PeteF3

It's not? He main-evented multiple PPVs and was part of one of the biggest merch-selling acts of the era in the Shield.

Strobogo actually let Triple H off easy: HHH said straight-up that he hadn't read the lawsuit yet. Just an absolutely staggeringly bad answer that made him come off as flippant and indifferent. Of course I'm not expecting HHH to throw himself at the mercy of the Lord or say, "Yeah, my father-in-law's a real shitbag," but I'm just absolutely gobsmacked that we didn't get a, "I cannot comment on an ongoing legal matter and that will be my last word on the subject."

Y'all are being naive if you think Linda gives a shit about this in the abstract. She'll care if still being married (in name only) to Vince hurts her political career more than divorcing would.

Vince accused of sex trafficking. Interesting timing of this article considering what happened earlier this week. It sure seems like somebody wants Vince *gone* gone. This reddit thread has the article for people not subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. Some absolutely vile stuff there.

The hits keep on coming. Farewell to one of the great "big match" workers of all-time.

Haiti has its own issues--French-speaking and generally the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Some Florida indy guys along with some WWE releases like Cryme Tyme ran some there in the late 2010s, and according to Matt Farmer when I asked him about any Haitian scene years ago, there was a big stadium match in the '50s between Ilio DiPaolo and Haitian boxer Omelio Agramonte, who apparently ran a small local promotion. That said, I would imagine once Papa Doc was in power, the local wrestling went away.

I don't get the geographic argument, either, considering Mexico's closer to the mainland U.S. than it is to Puerto Rico. Before we even get into the proximity of say, Germany to France. It's not exactly culturally homogeneous between Mexico and Puerto Rico, either. Go through San Juan on November 1 and I don't know how much Dia de los Muertos celebration you're going to see.

There's a not-inconceivable argument that VKM was, too. There are "connections" between American and British wrestling, of course. Whether direct crossover or through Japan. Same with lucha and Puerto Rico. Doesn't mean they're not distinct.

Why would Puerto Rico be lumped in with lucha? Lucha and Argentina-type wrestling aren't really all that similar, either.

In Memphis, titles actually did change on countouts--this is why Lawler thought he should have won the NWA World title in his famous TV studio angle and match with Flair. I have to admit, titles not changing on countouts has never really made sense to me. With a DQ I get the idea that a title should only change "objectively" and not the result of a referee's decision, but a countout (especially in the kayfabe days) doesn't really fit that description. Don't get me started on the WWWF not doing title changes on blood/injury stoppages.

I think Jim Cornette has said that he finally came out in the black on the Smoky Mountain venture by selling tapes to various countries probably similar to the ones who got old WOS kinescopes. I like Smoky Mountain (well, the first 3 years at least) but I don't think WOS' penetration in Tanzania or wherever is much more significant than Smoky's.

The English equivalent is also about the size of just the state of Alabama. Or about the size of Jarrett's territory. You are aware that there are gigantic geographical and population differences between 1 country in Europe and 1 country that's about the size of the whole continent, right? This is like arguing with people (mostly Americans) who wonder why our sports leagues can't have promotion and relegation like the cool, exotic foreign leagues do. Because London and Greater Manchester have like 6 teams apiece in the Premiere League and things aren't going to be thrown into upheaval on multiple levels if one of them gets relegated the way it would if a New York team got relegated and replaced by one from Tucson.

I question how many American stations were actually low-power, low-level stations airing territorial wrestling. WMC in Memphis was/is an NBC affiliate (and co-hosted by one of the most popular news personalities in the city in Dave Brown). WRAL in Raleigh was with ABC at the time. As was KTBS-Shreveport. WWOR was an independent "superstation" a la WTBS back when independent local TV stations had way more prominence than they did with the rise of cable and FCC deregulation. KTVT-Ft. Worth and KXTX-Dallas were lower-level independent stations in the Metroplex, but I'm not seeing a great pattern at first glance. (Full disclosure and sorry if I'm overexplaining: for the territorial era there were three major national over-the-air networks--ABC, NBC, and CBS. Plus most markets had at least one if not more independent stations that aired local programming, syndicated programs both first-run and reruns, local sports, etc. FOX launched as a fourth network in 1986 but was a distant, less-respected fourth place with a few buzzworthy shows, namely The Simpsons, In Living Color, and Married with Children, until ol' Rupert landed rights to the NFL in 1994, which changed a lot of things. Cable channels as we think of them now started launching in limited markets in the early-to-mid '70s and expanded throughout the '80s and '90s, I would assume at a greater clip than almost any other country except maybe Canada. Even in tech-advanced places like Japan, cable never really took off at all even by the 2000s. FCC de-regulation in the early '80s led to among other things the demise of the rule limiting advertising on networks to 10 minutes per hour--this led to the rise of the infomercial and combined with cable led to the demise of a lot of non-news local programming, including wrestling since networks could make more selling entire blocks of TV time instead of commercial breaks during a show.)

