Lee

That kind of thing has been a massive bug-bear of mine for years, people coming up with ripostes to hypothetical situations they've entirely invented themselves. "Knowing Vince McMahon, he'll probably do A, B, and C. Now here's a five paragraph diatribe on why he's a massive idiot for doing that!"

There was a kind-of Hidden Gems in the UK in 1997. After Raw went to two hours but we still got it on Friday nights, they had to pad out the run time because of how many more commercials the US had compared to the UK, so they would play out a classic match every week in the middle of the show (I *think* this ended because the overruns got long enough that they had enough footage to fill the two-hour window regardless of the extra commercial time). The problem was that in 1997, the WWF wasn't really interested in its history, and had these weird parameters in place where they wouldn't feature anyone still on TV (since it made them look "old", presumably, hence no no jarring footage of young lad Bret or happy smiling Shawn, etc), nothing from anyone who was persona-non-grata (i.e. Bruno plus anyone currently in WCW), and I think it *might* have extended to anyone who was dead, since I don't remember seeing any André on there either. Long story short, you can probably imagine just how thrilled a 13-year old me was when my weekly late-night dose of Steve Austin raising hell and going to war with The Hart Foundation was interrupted with yet another nostalgia-less plodding 1970s WWF snoozer from the back catalogues of Ivan Putski or Stan Stasiak, from an era long before the WWF was even on TV over here. Of course, nowadays I'd actually prefer it the other way around, two hours of retro content with maybe ten minutes of modern Raw spliced in. Hopefully there ends up being yet another behind-the-scenes change and the archive content comes back stronger. It's really off-putting to me to have such large gapes in all the libraries and single missing episodes dotted throughout.

I feel like they're not really "featuring" him, just including his stuff as a documentation of what happened for the sake of historical context. Which might just be my overblown way of attempting to justify it. I mean, I felt really turned off when he showed up WrestleRock just as I was getting ready to watch a U.S. Misawa/Tiger Mask match, but at least I know it's there if I want it and can skip it if I don't. (Sucked that I saw a Bret Hart in Hawaii tag match on YouTube recently and I had to can it because he showed up there too, but again, same principal.) As long as they're not pulling up individual matches for Hidden Gems or throwing him onto Triple H collections as an example of an early HHH WWF squash, then I'm fine enough with exercising the right to hope that fucking pig rots in piss, then moving on with the skip button.

Angelina Love has my wrestling Twitter blocked, in spite of the fact I've never followed her, never @'ed her, and never so much as even mentioned her. I'm baffled about it to this day.

Sounds like he's pitching a match with Shawn for the next Saudi show. "Retire me!? I'm already retired!" Winner gets both watches.

New Japan didn't "allow" Liger to work NXT strictly speaking, he's essentially a freelancer and can work where he wants, for who he wants, when he wants, without needing to get New Japan to clear it. It's the same deal that I think Minoru Suzuki is on, where they make New Japan their priority but can still appear on rival promotion's cards, like Suzuki has done with Big Japan, Ryukyu Dragon Pro, etc. I'm sure they could have asked Liger not to do WWE if they really wanted, but it was a one-off "career milestone" kind of match for a legend that I can't imagine realistically robbed ROH of too many ticket sales.

Not to mention the unit of measurement he concocted when passing judgement over Johnny B. Badd's varying appearances over the years.

Part of me thought about just leaving this thread to die, but I couldn't resist posting this belter from Scott's latest World's Collide review (or, as he called it, "Girlfight 2K19"), tactfully posted to his blog on Lesbian Visibility Day.

I really want to see Good Sell Morton vs. Mr. Pinball now. Also, Matt Striker called that Gingo Loco match like he was doing play-by-play for a funeral. I really can't wait for Schiavone to come back.

I've watched a ton of squash matches over the years for various different projects, and I totally agree about certain guys having significantly more entertaining squashes than others. I.R.S. was one of the notable offenders, who would chinlock his way through 4-minute snoozers that felt like they were at least twice as long, and that went for a lot of the usual plodders like Tugboat and The Warlord. Magnum TA was a different cat, in that he would hit the belly-to-belly as quickly as possible it seemed, not necessarily "bad", but never anything to it. And Randy Savage could arguably be in this class, because even though his squash match wasn't bad, it was literally exactly the same every single time, so if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. Seriously, watch a few Savage squashes back-to-back and you'll quickly be able to call them in your sleep. On the other hand, guys like The Steiner Brothers and The Midnight Express were always doing cool moves, crazy suplexes (Steiners) and inventive things you hadn't seen before (Midnights), or basically just throwing out stuff you'd never expect anyone to bother with in a squash. Going from a string of Bastion Booger and Giant Gonzalez squashes on a weekend syndie to a Steiners' squash is a real "Wake up! Something exciting's finally going to happen!" moment. And then you have the likes of Owen Hart, Jeff Jarrett and 123 Kid, who always seem to give their opponent a little bit of back-and-forth before they outsmart and beat them. I suppose the idea is they can't be that good if they're going toe-to-toe with the likes of John Paul, Ron Cumberledge and Barry Horowitz, but by the same token, their matches usually tend to get a reaction out of the frequently dead WWF TV taping crowds, and they tend to make you wish they'd lasted twice as long as they did, like the antithesis of I.R.S.

