JRH

Slick managing Sheik and Volkoff (and later the Bolsheviks) never made sense to me. I know blassie sold him the contracts, but it just looked weird for some streetwise hustler to be managing foreign menaces.

Did Rey get ANY major wins during that run? I think he defeated JBL at Judgement Day, but thats all i can remember.

I'd say TNA's attempt at a "Monday Night War" in 2010 definitely qualifies.

You know who was a surprisingly decent color commentator? Hillbilly Jim. Im not saying he was an all-time great, but he was pretty good and toned the whole Hillbilly gimmick WAY down. Not surprisng that he became a radio DJ much later.

While watching various programming from both companies lately, i noticed that WCW commentary seemed to focus more on the in-ring abilities rather than the gimmick of a wrestler. Yes, there were plenty of gimmicks there, some incredibly absurd for that matter, but it was always treated as just an aspect of their personality, and the wrestling was what mattered. Meanwhile, with the WWF, the gimmick was what was being "sold", and that continues even to this day. To make an example, watch any wcw match with an absurd gimmick (ie, big josh, glacier, even the dungeon of doom) and compare the commentary with wwf/e matches with absurd gimmicks (ie, repo man, IRS, or for a more recent example, the wyatt family).

Well, not to threadjack, but the thing about Heenan in WCW was that he was out of his element. In WWF, the announcing was to put over the gimmick first, and their wrestling ability second (unless the wrestler had no real gimmick to speak of, in which case they'd put over the current angle the wrestler was in). This continues to this day to be honest. In that format, Heenan shined. In WCW though, the gimmicks (even the goofiest ones) were just seen as part of the wrestler's personality and the wrestling was what was important, which meant people like Heenan had to rework their announcing drastically, and he just never really worked while doing that (though i will admit Heenan's commentary during Goldberg matches helped Goldberg quite a bit IMO).

The point about 80s/90s themes being more diverse is true though, just look at a show like Summerslam 90 (just picked a show at random) for example: Rockers: Heavy Metal Texas Tornado: Southern Rock Mr Perfect: Classical (Exodus theme ripoff) Tito Santana: Mexican-tinged pop rock Hart Foundation: Synth-rock Demolition: Heavy Metal Bossman: Blues rock Jake Roberts: Electronic music (this theme kind of reminds me of Tangerine Dream) Duggan/Volkoff: Forgot what theme they used (Stars and Stripes forever?) Orient Express: Stereotypical "Japanese" music, but with an 80s feel Dusty Rhodes: R&B/Funk Randy Savage: Classical (Pomp and Circumstance) Hulk Hogan: Hard Rock/AOR Dino Bravo:French National Anthem Earthquake: Sound Effects Ultimate Warrior: Metal Rick Rude: Knockoff of "The Stripper"

Im surprised that, outside of New Jack, no wrestling company really tried to capitalize on the popularity of gangsta rap when that was popular. They wouldnt even have to worry about the lyrics if it was in-house, just produce something that had the hard-edged sound of that.

I think the battlebowl ppvs could have worked if they didnt have the champion in there and instead threw in a token world title match, with the winner of battlebowl getting a shot at the worlds champion (kind of like an expanded version of the royal rumble, only this one would actually require teamwork to get a chance to get the title). Now, while i love this show, i'd have to say ECW One Night Stand 2005 qualifies. NOTHING from this show had any ramifications (aside from the meanie/bradshaw stuff) or led to anything later in the year (unlike ONS 06). I understand it was just meant to be a fun nostalgia-driven show, but i expected to see it lead to something.

Warlord and Barbarian under masks as The Super Assassins in 1996 WCW. Bear in mind this was the same WCW that picked up 80s WWF guys on a regular basis at the time, so why they would bring in two well-known guys and stick them under masks makes no sense to me.

What are some finishing moves that wrestlers used for only a short time? For example, when Diesel first started wrestling in the wwf, his finisher was a heart punch before he switched his finisher to the jackknife powerbomb soon after. Also, didnt Big Show use an inverted ddt variation called "the final cut" for a few months?

How about Butch Reed's short lived "return" to WCW, which IIRC, only consisted of the Clash X match with Barbarian against rhodes/windham and a match on Power Hour with Butch Reed against Zenk and Jimmy Garvin.

