thebrainfollower

In my podcast, we referred to that as his 3rd Doctor Who look, but yeah it's more like Liberace. He dressed like that in 84 in Toronto at least too.

Reading the title, I thought Hulk Hogan had started a podcast.

I would have to find someone willing to put it up as a podcast. That would be my ideal, so right now no. Also we actually watch the footage live (though we all have seen it before) so having stuff I can put up for the viewing audience to watch with us at the same time happens a lot. Obviously with WWE stuff that's out and TNA as well but I don't see us watching much of that beyond the Final Deletion stuff that Nick and Dave wanted me to see.

Dave, Nick and Rob are back to compare and contrast two very different generations of wrestling. First up the boys watch the first half of Buddy Rose's 1983 face turn from Portland Oregon which includes multiple promos, two epic beatdowns and an amazing tag match between Buddy Rose & Dynamite Kid taking on Curt Hennig and Billy Jack Haynes. Then it's over to last year's NJ for Will Ospreay vs. Ricochet. Will I completely bury this crazy high flying match (spoiler - no actually, I liked it with reservations) Topics discussed - Is Terry Funk in fact Godzilla, guys whose rep is hurt by their Hulkamania era run, Nick discovers the goodness of babyface Curt Hennig, Dave ponders the Assassin's role in BJH conspiracy theories, Rob messes up both the name of Buddy Rose's gang as well as the Portland Assassin, general respect and amusement about Don Owen. We also have a general discussion about both good and bad babyface turns we've seen over the years. As always feedback and comments are most welcome!

The beginning of the new Mega Powers. You should have taken a pic of a handshake

Yeah I was never impressed with Yokozuna. My best friend gave up on the WWF for good as soon as it was clear he was getting a monster push and i held that against him. For a supposed monster with all this speed and agility he sure never shows any of that in the ring often enough, Vince and Co hype aside.

This was my return to WWE, not having seen a show for many years. I agree with everything EL-P says, to be honest by hour 5 I was bored out of my mind and just wanted it to be over. Didn't see much from the ladies beyond Charlotte's shooting star press that made me think they were that great, but a 12 minute elimination match is a bad set up to begin with. The mixed tag was stupid fun I guess, Miz getting the reaction of the night was amusing. HHH-Rollins made no sense and dulled me but I cannot get into a HHH Match. The Undertaker thing made me sad, he could barely do anything, and most of what he did he messed up. Roman did the best he could but this push has to be the most stubborn idiotic thing I've seen Vince do. Also the commentary, is that WWE today? Just a series of meaningless catch phrases and social media hype with no attempt by the announcers to actually TALK to each other and have a good conversation? If this was miles better than last year, I am grateful I missed it. This show gave me zero desire to go back to WWE. I will stick with my old stuff gladly.

It's Episode 4 of Wrestling with a Generation Gap. This time the gang watches TNA's Final Deletion 1 as well as a random assortment of matches from Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens in the pre WWF days. We talk about Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, Sami Zayn's offer to mow Nick's lawn, Rob says fair enough way too many times, the history of the Tunneys in Toronto, Paul Jones as the lost Doctor Who, Dave's love of Wrestlemania IV, Rob buries the PWO board with a bad Margaret Hamilton impression, praise for Dory vs. Abdullah, Rob's earliest memory of wrestling, Nick discovers Lucha Slaughter, Nick believing young Bret Hart might make it somewhere, and everyone loving babyface tag wrestler Ric Flair. Comments and feedback are always welcome! There's no video for Final Deletion as TNA would have pulled it, but the Maple Leaf stuff syncs with the audio from about 28 minutes on.

Watched the November 91 Clash yesterday. Nothing more to add about how great a lot of it is, though I do think Steamboat's dragon disguise was a bit much. Also is it me or does Rick Steiner walk to the ring like he's going to his parents' funeral? I understand the Steiners didn't like doing jobs but surely even Rick didn't think he was walking out of this thing world champion? Also a longer question about Rick Rude. I've always heard he didn't like being paired up with Bobby Heenan in the WWF because he felt Heenan would take all the heat. I've also heard he loved this teaming with Paul Heyman. And yet...........it seems like the angle is all about Heyman. It's the Dangerous Alliance, he does virtually all of the talking and the whole angle leading to the title change is all about him running his mouth and even the camera stays on him while Rude is pretty much a background player. I guess I'm wondering why Rude was okay with this but not being a part of the Heenan family?