Just watched the AWA show, and it's one of the worst things I've ever seen. I loved it.

They ran 13 MSG shows that year, the regular monthly one plus WrestleMania (so two in March). So yes, they ran February and April too.

In the UK, he's known as Count Takeshi from a re-dubbed version of the Takeshi's Castle game show that airs endless re-runs on TNA's former home of Challenge TV.

Availability. Satellite dishes were just starting to become more and more widespread in the UK in the late 80s/early 90s, and with little money and small potential audiences, those stations were usually built around repeats of old British shows (back when that was still a novelty) and imported English-language shows, primarily from the U.S. SKY Channel had original content, but after Rupert Murdoch did a deal to merge British Satellite Broadcasting and SKY into BSkyB as a joint venture, they started putting money into movies and sport as the big draws. In 1989 they had something like 400 movie premiers before the BBC, ITV or Channel 4 (our terrestrial networks) got them, and they won the exclusive bidding rights to the soon-to-be-formed Premier League, which took top flight football off free to air television. Imagine if all you've got is NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX, but you have to get a satellite dish AND pay a separate subscription just to get ESPN who have exclusive rights to the NFL, and you get the idea. So at this point, more and more people are doubling up from their four basic channels to eight (with more and more being added fairly regularly), largely because of the movies and the football, but SKY are also offering up three key ingredients to capture the kids/family audience too: They've got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is also on terrestrial but SKY have the NEW episodes that poor BBC kids won't see for another a year, they've got this red hot new animated sitcom that is suddenly being merchandised everywhere called The Simpsons (which doesn't come to terrestrial TV until around 1996/1997, with episodes that have been played on SKY for years), and they've got the glitzy American showbiz of the World Wrestling Federation. And, like in America, the WWF was often broadcast after Saturday morning cartoons, which didn't hurt, at a period after British wrestling had been taken off TV, which also didn't hurt. In fact, if you were getting into the WWF in, say, 1990 when you were six, you probably didn't even remember much, if anything, of Nagasaki, Daddy and Haystacks, et al. It was basically a perfect storm of all those things coming together, and MTV coming along to coincide with the rise of Britpop, that made the whole satellite thing really enticing, and this was all in the very early 90s (the Premier League started in 1992). So yes, even though the WWF was available in a very limited basis here during the Hulk Hogan 80s glory period on cable (which didn't really take off until the late 90s, despite being around in limited markets at least a decade earlier), almost everyone in my age bracket basically discovered the WWF when their parents were getting SKY, or when their mates got it, or when everyone suddenly started trading WWF stickers and collecting WWF action figures. It just happened that the whole thing managed to coincide with the massive downturn in the U.S., but it was actually booming here, hence the suddenly regular twice and thrice yearly touring, live television specials and SummerSlam at Wembley Stadium. It's interesting because I heard an interview with Cesaro once where he talked about 1993-1994 being the glory period, which is when the bloom came off the rose in the UK, but it coincided with the WWF getting on TV in Switzerland and Austria and those kind of places. I think it just goes to show that the "novelty" of something like that can't be understated, nor can the whole "growing out it" thing. I imagine kids who loved Hogan in 1985 were sick of him as teenagers in 1990, and it's a similar kind of thing here, where a lot of kids were super into it until they suddenly decided they were "too old" for it, or moved onto other things (one of the more common suggestions that UK fans of that era make is that a lot of WWF fans basically migrated to Gladiators, which was on prime time network TV and was also shiny and new in 1992-1993).

I started reading graphic novels about 3/4 years ago. I'm 33 now.

Eh, I thought their match was sloppy, rough around the edges and not the sort of thing you'd want to debut them on TV with, but it was nowhere near as bad as people have made it out to be. Honestly, the worst thing about it was the horrifically obnoxious crowd that were literally just waiting for anything slightly imperfect they could shit all over. I mean, when you've got a guy yelling "Boring!" immediately after the opening lock-up, you might as well just burn the fucking building down.

