PeteF3

Zeus would have to qualify. Mid-South pushing The Nightmare to the North American title. The Midnight Express-Tully/Arn feud. Historically, the all-time biggest might be Wayne Munn. He was a Nebraska football star who got pushed to the world title in 1925 despite a lack of any real ability, and promptly got double-crossed and beaten by Stanislaus Zbyszko.

Fan safety concerns, probably. Even though it came five years after this, you can clearly see a girl getting hurt at the '93 KOTR when Bigelow gets rammed into the guardrail in the finals match.

In one of the Cornette/Heenan shoots Cornette talks about using--I believe--engine starter fluid with the can covered with tape. Then folding the cloth so the sprayed side was on the inside. One night Tommy Rogers got the wrong side of the cloth. With him puking up and laying in the back exit door for fresh air, concerned/enraged fans got to see Cornette and the Midnights stepping over his carcass trying to leave, which just endeared them to those psychos even more.

Projects & Lists for me, too. PM'd you. -- Loss, 01/09

Loss did lucha, let me try to tackle England (though the '70s were a much stronger decade, IMO): - Dynamite Kid vs. Mark Rocco (aired 3/5/83) - Sammy Lee vs. Mark Rocco (3/31/81) - Fuji Yamada vs. Mark Rocco (World Mid-Heavyweight Title, 4/24/87) (I'm detecting a pattern here...) - Johnny Saint vs. Robbie Brookside (4/24/87) - Fit Finlay vs. Marty Jones (4/14/84) - Clive Myers vs. Keith Hayward (12/82)

IIRC, the Crush Gals and Bull/Dump were brought in after AJW's popularity explosion landed them a story in the Wall Street Journal. The Crush Gals definitely had a house show match or two that made Prime Time.

That's the first time in about 5-and-a-half months that I've seen anybody classify the Fragile X story as being plausible, much less a probability as Muchnick apparently believes.

Well, this is probably a month or two old, but since I don't get 24/7 and have to rely on Youtube... Is Corporal Kirschner the lost worker of the '80s? His 5/86 MSG match with Nikolai Volkoff is stunningly good--best Volkoff match I've ever seen. It's not a legendary lost classic but it's better than some of the matches that made the DVDVR '80s set. Plus he pulled off that rising-from-the-dead trick a year or so ago.

According to Baby Doll, they were going to week-by-week reveal the image of Dusty in bed with a black woman. Is that better or worse than the proposed angle where Baby Doll gets raped by Big Bubba?

OK, fine on Myers, but at least wait for one Myers/Finlay to show up. Wasn't TWC supposed to end repeats two months ago? Kennedy is bland and his offense consists of nothing but punches and stomps, but he makes up for it with (speaking of e-wrestling) an absurd finisher that takes 47 minutes to set up. I'm not a Moves Mark per se but if you're going to punch and stomp your way through a match, you have to be...well, being Murdoch might be asking too much, so let's say at least Karl Kox. Take him off the juice and with that bleach-blond hairdo he's indistinguishable from your average southern territorial mid-carder/tag wrestler. Who's better, Kennedy or Carlito? Carlito's probably less overrated in that he's never to my knowledge been seen as a future main eventer. Sadly I don't think I've ever seen a single Fuyuki match--there's that kind of "dead zone" period between where AJPW Classics more or less stops covering things and where the season sets crop up. Wouldn't you know it, that's the time of Footloose's peak. Even Ditch only has the match where Misawa unmasks. And I don't have any FMW.

