PeteF3

He might well be done but I put zero stock into almost anything Rusev says. Dude just likes fucking with people.

Unfortunately in contrast to the reaction on this show, I think there's a strong argument that the decision to put the title on Slaughter was, from a purely financial and publicity standpoint, the singular worst booking decision in WWF history. Certainly the worst up until 1991 and maybe one of the worst for a long time afterward. So much of their more recent decline has been of the "death by a thousand cuts" variety, whereas this is a singular decision that ended up being a critical and financial flop, and brought untold amounts of negative publicity--negative attention that I would say planted a seed and exacerbated the reactions to the even-more negative publicity to come a year later. I can tell you anecdotally as well as with facts and figures that Earthquake was demonstrably more over in the fall of '90 than Slaughter was in the spring of '91. Anecdotally based on house show reactions and with proof in the pudding with the fact that SummerSlam '90 outperformed Mania 7 on PPV by a substantial margin (sorry JT, but Mania 7 was the *lowest* grossing Mania to date, not the highest). Now, the Rumble itself actually did very good numbers by the rather low standards set by the '89-'90 shows, so the whole distastefulness of putting Slaughter in a PPV main event mere days after war breaks out could probably have been a footnote in history...but when they doubled down and actually put the title on him, shit hit the fan and not in a good way. Maybe Warrior-Hogan doesn't keep the WWF in the Coliseum either, but they went with a main event that couldn't even sell out the LA Sports Arena and pissed off a bunch of people in the process who weren't shy about publicly saying so (a planned celebrity "get" in Bob Costas, as well as Jesse Ventura), all for a 2.8 buyrate after a 4.5 the previous year. The bloom was off the rose as far as Vince being a genius impresario, and his public reinvention as a cynical sleaze merchant would not help with even more serious accusations to come.

It was an issue with Flair in the '80s, too. Part of that was Flair himself, part of that was Dusty, but people operating in JCP at the time failed to understand the difference as well and still do to this day.

NWA champion model fetishization, with everyone missing the fact that the NWA champion model worked a hell of a lot better when the champ came to your territory once or twice a year instead of being on TV every week, and nowadays on top of it, wrestling every week.

On Cornette's Facebook group some months ago, someone suggested to Last that Cornette review something like WrestleMania III--something from a more classic time period but still outside of his wheelhouse. He seemed open to the idea. I think that would make for a fascinating show.

That would be quite the scientific discovery since to my knowledge there's been no known cases of re-infection, just stories of dying viruses still triggering false-positive tests. Did Kayla actually test positive twice or was she one of many people I know who just "know" they had it in the first 3 months of the year because they had a bad cold or flu but didn't actually get tested? (Partially because it was almost impossible to do.)

That crowd is definitely not impressed with ol' Fred's temper tantrum, as I recall. IIRC Kitao had already done one job to Tenta and was extra-pissed at having to do another one.

Yep. Gone. He made two more Tweets doubling down on it that I didn't save, about "I SAID I wasn't blaming victims, you dumbasses!" sort of in the tone of that guy in Office Space screaming about how he had people skills.

So focus on what she did, not what she is.

Can a mod please split these last few pages off to a new topic? We are way, way, way past the point of this "not warranting a thread."

I couldn't find the original angle on Beau James' big 1986-89 set that he was selling, and he said he included everything that he could find. Now, I didn't watch the set comprehensively but I was on the lookout for it as I was ripping discs. It's also not on ArmstrongAlley's Continental playlist on Youtube. Unless the Wrestling Epicenter list is out of order, it goes from 7/9/88 (Humongous vs. Intruder, Davis vs. Alan Martin) to 8/6/88 (Prichard vs. Mike Starr). The angle was on 7/30.

Am I correct that for such a 1988 newsletter sensation, the Eddie Gilbert/Willie B. Hert son angle isn't actually in circulation? I chatted with Bix about this and he's not entirely sure either, but I haven't seen it in goc's Continental footage or any other sources of Alabama wrestling. I've found a very brief highlight clip from a certain tape-trader in Western PA, though.

And top of that, knowing Keith the odds are 2-1 that it was just some dude posing as Borga. "Warrior was supposed to be the one to sell out to Mr. Perfect" is another one that's gotten a huge amount of traction and I'm pretty sure is 100% bullshit. It doesn't really make any sense and when I watched the '92 Yearbook I didn't get any sense or hints that there was going to be any Warrior turn. The pre-MNW WWF was usually not in the business of turning a major babyface out of the blue like that--if there were plans for him to turn, there'd be some kind of on-air hint of it.

Same here. Though it could just be that it was an IC title match in the spring of '99 and that meant that more often than not the title was getting switched.

Even though sex with a minor is what the charges seemingly amounted to, Walker was one of 9 participants involved in a gang rape. It wasn't just an 18-year old running around with a 15-year old. And considering this was the early 1950's I have to imagine this girl had to have been fucked up bad for charges of any kind to stick.

Mongo was awesome as both an announcer and a wrestler. I mean, in some ways he was terrible, but in many ways he was great--both ironically and unironically. My favorite unironic Mongo image is his first Nitro run-in after turning at the Bash, killing Randy Savage with the briefcase during a match against Flair. Mongo in the all black and shades actually looked like a cool, intimidating motherfucker. What I'm really trying to say is, this thread is apropos, and I ain't talkin' 'bout diggin' around in the dirt with farm implements, baby.

I'm sure Brian would try to point to the Superpodcast as evidence that he's a draw, but I can't help but think that if that was bringing in beaucoup bucks, we'd be getting episodes more than once every 5 months.

How do you say "bald-headed geek" in French?

Depends. Is he still in prison?

Shrug. Talking about old stuff is our world now.

So...Scott finally reviewed that episode of WCWSN with the Muta-Armstrong match on it this morning. He gave it **1/4 and apologized for talking the match up years ago. We've got an epic thread shitting all over him, we may as well give him some props for when he does the right thing.

Per Cornette: in early '90 Douglas was booked for a TV match against Cornette that was supposed to end on a DQ. Douglas was upset that he wasn't even able to pin a manager, so he went over the heads of Cornette (who booked the program) and Flair (the head booker) directly to Jim Herd to get it changed. I think a lot of the animosity started there. Douglas may have had a right to be upset, but a.) Cornette was the one guy on the committee trying to do something with the Dudes, and b.) going over your boss' head for a fairly simple complaint is a pretty bullshit tactic.

The 12/82 match is on A Certain Tape-Trader in Western PennsylvaniaTM's Classic Germany #5, though I don't know that it's been online before. (Both Slaughter/Wanz matches are on it.)

The most amusing of these stories to me is what caused Jason Alexander to get the most hate-mail of anything George ever did on Seinfeld: not brushing off Susan's death, not breaking up marriages, not desecrating Yankee memorabilia, not trying to use his girlfriend's aunt's funeral to get a plane ticket discount...it was for eating the eclair out of the trash.

Interestingly, there was noise in 1997 about a meeting between George Steinbrenner and Eric Bischoff to hold a Nitro at Yankee Stadium. That would have been maybe the ultimate "fuck you" move from Bischoff and now I'm kind of sad it never came to be.