El Boricua

Just wanted to chime in and say I enjoyed the piece and the view point you bring to them Matt D. I really get the bizarro world thing you mention, I started watching WCW around late 1990 and first knew Bobby Eaton as a singles wrestler and Ricky Morton as the guy that teams with Tommy Rich (and Jim Cornette as that commentator guy from LPWA ). This should be a real good complement to WTBBP.

I've only been able to listen to the first half, but it's been fun so far. For Austin, the one instance of bleeding from WCW that stands out is Wargames 92. He looked like he was about to pass out at match's end. Hope to listen to the rest of the show later today.

Would Shield vs. Wyatts from earlier this year count as heel vs. heel? I don't think the Shield had officially turned yet when that started.

Another enjoyable hour. Wasn't Cousin Luke wrestling as Gene Lewis at the time? He actually would end up in Puerto Rico for a spell in 82. One thing I wanted to ask is if the Cuban Assassin in Florida was Acevedo (the one from Stampede) or Sierra (the one that would tag with Ricky Santana in WCW).

Nice and enjoyable hour hearing you guys talk about the 1981 rosters. As you guys discussed, the toughest part about doing this is trying not to project future success or failure on your valuing of the wrestlers in 1981. I think Dylan mentioned that you guys didn't have a Southeastern roster. If you're using wrestlingdata, it's lumped in with Continental (CCW) in the promotion results history. If you look at the cards per year they are identified as SECW, but if you're trying to find the stats via the promotions list, you'll only see CCW on the list. Looking forward to the other parts.

I think part of the problem is not so much the long feuds themselves, its the way they burn up the matchups (usually the same matchup straight up with not much variety) to fill up the large hours of airtime with the Raws and Smackdowns in between the monthly special events.

Great show guys! Look forward to other "if not, then who" installments. What do you guys think of Carlos Colon as a possibility?

Yeah, it had to be the Midnight Rider change because 1) Solie would be more familiar with that one since it happened in Florida, and 2) the match between Flair and Colon to declare the champion of the universe happened about three to four weeks after Starrcade.

Don't forget Eddie Sharkey. He trained Rick Rude, the Road Warriors, Barry Darsow, Bob Backlund, Jesse Ventura, Madusa, Rick Steiner, Tom Zenk and John Nord among others (although some of them were in conjuction with Brad Rheingans). Maybe Rehingans should also be listed, he has guys like Vader and Bradshaw as trainees.

I humbly request that the Parv Points Award be included in future end of show awards. That right there is pure gold.

Can you go into specifics here? I think -- especially on this board -- it's underrated if anything. He has some good matches in 1991 against people like Lex Luger, Bobby Eaton and Brian Pillman that just seem to be taken for granted because "it's Flair". He has some great matches with Randy Savage in 92 and a very good performance in the Royal Rumble, which again, are taken for granted because "it's Flair". He has a very good performance against Vader in 93 for one of the all-time great Starrcade moments, and some non-too-shabby matches against Barry Windgam. In 94, he has the match with Steamboat, which while not 89 standard, is still a good match for the time and place, and he has some great performances against a very selfish Hulk Hogan. Then in 95-6, he has the match with Arn, the often overlooked triangle match with Luger and Sting at Fall Brawl, and then after that some terrific character work -- the most over-looked of his career -- in the feud with Randy Savage, which produced some pretty good matches. Certainly they aren't matches that are a knock on either guy at that point in their careers. After the NWO come in, I can't think of too many other Flair performances I'd cite, but I don't think Flair is "overrated" for the period of his career from 90-96 at all. If anything, people are overly harsh to him because he's no longer at the "obviously best worker in the world" levels he was in the 1980s. My overrated comment about Flair is more related to his place on the card during the 90's than his work. I'm heading into a meeting but I'll try to expand on this later.

For overrated I'll go ahead and say it: Ric Flair post 1990.

Dustin Rhodes and Ricky Steamboat could have worked as face Horsemen, but it would have to have been built up to. Just throwing them in there without build up would have not worked. The biggest mistake made (outside of not reaching an agreement with Tully) was going ahead with introducing someone new as a Horsemen at Slamboree. With the expectation of having Tully there, there was no way introducing someone else as a Horsemen was going to work unless it was a big star (maybe). They probably would have been better off just announcing that they were going to do a recruitment drive to fill out the Horsemen soon and go from there. As for who else besides Paul Roma, here's two candidates: Shane Douglas (had just left that very same month) or Johnny B Badd (would have to be toned down/somewhat repackaged).

I haven't seen anything from Reigns yet that makes me think he can handle a singles push of this magnitude. All I've seen so far is that he can hold up his end in tags as the clean-up guy, he can deliver the big power spots, and he makes the ladies swoon (which in the wacky world of pro wrestling could actually be a negative with certain segments of the fan base). None of this translates yet in being able to be a consistent singles guy, let alone the top singles guy. If this doesn't work out it could potentially be very damaging to Reigns' career.

