JerryvonKramer

It's September 1986, let's pretend you have a magic box that can pipe in TV from anywhere in the USA. I want to take a look at what an average week in wrestling on television would look like complete with the main commentary teams and on which channel they aired. Nothing like this exists online, so eventually, I want to do this for every year - if we're able to make this as complete as possible I might even stick it up on a website somewhere. I've made a start, help me flesh this out. I've been using this site, this site, this site and of course History of the WWE. Any help to fill in gaps, glaring omissions, correct mistakes etc. would be much appreciated. Monday WWF Primetime Wrestling on USA Network (B-show) Hosts: Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan WWF Madison Square Garden on MSG Network (monthly) Hosts: Gorilla Monsoon, Gene Okerlund & Lord Alfred Hayes Tuesday Wednesday AWA All-star Wrestling on syndication (B-show) Host: Verne Gagne (????) CWF Championship Wrestling from Florida on ??? (A-show) Hosts: Gordon Solie, Mike Graham and Buddy Colt Thursday Friday WCCW World Class Championship Wrestling on syndication (A-show) Host: Bill Mercer Saturday WWF Superstars on syndication (A-show) Hosts: Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura WWF at Philadelphia Spectrum on PRISM network (monthly) Hosts: Dick Graham and Lord Alfred Hayes WWF at the Boston Garden on NESN (monthly) Hosts: Gorilla Monsoon and Lord Alfred Hayes NWA World Championship Wrestling on WTBS (A-show) Hosts: Tony Schiavone and David Crockett NWA World-Wide Wrestling on syndication (A-show) Hosts: Tony Schiavone and David Crockett NWA Pro on syndication (B-show) Hosts: Bob Caudle and Johnny Weaver CWA Championship Wrestling on TV5 (???) (A-show) Hosts: Lance Russell and Dave Brown UWF Universal Wrestling on syndication (???) (B-show) Hosts: Jim Ross (????) and Bill Watts (????) PNW Portland Wrestling on KPTV (A-show) Host: Don Coss and Dutch Savage Sunday WWF Wrestling Challenge on syndication (C-show) Hosts: Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan WWF All American Wrestling on USA Network (C-show) Hosts: Gene Okerlund (and Lord Alfred Hayes??) WWF Wrestling Spotlight on syndication (recap show) Hosts: Gene Okerlund and Lord Alfred Hayes NWA Best of World Championship Wrestling on WTBS (recap show) Host: Tony Schiavone AWA Championship Wrestling on ESPN (A-show) Hosts: Ron Trongard, Lord James Blears and Lee Marshall UWF Power Pro Wrestling (A-show) Hosts: Jim Ross and Bill Watts

Question: why is footage pre-70s so difficult to come by and why is 70s footage itself generally really quite shitty? Plenty of other TV shows from that time frame and long before exist in high quality, so why the utter crapness of the 70s stuff? It was like it was all filmed on old-fashioned 1920-style cameras. Anyone know about this? I mean the 70s is not that long ago in the general scheme of most entertainment or sports, yet in wrestling terms it seems like the distant dark ages. Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbBAHsgUXxI That's Dory Funk Jr vs. Jack Brisco from 1972. Shockingly bad quality for the time. I mean Jesus Christ, The Godfather was made that year. What gives?

DiBiase against Bret in that Survivor Series

Just to clarify Loss, I was talking about the specific subjectivity-objectivity debate Dylan and Jingus were having, not any debate.

Oh turns out I can't get it. I'm in the UK. I thought Classics on Demand was an online thing, not a TV thing. I worked out how to get US Netflix recently, so figured I could get this too, hey ho.

Guys, is classics on demand worth getting? I should be able to subscribe now.

So am I alone in hating the WM25 match?

Rude's matches with Flair in 93 are terribly disappointing.

Where does the Jumbo vs. Tenryu match from 89 rank as far as GOAT conversations go? Like how does it compare to the highly rated early 90s matches?

