Kevin Ridge

I had the same feeling that they missed the peak of things by a few minutes. Also didn't feel like we got the best performances from all six guys such as Taue. Still a pretty good match though and maybe would stand out more if AJPW 93 didn't have so many other great matches.

You understand that's not what you'd have to do, right? Get a Chromecast or Roku or use a game console. Never heard of those first two things but I do have a PS3. I don't have a wireless set up though or a router. So, I'd still need to research and figure out what is best option.

From watching late 79/early 80 stuff of Backlund, I'm not too bothered with the lack of selling for him as a baby face. Not really seeing it as an issue. I think it just fit what those paying (Johnny Sorrow's great point on Titans shows of us looking back at this stuff 30 years later) fans wanted out of their top baby face in WWF at this time. A bit similar to Bruno in that he would go out there and kick some ass though not as strong as a brawler than Sammartino. Though, I don't really see Backlund as some underdog. He may not have the size as some other guys but as Shoe mentioned he had the amateur creditials but was also strong as hell. He had some of the most impressive legit strength in the ring. I get that he wasn't the most charismatic on the mic and that his promos could be a bit lifeless. But he showed way more emotion in the ring and I feel like the selling is there.

I'm going to have to figure out to hook my TV up to the internet finally as still can't watch more than a match or so on my computer. Can't imagine watching 3 or 4 hour shows. I'll probably give this a shot especially if they open the archives though I hope stuff doesn't expire within a certain time frame like 24/7 and On Demand where I may not get around to watching something in time.

Have people been having issues downloading this directly from Place to be Nation to iTunes and then putting on iPod? It's just not taking to my iPod and only seem to be having issues with this download specifically.

My wrestling viewing has been limited lately due to work so took me a while to finish youtubing this and then listening to show. Actually popped disc is first time late at night and after watching the first Bruno promo to open things I shut off my TV as I felt I wouldn't watching anything better the rest of way. What a promo the fact that he topped it later was even more awesome. Larry has really picked up too as he became way more interesting with this heel turn. Mount Rushmore of Wrestling Managers for me is Heenan, Cornette, Jimmy Hart and... Sherri Martel!!! I"m with Kelly on really liking her. I liked the Duncum/Backlund matches but good points about them seeming to be out of sequence with Backlund winning clean first match and things getting closer over the next two. I know Johnny picked the Monsoon tag match as his favorite but damn did I really get into this as it went on. Gorilla was great and loved his huge bump at the end of the match. Looks like Monsoon could still go and be effective in tag teams. The Larry/Bruno matches were off the charts with the crowd heat. I had the same exact view as Pete on the Philly one when watching thinking it would be more violent at first before picking up that it was all part of the storyline with the promos leading up. Bruno's delayed hulk up is so great and he builds it awesomely and his timing of letting loose on Larry has the crowd going to another level. Really enjoyed both Matches. Hard to pick a favorite but probably the New York one, barely. Backlund/Sika was crap but the first hour and forty minutes of wrestling before this was a hell of a fun time. I enjoyed these matches and listening to you guys a heck of a lot more than being at Survivor Series. Excellent bios, haiku from James! and loved the stories from Johnny/Heenan to Parv's magical experience at the picture palace.

