JerryvonKramer

Cross Face, that's really interesting stuff, thanks for taking the time to explain it. As for the rest of the stuff on Vince, guys, we live in a world where this man: Is the Mayor of London. He just got re-elected for a second term and as of right now is probably the most popular politician in the UK. He's also a complete buffoon, with a long history of doing and saying stupid shit -- all part of his "charm". Also, lest I remind you, that you had a certain President not too long along ago. All of which is to say that Vince isn't a complete no hoper. I still agree with the idea that he'd have had more chance than Linda, despite everything.

Amazing call. I think it was him, yes.

The fact that Jesse Ventura got elected with all the shit he'd said as a heel and commentator, with all the stupid costumes etc., I mean they didn't make a difference in the end. Not seeing how Vince is any more "wacky" than Ventura must have seemed in the late 90s.

Do you think Vince himself could have got elected? Y'know, having more charisma and star power than his wife?

jdw, on the random TNT from 84 I watched earlier, Andre seemed to be having a 3 vs 1 match. One of the men looked somewhat like Belushi in that shot, with a small moustache. Any ideas as to who that was?

Yes, what he said

How about quarterly? December 1st March 1st June 1st October 1st

Footage of Andre now. Seems like it's a 3 vs 1 handicap match or the final four of a battle royale. One of them is Johnny Rodz, not sure of the other two. One is a 300lber with a beard, the other looks Italian and is possibly Salvatore Bellomo but he looks a little too out of shape to be him in 1984. Anyway, it's only a brief clip, back to the studio. Just a little reminder to the folks at home that Andre is out there. Clip of Hogan vs. The Masked Superstar now. He pulls a foreign object out of his mask and nails Hogan, some clubbing blows now. Hulk up already. Back to the studio! Vince is impressed. Just a little reminder Hulk is out there. Clip of Jimmy Snuka now against Greg Valentine. Hits the splash from the top, Valentine does the body convulsing selling. Valentine rolls out and nails Snuka on the fence. Lord Alfred says that "diametrically opposed to Snuka, we have the Iron Shiek". Another clip now, and it seems like a 2 vs 1 scenario: Sheik vs. two jobbers. Gutwrench suplex and then he dumps one jobber onto the other via a kind of stomach breaker type move. Camel clutch on the said jobber ON TOP of the other jobber. Sheik's face is intense. Impressive. That rounds up this little "review" from Vince and Alfred, who think that this is the most exciting time in wrestling. Afa and Sika are back in the studio. Vince says they'll be back on June 12th ... let me see if I have that disc. Totally bizarre hour and a half that was. Reckon TNT is genuinely one of the oddest shows ever to go out on US national TV.

