Ricky Jackson

Honestly, I really do hope something like this is the logic behind it all. It's relatively simple and makes more sense than some convoluted conspiracy swerve type thing. That said, I don't think this is how those doing the booking have envisioned the angle.

I had no idea Santana and Martel teamed in AWA. This was early-80s? How long did it last?

All I know is HHH better fix this damn mess before the Muppets show up on Halloween. You can't have them appear in an unsafe work environment like Raw. It's just another potential lawsuit waiting to happen.

I feel validated that kayfabe CM Punk agrees with my assessment of last night's angle.

I know it went 60 and was bloody, but I'm only aware of the existence of a few clips of the match that were originally shown on 24/7 (high quality footage though) and not the full match. The clips are nothing special as far as making it seem like a great match or anything. I think the consensus from those who saw it live is that it was raining and the ring was soaked, which helped make it difficult to work. Besides the conditions, apparently neither Race or Graham had a particularly great night in the ring either. As far as Graham goes, yeah he was pretty limited, but the nuclear heat his matches could command (especially his 70s MSG stuff) puts him far ahead of Jesse in my book.

This reminds me of those old Wrestling Superstars magazine "Dream Match" articles (could you get those in the UK Jerry?). Sometimes they were quite weird (Andre's "long-lost" twin brother winning a freak show battle royal for example), but at the time I loved them. IIRC they did a dream tag team tournament in a 1990 issue with random draw rules (the Harts fluked out and stayed together, and the RnR's and Midnights switched partners). Looking at the Starrcade 90 card (BTW not WCW's finest hour), the teams are a little wacky, and my home country's reps are utterly disgraceful (anyone care to enlighten me on who Troy Montour and Danny Johnson were???? They're so obscure they don't even have friggen wikipedia pages). Anyway, in the spirit of Wrestling Superstars, here's my "dream" tag tourney from 1990: USA: Warrior and Sting ("reunited and it feels so gooooood") Canada: How's Piper and Abby for a crazy ass combo. Sure they weren't kayfabe Canadians, but this is my fantasy, so deal with it! UK: Um, was Big Daddy still working in 1990? Adams and Smiley is actually a pretty good pick. But I'm going with another odd couple: DK and Adrian Street baby! Russia: Another WWF/WCW dream team: Nikita Koloff and Nikolai Volkoff Japan: Have to go with the B-I Cannon one last time. Mexico: El Canek and Mil Mascaras (did they ever team in real life?) Plus wrestlers from two other countries that I can't think of right now, but it doesn't matter because they were eliminated in fictitious first round matches. The Winners: I'm booking a Japan/Canada final. It would be full of blood and the heat would be off the charts. The B-I Cannon go over as Piper does a rare pinfall job. Baba and Inoki embrace and celebrate in mid-ring, finally burying the hatchet, and agreeing to face each other in a one-time-only "scientific" match at the Tokyo Dome on New Years Day 1991. And Bill Apter and Matt Brock declare the night the greatest in the history of our great sport (settling that argument once and for all).

Yeah, I know it isn't cool to like DK anymore, especially his Tiger Mask stuff, but he was one of my childhood favorites and I still dig most of his pre-back injury work. Honestly, I've seen very little of his Portland run. Early-80s Slaughter has become one of my favorites in recent years. Need to really dive into Bockwinkel and watch some of his lesser known stuff someday. Need to REALLY dive into Rose someday. What I've seen of his early stuff has been one of the great revelations of the last few years for me.

Savage is my pick. I have no problem with any of the other names, haven't seen much from a lot of guys (Rose, Morton, Rogers, Mantell, Eaton, Murdoch), and would throw in Dynamite Kid (not enough great stuff in USA?).

Check the new comments thread for my take on it. (and no, I'm not secretly Todd Martin) I should have put it here but I totally forgot about this thread.

Don't get a swell head about it John, but damn your Chicago/Spears/Hogan/Cher/Edge/Warrior/Sting argument is a thing of beauty.

I think I'll always rate their Mania match higher, with the tie-breakers being the perfectly executed double-turn aspect, a bit better storytelling ("he didn't quit, he passed out from blood loss!"), and the fact it was the culmination of several months of build up. Still, the SS match is excellent and maybe a better example of Bret's skills (and Austin's) as a worker in that the two of them were wrestling each other for the first time and had yet to build up a rhythm in the ring, and they were still able to have an all-time classic match. Just an awesome feud that makes me miss the old days every time I think about it.

Well, they've sure been booking the Waffle House cook in a lot of PPV main events recently. So obviously they see him as something more than just a "technical" wrestler or somebody they need to force-feed to 90% of their fans. As for Steamboat, as far as I know he was a pretty decent draw between 1977 and 1984, at least in the Carolinas and Toronto, and not always because he was booked against Flair. Post-1984 (really, when wrestling history begins according to WWE), yeah, he was not a huge draw when given the main event spot. But he wasn't booked on top very often, and other than a house show run with Savage (maybe a B show run with Roberts?), not at all while in WWF. I think the weirdest part is this was in WWE magazine. I haven't read an issue in years. Do they do a lot of non-kayfabe stuff these days?