If I've got a problem with post-comeback Shawn, and bare in mind I've only seen a handful of bigtime matches of his from that period, it's that he's just far far FAR too self-aware for his own good. He seems to be aware of 1) his own greatness, not just that he's great but the IDEA of his greatness, the general perception of it, and 2) the status of a given match as a classic or a great match or some sort of masterpiece. These are things that in my mind can't be levelled at guys like Flair and Steamboat -- they just did what they did. There's no sense DURING THE MATCH that they are aware of the greatness or perceived greatness of the match. Same with Funk, Hansen and a whole bunch of other guys from that era -- there's a certain AUTHENTICITY AND RAWNESS that Shawn plainly lacks. And my dislike of post-comeback Shawn stems from the fact that this self-awareness gives "set piece moments", like Dylan said, a certain phoniness. It's one of the reasons I hate that Undertaker match from Wrestlemania 25 so much. You can't manufacture a classic match for the ages in such an obvious and self-aware way, they either happen organically or they don't. For that reason, I'd take Rockers vs The Orient over these cheesy, made-to-order big matches like the Flair match or the Undertaker WM25 match any day of the week. A shrewd reader might turn around at this point and say "Well, Jerry, what about stuff like Hogan vs. Warrior, or even Hogan vs. Savage, or Savage vs. warrior, weren't those manufactured classics? Weren't those made-to-order big matches designed to be historical? I bet you rate them, this is just yet more anti-modern-product bias". My answer is to that is: no, Hogan and Savage were good enough workers not to show that sense of self-awareness, that sense of "this is not only a big match but a critically acclaimed classic in the making", in their performance, in their facial expressions and so on. There's a difference between Hogan and Warrior going nose-to-nose and it feeling like the biggest deal in the world and 15 false finishes with Shawn cranking up his "Sweet Chin Music" like nothing had happened every single time.

The weirdest thing for me is that there seems like an entire generation of fans now who think they are "smart" but are in fact just massive marks. It's like the WWE at one point decided they weren't going to bother with keeping kayfabe anymore, they were going to try to control the received wisdom. And to an extent they've done it. Don't know how much political theory you guys have read, but it's a brilliant example of power/knowledge and containment. Put out enough DVDs with guys speaking "out of character" or "shooting" and all of a sudden people start believing what they are being told. Amazing in a way how they've done that.

As an aside, I wonder if there were guys around in the 80s and early 90s who were saying things like "these kids who think Flair is the be all and end all, brainwashed, he's got nothing on Brisco or Stevens". jdw might be able to tell us. If there was footage available though, I'm sure Brisco against Flair would be a conversation to have. With Shawn there is no conversation to have as far as I'm concerned. He's not in the conversation period. The fact that there are so many people now who see him as de facto #1 pick is the thing that winds me up no end. How did that ever happen?

Ricky has basically described the atittude that really irritates me too. Especially this bit: This is what I was talking about the other day. That particular mindset winds me up. It's almost like there's no reasoning with those guys, like they are too far gone, too brainwashed to ever be educated. But they probably outnumber the sorts of fans on this board by about 20 to 1, if not more. Then when someone else comes along and says "oh it's all subjective, it's all just opinion" afterwards I start to lose my shit. That's probably why this place and DVDR 80s forum are the only places I posts these days. In a way, I can handle someone who is 20 and a Cena mark or a CM Punk mark, I can't handle someone who is maybe 24 and thinks Shawn and to a lesser extent Bret are the be all and end all. -------- That said, it's been interesting that the majority here seem to be putting HBK in their top 100s, myself included.

Guys, I've been through this argument so many times, inside and out, backwards and forwards over the space of the past 4 years. A lot of words, 1000s of words, a lot of frustration, tantrums, bannings, people leaving, people calling each other names. I've devised concepts, aesthetic systems, "basic cultural knowledge" lists, and a whole lot more. And all of that has told me that there's no end game to it. None at all. No one ever changes their view on this topic and it's one of those things where the two sides only end up getting to each other. Been there so many times.

From what I understand most times Eric had no idea what was going to happen until the day of the show anyway. Nitro seemed to be booked on the fly.

Hey Frankensteiner, did you happen to see Jumbo vs Bruiser Brody? It's not like all 66 Jumbo matches were knock-out classics. Yes, in an ideal world you've seen 1000s of matches of every worker, but y'know there are only so many hours in the day and most people, myself included, can only devote a small percentage of that time to watching wrestling. So my view on Jumbo may be skewed because it's his *best* work, but I'll take that over someone who hasn't seen any Jumbo. Besides, there are other mitigating factors going for Shawn. For example, I grew up watching the Rockers, I have a certain fondness for a certain era of WWF which Shawn was a part of, there's a familiarity factor -- all of those things don't count against him really. But the point is moot, because the 66 Jumbo matches across 10 years are basically ENOUGH for anyone to know that he was a better worker than Shawn ever was or could be. I could watch 66 Billy Jack Haynes matches too and I'd know that obviously he's not in Shawn's league. How many matches of someone's do you need to see to be able to make a serious call?

