SteveJRogers

A few years back, before the days of Wiki, I noticed that in the 1970s there was a WWWF tag team called the Yukon Lumberjacks, (even held the tag titles and managed by, you guessed it, Captain Lou, but in 1978, just missing the Titans of Wrestling's coverage) and one of them was named "Eric" which made me wonder if this was the same Yukon Eric from the Kowalski incident. Obviously he wasn't, the 1970s Eric was Scott Irwin. BTW, and Chad's love of the Atlanta Braves made me think of it, but former Atlanta Brave of the early to mid 1980s pitcher Donnie Moore took his own life in 1989. Now obviously Moore had his personal demons he was battling, but there is speculation that his life began to unravel to the point where he would ultimately end it, was when he gave up a game winning home run in Game 6 of the 1986 American League Championship Series as a member of the California Angels. The Angels were an out away from winning the series and advancing to the World Series, Moore gives up a homer to the Red Sox' Dave Henderson in the top of the ninth. Angels lose the game, and the series in the 7th Game, and Moore was never the same as an Angel, and indeed as a baseball player. As I said, Moore had plenty of issues besides blowing a shot at the World Series for his team, but there is a case of an infamous incident in the sports arena being a part of the unraveling mental state to drive one to suicide.

FYI, the Mets were in St. Louis that night.

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion of out in the open Born Again Catholics in general? I wonder if the "ah its all an act" comes more from people pre-desposed to be anti-Shawn or anti the types who wear their new found faith on their sleeves. I know this is going down a road that PWO wasn't meant for, but with how much Shawn made it part of his gimmick amd public persona (even to this day), it probably is a fair thing to bring up.

BTW, proof that rap isn't the only song art form with non sequitor lyrics leaving you wondering "what the hell" as I mentioned in a Titans thread: "I was raised by a gypsy. You know handsome is cool." Seriously, did Jimmy write this song himself?

And yeah, the lack of notes, including who was due to win, for the matches is a bit odd. Perhaps paranoid of leaks?

Scroll down. Specific wording in the promos. Anyone find it weird that Road Dog is the only agent who uses a stage/kayfabed name (well, not counting Rotunda who probably hasn't been referred to on-air as Mike Rotunda since the Varsity Club days) not listed as his stage name?

According to ProWrestlingHistory.com's WWF Supercard index, other than Shea, there is one other "Supercard" in this era that the pod is covering listed, that's September 22nd 1980's WWF/NWA Title "Unification" (ironically considering what may or may not happen Sunday) from MSG.

How much of Shea is out there? Can't wait to hear those matches next month. Its a darn shame that the WWE didn't run a show at Shea again before they torn it down in 2008.

Been meaning to plug this pod, as they near their third year in existence: What A Maneuver! From OnTheStick.com Last year they did Raw/Nitro/Clashes/PPVs for the WWF and WCW's first full year of the Monday Night War, 1996, in an attempt to match real time. This year the goal was the same for 1997, but real life was getting in the way for a few months, so they are still in July of 1997 as of last week's latest episode. They also did a detour to do Barely Legal as a separate episode, mostly because of the historic nature of it. They are also friends with the Wrestlespective/Fair To Flair guys and do the Twitter thing, so a lot of that crew have been on as guests. Good weekly look back pod.

I don't mind the genre, its the way the references are so nonsensical and only done to fit lyrically that gets me all "what the fuck?" (Andre the Giant, Mr. Elephant Tusk...WHAT!? ) Granted I say this on the anniversary of the murder of someone who always loved doing strange and nonsensical lyrics in John Lennon, but for the most part (and I am NOT counting the "Dig It" jam fragment on Let It Be), things like that aren't cultural references but word plays, turn of phrases and whatnot. Basically to, as John would say about the accidental slip up on "You Got To Hide Your Love Away" when he said "...two foot small...", mess around with people (I'd assume especially when taking some rather potent drugs).

AND YOUR ITUNES FEED WILL NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRR! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRR! BE THE SAME! AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN! It airs Wednesdays, Steve Austin is the first guest. Talk Is Jericho

BTW, I'm enjoying the period specific song drops more so than the references in rap songs as the segment bridges. I mean I enjoy a good pop culture reference in songs, but generally rappers just randomly drop names in such odd, non sequitor ways just for the rhyme/lyrical beat it can be annoying. Example: "Like Jimmy Superfly Snuka/I know how to hook a hooker..." WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!? I mean is that an actual reference to Snuka actually murdering his girlfriend that night? Eh, I guess nonsensical references, or stuff that is flat out not correct for the sake of matching things lyrically always get to me, like in Adam Sandler's Thanksgiving Song's line "I can't believe the Mets traded Darryl Strawberry!" Yeah, I wish the Mets had gotten something for arguably the greatest homegrown offensive player in franchise history, instead of letting him walk away and sign with the Dodgers as a free agent! And no, I don't think Sandler knows the intricacies of free agents and draft picks that let the Mets have the Dodgers' first round pick in the next year's draft (that turned out to be Bobby Jones, who was a decent enough middle of the rotation type of starter for the Mets for many years)!