James Bond James Bond's exact birthdate is clouded in mystery due to him seemingly never aging and his early history being deemed classified by the British government. Earliest date of birth goes back to November 11, 1920 or 1921 but exact day probably will never be known. Place of birth is also disputed with locations of Scotland, Switzerland and Germany being mentioned. James early life had him spending much of the time living abroad with his Scottish father, Andrew Bond and Swiss Mother, Monique Delacroix. Young Bond became fluent in German and French as his taste for travel would play a huge part in his future career. James would add more languages over the years allowing him to become a true international star. At 11, both parents were tragically killed in a climbing accident which left James orphaned. He moved in with his aunt after before heading off to Eton College boarding school. His stay was not long before he transferred to Fettes College in Scotland. It is there that the sportsman was groomed as Bond boxes in the light heavyweight division and takes up judo also. During WWII, Bond entered the Ministry of Defense in 1941 in the Special Branch of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He would rise to the rank of Commander and was praised heavily by superiors for his excellent service during War. After the War, Bond applied for a position in the Secret Service. He attempted to become a Secret Agent but at the suggestion of M, Bond is told to give Pro Wrestling a try. James started his training at Q Branch wrestling school in London. Bond was a quick learner and was sent out to the "Snake Pit" run by catch wrestler Billy Riley to expand his wrestling knowledge. James survived the rough training environment and proved his toughness by being able to take torturous wrestling holds. While one of the best students, Bond developed issues with some of the other wrestlers due to his gambling and womanizing ways. He would clean out Billy Robinson in Baccarat and steal Karl Gotch's girlfriend. Upon debuting in London, Bond would become an immediate hit with the local wrestling fans. But who could have imagined how quickly he would become a worldwide star. Bond was sent to Jamaica in 1962 to get his first real taste of wrestling outside the UK. Jamaica would become one of his favorite territories to work as he would come back many times over the years. Fellow UK wrestler John Strangways was taken out by the Three Blind Mice faction. Bond answered the challenge debuting and becoming one of the first wrestlers to have ring entrance music with the James Bond theme that he would continue to use for the rest of his career. James would team with local babyface Quarrel in tag matches. They would also be joined up by Felix Leiter I who was one of the many Leiter brothers who would align with Bond during the years. Bond was able to sniff out a heel turn by Professor R.J. Dent which led to the eventual matchup with Dr. No (a Canadian playing a half German/half Chinese character). Here we would learn that Dr. No is actually part of the uber wrestling faction of the 1960's, SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion). Bond would come out as the victor in a scaffold match where he pushed Dr. No. below into an atomic reactor cooling vat. James Bond had arrived. Bond's feud with SPECTRE was just beginning now as the organization beefed up it's ranks by signing some of Russia's best wrestlers. Bond arrived in Turkey in 1963 and started a wonderful tag team with charismatic Ali Kerim Bay. Bond is teased by the Lektor device which gives detailed information on how to win matches. This same device would be used decades later by The York Foundation. It's really a plot to set up Bond by SPECTRE agents Kronsteen and Rosa Klebb though. Klebb would enlist Donald "Red" Grant. He would run through the local Turks, Bulgarians and Bey with him being built up to eventual match with Bond. Grant proved to be an strong opponent for Bond before succumbing to tear gas and being choked out by James. Bond would make quick work of Klebb and her poisoned toe spike afterwords. Continuing the excellent booking of the time, SPECTRE Number 1 is kept off screen mostly as the audience cannot see his face. It was 1964 that we saw the rise of Bondmania. James made his debut in the United States in Miami trying to take the gold from heavyweight Auric Goldfinger. Bond's overaggressiveness had devastating effects as he ended up doing a big job to Harold Sakata who was doing his world famous Oddjob gimmick, manservant butler who was henchman to Goldfinger. Bond was resilient though and chased Goldfinger back over the Atlantic to Switzerland. Bond would overhear Goldfinger talking to Chinese wrestler Mr. Ling about Operation Grand Slam that would take place at Fort Knox, Kentucky. James would believe that Goldfinger was trying to steal gold from Fort Knox repository but Golfinger would have other plans. From my match review: The after match is a pure bonus as Bond and Goldfinger take to the sky with Goldfinger taking a king size bump out of the window of a decompressing plane. The show was one of the fasting grossing of all time and received overwhelming critical success. It has become a true phenomenon and one of my most favorite wrestling shows off all time. Bond was at his peak in the ring as 1965 brought another banner year for him. SPECTRE is back and they are going to their Number 2 to try put away Bond. They resort to having one of their agents get extensive plastic surgery to look exactly like a NATO pilot so they can steal the loaded two Atomic bombs. Emilio Largo (SPECTRE No. 2) who sports an eye patch and is able to match promos with James is yet another strong heel Bond goes up against. Plan Omega is set in place as SPECTRE will detonate the two Atomic devices if the wrestling promoters don't pay up the ransom of 100 million pounds. Largo sets up shop in the Bahamas and is soon challenged by Bond and tag partner Felix Leiter III. First Bond gets rid of the original Straight Edge No Drinking No Smoking No Sexual Intercourse superstar Vargas with a spear gun. The big climax is a underwater Battle Royal between Bond and US Coast Guard versus Largo and SPECTRE where winner gets possession of the Atomic bombs. Great back and forth action with the great visual of being underwater. Bond and company pull out the victory in the end as another SPECTRE wrestler fails against James Bond. The year of 1965 proved to be the highest grossing year for Bond at the box office with adjusting for inflation. It is now 1967 and after five years of continuous travel through the territories it is beginning to catch up on James Bond as he is starting to get burned out. But Bond must get himself together and quick as he is about to face SPECTRE No. 1! Enter Ernst Starvo Blofeld, megalomaniac and main guy of the SPECTRE heel group. He's got two big plans in place. First to start a global nuclear war. Second, he wants his wrestling promotion to go national. Bond gets plenty of help in this big showdown in Japan with Japanese superstar Tiger Tanaka, Dikko Henderson, Joshi legends Aki and Kissy Suzuki and even Q himself joins in the action. The heels load up too with Mr. Osato, Helga Brandt, Hans, Number 3 and Number 4. But SPECTRE is starting to show cracks in the foundation and has been adding weaker talent to the group. Hans is one of the plainest blonde muscled up wrestlers you will ever see. Numbers 3 and 4 are useless and you wonder how they got ranked so high in SPECTRE. Way down the depth chart there is an interesting case though in Osato Driver played by grandfather of The Rock and father in law of Rocky Johnson in "High Chief" Peter Maivia. He duels it out with Bond. My review: SPECTRE has been secretly poaching wrestlers from United States and Soviet Russia which causes those two factions to almost go to the brink of war. Bond is dubious about this and comes to learn that Blofeld has been manipulating both side of things. It's an incredibly great set up for a wrestling venue as things take place inside a volcano. We get the first face to face meeting between Bond and Blofeld and it's a bit underwhelming as Blofeld doesn't look the part. His gimmick would get ripped off down the road by Mike Myers' Dr. Evil. Bond has the least exciting Death Pool of Piranha match with Hans that could possibly happen. We get a big tease for Bond versus Blofeld but Ernst takes off before they come to blows. It's a great looking card on the surface and received mostly positive reviews. But there are flaws with the increasingly use of gimmick matches. Still it's another year of Bond making big bucks at the box office. However, there are some big changes in the future for James Bond. James Bond will return!

