victory

I don't think you can talk about the Freebirds without at least mentioning the Von Erichs.

The top guys will always have pull. To what extent is just a guess. I think it depends on their personality. Really no different than any other job.

You can add Steamboat, Patera, Slaughter and Chris Taylor to the Verne Gagne camp. Jerry Sags and Brian Knobbs also went there, but were trained by Brad Rheingans.

How about Steven Regal? He would of given the Horsemen some International Flavor at the very least.

While trying to find out stuff about Tom Miller, I stumbled upon the identity of this man. It's Rich Landrum. He actually replaced Miller and George Scott as the host of World-Wide in 1978 until early 1982. Interestingly, he would do the ring announcing at the Richmond shows. Really cool and informative interview with him on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway: http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/resourcecenter/interviews/landrum/landrum_01.htm Rich Landrum has his own sub-forum on the KM board under the Mid- Atlantic forum. He goes by the username " The Voice". Very receptive to questions from my experience.

This site has pics of all the WWF magazine covers organized by name and year. Kind of cool to look back on. http://www.thewrestlingfanatic.com/magazines_wwf.html

Wasn't it called Victory? It was the program you bought at shows and there'd be a loose mimeographed page with the night's card tucked in.No this was after the Victory mag. I believe it was the first official WWF magazine. I still have it.

The first issue I ever bought was right after Hogan won the title in 84. I remember it contained an article on the Von Erichs as well. Which I thought was super cool since I loved World Class just as much if not more than the WWF at the time.

Having the new PPV's every month wasn't a selling point for me. Having all the old PPV's with some old TV sprinkled in was enough to get my money. With that being said I honestly just don't have the time to watch the Network to even justify paying the low fee. I want to support it to keep it around, I'm just not sure if I will since time is more an issue for me. Even for my kids the novelty has worn off. They would rather watch Netflix.

My first introduction to "dirtsheets" was from calling hotlines. I called some free ones from time to time in the late 80's and early 90's. I can't remember who did those. Blackjack Brown maybe? In the late 90's since I didn't have the internet I called a line with some guy named Michael Stern. I presume he was just saying what Meltzer and Wade were posting. I wonder how many other guys had a hotline and were doing the exact same thing? He updated everyday and I listened to it at work on speaker phone. He even did some interviews. I remember he did one with Bob Luce ( famous Chicago promoter). I wish I would of had the sense to record it.

The two that come to mind would be Rude vs. Flair from Fall Brawl 93 and " The Chicago Street Fight" from Uncensored 96 with LOD vs. Booker and Sting. The Fall Brawl match goes about 30 plus minutes which on paper sounds like it would be great considering the talent. Unfortunately the length is what hurts it. They seem to change directions several times where it appears they have another match within a match if that makes sense. The match never goes anywhere, which makes it seem to last forever. I watched the Uncensored match recently on Netflix. This match is a 30 minute street fight which shouldn't of been allowed that kind of time. The violence is super tame unless you like crotch shots. A street fight in general should never be too long IMO due to the style of match. In this case with it being so weak the long time makes the match really drag. 10 or 12 minutes would of been sufficient.

Luger, Road Warriors and Von Erichs were the first guys that come to mind. If they weren't on the cover of a PWI then it was one of the sister publications, in what seemed like every other month. Brody and Abby were more likely to be on the cover of the Napolitano mags or have a bloody color pinup in one of those types of publications. Man I miss the days when I would go to the store and they would have a dozen or so wrestling mags. Every week would be different since the 80's had around 25 publications.

You forgot POWW. Lol. I believe it came on after GLOW at 7pm. Are you sure about the AWA being on that Saturday night slot? I always remembered the 11am Sunday slot up to about 88 then it changed to either 5 or 6pm Sunday night on channel 26. There was a very short period, after it was moved from Channel 26 to Channel 66, where it was bumped around to different times. The channel 26 affiliation ended around May of 1986. The only reason I remember this is because I missed the Hall/Hennig tag title loss to Rose/Somers when I couldn't find it. After it moved to Channel 66, it was on Saturday morrnings in the Fall of '86 and then moved to Saturday nights for a brief spell before settling in at 6pm or 7pm on Sunday nights. Okay that time change does seem somewhat familiar now. Those were some fun times for sure.

