JerryvonKramer

I'd be impressed if ANYONE can name 3,000 wrestlers period, let alone better than Raven. THREE THOUSAND

Nikolai Volkoff was sort of an underdog babface when he was in the Million $ Corporation, sort of.

How come Vince didn't pick up Billy Robinson when he bought out that territory? I mean he took Dino bloody Bravo.

Here in the UK, by the way, a nationalist gimmick would almost certainly be a heel. A racist heel basically.

Is Bischoff's role at TNA purely as "an onscreen talent" or does he have some power too?

What's Kevin Sullivan upto now?

Given that someone mention Edward Said, how about a post-colonial academic gimmick? Would they be face or heel? Imagine the scenes ... they come out and accuse Vince of consistently representing "the racial Other" in a dehumanizing way. They have detailed packages of Kamala, Afa, Sika, the Headshrinkers and so on. Could be interesting.

I actually assumed he was talking about his early 90s run with Slick

He pretty much CONSTANTLY pimps the fact he used to be a Navy Seal in interviews I've heard. Like constantly.

Re: Kamala BSing, here's what he has to say on his website, make of it what you will, but he's implying Vince was racist in some way:

Random question but ... What the hell is the deal with "West Texas State University"? Why did basically every wrestler from the 80s graduate (or not, as the case may be) from there? Did they have an awesome wrestling programme there or something?

I heard an interview with James "Kamala" Harris the other day saying that he never got a big pay day. Like working for Vince he got stuff like $800 working MSG with Hogan and something like $5k working Undertaker at Wrestlemania. Was the WWF stingy? I guess they paid Hogan very well, but was say -- Tito Santana -- on the same sort of money as ... say ... Manny Fernandez? In my mind those two would be on similar sort of pay. Were JCP known to pay more?

I don't know if you guys have ever seen Jeremy Kyle ... this man: He presents a trash day-time talk show here in the UK, but I've heard rumours that he has a show in the US now too. It's essentially a bit like Jerry Springer only his gimmick is that he shouts disgustedly at the guests, casting moral judgement on their lives, telling them to "get off their backsides" and so on. His whole deal is to berate the deparved people he gets on the show. It can be funny to watch, but it's also quite disturbing. I don't know how it would translate, but Kyle would be a natural heel in wrestling. Remember how IRS would come out lambasting all the tax cheats in the crowd or how Rude would call them fat slobs etc? A Jeremy Kyle-type character could do that. Has there ever been a heel who specifically targets the trailer trash element in the crowd? Not in a class-based gimmick, but more of a "look at the way you people live your lives" sort of way.

Considering even Volkoff got a mini-angle with Hogan, there's got to be some truth to that. I'm surprised that they didn't run an Uncle Ivan brings in his devestating nephew angle given that he was a former champ. "I destroyed Bruno, and now I'm going to destroy Hulk Hogan". Suppose Vince Jr. had no truck with that sort of continuity.

Insincerity is a time-honored staple in wrestling, and one that almost always works well. When fans pick up on it, they don't tend to like it, and those wrestlers tend to get booed. One question: Even if the wrestler was intending on using the hold as a finisher, would you want it presented credibly in the company? Should he gets wins off of it? Should his opponents sell it? Should the announcers make light of it, or should they say something more like, "Well it looks like has a pretty devastating hold locked in, even if it does seem to be a relic from another era" ... that part I'm curious about, but I think it's important. What would be FUNNY is if, week on week, this wrestler would face jobbers. Not undercard guys, pure old-school jobbers who'd tap out almost immediately to the spinning toehold. Could even bring back Brooklyn Brawler, Iron Mike Sharpe, Barry Horrowitz, etc. as one shots. This guy could cut promos about how there is no one he's willing to wrestle on the current roster because they are all "rule breakers". Some guys could challange him but he'd actively get out of facing them on RAW or SD (or whatever show). This for like 3-4 months. Him making jobbers tap out with a spinning toehold. Him working basically exactly like Dory Funk Jr., slow-pace, only 1 suplex per match, a lot of matwork, etc. He could get all his "complaining" spots in against these jobbers to establish the character. THEN, when he's finally forced into some sort of PPV match, the build could partly centre on whether wrestler X will tap out to the spinning toe-hold. When the match comes you could then book it in one of two ways, either: 1. The face goes over and your 70s man becomes a semi-jokey midcard guy OR 2. Your 70s man wins but by BLATANTLY cheating when the refs back is turned -- chairshot to the head ... or maybe even with a bit of classic old-school heeling, the brass knucks, something like that. Then with the guy knocked out, he gets the spinning toehold on and wont release it and someone "throws in the towel" Arnold Skaaland style for the face. Not only would the second option be funny, it would maintain his heat AND keep the question about the effectiveness of his hold unanswered. Beyond that I'm not sure. The setup of modern WWE makes a gimmick like this hard to book long-term, but that's how the first 4-6 months would go.