I'm not sure, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head. But speaking of random Hogan jobs, he was "defeated" by Mike Awesome on the 5/1 2000 Nitro and by Vampiro on the 5/22 2000 Nitro (according to Cawthon's site). I don't remember these at all. I'm assuming they weren't clean jobs.

Maybe this was a bone Hogan tossed as a way to soothe some feelings before he tore through the whole heel roster at that Uncensored PPV.

Ah, gotcha, been a since I watched it, should prob give that 1 re-watch then since I remember very little about the Fall Brawl match. 1 last moment to bring up just since we're on the subject. The time Arn beat Hogan 2 weeks in a row in early 96 is up thear with like the greatest things ever too, especially the 1st week since the match was real good and the clebration afterwards is priceless This happened? Clean?

Bret apparently made Tom Magee look like a million bucks. End of discussion.

Here's a feel good story featuring a wrestler in the mainstream media for a change: Ray Rougeau=Hero

Although his "I hate modern wrestling" shtick is often tiresome, I do get a kick out of Bryan's gleefully anti-WWE F4W headlines. This weeks gem: "Summerslam buyrate tanks"

Shame on me for forgetting the (British) Invasion angle of '64. It helped make the boys the most successful babyfaces ever. Even Lennon's "Bigger than Jesus" promo (which turned him heel in the South) couldn't stop them.

After going over that list I think it's pretty clear that "Who shot JR?" was the greatest and highest drawing angle of all time.

Good point. But one way you could argue against that kind of straight up comparison, and I'm no expert on Japan, is that as far as I know AJPW and NJPW vastly outdrew WCW in every possible way during the 90s, with the possible exception of 97-98. So Sting was a much lesser draw than Japan's top guys. And while he had a number of memorable matches during the 90s, I think his Japanese counterparts were for the most part better workers. (although in a totally different style) On the other hand, I think that there is a bit of a "mystique" for some Western wrestling fans when it comes to Japanese wrestling, in that certain Japanese stars are put up on pedestals and worshipped with almost god-like reverence, similar to how certain Western wrestlers were regarded in Japan during the 50s through the 80s. As a result, some HOF Japanese guys are in perhaps based on being kind of mysterious and unique, while a guy like Sting is a dime a dozen musclehead American wrestler and, without slam dunk HOF credentials (serious drawing power, unique charisma, awesome worker, etc.), has had trouble getting in, and always will. I just pulled that out of my ass, so forgive me if it sounds a little off the mark.

Yeah, it seems like running the B-show PPVs on the network would be the more logical choice. I have no idea how the cable industry works, though. Maybe the plan is to get a ton of subscribers right off the bat by dangling the major shows as incentive, and with more subscribers be able to charge the cable companies and advertisers more money (is that even how it works?), or something. What would be considered a resonable number of subscribers for a start-up cable channel anyway? And how many subscribers, cable fees and ad dollars would they need to equal 1 million buys? This is going to be an interesting story to follow going forward. Who knows, maybe we'll look back at the launch of the network as major turning point. At the very least we should have a lot to post about in the coming months.

After writing about the feud earlier today, I thought I'd watch the Santana vs Savage no DQ match from MSG tonight for the first time in years. Great match, no doubt, but ye gods was Ernie Ladd horrible on commentary! Just totally spewing incoherent random comments and getting the Art Donovan-lets-ignore-him-and-maybe-he'll-just-stop-talking treatment from Monsoon and Hayes (who were also bad, forgetting the match was no DQ and getting on the ref's case about letting the wrestlers go too far). This was perhaps the worst commentated great match I've ever seen.

Was the match between Cena and Rey from a few months back the first between the two, at least since they both became huge stars? If so, it was a little short-sighted to just casually throw a first-time match between arguably the two biggest babyfaces of the last several years on TV with no build. But as we all know, the old rules of promoting "rasslin" no longer apply. Speaking of which, and I know I'm not the first to bring this up, but in the last few years I've envisioned Cena vs Undertaker as a modern version of Hogan vs Andre from Mania 3 (sans the legendary status, but hopefully better worked), with the twist being that the younger guy turns heel and does the job. Maybe for Mania 29 and Takers final match.

Who has ever hung it up at the "right time" and exited gracefully, though? Jack Brisco? Savage? Race, I guess, although his last few years in the ring were nothing to write home about. It's a pretty short list. It seems like almost all the all-time greats have put in time in the ring past the age of 50 (besides those who's careers were cut short due to serious injury or death). I can remember the Sheik, Kowalski, Bobo and others who were stars from the 50s still wrestling in the early-90s. I mean, if guys like Funk, Valentine, and others still want to go at the local high school, community center, or whatever, because they still love to perform, I'm fine with that. It sucks if they are only doing it to pay the bills. I don't know what Funk and Valentine's financial situations are like. Flair definitely needs the money, but he seems to still love wrestling, even if, based on his appearance and physical condition, he should not be in the ring on national TV in 2011. But I think he would still be doing this even if he didn't have 3 or 4 alimony payments a month. (like his title reigns, I've lost count of Ric's marriages ) Ideally, all our heroes, be it wrestlers, football players, rock stars, movie stars, etc., would call it a career before they begin to tarnish their legacies. Realistically, they rarely do.