PeteF3

Vince also had visions of using Honky to create his own version of Jerry Lawler. Note that babyface Honky had suspenders to yank down as part of his comeback routine, and at first used a flying fistdrop as a finisher instead of the Shake, Rattle, 'n Roll.

No, he was meant to be a true babyface. He even had endorsements from Hulk Hogan, which never would have been done for a guy they actually planned to turn. It was a rare instance of '80s WWF fans rebelling and a classic example of Vince turning chicken shit into chicken salad.

Because I refuse to let this go, let the record show that the Ding Dongs only had 2 matches on Worldwide--a match on 8/5 against the New Zealand Militia and 8/29 against the Skyscrapers (which as mentioned would be a fun bonus if there's room). I don't know if Cornette was even on the show at that point--the Skyscrapers squash is Ross solo. They didn't wrestle on Pro or on Power Hour. I'm starting to think this Scott Keith character isn't the most reliable. NBC stuff for the WWF... 2/3 Main Event: *** MegaPowers vs. Twin Towers. *** Post-match first aid room confrontation with Savage clobbering Hogan. Original airing if you can get it, so we can get Beefcake's blooper (entering the shot early). * End of the show, with Hogan moaning and then setting out to find Savage, beating up the Hart Foundation and Rockers in the process. 3/11 SNME: ** Opening video (I know you love these). ** Hulk Hogan vs. Bad News Brown. Probably Bad News' high watermark. Worth it just for his in-match promo. *** Elizabeth interview, where she reveals whose corner she'll be in at WM5. *** Rockers vs. Brain Busters. 5/27 SNME: ** Opening video *** Hulk Hogan vs. Big Boss Man in the cage. There are at least 3 of these (SNME, MSG, Boston) that are all pretty much the same. This has Zeus' debut, which probably is the historical tiebreak. * Demolition vs. Brain Busters (**finish). I think OJ gave some praise to this, but will probably be a victim of how hot everything else in the world was. 7/29: * Greg Valentine vs. Jimmy Snuka finish (ending advances the Garvin referee angle). *** Brutus Beefcake vs. Randy Savage. Hard-sell match for SummerSlam. Meltzer and a few others have declared this the best Beefcake match ever. ** Demolition vs. Brain Busters (***finish). The JCP boys take the belts from the WWF Machine. 10/14: ** Hogan vs. DiBiase finish. Zeus and Jake the Snake get involved. ** Post-match interviews with DiBiase and Hogan. * Rick Martel vs. Tito Santana. Strike Force Explodes. Probably not as good as the 6-man tag at SummerSlam. 11/25: * Ultimate Warrior vs. Andre the Giant. The Wrestling Observer's Worst Match of the Year. The 30-second squash job at MSG is a definite must. ***** Hulk Hogan vs. The Genius. Among the matches of 1989 most guaranteed to make this set are the Flair/Steamboat trilogy, the Flair/Funk matches, the Jumbo/Tenryu 6/5/89...and this. *** Post-match interviews with Perfect (destroying the belt) and Hogan's response. Hulk's promo is a 100% MUST--it's up there with his comeback promo announcing that he'd wrestle Earthquake as far as his very best performances. ** Rockers vs. Brain Busters. The final burial for Arn & Tully.

There hasn't been an MSG Raw since 2009. Since '06 the only MSG Raw not headlined by Cena anyway was the one Parv mentioned with Vince vs. Triple H and Cena in a semi-main 6-man.

It was stopped in '82 because it wasn't drawing (as tournaments tend not to do, though the RWTL was always a big deal), and because in the days of DCORs and people not jobbing, it was getting too difficult to book.

i think he appeared on TV after havoc but not sure He had one appearance on Up Close on the 11/7 show, making threats towards Ron Simmons and Dustin Rhodes. The next week, Watts said Jake was out dealing with personal issues, his spot in the King of Cable tournament was taken by the Barbarian, and that was that. He had a first-round King of Cable match against Dustin (which is quite good) on WCWSN. TV matches against Marcus Bagwell and Nikita. A 6-man pitting Jake, Cactus, & Barbarian against Nikita, Dustin, & Windham. Jake & Barb vs. Simmons & Windham in another tag. Plus a few squashes. That's just TV, not counting house show bouts most of which were singles or tag bouts against Sting. He was on more than I remembered, actually.

