JerryvonKramer

Did you know Lex Luger had a 3.78 grade average too?

lol, "thear" ... shittest gimmick in the history of internet wrestling message board posters? I'm nominating FLIK vs. tigerpride as PWO feud of the year. Other contenders include: Dr. Reverend Victator vs. goodhelmet Jingus vs. Dylan Waco Dave Meltzer vs. Dylan Waco anarchistxx vs. Bix and Phil Schneider (possibly 2011, can't remember now)

If it does date back to the 1950s, I guess it would have been something Solie picked up on and then JR picked up the habit from him (and to a lesser extent guys like Bob Caudle and even Bill Watts). The 50s seem a long time ago to us, but if you think about it the gap between 1952 and 1982 is the same as the gap between 1982 and 2012.

When was that, the 1950s?

In that case, I think a Lex Luger case would have to be based MAINLY on his WCW career.

When is "WCW" starting from? 1988 or 1991?

Jerry Lawler bullying that fat kid is probably the single biggest highlight of my entire week so far. Legitimately amazing.

Look at the state of Chris Champion here. Not just his hair, look his FACE. Ha ha ha. "[King Cobra] hasn't seen a $1000 in his life" says Lawler. Y'know, when Cobra came out as champ I wasn't buying it, and now with him a contender I'm not buying it. Why was King Cobra in the USWA main event picture? Might as well be SD Jones for how he comes across here. Lawler starts with his sly racist digs again.He is a fantastic heel. My feeling is that Cobra is so awful though that it's hard to root for him. A whole DOLLAR off the advance tickets.

Big fan of Dave Brown so far, what a total dude -- slightly more cynical and sarcastic than your average wrestling broadcaster. Travis's singing is hilariously atrocious. And his dancing even more so. Funny guy. Christ, look at the size of that phone that Lawler has! I like this "big shot" heelish Lawler character and his interplay with Dave Brown. The studio crowd is very entertaining as well. Love the fact that Brown doesn't believe who is on the phone and his increasing frustration and irritation with the constant phonecalls. Dirty White Boy is the very definition of "scuzzy". Interesting to see a young Papa Shango / Godfather here. Lawler running his mouth about Austin being on steriods is pretty great. His stuff so far has been a real highlight of January 1990.

Billy Travis has turned up as a jobber in the 1984 TNT stuff I've been watching recently, so interesting see him later in his career here getting a win over Dundee. Dundee said exactly what I was thinking about Travis: "You look like a woman". Ha ha ha Travis's singing is hilariously atrocious. And his dancing even more so. Funny guy.

I actually think Arn is better in the early 90s than he was for most of the 80s. This incarnation of Arn, from now until his retirement pretty much is the best version of him in my view. Great Muta is probably one of the most hot and cold workers ever, but he's on decent form here. Good but not great match. LOVE that spinebuster every time I see it though, and Arn's DDT.

Oddly cerebral conversation between Sullivan and Funk. I loved Sullivan slowly being more and more heelish and making several marked digs at Dory Funk Jr -- which is both odd if he's not going to be part of the feud directly and at the same time absolutely wonderful. Sullivan's stuff on there being no such thing as compassion and Funk making the counterpoints made this a VERY rare interrogation of American right-wing exceptionalism and up-by-the-boot-straps capitalism in wrestling -- in fact it's the only time I've ever seen it done. Sullivan can't actually understand how someone like Terry Funk, or indeed anyone, could have compassion for someone less fortunate than themselves. Interesting clash of ideologies and really has compelled me to want to see how this feud plays out -- hope there's more of it to come.

Not much to had that hasn't been said, good match -- although I'm probably less high on it than pretty much everyone in this thread. I was wondering who was on commentary, how long did Lance Russell work at WCW? The Cornette / Flair intereaction was also very fun and interesting. I echo some of the analysis of that above.

When we did this whole debate before I distinctly recall it took the form of overness vs. drawing power.

On that ep of TNT when the letter comes in about it, Vince is visibly pissed off about it, and pretty much buries Muraco. It's odd to think now that the audience only knew him as an announcer because on that show it's really CLEAR that he's the dude calling the shots. Treats Alfred like his bitch too.

Manny Fernandez? Sam Houston? Jimmy Garvin? The Fantastics? I also think that Luger, the Steiners and the Road Warriors having stints in WWF even though they were early 90s rather than 80s stints, made them seem like a bigger deal once they came back to WCW. And Sting was the pre-Hogan ace, so is a special case and arguably more of a 90s guy anyway. Do you think it's just a coincidence that the NWA 80s guys had a rougher time of it that the WWF 1988 roster?

What was the deal with Muraco's hiatus after he lost the IC title? Vince seemed to bury him on that TNT show and the keyfabe story is that he was just bumming around on the beach. Was that a cover story? And cmfunk -- I think it's clear that ALL of the guys who were part of the 80s boom on the WWF-side got another 10 years added to their normal career. Jake, Honky, Duggan, whoever was around from 86 to about 92 really. But only on the WWF side, the NWA guys or the territory stars of the 80s -- save Flair and Arn -- were in no man's land in the 90s. The physical condition was something I hadn't thought about though. Putski was looking pretty good in 84 from what I could see, but he really sucked as a worker. Still, Putski in 84 looked a hell of a lot better than Volkoff in 94. Muraco did too. What I'm trying to work out is Vince's attitude to basically his dad's last group of talent. It seems like there's definitely part of him that has a mixture of nostalgia and respect for them, but at the same time he's not going out of his way to keep them relevant. Backlund, Volkoff, Snuka, and to some extent, Studd -- those are all Vince Jr. guys really. Guys he helped to make bigger stars right when he took over the company. Pedro, Putski, etc. they are Vince Sr. guys so there isn't that same sense of ownership there. Bruno is a special case, obviously. If you look at Crockett during the same timeframe, they were still finding use for Ivan Koloff and Wahoo McDaniel in 85 and 86, and in a way that didn't make them seem particularly dated. Just find Vince's approach on it interesting. Were the 70s guys really any more broken down than Snuka or Volkoff? If you look at the records as well, he really REALLY jobbed them out in 1984-5 sort of time. Like proper burials. SD Jones going over guys who held major titles, and then getting squashed by the new big-name heel the next night. Ronnie Garvin got that sort of treatment in 1990 as well.

