CarpetCrawler

Seth looked like he was about to cry. That was a really sweet, heartfelt ending.

Make this a regular thing and have Elias perform after every match and segment on TV and PPV, recapping what just happened.

Either I tune it out (likely) or it's worse than normal.

This commentary is just nonstop bickering, good lord.

Mustafa Ali is fucking great man.

There's something fascinating about them trying to copy the Daniel Bryan situation from a few years ago by getting the crowd to chant "this is boring" and "we want Kofi" during the Kofi match and this title match tonight. Right to the point of having Corey Graves spell it out on commentary.

Two Holy Grails for me would be the March 25th, 1984 and May 21st, 1984 MSG shows. Both were never aired on television even though both shows were filmed and recorded live for the Felt Forum. Random matches from both were used for Coliseum Video and their syndicated shows, but the full shows themselves never even came up on 24/7 or Classics on Demand. We know more exists out there, because the Slaughter/Sheik match from the May show was used on the Greatest Stars of the 80s DVD set, and a few of the May matches (Hogan-Schultz and Santana-Orndorff) were shown off for the first time on that MSG Network series that highlighted old WWF shows from the Garden. So they're out there in the WWE's library, WWE has just never fully released them. The original WWF figurehead President, Hisashi Shinma, even made an on-camera appearance on the March show.

I finally got around to reading this over the course of a few nights. Light, breezy read with lots of information you're bound to know already, but still a fun light read. They know their audience and don't play kayfabe all that much. They also mention that Gorilla Monsoon was the frontrunner to take over the company from Vince, Sr. before Jr. bought it out, which I somehow had never heard before. I don't think it's worth the regular price it is now on Amazon but if you can get it on sale and are just looking for something to read before bed, it's worth a look.

If that's the one with Corey Graves on commentary with a couple of kids, I got such a kick out of it and it's a shame it never went anywhere. Corey is trying not to crack from the kids comments the entire time, it's really fun.

They reran both numerous times, and with The War To Settle the Score as late as 1990. I have a copy of it from then that was heavily edited so they could add in commercial breaks. And yeah I agree, it's a big, monumental moment of history for the WWF as well as MTV but not a single moment of it has ever come up. I tried awhile back and he didn't seem to have it. Unrelated but Tony is great. Super nice guy who will bend over backwards for you. Maybe one of the nicest dudes I've ever traded with honestly.

I don't know if it's been discussed on here, but I don't think any footage is out there of MTV's broadcast of The Brawl to End It All. The War to Settle the Score is out there and was even reran on MTV numerous times a few years after, but The Brawl is one that I haven't seen anything of. The MSG broadcast of The Brawl exists and is in circulation, but the MTV broadcast is the one that's not circulating and I'm honestly curious what MTV's coverage looked like.

There are a handful of good bits--there's a great bit around when Bobby Heenan's cancer diagnosis was announced that was sort of a salute/get well message for him with lots of really good clips. Also a really good Freddie Blassie video obit.

Among the many absurd lowlights was him telling Bix that he's gonna have a lonely Saturday night while everyone is responding "uh, it's Sunday, Corey".

The look of disgust on Drew's face was worth that Kofi/Xavier save spot, as well as Xavier and Kofi acting like goofs over it. That ruled.

The camera is missing a ton of stuff tonight.

Candice grinning from ear to ear running into the ring is my favorite moment of this match so far.

The timing of some of these eliminations isn't helping. Charlotte just dumps Tamina while Kairi is still getting into the ring so the crowd isn't even catching it.

I did so I guess my ears are bad. *shrugs* That was a great match and I had a lot of fun watching these two bridge each other's submissions until Asuka almost tore Becky's fucking head off. They were fighting out there, not just wrestling, and I enjoyed it a lot. Felt a lot of competitive respectful hatred.

So "important" that they swapped out commentary teams left and right, no less. If we are talking 1997 then yeah because it essentially replaced Superstars as the syndicated show with fresh wrestling matches but by 1999 the show is the precursor to Metal/Jakked/Velocity.

Heenan really didn't want to leave. He was more than willing to stay if he was allowed to live closer to his family as you had said, but Vince insisted on him staying in or near Stamford. WCW gave him an out by allowing him to live close to home, as well as give him health insurance. If Heenan was allowed to live with his family he would have been more than happy to stay. Okerlund however was ready and willing to tell Vince to fuck right off. It didn't matter if he had to live in Connecticut or not, he was flat out done for awhile by then and was appalled that Vince wouldn't give him a raise for all the work he had done once Sean Mooney had left and they hadn't found a decent replacement for him yet (they still weren't ready to name Pettengill as Mooney's heir apparent at that point). Okerlund and Vince often had tiffs like this and would get back to being friends a few months later. This time though Okerlund was flat out done.

I've said it before even on this board and I'll say it again now: Monsoon-Okerlund are maybe the most underrated commentary duo out of all of 'em. Them shooting the shit while some prelim guy is in a five minute headlock is some of the best medicine on real bad days. They're not "great" if you're looking for actual commentary but they're like having your buddies over while you watch some wrestling together. Okerlund's "AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH" whenever someone hits someone else hard makes me mark out everytime. A part of my childhood is gone now and this one hurts hard, like Heenan's did. RIP to a legend.

It's not bad. I got it at a used book store about a decade ago. There's not too much new insight in there besides him talking about how Dusty Rhodes used to just hang out totally naked in the locker room in the late 80s, and that's where we get confirmation that Dick Murdoch was a member of the KKK and was more than happy to show you his membership card. He doesn't say a bad word about anybody besides Ole Anderson and mentions almost getting into a fight with Shawn Michaels in 1992 but doesn't really go into detail. That's about it for anything too notable. If you like Tito it's a breezy, light read but don't go into it looking for anything really new.

The weird tangent Mick went into about porn/Kay Parker in his autobiography that came out a few months later makes a lot more sense now.

There's a story from like, 2000 I think, where Steve Beverly was the Phone a Friend lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and he gets the question wrong for his contestant friend, and Tony Schiavone makes a subtle jab about it the next night on Nitro.

That's fascinating and explains why they taped the entire thing in the first place. Huh. I'm glad they decided to keep everything they recorded and just put it up on the Network. Speaking of fascinating, seeing Steve Beverly get buried on his way out the door as a wrestling journalist as he transitions into being a general television/game show historian is interesting as hell. He doesn't even really like to talk about wrestling that much anymore and with how much he hides it most people who know him today would have no idea at all that him and the Matwatch guy were the same person. He only just recently really started talking wrestling again, and even then it's not that much.