Well this is disappointing to read about Brick. From my conversations with him he seemed so laid back. I'm not really here for debates but more to watch wrestling and post my thoughts on stuff I've watched recently. I understand the merits of healthy debate as people can bring forth solid opinions of matches/guys worth checking out/giving a chance. I personally just don't care to get worked up about wrestling though on a message board and have to duel it out with someone.

Thoughts about being there live. I found the crowd to be pretty well behaved early and doing their best to try enjoy the show. There was a brief Ziggler chant during the pre show match but overall fans were good. I went in with the bar set really low for this show so they didn't have to do too much for me to enjoy it in the end. I thought the opener was good but not seeing the praise by some that it was great. Ambrose early elimination was so obvious watching it. When Cesaro went to the big swings spots which also spelled the early end for him too. Crowd was deflated at seeing him go. It was quiet for a bit. I'm cool with giving Reigns the big push but it came at the expense of booking others on his side in match. I would have left Goldust as the last guy against Reigns and maybe give them a few additional minutes. Crowd were more into Goldust than Rey. Langston/Axel was forgettable and I hit up the beer line for the Divas match. It was humorous to be in the concourse area and hearing them announce eliminations almost ever 30 seconds. The crowd started to turn on show during Cena/Del Rio match. Normally I can't stand wrestling fans at live shows and during this match some dude in my section began to make himself heard very loudly which continued through rest of show. Some of the stuff he was saying was actually funny but he was really pissing off another guy sitting behind me. That guy spent the rest of the show trying to talk himself into fighting the loud mouth. That probably would have been my match of the night if it happened as was more into these guys guys going back and forth. Man does it seem like Punk has really dropped off. He was over pretty huge at Night of the Champions last year in Boston and he felt like just another guy. I wonder how things will go for Bryan since I felt he was more over at previous Night of Champions show too but there was still Bryan chants going on later in show during WWE title match. Main event was just boring as hell. One of those things with watching live from my seat you could see the cameramen running down the aisle back to stage area to get ready for Triple H's entrance at end. It's pretty comical to see it happen as they waited about 20 seconds before he came out. Crowd was running for the exits once match ended even with Cena coming out after. That stuff was just awful to watch with Triple continuing to stop Randy, then trying to stop Kane, Stephanie and Vince too. It was like poor comedy which ain't what they are going for when you are teasing a big Champion vs Champion match down the road. I don't know how much of this was shown on PPV but it really dragged on and on. Event was not a visible sell out. I could see partial rows of seats behind the hard cam in the balcony that were empty. I sat like a lump in my seat for most of the show. It was just a dull show to watch. I just don't care about these guys and why they are feuding. Guess I can say that at least it wasn't four hours long like Mania. I think the only time I really cheer something was during Zeb's promo when he took shots at dumb people on twitters which will go over strong with me since I dislike social media. There was Henry doing the JYD headbutt and Thump which I liked. There wasn't much else though. A show that I will forget about.

Hehe.

