strobogo

I wasn't around for the last time but I've shit talked Flair for so long online and in the past 2-3 years I've seen way more pre-Horseman era stuff that I think I'm going to have to eat shit and put him in my top 10.

Whatever the story, I'm glad he got that WWE run even if it was too late and wasn't what it could have been. Imagine the legend of Samoa Joe ending in 10 years like the last 4-5 years of his TNA run.

Joe is the most interesting cut there, seemed like they were pretty high on him in his out of ring role considering they used him all over both Takeover stuff and Wrestlemania. I wonder if he quietly retires and sticks to voice over and gaming stuff, if he continues to do commentary somewhere (AEW can't seem to hire enough commentators), or if he has one more in ring run left in him. It'd be cool to see him get a NJ run but I don't know if his body will hold up.

Was there some story to the Hansen/Choshu match 4/5/86? Sure seems like at the end Choshu gets pretty uncooperative, Hansen gets real pissed yelling out FUCK YOU, MAN after hitting a lariat, then hits another, then hits a big boot, then goes for another lariat and bumps the ref and Choshu immediately pops up to hit him with a backdrop as they go for a fuck finish. Then instead of of the normal angry post match brawling, Hansen and his crew just kind of stand around looking mad but not doing anything and calmly walking of until Hansen comes back later when Choshu is getting his trophy and belts for a more normal post match situation. The whole thing seems very weird.

From the little in ring footage I've seen of him, almost all well outside his physical prime, I bet he was a fucking blast to see when he was an actual worker.

Well there was some real implication that if you called the Hotline, Ole would tell you sex stories about Missy and the Nasty Boys. If someone was into it, I hope they were put on a list and are still tracked to this day.

What kind of psycho was calling the WCW Hotline in 1993 to talk to Ole Anderson at midnight?

What do you do with guys who don't have a long list of 5 star matches, but their performances are always 5 stars? Or how do you weigh guys like Regal and Arn who are clearly great but whose roles didn't necessarily give them big show case matches like Flair or Jumbo or what have you?

The twist being actually nothing like Bock/Funk/AJPW.

Yeah, that's the main issue I have with AEW booking. They don't do much with all the extra time between big shows and so they're just spinning their wheels repeating themselves for months. Which on the other hand works out if you just want to tune in every 4 weeks or so, you'll be caught up on everything and not really miss anything through to the next PPV either.

I haven't enjoyed his heel work at all, in either run, and I think a large part of it is they continued to have him be a dude who it basically takes a building falling on to keep him down for a 3 count, which can work as an underdog face finally conquering the heel, but is real eye rolling when he's such an undersized heel. Another part is the dude should have been out of NXT at least a year ago, if not nearly two years ago now. Same for Cole and Ciampa. Dudes have just been spinning their wheels for ages with everything they've done feeling forced because presumably HHH/HBK don't want to let them go get lost in the shuffle on the main roster. I would say Gargano is such an over the top cartoon heel that he comes off very silly. He was probably the best babyface in the business for a year run there, and it really feels like he just has nothing to do in NXT so they have him as a heel because he can't keep doing the face thing at the top of the card forever. Which is usually the point where okay it's time to move to Raw or Smackdown, but they just won't let him go.

I feel like I could much more easily get into Valentine stuff I haven't seen than I could Piper, but they do have an overlap of two guys I don't care for producing a match I think is really great.

Dude is just brutal to get through in WCCW, imo. Only guy worse with weaker looking offense at the time is Magic Dragon. When he first returns to AJPW under the Kabuki gimmick, he feels like a star and works much better, but within a year or so he's back to World Class laziness outside of the occasional bloody brawl. I remember downloading stuff from Ditch and he'd have blurbs about man great uppercuts how could I have ever not liked this guy...but that seems like the only thing he does well in the ring.

I'm willing to be open to someone changing my mind on Piper, but there are few dudes that have just flat out annoyed me my entire life like Piper. Even as a kid in his face period in WWF where his bullshit should have appealed to me the most, he consistently annoyed the shit out of me on color, and I always thought his matches sucked even if I didn't really realize why. His WCW run was flat out unbearable. I would say that dips into his WWF return in 1994 where he had seemingly aged 15 years and just could not have been cornier if he tried. And then of course the match with Lawler was awful on top of that. Then I got older and saw the real grimy shit of 1984-1986 and man...of course he's getting insane heat. It's not hard to get insane heat when you're saying crazy racist shit constantly. That's the absolute cheapest of cheap heat. I've seen a lot of Mid Atlantic TV now and it has slightly changed my opinion of him, but I'm still left with a guy who has maybe 5 matches I'd ever say were good (but a couple are great) and the rest is a career of this dude with the most annoying face promos possible, the cheapest heel promos possible, and looks like he was never even trained in the ring. I get that the less is more/get most out of the least is a big thing in these circles, but Piper did almost nothing and 9 times out of 10 everything he did looked like shit. Dude looked like he never even learned how to bump. Now, I think the dog collar match with Valentine (another guy who I'm frequently not enamored with but there are a handful of matches I like) and WM match with Bret are great, and the MSG match with Flair in 1991 is a lot of fun. There's the Flair/Piper/Greene vs NWO match in 1997 but that's the Flair show and Greene being a great celebrity wrestler and Piper's contributions are minimal. I would believe there are some other good matches with Valentine from around Starrcade 1983 period. The above Macho match did absolutely nothing for me. But if people have recs that prove to me Piper actually wasn't the shits outside of a couple of matches over 30 years, I'll check them out.

Still doesn't make sense to me why the WWF would put that clip into the intro to their home videos

I can pretty much guarantee that Santos will get called up and be Angel Garza status within 2 months. Probably within a month. Likely teaming with Angel on Main Event.

It seemed like it started as a way to torment Jim Ross and then started spreading to others and by the mid 00s it was just the norm for faces to always lose in their hometown unless it was something like Benoit as defending champion in Edmonton.

How/why on earth did a clip of Lou Thesz hitting a backdrop driver on Rikidozan make it into the intro of the first couple of Coliseum Home Video tapes?

What is the deal with always jobbing out or otherwise embarrassing people in their home towns? It's long stopped being a rib on specific talents and is just SOP, and seems extra weird when they really make it a point to build it up being in someone's hometown with all their friends and family there. I've never seen them follow it up in any way, either. Was Vince doing this before Montreal?

Oh that makes more sense. I was reading it like he was keeping up a proto-blog in his post wrestling career on the nascent internet.

This is an amazing thread. Too much to single out but 1. Sumo and puro really put the carny bullshit of American wrestling to shame 2. It's pretty fucking weird that Jumbo had a blog in 1996

Oh I do like Bruno but especially in WWWF footage his punches and kicks are pretty lol, but in that real 1970s wrestling way that if you're in the mood is really enjoyable. I wish there was more readily available footage of him. I've probably seen less than 25 Bruno matches and outside some stuff in JWA/AJPW and clips of Koloff winning the title, I think all of it is from his second reign or his last 80s run.

The Bar vs Rollins/Ambrose at I wanna say No Mercy 2017, the one where Cesaro fucked up his teeth on the post, was the WWE main roster tag match of the year.

I wonder if part of it has been the reactions to Cena/Roman over the years where they'd rather just put heels on top of everything so if the fans are going to boo, they're going to boo the guy they're supposed to.

Spent a decade booking the boss(es) as heels, then just changed over to the promotion as a whole being a heel. Really pretty bizarre when you think about it. Has any other company really done that?