JerryvonKramer

I think the main point about in-ring Rotunda is that while he's boring-as-fuck 90% of the time, he was a guy who could have a really good night on occasion. Out-of-ring, well it's tastes. I get a kick out of him bullying Rick Steiner in his whiny nerdy voice, or telling fans they haven't paid their taxes in his whiny nerdy voice. He was a consummate douche. I like the way he didn't have music as IRS and he walked down the aisle trashing the fans using some bureaucratic-sounding language. I think he stands out as being really different in a market saturated by shouty muscle heads. He's one of the few wrestlers of that era who I believe actually went to classes at university.* As far as masochism goes, I wouldn't watch 1000 matches of ANY wrestler, at least not uninterrupted by a ton of other stuff. * On this, someone should write a sitcom based in West Texas State. Imagine a seminar group with the class of 74.

This is top stuff Kris.

I know you hate Rotunda and you in no way intended this as an invite to discuss him again but: My argument was that he was actually better in WWF because he wasn't allowed to sit in those boring chinlocks for 10 minutes at a stretch. Now you mention it though, Rotunda is one guy, I think, who is a little slept on in terms of his ability to play a role and in terms of his micwork. He has a very whiny quality to his voice and somehow he made that IRS character work. And watching all the Varsity Club stuff it's been HIS promos rather than Kevin Sullivan's that have stood out. At a time when practically every other wrestler was doing shouty coked-up promos, Rotunda was doing these whiny, slightly nerdy even promos which actually made him a very effective heel for that time period. His out of ring stuff is probably better than his in-ring stuff. All of that said, I've been pretty impressed with his 89 feud with Rick Steiner and then both the Steiner Brothers. He seems to stop doing all the boring stuff, rackets up the intensity and becomes a human suplex machine for a few months there. So my big caveat to all of the above is "except when he's wrestling Steiner in 89". That's easily the best stretch of his career in the ring. I've seen Kamala in Mid South and in mid-80s Crockett and now in AWA too and simply don't see what the fuss is about. He was always shitty as far as I can see. "He played his role well", I don't agree. I really don't. Fuck it, Matt, let's take this to The Microscope, I promise I'll actually analyse some matches.

I'm not against the "he was good in his role" argument, I was just responding to Matt D's comment that it's dying out. Kamala is a guy who seems to elicit it every time he is mentioned. As I've argued many times now, I simply don't agree that Kamala was "good at his role" because he played it not like a savage beast but like a scared animal. He never came across like a legitimate threat. That's just my take on Kamala though, not the "role" argument itself. Post-colonial guilt though, ha ha ha.

My wife met Hulk Hogan last year and said he's a very big guy even now. There's a photo of her and and her colleagues with him and most people there are barely upto his shoulder. He's not just big, he's fucking massive in terms of normal, every day people.

Let's try talking about Kamala and see how far we get without that line being used.

I also have another question: how often was Flair on Mid Atlantic TV doing promos in the 81-5 touring champ period? Was it only when he was in town for a match or did he pop in fairly regularly to say hi to Bob Caudle? Obviously, I was 1-3 years old and living 4,000 miles away at the time, but my PERCEPTION has always been that it was the latter. That even though Flair was touring he was also kinda around that Mid Atlantic TV show even if he didn't always wrestle on it. Can anyone who watched that show or has seen lots of TV from that time verify?

http://www.wrestling-titles.com/nwa/world/...atches1983.html Who is this guy? Also: God.