WHAT!? First Keller last week, now Meltzer in today's show. You know, its one thing to have Keller or Meltzer do a show and interview a wrestler in a shoot-ish format (think PTB's style of interviewing), but did you ever think you'd see the day where a former wrestler himself would not only host a show, but have a major shoot journalist (as opposed to a staff member of Apter's publications for example, someone who worked on keeping the work style back in the day) on as a guest on a show.

Hate to potentially drag in a new layer to the Hulk Hogan vs. Molly Ringwald debate, BUT I'd wager Jesse Ventura had some pop culture cache in 1990 that it would have been appropriate to have his name attached to a video game. He had major roles in Predator and The Running Man besides being THE commentator for the WWF programming for quite a while at that point, so his name was out there in terms of pop culture. Yeah one would stretch to call him a D-List celeb, but I'm sure to the target audience Sega was hoping to get to buy the game, he would have been quite well known, even among people that didn't know the AWA from the ABA (American Basketball Association, a successful alternative basketball league that lasted from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s).

I was actually going to bring up Paul Hogan as a comparison. The first Crocodile Dundee movie grossed more than all the Brat Pack films combined, and the second one grossed over $100 million as well (in 1980s dollars, it should be noted). Was Paul Hogan a bigger deal in the culture than Hulk Hogan? No. Hogan WAS wrestling. Paul Hogan WASN'T movies. He was a pop culture icon. But not even in the top 100 actors recognized. Hogan's lost a lot of name recognition with the younger group. My 19 year old girlfriend didn't know the name or the face, but she knows The Rock(and loves him). The Rock has a lot of BIG movies which Hogan never ever had and also Rock is really good looking which is how all my girlfriends recgnize him and what makes him 10x the star Hogan ever was. A lot of what made Hogan relevant in the last 10 years was the VH1 'Hogan Knows Best' reality show and all the ensuing drama with the whore wife, the pathetic daughter, the criminal idiot son and the staple of trashy reality stars, the sex tape. Hogan went from the most famous wrestler in the world in the 80's/90ksto an infamous Corey Feldman And looking at his 2011 appearances & tag match, 2012 Wrestlemania main event & 2013 title run/Mania main event he is back to being the biggest wrestler and one of the top 20 actors in America. So basically I'm saying The Rock > Hogan >>> Taker as far as star power. In other words: Hogan = Your typical trashy celeb that is constantly in the news for most recent law brush up, douchebaggery example, or whatever attention seeking reason you can think of. The Rock = the celeb that stays out of trouble and is constantly in the limelight only to push whatever project they are working on, or cause they are working with..

Oddly enough I was thinking about the idea of people treating Hulk Hogan as a fictional character, and in a way, they'd be right. Like even if Chris Irvine shares the same interests and personality as Chris Jericho, TECHNICALLY Chris Jericho exits only as a stage name. Kind of like the idea of there are three sides of Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne; the super hero identity of Superman and Batman, the public persona of Clark (award winning journalist) and Bruce (billionaire philanthropist), and the Clark and Bruce with their closest confidants (Ma & Pa Kent, Lois, Alfred, whomever is Robin at the time). So maybe we've been going around this discussion the wrong way, and should be comparing Hogan with fictional characters of that era, or like characters that were hot for about the same time frame as Andy Warhol said about in real life people (Max Headroom, etc).

Right, ditto Rivera from the same squad. Throw Ripken and Griffey, Jr. in that mix as well. Brain fart/Yankee hatred on my part, especially in light of thinking about the PED scandals and pro wrestling comparisons that the mainstream media seems to be fond of making. Also was trying to correlate the end of baseball's reign as the top dog in the team sport landscape in that statement, sure it had been in decline for some time before hand, but the 1990s is really when the mainstream media (especially Sports Illustrated, as well as ESPN once they secured the NFL contract, I'm not sure when the NBA contract kicked in, but hyping the NBA players as "rock stars" happened at this point as well) started to treat baseball, and its players as an afterthought, and MLB has never been the best at marketing the individual players on their own the way the NBA and NFL have been in the same time frame. So in essence the point was that Jackson represented the last time a baseball player was in the zeitgeist in that way, being right time and right place. That is true, but the conversation is comparing the attitude of the masses whom associate Hogan with the way he was in 1986-1988 as opposed to the evolving personae in and out of the ring over the course of the last nearly 30 years. Fair point, just throwing some classic media hyperbole out there. But bear in mind, there are segments of the media, though thankfully none that have HOF votes, that probably consider the FAME part as more important than cold hard stats (I've heard someone suggest putting Jose Canseco in because of all the news worthy crap that followed him during his career, and since, including his books). So, even if Jackson ended up with a pedestrian career, his being one of the most famous players of his time would put him over the top in some people's eyes. That is true. Ditto the likes of Mark "The Bird" Fydrich and *sigh* Dwight Gooden (Met fan, grew up in that heyday).