Ricky, I seem to recall there's a good 15-minute segment on this on one of the Legends of Roundtables shows. Pretty sure it's either the 70s one or "celebrity effect".

He did have that US title run in WCW around 95/6. Don't forget that's a title both Vader and Sting had held around that point, not to be sniffed at.

I also wonder about what was more alienating: Being a 70s old-timer in the late 80s rock 'n' roll wrestling era or being an 80s boomer during the attitude era? One thing I've noticed about Vince's general strategy during his expansion: he'd take stars from other territories and repackage them with a colourful gimmick. The old-timers though, the Vince Sr. guys, he wouldn't repackage those, he'd just leave them, as it were, to fade and seem dated. All these wacky characters with nutty gimmicks around and poor old Pedro Morales is just plain Pedro Morales. No gimmick to speak of at all. This is at its most evident in the early Survivor Series. Who stands out as the odd person out there? Plain old no gimmick 70s Ken Patera. Look at next year's card: Pretty much everyone there is a colourful gimmick ... expect plain old Ken Patera and possibly Tito and Greg Valentine too. Very little trace of the Vince Sr guys now. Whoever was still on the books was mainly jobbing at houseshows. I think Johnny Rodz, Putski, even SD Jones were probably all gone by this stage. If you compare the treatment of those guys to their equivalents in 1997, I think more of an effort was made -- for example -- to make British Bulldog feel contemporary and relevant. It's not a fully fledged repackaging but there are enough tweaks to 80s Bulldog to make the 90s variant feel distinctly different. Jim Neidhart wrestled on that show as well, but I can't remember what he looked like in 97. Point is, at least in WWF, during the 80s Vince simply made no effort at all to help out any of the older guys who weren't brought in from elsewhere. He let them get dated, he let them fade, he let them seem like they relics of a by-gone time. In the 90s, he made more of an effort to reinvent any of the older guys he'd make who weren't working for WCW.

I think the best argument for Sting is what Dylan said on his podcast: he wouldn't at all look out of place in there.

One of the things I've noticed watching the 84 TNT stuff is how shoddily Vince treated a lot of the old 70s stars whether or not they worked for Vince Sr. By 1985 Ivan Putski was regularly jobbing to Iron Mike Sharpe. He even has a loss recorded against Frenchie Martin. We all know the fate of Pedro Morales. Salvataore Bellomo was basically a jobber by 85. The Valiant Brothers, tag champs in the late 70s, jobbing to Uncle Elmer in 10 seconds by 85. Even someone like Rocky Johnson was basically done by 1985. There wasn't so much a changing of the guard as there was a PURGE of the old guard. Over in the NWA, where Dusty had the book things were ok if you were a 70s star and friends with Dusty, but if you're Dory Funk Jr you're jobbing to Kevin Sullivan. By 87, your options as a 70s star unless you were Dusty, Flair, Dick Murdoch or Terry Funk, it seems to me, was either to be job fodder in the big two, try to work Japan, or eke out a living working for Verne Gange and probably tagging with Baron von Raschke in the AWA or possibly go to USWA for a cup of coffee. ------- On the flipside, you might think the life of an 80s star was rosy in the 90s with Bischoff giving stupid money to anyone with name value. But for every Hogan, there are two Ricky Mortons or Bobby Eatons or Tommy Rogers and so on who couldn't get a job or a push for love nor money. Unless you were part of a select group of 80s stars that Vince made circa 87-92, Bischoff didn't want to know and even if you were he'd probably forget he'd actually signed you and forget to book you. And Vince didn't want to know. Seems to me there are marginally more options than their 70s equivalents: ECW would give you some work and exposure, Cornette would probably give you a payday in SMW. But I wonder what the paydays in either of those two were really like. From a money and status standpoint, would you rather work an upper midcard angle in 88 AWA or 96-7 ECW? Or SMW in the same timeframe? ------ Either way, unless you're someone who has mainevented Wrestlemania, times are tough when you are a wrestler the wrong side of 40. But who was it tougher for? The 70s guys in the late 80s or the 80s guys in the late 90s? Which one would you rather have been from a professional and a money standpoint? Would you rather be an Ivan Putski / Pedro Morales / Ivan Koloff in 87 or a Ricky Morton or Tommy Rogers or even a Rick Martel in 97? Reasoning is encouraged.

I've always cited this match as an example where DiBiase really carried someone shitty to a decent match, am interested now to watch it again. This was on the old WWF World Tour VHS.

Pretty much every regular member of this board could do a better job of 90% of the shoot interviews that were made in the 00s. Is that the shoot where Ventura talks about not needing to do much in the ring to get a reaction?

Is WWA defunct then?