thebrainfollower

Taker did main both Summerslam and Survivor Series. Slam drew particularly well, but Bret-Owen was drawing decent money in a lot of places. It was certainly more successful than what came after it until at least early 96.

Well that sure as heck buried Paige and ended that experiment. I wonder if it's turning heel or simply vanishing as another failed experiment.

What house shows are up that aren't on the old school category for pc users?

I honestly feel like Mexican wrestlers should be their own separate category. It's such a great heritage and so much a part of Mexican wrestling that it has an massively unfair advantage over US masked guys, which was a very small subcategory and died off decades ago. I'd go with The Masked Superstar, Mr. Wrestling II and the Spoiler. Mysterio for the luchadores obviously. Need to watch a lot more Destroyer clearly.

Got about 80 Coliseum Videos including all the PPV's up to Wrestlemania X. Every now and then I pop one in with friends for nostalgia's shake. My best friend keeps a copy of the 45 minute Hulk Hogan video at his vacation home because that was his favorite as a kid.

Yeah it's Andre and it's not even close.

I'd go with Matt on that. You need to see something before Jerry Lawler was injured to really get the epic return and feud with Jimmy Hart. Earlier than that and you are limited with what you can watch.

The idea is that it's June of 82 the same time frame Vince Sr sold to Vince in real life. So Kaufman is still around for a while. I could see the Samoans are tag champs more than the Briscos or Patterson and Stevens. Rocky Johnson is a solid upper midcarder in the venture I'd guess.

Sounds like a LOT of old timers, pretty much the opposite of what Vince wants. I'd book with Patterson and Stevens teaming up one last time vs. the Briscos Muraco I can see as a Vince Jr guy, put him with Tito for the California state championship or something Wahoo vs Tully strap match assuming Wahoo is free Bill Eadie vs. Jimmy Garvin Stan Hansen vs. either Chavo Guerrero or Mil Mascaras Don Leo, Haystacks, Destroyer and Spiros are done by 82 IMO as being of any value. I'd leave them out of this. IF Vince gets a good timeslot (Maybe joining with Blanchard on USA) and local tv and the NWA doesn't declare war on these guys they might have a shot at surviving long enough for Vince Sr to die and them to all go to the WWF in mid 84. Which means no Horsemen with Tully in all probability and Randy Savage instead of Hogan as a headliner. Not sure how that would work. I'd say the WWF would thrive with their old talent and the CA talent through the rest of the decade at least. Verne with Hogan, the Roadies and if you believe Greg network TV would be a hard combination to beat as easily as was done in real life.

I would say Vince was a reasonably competent businessman who beat a bunch of idiots. Sometimes Vince is a genius, other times a moron so it averages out.

Time for someone to bring this to the fantasy forum. Piper vs. Savage possibly as the main feud Orton Jr. and Ron Garvin Blassie as the main heel manager with Jesse Ventura as his protege Have Kaufman as Roddy's manager? The promos alone would be amazing. If Vince is smart he would stay in the NWA. Flair vs. Savage or Piper in this era would be great. I'd book a first supercard of Flair vs. Garvin - NWA title Savage & a mystery partner vs. Piper and Kaufman - mystery partner is either Judd Hirsch, sick of Kaufman's BS (yeah I'm kidding) or Bruiser Brody. Brody and Savage together seems interesting. Ventura vs. Bob Orton Jr. We'd still need about 10 other wrestlers to make this work. Who was sort of hanging around doing nothing in mid 82 and could use a change of scenery? Are there known Vince Jr loyalists other than Finkel who would have gone with him? Who was big from the CA territory that could still have drawn money in 82?

Yeah Vince needs a new face and realistically Randy is about his only shot. Unless Vince does this with NWA tolerance in which case a lot of the guys who are fading in their areas might come to him. I can't see him walking out of an NWA meeting without the massive backing of the WWF. Orton and Garvin would have better pushes than they did in this fantasy promotion I agree.

Agree with Dylan it's a loser almost certainly. Best choice for Vince would have been to just wait for his dad to die. Even if if took another ten years. A World Class takeover of Texas makes sense but Fritz was not willing to go national and Watts hated him with a passion so no dice on that. I realize all this sounds like doom and gloom and I'd making Vince out to be the guy who saved pro wrestling from a 1992 death. Maybe Ted would have kept WCW on the airwaves anyway. Maybe it would have never gotten so big for Jamie Kellner to care and pull the plug in 2001. But I doubt it.

