Ricky Jackson

....sooooo yeah....again...1 year later and I made my debut last Saturday as Big Benjamin Johnson. Same day Kobashi retired, sadly I failed on my promise to no sell even 1 burning hammer and I lost via getting kicked in the head Congrats, man. Keep on living the dream.

A bit off topic, but I really, really like 1983 as a "best overall year" candidate. The territories were firing on all cylinders for the last time. Really good stuff from Memphis, AWA, World Class, Crockett, Portland, Mid South, and strong output from Japan and Mexico (well, one classic match at least). WWF had a down year compared to what came before and what came after. Classic/memorable matches from 83 off the top of my head: -Lawler vs Dundee Loser Leaves Town -Final Conflict cage match -MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana -Tsuruta vs Flair -Hansen vs Terry Funk, AJPW -Hogan vs Bockwinkel, Super Sunday -Snuka vs Muraco MSG cage match -Flair vs Brody, St. Louis -Hogan vs Inoki, IWGP title -Tons of stuff from World Class, Memphis, AWA, and Mid South that has been pimped but I haven't seen yet. Big picture wise 83 also had the first Starrcade, the end of Backlund's long WWF title run, the Buddy Rose face turn, the Von Erich's/Freebirds feud, and the start of the wrestling war with Vince moving into St. Louis at the end of the year.

Is this a new LHP or a random rerun of the Michael Landon one?

It works on so many levels.

Thanks again for listening Chad. 6/3/94 is a cliche pick amongest puro experts for sure, and it was really hard to narrow it down to two matches to represent all of Japanese wrestling history, but, damn, it really is an awesome fuckin' match. Definitely a crowd pleaser. Thanks so much for the complements. I know we talked about this before, but if the spot is free, you can pencil me in for Havoc 91 with you and Parv on Big Boys, whenever that may happen. I had a blast doing Bash 89.

It's awesome that the smark darling and the smark pariah are dating twins.

Good show guys. "Santa Tully" is my new favorite fantasy angle.

He's my current favorite wrestler as well. I never thought about the Owen comparison before, but when you think about it, that is maybe the wrestler he is most similar to overall, and not just because of the Team Hell No stuff either.

How widespread was the steriod scandal reported in the mainstream US press? I don't really remember reading about it in the Calgary papers at the time, but I do remember tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair covering it. I know the Apter mags covered some of it, or at least the sex scandal part involving Patterson and Phillips, but I don't remember how in depth they went.

Looking back, A&E really went wrestling crazy at the time, with multiple Biography episodes and that Unreal Story of Pro Wrestling doc they ran a million times, on top of airing Wrestling With Shadows.

God, they can't possibly run a Cena/Orton feud again, can they?

Vince was the booker, at least for the big picture stuff, during the 80s and most (maybe just half?) of the 90s. At some point in the 90s it seems he decided to let others to do most of the day-to-day booking, but I've never really been sure of the exact timeline, or how much credit Patterson deserves for the 80s/90s stuff, etc. But maybe I'm totally wrong.

You should watch Raw from the night after Mania, Jerry. Way more fun. Your countrymen take over the crowd and turn it into a soccer match atmosphere.

I don't remember him having one with Edge either.

I usually think current WWE is pretty lacklustre, but God, compared to this era of WCW... :o :o :o It really was just the most awful crap ever. I mean, just thinking of Hogan doing the Hulkamania schtick again and everybody pretending the NWO years never happened and Sting being such a dumbass and, fuck, IT GETS WORSE WHEN RUSSO TAKES OVER!!!!!! El-P, I don't know how you do it. Or why. Makes for a great thread, though.

Episode 3 is now up for your listening pleasure. Rejoice! Wrestling talk returns to The Fringe Scholars as Moss and I explore Wrestling from Japan http://fringescholars.wordpress.com/ I promised non-WWE talk in the past, so here we go. I do not profess to be an expert on puro, although I do love to watch it and research it. In this episode I give a general overview of the history of wrestling from Japan, hitting the major points and names, and examine some of the differences between Japanese wrestling and North American wrestling. Then, Moss and I review two matches --Terry Funk/Hansen, 4/14/83 and Misawa/Kawada, 6/3/94--becoming almost giddy in the process. So enjoy, guys. As always, any and all feedback is welcome. In the next episode I deconstruct one of the great classics of the art form, the Chamber of Horrors match from Halloween Havoc 91.

When he stays away from trying to push the "Reality Era" and other bullshit postmodern theories, like he mostly did with his last column, he can be pretty good. His piece on Bruno was just really, really bad and embarrassing.

What gets over is what gets over.

The proposed year long build to a Rock/Brock match didn't sound very appealing.

So Meltzer is reporting Rock has gone home and there is chaos backstage this afternoon. Anybody know anything more?

I missed the first three matches and only half-watched Jericho/Fandango. Taker/Punk was really good. It seems I liked HHH/Lesnar more than anybody else around here but it was hurt by the dead crowd. Rock/Cena was better than last year but the finish was as predictable as they come. Considering how underwhelming the last year or so of WWE has been, this is about as good as one would expect Mania to be. The last 4 or 5 Mania's all feel the same to me anyway.

I'm jealous.

The highlights of Backlund's HoF speech read just as crazy as I hoped they would.

Germany has a national wrestling mag similar looking to the French one above, with a lot of the show reviews taken straight from the WON.

Yeah, I had a "didn't someone just recently review this match?" feeling when I wrote this up last night. I was too lazy to check. Honestly, I totally forgot there was even a Bockwinkel thread, let alone a 6 page one that was only started in January.