David Schultz vs. Billy Travis now. Good suplex. Terrible drop kick. Mean Gene and Vince on commentary - odd duo. His finisher is an elbow from the second rope? Ha ha ha We're off to Nashville now to see Schultz with his family at their farm residence. Oh boy ... He appears to live in a log cabin. He quickly shouts at both his kids and wife. This shit is properly terrible. Schultz just doesn't have the acting chops or charisma to pull this act off. The only positive thing I can draw from this abysmal piece of tv is that, in 1984, it was mildly socially progressive for the WWF to be depicting this guy as a heel. Lord Alfred's analysis of that: "I think he uses his family to pysche himself up ... so he can become the best wrestler in the world". . Mentally what he does is hurt is wife and his family to make himself a better wrestler ... and I think that's an awful, awful thing. That's all you've say your lordship? Tito Santana is in the studio now. He's not happy with what he's just seen from Schultz. But he's not here for that. Vince tells us that we're going to be shown a video package featuring Santana and Chris Beevers. Who is Chris Beevers? Well, he's the WINNER of the "on-going" contest to have lunch with your favourite WWF star! Out of all the superstars, Beevers chose Tito. Santana says that being picked out by Beevers was "a feeling like that I've never felt in my life". Tito says a limo picked them up. The "video tape" is actually just a series of stills. Beevers looks like he's about 6 years old. Awwww. Tito looks massive hanging out with everyday people. Santana vs. Adrian Adonis now for the IC title, JIP. Vince-Mean Gene combo on commentary again. Adonis on top and getting a lot of heat. Do my ears deceive me? Is that a "you fucked up" chant in 1984?!!! I had to rewind it .... actually it's a "New York sucks" chant. You can tell Vince is uneasy about it, but he acknowledges it several times. It's a very loud chant. Bulldog on Santana by Adonis. Goes for another one but Tito blocks. Comeback now. 7-8 turnbuckle spot. Adonis goes to the eyes. Goes to the top, Tito catches him and he lands with the top rope between his legs. Ref calls for the bell. WHY? Tito is pissed. Oh, a 30-minute time-limit draw. Odd and unexpected. Tito is really pissed off. Adonis milks some boos. Tito posts his head on the announce table. Back to the studio. Vince with the cheesiest grin in the world mentions that little Chris Beevers must have loved that. Someone throws a sack onto the set. It's a post bag. Lord Alfred: "If someone threw a postbag like that in England, I'd sack him immediately". Vince is fucking loving this. Ha ha ha From San Francisco: "Dear Vince, were you ever a wrestler? You seem to know so much about it. Please send me a photo of the Tonga Kid. Sharon O'Donno, San Francisco" Vince: "Well I appreciate Sharon's comments. Never a professional wrestler: not big enough, not bad enough ..." Lord Alfred: "Hmmm, I don't know about that last one ..." Vince: "Collegiate wrestler, a little bit yet" Vince is in full-on talk-show schmaltz mode tonight, it's really incredible. "Dear Alfred, last week I heard that the Queen of Eng ... well I really don't I ought go into that on television ummmmm ..." I can't actually believe this was a tv show. From Chicago: "Dear Tuesday Night Titans, I occassionaly watch wrestling on a another tv channel. After all, a person must read all political papers in order to decide if they are a Republican or a democrat. Here is my point: this other tv channel has wrestlers that wear coloured-grease makeup, something like rock stars including the original wearers of this paint, Kiss. Is there a rule against this? Personally, I find it intriguing. Will you clear up this point? Yours, Sue Russell" On the one hand, I'm having a hard time believing these are keyfabed. On the other, I'm simply not buying the idea that two random bits of fanmail both came from women. Let's see what Vince says: "Interesting question, interesting comments ... in the World Wrestling Federation, I'm sure we'll be seeing individuals of that nature, there's no telling what you may see in the World Wrestling Federation." Smoothly done and I believe him too. Back to the archives now for ... Arnold Skaaland vs. Joe Turco!! What the flying fuck? Vince says that Skaaland didn't find himself on his back too many times in his career. Lord Alfred confesses that he's not that familar with Skaaland's work but if he's like most wrestlers he spent most of his career on his back! Turco has him in a headlock and Alfred says that Skaaland is an embarrassment. What the hell is this?! There's a puff of smoke down near the bottom of the ring and Vince notes that it's from a smoker in the crowd, not from Turko's posterior. Ha ha ha!! Lord Alfred says that he doesn't know much about Turco but that he was a nasty Italian wrestler. He's still thinking about Vince's smoke comment. Turco is laying some pretty stiff blows here. Vince postulates that this match was a real turning point in Skaaland's career. Alfred says that he doesn't think that either of these guys were world champ material and that wrestling has come a long way since the likes of Turco were around -- he seems intent on absoutely burying these two. Vince asks him to compare and contrast these two with