When we were having the insanely long Sting HOF argument a year or so ago, I went through pretty much all WCW's 1992 results on Graham's site to see if Sting made any difference as company ace in the absence of Flair. The 92 figures are legitimately shocking. Many house shows were lower than 1,000 people with stuff like Rude vs. Steamboat or Rude vs. Sting on top. Business wasn't just bad, it was through the floor. ---------- I would like to talk about 87 Crockett with jdw a bit more because I think the disappointing Starrcade result puts a different colour on the year. Also, from what I've read in Meltzer, Crockett's problem, even in 88, wasn't drawing or TURN OVER, it was making a profit. Their costs were loopy stupid. They mismanaged things to the extent that you can make the argument that Flair was drawing AND that the company was losing money hand over fist. The end of JCP is a very different scenario to, for example, the end of AWA where there were playing tiny venues with a handful of people turning up. JCP were doing RELATIVELY OK in terms of audience numbers, buyrates, and so on, what they sucked at was business fundamentals. Like don't book one show in Charlotte and the next night in LA and the next night in Philly and fly the roster back and forth between those places. That's not Flair's fault is it? JCP in 87-88 might be one of the few times in wrestling history when a company was drawing but still losing money. By 89, after the Turner takeover, forget about it. The marketing promotion of the Flair-Steamboat feud might just be the worst marketing promotion of all time. Bottomline here is: despite the fact that JCP were on the brink of bankruptcy, as bizarre as it sounds, there are still positives to draw.

Go on jdw I'm listening. My impression is that even if Flair was gone for stretches, on Mid-Atlantic TV he'd still be treated like The Man. Starrcade 83 and 84 were built around him.

I'm not and haven't been at all discussing his time in WCW. I'm was saying there wouldn't have been a WCW without a Flair-led JCP. Maybe KrisZ and jdw can bring some numbers to bear on thus though, we're getting some real counter arguments on Flair-as-JCP lynchpin. I'm very interested in them.

Loss, the problem with that post though is that it is foregrounding WCW; my argument is foregrounding JCP and what IT achieved. What WCW went on to do with the house that Flair built is neither here nor there in terms of the argument I'm trying to advance.

Ok. I was curious if you'd seen him work in his prime and where you would have seen it as I don't think there is much out there. Just checked Cornette's garbage tapes to see if he crops up but he doesn't. Where was Thunberbolt Patterson actually based for most of his peak? I think that's true of a certain type of worker, but it doesn't work for everyone. Smart story-teller workers are going to age well. Instinctual make-it-up-as-you-go-along workers like Flair not so much. I'm not sure if it's true to say that Flair didn't "get it", he clearly did, but stripped of his endless stamina and half his moveset he wasn't even a shadow of the worker he used to be.

Loss - I am talking about Flair as a draw for JCP from 77-87 (as outlined above). The point about WCW is that it wouldn't have existed in the form we knew it from 89-96 (or indeed AT ALL) if Flair hadn't been drawing for JCP in that period, if JCP hadn't have been as big as it was by 88, if JCP had died before 88 and so on. I am not treating them as the same thing, far from it, but it is undeniable that one led from the other. Go on then Dylan I'll let you give the punchline to your own question: what two things happened between 75 and 85? I think this is another string to his bow, and it's a considerable string for sure. But Flair was the face of JCP during the time he was touring champ as well, there can't be any doubt about that. You make it sound as if 85-88 is the only time we should consider Flair as the lynchpin of the company, that's not strictly true is it.

I'm interested by this point. What towns were Mid Atlantic running in 1975? What towns were Crockett running in 1985? What about by 87? There's an argument to say that that's the second biggest expansion wrestling has ever seen. Not only that, Crockett managed to leapfrog the AWA -- and every other promotion -- to become the number 2 US company. Flair was their man when they did this. Is that a "stretch"? Why. Tell me how. I'd love to hear more from Loss and Dylan -- and anyone else -- on this. I don't think it's talked about enough.

I was thinking JCP were national before the buyout and up until 88 they were making money. A few things were badly botched: UWF, the two offices, grip on costs, marketing in general, Dusty's booking, Magnum's injury etc. but Jim Crockett Jr took things national himself. They were making good money in 85, 86, 87. Not Vince money but pretty good, and better than any other promotion. Meltzer goes through it in tedious detail which I'm sure you've read. It's that I'm crediting Flair for -- drawing for a company with completely inept business savvy and zero marketing knowhow. It's everything upto Turner in November 88 rather than after it. 88 itself was a disaster for JCP and nothing short of a clusterfuck of mistakes. But Flair's 77-87 from a drawing and promotion growth perspective is as important to that company as Hogan was to Vince. WCW until Bishcoff never made a dime (as WCW 89-96) I'm just saying the infrastructure, what gates they could rely on, the audience -- all that was the house built by Flair. Even if by 92-3 it had been severely eroded and by 96 transformed beyond all recognition into an ersatz WWF. I think Flair's achievements as a draw and promotional lynchpin for JCP (77-87) tend to be buried under the weight of WCW's commercial failure (89-96) and Hogan's incomparable WWF numbers. I don't think he's given a fair shake and what he did, whichever way you look at it, IS really important to wrestling history.

