Petey

I feel like Conrad was a little more inquisitive before he fell into the formula of: read Observer tidbits, let host crap on Meltzer, read random results, rinse and repeat.

I think that's a lot of it as well. That amount of podcasts while still running your own business has to be incredibly taxing. I can understand why it's so easy to slip into the formula of "it was reported in the Observer that..." and allow Brucey/Eric to just go off.

The issue is that Conrad's not really a super knowledgeable wrestling fan, especially when compared to Brian Last. Conrad's wheelhouse is basically nWo through the end of the Attitude Era. He admits that he didn't really watch much wrestling post-80s wrestling boom and post-Attitude Era until some of the more recent stuff. I imagine he doesn't cover a lot of JCP stuff or WCW stuff because he's just not familiar with it. Yeah, he can and does fall back on old Observers/Torch's, but there's a lot of stuff that's out of his wheelhouse.

I think Jim's opinion is probably influenced, to a great deal, by the fact that he has no kids and I get the sense, doesn't really like them or understand why people would want them. I'm in my early 30s and don't have children but even I can understand why people want them. It's not out of the ordinary for someone, regardless of success level, to have children. What a weird thing to get bent out of shape about but everyone knows it's Corny.

He felt that the masks were a hindrance to the luchadors when trying to tell a story in the ring to an American audience because the audience couldn't see their eyes/facial expressions and it was compounded by the fact that many luchadors were unable to speak fluent English. He may have phrased things a little different since I'm just doing it off memory but it's something along those lines.

I completely agree that the episodes where Tony's watching stuff he's never seen tends to be the best. The WWE/WWF ones are pretty good because sometimes he'll point out certain things they might do from a production standpoint that differs from WCW at the time. I just wish that Conrad wouldn't shit all over the NWA stuff because it's obvious that is stuff that Tony likes to rewatch and is nostalgic for but Conrad's clearly super bored by it and his "I'm bored by this" schtick is irritating.

I think it's one of those where he feels like it just didn't age well. IIRC, Conrad said he first got into wrestling after watching the WrestleMania 4 tape and watched both WWF and NWA/WCW but ultimately was a huge Hulkamaniac as a kid. I'm a little younger than Conrad and didn't have any real exposure to Crockett until Classics on Demand. I loved watching the TBS show from that era but different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Nothing stands out in particular but anything non-NWA/WCW is usually pretty good because Tony's particularly engaged and Conrad can't fall back on "LOLWCW so stupid!" or "mid-80's Crockett ain't for me".

The Barely Legal watch-along was one of my favorite things ever. Tony's first exposure to ECW and him trying to name the wrestlers got me every time. For the most part they're whatever and of all the podcasts I listen to, WHW is the least priority but sometimes I enjoy it as a change of pace. Conrad's at his most insufferable but there are worse things.

Yea it was one of the many example of JR's "old man yells at cloud" character. A couple of days after that ep, I was listening to one of the WHW with Tony Schiavone podcast's from over the summer and Tony was talking about how he frequently includes emojis in his texts. I'll always like JR but good grief his constant rants against "push" and "war" and anytime someone directs a negative tweet at him can make his podcast insufferable. The other issue is that a lot of the WWF content has already been covered with Bruce so there's often not a lot that JR can add to those topics. That said, I do think the Crockett/WCW stuff tends to be better since JR seems to have a decent memory of that era and it hasn't been covered to death. I wish they'd focus more on that time period but my guess is that it'll never get the download numbers that WWF/E content generates.

I enjoyed it enough, if only because I felt like we had been starting to slip into Grumpy Old Man/Preachy JR and he had a different tone for this show. However, I totally agree on the jump cuts being rough. At least tease them/discuss them.

I think the biggest thing was that Lois never really enjoyed living in CT and wanted to move back closer to home. At this stage of both of their lives, I can't imagine them uprooting and moving back north but I could see a situation where Tony just does random Network stuff or whatever like someone else suggested which allows Tony and Lois to stay in Georgia while still being under contract to WWE.

This podcast is tremendous and I've enjoyed each episode. It's continuing to get better as Ross and Conrad develop better chemistry. Really good stuff and I'm just sad that they didn't connect earlier.

I had no idea either. Didn't Cornette appear at one of Bruce and Conrad's live shows not that long ago?

I was arguing with my girlfriend (who is not really a wrestling fan) about Ric Flair's attractiveness. I was showing her pictures of mid-80's Flair and she didn't find him attractive at all which I found to be preposterous. Women, AMIRITE?

Agree that I really liked the Sid episode. It helped that due to the nature of Sid's runs, the episode wasn't bogged down with Conrad just reading through TV and house show results. And yeah, it was quite refreshing to hear Bruce agree with Dave's takes and not just instantly crap on them.