modern wrestlers. Alfred says "well look at the condition that these two men are in. We saw Tito Santana earlier who was in tip-top condition compared to these two ... I think in this day and age it was very macho to be a beer swiller and a wench chaser and possibly both of these were of that mould". Vince is completely bemused. "Nonetheless they were tough", he says. "Yes, they had big hearts", Alfred says derisively. Skaaland gets a backslide on Turco for the three. Back to the studio and Vince is in full flow talking about Skaaland's career as a manager when he's stopped by a strange smell. Vince: "I think perhaps some of the smoke from the film that we saw from the posterior of Joe Turco has come into the studio". Vince's look of disgust at the smell is absolutely AMAZING. My prediction is that the big fat sloppy pig Lou Albano is in town. Oh no, it's 3-time former tag champs Afa and Sika! They are cooking a massive fish. Afa gives it some karate chops. Alfred is hiding out back at the sofa with his fingers on his nose. Vince reprimands him and beckons him over. Afa and Sika start eating bits of raw fish guts. They put the fish tail in a pan of boiling water with an onion. Lord Alfred: "Are you sure these chaps know what they are doing?" Vince goads Alfred into tasting the dish. He says he's already eaten. They give him a bit of raw fish. Vince is losing his shit. Alfred has a mouthful and makes a face. They take a break and when we come back we're back at the sofa. They give them a bowl of fish. Alfred has the head, Vince the tail. Alfred: "Do you know what, this would give a cat rabies". We get taken back now to a tag title match: The Wild Somoans vs. Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas. JIP as always. Sika has a nerve pinch on Johnson. Announcers are Vince and, I'm pretty sure, Pat Patterson. Albano is in the corner of the Somoans. Face in peril section is kind of going on and going nowhere here, couple of hope spots. Eventually Atlas gets the hot tag. Ref bump. Very messy slam from Atlas. Albano comes in for the chairshow but nails Afa by mistake. We've got NEW tag team champs here. "UNBELIEVABLE" screams Vince. Ring announcer is some ancient looking dude who has an interesting (and awesome) accent. Johnson and Atlas look pretty good together in an early 80s-black-stereotype kinda way. Back to the studio. Vince notes that the current tag champs aren't Johnson and Atlas but in fact Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis. Weird for them to show that title victory given that fact. Ah now it makes sense ... Lou Albano is coming out and the Somoans are still pissed off at him for losing them the match. Albano stumbles with his words, he's got no explanation. After a break, Afa and Sika have left the set temporarily. Albano is no longer stumbling and is now more confident -- wonderful character detail. He calls them cry babies and said they should have been tough enough. "I took them from nothing ... they were savages in the trees, and just like with Jimmy Snuka, I made them who they are. 3-time world champions." Vince asks Alfred his opinion, he says that the mistake Albano made is inexcusable. Vince suggests that he's now got his eye on managing Adonis and Murdoch now anyway. Albano claims he had secret meetings with them before they won the belts and gave them a bit of coaching on the side. Anyway, now we are going to go to a video package show-casing Albano as the manager of 14-tag team title reigns. 1. Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito 2. The Moondogs 3. The Wild Samoans 4. The Executioners Albano then reels off all the teams he managed who won gold: The Mongols, Tarzan Tyler and Luke Graham, Scicluna and King Curtis, The Executioners, The Valiant Brothers (twice), Mulligan and Lanza, The Lumberjacks, The Moondogs, and the Somoans (three times). This is quite the history lesson. Albano also talks about Cyndi Lauper. Strange that he's still a heel here. "I took the woman from the slums of New York, from the worst part of Queens, and made her what she is today, a superstar". This is a very odd segment. It's doing FIVE different things: - Positioning Albano for a feud with the Somoans - Getting over Albano as a bullshit artist - Getting over Albano's legacy as a manager of tag champs - Positioning Albano as the future manager for Murdoch and Adonis - Continuing the Lauper angle Vince asks what his percentage fee is. And goes to a break. We're taken to footage of a panel discussion in front of a live audience now. "Shelly" (female chair of panel) spots that the man who is about to ask a question has an apple. Albano rants at him, the man shows him his middle fingers!! Freddie Blassie calls him an idiot (the other member panels are Piper and Slaughter). Question from the crowd: Woman: "Mr. Blassie, you go on about Russia and Iran, but you make all your money here, why?" Blassie: "I can make my money any place I go. I can but and sell a dozen like you or that other idiot who was speaking just before you" Albano: "And another thing, why can't you get your hair done? Have some class! Look at his hair it's all nice, yours has got black roots showing!" Woman: "Can I hit him?" That fan with the apple seemed drunk and disorderly to me. He was irrate. More of this episode coming soon ...

