Ricky Jackson

I watched the Super Bowl with an old friend last night, and after it was over we fired up YouTube and watched a bunch of random wrestling. My friend is a long-time WWF/E fan, but I don't think he has ever seen much of the territory-era stuff. Anyway, I showed him the clip of Savage's Memphis debut (in the TV studio where he demands a match with Lawler and dishes out piledrivers like crazy on two jobbers) followed by the first concession stand brawl and he was absolutely stunned and blown away by what he was seeing. We then watched the Cena vs Umaga Last Man Standing match from 07, and while it wasn't said, the feeling in the air was what we were watching didn't really matter and felt so contrived compared to the Memphis stuff, and this is a great match and one of the seminal moments of Cena's career. So, yeah, Memphis was fucking awesome. (On a side note, also last night, in a haze of beer and other good stuff, we developed the theory that Vince McMahon, through his announcing, was the "auteur" of the WWF from the 70s to 1997, and the real reason things have gone so downhill over the years is because he relinquished the headset and thus ceased to be the singular creative mind for the company...or something )

Yeah, the Q and A's I read on his website were usually long-winded and some of the questions he chose to answer were puzzling. I enjoyed most of his Mania reviews, which is where I thought the good insights I referred to came from.

Jesus, that's depressing. Facts like this almost make me feel sorry for Lance. He seems like a really nice guy and he does make some interesting insights, but the more you look at it, his career really was underwhelming.

Hogan from 91-96 is easily my all-time least favorite main event babyface, and I haven't even seen some of his worst offenses (eg. Uncensored 96). Hogan played a huge part in my biggest letdown as a fan, the debacle of Wrestlemania 9. It took years until I was able to allow myself to enjoy a Hogan performance after that crappy show.

I think Hogan's match with Earthquake at Summerslam 90 is underrated as a classic Hogan moment. Crazy heat, with Vince getting over the hopelessness of Hogan's situation very well, and Earthquake takes a chair shot at the end that leaves an awesome welt on his back to boot.

Yeah, I should have said Jim Powers.

I'm not sure there was anything Verne could have done once Vince and the lure of being the King of New York came calling.

I wasn't a huge fan of Hogan in the 80s, even though I was just a kid and a total mark. I think even then I sensed he was too God-like, too invincible, to ever really embrace, like Superman, and I've always been a Spider Man guy, a Santana and Steamboat and Savage guy. My teenage years coincided with his self-indulgent 91-96 period that to this day I utterly detest. I loved Hollywood Hogan, but by 98/99 I was a total wrestling snob who hated the (as I saw it) "bad workers", so of course I started to hate him again. Today, as has been mentioned by others, I really enjoy most of his 80s work. I think my favorite Hogan match is the cage match with Bossman from SNME 1989. Really fun stuff. I cannot deny he is one of the all-time great performers, probably the best at working a crowd I've ever seen, and at his peak a really entertaining showman who was a much better worker than he has ever been given credit for by the smart community.

If this is true, then we are supposed to take him seriously as a "wrestling expert" why exactly? Oh right, nobody does.

Shit, Lance isn't even in Koko B. Ware's league as a WWE HOF candidate, let alone Tito's. I think the whole WO crew could use a few bong hits so they don't get so infuriated over WWE booking on a weekly basis.

The whole "Bret's contract was too expensive" story has always sounded a bit weird to me. I don't know what the exact annual amount was, but was it really the crippling financial burden Vince made it out to be? Was letting Bret go to WCW really the only answer? As for booking Bret to win the title at Summerslam, wasn't the plan, at least originally, for Austin to finally beat him cleanly at Mania 14 and thus bookend Mania 13 and blow off the whole feud? That has always been the ideal ending for me, anyway. I guess I'm just curious if Vince ever considered having Bret stay until Mania, put Steve over, and then let him go to WCW.

Lance Storm's career is closer to Paul Roma. Comparing him to Tito is laughable, and even though it is a pretend HOF, he should come nowhere near being inducted.

I'm partial to the Norse God of Sports Entertainment, Erick Rowan, myself:

The Calgary phone book/Yellow Pages back in the 90s had a free wrestling news weekly update service (there were also weeky updates for soap operas, sports, celebrity gossip, etc). I think the update was done by some guy from Toronto, but I'm not sure, and most big Canadian cities probably had an equivalent at the time. The news was taken directly from the Observer IIRC, with Meltzer receiving credit.

So, I see the website finally made the jump into the, well, early 21st century.

Yeah, Cactus Jack managed Barbarian and I want to say Butch Reed, maybe some others, for a few months while he was recovering from an injury.

Superstar Graham's influence on wrestling didn't always produce the most eye-pleasing fashion choices.

Lately, I regret not seeing Hogan live at least once, especially in the 80s. I know he wrestled in Calgary a few times back then, but the only cards I attended were B shows headlined by Savage and Roberts (not that I'm complaining, because those are two of my all-time faves). I also lost interest in WWF in 2001, so I didn't go to Mania 18 in Toronto (didn't even watch it on PPV), when only a year or two earlier I would have went out of my way to go to a show like that. Passed on Mania 19, even though I had friends who were going. I also missed the only Superstars taping ever held in Calgary (summer of 91), but I only became aware of that show through Cawthon's site, so it's not like I skipped it when I had a chance to go. I also have never seen Flair live. My friends went to a 92 show where he headlined against Savage, but for some reason I didn't attend, even though I was super into WWF at the time.

What about Bobo? Or was he more of a touring attraction?

To each his own, but my favorite Jake feud is vs Martel.

Yeah, I watched the Bob/Don 83 TDM recently, and coupled with the Tito/Savage No DQ, Gorilla's seeming ignorance of what type of match he is calling is really annoying.

I've always been a DK fan and I'm curious, is the modern DK hate more to do with the idea his legacy (no-selling workrate clones) has ruined indy wrestling for many fans, or is it the perception that his HOF credentials (drawing power, great matches, great worker) are not HOF worthy and he shouldn't have been inducted in the first place?

I have nothing to really add to this other than to say that the first WWF card I ever attended was in Calgary at the Saddledome in (pretty sure) early-January 1989. The reason I am unsure of the exact date is because the result of the card is not listed on Cawthon's site. The main event was Savage vs Brown, but this was of course before the heel turn. I've thought about e-mailing Cawthon about this card, and maybe I will someday. I really don't remember much else about the show other than Demolition wrestled (I think vs Powers of Pain). I can remember the next card I attended much better, March 17, 1989 at the smaller Corral, featuring Andre the Giant and my hero Tito, and which is listed on Cawthon's site.

As a kid I really liked Trongard calling the AWA shows from Vegas. I thought he had a great voice, still do. He just *sounded* like a sports announcer, and I thought he made the AWA shows seem more important than they really were. I know he is universally hated around here, a worst announcer of all time candidate. His WWF work sucked, no doubt. In the last few years I've watched more of his AWA work and some of it is pretty bad. Still, I have a soft spot for the guy mainly because of nostalgia for my youth.

Hillbilly did commentary for 7 MSG shows between Sept 89 and March 90 (Cawthon). I'm not as familiar with these MSG shows as I am with earlier ones, but I remember Hillbilly's commentary being quite terrible. Neidhart commentated on 2 shows in 91 (4/22 and 6/3).