JerryvonKramer

I've also come to realise my caveats will be explicitly ignored, especially by jdw. Like this one: This the bit where I say this isn't really about Sting. Since jdw's post there did return time and again to money though and since Dylan made a little quip about drawing at sub-AWA levels the answer appears to be "no". The bottomline alwas comes back to money and being a draw. That's all I was really after here. There are a few guys who fall into the bracket of being "famous", of being perceived to be big stars mainly because a lot of people watched them on tv which doesn't always translate into box office numbers. I think Sting is one of them. Big Daddy is probably another. In a weird way, so is Shawn Michaels.

I haven't done my analysis yet. Of course, the gimmicks and angles and even the general gist of promos are all Vince's or Creative's ideas. Of course. The word-for-word thing IS the thing I'm caught up on, because that is the precise problem with so many of today's skits and promos. I am nerdy enough to have exact promos from the 80s and early 90s in mind where I have a good sense that they were scripted word-for-word and also for ones where I'm pretty sure they weren't. I also like to be theatrical, so I am saving my examples for the big long analysis post with youtube links that I am planning. Unfortunately, I know I wont have time to do this until at the earliest Wednesday evening. This post is doing little more than building hype for it. Yes, my life has come to this, building hype for a forum post about wrestling promos

Going through 1989 Observers, I've come across a certain "Tim Evans" having matches. Is that the Tim Evans from here?

Holy shit, it's like I completely forgot this folder was here. Have missed the past 4 weeks by the looks of things. Yes, I love this match. Part of what I like about it, is that The Fantastics are really vicious here and sort of do a quasi-heel turn in that the crowd is against them by the end of the match. The beatdown on Gilbert is as brutal as Fulton and Young would ever get and he's just tremendous selling that. Easily the best Simmons had looked up to that point too (and, really, all the way until 1990 and Doom). It's his only standout performance on the big shows. Of all the NWA shows we've seen, this match stands out as the biggest "hidden gem".

Forgot to mention it at the time Crossface, but that post is beautiful, poetic almost. I enjoyed reading it then and again just now. (still hate Kamala though )

Excellent analogy.

Let me phrase this another way. Wrestling has changed. The business model for wrestling has changed. The product has changed. Where once TV was essentially a shill for live shows, now TV is an end in itself. The target is not necessarily house show numbers but Neilsen ratings. Soooo, being "a draw", in the conventional sense, from one point of view isn't what it was. Live shows are not what they once were. I asked this question, to an extent, with Sting in mind. Could you make an argument for Sting being a big TV star, despite the fact he was never a proven draw? I don't want to get caught up in Sting though necessarily. I'm just wondering in general if being a big TV star could ever come to mean the same (or replace) the idea of being a big draw.

Question: how much can being "a TV star" replace being a proven draw?

That's a pet hate of mine too Loss. Think I even mentioned it during the GAB89 show, Survivor Series promos where everyone is shouting are just the worst.