I listened to the Souled Out 97 show last week and had the same takeaway as what's already been mentioned regarding Conrad's attitude. It was really bizarre. Yelling Conrad is my least favorite version and in that episode, he seemed to be going out of his way to be a prick. I couldn't understand why Conrad was acting that way but glad he wasn't nearly as moody in the Souled Out 98 episode.

I think you nailed it right there. The biggest problem with Conrad is his extremely limited knowledge of pro wrestling unless it's WWF/WCW/ECW and as someone who listens to all 3 of his podcasts as well as the Jim Cornette podcasts, the knowledge difference between Conrad and Brian Last is really glaring.

2018 Tony Schiavone the ECW Mark is one of my favorite things. Those eps are definitely a lot of fun, with Barely Legal in particular being great. Tony's name for John Kronus legit made me laugh out loud.

I watched the show at a Buffalo Wild Wings-ish sports bar (but a better version, if possible) with a buddy of mine who was a casual fan during the 80's and 90's boom periods. There were a decent amount of people at the bar for WrestleMania, including one guy in a Daniel Bryan YES YES YES shirt who was pretty much straight out of an r/SquaredCircle casting call. I'm not sure I'd choose a bar venue again because although I enjoyed the relatively inexpensive beer and wings, I feel like that type of setting doesn't really lend itself to being able to appreciate a lot of the matches. I liked Charlotte/Asuka. Thought it was decent. Was surprised Asuka lost. I was even more surprised to see how many folks on my Twitter timeline were gushing over it. I think it's one of those matches that suffered because of where I watched it. I'll admit that I don't watch Smackdown Live, so I was super shocked Jinder won. I thought he was done. I loved the mixed tag and it got a great reception at the bar and with my friend. Initially, I hated Ronda's entrance with her as the smiling babyface. I thought they should have had her replicate her UFC entrance because if anything, Big Steph looked like the bad ass until the match started. Really great stuff from all four participants. I liked the Cena/Undertaker bit except for the match itself. All that buildup for a nothing match. I really liked Bryan and Shane vs. Owens and Sami. Bryan looked great and after the slow start, the match had a hot finish. My friend, who was pretty much totally unfamiliar with Bryan, was initially not behind him because the aforementioned r/SquaredCircle fan was pretty obnoxious, but once Bryan got in, he won my friend over. Shane should probably never wrestle again though. Nia/Alexa was good. Told the story. Another match my friend was very into, probably because the story was easy to follow, made sense, and he had a crush on Alexa. I was letdown by AJ/Nak although the turn was really strong. Braun and Nicholas vs. The Bar was fine. I was letdown that the mystery partner wasn't someone returning/debuting, but the graphic announcing Braun and Nicholas as new tag champs got a chuckle. Brock/Roman was whatever. It obviously wasn't anywhere near their match from a few years ago, and that's no fault of Roman's. When Roman kept kicking out of all the F5's, it started to make me think that Brock was going to retain because it had just gotten ridiculous. Granted, I was still surprised when Brock won but I thought it was telegraphed a bit. The blood drew a big reaction in the bar which makes sense since it's such a rarity nowadays. I'm not sure what this means for Brock or Roman. Overall, I thought the show was fine. Definitely too long. My friend's takeaway was that he felt there weren't enough compelling/big time characters, particularly on the male side. He felt that the people who came across as the biggest stars were the women.

Two things here: 1) there's a 6-hour Eliminators comp tape? and 2) you chose to watch it??

Yup. Probably the best match I've ever seen live (I was at Joe vs. Kobashi which is probably my favorite). Just an incredible match even more amazing when you learn that Danielson suffered a detached retina during the match!

Good thing Hall and Nash came over and solved that problem. Company men above all else.

I was also going to point out the man-crush thing. Vince used to gush so hard over Shawn on commentary. I wonder if Linda ever got jealous I just wanted to say that there is some really nice synergy between Petey's comment here and his avatar. Points to you on that one. I think it's actually the RAW from South Africa, later in the year. Nah, it was after the Germany RAW with Sid vs. Mankind and Owen vs. Davey. The South African RAW was spliced with footage from Muncie, Indiana and did a 2.2. I watched the South African RAW on The Network a few months ago and wow, what an awful show, especially from a production standpoint. They should have preempted themselves for a dog show.

People have joked often that Vince had a man-crush on him. I actually believe it. I was also going to point out the man-crush thing. Vince used to gush so hard over Shawn on commentary. I wonder if Linda ever got jealous. I would be curious to see Vince's thoughts on paper after that brutal Raw from Germany that did a 1.9 and then the next week had the "Raw Is War" debut with the Titan Tron and stuff. Russo claims that the Germany Raw is what caused Vince to basically throw his arms in the air and greatly increase VR's influence.