Sidebottom

Really? I didn't find it that objectionable. Although that could be just letting WWE's slant wash over me. What annoyed you most? For one, it's been 17 years now. How refreshing would it be to acknowledge the fact that Bret didn't even need to show up that day... Instead of the same old stories, how refreshing would it be to go into the politics which allegedly held Bret back in WCW, which in turn would have fitted the theme of the programme of the "Wars" as the politics in WCW were a huge factor in the creative suffering from 1998 onwards.

Bret Hart episode of the Monday Night Wars is up. This was particularly hard to sit through. The format of this show has degenerated to individual episodes of the stories which have been told a thousand times, all with the standard WWE revisionist slants. The amount of omissions and embellishments concerning the Bret Hart / WWE fiasco aren't even worth getting into. By the time Miz pops up as a talking head, the programme turns into background fodder.

Yeah you could see him getting visibly frustrated trying to explain how he would try and explain...

Watching the new Chris Daniels RF Video shoot interview in which Chris calmly and brutally buries Russo. In short, he tells a story where Russo said to Daniels in front of the locker room "We released you because you wasn't over". Chris explains several situations where Russo's booking made him look like a fool and rationalised that there was never an instance where he was booked strongly and dropped the ball on his end.

Watching Lou Thesz referee some old school lucha. It's like watching wrestlers try to impress their Dad's!

No Mike Lano?

Christ, he was only posing here the other day in the WON HOF thread

Scary how plausible this is and I'm already holding back laughter thinking about the heavy-handed NFL films style narration "Fans were craving a more realistic, more dynamic brand of sports entertainment. Enter: The Disciples of Apocalypse." Los Boricuas and DOA have to go down as two of the sorriest groups ever. It's unfortunate I was alive and watching weekly wrestling at a time they were feuding.

Apologies if this was discussed at the time but I've only just seen it now. Prior to Wrestlemania 30 Michael Cole hosted a panel with Flair, Foley and JBL speaking about various Wrestlemania moments. They get onto the subject about celebrity involvement at Mania and what their favourite involvement was. Foley cites Tyson as his and summarises that Tyson helped make Austin and Michaels a special attraction and help launch Austin. Flair takes offence to this and shoots Foley down sayinf that Steve and Shawn didn't need Tyson and it was ridiculous to think that "the greatest athlete" and "the biggest star" needed Mike Tyson. JBL who seems sane enough to agree with Foley, instead starts trolling and agreeing with Flair for kicks. I'm in complete agreement with Foley. There is no way that match would have been as special if it were not for Tyson. To also ignore the impact that Tyson had in cementing Steve Austin as THE man is ignorant. Flair can really be delusional.

I think the story goes that him and Shawn met her together somewhere in 1996.

Not to mention that Xanta Claus had the potential to be a great character...

Do you know if the 16mm prints of Rocco/Jones and Masambula vs. Leon Arras ever converted to DVD? Wasn't even aware there were any 16mm prints of British footage post 1960's...

Well said Matt.

Great thread idea! I'll be checking every week to make sure I haven't missed anything worthwhile. Thanks

Didn't he mention that about when his first WCW match aired, which would make it pre Chyna?

What are you citing as some of the worst matches of 1996 - 2001 featuring Steve Austin??

My favorite ECW match is on that top to bottom dud NTR99.

They did over 6000 in Illinois which I think is the best they got by some distance. When you factor in Memphis crowds ranging from a few thousand to that same figure on a continued basis with Fargo on top, WCCW far exceeding those live gate numbers... attendances weren't ECW's strong suit. But they played against this publicly. I liken it to a singer who can't fill an arena opting to promote an "intimate setting" as the selling point, wink wink.

I cited this when somebody was asking the best and worst of 2000 a while back. RE the subject, look at Austin's work during that era and it holds up nicely. I watched Austin vs Dude Love from Over the Edge 98 the other day on the network; it was an absolute hoot from start to finish. The match was hard hitting, and all the bells and whistles went down a treat: Austin knew how to balance things perfectly. I also watched Backlash 1999 the other week: his match with Rock was far superior to their Wrestlemania match the month prior IMO.

Somebody telephone Jerry and tell him to avoid the board tonight...

ECW peaked in 1995 in terms of in ring (Malenko, Guerrero, Benoit), Character development (Raven, Sandman, Taz, Sabu) and storylines (Dreamer & Raven / Foley vs ECW). 1995 is when they were consistent. After that time they were a mixed bag. For every consistently great show from top to bottom you had (i.e. Anarchy Rulz 99, Guilty as Charged 2000, Heat Wave 98) you had an equally dud card from top to bottom such as Wrestlepalooza 1998 (which for my money was the worst card of 1998) and November to Remember 1999. The promotion would seem stale at times. The likes of Nova and Guido etc seemed to float around in the same spots for years (which ironically started to change towards the very end when Nova got in shape, and Guido formed that excellent tag team with Tony Mamluke (who seemed hell bent on killing himself) and were knocking it out of the park with a revived Mikey Whipwreck and Tajiri. But again, for every one of those tag matches you had a Danny Doring & Roadkill Twilight episode, nothing tag team match. But to summarise, I loved ECW when ECW were presenting a hot product. Were they everything they were cracked up to be? Depends on who is hyping them up and to what extent. I'd argue their influence (taken from Onita, who in turn took elements from Memphis) was obviously very important to Western wrestling.

I'm absolutely down with this. The rise and fall of Ryback is still something which makes me shake my head; they should have rolled the dice with him whilst he was hot. The numbers the HITC PPV with Punk got in contrast to the other PPV's around it clearly show people were behind Ryback and were tuning in to see whether he was to be the next big thing. It was just bad timing though. Ryback wasn't in any way ready to be the next big thing, but was shoved into the spot when Cena got hurt. You need to look at a few things. Firstly, fans were getting bored of Ryback and his squashes pre Punk. I think they should have left him in development to be able to work on his matches some more instead of bringing him up to squash people for months on end which was bound to get stale. People were getting bored of that act until he stood up to Punk. So there is no method of giving him time so to speak. You either rolled the dice on him, or you pulled him (or fucked him, which they did). Considering the fans were into him, and that's the important point here by going by the PPV numbers, they had nothing to lose by giving him a go. People liked Ryback because he was a beast. Once that was taken away from him the air came out of his balloon.

Mike Lano...

I'm absolutely down with this. The rise and fall of Ryback is still something which makes me shake my head; they should have rolled the dice with him whilst he was hot. The numbers the HITC PPV with Punk got in contrast to the other PPV's around it clearly show people were behind Ryback and were tuning in to see whether he was to be the next big thing.

Watching Robbie Brookside's video diaries from the BBC. A nice little journey back in time and great to know Robbie is doing really well for himself right now!