thebrainfollower

What's the criteria for not being a main eventer? Santana-Valentine main evented quite a few WWF cards in 84-85 and Valentine main evented off and on in MACW for years. Someone like Ray Rougeau even, wasn't he a main eventer in tags in Montreal before coming to the WWF? And Ricky Morton had matches with Flair and I was under the impression the Express main evented a lot of B shows in JCP 96 as well as tons of Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Regal, Finlay and Smothers are great picks. I would say Arn is the best of the bunch, he main evented a bunch of War Games I guess, but if you count those you're only a few steps away from counting Battle Royals and the like and that pretty much eliminates just about everyone. I'm not saying he should be on the list but what about Jake Roberts? Other than the Andre feud and the brief Sting feud where was he the main event in his career? Against Ron Garvin in GA?

I assumed the 80's because otherwise yeah you are down to pretty much Ron Simmons as guys who maybe should not have jumped.

Powers of Pain. Would never have gotten a world tag title run and would have ended up severely injured in those scaffold matches. Neither had that much success in WWF either but I think they made more money and worked against safer people overall. Bushwhackers probably had their lives extended by the switch, but not their careers if that makes any sense. They made money in merch as well they never would have seen as the Sheepherders in the NWA. Rick Rude made a great decision to jump as well as when to jump back. Agree totally on Bossman. I would argue Arn made the right call. Had a short title run that would have been longer and showed he could not be treated as an afterthought. Mind you I could see someone arguing he went right back to being that in NWA.

Let me throw this thought out, how about Marty as the top face of Smoky Mountain once the Rockers break up?

Is there any footage of Bobby's work with Randy Savage early in both men's careers?

Given that King Tut did 8 episodes and the Riddler 11 King Tut has to be every generic fat guy opponent for Hogan in this analogy.

I will hold off until I see that comp made then.

I have to admit Maria talking about how rough she worked as opposed to today's divas was one of the funniest things I had ever heard. Coming from Victoria, Trish, Jazz or Molly I might have taken it seriously.

Thanks. So I'm going to begin my journey with everything Meltzer gave 5 stars to from 1984-1989. Why that year I have no idea, other than it's my first wrestling memory. My going into this totally ignorant might make interesting reading. BTW if anyone has any "But you need to watch THIS" as well from those years chime in with that. Or any other thoughts or opinions. Is there a thread already for generic 80's Japanese reviews or should I just post thoughts here?

Shockingly good or shockingly ignorant?

I can't think of any WWF house shows JYD-Race headlined, unless you want to count the 6 man elimination matches. I have a broader question, do wrestlers do this out of massive insecurity or simply because they've lived a carnival lifestyle for so long they have no idea where the lies begin and reality ends? I mean someone like Hogan who constantly exaggerates his deeds. Which would be fine and good if he were say Sam Houston and had a massive insecurity complex. But he's arguably the most famous wrestler of all time, why the hell does he find the need to add a few hundred pounds to Andre's weight for instance? Does he even know he's lying anymore? And if not, does that make the shoot interview, for all its BS, the best insight into the mind of a wrestler we are ever likely to get.

Fair enough. For me it's too much of a blank. For instance I've heard for years that Jumbo is the best wrestler of all time. That's all I know about him, that some people adore him. I have no more knowledge of him than something not into wrestling has of Ric Flair, and that makes it hard for me to get into his matches.

So I've been giving this a fair amount of thought lately. I've got a very small collection of Japanese matches on my hard drive, probably less than 50 as opposed to say about 1000 80's and early 90's North American matches. And the vast majority of those involve at least one US based wrestler. I was thinking about what Vince Russo said about US fans basically never caring about Japanese (or Mexican wrestling IIRC) wrestling enough to make it worthwhile. And while I hate to sort of kind of agree with that viewpoint I am thinking he might not be totally wrong. The problem for me is context. With the exception of some smaller promotions (Central States, Continental) I know the basic storylines and histories of most of the matches in my collection. And that is important to me, being able to put things into context. It's probably why, however unfair, I prefer 80's WWF I was there and can remember it. And in the unlikely event I don't I can always listen to the commentary team and they usually fill me in (I don't know how comprehensible late 90's WCW low and midcard matches will be for viewers today given how little the matches are talked about). But with Japanese wrestling I've got nothing. I wasn't a tape trader and I rarely if ever know the full history of what's going on. My ideal solution would be for the two best experts on 80's All and New Japan on this board (I'll leave you guys to fight out who that would be) to record audio commentaries for say the 100 best match sets. Doing them like Cornette and Meltzer on wrestling gold as opposed to play by play. Would such a project appeal to anyone else or should I stay ignorant about Japanese wrestling?

I sort of want to watch this now. As per Lance Storm, isn't Russo right there? Did anyone really give Lance a bigger push than Russo?

