CarpetCrawler

Looks like we know who to thank for the WALTER name change:

Vince knew that there was going to be a subset of fans that weren't going to like the new direction the WWF was going in. I know the gag is that the masses didn't like Backlund as champ but he absolutely had his fanbase who loved and rooted for him that were very different from the audience that Vince tried to appeal to. There was a small dislike of Hogan, specifically in the Northeast, from this vocal portion of the fanbase who were already half smartened up to the business that didn't think of Hogan as a real and worthy champion. In the coming months, after he takes a little bit of time off outside of spot show stuff, they would film vignettes of Backlund at his home and hanging out with his family and talking about his future plans in the business. He never says it outright, but even in these 1984 promos he says stuff like, "I know I've heard some of my fans don't believe that I ever truly lost that title, and I promise you that I will try to regain it soon." Vince was absolutely doing everything in his power to program Backlund and Hogan against each other. He really wanted the idea of a bitter and jealous Backlund (and now you know where the caricature stuff in 1994 came from) possibly even turning heel over this to challenge Hulk. He felt like Backlund needed to do an actual torch passing to close the book on that era of the WWF. Backlund took one look at Hulk and dismissed him immediately and flat out refused, riding the pine of the rest of his contract until it ran out. When Backlund joined up with Pro Wrestling USA, his first few promos were taking direct shots at the WWF, and especially at Hulk Hogan. "I promise as champion I won't tell the kids out there to not take a pill and then do it behind their back", he was 100% subtweeting () about Hulk and his moral "train, say your prayers, take your vitamins" schtick. EDIT to add: I have heard that story about Backlund too and I do believe there are small kernels of truth to it (in that Vince, in a moment of desperation, proposed that idea to Backlund knowing there was no hope in hell that Backlund would accept it), but it's definitely off base. RE: Eadie. He was definitely considered for the transitional run with the title. As far as I know, it was between him, Sheik, and Ivan Koloff. I have heard the amateur background story but haven't heard enough one way or the other to confirm if it's true or not though.

In some good news for the Network, they have added 1983 MSG shows, including one that had never aired on television before:

Okerlund going "AAAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH" to sell someone getting hit really hard is one of the greatest things ever. Dude fucking ruled. I could watch those 84/85 MSG shows all fucking day.

My two guilty pleasure commentary teams are Gorilla Monsoon with Gene Okerlund, and Dick Graham with Kal Rudman. Both crews shooting the shit about whatever while SD Jones is headlocking Johnny Rodz for ten minutes is comfort food for me, as is when they mark out when the crowd gets hot for something like an atomic drop. So underrated and don't get anywhere near enough love.

Kal ran a publication called Friday Morning Quarterback which at first when it was an underground magazine gained traction because he called the stardom of various performers, including Hall & Oates notably, before anyone else did. After that he gained traction and trust in the industry and was taken in to the industry as a talent scout of future stars, and his track record was incredible, he had a real eye and ear for it. Dude had pull and for good reason, in a seedy industry of sellouts and cynicism he was known as a genuine nice and honest dude that genuinely wanted to see people do well.

Kal's connections to the music industry were considered hugely, hugely invaluable to Sr. but ESPECIALLY to Jr. when he was trying to expand in 1984/85. Kal was the Industry Name that Jr. figured could put out a good word to all his big name industry buddies, and Kal in exchange got to be involved in an industry that he dearly loved as a fan. In fact, the only reason Kal and Dick Graham were taken off of Spectrum broadcasts had something to do with the Spectrum itself. They decided to run shows with the NWA/WCW and it angered Vince so much that he dropped the televised broadcasts, and then kinda phased out the monthly arena show broadcasts a short time later anyway. I often feel like Kal's role with the company was highly, highly underrated in hindsight and by all accounts Vince's friendship with Kal led to the floodgates being opened for celebrity appearances and endorsements of the WWF. There's a strongly likely chance that Kal's influence helped make it easier down the road for Vince to book celebrities for shows, because the trust was there with Kal. If you were in with Kal, you were in.

And from the sounds of it, has ties with Joey Ryan. But he makes fun of Dave so I'm sure he won't lose any support anytime soon.

Funniest things I've found out since making this post: - MeltzerSaidWhat and Meltzer Botches WERE the same guy. AEWBotches is also the same guy. They'd all even talk to each other and reply to each other as if they were different people. - it's a dude extremely upset that he got banned from Dave's board years ago and he's held a grudge ever since.