Yeah, I'm going too. About to head out in twenty minutes to catch the train in. There is a solid 25% chance once I get in that I just sell my ticket and go across street to watch Pats game in bar instead. I only care about the Elimination match with everyone else not being too appealing to me.

"How much does he weigh?" They should have had a truck stop scale at the entrance way for guys to weigh in to help Art's curiosity.

Normally, I defer to Parv on this type of question. I think I'm at the point now when it comes to talking about mat work that the first thing that pops in to my mind is Lucha. I'd had Casas versus Santo and Dandy against Azteca that were immediate picks.

Khawk was great for that extra info about AWA. I'll start my viewing in January and then listen to podcasts after I watch each disk. I'm sure Kris and Phil or whoever else shows up on those shows provide extra knowledge of the stuff. It would be nice to have the sheet to help out with rankings (Mookieghana!) before getting into things to help me rank stuff as I watch.

I ran with the old WWE 24/7 for a while and usually enjoyed what was provided. Part of the problem would be when I'd be too busy at certain points to be able to watch everything provided before it expired from viewing window. As far as Network I'd really have to consider price and schedule. Already, I'm paying way too much for cable since I barely watch it outside of Soccer/Hockey and movies on TCM. I think as we move on we really are going to go to the Pay as You Go model for cable as more and more people drop it for internet viewing. Stuff like cable/newspapers are totally surviving on older people. There are just so many channels available that people don't watch. I'm tired of sports contracts like NFL/College sports inflating the cost of my cable bill. You talk about a bubble that is going to burst huge down the road and it's the NFL. Similar to WWE in a way where you have less young kids getting into the sport (legit athletes moving to UFC) which leads to a drop off in quality athletes ending up in the game and therefore the quality of the product suffering a big drop off as time goes. The NFL is going to be a much different sport in the next 10-20 years. Really, this sport has their short (every game counts) schedule and the demand for betting that really props it up. But the powers to be there now wants to make the NFL a year long thing by stretching out the combine and draft and adding additional games to the regular season and playoffs. Talk about over saturating the product. You have games Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday now. Even the most loyal NFL fans are being overwhelmed. You are lucky to have one really good game a week to watch. If I'm running any type of sports league right now I trying to get a long term contract from the cable networks cause over time the paying customer won't be going for this on their TV.

It maybe too much to go back to early 80's when working through WCW but I think a great time to focus on 90's would be in late 91 after the Flair exit when Rude and Steamboat show up and the creation of the Dangerous Alliance. I feel like you get good enough stuff through mid 94 before the Hogan show begins.

I'm not much enthusiastic about going to Survivor Series tomorrow night. People seem to be practically giving away their tickets on Craigslist. Having only five matches announced may make for the Elimination match getting some really good long time though. But that's really all I care to watch. I'd probably get good and wasted beforehand for the show but then remembered I'm sitting in the first row of the balcony. Don't want to end up moonsaulting into the Loge below during the Divas match.

Mad Dog was one of those guys I didn't see what was the big deal about. I was slow to come around to him during the AWA set but he just slowly grew on me. Seeking out more footage of his career I really began to enjoy him. As mentioned by a couple others the guy really was a character. You're not getting hight level work rate stuff but he was fun to watch and listen to. Worth going out of your way to seek out more of his stuff.

So for the folks who have been working through this set how does it compare to say AWA as far as enjoyment/great matches? I've been putting off jumping into Lucha though I am eager to get into this after watching 90's yearbooks and listening to the 80's hype podcast. From the talk on that show it seemed like it we were getting the best of the best matches which probably going to make it hard to rank them overall.

Way back in the day when I was in one of those E-Fed groups I had a character named Molly Ringwald's Boyfriend playing up Louie Spicolli's Madonna one. Who knew she had such crossover appeal in wrestling. Vince should have had her at one of the WrestleManias.

the card is insanely weak right now Orton v Big Show, which ok, they've done a good job pushing Show and he's over as a babyface now, but nobody really wants to pay to see this Cena v Del Rio? meh. Cena beat him clean with an injured arm, they totally threw Del Rio under the bus here. Nobody is gonna pay to see this, and nobody thinks Del Rio has a chance Bryan/Punk v The Wyatts? I don't know what the f they are doing here. They did that big angle with Punk/Bryan/Usos/Rhodes family v The Shield and the Wyatts......then they book a tag match? why? Ugh, that is just not very good. Can't believe they have only announced three matches at this point.

No clue what the card is since I don't watch TV but I'm hoping for a big Survivor Series elimination match since I'll be going to the show. And not one of those Diva matches. Something in the 30 minute range would be great.