I was watching the 1985 Timeline shoot with Greg Valentine the other day and he told a story about turning up to a recording session for localised promos and being handed a script. He said "this is new", and refused to do it. That tells us two things: 1. There were definitely scripts floating around 2. The wrestlers, especially old-school ones like Greg, were likely to show some resistance to the idea. Here are 10 prominent names from 1980s WWF: Hulk Hogan Roddy Piper Randy Savage Jake Roberts Ted DiBiase Rick Rude Mr. Perfect Ultimate Warrior Jim Duggan Junkyard Dog Let's try to look beyond the fact, for a moment, that most people compiling a list of "top men on the mic ever" might include some of these names. I want to focus on the extent to which anyone thinks their promos were scripted word-for-word as Sean Liska is arguing here. I don't have time right now and possibly wont till tomorrow, but ideally we'd post notable promos from each of these guys and have a think about whether they are coming up with the lines themselves or being fed them. For TWO of these guys -- Hogan and Piper -- we can see examples in films in which we know they are acting from a script, so that might make a decent comparison. Sean's idea is that they are mostly being scripted. My idea is that at least 90% of the time, they are coming up with the stuff themselves. I find it very hard to believe a script writer is coming up with Piper's coked-up promos, or that they'd write anything as dark as Jake's promos, or that guys with strongly themed characters like Rude, DiBiase and Perfect couldn't come up with some of their lines by themselves -- do we think Rude was being scripted in WCW too? We know Warrior had a lot of his own ideas for his characters -- does anyone believe his famous HOAWK HOGAN promos were scripted by someone? If I find some time later on, I will post example promos from each guy and then pull out individual lines to speculate on how "scripted" we think they are. I will also try to find clips of INTERACTION between some of these guys to see how scripted I think they are too. As a basis of comparison, I will get some promos and skits from RAW in 2012-3 and do the same thing. If what Sean Liska is saying is true, then the problem comes down not to writing, or writers, but to the quality of the performers. I simply don't believe that the 80s generation were just innately better than the current crop -- I just think they were given more freedom and creativity on the mic. I look forward to doing some analysis on the language of promos. I'd like to think it's not that difficult to tell between highly scripted promos and stuff guys are just coming up with.

Meltzer did say he'd put him top 50 but he wasn't a "slam dunk". I did get the impression he was being polite to Matysik too though. There's one moment where he differs slightly on something else too and Matysik says quite pointedly "it's ok disagree then". Which was a nice reaction for a guy trying to encourage debate. Can't remember what that was about now. There's definitely the feeling of him being an old man set in his ways. That said, it was interesting to hear him talking about the views of long-dead oldtimers.

I should elaborate a bit: I'd always assumed that Wrestling at the Chase could have top talent on its cards because Sam Muchnick both had maximum respect in the industry and basically controlled the world title. Who wouldn't want to be on there? I can see a level of prestige being attached to it, but I guess I hadn't thought about St. Louis being head and shoulders in front of any other major town. I mean if you look at Houston cards over the years booked by Paul Boesch, they are also full of big names -- and mostly the same ones who headlined St. Louis. I'd never thought of those island city type towns as being the equivalent of a top university -- and the more I think about it, the more that seems like a strange analogy for anyone to make.

I knew St. Louis was a major wrestling town, but I've never heard it called "the Harvard" of wrestling before. In my mind it was just another major wrestling town alongside Houston, New York and few other key places. They were comparing it to New York on this show, and saying basically that if you were chosen to headline a St. Louis show that meant you were a made man. And also, unlike New York, you could keep going back for 15 years. So, yes and no. Yes, I knew St. Louis was a major town. No, I didn't think of it as the jewel in the crown, or "the Harvard" of wrestling towns.

I'm listening to that show now and while there is definitely a rambling old geezer quality to proceedings -- to the point where I jump every time Alvarez butts in -- I do think Matysik and Meltzer do an effective job of defending against the "he looked after the St. Louis guys" talking point. That's if what they are saying is true though. Was St. Louis really "the Harvard" of wrestling towns? I've never heard that before from anyone. EDIT: He also flatly admits Randy Orton was a mistake and regrets it.