Hogan would have been nuts to try a brand new promotion. I say Hogan bites the bullet, lets Verne takes his % of the Japan cut and becomes AWA world champion. Blassie? Maybe and that would have helped in CA. Patterson I could see definitely, between him and Blassie Vince now has guys that know the territory. Buddy Rose would stay in Portland, he was happier there. Patera' s a possibility. If Vince Jr is able to get the old man's blessing at least to do this he has the NWA's at least tacit acceptance then. If not he's toast in a year at best. I just don't see too many big name stars being willing to go on board with this. It would have forced Vince into an alliance with outlaw promotions and I could see Randy Savage being brought in to help headline as the new star Vince would build his promotion around.

Did your dad fire Hogan for Rocky III is on my list of questions I want to and will never get to ask Vince.

Forgot about the Pat turn. I wonder if even then they were putting him in to be part of the creative team and that's why he was turned much like Gorilla a decade or more earlier.

Sorry I meant Vince going to Ohio in mid 82, which was being run by GCW but was as close to open as anything save CA. I don't think Vince would have gone to St. Louis then. Maybe a year or so later if Larry still falls on his ass. I'd put money on CA if Vince goes anywhere. 2nd largest media market in the US ,and Vince is a businessman first and foremost.

My ideal booking goes something like this. Night after Mania, you do the Austin/HHH team up halfway through the show for a beatdown on Rock, Taker saves. At the end of the show you have the rematch booked with HHH/Vince in Austin's corner and Taker in Rock's. Opening exchange big brawl and everyone hits the ring. Lights go out. Lights come back on and Bischoff, Sting, Goldberg, Steiner, DDP, possibly Booker T, Hall and Nash are surrounding the ring. (I leave out Hogan because I can see him being brought in later as a face making more sense and nobody wants to boo Flair anyway). The WCW guys hit the ring and absolutely brutalize the WWF talent. The one sided ass kicking of all ass kickings. Leaving em laying. Shane McMahon comes out and shakes Bischoff's hand as Vince is held up to watch, in shock. Shane hands over a contract stating he's selling his WCW back to Bischoff as well as his part of the WWF to get further revenge on his dad. Bischoff nods, hugs him then has his guys beat the heck out of Shane too just to be a douche. Then finally Vince is beaten down horribly, so bad he's in a pool of his own blood. Bischoff grabs a mike and turns Vince over to face him. "You put us out of business Vinnie Mac? Good for you. We're gonna put you in the FN grave" and slams the mike down. And next PPV Goldberg as Bane and Austin as Batman goes pretty much like the first fight in DKR rises as WCW runs rampant for a year over WWF. WM XVIII is booked as the ultimate WWF revenge show with them finally conquering the unstoppable Goldberg with Rock which might entice him to stay around a lot more than playing third fiddle to HHH/Austin did.

I can't see anyone selling out to Vince Jr. Verne, Crockett, Watts, etc would have laughed at him. He could have tried starting up a regional West Coast promotion with Hogan as his lead but that's a huge risk. He has no real assets, no known name, no home base to fall back on, only an area with a burned out wrestling fanbase. Again on his own, GCW in mid 82/83 would have crushed Vince if he had gone there and Tunney/Crockett would have stayed a firmer alliance with them probably taking the dying remnants of Detroit over. He MIGHT have convinced some TV stations to give this new promotion a shot and had it take off but it's far more likely he would just have died out. But then Vince Sr. dies in mid 84 and I just don't see Skaaland/Monsoon wanting to run the wrestling business. My guess is they'd bring Vince Jr back to run the promotion for them, but not as an owner. We'd see a much more conservative WWF that would probably not have expanded or gone national. And without it I think pro wrestling may have died out more or less in the early 90's and general burn out on its old school product.

