JerryvonKramer

Powering through, POWERING through now. It's Cheese & New York Deli Relish "American Style Bubble Chips" now accompanied by a fine ale indeed: Maplemoon brewed by Jospeph Holt of Manchester! Come on! 1985 you are going down tonight. ... Hold on, what the fuck, I'M on this show. Ha ha, I've seen these matches. Ridiculous scenes here. Onwards to disc 6!

KrisZ is right that heel Freebirds in 89 were cool for a while around the time of Hayes's US title shot, but they become uncool almost overnight. You can almost measure it. I think Chad and I watched it play out in real time not too long ago. KrisZ is very on the money on this point. If I had to point to a single show, it's Clash 8 when they win the World Tag titles. From that moment on they suck. Before that, I think Hayes still has something.

Since I'm drinking this evening, I am instituting a "two fingers" every time Johnny mentions Tony Garea rule. Also, Johnny I was just like your buddy, 100% committed heel fan.

That cage match is fucking amazing.

On the Bugs Bunny topic: Looney Tunes shorts were shown regularly here for years and then randomly in the mid-00s fell off the face of the earth. They just don't show those cartoons anymore. I don't think the BBC would have shown the racist ones though, not even in the 80s or 90s. They always seemed to play the same 30 or so ones. I feel like there was never a Looney Tunes short that I hadn't already seen. Reckon I saw that one where Bugs does the dive into the little bucket and the trapeze act about 100 times.

Time to bust out the Louisiana BBQ Rib "American Style Bubble Chips". The accompaniment? A pint of Theakston Old Peculiar, 2 hours of goodhelment, Kris Z and Sorry and on my screen two of the most random teams I've ever seen in my life. Billy Robinson and actual Bobby Duncum vs. Jim Brunzell and The Tonga Kid? What the hell? Should be interesting.

I like the Will wants blood and violence vs. Matt D structure point being discussed again. In recent times, I think I've shifted more towards taking intensity over logic. I also want to see a story play out, but it's my point with Flair again and again, stories can be organic and messy, they don't have to be structured and logical. Also, watching Bock strut across the ring during this king of the mountain spot like the cockinest mutha fucker in the world, I think character is of the utmost importance to me too. Intensity, character, story.

For some reason I stopped right in the middle of this show, I think I had to go out for something, and then AWA took a long haitus in JvK's life. Well tonight it's back with vengeance. Picture the scene, I've got several bottles of the finest English ale here and two big bags of maize-based snacks with a tub of Nacho cheese sauce. I've got an iPod loaded up with Will and Johnny Sorrow and the rest of disc 4 and then disc 5 ready to go. AWA 1985 is going to fucking take it tonight! I'll leave match comments on DVDR and pod-based comments here. Set me a deadline Harrington, I'm going to do this shit!

Chris's rather spiffy chart of DiBiase's ELO rating kinda backs me up on the idea of the re-push in early 91 too, that spike by my estimation is early 91:

Answer this in any way you want: all time, right now, historically at a particular place and time, whatever you want. Just interested to see the overall result. I have an expectation, but y'know, anything is possible.

Reading through an old thread that recently got bumped, I came across a post I made myself that takes the opposite argument. Maybe some guys who have recently been watching the 91 Yearbook could speak to this? If he was sliding down the card, why were they still protecting him on tv against a guy they were clearly pushing like Bret? Why not send Bret over DiBiase clean? And why send him over Piper semi-clean?

Imagine how much less cool The Color of Money would have been if Tom Cruise and Paul Newman had been playing snooker. Ha Ha.

I remember reading somewhere that "World Series" refers to a brand or something, not to the actual world. Snooker has grown a lot in the last decade it's true. Wonder if our American friends have even heard of it.

Wouldn't the Yatsu tag matches give him a nicer look at the 85-6 feud?

I like the entirely fictional idea of "the world" in wrestling. Shit like the 1992 Tournament for the NWA World Tag Team Championship where like 2 guys from Japan, a pair of Mexicans and the Malenko brothers are meant to represent "the rest of the world". Which gives the commentators ammunition to talk about how it's a truly international sport, etc. etc. I enjoy this total myth making. I don't know if anyone's ever watched any snooker, but the "World title" in that is typically contested between 95% people from the UK. In the 90s, there was one dude from Canada and one dude from Thailand and so much weight was placed on them to carry the torch of it being an "international" competition. These days there are loads of Chinese players, so the diaspora is a little wider, but still.

The two UK promotions I've seen this year were Southside Wrestling and Revolution Pro Uk.

From a TV point of view, from the sampling we did, 88 seemed like a monster year for NWA. Would you agree Brick?

NWA 1989 All Japan 1989

Hey Matt, look what I found, we had this exchange at the time: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=5513216 That was literally the last time I thought about RVD. Would be interested to see if people who have been generally more pro-RVD like anarchistxx and maybe Jingus would agree with you.

Last time I even thought about RVD is when I started watching High Flyers matches and wanted to find someone to compare some of the sheer awkward-weirdness of Greg Gagne to. I'd take Greg Gagne over RVD now. RVD, or at least my memory of him from early 00s WWE, is that he represents a spotty style I really don't care for. I do think though, that the comparison with Greg Gagne is warranted: he's very distinctive in the way he does things. Sort of moves oddly. He doesn't do a kick like most human beings would do a kick. This thread did make me want to go back to 2002 though to see what perceptions were like back then. Some random links to the way-back machine: http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?showtopic=8037 http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?showtopic=3728 http://www.oocities.org/colosseum/arena/9893/RVD.htm People comparing him to Shawn Michaels in 95/6. People saying he's a bigger face than Austin on Raw. People annoyed with Jim Ross for criticising him in a column. Extended comparisons with HHH. RVD's getting held down for political reasons. It's part of JR's campaign against Paul Heyman. All fun and games.

Hi all, we're going to be recording the end of 80s awards show this weekend. As mentioned at the end of this episode, we want to give people a chance to make their picks. If a few people take part, it will make a cool reference point. No worries if you haven't seen all of this stuff recently, or ever, just go on your gut feeling. Here are the categories, mainly drawn from old PWI categories and the Slammies: The Loss award for "Best ring apparel" Best personal hygiene Best woman Best ref Best manager Best Announcer (play-by-play) Best Announcer (colour) Best Feud The Total Billy Graham Award for worst wrestler (+ next 4) Best Manager Most Improved Wrestler Best Tag Team Top 20 matches Top 10 wrestlers (Ric Flair Award for Best Wrestler) The Ric Flair award for best wrestler Best Face Best Heel

Yeah, I'm not debating the figures. I guess I always thought that WWF were killing WCW at a much bigger ratio, more like 5:1 than double. I think this perception is partly down to the massive gap in gates where you have WWF shows doing 50,000 at the same time as WCW's most major shows are struggling to get 5,000.

I thought the gap in the late 80s and early 90s would have been a lot bigger than that tbh. For example, Superbrawl II apparently got 199,110 buys, Royal Rumble 92 got 361,493. I'd have expected a bigger gap just going on the perception of where the two companies are at that point. WCW seemed regularly to be drawing 200,000 buys in a period when they are meant to be doing really badly, that's not too shabby. Obviously some of the Wrestlemania and Summerslam numbers are close to tripling that, but the gap is way smaller than I expected.

Halloween Havoc seems to have had a habit of drawing more buys than Starrcade. All the NWA/WCW figures seem really high to me. Are these accurate?

Disappointed to see Ted going for the IC title here. That title was surely beneath him. But Chad, look: the JJ Dillon finish!!