Just thought of a GREAT ONE in terms of non-scripted sports in the same era (ish) Bo Jackson. Couldn't go ANYWHERE without seeing something with his image on magazine covers, Nike commercials (Bo Knows...), video games (he was virtually unstoppable in Techno Bowl form), action figures, trading cards, etc. ESPN just did a 30 for 30 documentary on his meteoric rise into the zeitgeist, and sudden fall due to that damn hip injury. Could he have been the one true two-sport Hall of Famer if not for the injury (there is one in the Pro Football and National Baseball Halls of Fame, but he's in the Baseball one as an umpire)? Sadly we'll never know, but he was one of the most amazing talents and pop culture sensations to come along in his time. So, does Bo > Hogan based on being such a pop culture icon for a short period of time? Maybe the last MLB guy to truly be on that level...well there is Bonds, ARod, McGwire and Sosa, but for much, MUCH different reasons. Come to think of it, maybe the saga of Bonds and McGwire tells a lot about the placement of pro-wrestling and wrestlers in the mainstream, when comments about sluggers looking like they are WWF wrestlers and suggesting that based on PED cheating, baseball might just as well be on the same level as pro-wrestling in terms of being "fake" (as if they think all wrestling fans really are marks or some shit). But anyway, back to Bo, I think he'd be a good enough comparison, in an athletic sense, from the same time frame as Hogan's peak of popularity.

Riding up to a PPV with a friend back in 1999, we were hoping to get their early enough to see the wrestlers getting in. Sadly we just got in time to see Heat go off. Jokingly I said "yeah, if they really DO show up at the time they are shown arriving on TV, I don't think they'd be long for the company!"

It'd be fun to take a wrestler, like Darsow, and try to construct a narrative thread that unites all of his weird gimmick changes from promotion to promotion. Barry Darsow starts out as a roided-up Soviet sympathizer whose commie ways fade as he falls in with some strange leather/biker/post-apocalyptic subculture. When this runs his course, he decides to enter the repossession business. Before long, he grows tired of this career and becomes an asshole truck driver. Eventually, he takes up professional golf. Speaking of never referencing past gimmicks, if not for The Spirit Squad losing to Flair's Legends team in 2006, Nick Nesmith would be undefeated/on the winning team in every Survivor Series he has appeared in. 4-0 as Dolph Ziggler, which includes successful IC and US belt defenses.... Poor Dolph, to borrow a phrase from segments of the IWC...

These may be bad examples comparatively speaking, but in team sports players always get cheered by fans knowing full well that this could be that player's final game in that uniform. And using wrestling analogies, how many faces (and even a heel or two like CM Punk leaving ROH) got "PLEASE DON'T GO! PLEASE DON'T GO!" chants from fans whom knew that they were working their final match for the promotion and were heading else where? It does happen where an outgoing wrestler is able to get the crowd on their side, no matter how shitty their manner of leaving may seem at the time.

Right now, one of the players did the John Cena "You can't see me" hand gesture, and the announcer referenced John Cena, the catch phrase and the gesture. I'm still amazed that they (WWE/Cena) didn't "borrow" that from some other rapper.

It did lead to a running gag in A Hard Day's Night that went over any American's heads. Paul keeps referring to his "grandfather" as being clean. The actor was Steptoe and was always referred to as a dirty old man.

So it'd be like a classic post-Ghosbusters Murray outing, Groundhog Day? =

Here is something odd that I wonder about though, there is a podcast (non wrestling) hosted by two Brits (one early 30s, and one early-mid 40s) who love dropping the Airwolf theme song into their show every now and then. Thing is, Airwolf is an AMERICAN show (IIRC its Knight Rider, only a sophisticated helicopter (and I don't think it talked) that lasted about two seasons in the early 1980s. Could just be odd quirks about American entertainment. What is your record when it comes to more UK based stuff, besides Who and Potter of course?