JerryvonKramer

The Bash match, which was a Hogan match as noted, was much much better than the Havoc match -- that was a Flair match and had the overall effect of making it seem like Hogan was treating Flair like a jobber. In general, I don't like Hogan matches when he's on offense 90% of the time. Hogan's best attribute is his selling.

That video is amazing

While I've never heard oldtimers use the specific phrase IWC, I have heard many many guys including Cornette and Heenan criticise "these internet fans who think they know it all", especially in the older shoots, when people were still somewhat protective of the business. The whole concept seems dated to me.

If anyone hasn't seen the Tenta match from the 80s All Japan set, suggest you track it down. From 1988 tagging with Yatsu against Tenryu and Hara. He sells a suplex in that match. Tenta is undoubtedly one of the smarter big men. It's not often talked about but he was quite motivated in 1994 in both WWF and WCW. Has some good stuff from that year.

The post below has been made over the period of about 2 months. Was going to watch Wrestlemania 28, but this somehow seemed more pressing. As I said I would do, I've stopped right before Starrcade '85 to watch the whole show in full. I'll do this for every PPV, but probably not for Clashes. - The Starrcade music at the start and played throughout the show is fucking incredible. - Massive reaction for Sam Houston and little heat for Crusher Kruschev, so suprising who goes over. Barry Darsow just speaks with his normal American voice and is the least convincing commie Russian ever, awful, awful promo. Also, I think Johnny Weaver is an awkward on-camera presence -- he's no Mean Gene. - Abdullah vs. Manny Fernandez Mexican Death match was nowhere near as brutal as I'd hoped. Bloody, but not brutal. Oh well. - Christ they gave Kruschev MORE mic time? Weaver is even more awkward in this segment. - Now, Black Bart vs. Ron Bass. Three things I don’t like about the booking here: 1. If Bass wins he gets 5 minutes with JJ Dillon, so obviously Bass wins. I don’t like that when the heel has to put a stake but the face doesn’t. It should have been “If Bass wins he gets his 5 minutes with JJ, if Bart wins Bass has to leave town” or something like that. Otherwise it’s too obvious the face is winning. 2. During said five minute match with JJ, the commentary is severely lacking a Ventura figure to say “oh, beating up a manager? Big deal” sort of thing. I really miss having a heel colour guy in general when watching 80s NWA. 3. What’s the point in having JJ go over? You make Bart look weak because he got beat by Bass who his manager then beat, you make Bass look weak because he got beaten by a fucking manager. Don’t get the booking here at all. - What’s this now? An arm wrestling match? Gimmick mad this card. Weird to see Billy Graham in 1985 NWA. Guessing this run never worked out. This is probably better than any of the arm wrestling matches from the Jesse Ventura invitational tournament in 92. Crowd is wild for it. - Landell vs. Terry Taylor now. Topical considering the recent thread. Landell really looks like Flair from the side and back. This one kind of passed me by like every other Taylor match I’ve ever seen. Good night for JJ Dillon so far! - Arn and Ole vs. Wahoo McDaniel and Billy Jack Haynes. Wow Haynes is RIPPED. One of the better matches of the night thus far. All Arn for the first 6 or 7 minutes or so. He bumps like a champ for Haynes. Wahoo plays face in peril here. He was 47 at this point, and looks more like 57. Haynes is pretty over and the crowd pop big for the hot tag … but then he tagged Wahoo back in – don’t understand why. Couple of double teams and it’s all over. Now why did Haynes tag the guy who’d been getting battered for the past 10 minutes BACK in? - Johnny Weaver’s with Buddy Landell and JJ Dillon now. “I think wrestling history will show that The Gathering at Starrcade 85 will be the greatest ever single event in wrestling history”, says JJ. He says the win over Bass crowns the greatest night in his illustrious career to date. Wow, Landell is a decent promo. - It’s time now. Tully Blanchard vs. Magnum TA. YES, pumped. Crimson flowing early here after they start out 100 miles an hour. “SAY IT!! SAY ITTTT” “NOOOOOOOO” Awesome. Oh my god. Tully’s gone mental here, kicking the ref, breaking down a wooden chair and making a giant splinter out of it! Amazing scenes. Jesus Christ! Oh fucking hell! Brutal. For the ages. - Atlanta street fight now. Midnight Express vs. Jimmy Valiant and “Miss Atlanta Lively”. The Midnights are in full tuxedos. Dennis Condrey looks quite dapper all in white, but Bobby Eaton couldn’t look more ridiculous. Jim Cornette seems to be running away from “Big Mamma”, a skinny woman. Ha ha. Things quickly degenerate and the Midnights are trying to undress Miss Atlanta. This is so messy, but it’s entertaining messy. - Ivan and Nikita Koloff vs. RnR – JCP getting their money’s worth out of that cage tonight. Interesting first ten minutes as Ivan plays heel in peril for a while, with Morton and Gibson using speed and quick tags to their advantage, and Ivan even gets some colour. Things turn when Nikita gets in and the Russians gain control. Surprisingly, it’s Gibson who plays face in peril. Stretch sequence is lonnnggg. Flash finish a bit too quick for my liking. Interesting story in that match – Ivan consistently shown to be the weakest link and ultimately it cost The Russians. Hoping for a Rock and Rollers vs. Minnesota Wrecking Crew feud now. - Time for Flair vs. Dusty. No one feels more like “the man” than Flair in the 80s. Rhodes has got his game face on. Flair’s not in the mood for strutting. Great story here as Dusty is still recovering from the ankle injury that Ole and Arn gave him a few weeks back. Flair obviously works on that leg and goes for the figurefour whenever he can. So much blood on this show! There’s one very very annoying fan in the crowd who keeps doing this loud high-pitched “oohhhh”, sounds demented. Distracting. Flair’s finally got the figurefour on and Dusty looks like he’s going to legit pass out through pain. Tommy Young is out now … if the Horsemen were actually together at this point, I’d expect a run in right around now. Oh! There’s Arn!!! There’s Ole! Kick out! Flash cradle pin. Of course, Dusty is the new champ. Funny that the face locker room can’t actually lift him up. Well Tully vs. Magnum was clearly the match of the night. But from the Andersons match onwards this is quite the card. Haynes surprised me with just how over he was, and the psychology in that match with Arn and Ole working over Wahoo’s chopping arm was great. Midnights vs. Boogiewoogie Man and Garvin in a dress was the best type of horseshit, and you need some horseshit on a card as intense as this one. Koloffs vs. Rock n Roll Express is also a very solid match and an interesting departure from the standard R ‘n’ R formula. Flair vs. Dusty is not a classic by any means, and the emotion at the end seemed kind of forced – I didn’t get the impression the other wrestlers were happy for Dusty. Never has there been so much blood on one card. MVP of the night? The Starrcade theme. What awesome track.

