PeteF3

If you want an example of actually using a football background to get somebody over instead of just to blither, Bill Watts knew how to do it with Jim Duggan. Duggan didn't just play for SMU (back when they were a powerhouse), he was the "wedge-buster" on kickoffs--i.e., the craziest most suicidal position on the roster. It was also where Duggan developed his flying tackle finisher. Even the WWF telling us Jim Neidhart quit the L.A. Raiders because it "wasn't rough enough" worked, goofy as it was (plus the Raiders themselves are sort of American sports shorthand for cheating and underhandedness). In the abstract, football and athletic backgrounds are just fine. Hell, when Brian Jordan played baseball for the Dodgers, even Vin Scully would often relate his NFL career to the game at hand. If Scully does it, that makes it okay in my book. That said, Ross did tend to overdo it and many times it was counterproductive, like talking about Stan Hansen's alleged career with the Baltimore Colts. I don't need to be told about how Stan fucking Hansen was a football washout, thanks. As an aside for Lex, thanks to Ross he's the only wrestler whose college GPA I know (3.8).

I'd say the playoff system, which is inherent in all American sports to a degree not seen almost anywhere in soccer, is a much bigger impediment to any one team (or small group of teams) dominating a league year after year. Imagine if the Premier League standings meant nothing except seeding for the FA Cup (okay, and imagine seeding for the FA Cup). One bad leg could knock ManU or Chelsea out of championship consideration, the same way the New York Yankees can buy everybody they can, dominate in the regular season, and then trip up in the first round of the postseason against Detroit.

Dusty was still much higher on the pecking order than Tito (and the WWF roster at this point was just absurdly imbalanced in favor of the babyfaces, and it would get worse before it got better with Boss Man turning and Von Erich arriving). I don't know for a fact but I'm guessing that it was Akeem doing 99% of the jobs in the tag title matches, as he did in the 6-man at SummerSlam. Obviously you're not going to have Dusty going over the BBM on a Survivor Series preview show, but Beefcake was also on that team and he was actually in a higher spot than team captain Rhodes. None of this should be read as a complaint, as this is probably Tito's last major win (trying to block that Jeff Jarrett fiasco from memory) and Lord knows we'd all rather see Tito in that match than Brutus. I still just find the result very odd.

Two mindblowing things about this: Boss Man busting out a frigging Doctor Bomb as a fairly throwaway move, and Santana going over. I mean, Boss Man's time as the #1 heel in the company was over and Santana wasn't quite the JTTS he'd become as El Matador, but that still surprises me that even with Dusty interfering that they'd give Santana a pinfall here, to the point where I wonder if it wasn't a punishment of some sort for the Boss Man. EDIT: Piper name-dropping Truman Capote at the ad break would be a third one.

Punisher was the future Bull Buchanan.

Does Doug Furnas count in either category? He did have a "World's Strongest Man" gimmick in the U.S., after all. Not at Patera or Henry's peak level and not the best worker of his team (the Can-Ams, that is...not Doug & Mike Furnas), but I'd put him comfortably ahead of Scott Steiner and Davey Boy.

Poffo had a gimmick (poetry and Frisbees), a nickname, and did get some house show wins (specifically I remember seeing him win on Prime Time over Jose Estrada and Sika). Even in quick syndie matches he got an offensive flurry that a regular scrub wouldn't get. That's enough for him to definitely be at SD's level, even before the Genius push.

At one point early on in the WM8 hype for the match, it was teased that Hogan vs. Sid would have a guest referee. That idea was quickly dropped. It may not fit this thread because without any actual knowledge of the plans, it would make sense that this guest ref would be the Ultimate Warrior, who returned anyway. Or was someone else in mind for that spot?

They ran through a multitude of guest commentators after Heenan left--Johnny Polo, the Quebecers, Bastion Booger of all people...Shawn was one and seemed to fit the role best, so he stuck around for a bit. Lawler was likely unwilling to miss a MSC show every few weeks. Savage was back on the road going around the horn with Crush, which may have been logistically problematic. With the WWF trying to cut costs on flying people in, which is what led to Heenan's departure, their options may have been pretty limited.

