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The fact the Meltzer picked Fuji over Johnny V in 1987 almost negates anything else he says. This is an awful choice. Fuji, in '87, was actually very hot in the WWF ranks. They switched Demolition from Johnny V to Fuji. They switched Kamala and Sika over to Fuji and teamed them up after the Wizard didn't want to travel on the road anymore. They brought in Killer Kahn and paired him with Fuji. And, Fuji still managed Orton and Muraco thru September. Meanwhile, Johnny V was so terrible that they didn't give him any of the new guys that came in (One Man Gang went to slick, the Islanders turned heel and went to Heenan, Kahn went to Fuji, Bigelow went face with Humperdink). Johnny V through the entire year only managed one team - Brave and Valentine. That says a lot about his performance and the trust they had in him.

What are you referencing exactly? Give me something tangible. I remember some godawful 1993 Wrestling Challenge shows with Stan Lane and Gorilla. However, nobody on the planet could have made those shows even remotely entertaining when the main matches included Doink, Well Dunn, and Damien Demento. That was a brutal era. BRUTAL. Judge Gorilla on his work from the early 80s to early 90s, not the 92-94 stuff, especially after he lost Joey in '94.

This is comical. I get a kick out of you guys. This is the same mindset that says Steamboat/Savage at WM3 sucked because Steamboat wasn't "mad" enough. Everything in context. If you lived it, you knew how fucking great Gorilla was. As good as he was with Heenan, his chemistry with Jesse on the early PPVs and the All-Star/Maple Leaf show was even better.

The contract for "creative control" was written and agreed to in the spirit that Bret would have direction with his character. I don't believe this should have given him the right to decide if and when he could lose the title. What, if he didn't want to lose it, could have left the Federation and gone to WCW without dropping the title? No fucking way. The "creative control" contract was written so Vince didn't dress him up like a fucking clown and make him come out on Raw and wrestle in a slop pit with Henry Godwin. If Vince asked him to drop the company championship at Survivor Series, he should have. He could have had control of how it happened (pinfall after interference, clean, etc), but the belt has to change when the boss says. Bret owns his character with that contract, but not the belt.

Did the World Championship Wrestling show start on April 6, 1985? Was WWF or Georgia before that? Is that why, perhaps, WWE 24/7 started its run around April 85 too? Makes sense.

What was the Mania 13 cover?

I'm in the process of re-watching Superstars '87 right now. I'm up to March. It is AMAZING how every single match, every single segment, seemingly every single moment of the show has a well-thought out purpose. The build to Mania III was just incredible if not perfect. I still love that they stretched out the Hogan/Andre thing over FIVE weeks of Piper's Pits. Imagine that in today's day and age.

HELL of a read. Some nice give and take for awhile before Taz decided to take his ball and go home.

Would have been amazing.

LOL

Who was the dude who did Maple Leaf Wrestling for Titan and was at all of the MLG shows in the mid to late 80s? He actually looked quite a bit like Tommy Miller and sounded like him a bit too.

1984ish wasn't just a change of Hogan getting the belt and the WWF going national. It also was a change of Vince freezing out the magazines from their old ring side access and the office cooperating with the mags. Vince was launching his own mag/mags, wanting not only to make money with them, but control storyline treatment and also eliminate coverage of others promotions. A true house organ, as opposed to the old mags being a house organ for everyone. So you saw companies like London stuck in a tough spot: * crap access from the WWF * the WWF competing with them and taking market share * WWF wrestlers (specifically Hogan) still selling tons of mags The WWF very literally became their enemy, with Vince perfect happy if London died off just like the AWA so he could take their business. But WWF wrestlers also drove buyers for London's mags. So you had this strange dichotomy where they pushed the non-WWF rather hard while also having to use the WWF to sell mags. Flair was pushed as #1, topping their rankings for ages of months (or weeks if you got all the mags and actively tracked it). JCP was pushed hard. Lex was pushed as the Next Big Thing, with London trying to position themselves with a hit either way: if he went to JCP as a savior or went to Vince and got over huge. But they also had to put Hogan on the cover a ton, cover all his stuff, and give every reason for a potential Hogan Fan to buy the mag. They'd even cover Hogan's minor feuds like Hogan vs Adonis. It's the period where I read the London mags. I was 20+ at the time, and could pretty much read all that into it at the time. It was really trippy, but kind of fun. And yeah... it was quite different from the vibe I got from reading pre-1984 London mags. You could get in the 1984-88 stuff that they didn't really like the WWF. I can't think of any promotion prior to that which had the same vibe in coverage. I'm a bit younger than you, but my period of reading PWI was from '84 to about '90 (between 6th grade and going off to college). Once I got to college and discovered RSPW in '91 and then the Observer and the Torch, I was well past the need for PWI. That's where we differ from quite a few people here, who seemed to have been just getting into PWI as we were getting out of it. During that 80s period, I noticed PWI pushed Florida and Portland fairly hard. Luger, along with Jesse Barr, Rick Rude, Jack Hart (Horowitz), Percy and the like were pushed to the moon. Billy Jack Haynes was pushed to the moon also. It was a fun time indeed. I do remember going on a weekly basis to the small pharmacy/five-and-dime shop in town and buying wrestling mags and baseball cards. Those were the two things that kept me going. And indeed, there would be a dozen wrestling mags at any given time. What a wonderful time and great memories.

