King Solomon

High Spots is also real good, the RF guys remind me of Beavis and Butthead the way they hyperventilate whenever some good gossip comes up in a shoot

Yeah KC is easily my fave. RF is real bad at lack of follow up questions and do they always have to ask "So how was the locker room?"

My fave 5 are: The Fabulous Ones Bruiser Brody and Jimmy Snuka The Road Warriors The Midnight Express (Either version) Dick Murdoch and Masked Superstar

Dude, I was fucking hooked on Santa Barbara. I got the chicken pox when I was 14 and was laid up on the couch for 2 weeks. We didn't have cable or a remote control, so I just left NBC on all day. Santa Barbara had just started a week earlier so I didn't have to learn all the normal soap sub plots and man it hooked me in bad. I watched it for years. Yup I had a major crush on Eden Capwell

I was a huge Soap Opera guy and my favorite was the short lived "Santa Barbara" on NBC. I also watched Ryan's Hope on ABC aloong with General Hospital and One Life to Live. Days of Our Lives on NBC was another one I liked. There was so much mystique to them prior to the internet age as the shows wouldn't have preveiws of the next episode or recap the previous one which meant you had to see every episode or you could miss something. My mom was into Soaps and we use to record them and watch when we got home. I would even ditch some of my classes to get home in time for a real hot episode back when I was a school kid in the 80's

I'm a sucker for any wrestler that has fast twitch explosiveness and Vader had that in spades. His offensive was high impact and he had a suddeness to him. I also like his AWA matches with Hansen. I would have really loved to see Vader hit the U.S. a little earlier than he did with that gimmick. JCP coulda used some fresh faces in 88 and even though Vader still wasn't polished he woulda been a plus to that stale roster.

I hated this show at the time because I was so used to Starrcade being a show that blew off feuds and stuff. I want to watch again tho with an unbiased slant. I find the internet fascination with the colors of Lex Lugers trunks hilarious.

I agree with LOSS on other wrestling web site where it becomes a free for all on subjects non wrestling. Wrestling Classics is one of them, the political and off topic discussions there are a landmine. You don't agree with the status quo there you will be on the "HATE" list pretty quick.

I hated the Dudes as well Parv ,couldn't wait for their run to be over at the time.

The guy who did the Seargent Slaughter shoot was awful, pretty much skipped over a lot of sarges career and just seemed to hit on one angle per territory that Sarge worked. Why these guys even try is beyond me. If you're going to do something like this then do you're homework and be prepared. The one question that I get a kick out of on RF shoots is the "So how was the locker room?"

Wishful thinking among Dave and the anti WWF contingent that read his newsletter. I knew the WWF in 1985 was here to stay and not a fad. Too many things were going right for them, Wrestlemania, SNMain Event on network tv, all the mainstream pub, cartoon show. The WWF was storng throughout the rest of the decade. When they actually declined in the early 90's it was just an eventuality due to the cyclical nature of the business.

According to "Dr. D" Hogan never paid him back after the Good Doctor paid some of his bills when they lived together in the early days of Hulk's career. Maybe Buzz should've lived what he preached after ripping off Magnum T.A. and The Undertaker. Also Buzz had to be an idiot to threaten the WWF's Golden Child.

I have a bunch of early Observers and the WWF hate starts as early as 84. Dave was dogging WWF expansion pretty much from the start, and there were plenty of unhappy letters. To be fair, there were also a few pro-WWF letters from fans who thought WWF was better than the territory area that fan was in. Yup I have all the Observers from 83-spring 86 and the WWF hate was strOng right from the start of the expansion. There was some good back and forth with Mick Karch defending the AWA and Ron Dobratz defending the WWF.

I grew up with Samoans here in my Los Angeles neighborhood and went to high school and played football with them.. Sarp is right they do value size. I also heard that they're metabolisms are traditionally slow. Of course they eat a lot and as they get older there slowing metabolisms have an adverse affect on their weight. Some of them that I was friends with got bigger later on in life whereas during the highschool years they were pretty fit.

I ordered this as well and I loved the book, just finished it up last night. I was always a little confused about how and exactly when the St. Louis Wrestling Club folded up and how and when Crockett took over. Man Ron Fuller was a bad draw in St. Louis, How did this guy get at least two/three main events?

Just watched this show last night on VHS (I recorded this on PPV) I liked the War Games match better this time around. When I watched the show live on PPV I kept comparing it to the War Games I saw at the Inglewood Forum in 1988. I think this War Gmes is the best one Post Crockett era. My two favorites are the 87 Atlanta games and the 88 bash in L.A.

