clintthecrippler

I think Vince respects the fact that Nick Khan got him a billion dollars from Peacock and was a key figure in the FOX television deal even before he formally joined the company. You can get away with not drinking the Kool-Aid if you put a billion dollars into his pocket. As for the return to live crowds, that's one of the biggest x-factors for me with the whole Velveteen Dream deal. If he is back on any active roster when television and PPV's/monthly specials return to the road, what the fuck do they think is going to happen the first time Velveteen Dream walks out in front of a live crowd in a "smart" market like Chicago or Philadelphia?

I will always laugh at the fact that for as much as he carried himself as a tough guy and a shooter, inside the ring and (apparently) outside the ring, Low Ki never did man up and give MMA a try. When I realized that was never going to happen was the day I stopped buying into the mythology of Low Ki being badass.

That was in a "answer these questions in 60 seconds"-type promo ahead of the whole interview. They have been doing that lately, those or "word association in 60 seconds" like they did with Randy Orton. Those never end up being part of the interviews themselves, just something they throw out there as a promo a few days before the episode itself.

I had Royal Rumble 2000 on today and Bubba Ray taking a chairshot to the head, Triple H bleeding all over the place, and the Bikini Contest/Mae Young segment aired pretty much untouched from what they were on the WWE Network, so I really do think a lot of people are unnecessarily sounding the alarm because of the two instances of editing so far.

There were several stretches during the first six months of the pandemic last year where I was having insomnia spells and found a couple Youtube channels with a ton of All-American Wrestling and syndicated WWF TV from 1985/86 and that stuff got me through some of those more insane periods. That was the year I really became a wrestling fan as a kid, and watching the Mean Gene update segments on Championship Wrestling/All-Star Wrestling were legit highlights of those television episodes for me on the adult rewatch, and he was dropping euphemisms like this almost weekly during his "A Moment with Mean Gene" segments on All-American where he was on the phone talking with a big-name celebrity circa 1986, though of course we were only hearing Gene's side of the conversation.

While Dynamic Duo vs Von Erichs was definitely the last program to draw on a week-to-week basis (even a steel cage match AFTER this blowoff drew 13,000 to Reunion Arena on Thanksgiving Night), I think it's a slight misnomer to point to 1985 Cotton Bowl as the true "last hurrah". Even without an NWA Title match, they still drew 24,000 to Texas Stadium for the 1986 Parade of Champions. Even being generous with the idea that crowd came primarily BECAUSE it was the Parade of Champions, that's still no sign of a promotion that is near-death just yet. And even after Kerry's accident, the appeal of seeing Chris Adams win the new WCCW "World" Title was enough to draw 11,000 to Reunion Arena on July 4th. I really do think though that second half dropoff in 86 was SO massive because of the combo of things piling up. Gino dying, Kerry's accident, Ken Mantell taking off to UWF with a bunch of talent, and no compelling heel challengers lined up for Chris Adams to defend his championship against. They might have been able to weather the tide another couple of years if only one of those things happened, but all of that happening in under six months would have killed any promotion. Watching the second half 1986 shows on WWE Network when you can literally count the dozens of people in the Sportatorium...that drop came FAST.

A reminder that there are still plenty of people that pine for the Attitude Era now and say it's not as good as it was then are holding onto an era of wrestling that ended 20 years ago this year (if you count Wrestlemania 17 as an end point, which a lot of people do). So Cornette doing an early '80s throwback in 1993 is actually way less further removed than the folks that still hold up the Monday Night Wars era as the last time wrestling was great.

Think about all of the galaxy-brained people that work within WWE. Now think about the fact that Austin Aries, TJ Perkins, and Low-Ki were all so galaxy-brained that THOSE PEOPLE said "sure, you can have your release" during time periods where they weren't granting releases to anyone.

On the topic of 79/80 WWF JTTS, I have been doing a 1979 WWF watch project the last few months. I am almost through the end of the year and I have become a big fan of Johnny Rivera on the face JTTS side. Short, energetic spark plug of a wrestler that puts up a bit more intensity than the average face jobbers of the time period, and you could buy him picking up a win against someone else on his level every now and then. This past week I saw a helluva face vs. face TV match against Larry Zbyskzo (starting to approach the heel turn but not there just yet) that might have been the closest thing to a "workrate match" that WWF had all year outside of the Backlund vs Patterson matches. And thank you for sharing that Randy Savage "wash dishes" promo from Memphis. Thats been my favorite Savage promo ever since I first saw it during the Death Valley Driver 80s Memphis project and I love showing that to people who have never seen Memphis Macho. It really is wild how fully-formed he was by the time he made it to national television, watching him in Memphis its no shock that he rocketed pretty quickly to being a prominent part of WWF television and their continuing expansion. Loving this thread and digging the mix of chronological documentation and stream of consciousness thoughts. Keep em coming!

