WingedEagle

What's next -- HOF points for what could've been if he turned in '96 instead of Hogan?

That's a win. Pretty much nailed it.

Definitely interesting. Assuming things played out that way I don't think there's any question the resulting product would've been less compelling than what came of it. Unrelated, but I can't get over the job Hansen did selling for Misawa and painting him out as some kind of unstoppable force. Just awesome.

'92 CC and 8/92 TC are not classics (although the TC is great), but I always thought Hansen selling for and putting Misawa over in these two, particularly his elbows, did nearly as much for Misawa as the Jumbo win 2 years earlier. Hansen went out of his way to paint Misawa as the type of force that he just didn't do for anyone on the 80s set or on this level in the early 90s.

Do we know any more about plans for the TC post '93? Fascinating to think about what that would've led to, but man would we have missed out on so much.

His pyro is sometimes fun. +1!

The Kobashi/Kawada sequences were clearly the highlight and had a totally different feel from the Carnival match following Kawada's split from Misawa's group. The punch to end the chops and brainbuster of doom were awesome, but the nodowa / power bomb combo was also pretty cool and showed Kawada & Taue gelling on day one.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to given when it took place. The first half or so felt like two pros running through a routine they've worked on forever (almost akin to how I've read AJW used to start off young pros), before picking up after that with a few high spots and hot finish. I don't know if I'll appreciate it as much on a rewatch but thought it was a lot of fun on an initial viewing.

Although I prefer 10/92, I loved how the tone of this changes with the slaps and strikes. Its a dramatic step forward from the respect of tag partners facing off for the singles title to two rivals who do not like each other.

Supposedly Flair had some abandonment/commitment issues resulting from his being adopted as a child. Different people handle that and the attending circumstances in various ways and outside of his seemingly being open to showing emotion, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he hasn't exactly sought out to formally resolve these issues and insecurities. Hopefully he can find some happiness without causing too much damage to his family.

Okay. You win. There are lower midcarders. As epitomized by Brad Armstrong.

I've subscribed to the WON since September of '96 and have never been entirely clear on just what best technical represented separate and apart from most outstanding. No explanation has ever made much sense and for some reason I never really questioned it. I always interpreted it as somewhere along the lines of "best wrestler who does not brawl or fly and is not exceptionally small, large, fast or slow."

I think this fluctuating is part of the very definition of a mid-carder. Sometimes they're involved in a storyline and sometimes they're not. They're filling a necessary slot on the card and in some cases that sees them in a featured role either putting over an upper carder or advancing a storyline, while in others they may be in their own feuds/stories or simply rounding out the lineup.

Not to be too greedy/lazy, but where links to matches are available they'd be much appreciated.

Bischoff unquestionably changed history. But one can do so in positive and negative ways. I believe his role in letting WCW spiral to near 9 figure losses and the cancellation of TV outweighs what he brought to the table before that point.

I compare Bischoff's WON HOF credentials to Marvin Miller's credentials for the Baseball HOF. Without Miller's work in eliminating the reserve clause in MLB, the game would be vastly different today. Without Bischoff going w/ Hogan as a heel and coming up w/ the NWO, wrestling would be vastly different today. Some might argue that baseball and wrestling are actually worse off today because of Miller's and Bischoff's actions, but I think those people are wrong. Yes, both Miller and Bischoff are mainly known for doing one thing, but that one thing made such an impact that it altered the course of baseball/wrestling forever. If I had a vote, both Miller and Bischoff would be in the HOF. Miller has a stronger case, though, IMO. Bischoff convinced Turner to give him a Monday night time slot and, so the story goes, wanted to push an inter-promotional feud after seeing the NJPW/UWFI Dome show. I don't know how instrumental he was in selling Hogan on a heel turn as opposed to Hogan reading the tea leaves. If we give him substantial credit for that its a great resume and historic impact on the business. But as Loss and others noted, he was at the helm when the ship began taking on water and rather than plug those breaches, he blew them wide open. I don't see any case for Nitro + NWO overcoming that.