Well does anyone know how much he lost during the whole "Black Saturday" debacle in 1984? He bought GCW and it was a total disaster and he was forced to sell it at a loss. I know the sale to Crockett was $1 million, but how much did he pay the Briscos in the first place?

I've always heard people say he had every last cent in there and then some.

You'd be surprised how much of America still didn't have cable television in the early 90's Nah, it was way worse in England. Absolutely it was. There was only ever 4 terrestrial channels, 5 from the mid-90s and the vast, VAST majority of people didn't have Sky until the 00s and the advent of digital TV. "Cable" has never been a thing here, it was always satellite operated by Sky, and then digital. Freeview was quite a major deal when it happened. I think that this might also be why viewing figures have been easier to come by in the UK, because every single household has the same channels for the best part and up until recently Sky had a lockdown on most of the other channels. So they could produce pretty accurate figures.

Wow, my memory on the Tugboat stuff is awful. It's all there but the details are massively jumbled up. Guessing old Mr Ottman is not going to be featuring much on the 1990 or 1991 yearbooks.

Wasn't Tugboat orginally a "fan in the crowd" like Hillybilly Jim though? Correct me if I'm wrong but I remember a whole angle about him being Hogan's best buddy and him being into the fued against *I think* Earthquake and Dino Bravo. Then turned on Hogan and sided with Earthquake in 91.