I think Vince Sr. wasn't a huge fan of improvising. Superstar was booked for ten months and got ten months. Hogan was brought in to have a few matches with Backlund and then an Andre feud. The only thing left would have been an Backlund MSG series where Bob goes over clean and Hogan does what virtually every other heel does, which is depart the territory. Hogan leaving here and then coming back a little under 3 years later as a conquering hero has more impact than if Hogan had stayed around in the mid card for another year, turned face, and then waited a year and a half to win the title. The other option is a face turn but that didn't happen all that often in that era. Off the top of my head I can only think of Jimmy Snuka and that seemed like more of a Vince Jr. thing. Gorilla was turned but he was buying into the promotion and so had to hang around, and wasn't really going to ever just be a jobber like the Baron. On to the show in general, Johnny was on fire here with the Mole Man and Plan Nine both getting shout outs. And Plan Nine is far from the worst movie ever. Check out the Creeping Terror, Manos - The Hands of Fate or The Beast of Yucca Flats and that will quickly dispel the Medved brothers' claim.

That is one loaded Prime Time Wrestling. Granted one of the matches was from Superstars and another from Challenge but that's five quality matchups in two hours. Gotta love the November sweeps. Gorilla post Ventura did get annoying as hell I agree. It's mitigated with Bobby due to the general entertainment value of the duo but anyone else is a disaster post 1990. His work on the 94 Raw's and PPV's is just mind numbing bad.

Yeah the lack of updates are starting to get frustrating. What's the point of putting up about half of the first six months of the Freebirds WCCW run for WCCW and nothing else? Only thing updated is the 94 Raw's and that's usually only 2 a week.

So I've been watching Raws as they update them via the network and i started with the day after WM X. Up to 10/92 which means I endured the whole faker UT story and I THINK I've figured it out from beginning to end now. It's just batshoot insane but here goes. UT vanishes after losing the casket match at RR 94, returning to the netherworld. At some point a random demon (no I'm not making this up, I think this was the idea) impersonates him around various places. Ted Dibiase hears about this and thinking it is the original Undertaker, somehow contacts him and convinces him to join his new corporation. After defeating Tatanka effortlessly (which might have been a lay down since Tatanka may or may not have already sold out to Dibiase), Ted's fake UT is confronted by Paul Bearer, who is skeptical that this is the real deal. The Fakertaker teases going with Paul Bearer, since it would seal his claim to impersonate the original better and desecrate the spirit of the UT, which was his master plan all along (listen to all the promos, I wish to God I was making this up). But Dibiase pulls out some major cash and being greedy and evil, fake Taker stays with him. That convinces Paul Bearer he's not the real deal and Bearer signs for the Summerslam match, having faith that the real Undertaker will show up to restore his good name. After his spirit saves Paul Bearer from a choke out on Raw and taunts the fake Taker and Dibiase on Superstars, he does exactly that (wearing purple now because that's the color of rebirth in the Roman Catholic Church). He destroys the Fake Undertaker who is sent back to hell (hence why the coffin is empty when Leslie Nielson opens it.) So Dibiase was more or less an innocent dude as he really believed his Undertaker was the real deal. Everybody got that (Say it like Rick Moranis in Spaceballs for max effect)?

I just rewatched this whole feud via the network and I THINK I've figured it out from beginning to end now. It's just batshoot insane but here goes. UT vanishes after losing the casket match, returning to the netherworld. At some point a random demon (no I'm not making this up, I think this was the idea) impersonates him around various places. Ted Dibiase hears about this and thinking it is the original Undertaker, somehow contacts him and convinces him to join his new corporation. After defeating Tatanka effortlessly (which might have been a lay down since Tatanka may or may not have already sold out to Dibiase), Ted's fake UT is confronted by Paul Bearer, who is skeptical that this is the real deal. The Fakertaker teases going with Paul Bearer, since it would seal his claim to impersonate the original better and desecrate the spirit of the UT, which was his master plan all along (listen to all the promos, I wish to God I was making this up). But Dibiase pulls out some major cash and being greedy and evil, fake Taker stays with him. That convinces Paul Bearer he's not the real deal and Bearer signs for the Summerslam match, having faith that the real Undertaker will show up to restore his good name. After his spirit saves Paul Bearer from a choke out on Raw and taunts the fake Taker and Dibiase on Superstars, he does exactly that (wearing purple now because that's the color of rebirth in the Roman Catholic Church). He destroys the Fake Undertaker who is sent back to hell (hence why the coffin is empty when Leslie Nielson opens it. So Dibiase was more or less an innocent dude as he really believed his Undertaker was the real deal. Everybody got that (Say it like Rick Moranis in Spaceballs for max effect)?

Dave's smarky reaction to the Demos not turning face amuses me. Wonder how he backtracks in a month or so.