clintthecrippler

I would say all the Tyler Bate matches are worth watching.

I dont mind Jimmy Havoc, but I would fire his ass just based on the weakness of that comeback. If that's the best he could come up with for the written word, I am cringing at what the fuck he is going to say the first time he gets lost or stumbles during a promo.

Though because its Savage, WM9 still totally ends with Hogan coming down for the post-match and winning the title.

Hey, is John Nord still alive? If so, they should have a weekly segment where he comes out to the ring and all he does is toss fuckers over the top rope Berzerker-style. And then leave. This is currently the only opinion I feel strongly about regarding AEW until they actually run their first show. Until then, Y'all have fun babbling on about whatever the fuck it is that y'all are babbling about. I will be hanging out in other threads until then.

Gene's call of the Slaughter/Sheik Boot Camp Match is just as memorable to me as the match itself. I remember his shouts similar to the above seemed to put over the blood and guts of the match even more.

Some fun history with the AWA Christmas Night 1983 upload. Mean Gene announces to the crowd that Hulk Hogan is not there because he is "still in Japan". Crowd responds very negatively, and chants "We Want Hulk" during the 8-man tag that he was scheduled to be a part of. Two days later, both Gene and Hulk would be at WWF's first St. Louis TV taping.

LOL at making ECW fans wait through days of AWA uploads to get to their show. Loving Ken Patera doing 2.9 wrestling in the mid card in 1982 on that year's AWA Christmas show but it's okay because "they knew how to work then". I am really hoping that this ends up becoming a trend with the Hidden Gems uploads in that any time they have old arena footage that they just post everything they have on tape from that night. Was a neat little surprise firing up that first AWA upload and finding they tossed up undercard matches too, even if the camera wasnt turned on until a few minutes into the match.

There may be some folks doing that, but not enough. 85-90% of Raw's audience has been the consistent metric for SDL since the brand split from a couple of years back, with spikes primarily centered around "Event Episodes" like Smackdown 1000 or John Cena's return last year after a lengthy absence. And this week's episode of SDL had the second lowest viewership since the 2016 brand split.

The other problem with the "why worry about Raw when Smackdown is so much better" theory is that when Raw sucks and the ratings keep declining, Smackdown's ratings go down too no matter how good SD is since there is still an trend that interest in Raw drives interest in the product as a whole. So when someone decides to turn off Raw because they are tired of Baron Corbin, they aren't bothering to come back the next night to see what is going on with Smackdown.

I could also see WWE being thick enough to think they can run Shane vs Bryan but positioning Shane as the face. And while I would love to see Becky vs Ronda main event Wrestlemania, I am not getting my hopes up for that until (a) Becky is cleared to come back and (b) the match is made official on TV and physical printed promo materials start going out with that listed as a match.

Wow. Even if this ends up being match footage that ended up airing on TV elsewhere I am still impressed they dug up something that khawk20 doesn't have info on! I am hopeful that with this and the AWA Collection YT channel being taken down that this means a formal archive dump is coming to the Network.

A lot of the higher end Houston NWA On Demand is being uploaded to YouTube by various folks as well since that service went kaput last year. I believe all the matches against Gino Hernandez are on YT somewhere now

As someone who was in the stadium for that Wrestlemania, I still say the image projections on the mat would have came off a lot better if Orton actually was psychologically thrown off enough to be off his game and lose the match, instead of regaining his bearings after one outside of the ring brawling spot and then a RKO to win the match and render all the gimmickry gaga meaningless.

You might be thinking of U.K. wrestler Giant Haystacks. I could see the "Big Daddy" deal just being a super generic nickname, same with "Dr. Death" as has been mentioned elsewhere. But "Kendo Nagasaki", that's really specific.

A question for the wrestling historians around these parts. U.K. promotions in the '60s, '70s, '80s cribbed a lot of wrestler names from U.S. attractions (Blackjack Mulligan, Greg Valentine, The Legend of Doom, etc.). Is "Kendo Nagasaki" the only instance of U.S. promoters from that era swiping from a popular U.K. attraction?

Its times like these that I wish Bert Prentice was still alive to get in the mix somewhere. EDIT: well shit, Bert Prentice is still alive. Which begs the question of why he isn't promoting random shows in Wyoming with non-WWE talent right now.