Snuka-Orndorff 79 version as NWA Champs VS. Brody-Hansen 84 version

I have an old wrestling Mag from the 70's that talks about the Ali/Inoki match. It's pretty cool as it breaks froim the usual super kayfabe and blasts the match

Yup! By the time Watts rebranded his promotion into the UWF the market had already been overstaurated by Crockett and McMahon not to mention the other promotions min their areas such as the AWA and World Class. Watts woulda had to get the the TBS slot. In his book Watts says that he and Turner had a verbal agreement however Turner had no control over what Vince did with his timeslot. Had Vince decided to stay on TBS then it seems like Bill's agreement with Turner would have gone through due to Turners dislike for Vince. Bill's only other option would have been to buy the slot from Vince himself. Once Crockett got the slot then Turner was willing to forget his agreement with Watts and hitch the station fully to Crocketts wagon. If Watts could have gotten the exclusive on TBS then he could have repositioned his promotion to run in the old WCW Georgia, Tennesse, West Virgina, Michigan and Ohio corridor when the old Mid South region started feeling the effects of the oil bust.

Yup! By the time Watts rebranded his promotion into the UWF the market had already been overstaurated by Crockett and McMahon not to mention the other promotions in their areas such as the AWA and World Class. Watts woulda had to get the the TBS slot. In his book Watts says that he and Turner had a verbal agreement however Turner had no control over what Vince did with his timeslot. Had Vince decided to stay on TBS then it seems like Bill's agreement with Turner would have gone through due to Turners dislike for Vince. Bill's only other option would have been to buy the slot from Vince himself. Once Crockett got the slot then Turner was willing to forget his agreement with Watts and hitch the station fully to Crocketts wagon. If Watts could have gotten the exclusive on TBS then he could have repositioned his promotion to run in the old WCW Georgia, Tennesse, West Virgina, Michigan and Ohio corridor when the old Mid South region started feeling the effects of the oil bust.

The continued refrence to Tommy Young beoing a 5/6 time referee of the year may be a WFIA (Wrestling Fans International Association) thing. They used to have a convention every year along with a card of whatever local promotion was promoting in that area. There was an awards banquet and it was a weekend event. The local promotion would usually get the bulk of the awards. The 1986 convention was held in Houston and the UWF got most of the awards. Jim Ross (not the announcer) ran the organization.

I will say that the Oakridge boys at Wrestle War was a better idea than Waylon Jennings at WrestleRock 86

I would say with Hogan his prime would be from early 1982 when he got real comfortable as the top babyface in Verne Gagne's promotion up until Mania 6 or so when him and Warrior put on an emotional main event in what was supposed to be a passing of the torch and his subsequent match with Hansen in Japan. Hogan's work in the AWA was pretty solid as he was a less formulaic version of what he would become in the WWF. He had good matches with Blackwell, Patera, Shultz and Saito not to mention his legendary feud with Nick Bockwinkel. For all the talk that Hogan was not a Gagne type of wrestler to me Hogan was just an updated version of the Crusher in the sense that he had the brawling babyface type character down plus he was a better worker with better moves than the Crusher. Remember that the Crusher was a former AWA Champ so I don't think that Verne was adverse to Hogan being the Champ but rather I thikn it was a money issue over Merch and Japan bookings. Mad Dog Vachon was also a former champ so I never bought the whole Hogan was not Verne's type of Champion argument. His work in Japan was also good as he worked a solid big man style minus the Babyface type of hero spots that he worked in the AWA/WWF. When Hogan entered the WWF he was fresh to the fans there and he had some good matches with Masked Superstar, Greg Valentine, Paul Orndorff and a real good rematch with the Iron Sheik at the spectrum. He also had a real bloodbath with Dr. D at the Met Center in Bloomington. His formula was less rampant in the early going of his reign and really he would go away from that when facing a hot opponent such as Savage in late 85-early 86. He also had a good three match series against Muraco at MSG in spring of 85 leading to a cage match blow off. His matches with Studd and Beefcake sucked from a working standpoint as I saw those live. His matches against Piper were entertaining and were for sure non formulaic. His second series against Orndorff was hot as hell and the matches had unreal intensity if not being mat classics. I also enjoyed Hogan's matches against Kamala. His matches against Andre served the purpose that was needed and Andre had a real bad ass aura to him even tho by this time he was a shadow of what he once was. His year off of having the title was a good refresher period for him when he battled Bossman and teamed with Savage as the Megapowers. Of course the eventual heel turn of Savage led to Hogan having a hot main event at Mania 5 against his former partner and gave Hogan another year with the belt. Don't know too much about his 89 title defenses but the angle with the Warror and their subsequent match at Mania 6 got this 16 year old hardcore NWA fan glued to the tv set. His match with Hansen was real good IMHO. I didn't care at all for the Slaughter angle or matches as it just didn't interest me at this point plus I thought that Hogan was becoming tired by this point.

The top 100 lists that Meltzer used to do were a semi regular occurance on the Observer. He did it as far back as 1983 as I have Observers from 83-86. The emphasis was on work rate from what I remember.

I got the book and im enjoying it but I wish it woulda been more detailed on the historical narritive aspect