a show in Detroit in 1980 were the people there just totally against the notion of going to a wrestling show? Were they actively anti-wrestling? I've talked in the past about fads -- WWF in 91-92 here was a fad like yo yos -- but those were established towns with decades long traditions. How do they just suddenly stop like that? Curious phenomena. The only parallel I can think of is something like the death of Music Hall (believe Americans say "Vaudeville"), but that is explicable in terms of technology and cultural shifts. The idea that an area gets "burnt out" by a wrestling company hot shotting is a bit strange. Ok, you piss off some fans in 1977, 4 years later that means no one in the area will watch a wrestling show? I'm not saying it didn't happen, it clearly did, just trying to make some sense of it.

It would be good to move all the stuff from the other thread here. EDIT: Goes without saying that the article is good.

I'm with Will too. The Ricky Morton case is basically absurd.

Iranians, Arabs, what's the difference right? In the wolrd of wrestling anyone from east of Berlin is Russian, and anyone from the Middle East is an arab. My dad is Iranian, so I can speak a bit of Farsi. When they did the Muhammad Hassan run, Davari did his rants in Farsi and I could understand bits of what he was saying -- mostly incoherent stuff. Hassan was meant to be an Arab (who tend to speak arabic), so unless he could speak fluent Farsi presumably couldn't understand what he was saying. These are two examples where the deep historical, linguistic and cultural differences of Persians and Arabs -- which are far bigger than those between, say Americans and Canadians or even Americans and Mexicans -- were collapsed into one big racial Other. "What's the difference, they're all the same ain't they" That was the part of the Hassan angle I found offensive, not that it was the 00s and they were running an angle where the crowd was meant to be cheering pretty far rightwing views (it's wrestling, I expect that), but that it was the 00s and they were still openly conflating people of wildy different cultures and races in stereotypes under the guise of a character supposedly attacking that very thing. Found it really insidious and dark. Anyway, the worst part of the idea of Sheik becoming Mustafa is that the Iran-Iraq war had just been going on for 8 years. It was long, bloody and bitter. The idea that an Iranian would support Saddam Hussein in 91 is insane -- probably more so than the idea of an American being a sympathizer. Col. Mustafa would have been the biggest heel of all time in Iran - they should have done a tour there, it would have drawn big. Did they ever recognise that Mustafa was Iranian, not an Iraqi on TV? The character is pretty sickening if you think about it.

I am incapable of watching youtube or anything on my computer. I simply can't do it without checking websites or posting on the forum or whatever. I have to be away from the desktop. What I always do if there's something on there I want to watch is: 1. Use this site to download it: http://keepvid.com/ 2. Stream it from my PC to my Sony Bluray player to watch on the big TV using a program called Serviio For the podcast I use a pen and pad to take notes. For things like 80s set watching or the Yearbooks, I have my laptop there. For All Japan, I actually took pen and pad notes first and then wrote them up but this too long and I prefer doing the sort of stream-of-consciousness half-arsed analysis you've all seen of mine -- I think it's more "honest". For whatever reason though I get less of an urge to click on stuff when I'm watching on the tv with the laptop on the side. On a side note: this is one of the reasons I hardly ever play PC games anymore. I have 100s of them, possibly even 1000s. I keep buying them too. Never play them. My hobby is reading about and buying games, and then not playing them. I think the urge to click about and check things: forum, email, facebook and so on is just too strong to sit down at the computer and play a game for hours on end.

I just listened to Ole and Dave Meltzer arguing about this in 2003: Ole's argument is this: 1. The Dumont Network was national in the 1950s. 2. Vince has been bad for the business because of the total number of wrestlers who are able to make a living out of it. 3. The fans are not served as well because they no longer get regular wrestling coming to their city, sometimes as much as 5-times a night in a given area. 4. The total number of hours on TV was as much then as it is now, if not more -- and the TV was better then. 5. More bizarrely: there are a 100s of Hulk Hogans waiting to be found out there -- plus a tangent about how Hogan was not the sort of maineventer he needed in Georgia because he's not someone you can have an area night after night since Hogan is the sort of person who needs to be used relatively sparingly, which goes off into some odd areas during which he claims complete ignorance of Hogan's success in WCW. Dave provides many of the same arguments provided so far in this thread. Ole is his usual grouchy, bitter and arrogant self, but he does reason out his arguments fairly well for a wrestler (insomuch as he bothers to at all). In the second and third parts they go off on other arguments: Flair wasn't a draw because he only did well when business was up. Ole asks Dave why he's not in the WON Hall of Fame. Fireworks now. Ole thinks he's not in the HOF because WON voters think he didn't travel around enough -- he says the Carolinas and Georgia was where the money was and he didn't want to keep uprooting his wife and family. Meltzer tries to tell him it might not have made a difference. Then they argue about whether or not Ole CARES about being in the Hall of Fame or not. Very entertaining. Ole is such an asshole, but he's funny in how much of an asshole he is. "Are you interviewing me or are you interviewing yourself?" Ha ha. Part 3 more or less descends into pointless ad hominem but for the purposes of this thread, part 1 is worth a listen.