What Dylan said. I mainly tend to use it when a match or portion of a match has a bunch of rapidfire counters and swings of momentum in which guys (or gals, as this is a problem with joshi) bounce back to being 100% as soon as they hit a countermove, only to go back to selling like death when their move is inevitably countered as well. Repeat the process from there and you have a match that tends to annoy me really quickly.

I've never been blind to his flaws, but I've always liked Dory more than the average IWC guy. That match with Hoffman came as part of a big tournament where Dory was the MVP--and this was a group that included Jumbo, Horst, Baba, the Destroyer, and Harley Race. Plus Dusty Rhodes for the hell of it. Glad to see him getting a fair shake here. At one time I may have had the Funks as my #1 favorite all-time tag team. I think there are 3 straight Tag League finals that pit the Funks against Abby & the Sheik, and they're all pretty much gold. They also have a match against Mil Mascaras & Dos Caras that I really liked, plus a long match against Horst & Billy Robinson that I thought was great. I wouldn't have pegged it as something you'd like, Parv, but if you liked the Horst singles match... .

A really fun match, and Baba showed lots of pep and energy for the first 2/3 of this at least, before seemingly running out of gas. This is actually worked at a sprint pace for those 2/3, which is almost unbelievable. Taue's maniacal save after Hansen's Lariat is pretty great and once again I was guessing all the way until the finish. Kawada does the job, which ideally sets up Hansen as a Triple Crown challenger which I'm fine with, but not as fine upon knowing the result of that match. Even in spite of the Carnival win there's a strong undercurrent throughout the year of Kawada getting fucked, sometimes subtly so like a modern-day, WWE-style start-stop-start push. Back to the match...the finishing stretch was good but it didn't quite build as well as last year's Carnival match, but it's not far behind and in some ways is an even more surprising latter-day performance from Baba.

Can't ask for more out of a tag match than this. A LONG southern-cooked FIP segment on Misawa which is really well-done, with great sympathy selling from Misawa and perfectly timed teases and comebacks. Kobashi doing great work as the "saver" on the apron. A great dramatic twist as Doc levels Kobashi with a backdrop driver, taking Misawa's hot tag away and forcing him to make his own comeback. Then *Misawa* eats a backdrop driver and is saved only because Doc isn't legal and Ace is too slow to cover. Doc also has an awesome deadlift off the mat directly into the Oklahoma Stampede in here somewhere. Then to Southern Tag this up a little more, Ace does Kobashi's own moonsault and mocks him the whole way, complete with arm pump. Some truly fantastic stereo sequences here too, with Kobashi saving Misawa from Doc who was saving Ace from a tiger driver and then all the dueling tiger suplex attempts. Plus this match had me guessing the entire way through--Ace looked like job material from the start, of course. Kobashi's the clear #2 for his team. And Misawa took such a beating that I could actually see Doc pinning him, too. And of course there was the possibility of a draw. Possibly one of the 10 or even 5 best AJPW matches of the year.

Graham is missing a ton of summer Worldwide and Pro results, though.

Outside of Austin's entrance and victory, I'd estimate Undertaker grabbing Patterson and chokeslamming him through the table was the biggest pop of the show. For something allegedly last minute, 'Taker's presence was pretty well-explained. Vince had to agree to Austin having a back-up in exchange for Austin dropping assault charges against him. From a wrestling storyline standpoint that makes perfect sense to me. Plus, while Austin was a lone wolf, he wasn't an idiot. There were four heels against him in that match, why shouldn't he try to leverage an advantage of his own? And intentionally or not, it added a bit of "you owe me one" intrigue in setting up their match at SummerSlam.

Kevin Sullivan turned on Cactus Jack, but Mikey was a man of his word and took it to Kevin afterward.

Lawler must have somehow been starving for promo time because he crams in about 30 one-liners into his screen time here, even bringing back his old heel USWA "talk to the audience" shtick. Sort of a WWF-by-numbers promo but it gets all the points across. Shawn looks absurd but he was one of the only 1994 WWF guys with any air of legitimate "cool" about him, especially in this commentary role.

Not the prettiest match you'll ever see but a really fun character brawl. Parka is the star on all fronts, incorporating comedy, offense, bumping, and sympathetic selling all at once. But Los Hermanos Dinamitas make for perfect asskickers and everyone contributes some fun stuff (Octagon quite a bit less than the others). The third fall is the best, descending into a crazy-ass brawl and super-heated comeback by the technicos, before the teams start trading eliminations. Estrada locks a beaten, bloody, half-unmasked Parka into a funky octopus-style submission to secure the win for his team. One of the better team matches of the year, actually.