Andre is a Vince Sr era guy. While Vince always treated those guys reasonably well and with respect, I don't think he gets that warm glow feeling he gets when thinking about his golden era guys. Especially 85-86 guys, but that era probably stretches as far as 91. What about Liz? Vince was never at his more pervy, marky or excitable when "the lovely Miss Elizabeth" was around. I think we could probably do another thread on "Vince and Morality", but his sense of right and wrong has never been more twisted and worrying than when Liz was involved -- especially when Savage was a heel.

1. What are the dead towns or even dead territories that used to support big promotions? How often do the WWE run the old AWA or Mid-South stomping grounds? How often do they run shows on the West Coast? Need to establish a core powerbase somewhere outside of the tri-state area and preferrably not in Tennessee. 2. Can you get on free-to-air national TV? For example, BBC, ITV or Channel 4 or even Channel 5 in the UK. Any channel that ANYONE can get. Yes, you might be losing out on cable revenue, but that's ok if you can get a national TV slot. 3. Celebrity endorsements. How did Vince get wrestlemania off the ground? How did he launch the boom era? You need to get buy-in for some big names. Aim for Kanye West, Beyonce, fucking Christian Bale, whoever the top stars are ... maybe if you can get support from one or two, more and more will get involved as it comes to be seen as fashionable. 4. Get top talent on the roster -- this could even be the sort of guys TNA have currently, but it's about marketing them and positioning them more effectively. Don't use Hogan and Flair as in-ring talents either. No one over the age of 50 is allow in the ring! Use them as managers, mouthpieces, presidents etc. But you also need guys who the current wrestling community will buy into. CM Punk on a big money contract would be ideal. 5. Be aggressive in running towns the WWE run and use every trick in the book to boost gates: so that means getting local sports stars and whatnot involved. If there's a wrestling heritage there, make sure you give the old home-town star a match too. If you look at WWF's strategy in the 80s, they'd poach top talent from other territories and then run stars in their local markets to get buy-in from the home crowd. Example: before DiBiase debuted on tv as Million Dollar Man, they ran JYD vs. DiBiase in Texas many many times during the summer of 1987. Then even after DiBiase had debuted, he did shows primarily across old Watts country working mainly with JYD. This makes sense. Those guys were over with fans in Texas and Oklaholma, so they would draw in towns in those states. He did a similar thing with Dino Bravo in Montreal. In 2012, this is harder to pull off, but it might mean tracking down Sandman, Tommy Dreamer and Mikey Shipwreck and doing Philly with those guys, or finding Shelton Benjamin and running the Carolinas with him, with Steamboat or Flair in his corner and making TV appearances with him in the run up to those shows. It might take a long time, but you HAVE TO GROW LOCAL SUPPORT. You can't do a TNA and think that TV alone is going to do it for you. You have to go back to wrestling 101 and run towns and develop local markets. It's one of the things Vince is seldom credited for -- not only did he break into long established territories, over the 80s he REALLY developed a local following for his house shows across the country. When I was going through all the WWF and WCW house shows a few nights ago, what really stood out to me is how WWF could draw 10,000 one night in Washington state and then two weeks later 10,000 in LA and then 10,000 in Texas. The story that DOESN'T tell is how often he'd been running those local markets for the past 5 or 6 years. That's what TNA haven't done and what, for what I can see, WCW never did. TV is a big deal, sure, but there's no substitute for wrestling fundamentals.

Don't understand why they can't just release number of viewers like they do here. It's easy to see at a stroke then how many people are watching. Surprised viewing figures now seem to be up on those from the 90s -- given that watching live TV has been massively diminished as the primary source of entertainment (see internet, Sky plus, Netflix, etc.).

Jingus can you explain this with actual figures? US tv rating systems are difficult for a Brit to get his head around.

Isn't that exctly the same angle as Tugboat?

What about Hillbilly Jim and his whole crew (Uncle Elmer and the other one) - Vince just loved his southern stereotype gimmicks, but he had a particular thing for Hillbilly Jim. Even brought him back in 96. I know he's WWE backroom staff so is easy to wheel out whenever they need an old face on TV, but I get the impression that Vince is literally the only guy in the world with genuinely fond memories of Hillbilly Jim. Vince seems to have a real, REAL soft spot for his 85-86 era guys. Basically anyone featured in the Hogan cartoon or on Piledriver. Look at how many chances he gave Sheik. Or like giving a job to Volkoff in 94 -- many many other examples. I think that like in his heart of hearts, he sees those guys as a kind of surrogate family. Much more forgiving and "doting" with that group of chracters than with any roster before or since.