I honestly could not be more excited to see this. Was interesting you touched on some of the things from this thread. I am almost as pumped to see the David Crockett interview as I am to see the Jim Crockett Jr one. I think you guys did a good job here. First 10-15 minutes it seemed like he wasn't going to open up much but as you talked more he became a bit less guarded in his answers. If this guy does an Ivan doc, that would be really interesting too. Dylan, have you seen this, it looks like something that you might want to own: http://www.highspots.com/p/crockett-book-1.html

On the Guest Booker, Greg Gagne flat out denies that story. I guess whether or not it's true is irrelevant, the only important thing is what Vince believes. Still -- it's such a strange thing to see history literally being manufactured and manipulated in this way in front of your eyes. I did have a thought that one possible reason might be as a way of talking up the importance of the WWE World Title, i.e. "look, one of ours, this legend, was champion". But they don't do it with Pedro Morales or the other 70s champs. Bruno is obviously now back in the fold. I wonder if Sheik is one way of them giving the illusion that WWE history is richer or something like that. It's baffling to me though because ... the history IS rich. No fabrication or rewriting at all is required. If it is just because of his loyalty, a massively inflated sense of his historical importance seems like a huge huge payback. I mean other guys make do with a place in the Hall of Fame and a payday or two.

While I was away I rewatched many of the Legends of Wrestling roundtable shows. If you recall the first 6 of these showcased "Superstars of the 80s". Let me remind you of the guys to whom they dedicated 30 mins or so each: Terry Funk Roddy Piper Hulk Hogan Bob Backlund Andre the Giant Jerry Lawler JYD Ric Flair Sgt. Slaughter It's very difficult to quibble with these selections. They all make sense. These were the biggest stars of the 80s or the most talented. It's a very fair representation. We might put cases forward for other people to be included ahead of these 9. I can see an argument for Dusty, for example. Piper and Slaughter may have some competition, but they are not at all controversial people to cover. Who is the 10th star they featured? That's right, it was Iron Sheik. Why is Sheiky Baby deserving of such lofty company? It doesn't end there. The Official WWE sanctioned Top 50 list that got Matysik so hot under the collar lists Iron Sheik at 31. One place ahead of Jimmy Snuka. Above Mick Foley, Kurt Angle, Jack Brisco, Sgt. Slaughter, Nick Bockwinkel, Dory Funk Jr. and Bob Backlund who is at 47. He was ushered into the WWE Hall of Fame fairly swiftly. Now, I'm wondering, does Sheiky have secret photos of Vince caught having man-sex with Pat Patterson? Vince re-hired Sheik on no less than 4 different occasions, despite his trouble with the law and drugs. He gave him a fairly inexplicable high profile role in 1991. Since the 2000s, Iron Sheik has been in every video game going, got his own action figure, and so on. WHY? I don't really get this at all. The WWE own wrestling history. They own all the footage. There are clear legends in wrestling history. So why do they seem so intent on spinning this myth that the Iron Sheik was this legend on par with the greats? It's quite bizarre. Ivan Koloff or even Superstar Graham do not enjoy this treatment. Iron Sheik's sole claim to fame in the "all-time" stakes is being the guy Hogan beat for the belt. That one moment is elevating him an awfully high way. In the official WWE sanctioned version of history, Iron Sheik is one of the wrestling gods. In reality he was essentially a career midcarder (or upper midcarder at best) who was in the right place at the right time to be a transitional champ for a month and from there became a JTTS within 3 years. Anyone got any ideas about possible explanations for this?

Loss - funny enough I'm reading the January 8th 1990 Observer and Meltzer mentions the Pat Tanaka story shortly after noting Gary Hart's firing. It seems like Tanaka would have been AS WELL AS Dragon Master rather than instead of him. Looking at the cards, Dragon Master was actually positioned in an upper midcard slot. He was having semi-main tag matches with Sawyer and doing things like jobbing to Sting in main events at house shows. He's got to be one of the most anomalous guys from that time-frame. I always point to Col. Mustafa being in the main event of Summerslam 91 as being some truly WTF shit, but I reckon Dragon Master in 90 is even more puzzling. I struggle to think of someone so utterly incongruous in a promotion.