I'm not sure he would because that would have meant three babyfaces champions at the same time, which is something I noticed the WWF didn't really do back then. I always just figured it was Perfect getting his win back from WrestleMania, plus what would Beefcake have done as champion? Defended it against Dino Bravo? Done the same angle Tornado did, with Perfect winning it back and reverted to the DiBiase feud? I would have guessed at Perfect keeping it for the Boss Man feud, but since that was supposed to be Boss Man vs. Rude, it kinda leaves Perfect without a direction as champion either, unless he was supposed to go with Tornado later on and they just bumped it up because of the Beefcake injury. It's pretty interesting to look at how the landscape had changed in just a few years in the early 90s, and how Beefcake's career would have been pretty much done by the 90s if we imagine he wasn't a bosom buddy of Hogan. Where would he have gone post-WWF? I can imagine him having some value to the AWA or World Class or wherever a couple of years earlier, but by 93/94 if he'd not gone to WCW? I can't see ECW wanting him, Smoky doesn't seem like a good fit, and I doubt Japan would have been clamouring for him outside of maybe a tour as somebody's tag team partner or something. I don't really seem him going to AAA to work with Konnan a'la Jake Roberts either, so you're looking at Herb's UWF tapings, *maybe* late era Global tapings (but probably not since they were down to just locals), and going around the horn with Hercules on NWA anniversary shows, NWF-level indies, NWA anniversary shows, and stuff like those WWS tours or Germany or Australia or wherever. Which is funny to think about really, because he might not have made as much money as working for WCW, but he probably wouldn't have as bad a reputation as he does these days since he wouldn't have been stinking up the ring on national TV far past his prime.

The one that grates on me the most is where someone or something is mentioned in the Obsever Recaps that we know goes on to be huge, and he makes literally the exact same tired joke about it. Something like "A kid named Steve Austin debuted and was said to look really good" followed by Keith adding "Like this Austin kid will ever get over and become the biggest star in the business, HAHAHADEDFUNNYLAFF". Regarding his intentional ignorance towards being corrected, he actually blocked me from leaving comments on his blog because he got sick of how many times I called him out on both his bullshit and his blanket refusal to ever acknowledge his mistakes, even when presented with evidence.

My favourite of the episodes I've watched so far is the 5/23/92 show. There's a really fun opener with The Steiners throwing around the best halves of The Rock 'n' Roll Express and The Young Pistols (Ricky Morton and Tracy Smothers), and a 2/3 falls main event with Steamboat, Koloff & Rhodes against Eaton, Anderson & Zbyszko that's just perfect. Everyone in the match is great, Steamboat is in peak form with his overdramatic selling, Koloff is such a great monster, and Zbyszko fucking everything up is a delight. Best of all, you've got Arn giving a 10 out of 10 performance and still not being the best guy on his team. This is one of those matches where, despite how understated he is, you'll come away with a reminder that Bobby Eaton is one of the greatest workers ever, so smooth in the ring, great bumps, great looking offence, and great timing. In fact, everyone's sense of ring placement and timing is impeccable here, especially on the finishes. I can't recommend this one enough.

My favourite was Kevin Nash telling Alex Shelley about how he drew 29,000 to MSG and Shelley asking "Does the Garden even hold 29,000?" and Nash responding "... it did that night."

Only if you like shows with massive amounts of edits.

There are two versions, the one you've got listed above is the U.S. release, which has has stuff from the October '91 Albert Hall show and the April '92 Sheffield Arena show, both of which were shown on Sky TV and had their own SilverVision releases. The UK got a different tape that replaced those matches (or some of them, at least) with the High Energy vs. Beverly Brothers match (on account of it being taped in Canada). There was also another tape called "Wrestling World Tour" that was released in 1992, but was only 60-minutes and started with Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich from Spain.

Those Sting vs. Vader title changes were both taped, as was a Davey Boy Smith vs. Vinnie Vegas match from Manchester that actually aired on TV despite looking (at times) like a fancam.

I'm probably misremembering things since I forget the source on this, but I'm sure I've heard a story that Vince saw Kokina and loved his size but was going to pass on him because he thought two Samoans was enough, and that it was Bobby Heenan who suggested he looked Japanese and should be cast as a sumo instead. Like I say, I can't recall the source on this, if it was Heenan's book or a shoot interview somewhere but I couldn't find anything on Google, unless anyone knows any better?

I'm tickled that Clash of (the) Champions is a PPV now but Starrcade is a house show. Maybe they can add a podcast and call it Nitro.