My abiding memory of the "real Vince" is from Behind the Mat when he's there with The Headbangers and is just 100% living the gimmick, no sense of being a real person at all. There are so many examples of this I'll have to have a think. But from a fan perspective the *love* the idea of Vince being really like this and love his sort of out-of-touch uncle amusement. Awesome thread.

I also sometimes tell my wife she's "turning heel" if I think she's angling for an argument.

I use the word jobber in everyday life as a derogatory term. I used to work at a local game store and people heard me say it all the time and started saying it themselves. Now there are big gaming circles in my city running around calling everyone jobber. It's pretty surreal. I run my own little private forum that sort of his its own logo and people who don't watch wrestling regularly use the following terms mainly imported there by me: "Over" - when a new member is accepted by the locals "Gimmick change" - when I change someone's screen name and they get a set of things associated with them "No sold" - when a post intended to be funny gets no reaction

How much does this support the idea of Sting as a big TV draw then? And does it help his HoF case?

I think that by this stage "The IWC" actually has a few quite large sub groupings. 1. People stuck in the early 00s mindset, similar to those laid out in the OP. The quotes Mr. Wrestling X pulled out seem to have a hardcore / ECW bias, but there's also a probably much bigger variant that has a workrate bias -- thinking Malenko vs. Guerrero in 96 was the best match ever, or that Benoit was the best worker ever or Shawn or Bret Hart and that's where the conversation ends -- and probably many many of the members here were once fans of this general type. The low-end version of one of these fans is Scott Keith. This is sort of the lazy, default "IWC" attitude, probably a good few years out of date now. These guys may well have turned their back on the current product and their point of reference is still the Monday Night Wars and their high benchmarks are still Bret, Shawn or Benoit matches. Huge amount of people out there in this boat. 2. People stuck more in an 80s / early 90s mindset. Similar to those above, but they'll point to "golden age" examples from NWA or WWF (or the territories) instead as their watermarks. Possibly more of an understanding or emphasis on "guys playing their role" here and on psychology and storytelling over workrate. Also a huge amount of people out there in this boat. 3. "Smart" fans who analyse the current product inside and out, who really really know WWE very well and possibly TNA and some of the super indies too. On the high end this is people like John Pollack and Wai Ting who do the LAW. These are basically your current smarky fanbase. Again, huge amount of people like this, especially younger fans. 4. "Post-IWC" or "enlightened" fans -- which I'd say is a lot of the people on DVDR, here and related forums. This is more your Dylan or Loss, devoted to watching lots of footage from any era, any promotion, any time and developing a real appreciation for workers of all different styles. A strong aspect of this type of fandom is challenging received wisdom and lazy opinions by actually taking the time and really watching and analyzing stuff to put those opinions to the test. Basically anyone who has stuck around PWO long enough has more than a hint of this in them. Far far fewer people in this group. 5. Specialist fan -- could be puro, could be extreme hardcore, could be lucha -- just an enthusiast for a particular niche. This may or may not come with the trait of thinking everything in said niche is better than . More people in this boat than in 4, but far fewer than 1, 2 or 3. ------------ These five categories are not mutually exclusive, could have a bit of two or three of them or even have aspects of all 5. But the vast majority slot into 1, 2 or 3. I'm probably predominantly a 2 and a 4 with a hint of 1 and a dash of 5. No interest in 3 at all.