That'd be nice but don't see HHH passing on getting back his win over Lesnar. I suppose its possible if they extend his contract but still fully expect that on the big show.

Yep, that was back in '96 where they introduced nwo sting and led to crow sting.

It was definitely sold that way. I was at the show live and the anticipation of Sting being there was a major, major aspect of the show. People were defeated when he didn't show up to stop the NWO from winning at the finish and when he came down from the building the pop in the building was insane and unlike anything I have ever been a part of before or since. Cool, that's what I thought. I definitely remembered that pop but wasn't sure if I was imagining things about the build. Looks like that drew a 0.89 buyrate, good for 3rd on the year behind Starrcade and Havoc. The show also had Rodman appearing in a non-wrestling capacity.

I'd have to go back and review how certain PPVs other than Starrcade were promoted to see what else he was responsible for. Offhand I believe Uncensored with the nwo vs. wcw vs. piper mess was sold with Sting having an impact on the main event. Will try to take a look at other PPVs that year to see which, if any, were sold on his back.

That's an interesting concept. I wonder if it's true. ... Anyway, Sting was probably the #3 babyface in the US in that period. The other two happen to be in the HOF, and if one goes further down the list, you'll find a number of "top" babyfaces from that era below Sting that are also in. It is an argument that splits both ways. It's tricky, and that's why I framed it as I did, as an emotional thing. Personally, without looking at numbers, I'd be tempted to suspect Taker (92-98) as higher. Even when he didn't have the belt, he shared that #1 spot with Bret most of the time. Boy did he have some shitty guys to feud with a lot of the time though. And Savage is probably a compelling case. He was basically the biggest draw for Summerslam 91 (or at least Dave thought so at the time), then he had high profile, memorable (and I think decently drawing) feuds with Jake and Flair, basically got Razor over as a top level heel, and he was even used in Early-mid 93 as an anchor on house show cards vs Doink and Lawler. More than that, he was considered invaluable to Vince as a top announcer on Raw, Superstars and Mania 9, not to mention the very public charity work he did in 93 (which is spotlighted all over TV that year) in order to help shake some of the scandals of 92. Macho was the go to guy for that. Late in the year he had the Crush feud which rode things out til Mania X. And we've talked plenty about how he drew vs Flair in WCW in 96 before the NWO came in. The key word there here is emotional. I would imagine (and happily be shot down) that the demographics here skew towards folks my age and older, which means they were in the 8-14 range when Sting became a national figure in '88, had the Muta feud & team with Flair team in '89, followed by the knee injury at the hands of the horsemen, the scene on crutches at wrestle war / capital combat and then win the belt at the GAB in '90. Combine all of that with the bonde buzz, the facepaint, the splash and the howling? The guy was everything cool about wrestling as far as I was concerned and was hooked from thereon out. He was in that elite tier in WCW for the rest of the decade, whether in genuine classics with Vader, redoing Flair stuff or the crow years, including '97 when he was responsible for the biggest buyrate in company history. At some point during that period you/I start get online, start reading more about the industry in the WON or elsewhere and the world outside of turner & titan, and your perspective becomes clearer. Sting was one of the first (and *the* first non WWFer) wrestlers that got me hooked on the game because of when I started watching. Because of that I definitely look back on him as a huge star and moreso than any off the cuff, objective analysis would suggest is appropriate. If I ever open the mailbox and read his WON HOF bio it'll be awesome. But he probably wouldn't make my ballot if I had one.

Nice, I definitely didn't realize this was essentially the first big 6 man of the era. Pretty special and definitely neat seeing Taue on the other side. I'd like to say I rate this above others in the series because I knew it was what kicked things off, but that won't hold water now.

The two that stand out for me are 1) vs. Foley at Backlash '04 and 2) the heel vs. heel match with Edge on Raw.. Other than those and his work in the angle setting up the Mania main event vs. HHH, nothing he's done has been that memorable for me. Same thing with Sheamus, just a couple of guys I don't connect with at all and more often than not don't enjoy.