I definitely prefer SS 95 to their Rumble match, but yes Nash has respect for Bret as a performer. He seems to write off Bret's odd behavior in his eyes as a byproduct of Bret's odd upbringing.

I remember writing a fantasy scenario where Paul Heyman and the Dangerous Alliance invaded the WWF rather than Ric Flair, forcing Hogan and Heenan to do the unthinkable and join forces. Anyway I always think of Paul Bearer. He was a face for over 4 years which is a pretty long run for a face manager.

Yeah I just don't get your argument. Steamboat tried righteous vengeance and failed each time. Here he realized another way to get revenge on Savage which was his pride. Outwrestle him, stay focused and calm and take away the most important thing, his title. Steele's interference makes perfect sense too, capping off a year plus long storyline and adding to the drama of every horrible thing Savage has ever done coming back to bite him in the rear. Plus I think they wanted to give Savage a little bit of an out because even then they were thinking babyface turn. Most of the cage rematches weren't precisely clean wins for Steamboat either, he wasn't cheating but he was getting lucky IIRC. In general also I avoid the workrate comparison with WWF. It has little value when comparing to NJ/AJ, a country with a totally different culture, and more importantly a wrestling schedule of less than half a year which allows matches to be what they are without destroying the body. WWF's brutal travel schedule made that harder to do. Savage-Steamboat DID have matches such as Toronto I can see you liking more definitely though, but I can't help find myself disagreeing with the majority of the argument against Savage-Steamboat here.

I know Tito and Ricky teamed up against the Dream Team in what is probably Brutus Beefcake's career match IMO but did they ever team up against Savage?

Huh it was Nick Patrick. Odd how the memory cheats like that. For years I "recalled" Steamboat coughing up blood after Savage hit him with the ring bell when I saw it as a kid. Never happened of course. But thanks

I have nothing planned yet. I'd like Carlos Colon vs. Stan Hansen, either cage or bullrope match

So Episode 11 of my podcast is going to be all about WWC. Anyone want to make suggestions for what to include in a one hour WWC compilation from the 80's? I've got it down to about 3.5 hours of stuff, but that's a bit much. Sadly none of us are fluent enough in Spanish for promos. I definitely want to get as much talent as possible and not just a Carlos Colon comp. Thanks in advance.

Also still watching SMW from 1993. The build to Fire on the Mountain's main event has been great, and I actually can't wait to see Bullet Bob finally get his on Jim Cornette. Given I am watching 24 year old footage and I like Cornette a lot (I even provided him a bunch of DVD's of his childhood horror host last year) that says something for the performers and the angle

I watched Wrestlemania XV at my college dorm. The audience seemed to like it but I remember even then thinking it was a disaster, with only the main event and Shane vs. X-Pac being good. I think the think was they just turned Sable heel, but really she didn't do much heelish. I'm guessing this was around the time they decided to get rid of her too. It was definitely a throwback to Wrestlemania's IV-VIII with the "get everyone on the roster" mentality. A lot of those matches were short and equally pointless as well.

But also a true answer for sure. Would prefer shorter matches, as we try to keep the old school stuff to an hour, but that's a great pick. Does anyone know the match where Tommy Young gets into a mini fist fight with Jim Cornette?

For their third podcast, Dave, Nick and Rob take a look at a compilation of Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling from the mid 80's. BUT there's more, they also look at Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada from last year. Does the gang believe this to be the GOAT match? And thanks to feedback this is synched, well mostly, WITH the relevant video footage for you to watch along with us. https://youtu.be/whDvgS44jbY

Okay another question. What are some of the WORST refereed matches in history. I'm talking a performance so bad from Dick Woerhle that Johnny Sorrow throws his TV out the window bad. Not counting guest refs or Starrcade 97 since that's been talked to death. I'm talking a bad reffing job from bell to bell bad.