The comic books comparion is very interesting. I have long-term plans of writing a book looking at "The Changing Face of Good and Evil in American Popular Culture" using comics and pro wrestling as my two main case studies. To my way of thinking they go hand-in-hand, but you are right that comics have the middle-class audience, and wrestling by and large doesn't. Interesting. Also, is there REALLY a moral difference between Batman and wrestling? It's both hard Regan-style American justice from where I'm looking.

Loss - you say that, but do you think that part of wrestling's appeal is PRECISELY its roots in blue-collar America? Like part of what makes watching Mid South so great is knowing that that old dude in the cowboy hat in the front row basically has exactly the same values as Bill Watts. I mean it does get uncomfortable at times -- I have a problem, for example, with the almost blatant racism of guys like Dick Murdoch and Terry Gordy -- but in a strange way that is part of its "charm" as well. Does wrestling have an "affluent audience"?

So you basically mean the Hasan debate angle only with JR and Lawler as the heels? That angle was probably one of the bottom 5 worst moments in WWE history by the way. It was horrible. JR and Lawler telling the "Aaaaa-rab" to "go home" and expecting (and getting) babyface pops for it. One of those moments that made me ashamed to be a wrestling fan.

Does Will have an ECW set? I need to see some of this stuff.

I suspected as much, but I do need to see more ECW in general, so look forward to catching up on Corino. I was thinking more along the lines of a Dory Funk Jr. or Bob Backlund only, like, now. It's not so much about morals, but about how wrestling itself has gone to the dogs -- not morally, but in terms of the pureness of the sport. I'd love to see someone stubbornly using a spinning toe hold as their finisher.

My ECW exposure is very limited in general. Did he do all those spots? Like decrying a closed fist? Moaning about over the top rope etc? If so, I'll be checking Corino's ECW stuff out in a major way. Something I've wanted to see for years.

Fascinating thread. The trouble with the Sarge face character is that it was tied into American patriotism in a way that Hogan wasn't. US patriotism was ONE facet of Hogan's persona but he was, as people have said, also a guy who seems like he could have legit hung out with Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper. Hogan could work US vs. foreign invader feuds, but he could also work vs. monsters (Andre, Bundy) and vs. any evil masterminds (Heenan, DiBiase) Where are the exmamples of Sarge working against monsters or generic villains? The babyface Slaughter character was quite limited. The sadistic heel Slaughter could work any angle, but face Slaughter was locked into foreign invasion stuff. Which is why the Sheik feud worked so well. ------ On the transitional champ stuff, I think 86 was too early for Savage. In 85 it would have been Piper for sure -- although I don't see how a heel Piper, face Sarge angle would work unless Piper started with anti-US rhetoric. Same with Orndorff. I just don't see why Sarge would have beef with a "normal" heel. The thing is that if Sarge had got the belt, the booking after the Sheik match would have been different. Sheik would have had some sort of rematch and his push would have been maintained. Volkoff would have been booked stronger coming in and rather than being in a tag with Sheik, would have worked some sort of singles feud with Sarge. I see Mr. Fuji being more prominent as a manager and brining in various "anti-US" stars from abroad. From all that, weirdly, I'd see the belt going back to Sheik to transition to Hogan in 85. The alternative is a Snuka heel turn -- maybe he falls under the spell of "The Devious One" or something along those lines. Muraco could also be in that spot. If it happened as late as 86, then -- here's an interesting idea -- what about Terry Funk working some sort of American turned Japanese angle? Build for months with Fuji saying he's "got a big star coming from Japan", and it turns out to be Funk. Not that WWF would book that in a million years, but it's fun to imagine.

One gimmick I've always wanted to see is the idea of an old-fashioned 70s wrestler with no gimmick who INSISTS on the certain old-fashioned rules. For example, if someone hit him with a closed fist, he'd want a DQ. If someone threw him over the top rope, he'd want a DQ. In a tag match, he'd want to see the guy on the outside holding the tagrope. He'd naturally be a heel, but would present himself as a babyface standing up for old-fashioned rasslin' values a la Bill Watts (he'd be implicitly homophobic, bible thumping and so on). The closest we've seen to this character is Bob Backlund in 93-4 before his actual heel turn when the Mr. Backlund character came to be about more than just being an old-school 70s star. It's really Backlund in 93, as glimpsed at Wrestlemania 9 vs. Razor, that I'd love to see developed into a fully fledged character. There are others, but I'll leave it there for now.

Amazing, it's just on Youtube. Better watch it before the Feds arrive. Ok, the 87 and 88 tourneys where Savage and then DiBiase won, are my picks for this then.

Ep 13 has been really good so far.