As far as I know the only existing footage of the Snuka-Valentine match from that card is fancam footage taken from Warner Wolf's WCBS sports recap, which tells me that if it's not even in Peacock's archive, that WWF likely never recorded it. A shame. But at the same time I'm so happy to hear two long considered "lost" MSG shows that were recorded and meant for air are finally out there now in some sort of official form!!

I guess MeltzerSaidWhat needed competition. No idea why we need multiple accounts to post out of context gotcha journalism-esque Dave Meltzer soundbites.

Also the writer that was caught up in a minor shitstorm a few days ago over her podcast appearance where she told the story of flat-out telling WWE she didn't know a thing about wrestling and they hired her anyway.

Had a blast watching this show. The pacing was bizarrely off for a lot of the matches but the Stadium Stampede was the kind of feel good I've been badly needing for the past few weeks with how things have been going in my life. Needed something silly to laugh with and have a good time. Thumbs up for the entire show. Loved the triple threat until the ending and same for Baker-Shida, loved it until the ending.

I went ahead and re-retweeted the tweet I made about it too. It got some traction on the first day but kinda petered off after that. I'd love to see this get funded.

Yeah III isn't well booked persay as it's the first post-George Scott Wrestlemania and the show is *packed* with matches so they had to rush everyone to get their shit in and besides the notable matches like Savage-Steamboat and Hogan-Andre almost everything gets about five minutes. One thing that always blows my mind while watching III is how briskly paced it is.

For me the censored stuff isn't as much of a concern as the slowwwwwwwwwwwwww trickle of the vault stuff. Is every single RAW and Smackdown even up on Peacock yet? The old stuff is the only reason I ever bothered with the Network to begin with so I feel like I shouldn't even bother with this until the apparent August deadline which to be honest, I'm extremely skeptical of.

Andre and Skaaland, for the record, which just picturing those two together plotting anything gives me great comedic delight for some reason.

Boosted it on my Twitter as well. My Twitter doesn't really overlap with wrestling fans but it *does* overlap with media preservation enthusiasts (one of my biggest passions) so it'll hopefully get some traction!!

Bingo. Not saying anything makes them think it's OK to keep doing it because you won't do anything about it. That's what always blew my mind about school bully logic from adults. We all saw bullying in our lifetimes in school, and I even worked in a school system for a brief period of time. I've never seen a bully actually stop bullying someone because they ignored it. With Cornette it's lose-lose. If you ignore him he keeps going and his followerbase keeps going because they see it as a win because you won't confront him about it so they think they've "got" you. If you engage they see it as a win because you're engaging him and giving him attention. That's why some people just openly last out at him now. At least when he refuses to go away again they can get the small satisfaction of dunking on him. It's the Piers Morgan effect.

That clip of his Mom debunking the Paul Boesch stuff was one of the deleted scenes they put on YouTube last year after the episode aired. Sounds like I'll have to give this a look since I don't recall any additional theories about his death making it onto YouTube last year. Rad!!

So Vice has been running old episodes of the show but also adding new deleted scenes that aren't even the YouTube ones which is kind of a bummer since it's been happening for a few weeks now so I've been missing most of them. But hey, heads up ya'll.

Yeah I sure did find out via 1998 and 1999 RAW signs that there were multiple sites on places like Angelfire and Geocities (still up thanks to the power of Internet Archive) that were dedicated specifically to how much women loved Edge. He was absolutely the hunk wrestler of that era.

I mean, to be real, it's because he's a funny dick and people love funny dicks. He can be very good when he's actually On (which tends to be with Gorilla Monsoon) but when he's paired with Vince it's the EXACT same style of bullshit bickering that has nothing to do with the match at hand that made people so mad when Renee and Corey did it on RAW and PPVs and I refuse to hear arguments to the contrary. I think the lack of footage has been a mega benefit to Jesse because he tends to be on much better behavior (with some exceptions because Vince post-like... 1986-ish or so on commentary sucks so much ass) on PPVs and Saturday Night's Main Event than he is on the weekly TVs, where he is incredibly boring. I say all this with lots of love in my heart for Jesse.

Honestly Jesse Ventura's extended temper tantrum immediately after the match is what bugged me the most about Savage-Steamboat IMO. That was a prime time for both Gorilla and Jesse to shut up and let us enjoy the moment and almost immediately Ventura is going on and on and on and on and on. Steele running in to make sure Savage didn't do it again made total sense, especially after I watched the product from the 1986-87 timeframe on a weekly basis many years back.

Fucking oof.