Ricky Jackson

See, I would take prime Piper over, say, prime Misawa any day of the week. But I thought something like Strongbow vs Fuji from 73 was a great match, so what do I know. Hmmm, speaking of Strongbow....

Savage is my #1. Flair probably #2, and then the list gets far less "serious" after that

Roddy Piper http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19894-roddy-piper/?hl=%20roddy%20%20piper

Based on comments made by Russ Davis during the match, I'm going to guess that the Thesz-Gagne match from the Chicago footage is from 1/25/52. Not 100% sure. Wrestlingdata is far from being complete of course, but they list two Chicago Thesz-Gagne matches from the time period, both Broadways - 1/25/52 and 12/12/52. Davis on commentary implies this is the first time they have wrestled in Chicago, so that would suggest the former. Again, just a guess. Great match BTW

Great research Steve! I never knew the story of the MSG "brand" being used in other cities

Thanks for putting this together, Charles

That comment actually warranted a thread

It's cool footage. If anyone is interested, we discussed it on this episode of Titans devoted to St. Louis wrestling https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-of-wrestling-11?in=jerryvonkramer/sets/titans-of-wrestling

Works for me

Totally down for this, Chad. Great idea

Martin, Once we hit January or so, let's do a mini joshi project or something. I'm game. I have never watched a Joshi match in my life and really ought to have by now. We can use yearbooks to help us in the 90s and I am sure there is a way to figure out the most famous 80s matches. Mind if I get in on this? I've never seen a full joshi match. It's my biggest blind spot.

Don't worry, that guy is long gone

Totally wanted this to come up again since I wasn't around for the 06 version, so count me in

Hmm, maybe he was the mysterious lost "20th man"

Montreal was a really unique situation because it was picked up by the Canadian media as a significant news story and the WWF was forced to acknowledge the truth that he was leaving. The Internet definitely played a big part in that story gaining momentum, but I think the Canadian media being more willing than the U.S. media to cover wrestling seriously was equally, if not more, important. I can still remember how strange it felt grabbing a Calgary Sun one morning and seeing the news of Bret leaving for WCW reported the front page. This was about 2 weeks or so before Montreal

Within hours Titans #34 drops featuring a 90 minute interview with the legendary "Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff. Please help support the production of a career retrospective documentary on Ivan, directed by Michael Elliot of the recent Rock n' Roll Express doc and the highly acclaimed Jim Crockett Promotions doc. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1244526869/ivan-koloff-the-russian-bear

Playlist featuring the segments discussed on the show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV6RCTo_Cd0BJI1C8xoF2oMz2yFp36o6B

Piper was pinned by Flair (feet on ropes) at MSG in Oct 91

Kinda reminds of 1993 when Raw debuted and we couldn't get it in my part of Canada for another 2 years, and then it was on like Friday nights at 11pm or some such shitty timeslot.

Once again, great work Matt

No surprise, but "PWO is the board that loves Mark Henry" is a cliche amongst certain wrestling fans. A wrestling fan friend of mine who is big into the latest online trends, but doesn't visit PWO that I'm aware of, brought this up one day. He picked this up from somewhere, probably Twitter

Cena being part of the birthday segment, where Hogan revisited his NWO turn, could be a great bit of foreshadowing. Probably not though

I did (it's actually 6/30/73) and I saw a ridiculously heated match where Strongbow was basically as over as any wrestler past or present.

The MSG fans who were going nuts for Strongbow on the two 1975 cards we've looked at were made up almost exclusively of adults. Look at the crowds. The main reason for this is that children under 14 were technically banned from going to wrestling shows at MSG stemming from the 1957 riot. The ban wasn't always strictly enforced, but it seems like if you looked too young they wouldn't let you in. Plus, MSG shows were held in Manhattan on Monday nights starting at 8pm, not exactly a prime time and place for children. Appears the ban was lifted around the time Backlund won the strap. Another thing is that we have next to nothing of 1970-74 WWWF Strongbow to assess, which would likely help explain his appeal. 75 Strongbow is clearly in decline, and 79 Strongbow is close to being ancient. It would be cool to see how Strongbow originally got over in 1970. Clearly he was someone coasting on past glory even by 1975.

What's cool is the name on the back of his jersey was "Wahoo"