They dont usually have tv listings, but prowrestlinghistory.com is a good source for results. Most of what they list are supercards, but its still a pretty valuable resource. They even have results for obscure stuff like SAPW, AWF, and the Abrams UWF.

Bill Irwin showing up out of nowhere in 1993 to job to Davey Boy at Superbrawl 3. Dont know what that was about.

Anyone remember Carl Oulette, Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles, and Mike Modest's short lived runs in wcw around 2000-01?

Mr. Perfect's 2002 WWE run. He had a memorable Rumble apperance (being one of the last 3 guys in there!), and i was hoping for good things, but there were very few people on the roster he really could have meshed with (Angle, Jericho, and Benoit all come to mind, but they never ended up having matches with Perfect), he was made into a JTTS, and then the plane ride from hell happened and we all know what went on from there.

Makes sense, but it did get ridiculous when they brought in Chavo Guerrero Sr, and since Chavo Guerrero Jr was no longer using the "jr", they resorted to calling him "Chavo Classic".

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but why do they always remove "Jr" from a second generation wrestler who has that at the end of their name (Chavo Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Ted Dibiase, etc)? I cant recall any other wrestling promotion who ever did this.

Scott Keith (yeah, i know) had an interesting way of rating matches back when he reviewed Coliseum videos. Basically he would rate the tapes on a "point" system, and if a match was worth watching he would give it a point. For example, if a tape had 7 matches and four of the matches were good, it would be rated 4 for 7. I always thought that was a unique system that could work.

Where i lived we had three. One was a combo video/pizza store (though the pizza store branced off, giving more room to the video section) that had a small, but decent amount of wrestling videos (mostly 85-87 coliseum stuff, though they also had a tape called USA All Star Wrestling which was full of NWA TV matches from 84-85, shocking as a kid to discover guys like greg valentine were in the NWA). We also had one in the city that had a bigger selection. Again, nothing past 1988 (aside from WMVI and Summerslam 90), but they did have the PWI Lords of the Ring tape which is where i first discovered Bill Dundee and Jerry Lawler, though i was surprised there was no WWF footage). Finally there was the one in the center of town which only had the Wrestlemanias and Summerslams and a few random Survivor Seroes (they stopped getting them in after Summerslam 93 though). Later, around college, we had two more video stores near the college, but those were slowly phasing out the vintage 80s/early 90s stuff for late 90s wwf and wcw tapes. Still, all those stores (along with the apter mags being eager to acknowledge wrestling history) helped me "catch up" when i became a fan in 1990.

Kind of an odd question, but does anyone have a comprehensive list of everyone who's been doink (not counting guys dressed as doink for angles like jericho) in the wwf/e?

Was it just VHS space issues? I remember in the late 1990's when WWE went back and released full versions of older WrestleManias on VHS, the quality was horrible. Bill Watts addressed it once, as it was something he fought during his WCW tenure and tried to have changed. THE felt that rentals would be a hard sell for a three-hour tape. Watts of course made the obvious counter, that three-hour videos had not hurt the WWF in the rental market at all. They made the switch sometime in 1993, but I'm not sure exactly when. As late as Beach Blast '93, they were still two hours, and as early as I believe Starrcade '93, they were unedited. So I guess somewhere in that window. Then there's not releasing SuperBrawl IV commercially for who knows what reason. Actually, though i havent seen them, i've heard that Halloween Havoc 98 and Souled Out 99 also have matches edited out of the tape.

Why did WCW oftentimes remove matches from the VHS versions of the PPVs? For example, the VHS of Great American Bash 1990 has the first four matches edited out so the show starts with Southern Boys vs the Midnight Express. It made no real sense IMO.

Here's one that always bugged me, Vader going over Cactus Jack at Halloween Havoc 93. So you have a feud where a heel injures a babyface to the point of amnesia, and it ends with the face losing, and not just that, but in a non-title match no less? Cool match and all, but Cactus losing just soured me on it.

Austin/Angle at Summerslam 01. While Angle did win by DQ, having Angle win the belt would have been a huge moment. I know they wanted to wait until Unforgiven so they could have the title win in Kurt's hometown, but you could have just added some "can angle beat the odds?" stipulation to that match to make it more meaningful. Also, i still dont get why Angle was put over Rey Mysterio at Summerslam 02.