I have a vague memory of reading about this flight, sometime during the early '00s run. All I can tell you though from memory is reading an anecdote where everyone the plane was looking to see if Flair was selling any anxiety about the turbulence since he had the crash in 75, seeing that he was staying calm, and that seeming to relax others on the plane about what was happening.

My concern also is that while the archival releases have been slowing to a crawl since they stopped uploading Hidden Gems, that now that the money from Peacock is guaranteed WWE will now literally have no incentive to dig into the archives any deeper, as surely I can't imagine that more episodes of Prime Time Wrestling or old UWF footage would be of priority to anyone involved in brokering the Peacock deal.

Thank you so much for all of the work you're doing and info you are sharing. I think we're also glad though that you're setting some limits and parameters for yourself, and if this ever hits a point where it stops being fun, I would hope all us would understand if you had to walk away as needed.

Adding a vote to the Herd interview, if simply for the historical significance of it being the first time he talked about his WCW tenure in nearly 30 years.

Thank you so much for the lengthy recap here. I am pretty much off the Cornette bandwagon completely these days, but I have to admit that he managed to put into words my feelings on Bray Wyatt and The Fiend exactly. I love the promos. I love the vignettes. I love the aesthetic of the character. But he is essentially "Ultimate Warrior 2020" once the bell rings, but with incredibly awful booking and writing that the Ultimate Warrior didn't really have to fight to overcome - at least until the Papa Shango feud.

I saw the response you posted and loved that he gravitated to Kenta Kobashi based on name alone, but now I'm sitting here shocked that no enterprising brewer has cribbed the "Strong Style" name yet for a 10-12% alcohol content beer or 100+-proof liquor. EDIT: come to think of it, a lot of Japanese wrestling terms would make great beer names: Strong Style, King's Road, Four Pillars, FUCK YOU We Are Jadoh & Gedoh...

I thought I had heard a few folks - including Bruce Prichard - say that the original pitch for Dusty's valet was that she would be a younger more conventionally attractive woman, but it was Dusty that flipped it into something more "common man" appropriate, having remembered Sapphire from her being a gopher/superfan for the Kansas City territory.

Man, I can't imagine how much of a social media shitstorm it would be if the Summerslam 1999 match went down the way it did in today's modern climate. It would be Matt Hardy/AEW x50 because of it being the main event of one of WWE's biggest PPVs, and just the optics of Angle being slumped over in the announcers chair, walked back, and then walking back out for the final stretch.

Word going around is that the new contracts being offered specifically ban talent from working AEW, so if you signed a yearlong deal with MLW, you are stuck with the $3k for the year before you can entertain an AEW offer. Has word got out how much folks working AEW Dark without a contract are getting paid per shot? I would be very curious how that compares to an MLW contract.

Most people are saying that he is unlikely to win such a lawsuit, but even the financial burden of having to fight this lawsuit will likely be enough to bankrupt the people that have been named. So even if he loses the lawsuit, he still will have done plenty to ruin the lives of those named as defendants, and he likely knows that this is exactly what he will accomplish with this lawsuit. What a piece of shit.

If we are assuming the that WWF Top 50 list was drafted between late 85 and summer 86 (I think I remember the final release date being more late Fall/early Winter 1986), Brian Blair did go back to Florida for six months at the end of 1984/early 1985 and had separate runs as Florida Heavyweight Champion AND Southern Heavyweight Champion, so it's possible on a "kayfabe" accomplishments level they weighted holding both the 1A and 1B singles championships for that territory as a reason to give Blair a higher individual ranking than Brunzell.

I am happy I saw this match live and it was a damn fun 10-minute house show match, but I will never NOT think it was weird that the time I saw One Man Gang vs Tommy Rogers live, it was on an ECW show of all places.

Anyone want to start a betting pool on the odds for this Marty Jannetty thing not resulting in him getting booked/arrested for the murder that the cops think he might have committed but because he's Marty Jannetty they end up solving a whole bunch of OTHER unsolved murders?

Or MLW 2003 would just do ridiculously counter-productive stuff, like bring Samoa Joe in while he is building buzz as ROH Champion, but have him wrestle under his real name of Joe Seanoa, because...

I still remember laughing my ass off when Low-Ki was trying to get his motivational speaker gig launched and he had a graphic made up with the logos of all of the companies he worked for, as if any idiot can't get fired/not welcomed back by just as many companies as he has.

Hearing his voice crack and watching his face contort but seeing NO TEARS come was super-cringe. That really did come off like he was trying to "will" himself to cry.