Nelson Frazier: Mostly agreed, but he had a big, BIG problem in his MOM days with injuring people--most notably the Undertaker's cracked orbital bone. Combine that clumsiness with a silly gimmick and a main event push that he was given well before he was ready for it and that pretty much killed him as anything other than a freak show. A very good freak show when on, but that's it. All of his offense--especially his belly-to-belly suplex--has always looked positively devastating. Clive Myers: It completely sucks that this guy never toured Japan because he absolutely could have torn the house down with either Tiger Mask or the UWF folks. Fabulous mat worker and bumper who also brought the HIGH-END OFFENSE~ by WOS standards. Myers is on my short list of guys to comp after I finish Mark Rocco. Speaking of things completely sucking, Myers had three televised matches in the mid-'80s against Fit Finlay and I can't find any of them listed in any TWC listings. Tito Santana: Maybe the biggest revelation of the DVDVR WWF '80s Project--the Orndorff match made my top 10 as I recall, and Strike Force/Islanders was another shocker. Great, GREAT seller who knew how to lay out a match even without a boatload of offense or even brilliant technical skill. Tito gets knocked for not having charisma but it's not something I buy--he most definitely was capable of getting the "fiery Latin" image across in a big way. Oh, and he was a hell of an underrated brawler. That said, is there anything from about 1991 on that's worth checking out? As Tito dropped down the cards the quality matches seemed to vanish, though I haven't seen Tito/Flair from London or the supposed Best Match in AWF History between Tito and Chris Adams. The Barbarian: I pimped that Boss Man match in the Match Discussion forum awhile back--just checked out the review and it still holds up. Had a really underrated WM6 bout with the aforementioned Santana. Still, while it wasn't all his fault, I never bought Watts' attempts to make him a main eventer.

I'm about 99% sure it's not Michael "Moneyball/Liar's Poker" Lewis.

To say that there hasn't been a difference in baseball's steroid policy in the wake of its Congressional hearings is to say that you haven't been paying attention. It took forever and a day for MLB and the Union to agree on an initial testing policy that was universally regarded as a joke--no suspensions until the second or third failed test, anonymous results before then, etc. Bud Selig's post-hearing proposal of 50 games/100 games/lifetime-banishment was hammered out in negotiations that were about as long and contentious as a trip through the Wendy's drive-thru.

Good point...though that's starting to sound like a more effective and secretive way of doing things than doing it online.

Is Sydal a possibility? Or was he already hired and thus doesn't count?

Tiger Jeet Singh and Dennis Stamp!??!? Singh also formed a one-shot tag team with British ultrababyface Steve Veidor in New Japan around this time. Greatest thrown-together gaijin team ever, topping Abdullah Tamba & Mile Zrno and Hulk Hogan & Jimmy Garvin.

Low-Key Crockett was the best...you KNEW serious shit had gone down when David freaking Crockett can barely bring himself to speak. "The Nightmare has come true, for all of us" being the pre-eminent example, after Nikita won Match #7 to win the U.S. championship. You'd swear Nikita had just shot Ronald Reagan in cold blood. Fuck it. Crockett >>> Schiavone, and not just Nitro-era Schiavone, I mean back then.

Well, even if nothing changes on the WWE side of things, some good can come out of printing and saving those comments on Kennedy's blog: anyone who accidentally swallows poison can read them to induce vomiting. And yes, I got the Ban Hammer as well. I'd love to know what TOS we actually violated.

Making my way through the new IWE box set (1974-81). Only seen a little bit and some of the matches are just hacked to death (Mighty Inoue/Mad Dog Vachon is just the last 5 minutes of a 2/3 fall title change), but the big one of this set is Verne Gagne vs. Billy Robinson in a complete, 40-minute TV match for the AWA title in late '74. Really, really good--not as good as Robinson's matches with Inoki and Baba, but really good. Verne is of course physically past it but is clearly one of the *smartest* workers of the '70s, if clearly not the best. Subtle heeling on his part, with clenched fists and goading Robinson into losing his cool and making a mistake, the psychology surrounding the sleeper hold...all makes up for a very satisfying '70s mat-based match. The only two main drawbacks: 1.) The double-KO finish is less than satisfying...though they still build to that very well with two false finishes just before it: a near-double-countout where both guys get back in at 9.9 and another double-KO after a Verne back suplex, where Robinson recovers at the last second enough to land a hot near-fall. All 3 of those moments had the crowd thinking it was over. 2.) We get entirely too familiar with Gagne's rear end. Robinson yanks him off the apron by the trunks and goes a bit overboard... The IWE sets are well worth picking up, at least if you're into '70s stuff. They're not going to be filled with all-time classics the way an AJPW/NJPW set would be, but they provide several very good matches (Gagne/Robinson, and Kobayashi/Kimura and Kimura/Mulligan from the first set) as well as interesting glimpses of Red Bastien, Bill Watts, and others in longish singles bouts. And all in master quality.