So anyway for a future episode of my podcast a friend of mine who's a referee in New England indies is going to be a guest. We are going to look at some of the best refereed matches in wrestling history. That's kind of a blind spot for me. I love Tommy Young, but if someone asked to come up with say 4-5 of the greatest refereeing performances in wrestling history, I'd draw a blank. Want Brian Hildebrand in there too naturally. Anyone have any opinions? Tommy Young clobbering Cornette I love, but I cannot recall which match that was.

Watched the 5-22-93 through 7-10-93 episodes of Smoky Mountain Wrestling. I'm going to keep going and watch the few major shows I have as well but some observations. The show would be great to watch weekly, but it's not so easy to binge watch. Because the roster is really small (maybe 12 name wrestlers) you get the same stuff over and over again. I have maybe 40 hours of Jim Cornette shoot interviews on my external hard drive and after one episode even I was thinking "this show has too much Jim Cornette" after some episodes. I definitely think Dutch and Bob Caudle were the best commentary duo in wrestling around that time. Dutch isn't too heelish nor too neutral, he really does hit the perfect balance and even when he says outrageous things, his tone is funny enough it's not irritating at all. For a very left wing guy, Cornette sure pandered to his audience. Evil needs more money from Social Security Ron Wright, and HRC wannabe Tammy Sytch are gimmicks I'm sure that audience ate up, and they are presented just tongue in cheek enough, I'm sure many of his viewers didn't get the irony anyway. Speaking of Tammy I do agree she's really good here, even early on a more interesting character than the cocky cheerleader Sunny. It's a bit odd that Cornette basically gave her his Memphis gimmick (clueless rich putz who's not from here, wants to manage babyfaces but is so obnoxious they get shot down again and again until they change their mind and become full heels) as I cannot think of two managers so different from that time period. Brian Lee's heel turn seems really well done and her basically admitted she used money and sex to lure him in was pretty blunt for 1993 wrestling. I do think it's a problem because I just don't see Tracy Smothers as a babyface you can build the singles division around, but I'm sure they figure something out soon. The Armstrongs are a bit bland. Bob's promos are great, a weekly highlight but when the brothers wrestle they don't bring the rage enough. Part of it is their high flying technical style but take a guy like Tito Santana, who worked the same way usually but knew when it was time to KILL YOU (Valentine feud comes to mind). The Heavenly Bodies are great though, I really love Jimmy Del Ray right from the start. The Harris Brothers...........are not driving me to watch something else. I think that's the nicest thing I can say about them.

It was a vicious angle. I can't however think of a single good Ron Bass WWF match. For years I thought he was pretty awful but catching up on Florida, including his heel turn and a very good match with Barry Windham, he's another guy like Butch Reed whose WWF run really hurt his perception by fans.

Sure I can provide that feedback. The first episode was Knoxville stuff from 1979 because one of my newer friends loves the Macho Man. They enjoyed it, but had a hard time distinguishing faces and heels and there's not really much to see from that era beyond what we did. The second episode was San Francisco 1978. Again there's not much out there. But Dave absolutely was blown away by Buddy Rose and wanted episodes 5 and 6 to be all about him. Given it was only the second BR match he had ever seen (and I'm not sure WM counts) and I'm sure even Buddy Rose would admit Jerry Monti wasn't a career highlight that says something for the awesomeness of Buddy even to a modern audience. Given his look is about as "not a star" as you can get in 2017 that really impressed me, even more than the PWO crowd loving him. Third episode was Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling from 85 ish. ALL of use agreed this stuff was mediocre at best. Bulldog Bob Brown, Cuban Assassin and a 6 man tag with a nonsensical ending, none of it really went over. I gushed over Okada-Omega and I rarely watch new stuff. Fourth episode was Maple Leaf Wrestling. Their general thoughts were it wasn't a real territory, just using the Mid Atlantic Crew instead but they loved it. This was their first time seeing 80's Flair too.