JerryvonKramer

Listening more to this, I think Russo is both a total fucking idiot as evidenced by stuff like this ... Sean Oliver: Aren't you ever scared you're not going to be able to top it next week? When Goldberg and Austin runs out of gas, where do you go then? Vince Russo: That is a good question. Here's the thing that makes me laugh -- and this an "internet" thing -- y'know "hotshotting". There's no such thing as hotshotting because ... when I wrote the television, my thing always was: I don't care what we do this week, next week is going to be even better. I had the confidence in myself that next week's show is going to top this week's show. There was no "hotshotting". A lot of times what they'd call "hotshotting", was when we'd do something like that which would open up the next 12 weeks of programming. That's why you do it. Sean Oliver: But is there a fear that you had that you were going to be giving away too much for free on TV this week? Vince Russo: Never. And also someone who can be occasionally insightful, as he is in the next 2 minutes after the above ... Sean Oliver: Do they do that now? Are the cards too stacked on television? Vince Russo: The 12-month wrestling PPV model is dead. Has been dead for a number of years. Has been dead since UFC took that market away. And the adjustment has been made. The PPV model has to change. To continue doing that now, you're not going to draw any PPV buys, you're just not. ... It probably has to go back to when the WWE just had the big 4. That's probably the best you'll be able to do PPV-wise.

Sean Oliver: [Let's say] I'm a fan in the audience now of WWE's product. Are these guys heels? Vince Russo: It doesn't matter. I couldn't care less. Are people watching the show? That's the question. Are people watching the show? I couldn't care less if they're booing them, if they're cheering them, it means absolutely nothing to me. The only thing that means anything to me is: what is that number on Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon. That's it.

I'm on a bit of a shoot kick at the moment, watching some of the more recent ones. I've just watched the first 30 minutes of the Vince Russo Guest Booker one. Things started off pretty well for Russ -- I absolutely agree with him that characters and emotional investment are more important than moves or match quality. Nothing new there. But then as he kept talking my blood started to boil. Russo starts the interview by rejecting the label of a booker. He says he was never a booker. He was a television writer. He elaborates on why a writer is necessary in today's wrestling. When Sean Oliver asks him why so many guys now lack the personalities of the people he worshiped as a kid (Lou Albano, Chief Jay Strongbow), Russo's answer was that it's because they are thinking about their next move and getting that right, rather than thinking about what their character would do. The reason for this, he says, is because they grew up playing video games. (???!) He might be right to an extent, but isn't half of it also that they have scripted promos? Not so, for Russo, he points to an example of a guy in TNA for whom he scripted every line. After he left TNA, they moved to a format of just three bullet points. Russo smugly pointed out that without the script, this guy was totally lost. Russo's argument is effectively this: - No matter how talented the guy, for 52 weeks of tv a year you need material. It doesn't matter how good a promo you are, the writer needs to be there to give you stuff to say. All I could think about during this was Will's Horsemen set, where we get week-after-week-after-week of Flair, Arn, Ole and Tully cutting promos which I assume weren't in any way scripted. But the key distinction between then and now is that they were selling house shows, and using television as a vehicle to get themselves over and boost their gates. Now the television itself is the thing. So I ask you luminaries of PWO: are writers now necessary for wrestling on television? My own view will not come as a surprise to anybody: I find scripted promos almost always come off as phony. Wrestlers are not actors and, most of the time, just don't have the ability to recite from a script and make it believable. This is one of the reasons I don't watch any more, because so many segments are skin-curlingly embarrassing. So obviously scripted, so obviously inauthentic. Not only that, but they stultify the creativity of every wrestler. If you are a young guy getting into the business and you know that someone else is going to think of what you have to say, of course you're going to become reliant on that, of course you're never going to think about your character in the same way as if you had a hand in its creation. There's a big difference between being given a character and then left to craft it yourself ("This is the character, now make it work"), and being given a character and micro-managed at every stage down to the last word ("This is the character, this is what you do, this is what you say"). I honestly don't believe that the problem is with the performers, it's with the structure and the system.

When did business really drop off for him though? Was it 85 or 86 or even later? If it was 85, are we saying the Duggan-DiBiase feud wasn't compelling? Or the famous Flair-DiBiase match where Murdoch brainbusters Ted on the floor? Isn't that stuff compelling? Didn't the fans go wild for it?