Both, if you could. Thanks. PM'd you. -- Loss, 03/31

IWE Heavyweight Title: Strong Kobayashi © vs. Rusher Kimura (7/9/72) This came off the first IWE Box Set, which covered 1969-74. A match listing that catches one's eye--not because it's a dream match-up of two brilliant workers, but it's a native -vs.-native title match in 1972, a full two years before the Inoki-Kobayashi showdowns that were supposedly the first big native-native matches since Rikidozan-Kimura. Perhaps the IWE had less of a choice in these matters, being a 3rd promotion with a skeleton crew of a roster. I watched this more for the historical value than anything else, but I was very pleasantly surprised by Strong's work. He is "the man" of IWE fending off the challenge of the #2 native in the company, rather than an outsider serving as the victim of an extended squash match against Inoki. Kobayashi takes Kimura apart on the mat to start with some neat takedowns and holds, particularly a crucifix arm-and-neck bar with Strong working it to the hilt: pulling back on Rusher's other arm, rubbing his face in the mat with his legs, and raining legdrops down on the back of his head. Unfortunately, Kimura never could do much on the mat and here he can't do much more than lie there while Kobayashi does the bulk of the work. Kimura does bring a bit of his fire and striking to the end of the fall, heeling it up with punches and an eye gouge before putting Strong away with a double arm suplex. (10:22 shown; there appeared to be a clip in the early stages.) Down a fall with his title on the line, Strong wastes no time kicking Rusher's face in to start the second. A swinging neckbreaker, a front facelock, and a delayed vertical suplex later and it's quickly tied up at 2:11. Rusher appeared to get his shoulder up but the referee counted three regardless. The third fall is little more than both guys trading bombs back and forth. The psychology of the first fall--Strong controlling things on the mat and Rusher gaining advantage through fighting and strikes--falls by the wayside. However, these two bring a whole lot of offense for a match in 1972: a few different suplexes and some big elbowdrops from Strong and a piledriver from Rusher. Rusher is able to kick out of the suplex that put him away in the second fall, then manages to counter Strong's atomic drop (his finisher) with the All-Japan "push off the ropes" spot, but whiffs on a big splash attempt and is put away with a back suplex (with the ref horribly botching the count), as Strong retains the title at 4:26. This obviously lacked the historical impact of Strong-Inoki, as well as that match's red-hot crowd. But these two did a nice job of raising the crowd's intensity as they moved from matwork to throwing big moves at each other as the falls went on, making for a much more satisfying match. It's not an all-time classic and I'm not going to go about pushing Strong Kobayashi as the Great Lost Worker of the '70s, but he looked very good carrying a match here, maybe as a result of greater motivation in being the ace of a company rather than New Japan's #3 native. Worth a look.

The Big Boss Man vs. The Barbarian ('91 Royal Rumble) I knew I'd seen a good match when I first/last saw this 15+ years ago and certain folks on the 'net have praised it since, so I was almost hesitant to watch it again off the Rumble box set in case it didn't live up to memories. Luckily for me, it did. Most of it due to the Boss Man, as he moves and bumps around like a freak. Barbie pulls his weight, as he had the strength to throw around the Boss Man with a few nice moves (slamming him backfirst into the post, and a nice backbreaker in addition to his flying clothesline), but it's the Boss Man's show here. The LONG finishing sequence is not something you normally see in the WWF, especially at this time, but it starts with Boss Man landing a hotshot and the Barbarian getting a hand on the ropes at the last second--with the crowd *sure* that that was ending the match. Boss Man has to use the ropes himself to escape a pin after the Barbarian hits his clothesline off the top. Boss Man quickly comes back to hit the Boss Man Slam, leading to the markout moment of the match, as a WWF heel actually escapes a face's finisher when Barbarian literally gets one fingertip on the bottom rope to break the count. A great, great near-fall, at least by the standards of 1991 WWF... The finish is fine for what it is but is still my one quibble with the match. This was part of the Boss Man's feud with the Heenan Family and his quest to go through each member, one by one. As what is essentially a feud match (even if the real issue was between Boss Man and Heenan with Barbarian only tangentially involved), it seemed less than satisfying for the Boss Man to win with a roll-through on a top rope body press. Especially since the Barbarian wasn't really going anywhere while Boss Man was headed for an IC title match at WrestleMania. Flukiness aside, it was a clean victory, Heenan high-tailed it out of there to stall the ultimate payoff, and this was a surprisingly hot, exciting match in front of an amped crowd.