Good to see WWE backtracked on Emma's release. They were really going to make themselves look bad for firing an employee for what may have been an honest mistake in a self checkout line, while having given a slap on the wrist to another employee for a DUI and attempted bribery of a police officer.

Any Pacific islanders (Snuka, Afa Sika, etc.) are a possibility, as well as Rocky Johnson.

I was thinking about what I consider a great wrestler to be, and I couldn't decide what element does it. But I kind of flashed to something I saw recently and I think I have my answer. Recently I watched an episode of Tabletop where John Rogers mentioned the three rules of storytelling: - Who wants what - Why can't they have it - Why should I give a shit (apologies for the language) So to me, a great wrestler is one who is constantly successful at getting people to care / give a shit. There are different ways a wrestler can accomplish this, but I think it boils down to that.

Haven't listened to the show yet, but I think the killing of Vader's aura starts with Vader losing the cage match to Flair at Superbrawl. He should have regained the title there.

According to the Observer, apparently the original working plan for Slamboree was a six man tag between Flair, Piper & McMichael vs. Kevin Greene, Reggie White & Jarrett. Apparently someone realized that maybe that wasn't the best match to run in Charlotte, so it then got changed to Flair, Piper & Kevin Greene vs. Hogan, Hall & Nash. Hogan didn't want to do the match so Syxx got the spot. Reggie White was already booked for the event, so they had him face McMichael in singles action. They might have been better off booking Jarret & McMichael vs. Greene & White and putting someone else with Flair & Piper (maybe Benoit, or how about Rey Mysterio based on his issues with the nWo around that time).

According to the Observer at the time, it appears Savage hurt his ankle during the match and it was one of those cases where it really didn't start to hurt until the next morning (Savage woke up in a lot of pain). He was supposed to go get checked the day after Nitro to determine how bad the injury was.

Another example of 'last match is the main event' being misleading are those cases where there is a double shot scheduled that day and the main event in the first show is earlier on the card to allow time for the wrestlers involved in the main event time to make the second show. And it's always going to be tough in cases where you have several top feuds / hot issues. As an example, how much credit would you give to Hogan/Slaughter and Warrior/Savage for WrestleMania 7? Savage/Flair and Hogan/Sid for WrestleMania 8?

I'd offer my take on the giggling, but it's been over four hours since the link has been posted and my modern ears can't handle evaluating this vintage giggling. Just kidding, I hope to give this a listen soon.

I’m jumping in very, very late to this discussion, so I apologize if some of what I’m about to say is rehashing already mentioned points. To the original question “Do standards change in wrestling?”, it depends on which standard is being referred to. In my mind, there have always been two relevant standards: 1) Did it make money? and 2) Was it ‘good’?. “Did it make money?” is the most important to the business of wrestling and to its continued viability and existence. It’s important to the people that make their living on wrestling and it will always be the most important standard for wrestling’s existence. This standard is objective, measurable, absolute and will never change. As a fan, it’s not the standard I use. That would be “Was it ‘good’?”. You’ll notice that I’ve put ‘good’ in quotes. There’s a reason for that. There is no set definition of ‘good’. Never has been, never will be. Each of us has a definition of ‘good’ that we create based on what we’re exposed to (which can be influenced by a number of factors). For some, ‘good’ can be a match filled with high flying spots. For others, ‘good’ can be a technical chain wrestling encounter. You’ll have those that view violent blood-letting brawls as their ‘good’. And there are those who view ‘good’ as did someone get set on fire. My standard of what is ‘good’, at its core, is did I like it. The standard of what is ‘good’ is an eternally moving target, subjective, difficult to measure as an overall absolute (because it isn’t an absolute) and will eternally change. And the beauty of it is it changes not just from person to person, but the same person will always have their standard change throughout time as they increase their exposure to more wrestling. The only way for it not to change is to encase yourself in amber and not be exposed to anything new. But I think the argument here about standards has moved on from this and is now looking at things such as context and expression (and the confusion being caused by calling those things standards). Wrestling is a language. The ring is the page, the wrestlers are the instruments, and the moves are their words. And just like languages, the ways to express certain things change, but the meaning is still there. You have all these different ways to express the same things. Be it Latin, Aramaic, Ye Olde English, British English, USA English, Spanglish, Ebonics, Klingon, etc., there are countless ways to express the same messages. The words used to express them may change, but those things that need to be expressed will always be the same. You still need a word to express love, one for happy, one for sad, one for home, etc. The ‘words’ Lou Thesz uses may be different than the ones Rey Mysterio uses, but the message they want to convey is the same. All this talk about higher impact moves or athletics is just talk about the language being used, not about the standard of what is ‘good’.

Epic cold open.

Hallelujah! Can't wait to listen to this.