JerryvonKramer

Folks, we've hit a bit of a snag on finding the footage for a lot of these.

I've got this vision of some dudes in Japan watching TNA and saying to each other "You know that's just how crowds are in America. They are quiet. It's a cultural thing."

Caught some earlier

Have there ever been any good documentaries about either JCP or the old territory system not made by WWE?

I think they would have gotten over better in a slightly earlier period. 1993 sort of time. Imagine them feuding with Bagwell and Scorpio or Pretty Wonderful. That's a context in which I can see them fitting in 100% whether on the face side or the heel side.

This all goes back to booking philosophies 101. Think about WWF heels from the 1980s and early 1990s. They came in only two shapes: big fat monsters or scheming technicians who were also massive cowards. The WWF never ever booked the second group of guys strongly. I mean they PROTECTED them, but they didn't make them seem strong as threats -- does that make sense? Think of heel Jake, heel Savage, DiBiase, Rude, or Perfect. Flair in WWF was booked as just another one of these guys. Yes, he was the de facto top heel, but so was DiBiase in 88, Savage in 89, Rude (and later Perfect) in 90. These guys would go over jobbers and JTTS clean, but they'd almost always win cheap against credible faces. Count out, feet-on-the-ropes pin, manger-interference finish, etc. etc. All this means is that no matter how well built a DiBiase or Savage or Rude were, in the world of WWF kayfabe you don't really give them a chance vs. a Hogan or a Warrior. You always knew deep down that the big muscely guy is going to beat the sneaky technical guy. In the world of WWF presentation, Bundy, Andre, Bossman -- these are the sorts of threats that were given a real hope (kayfabe-wise) of beating Hogan or Warrior. NWA is like a completely different universe. Yes, the heels got cheap wins and cheated there too, but they were also given credibility in a way that WWF never were in that time frame. NWA Flair and WWF Flair are like night and day in that respect.

I think WWF did take a very dark turn in 1991. The Jake vs. Savage feud is only the most visible and extreme example, but think about stuff like DiBiase bullying Virgil and making him clean fungus from between his toes earlier in the year. I think they carried on down this path with the Flair vs. Savage stuff in 92 and the Liz centrefold until something (steroid scandal?) made them change course. I really like this angle by the way. I remember the first time I watched This Tuesday in Texas, I was absolutely blown away by the intensity and the hatred of the feud too. Jake and Savage has something special with this feud, something that seemed to go beyond wrestling in a way that is rare (Magnum vs. Tully also has this). Also, we shouldn't underestimate how traumatic this angle might have been for kids seeing someone actually get bitten by a snake and thinking that they were at genuine risk of death. Really surprised that the feud did low draws BUT ... weren't Hogan vs. Flair also pulling poor gates at this time? My conclusion looking at that would be something like "the market was down in general".

I feel like even WCW's significance has a man-managed in-continuity narrative though. It enters continuity in 1996 and the story is as follows: - Ric Flair was once a great wrestler who was part of a group known as the Four Horsemen and won many titles - NWO - Eric wanted to put us out of business - dirty tactics - 82 weeks - Tony Schiavone mentioned Foley winning the title on air and millions and millions of people turned over - Stone Cold Stone Cold Stone Cold - Stone Cold - The Rock - Stone Cold! That's the story of WCW. I do wonder how much of that is internalized by the average fan.

Feel like 1985 is an interesting year. Not only those matches already mentioned but also Tully vs. Magnum TA, DiBiase vs. Duggan and a whole bunch of Ric Flair.

As an afterthought to this thread, when does the point come when a name just becomes like a legend acknowledged in the distant past rather than in the collective memory? To use a bit of comic-book lingo, it sometimes feels like everything that happened from Wrestlemania I is "in continuity" WWE kayfabe-wise, but anything that happened before that -- say Lou Thesz or Buddy Rogers or even the 1970s in general -- is considered ancient history. Something like Golden-age 30s and 40s Batman from the vantage point of present-day continuity. Does there come a point where Hulk Hogan's 80s run is considered ancient history in that way or will it always be that present-day continuity kinda starts in 1985? Am I overstating this even and is it already considered ancient history from the modern 18-year old fan? I dunno.