I don't see the point about the 80s sets not being used. I mean I've seen 28 matches featuring Yatsu and 66 featuring Jumbo Tsuruta and 63 featuring Genichiro Tenryu. Isn't that enough to know if I think a guy is better than another guy or not? Sure, the 80s sets can give you a skewed perspective on some guys if 2 great matches made the set and there were loads of others than stunk that were left off. I mean I really thought Mr. Olympia was great on the Mid-South set, but he didn't have enough matches featured for me to have a fair call on it. But when we're talking 20+ matches of one worker, that's plenty I think. Enough to be able to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

As a little aside: I basically hated that Shawn vs. Undertaker match from Mania a couple of years back, like I properly hated it, represents everything wrong with wrestling at the moment for me. Just want to confirm what the consensus here is on that.

Just going to do this in batches of 10 as they come to mind. See how far I can go before I'm not confident that I don't rate Shawn higher without being dishonest to myself. This will be more difficult for me than most because 1. I don't have 90s Japanese stuff to draw from, or Lucha, period. 2. I actually rate Michaels quite highly, I just don't see him in a GOAT discussion. Let's see what happens ... Funk Hansen Jumbo Tenyru Yatsu (why not? He's in some of the greatest matches I've ever seen in my life and possesses one of my all-time favourite offensive arsenals) Choshu Kawada Bockwinkel Martel Race Hogan Andre DiBiase Savage Hennig Rude Austin Angle Bobby Heenan (seriously!! Love Heenan in the ring) Steamboat Flair Arn Tully Windham Sting (may get flak for this, but I'm willing to argue it) Vader Regal Eaton Morton Lawler Pillman Dusty Rhodes (this one is borderline, it's about working a crowd and maximum babyface sympathy against, basically, superior workrate - tough one, I can't justify putting Jake here, for example, so not sure on this) The Rock Benoit Eddie Guerrero Chavo Guerrero (borderline - loved the Mr. Olympia match on MidSouth set, like him a lot generally as a worker, if you asked me right now whether I'd prefer to watch, say, Rick Martel against Shawn or against Chavo, I'd pick Chavo ... but I need to see more really) 2 Cold Scorpio Foley Rey (borderline - I'm much less high on Rey than basically everyone else here, largely oweing to the fact I don't watch the current product, this is based on WCW and WWE up until 2003ish) Honestly, starting to struggle now. I think that Shawn would have to come somewhere after the names listed above in the 40s. I'd put him above Owen Hart and a lot of guys who I considered over the past hour. All this says to me though, is that I need to see more stuff. That's not to say that watching any of Will's sets is NECESSARILY going to place guys above Shawn. No one from MidSouth, for example, that wasn't already making this list is here. But it may expand the pool. Come December and I'd probably have AWA guys like Jerry Blackwell and Buddy Rose above him, maybe Slaughter, maybe Patera. Possibly Billy Robinson too if he's anywhere near as good as his one showing on the All Japan set. But as things stand as of right now, Shawn is probably ranking about 41 or 42 for me.

Someone answer me this: if his 96 is so great why's he getting booed by Survivor Series?

I really like Eaton's match with Arn. Can't recall seeing or need to re-see the Austin and Flair matches from that year.

The answer is that I don't know until I see. He's definitely not top 20 for me, but he might be top 80 ... wont know till I try to compile a list. Might do it after Spain vs. France.

I actually think Angle from 98 to 2001 was really good, basically until he was a face.

Oh right, carry on. That belt doesn't even exist in my mind.

It looks like I set the bar too high. How about something more like Rude DiBiase Hennig Martel Robinson Arn Anderson Tully Gordy Williams Jericho Hogan Andre Dino Bravo Also, incidentally is Rude's peak year 92 in your view? What matches in 92 outside of the Steamboat match are you thinking of?