I might be alone on this, but I die a little inside when reading the word "botch." It's a meaningful term by itself. But thanks to Botchamania the word is being thrown about like it's a fucking insider term, or an official statistic. Some places have actually seen arguments over whether a particular spot was or was not a "botch." I hate it, hate it, hate it.

Also, a note: Duggan losing his crown to Randy Savage was ONLY shown on Update, showing the ending of the match. That aired on the 9/23 Superstars, with Savage's coronation the next week. Graham's http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/challenge89.htm'>Challenge page for '89 is actually more in-depth, listing most of the podium interviews. A few things that jump out: 5/21 - The Rockers come out for a match against the Rougeaus singing their entrance music, incensing the Rougeaus and leading to Shawn Michaels getting his throat crushed with the megaphone. I remember freaking out when this happened, sort of the poor man's Savage/Steamboat. Good set-up for the London match, which got some love during the first '80s Project and is something I think needs to be on. 7/16 - Mr. Perfect vs. Dave Paradise. Heenan melts down in the booth, tells off Schiavone and Monsoon, and storms off the set, quitting the show. Some classic Brain here. Set-up for The Bobby Heenan Show, which probably needs a Yearbook segment for sheer WTF-ness.

The question's silly, but it starts off, "Which of these personalities..." Dave isn't claiming that any of those guys are more publicly known than the most famous athletes.

I thought they had switched wholesale from doing the "X" to something else unless the injury *was* worked. But then I thought I read someone reporting that they flashed the X when Bad News Barrett injured his shoulder at Smackdown. So maybe it's like a baseball coach's signal that gets changed and recycled every few weeks/months.

One other point of potential confusion is that guys going to the same "camp" may have received training from other guys. Billy Robinson was a trainer at Verne's camp, as was Rheingans as mentioned, supposedly some of Stu's kids were doing Dungeon training, etc.

Wrestlingdata.com has a good collection of trainers and trainees, though it of course has its own blind spots and caveats. The only pre-'90s people who stand out as being trained by Kowalski are John Studd, SD Jones, and Misty Blue Simmes. Though there are probably others. Stan Lane is notable for being the only wrestler trained by Ric Flair. (I guess David could say the same, but he doesn't count here. In more ways than one.)

In fairness to the guy posting on Keith's blog, he did link directly to a PWInsider page talking about the Rollins injury being a work. http://pwinsider.com/article/86935/bray-rollins-and-more-wwe-injury-updates.html?p=1

In a way I was disappointed to see Davies work that Haystacks match as a total bouncing babyface. I like the idea of either the cocky Davies being overmatched or the big nasty Haystacks having to face an equally nasty opponent.

I'll see if the Portland set changes my mind, but I'm fairly cold on the Sheepherders. They were certainly better than the Bushwhackers and I like their Clash 2 match against the Fantastics, but their barbed wire gorefests do nothing for me. The more I watch the less upset I get about what happened to them in the WWF, though there's no question they deteriorated badly in the ring. Similar caveats apply--I have more '90s to watch--but for the first half of the decade Ultimo Dragon is a mess of a worker. A '90s version of Sayama in more ways than one. Late '80s/early '90s JWP sounds like the most hidden-gem-e-riffic promotion that's semi-available on tape. It was the #2 joshi promotion and didn't have the incredible physical pace of its more popular competitor, so it was mostly ignored in its first incarnation. Watching it now I think people would appreciate the more deliberate style. It's not remotely the case here or at DVDVR, but a ton of the Memphis guys get dismissed by a lot of people as being all talk and no ring skill. Lots of people will dismiss Jerry Lawler as a guy who did nothing but talk and punch. Loss and I have gone over our unease with some of heel Lawler's shtick but that simply isn't remotely true. Also, there are too many good Austin Idol matches for him to be dismissed as all talk. Billy Black is the great lost worker of the '90s. He and Joel Deaton should have been a cornerstone of AJPW mid-card tags, but Deaton was kind of nuts and Black was a complete loon with absolutely no reliability. He looked like a pudgy Global mid-carder and wrestled like a '90s junior heavyweight.