They did a great one once with Gary Michael Cappetta.

So coming back to this ... and I'm rewinding back to May 29th 1984 for an episode of TNT! Lord Alfred gives us an intro to our host Vince McMahon! Guests are going to include Lou Albano and the IC champ Tito Santana. In a totally bizarre intro, Vince calls Lord Alfred "Britain's answer to Idi Amin", then goes on to imply that Afa and Sika are two of Amin's proteges. Lord Alfred then wonders "whatever happened to Idi Amin"? WTF this is just surreal. We're going to see Paul Orndorff vs. B. Brian Blair now. Alfred gives a bit of analysis: Blair coming from the same town as Orndorff has done his homework and knows all his tricks. Vince says with a smirk: "Blair is someone who, how can I put this, just hasn't had the same sort of breaks as Mr. Wonderful". Lord Alfred seems flummoxed by that. This studio banter is fucking woeful. Match is joined in progress in the midst of some matwork. Orndorff does the cheap heel moving of throwing Blair out of the ring. He's in great shape here. Couldn't help but notice an extremely fat cameraman on the outside. Orndorff gullotines Blair on the railings outside who sells it by coughing and spluttering -- sees to spit out a ton of gob there. Vicious knee by Orndorff. Hope spot from Blair. Orndorff throws him out again and goes for some megaposing. Big comeback from Blair now. Elbow to the breadbasket. Not sure who the colour commentator with Vince is here. Sunset flip reversal and a handful of tights gets the three for Orndorff. Shots of the crowd reveal that in 1984 a lot of men were sporting big nerdy glasses and a moustache. Vince says that is "One of the matches best typifying the action here in the World Wrestling Federaion". The dialogue between Vince and Alfred here is amazingly stilted. They've spent almost 4 minutes in total talking about this match now. A "house call" with Doctor D. David Schultz now. Alfred says that he "speaks funny" and that he's also a bully. Mean Gene is here with Schultz now. Terrible blonde perm! Wow Alfred was right -- he's got that Southern drawl that Hank's friend from King of the Hill has. Schultz says that he was the kid at school who used to take the others lunch money. He says that if his "momma" was there, he'd slap here. WHAT?! Lord Alfred "he said something about going to school, where was that? ... Didn't I tell you he was a bully? He bullied his own mother!" I must pause here, to be continued ...

In that case, the WWF were pretty good at protecting guys on TV back then.

One little spot of Flair's that has been bugging me of late is his cage escape attempts. They make zero sense and are really quite silly. However, in the interests of balance and fairplay: What are Terry Funk's weaknesses? What are Jumbo's weaknesses? What are Lawler's weaknesses? What are Stan Hansen's weaknesses? Surely only after all of those things are meted out can anything like a fair call be made. Let's be .

Would anyone object if I ran a new "best worker of the 80s" poll with around 20 different options?I am generally rather curious as to who would win.

ohtani -- you might not get anything as crude as GOAT discussions in other fields, but most fields have their canons and sacred cows. Shakespeare in literature, Bob Dylan in pop music, Hitchcock or Kurosawa or Bergman or Welles in film -- the idea that pimping of incredibly canonical figures is unique to wrestling is surely wrong. What I think happens in wrestling though is that wrestling fans don't think about wrestlers like they think about writers or directors, they think about them like sportsmen. The idea of a GOAT is more of a sports thing than an entertainment thing, and this is why it takes the form it does in wrestling.

I like the idea of El-P moving in trendier wrestling circles than Dylan circa 1998. What elite clubs did he frequent during that time-frame, I wonder?

Can you say more about this Matt? If Flair has any sort of wrestling philosophy at all it's calling matches in the ring, thinking on your feet and reacting to / controlling the crowd. Which is to say that going into a 45-minute match, he probably only knows a few things: 1. the opponent, 2. the finish, 3. possibly one transitional detail How he gets from A to B is develops organically. A Flair match is almost entirely unplanned. Flair will dictate the match, the tempo and the transitions. This is the opposite of the "self-conscious epic" of today that El-P keeps talking about. Because of this, sometimes his matches aren't coherent, but A LOT of them time they tell very compelling stories. I watched the Jimmy Garvin cage match from Great American Bash 87 recently, and that match tells a fantastic story built around a chance knee injury from Garvin. Flair spends the first half of the match getting his ass kicked, but then the second half viciously going after the injured leg like an assassin. Garvin eventually passes out in pain. Flair is the consummate dick heel throughout. How did that set wrestling back 30 years?