And Lawler was a much more overt heel in Texas than Kerry was in Memphis. Kerry wrestled and acted pretty much the same way he always did--the most over-the-line thing Von Erich did was point out how "in World Class, we don't have no sissy rules like no piledrivers."

Lawler was pretty much always a heel whenever he wrestled outside of Tennessee. In Memphis, Lawler's first face run came in late '74-early '75 after wrestling as a heel to that point. He turned heel again to feud with Tommy Rich--unclear on the details, and in fact his feud with Sam Bass almost reads as a Horsemen vs. NWO quasi-heel vs. heel thing. He would turn babyface after being attacked by Jimmy Valiant in the fall of '77, and would remain that way until turning heel in late '89. After about a year as a heel he turned babyface during a feud with the Snowman, and stayed that way until turning heel again around 1996 to align with King Mabel, which only lasted a few months. Four turns in the span of 20 years isn't too bad--just seems like more because he was pretty much never a babyface anywhere else. (I can only think of a few mid-'80s guest shots in the AWA). Lawler's explanations for his WWF behavior kind-of sort-of made sense as I recall. He was defending the honor of the South against those city slickers in New York and had to use their own tactics against them. Or something.

Or just haul off and slug the referee during the pre-match frisk (not that the WWF was interested in frisks or instructions by that point). One potential way around the loophole is to issue a new rule interpretation: a deliberate attempt to leave the ring area (and there is no question that what Money Inc. was doing was deliberate) would be construed as a submission. Therefore, a title change.

I'm not going to call any of it good but there are some '70s matches when he was still a heel teaming with Haystacks. There's also a face vs. face match from I think '78 or '79, shortly after he turned babyface, against John Elijah. It isn't good but is actually wrestled as a straight match and not a belly-bump routine. As for babyface Daddy against heels, literally the only match where sells a single move is the Wembley Arena match with Haystacks, where he collides with the referee and allows Haystacks to stomp away at him for like 20 seconds before the inevitable comeback. For me, I have to go with Yohe's post at Classics. Daddy was such a putrid, awful, and in my view destructive worker (and yes, as Bix implied, worse than Haystacks) that I could never bring myself to vote for him. I would like the first WOS inductee to be someone who represents the style, and Daddy is not it. Walton could be it. Mick McManus was almost as famous as Daddy, was a better worker, and also has some minor positives for being one of the main Joint Promotions bookers in the '70s. I wouldn't vote for Saint but I can at least see the points in his favor.

Saint's really a much bigger deal with us tape-watchers than he ever was during his in-ring prime. With a few exceptions like Daddy and McManus and Kendo it's hard to see anyone in British wrestling as a "draw" in the traditional sense just because of the nature of the business, but Saint wasn't really a guy who held lots of titles or was positioned as a top player. If you're one to really emphasize ringwork for the HOF then I could see it, but that's really his only case.

Mick McManus has most of Daddy's fame--he wasn't as famous at his peak as Daddy was at his, but he was nonetheless a 100% mainstream celebrity in Great Britain--without the in-ring baggage. Indications are that he was a very strong worker in the style, considering what's available is when he was well past his prime and he's still looking good. Throw in some supposedly big audiences on FA Cup Final Day--I don't know how would one would go about verifying that--and his front-office work in the late '70s and I don't see much of an argument against him. McManus would seemingly satisfy the lack of WOS workers in the Hall without being as divisive as Daddy.