You forgot POWW. Lol. I believe it came on after GLOW at 7pm. Are you sure about the AWA being on that Saturday night slot? I always remembered the 11am Sunday slot up to about 88 then it changed to either 5 or 6pm Sunday night on channel 26.

World Class 83 would certainly be on my list. After watching the AWA for years World Class was a totally different type of format with competitive matches in front of an ecstatic crowd. I didn't even get to watch the entire year back then since the syndication here didn't start until the fall. Even with only a half year at best I still thought it was great. I agree with KHawk about 84 AWA. Really fun year with so many newcomers that I only read about in the Apter mags at that time. WWF 84 was pretty great. You had four great feuds and Hulk Hogan as champ, who I was wondering where he went since he disappeared from AWA TV. Although you really have to see the house show matches to see the feuds really play out as the TV didn't give you much. 86/87 JCP is another favorite. I only saw the syndicated Worldwide show back then. Really enjoyed the arena feel of the program. Even to this day I really don't care for the TBS show and that small studio except for the interviews. UWF 86/87 was also a lot of fun. I never saw MSW up to that point so UWF was my first exposure to that really hard hitting style. Every weeks show seemed to end with a non-finish of some sort. Despite that, it made it a must watch every Sunday morning. I'm a sucker for tag matches which is why I enjoy AWA 88. That year as a whole had some great tag matches. AWA 88 had the potential to rival any promotion when it came to tag teams if they would have been able to keep them on the roster the entire year.

Yeah O'Haire was a great athlete for sure, again so was Tom Magee. I admit I thought he was going to be a star.

From my understanding on the contract situation Timer Warner and AOL were the ones who had to offer buyouts. If the wrestler accepted then they were free to negotiate with WWE. The buyout offer for the big money contracts was anywhere from 30 cents to 50 cents on the dollar of the total contract. So you can't really blame someone for wanting to sit out the duration of their contract when they would lose half or more. I think guys like Booker T and DDP accepted the buyout due to their age and the chance to hopefully make even bigger money. Not sure what their original contracts were though. So maybe they weren't losing as much as say a Goldberg or Nash.

I just watched one of those Legends of Wrestling episodes on the Network and Michael Hayes called wrestling art.

They were planning that as far back as 1988? Nord claims that he and Brody were going to come in feud with Demolition before Brody would move on to a program with Hogan. Take that however you want--I don't really buy it. I can buy that Brody would do a house show run with Hogan and make some final bank, though I don't think it'd ever headline a WrestleMania or anything. I doubt they'd get viking gimmicks or that Brody would go for that, but it wouldn't be the first time the WWF sat on a gimmick idea for multiple years. Yeah I'm not sure I believe Nord either. If Brody did come in I always assumed his run would have been similar to the one Killer Khan had.

I remember going to a WWF show in January 85 and before I left the house I watched the World Class show. They showed a MX vs. Fantastics match. I remember really digging it and becoming a fan of the Fantastics from that day forward. I always thought ring work wise they were better than the RNR like many have already mentioned. Although the RNR had a better gimmick, I enjoyed the Fantastics more.

Back in the 80's I never realized how bad he was. Calling a piledriver an atomic drop and an atomic drop a piledriver can be quite comical to say the least. I will admit to still liking him despite his faults.

I thought I read the SNME shows would be up in July.

My Father-in-law ( grew up in Italy) is a die hard soccer fan. Europe leagues only as he finds U.S. soccer inferior. It seems most people in his group of friends have this mentality. I will admit that is a small biased sample size. It doesn't seem U.S. soccer is embraced here in Chicago at all. I couldn't even tell you the last time I saw somebody wearing a Fire shirt. This is only a four sport town and soccer isn't one of them from my view.