The more important question is the World Class one though. If they suffered a parallel slump, then that would lend some weight to the oil excuse. They didn't lose Kerry until 1990, so it's almost a perfect comparison point. (Watts lost his top draw, Fritz didn't -- and we even get the period when Kerry was out after the accident) I mean if the numbers Watts was talking about are in any way accurate and the oil mega-trend didn't affect business in the way he claims, that means JYD is a top 5 US draw for the 80s since we're effectively attributing a slump from $100k gates down to $20k gates almost entirely because of his absence. Does this also mean that Duggan vs. DiBiase and Murdoch vs. DiBiase didn't draw? Sorry if this is old ground to some of you.

Two things: 1. I don't know if I ever actively liked Brother Love, but I was and still am entertained by his ridiculous accent. 2. What's going on with that Sky remote jdw posted? It's all back-to-front.

What interests me John is that by all accounts -- and common consensus here and elsewhere -- MidSouth TV in 1985 is some of the best wrestling TV ever made. Watts had a very very strong product, so logically you have to start looking at outside factors. In this interview he talks about the changing demographic. A constant theme here is that when he feels things aren't going well, he asks Jerry Jarrett to come in and give an assessment of what he thinks is going wrong. Around 83-4, Jarrett pointed out to him that there are no girls in the audience. Ergo, he brings in the RnRs and the Midnights. Which attracts younger fans. I really believe Watts is one of the smarter promoters from that era. All of which means I'm inclined to believe his "mega-trend" oil glut excuse. But what happened to World Class in the same timeframe?

I thought I remembered you asking about it, and I even did a search for "mega-trend" but it didn't bring this thread up. Didn't think of looking at page 1. Yeah I'm reading about it now. Interesting. Have they since gone back to pre-glut levels of production? I'm just trying to understand how this happened then and I'm currently paying over £1.40 per LITRE here (about 4.5 litres to a gallon)

Actual lucha as in matches from Mexico? ... less than 10. Matches involving guys from Mexico like Mascaras and Dos Caras -- however many there were on the All Japan set. It just so happens that all of them have had this particular style of matwork in common. I still have all of the 90s yearbooks sitting here waiting to be watched. Everyone has been hyping El Dandy, so I am both curious and looking forward to getting there. Just need to get AWA out of the way first.

Watts was arguing that pretty much everything ground to a halt down there. Rock tours cancelled. Is he simply making this up?

I'm just watching the second volume of the Jim Cornette-Bill Watts ROH interview. This is where he's going on and on about the "mega-trend" aka the oil crisis that put him on the verge of bankruptcy. He is saying that his gates in Oklahoma City and Tulsa went from 100k a week to less than 20k a week, and to boot in New Orleans they couldn't find any hookers in the French Quarter. He was losing 50k a week! I don't really see that particular oil crisis mentioned much on tv, in documentaries, historical accounts of the 80s etc. From the way Watts is talking, that had to have been a massive deal for that section of the country. Was it underreported because it was removed from the East and West coasts? I know in this country, there are often complaints about London bias -- i.e. a problem isn't treated as a major deal until it hits London / the South East. I was wondering if there was a bit of that with this mid-80s oil crisis.

I did say "the lucha I've seen" rather than all lucha.

Jason, listening to your Shane McMahon show and your guest's mini-rant about how we should make a distinction between commercial and creative success in wrestling like we do in film criticism is pretty great stuff.

OJ - it depends on the match in question. For example, the matwork in the Bock-Martel matches is excellent. It's not only smart but also intense and nasty. Obviously I'll always take that over Herc. The important factor for me is when it feels like I'm watching an exhibition. As I said, it's the same reason I tend not to like flippy spot-oriented high flyers. It takes me out of things. If the two guys are genuinely struggling for position, I can get into that. If it feels like a skill demonstration, most of the time I can't. The lucha I've seen has been guilty of this.

El-P, I happen to be giving a lecture on Althusser next week, and for my classes I often put together video packages to play in the first 5 minutes or so. I have done one for this lecture, and couldn't resist slipping in a fairly massive wrestling reference so thought I'd share it with you: http://www.sendspace.com/file/niaw8q

Hercules Hernandez sitting in a chinlock kinda makes sense even if he is meant to be an ancient slave or whatever; getting out of a head scissors by means of a headstand just doesn't. On top of that, unlike crappy US gimmicks, there is no kitsch value to fall back on for my own amusement. So it's just two guys tied up like a pair of acrobatic octopuses doing moves that even theoretically don't look like they could hurt. That sort of thing is just not what I'm looking for in my wrestling.