Akira Fukuzawa says hello. I don't speak japanese, and as it is I would rank him pretty much at the top along with Lance. I don't really agree or disagree here, I just find it interesting that Hisa--native Japanese speaker that he is and one of the few guys in the IWC who can understand the announcers at all--absolutely hates Fukuzawa and more or less has dismissed him as a goofball (which he was). I tend to think Ross' peak was late '80s NWA. It may be sample size/selection bias but his screaming act sounded dialed-back in comparison to the UWF days, which were just as abrasive and out-of-control as he would become in the late '90s/early '00s, but without the unintentional hilarity of his angrier, indignant "DAMN HIS SOUL!" moments to make up for it. I'm also going to agree that Crockett, as hideously unpolished as he was, did a better job of getting the angles and wrestlers and even match psychology over in a given match than Schiavone was. Even Schiavone's "Straight to hell..." peak is at best even with Crockett's somber, quiet "The Russian Nightmare...has come true."

I thought there were only 2 regular columnists who were made up: Matt Brock and Liz Hunter. 2.5 if you count Dan Shocket, who was a real person but who may or may not have just had his name used by Bill Apter. Then you had the guys who were perpetually name-dropped like "WWF expert" Thomas Pillard and wrestling psychologist Sidney M. Basil. Heel columnist Eddie Ellner is definitely real. I'm pretty sure his replacement Brandi Mankiewicz is as well (even though she was supposedly Matt Brock's niece). Other people who were definitely real: Bill Apter, Dave Rosenbaum, Chris Bernucca, Stu Saks, Craig Peters, and Bob Smith. They seemed to have a full staff for one magazine, but they were putting out 6 or 7 a month even into the mid-'90s.

Again: Whiplash. You don't need to hit your head to suffer a concussion. A concussion is when your brain slams into your skull. Interesting in watching the '80s NJPW set how less concussive Dynamite Kid was in doing his headbutts--he almost always landed knees-first. Granted, that ended up not doing a whole lot for his knees, but it does seem there's a "safer" way of doing the move.

There's a bigger chuckle in the Comments as Scott tries to explain that he really meant the entire Rosemont crowd would be scoreboard-watching instead of paying attention to the matches.

You're thinking of Toyonobori, the guy that Beyer wrestled and carried to a 60-minute draw. He was a yokozuna who the JWA had in mind as the heir apparent to Rikidozan. Michiaki Yoshimura was sort of the Jumbo to Rikidozan's Baba. There's only a little bit of him on film but he looked like a good worker, as an underdog babyface type.

According to Dave, Bret's real source of anger was something in Oliver's mostly-raving review of his autobiography.

Akira Maeda, in his second New Japan run, was pinned exactly one time. By a rookie Bam Bam Bigelow. If jdw or someone would care to explain the story behind that one to me, I'd love to hear it, because I find it totally bizarre. I get that they were building Bam Bam up to be a top gaijin monster, but a.) how'd they get Maeda to go along with it, and b.) why do you book your Monster Heel to win on a flash-pin small package?

There was a Michaels/Lothario vs. Vader/Cornette match on Raw a little after SummerSlam '96 that ended with Michaels eating a Vaderbomb for the pin. I was almost positive it was a clean loss, but maybe I'm misremembering. Another competition-on-the-same-show card: the Don Owen 60th Anniversary Show on 5/21/85. Roddy Piper worked the show against Buddy Rose without permission from Vince, and it featured both Rick Martel and Ric Flair defending their World titles.

It may not quite count, but I'm about 99% sure Vader did a run-in for the USWA as part of his "Roadkill Tour" building to his challenge to Hulk Hogan (where Vader would do run-ins at various indy cards and beat the crap out of two guys having a match), at a card where there was WWF talent working. On a similar note, how many All-Japan vs. New Japan matches were there in the pre-NOAH era when that thing was a big deal? You have the two interpromotional cards--the Tokyo Sports one from the late '70s and the 1990 Dome show. I'm also talking about things like Terry Funk vs. Hulk Hogan in South Africa where a mini-scandal erupted over Funk doing the job. You could also count the Steiners vs. MVC. Jushin Liger and Dr. Death were on opposite sides of a Lethal Lottery tag match.

There may have been a few clips, but since most of the matches ran 2 minutes or less it wasn't an issue. I wouldn't call the show a holy grail or anything but it was the "first" wrestling PPV, so it's significant for that fact alone--and as far as I know the complete PPV version had never been available.