I dont know much about how the stock market works, but if the story picks up mainstream news these next two weeks in a really intense way, is there a chance that the stock price would drop in a level that would shake WWE? I am of the mindset that at this point all WWE is going to do is avoid mentioning the location in the show buildup, run the show, and the move on to the next thing. And that the only thing that could potentially stop that would be strong pressure from USA and FOX or if the stock drops from bad PR, but I dont know if the PR related to them going ahead with the show would be enough to make a dent in the stock with everything else WWE has going as a positive.

GCW is doing their own weekend festivities separate from WWN and Wrestlecon and it seems other indies will be joining them including AIW, so I would presume Spring Break will be a part of that. This seems like the year the Mania weekend indie bubble might burst. GCW, WWN AND Wrestlecon are all running their own groupings of shows Thursday through Saturday that weekend, and they are spread out on opposite ends of the NY/NJ border area as well. Beyond Wrestling was saying on Twittet yesterday that they may not run a show at all this year due to too many cooks and the separate experiences not being painless commutes to each other.

I would also point to Joey Janela as someone who is a master of using the new mediums of promotion. There are probably dozens of shitty indie wrestlers that would have taken that Zandig bump off the roof and three months later would have been stuck back in the deathmatch rut to diminishing returns. Janela - who at first glance appeared to be a dollar-store Shawn Michaels that takes Mick Foley level bumps - instead seized the notoriety from the initial bump and aggressively cultivated his social media presence to enhance his in-ring persona, smartly positioned himself as "not just another indie or deathmatch guy" by petitioning for matches against ex WWE/WCW names with notable followings of their own, and then with the first Spring Break, put together a show that was essentially designed to "go viral" from even just the match announcements, and has continued to build a following to the point where a wrestling show can be "presented by Joey Janela" can draw a rabid fanbase and get eyes on the show - and fans in the door.

The Mysterio vs Super Calo match was a fun '96 TV match. I am guessing it was originally meant to air on Main Event since Mysterio takes a sunset flip bomb to the floor and there are slo-motion replays, but it ended up being scrapped when

Didn't the "Perry Saturn wears a dress" gimmick come from him losing a "loser has to wear a dress" match to Chris Jericho, and they played up Saturn finding out he likes wearing dresses so Jericho didn't get to relish his victory at all?

I can think of one thing: Eddie Gilbert being billed as hailing from "Every Woman's Fantasy" And his tag team partner Sting hailing from "Every Man's Nightmare"

Has footage of the Koji Kitao/Preston Steele match ever surfaced? If my memory is correct, Koji Kitao was inexplicably booked in 1995 by Pittsburgh-based indie Steel City Wrestling. His opponent, local wrestler Preston Steele shouted at him before the match in broken English about "working light." The story goes that Kitao - who spoke perfect English - was offended more by the manner in which he was addressed as opposed to the request itself. The match begins, they work one basic lockup/hold sequence, then Kitao shoot suplexes his opponent, kicks him in the face a bunch of times, and the match ends. His opponent also apparently suffered a separated shoulder on the suplex.

Still watching RAW and Smackdown every week, but poking around and fast-forwarding to the point where it takes me a little over an hour to watch RAW and a little under to watch SD. Since about Wrestlemania, for the monthly WWE Network supercards/PPV's, just watching a few of the bigger matches that are more compelling to me. Poking around NXT and LU, mostly around hyped matches or debuts in the case of NXT, but Takeovers get watched in their entirety. I have an NJPW World subscription, but I mainly watch the tour-ending shows in complete only, and big singles matches on other shows. I also have a Powerbomb.tv subscription, mainly checking out Beyond shows, and poking around Black Label, and other individual matches here and there. With the WWE Network, I am working my way through big WWF/WCW PPVs/Clashes/SMNE's about once or twice a month, about to enter 1990 now. I am also occasionally taking a weekend afternoon and watching back-to-back-episodes of 1982 Mid-South, World Class, and Mid-Atlantic from the same weekend. A fun experiment in "what was happening this particular week". But again, this is going rather slowly. On the podcast side, I am listening to Between The Sheets, primarily on my work commute. And I am working my way through the Portland set, widing down my nights with one match at the end of every night as I am dozing off to sleep. And sneaking in a Game Changer Wrestling full show download here and there. So while I am rarely watching entire shows from start to finish, I am still getting a good variety of wrestling to watch every week and it's honestly keeping me from burning out on any one promotion or style. And it's enough where I get plenty of wrestling in to watch, while also still taking time to live a life, enjoy social activities, and indulge in movies and a few tv shows I follow.

Damn. Between this and the David defense that went up with the original Hidden Gem dump I am now wondering how many Harley title defenses they got sitting their in the vault.