Migs

I'm imagining the year at the top on the big shows looks the same - same Summerslam main event, similar Survivor Series main event, Royal Rumble probably looks the same. The hitch is that if Savage is the IC champ doing house shows with Dibiase, what's the B-show main event? Honky vs. Beefcake was doing okay business, I believe, but probably doesn't work without the title. The Warrior question I think depends on how the belt is moving from Savage. They clearly want to push Warrior. Maybe he even squashes Honky at some point. But I'm having trouble seeing how they get to a big moment for Warrior that matches Summerslam. Does Savage drop the belt to Rude and Warrior takes it from him? Andre?

Pretty much every other major promoter got a shot at national TV in some form in the 80s. I just don't see any of them being successful in 1988 (you can create other counterfactuals for periods earlier in the 80s). Verne, Fritz, Jerry Jarrett... they're all going to be disasters. The idea of Watts coming in is sort of interesting, but I just don't think his philosophy works nationally, or in the Turner corporate structure, based on how badly things went in 1992.

I wonder if this ends up working out better for JCP. As noted above, Turner possibly still buys it because he needs the programming. With Flair gone, Sting and Luger shoot up the card more quickly, without Flair to hold them back. (I'm assuming they at least convince Flair to put over Luger on the way out, although given what happened in 1991, maybe not.) Sting especially has an interesting shot at being a bigger deal, because his push precedes the Ultimate Warrior's. This might only work if Dusty still goes, but I think that's likely.

But Rock's rise then probably looks a bit more like Roman Reigns', where he's forced up the card too soon (again, after '96). Assuming the same injury happens to Michaels, HHH is also probably pushed more quickly. To me, this really throws off the whole flow and build of the Attitude Era. Without Austin, there's a need to rebuild the momentum that he had gained, which probably delays the WWF catching up to WCW.

Some of the releases recently have been DVD only. I believe this might be one of them.

Interesting to hear Punk doing the beta version of the straight edge gimmick this early on. He's still got a lot of fans, though - maybe tons of straight edge people were going to shows in Chicago. Priest seems terrible, and the eyes on his trunks are nightmare inducing. "Mr. Pecs, how big are you now?" Punk is pretty solid until that brutal blown dive (truly one of the worst botches I've seen watching 2000 indy wrestling, which is impressive). I enjoyed the old chair gag finish actually working - seemed like an effective bit of character stuff for Punk in this context.

They've been pretty good about having at least one big dump per month.

Thought the show was fine last night, but nothing particularly stuck out. Scurll in Bullet Club doesn't make a ton of sense to me, as the character has been portrayed as a loner.

Yeah, it feels like the only story they want to tell a lot of the time is about a wedding, which led to some brutal Rusev-Lana stuff this season. I presume next season will be about Renee and Dean, which doesn't sound much better.

Really, just anytime before the car accident.

The New Japan guys, in my experience, are pretty checked out on the ROH house shows. Going to the PPV on Friday and hoping the effort is a bit better.

There is a Flair/Arn v. Bobby/partner (I think Big Josh) match from this same time period. I figure they were just switching things up since they were doing so much TV.

They released a poll on DVD concepts for next year, and Best of Superstars was on the list. http://www.wrestlingdvdnetwork.com/16-new-wwe-dvd-concepts-aj-styles-list-of-jericho/

The first three don't fit the range of the set (although they'd make great Hidden Gems on the network for sure).

I actually do think there's a chance we get Hart - Magee, since it's gotten so much talk and would guarantee a bunch of sales. Based on the Attitude Era Unreleased set, I think they will go beyond just Coliseum stuff. I think we get lots of taping dark stuff, which would be very cool.

That relationship in particular feels like they do a lot of "scenes." Very stereotypical television show couple things, where the female has to learn that she shouldn't try to "tame" her lovable man. It's to the point where I'd hope it's just for the show, because if that's their actual relationship, I'd feel pretty bad for them.