Re: Michaels, the referee called for the bell and indicated that Bret Hart had submitted. Disagree with you.

Could not disagree with you more. That line by Heenan was completely inappropriate. Also, this was smack dab in the middle of Heenan's period of being drunk on the air. God Bless him (we've talked about this before), but there were some shows between '96-'98 that were hard to listen to with Bobby in the condition he was in. But, no, that line was not for the best interests of the company. He also rushed it, like he had it planned the entire time, and tried to sneak it in. Never liked that.

You forgot POWW. Lol. I believe it came on after GLOW at 7pm. Are you sure about the AWA being on that Saturday night slot? I always remembered the 11am Sunday slot up to about 88 then it changed to either 5 or 6pm Sunday night on channel 26. There was a very short period, after it was moved from Channel 26 to Channel 66, where it was bumped around to different times. The channel 26 affiliation ended around May of 1986. The only reason I remember this is because I missed the Hall/Hennig tag title loss to Rose/Somers when I couldn't find it. After it moved to Channel 66, it was on Saturday morrnings in the Fall of '86 and then moved to Saturday nights for a brief spell before settling in at 6pm or 7pm on Sunday nights.

Make fun of him all you want, Good Helmet. He could pull off the incredible feat of wearing a Hollywood Squares and still banging this...

Ah, wasn't there a "Crazy Eddie" who did that? I remember when we first got the home shopping channels around 1986. One of the "Crazy Eddie" types was on Saturday Nights on a local UHF station during that one hour block when wrestling was NOT on that night. Literally, from 5pm until 1:30 am in Chicago, there was wrestling pretty much on continuously on the UHF stations. 5pm World Class 6pm GLOW 7pm NWA Worldwide 8pm AWA 9pm Pro Wrestling This Week 10pm Either Wrestling Challenge or UWF 11pm Either WWF All-American or Spotlight of UWF Power Pro 12:30 am Bob Luce's WWA

I sold most of my tapes around 2001-2002 before I moved and got married. I remember I sold a bunch off on various boards and did fairly ok. I think I got out just before the market crumbled. I had every Raw taped from '93-'96 and tons of other stuff. Happy I sold then and didn't have to throw the stuff away. Now I'm trying to recollect a lot of that stuff on dvd.

I'm sure only us 40+ guys remember this one, but it just popped into my head....do you remember the commercial (believe it was a MILK commercial), may have been the "Milk, it does a body good", where there'd be a little shrimp who was talking about being picked on, and then he'd grow a bit taller and bigger, and talk about drinking milk, and then by the end of the commercial the dude was like 6'1", 185, taller than the guy who was picking on him, and then a hot chick walks onto the screen and he leaves with her. Milk....it does a body good.

So they're supposed to erase history?

Oh Geez, you're not aware that standards were different 30 years ago?

According to Wrestlingdata they wrestled 101 times - July of 71 to April of 85 That's certainly a way to frame the metrics to make it look like it is closer to 20 years than it really was. Wasn't the Gagne retirement match against Bock in 1981? So, in reality, they had a 10-year run at max. That 1985 reference I believe is to Verne coming out of retirement to work a match with Greg against Bock and Saito. I don't think he wrestled much more than just that one match in early '85. Of course he came out of retirement in '86 for one match against Adnan and in '83 for the Super Sunday show with Mad Dog, but the Bock years would have been '71 to '81, nowhere near 20 years. I'll have to defer to someone else how much they actually wrestled each other in the EARLY 70s also. Bock was doing a lot of tag-teaming at that time, I'm not even sure they really worked a ton of singles match at the beginning of that time period either. I'm thinking most of their work together was in the late 70s.

Yep - same ending. Very odd.

Thank god you have a good relationship with your family because you save all of your wrestling viewing for when you're on the clock at work. LOL.

Watching the two Hogan/Race "Texas Death Matches" from post-WMIII in '87. First match is at MSG. Rematch at Boston Garden. Race makes Hogan look like a million dollars, and Hogan is completely fun to watch. These are really good brawls, perhaps some of the best stuff Hogan has done since his early '84 matches after winning the title.