The thing with this, Loss, is that it sometimes feels like all it would take to change the perception of El Dandy as a joke or Dennis Stamp meme sort of character would be for someone like Mick Foley to come out and say he's an all-time great. THE JIMMY SNUKA SPLASH!!!! The greatest moment in wrestling history pre-1985.

Do feel like there's a hard split between, for example, this place and your typical wrestling fan who likes old-school wrestling. This is not a knock on them, but the Place to Be guys and their following kinda represent that view. I don't think many of them are seriously going to sit down at watch 4 hours of prime El Dandy matches to overturn this sort of received opinion. So AWA is boring. Buddy Rose is a fat jobber. Shawn and Bret are the best wrestlers of all time. etc. etc. There's no imperitive there to question or challenge those assumptions by watching footage. You have to expect that, I guess.

Scott Keith seems like a sort of smark dinosaur to me.

Where the Big Boys Play #42 - Starrcade 89 Chad and Parv welcome Charles (aka Loss) to discuss the Iron Man tournament at Starrcade 89: Future Shock! Highlights include: Charles's background as a wrestling fan and the birth of the ProWrestlingOnly.com forums, imagining El Gigante vs. Zeus in 1989, the problem with Sting's wardrobe, does crowd heat affect how you rate a match?, a farewell to Tommy Young and thoughts on referees in general, and end of the show awards.

I'd be interested to know when exactly he reached the stage where he was just too big and immobile to be effective. He was feuding with Vader in 1996, which on paper looks like it could have potential to produce some good matches but he was upwards of 700lbs at the time.

It's pretty annoying in cases where the guy is now dead and that was the one shot anyone had at an interview. Imagine if all shoot interviews ever had been conducted by a panel of 3-4 people from PWO. Imagine if khawk had interviewed Slaughter.

I think the more interesting question to ask is why Vince changed his from regular match sequencing for Manias and (and Summerslams). But I guess we'll never know short of asking him. I mean whatever anyone says, jdw's take is just a guess, as is Dooley's, as is mine or anyone else's. There's not a lot we can extrapolate from looking at house shows or other big events prior to the Mania era. The PPVs were booked differently, the "why" we've been trying to figure out. It's not something they stuck with for all that long. It was only for a 4-5 year stretch that Vince was booking his PPVs that way. Look at Wrestlemania X. I wonder if Shawn vs. Razor ladder match hurt Bret vs. Yokozuna at all. Been over a decade since I watched that show but I don't recall it hurting, and most people in that crowd had probably never seen a ladder match. Wrestlemania XI stacked the card late (Bret vs. Backlund, Diesiel vs. Shawn, Bam Bam vs. Taylor). As this thread documents, the WWF started booking their shows differently in general from about 1993 onwards. The match sequencing on big shows was yet another thing to change. Might Pat Patterson be the differentiator?