Yeah, this is certainly an issue. Let's use Punk as an example, since he's a great promo and natural storyteller. He was in WWE for over 7 years and had very few long-term feuds that are even "good." The Jeff Hardy stuff is a good angle and there's actually a progression in the finishes to the big matches (in part because Punk was able definitively win since they fired Hardy at the end). After that... the stuff with Mysterio is ok but repetitive, the feud with Bryan and Kane over AJ is decent soap opera stuff with great matches, and the Cena stuff never worked for more than a month at a time. And this was a pushed guy! So I think that leads to the question of how much of this falls on Orton not being a compelling character vs. the position he's in and the era he's in. If Orton is around in the 80s, he probably falls into a role in various territories a bit like Jake Roberts - the sociopathic killer heel with a lights out finisher. But the movement would allow him to keep an aura that the current format just does not allow. He also probably would have been a babyface far less frequently, which really doesn't play to his strengths. I just haven't had time to make the thread but i really want to know what people think are multi-month angles that have worked in post 2001 WWE. Jericho vs Michaels, Michaels vs Undertaker, maybe the Flair retirement, maybe Legend Killer Randy Orton, maybe Hall of Pain Mark Henry to a degree, the Batista turn, but it's not much. It's astoundingly not much. And what about in this decade specifically? This decade has really been hurt by the gimmick PPVs, because it means that the blowoff to a feud is a TLC match or Hell in a Cell not because the feud has built to it, but because that's what month it is. So the finishes in a three month feud don't really escalate or move forward. So there's the overall 50/50 booking issue interacting with the use of gimmick matches in a really lazy way. Jericho v. Michaels, for example, starts with a regular match that moves to an unsanctioned match, which then moves to a ladder match, all of which were built to as the storyline progressed. They also had them feuding without having a match on each PPV available, which just doesn't happen anymore.

Yeah, this is certainly an issue. Let's use Punk as an example, since he's a great promo and natural storyteller. He was in WWE for over 7 years and had very few long-term feuds that are even "good." The Jeff Hardy stuff is a good angle and there's actually a progression in the finishes to the big matches (in part because Punk was able definitively win since they fired Hardy at the end). After that... the stuff with Mysterio is ok but repetitive, the feud with Bryan and Kane over AJ is decent soap opera stuff with great matches, and the Cena stuff never worked for more than a month at a time. And this was a pushed guy! So I think that leads to the question of how much of this falls on Orton not being a compelling character vs. the position he's in and the era he's in. If Orton is around in the 80s, he probably falls into a role in various territories a bit like Jake Roberts - the sociopathic killer heel with a lights out finisher. But the movement would allow him to keep an aura that the current format just does not allow. He also probably would have been a babyface far less frequently, which really doesn't play to his strengths.

Given that Anderson lives in Minnesota and his business partner Sonjay Dutt came in for a one shot deal to put over Scurll, perhaps it's just a one off?

Was that the A show in the late 80ies or was it Superstars? Superstars was where most of the angles actually happened, but everything was covered on PTW. It's also a much better weekly watch, with far more competitive matches. I'm sure that's part of what's driving the uploading of PTW over Superstars - much more rewatchabale show.

Not too much more to say about these guys, but this was very fun. Liked the new iterations on the alliances and all the cool counters. Also really liked Sal doing a bit of play by play to the fan cam, pretty funny.

It's such an interesting year, because the whole promotion is built around these top guys for the first part of the year (Hogan, Jake, Sid, Piper), who all disappear immediately after Wrestlemania. At which point the promotion is built around Savage-Flair and Hart-Michaels, which, retrospectively, is awesome.

One of the new collections is the buildup to Barely Legal, which turns *20* years old this week.

Stars: they're just like us!

Agreed, this was really good. Liked the bit of stalling and slow start, as they used it to build up the characters. Corino was hilarious - "Oh yeah that's wrestling!" on a reversal, "Don't you ever chop me again!" Corino is great as a base and lets Kash get in his big moves without it being too much Kash on offense. The ref bump finish seemed fine in context, and I liked the way Corino seamlessly hooked the leg as Rhino was throwing him on there. Very enjoyable. Crazy to think these two are jerking the curtain here and would be main eventing in title matches 5 months later at the Hammerstein.