I think that's easy to say in hindsight. If that's not impressive, there is nothing at all impressive about ECW, AWA, Mid-South or any other US promotion you care to name not called WWF. It's one of only two wrestling companies ever to go truly national in America and it's not impressive to you? How about some perspective here?

I just think building a house edges out maintaining a house or adding an extension to said house. If WWF is the house that Hogan built which Austin kept going / expanded, then WCW was the house that Flair built (albeit an admittedly smaller one) which Hogan (+ NWO + Goldberg) expanded. If Flair hadn't have been there for the Crockett expansion and eventual Turner buyout, then who knows what the number 2 promotion would have been. Maybe AWA would have survived because they'd have kept towns like Chicago. Maybe Watts could have expanded a bit more and survived. Who knows. Point is, Flair was the big differentiator there -- first in terms of establishing Crockett as the number 2 promotion, then in terms of expanding it, and survival. The argument that says otherwise is really selling him very short. I can imagine a WWF without Austin surviving in the mid-90s, I can't imagine Crockett surviving without Flair.

Can't really think of many matches that actually have an "equals" portion. 9 times out of 10 it's a shine sequence with the heel bailing early doors to break momentum and then doing some cheap (e.g eye gouge) to transition into the heat. The other 1 out of 10 times, is when they skip the shine with a jump start. Stan Hansen does that a lot. Obviously, I'm talking mainly about 80s matches here, no idea what they do on tv nowadays.

So I've finished this now and it was a very enjoyable intro ep. I liked the dynamic of Moss not really knowing much about wrestling and you breaking things down for him. Can you just go over exactly what those four basic segments to a match are? I only counted three (Shine, Heat, Comeback/Finish). Are you counting the hope spots as a segment? Or is the first segment "equality"?

Yeah that was it! Empty arena, techno soundtrack. Thanks Mr. Lister. They looked decent to me. It was TOTALLY random though, just like 5 minutes after the evening news on primetime TV. Will let you know how this Stevenage show turns out.

Ricky, we had great fun talking to you about GAB 89 for 3 hours the other night and so my initial reaction to this wasn't one of despair at yet another wrestling podcast, but one of delight that we'll get to hear more from you. I have only listened to the first 4 minutes (REALLY good production by the way), but I had to pause it because ... well, I might just be the only person out there that intersects with your Venn diagram exactly. I don't just mean a little bit, I mean I'm a 100% match. I mean I'm an academic, a literary scholar, that's my job, but the areas your buddy had outlined -- wrestling, comics, video games, board games -- those are exactly my interests. I've stopped the recording chiefly because I wanted to take some pictures from around my little office / man-cave here to demonstrate just how thoroughly this is the case: The wall I'm looking at: Suffice it to say, I'm looking forward to this.

I quite liked those shows he did breaking down what a face and what a heel does in a match. The idea of "showing ass", all of that stuff was reasonably interesting. I listened to it on a business trip to Chicago, so have an acute memory of wandering through this mall hearing him go on about fundamental match structures. Those couple of shows are easily better than anything I've seen of Raven's in the ring or on the mic. I never got into ECW, but one of these days, I will check it out again with Dylan as a guide through it. It's very low priority right now though.

What's the deal with this promotion then John? My knowledge of the UK indy scene is basically non-existent. They must be doing alright if they are booking Ted. If I like this, I might consider going to some more shows. I saw this great random 5-minute package on Channel 4 a few months ago and forgot to take down the names of the two workers involved. Any ideas on what promotion that was?

Did Raven start the trend of not wearing proper ring gear? Feels like everyone from a certain period in the 90s wore those long half-jean short things. Is Raven to blame?