I know this one! Tama was angry at his WM IV payoff and relative Sika's release and opted out. Sivi Afi I don't think was ever intended as a replacement and his idiotic performance (seriously does he not know he's a heel, he's with Bobby freaking Heenan) ruled out any chance of that happening. For that matter why wasn't THAT match reshot? OR was this still when Vince would have been doing live commentary at the TV tapings (it's right around the time of the change)

That's a great post JDW. One thing I would point out though, it might sound contradictory to argue that Vince grew up poor and acted like an arrogant little shit around his dad's office but it really isn't. I work in a field with tons of poor kids whose behavior convince you they think they are multi millionaires. It's compensating.

As a former debate coach and teacher (and still the best record in MA as a debater, insert your own tired jokes) I gotta say I'd hand JVK the easy victory here on points. Some thoughts, comparing Vince to Goebbels brings up a point. A lot of people simply won't credit Vince because he either destroyed their beloved NWA or JCP or what have you, or they simply hate his product. Regardless of what you think of Goebbels he invented much of modern political propaganda and got a bunch of creeps (and I'm being generous) worshiped by a nation for 12 years. That's impressive. Sick but impressive. You can despise Vince and still consider him a genius. I don't like him as a person per se from everything I've read and seen but yes he is a genius clearly. It's pretty obvious Vince is the most successful wrestling promoter in history. He did NOT do that with his father's money. He did that by using more successful business models than wrestling. He was the only promoter to think outside the wrestling box totally in decades and have the resources to pull it off. Memphis did a lot of stuff but at the end of the day Memphis was about making Jerry Lawler look great almost as much as being a successful business. Vince kept his own ego in check, never made himself a star (and when he did he was one of the greatest wrestling heels ever for a few years so credit that too) and created a massively successful company. His run in the 90's? Well he was smart enough to admit thing weren't working and smart enough to find the right people to listen to and get things out of them NOBODY could (I'm looking at you Mr. Russo). So credit him for a lot of that too.

Seeing posts back on this thread brought a smile to my face. And EL-P I agree with Shakira. She seemed to understand her role, looked great, and looked like she was enjoying herself. Midajah has exactly one facial expression by comparison.

I really don't watch any joshi because to me wrestling is also about storyline and historical context and I have zero knowledge going in. I may sound like a WWE mark but for women's wrestling in the US I'd happily argue Trish Stratus. Not the best worker but darn good at her peak of 02-retirement, could cut a decent promo after a year stumbling and looked great. I respected the fact that anyone who looked like THAT actually respected and cared enough about pro wrestling to become good at it (see Torrie or Stacy for the other approach) If you use the Bret Hart score cards of look, workrate and promo I would say best in the US of all time. And fans cared about her and Lita a heck of a lot more than anyone cared about Madusa/Alundra Blayze or anyone in TNA, which usually gets brought up. Having said that I am sure there are 50 joshi girls miles ahead of her in workrate. But is that all we are asking about? And I've seen about 20 Velvet matches. I cannot see any way that Trish doesn't surpass her, but a lot of that might be Velvet's opponents I guess.

My favorites per system NES - Tecmo Pro Wrestling. Best NES game by a mile. WWF games were awful but this was pretty good and had Inoki, Flair and Road Warriors knocks offs. A good moveset and a very hard game, though no tag matches. SNES - Monday Night Raw - Liked the fact that finally different wrestlers had different movesets, even though those movesets weren't always accurate. And what was that odd powerslam/belly to belly hybrid some wrestlers had anyway? Also the Super moves were a preview of the nightmare that was to come with the next game being awful. N64- No Mercy - Got this and was so obsessed with it that when I bought it the next day was a college student govt 6 day Disney trip. And I brought it with me so I could play from 12-2am every morning and start unlocking stuff. At one point I had done EVERYTHING, 100 percent on all titles and everything even the Ho unlocked. Then some little kid of a friend of my parents accidentally knocked into my SNES and erased the memory. I'm on my third copy now and still play regularly with friends. PS2 - Here Comes the Pain - most varied roster, best movesets. Can't remember much more about why I loved this one but I did.

Good to know. I snuck in a listen while it's still up. Here's my only thought on the whole did Backlund draw at MSG issue? Clearly he did more often than not, but was Bruno's returns a contributing factor to there not being a few months of poor attendance once in a while? Not really sure about that. This was a good listen and I enjoyed it, though I should have watched the matches in question first, as I haven't seen that one hour match in years, possibly a decade or so.

This doesn't work for me and when I try to click the download feature it tells me the website has been suspended.

I agree wholeheartedly. I feel like pwo is the Ernie Ladd of wrestling sites. "Come on and sit under the learning tree son".

I agree the wedding was sold as the main event. I still wonder why Jake and Taker were left off the card because them and Slaughter would have struck me as a much more marketable match but I guess not. Match is pretty lousy and I feel v sorry for the Bulldog in this, he was just coming off a nice run with Mr. Perfect and going into a fall of not doing much at all IIRC.

My understanding of the Detroit territory was that the Sheik booked himself as an unconquerable heel for so long that fans just gave up and stopped watching. There could be other factors I'm not aware of but that's what Cornette has said a bunch of times. It is interesting that CA fell apart, both territories so close to each other and only a few years apart.