Any said Bulldogs vs Steiners yet?

I think it's a close call as to which out of this and Ranger Ross vs. Butch Reed from Wrestlewar 89 I enjoyed less. Ross/Reed is edging it because Reed came out to funky music and Ross's entrance made me laugh.

Exposer - my distaste for extended matwork is no big secret. I think I was the only guy who had Masa Fuchi vs. Pete Roberts (5/5/87) as 150 for All Japan. That's just not my scene. I don't hate matwork completely, but there has to be something more compelling to it than lying around or doing "neat" counters. I like to see viciousness, it has to look like it is really hurting. My problem with the Lucha I've seen thus far is that none of the matwork looks believable. If you want to hurt someone's neck, you don't contort yourself into a headstand doing it. I have a general problem with "exhibition-y" type matwork, I am as down on that as I am on the worst excesses of flippy flippy highflyers. This is one of the reasons I am a little apprehensive of the Lucha set. I basically hated Mil Mascaras in All Japan.

The only line of defense I can think of for the match is that its placement on the set comes at a time when there's a rush of good matches. The second half of disc 3 is getting towards All-Japan levels of consistency. The Bock vs. Martel matches are excellent, one of them is truly great and potential #1 contender. The Bock vs. Hennig match has great energy and an interesting story. The 6-man tag is lots of fun. That's a very solid stretch of matches. And then in the middle of it, you have this 70s-style matwork borefest with no heat. Part of me does think that if this was on, for example, disc 1 right next to something like Verne vs. Bock, it might not seem quite so objectionable. So I'm willing to say that context -- the context of everything around it being pretty great -- might make it seem worse than it is. I don't see an argument for saying this is anywhere near the level of the other Martel matches on disc 3 though, especially not the ones with Bock. And yes, of course, Brad is the differentiator. That and the face vs. face dynamic (Jumbo doesn't count as a face for me in AWA, he's a unique case). So take away Martel's fire, his comeback spots, and a lot of what makes him great is taken away. You're left with a goody-two-shoes white meat babyface who is technically proficient and not a lot else. In there against Brad who is that to the power of 10. I can think of situations where I might enjoy Brad. For example, getting his face smashed in against any heel. But this match was more or less set up to extenuate all of the things I don't like about him. I find it really odd that the guy who hates Mike Rotunda doesn't also hate this dude.

Dylan, honestly, I feel the opposite. The fact you've gone in so hard for that match has actually made me question your views on everything else too -- in the world. Ever. I'd go as far as to say that it's the least enjoyable match I've seen in the past 12 months, and I've seen at least three Ranger Ross matches in that timeframe. Brad Rheingans makes Dory Funk Jr. look like The Rock. Brad Rheingans in a face vs. face match with a dead crowd working 10-minute limp submission holds? Are you fucking kidding me?

It was a key period for me too. Do you remember when the Dangerous Alliance were all in tuxedos that one night? I remember swaggering around my room pretending I was one of them. Just the coolest fucking stable ever. I also remember the Jesse Ventura arm wrestling tournament with Ice Train being a big part of it. Seriously though, I loved the Dangerous Alliance so much -- just loved Arn Anderson and Rick Rude. Wanted to see that Wargames so much, but we never got to see it. Something weird happened and our TV fastforwarded about 5 or 6 months in the space of a week so we went from the summer of 92 to sometime in 93 with Flair for the Gold and Bagwell and Scorpio being pushed.

Couldn't have hated that Brad Rheingans vs. Martel match more. What was that doing on the set? Sorry Dylan, I really hated it -- as my comments on DVDR just now attest.

Watts had a major major *major* hardon for Gordy and Williams. I'd argue they are the most pushed to the moon tagteam in any major promotion ever -- and that includes Road Warriors in the 80s. Bash 92 is a tournament for the newly made NWA Tag Titles, MVC were ALREADY WCW tag champs and they basically romp through that tournament and win those belts too. I'm not sure if Gordy and Williams ate a pin to anyone in that 6 months. Monster team of all monster teams. Still, never really understood why Watts had them going on last all the time. It's a weird period. Ron Simmons is champ for much of 92 and he hardly ever headlined any of the shows.