I've found figures for Clash of the Champions: http://www.twnpnews.com/information/WCW/clashrat.html Just for reference, I've pulled out the figures for 91-93 and inserted the main event below: January 30, 1991 Clash of the Champions 14 3.90 (Flair vs. Scott Steiner) June 14, 1991 Clash of the Champions 15 3.90 (Flair vs. Bobby Eaton) September 5, 1991 Clash of the Champions 16 3.70 (Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko vs. Rick Steiner and Bill Kazmaier) November 19, 1991 Clash of the Champions 17 4.30 (Lex Luger vs. Rick Steiner) January 21, 1992 Clash of the Champions 18 3.70 (Sting and Steamboat vs. Austin and Rude) June 16, 1992 Clash of the Champions 19 2.80 (Terry Gordy and Steve Williams vs. The Steiner Brothers) September 2, 1992 Clash of the Champions 20 3.70 (Rick Rude, Jake Roberts, Super Invader and Big Van Vader vs. Sting, Nikita Koloff and The Steiner) Brothers November 18, 1992 Clash of the Champions 21 3.20 (Steamboat and Douglas vs. Windham and Rhodes) January 13, 1993 Clash of the Champions 22 2.90 (Dustin Rhodes, Sting and Cactus Jack vs. Big Van Vader, Paul Orndorff and Barry Windham) June 16, 1993 Clash of the Champions 23 2.60 (Ric Flair and Arn Anderson vs. Brian Pillman and Steve Austin) August 18, 1993 Clash of the Champions 24 3.80 (Big Van Vader vs. Davey Boy Smith) November 10, 1993 Clash of the Champions 25 3.30 (Flair vs. Vader) Very difficult to extract anything meaningful from these figures to be honest.

If WCW were much more focused on their TV and PPVs than running successful live shows around the country, I'm now interested in their ratings and buyrates. TV ratings before the Monday Night Wars are difficult to find. For buyrates, I've found this ancient 90s-looking Angelfire site: http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/RAWisWAR/WCWBuyRates.html This one is more nicely laid out, but it's the same figures.: http://www.2xzone.com/wcw/buyrates.shtml The most striking thing to me is that there is no significant increase in 96-98, and how high they are in the period 87-91, there's a gradual decline during that time but they are still mostly 1.0+ in 91 when Sting was on top. 92 has mixed results. Some surprisingly "high" (relatively speaking) figures for key shows. Superbrawl II (Luger vs. Sting) did a 0.96, Halloween Havoc (Jake vs. Sting) did a 0.90. Other events crashed and burned - Starrcade (Battlebowl) did 0.50, Great American Bash (Tag tournament) did 0.40. I had to look it up elsewhere but Beach Blast apparantly did only a 0.40 too. This actually helps the Sting case quite a lot. The two big shows that year headlined by Sting drew in nearly DOUBLE the amount of people than those that were not. About 200,000 more people in both cases. The most SURPRISING thing for me is how many times even DURING the Monday Night Wars WCW failed to break 1.0. I guess this can easily be explained by the fact that Bischoff and co were going for TV ratings not PPV buys, but still, it's pretty shocking that Superbrawl II and Halloween Havoc '92 both got more buys than Superbrawl in 96 or 97. I'm going to see if I can find Neilsen ratings for WCW shows too, but there is an intense focus online on Nitro vs. Raw. Ideally I want to find figures for Saturday Night. http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&view=tvppv&year=1992 This place looks promising. I think these findings boost Sting's case, albeit ever so slightly. EDIT: Unfortunately, cagematch doesn't have the data on TV ratings. It only has ONE: http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=17934 That's a WCW Saturday Night from 02.08.1993, which apparently got a 3.4 rating, which -- if true -- is about an average-good WWE RAW show in 2012. Incidentally, that show had a 40-minute Sting vs. Flair match on it.

Interesting. So if we judge the idea of WCW as a national company by their TV, where does that leave the idea of Sting as a national draw?

I wasn't necessarily knocking them eitherm just trying to be realistic ... the thing I've been driving towards saying is that they never really developed any towns that they didn't take over. What was WCW in 1990? It was JCP + GCW + UWF + Florida. What areas did they really develop outside of those pre-existing territories? It's already been mentioned they failed to break into Texas. They didn't run the west coast, the north west, New England or Tri-State. My point was always that although they made a few random overtures to running towns outside of their core territories, they didn't really go outside of them that much -- not enough at any rate to develop their presence in them. This is kind of ignoring TV, of course, but as far as where and how often they ran shows, they were much closer to being a Southern "super territory" than a truly national outfit. I stand by that claim. Maybe playing Total Extreme Wrestling for as long as I have has made me think about these things differently.