OJ -- the backstrage vignettes are exactly the thing that I was talking about when I say I can't stand to watch the modern presentation. They are often so horrible and so hokey that it makes me feel embarrassed to be watching what I am. I can think of at least 7 different occasions when I've been trying to give TNA a chance over the past five years when some insanely crappy segment will come on where the acting is a lot worse than the very worst of the Aussie soaps. The WWE stuff is not a lot better. The problem is also that it only takes one or two bad segments to tarnish a whole 30 minutes of TV. If one backstage skit is so atrocious that I'm reaching for the remote, it doesn't matter that the next 15 minutes is a great promo or whatever because I'm already watching something else. I don't agree that "a lot" of wrestlers are quality performers. The vast majority of them are not. When they are doing scripted promos and scripted dialogue backstage, they can't compare well to the quality TV or films any of us are used to watching. It just can't compete with that on that level. And yet, the Mr. Perfect vignettes, the Million Dollar Man skits and vignettes, the Bossman vignettes -- hell, even The Mountie or Repo Man vignettes -- were all pretty much pitch perfect. The WWF were AWESOME at doing that shit. And they did it for years. I don't understand what changed and why it had to change. I'm pretty sure Hennig or DiBiase weren't scripted word-for-word in any of those videos that we still remember now. They had their characters down, and they knew how to act accordingly. I also don't think Hennig or DiBiase were necessarily innately better actors or promos than any of today's talent. They were just in an environment that let them take a character and run with it. WWF was still doing that stuff in the late 90s. I don't see the need for the scripts. Watch old Prime Times. Heenan and Monsoon didn't need scripts. Guys could just come and hang for 5 minutes, in character, with set stuff they needed to get across. If the character wasn't a big talker or a good promo -- don't put them in those segments, or give them a manager. Simple, problem solved. What changed? Do we really need the 15-minute promos now? When was that paradigm set? We don't need 15 minutes of one man talking. If we do, then something has gone wrong. What could possibly be complex enough to justify 15 minutes of mic time? Do we need cheesy, fucking abysmal backstage segments with wrestlers exchanging written dialogue like pieces of wood? What used to happen? One guy is doing a promo and another guy attacks him. One guy is doing a promo and another guy gets on the mic to challenge them. It's not like these writers are Harold Pinter giving them great stuff to say. In fact, the more ambitious the writers get, the worse and less natural it all comes across because the wrestlers simply don't have the acting chops to do it any justice. This is going to come across like a grumpy "why aren't things like they used to be" rant, but I really don't see why things are like they are at the moment. If I was running wrestling, the first thing I'd want to chuck out are those backstage exchanges. Get rid of them. What's the justification for the camera even being there? Shit, bring back Mean Gene or someone else in that spot. It makes more sense. The next thing I'd get rid of is 15-minute in-ring promos. There's no need for it. Wrestling isn't War and Peace, the storyline is never going to get much more complex than "I'm pretty great, you're not. You and I have some fundamental differences and I want to settle them in the ring". Promos shouldn't be going much longer than 6-7 minutes.

Does anyone actually think Flair was a lousy booker? 89 and 94 don't stand out as bad years from a product point of view.

You're good at pointing back to original posts. But that's not how this conversation went down jdw. I'm not going to re-summarise it because it's right there for everyone to read. However, this particular exchange isn't getting me any closer to answering the sorts of questions I want to answer so I'm not interested in taking it any further. I am interested in building a fuller picture of the decline of UWF. So far the Kayfabe Memories thread has provided the greatest insight into that. If I find anything else, I'll post it here.

The problem is actually the opposite of this. The Cheers Actors are actors. So when they are given a script, they can make it believable. Wrestlers are not actors. So when they are given a script it comes off like someone reading a script. If you think about most wrestlers, they only ever had one character. Dick Murdoch the wrestler wasn't a million miles away from Dick Murdoch the man. Let Dick Murdoch be Dick Murdoch and say whatever comes into his head and that's going to be more believable and authentic than giving him a script and asking him to recite what you imagine his character might say. Dick Murdoch probably isn't a great actor, he probably doesn't have the required skills to learn that script in a way that makes you believe him. Now the very idea of "a Dick Murdoch" is an anachronism because for the most part the wrestlers' real personalities are never allowed to come out. They sadle them with scripted characters from the moment they debut. The cases you've pointed to are anomalies. It's not Trips and Undertaker you should be looking at but the younger guys. Guys who have made their name in the past 5-10 years.

jdw, how can I be wrong when all I've said is that there are multiple factors on the table? Read the thread from Kayfabe Memories. There are lots of people from that area, who also lived through the period you are talking about, who don't seem to agree with you. All I'm saying is that your take is not the only take and that you are wrong to write as if your word is gospel, or indeed that there is a gospel in a case like this. Also, Bill Watts doesn't point to the oil glut as the ONLY factor, but as one of a few. All that aside though, I don't entirely understand how you are telling me I'm "wrong" when I haven't even advanced a position on this yet. I'm wrong for saying that the version of events you are giving me isn't the only one I should be considering? Is that it? Come on dude, you're the history major here -- is that really a "wrong" position for me to take?