Boon, my own instinct is to agree with you and I made a version of this argument a year or so back but can't for the life of me find it. Hold on ... [search term: Wembley] http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...p;#entry5513181 Here it is, buried in the HoF thread. In fact, Matt D was part of it As I said back then, I still think it's pretty amazing how they packed out Wembley since: well, how many people really had Sky? Sure, MORE would have picked it up in 92 for the first EPL, but it still can't account for more than 4-5% of the population. A lot of people would have gone down the pub to watch the football, for example (and no pub would show wrestling! ha ha). Yet, I had friends who went to Summerslam who didn't have Sky! And I'm sure they weren't alone. The idea that Vince got someone who didn't even have access to the product to go to the show is pretty amazing if you think about it. Point being here Boon, is that I'm sure Sky figures were a factor (in the decision to run Wembley, for example), but it's hard to believe that the ticket sales on the day all came from Sky subscribers, maybe that could happen now, but not in 1992. I'm more inclined to think that a significant portion of that crowd were there because of their action figures and branded lunch boxes and lever-arch files. WWF wrestlers were household names even though maybe only 1 in 10 kids could watch the show (maybe 1 in 20 in poorer areas). I've talked about it many times but I think August 1992 was right in the zeitgeist of WWF being a big fad here. If they'd tried to run Summerslam 93 in the UK, I can't see that many people showing up. How Vince was able to manufacture that fad in the first place remains something of a mystery to me. Marketing genius, I guess. The point I wanted to make is that the LoD action figures, lunch boxes, lever-arch files, pencil cases, ruck sacks, trainers, t-shirts and so on were HUGE. The proposition to a kid of 8 or 9 of seeing them live was tantamount to saying "see He-Man live". The same was true of Warrior and Bret -- those were the guys with heavy Merch. I don't recall Davey Boy having his face on all of those things. He had an action figure, sure, but so did IRS. I think the massive reception Davey Boy gets on the day comes as much from the fact he's drenched in the Union Jack as it does from any pre-event build. Remember that Summerslam 92 was going to be beamed back to the Domestic Market and it's a very nice story for Americans to see Bulldog get a massive ovation from a British crowd. I'm inclined to think it is more packaging than anything else. I don't believe Davey Boy was a bigger star here than anywhere in the States or Canada. It's neat marketing to present him that way, but if he was such a massive UK draw then where are the figures after Summerslam 92? Bottom-line: The big crowd that day was partly because "WWF is in town" at the height of WWF being a big thing, partly because of the strength of merch and kids wanting to see these faces they'd seen so often on all their stuff in the flesh (and those guys were LoD, Warrior and Bret), and partly because of the process you describe Boon with more people having access to Sky. [on a side note, you know on the VHS when they do the exclusive with fans mingling outside the stadium? Well, as the camera pans across the queue, my friend was tying his shoelaces. So his mum is on the VHS but he's nowhere to be seen. Hilarious, he was in full Warrior face paint.]

OJ, just out of interest, did you watch any European promotions outside of Britain? If so, what were they and what did you make of them? I can see you've listed Wanz there.

There are others though: Sting/Vader most obviously, Piper/Valentine (pinfall finish?), Hansen/Luger (Starrcade 90, been a while, but wasn't bad), errr ... Austin vs. Savio Vega. Rock vs. HHH even? I mean sure there are plenty of bad ones too, but I don't think it's awful as match gimmicks go and it can be done right on occasion. Guys like Wahoo and Ivan Koloff must have some good strap matches somewhere too.

Isn't a bullrope match basically a strap match / Russian chain match with a cowbell in the middle of the rope? There are loads of good matches with that stip. I feel like any variant of the "on a pole" match (including the aforementioned Coal Miner's Glove) tends to feel anti-climactic. I can think of many examples of bad ones.

Haku turns up on the AWA set?! I really need to shape up on that front. I was never down on Bossman by the way, I just think DiBiase is a better worker than him.

I was thinking of doing a sister thread on Barbarian vs. One Man Gang, but was worried that Barb would just landslide it. The vote on this one is actually a lot closer than I would imagine (assumed Bossman would get the popular vote).

I'm not necessarily pro-Haku in this debate, just wanted to point out the massive difference between his WWF and WCW incarnations. Has anyone seen early Haku? What was he doing pre-WWF? I kinda feel like the young Big Bubba we see with Cornette and MX is very green and he develops very fast and is pretty good by the time we see him tagging with Akeem. But Haku feels like the complete package from the start with the Islanders. I've not seen King Tonga: The Rookie Years.

I'm a little puzzled by this because to my eyes Haku never looked big when he was in the Islanders or even later on as King Haku or tagging with Andre. But when he was Meng he was a proper monster heel and a good bit bigger in terms of his physique. Did you really think of him as a big man in WWF? I don't think Haku is given enough credit for how he was able to transition as a worker from being a more agile guy with assorted savate kicks and so on in WWF to being a 300lb beast in WCW. Some screenshots: Now look at him in WCW: Almost a different guy in terms of the way he looked and was booked.