Ha ha, just been looking for any other instances that a rapper name dropped DiBiase, and apparently, some chap called Jay Rock says this on the song "2 Raw": Just me and my posse Strapped up boy you gotta know the ropes like Ted DiBiase What an awful rhyme! That's not the only one though: Lupe Fiasco, "The One" In high school I was voted the most Ted DiBiase-est Also the most slept on, cause my Ted DiBiase-ness What the flying fuck? Is he saying DiBiase is slept on? Or is that an oblique reference to the Million Dollar Dream? There's more: The Roots, "Ain't Sayin' Nothing New" Dig what I'm sayin yo? D-I-C-E Shove a mic in your mouth, like Ted DiBiase At least this one works, shows off a nice bit of wrestling knowledge. Big Pun ft. Donnell Jones, “It's So Hard” Poppin’ shit like a Nazi Iced out like Dibiase --------------------- It makes sense why wrestling and rap would make such easy bedfellows. Both are impossibly cartoonish macho worlds where men show off their masculinity and try to best each other through a mixture of toughness and braggadocio. Wrestlers cut promos bigging themselves up while denegrating their opponents, while rappers do the same through diss verses. Wu-Tang definitely have a 70s wrestling thing going on though. Method Man name checks Bob Backlund several times and RZA mentions Wahoo McDaniel.

Dusty Rhodes seemed to have an injured leg from 1984 until 1987.

It took us 18 shows, but it finally happened and we discussed current WWE (well, mostly Chad did) and for a surprising amount of time. Where the Big Boys Play #18 – Great American Bash 87: Part 2 Chad and Parv finish up their review of Great American Bash 1987. In this show: Parv reveals the extent of Vladimir Pietrov’s ‘legal problems’, an unexpected detour to discuss the current WWE product, Dusty Rhodes: weighing in at 285lbs, Chad tells a story about when his mum saw Ric Flair live and got an eyefull of more than she’d bargained for, picks for End of the Show Awards, and the pod says farewell to Brian.

That was me jdw. But the fact remained that no matter how much Football Italia I could watch on Channel 4, I still probably saw 5-6 times as much Shearer as I did Batistuta. If you asked me who was better, I'd have said Batistuta without doubt. But his greatness was still sort of shrouded in mystique and magnified by the fact that your average English football fan doesn't watch Serie A and gets their football opinions from The Sun or TalkSport. The notion that Batistuta was a god came from the fact that he seemed to be top scorer in Italy every year. And he looked amazing whenever I saw him. I didn't see him week in, week out like I saw Shearer. As it happens, Shearer scored many more goals than Batistuta and was also amazing in that time frame. You could make a very convincing argument that Shearer was better than Batistuta. In fact, Shearer over the course of his career probably WAS better than Batistuta. The fact that I thought it was definitely Batistuta does point towards a certain "exoticism". Would Batistuta have scored a shedload of goals in England? Probably. Would Shearer have done the same in Italy? Probably. So what's separating them then aside from the fact that one is a burly Georgie with a boring voice and the other one looks like this and has a cool name? If we flipped it. If Batistuta looked like Shearer with Shearer's name and played in England and vice versa but their skills were identical -- i.e. only name and appearances are changed -- I am not convinced we'd have entirely the same view of it. I SUSPECT, although I might be wrong, that something similar to this happens in wrestling too, only with Japanese wrestlers.

Did you ever feel tempted to ask him a question and then say "It doesn't matter what you think"? This is very topical for this board right now.

I think WWF was much better booked week-to-week between say 86 and 89 than it was in the Attitude Era. The Hogan booking arc from the Andre feud to the Warrior feud is, in my view, purely from a booking / tv-storyline perspective stronger than the Austin run and then the Corporate-Ministry blah blah stuff that followed it. Something that is forgotten about 80s WWF, is how much NON-WRESTLING stuff was on TV. TNT and PrimeTime were essentially non-wrestling, angle-heavy shows. They advanced a lot of stories not through matches but vignettes and promos and through Heenan/ Monsoon / McMahon / Ventura. Incidental jobber matches were just part of that overall character development. The art of the slow burn. Look at how they developed the Mr. Perfect character over a period of months compared to how they developed someone like ... I dunno Val Venis? It's long-term booking vs. short-term week-to-week booking. I must admit though, like everyone else, I was hooked on RAW from 1998-2001.

Wonder what the demand for a 16-disc "Best of Dory Funk Jr" set would be like ...

Guessing all of those DiBiase vs. Savage matches ended in bullshit finishes? Only the Wrestlefest match is a pin.