Ha maybe I'm reading it wrong but it looks like you said he's "both a total fucking idiot" and then just trailed off without listing a good quality. There's a second line in italics there, it is easy to miss I'll grant you

jdw -- I don't think anyone is disputing the need for someone to layout storylines and angles, it's more on the micro level of giving them scripts -- telling them what to say word-by-word. So Hogan and Orndorff knew how this turn was going to go down, but they were left largely to their own devices in terms of exactly what they were going to say along the way. The problem we're talking about is a lack of autonomy on that level. "Go out there and achieve these objectives" is a very different order from "here's a script, learn that and perform that".

Anyone know where we can get MidSouth / UWF attendance figures? They did the same towns and venues time and again: Tulsa, New Orleans, Houston, OKC. Should be very easy to see a significant drop off in gates if the numbers are there. That would effectively eliminate Taylor's version of events, leaving the other three possibilities. I would also be interested to see when exactly the numbers drop off (assuming they do). Is it a sudden drop after JYD goes? Is it a gradual decline? Does it start in 85, 86 or 87? If anyone just knows this stuff, would be cool to know. EDIT: Came across this: http://www.infinitecore.ca/superstar/index...8396&page=0 Same sorts of positions being put forward. Oil definitely being put forward as a contributing factor. Mid-late 86 as the time things started to fall off. RE-EDIT: I'd encourage those of you interested, to read the Richard Sullivan piece and then the Kayfabe Memories board reaction. Sullivan gets a lot of criticism for not understanding the difference between sports fans and wrestling fans in the area. There's a core of guys who reject his theory that there's no correlation between the oil glut and business because it is based largely on a dis-analogy (fallacy 101). I think that this shows, if nothing else, that jdw is largely unjustified for writing that rather pompous post above; if anything is clear about this question it's that there are multiple explanations in play for why the territory failed in the end.

jdw, you have a habit of writing as if the Scrolls of History are written, you've got access to them, and all the answers have already been established. I don't think the answer to this is as simple as you are making out. I don't believe that Terry Taylor would make out business was great for them if he didn't remember (or thinks he remembers) the arenas being full. What does he have to gain by saying that 20 years later? I don't believe DiBiase pointing to hotshotting is a complete "waste of time". Right, they are wrestlers, not historians. But their accounts of events should be taken into a broader consideration. Actual historians look at more than just hard data to draw conclusions. Did I advance a "theory" here? If I did, I must have missed it myself. But if everyone took the same view of history that you do, there'd only need to be one account of any given event written. Anyway, there's a brick wall, feel free to knock yourself out on it.

I'm watching the Terry Taylor Guest Booker now, and according to him the UWF was doing good business even in 87. He keeps saying they got 9,000 or 10,000 people at the Omni. According to him, the main thing that was sending Watts under was that he over extended and the costs were spiraling out of control. The distances between towns was too great, he also had "political costs" with the different athletic commissions. Taylor says -- and I quote -- "We were drawing best business ever when the oil crisis was at its worst ... we were roaring, people were coming to watch". I'm not saying I believe this, but it's a fourth explanation on the table now: 1. Oil mega-trend (Watts) 2. JYD left so gates were down and / or the product wasn't what people wanted to see anymore (jdw and Loss) 3. Dundee hotshotted the territory (DiBiase) 4. Costs were out of control (Taylor) This sort of condundrum won't be new to any history majors among you, but in the next week or so I'm going to see if I can have a shot at determining which one is closest to being the truth by looking at attendance figures and other things. It's quite an interesting one.

Check out my line in italics there rvd, I think it's a great idea. I was just saying that Russo has moments of being a complete tool, then then moments of talking sense.