Belts were and are a means to an end--the end being getting paid. Robinson had about 753 shots at Verne Gagne and Nick Bockwinkel and Dory Funk among other champions of varying prestige and aside from maybe a little subterfuge with Inoki, played ball for all of them. And when Inoki stiffed him (at least in Billy's mind) on pay after that match, he jumped to All-Japan and promptly did a clean-as-a-sheet job to Giant Baba just to stick it to him. So, yeah, he definitely had a spiteful streak in him.

All accounts are that the Robinson-Gouldie match was supposed to be a disputed decision with each person getting a shot at Funk as a result. The dispute seemed to be over Gouldie getting the bigger-money spot against Funk during Stampede Week. Robinson was motivated by money, not being a belt mark. As he replied at a wrestling convention in the mid-'00s to someone who asked why he never held the AWA Title, "I got paid enough without being the champion."

The Wrestler magazine in the '60s certainly gave it coverage and held Dory Funk, Jr. in plenty of regard. It wasn't a breathless recap of every last title defense but readers of the magazine certainly would have known who he was and of his status as "World" Champion and somebody that multiple Britain-based wrestlers named as a dream opponent. And Wayne Bridges' son Dean Brisco may or may not have taken his ring name from Jack.

He was in Memphis full-time in 1980, filling a void left by Jerry Lawler who missed essentially the entire year with a broken leg. He also had a full-time run in Tri-State in the late '70s, which was an even sleepier territory with brutal road trips to boot (and which would not explode as a big-money promotion until Watts split off and hit it big with the JYD-Michael Hayes feud). Robinson's one-off UK return against Lee Bronson and Pat Roach in 1976 can almost assuredly be chalked up to being a tax write-off--work a match or two and that trip home to visit family or renew a visa or whatever he was doing is suddenly a business expense.

I didn't just ask for (North) American names. I asked for guys who were already established stars at or near their prime, not guys who hadn't yet made it or guys who were on the downswing. Don Leo Jonathan didn't work anywhere that was recorded after his match with Wanz in 1980. Arion was done after his run in Joint. Jim Harris was a relative nobody until Jerry Lawler got the perfect gimmick for him. John Quinn was on the downswing of his career and was a lesser challenger for Bruno even at his peak. Duncum kicked around into 1984 but had peaked with his run against Sammartino and was mostly washed up. Like I said, Slaughter was a prominent name who was in the middle of or about to have the run of his career (or one of them) in Mid-Atlantic. He doesn't compare to most of the other names that have been listed. I'm not trying to knock the guys listed--I like all of them to some degree, before and after their primes. But I stand by my statement that if there was movement between North America and Europe between prominent stars at their peak, it was mostly one way.

Slaughter was already established and a good get for Wanz, and Andre goes without saying even if strictly speaking he was on the downslope of his career. Ed Wiskowski and Ed Leslie pretty much prove my point. They were relative nobodies when they were working in Germany. All of those '90s guys were the "guys on the way down" I was talking about, with the possible exception of Gilbert, but he was also a guy with a very low ceiling in a national U.S. promotion as compared to a regional one. Germany also became a lot more attractive with the decline of most U.S. territories whether or not the pay scale ever changed (I have no idea if it did).

Two. Puerto Rico is limping along but still around.

Japan was full of shooters, too. And a farther trip with a bigger language and cultural barrier than even Germany. It was still worth their while for Americans to go. And how many prominent American names were really working for the CWA or the other German promoters? Edmund Schober had NWA membership in the late '70s, but the guys he and/or Wanz were booking were folks like an 18-year-old Michael Seitz (not yet Hayes), a pre-stardom Big Daddy Ritter/Junkyard Dog, and Pez Whatley. Some bigger names went over like Afa and Sika, the Destroyer, Mil Mascaras for a tour or two, and most prominently Nick Bockwinkel. But most guys going to Austria/Germany were either guys on the way up or guys on the way down (especially in the '90s).

That's sort of like denying that football money is better in England than many other countries and pointing to Hartlepool United as proof. Most of the American big names were also big names in Japan, so that spreads the reach quite a bit. (Of course, guys like Robinson and Horst Hoffmann were big, to varying degrees, in Japan as well. But you also had prominent guys like Albert Wall who went to Japan and didn't get over.) You saw more prominent heavyweights in Europe moving to the U.S. than vice versa. I don't know what immigration laws in 1970s and '80s UK were like as compared to the US so it may not just be as simple as money, but the direction was mostly one way.

This is mostly going to go over the heads of everyone else in this thread but this reminds me of the myriad articles in actual newspapers talking about Vader playing football in Super Bowl 14 for the L.A. Rams. This was repeated in *lots* of places because it was obviously one of Leon's own talking points when talking to reporters and this was before the days of sites like pro-football-reference where that could easily be verified. Vader was drafted by Los Angeles in 1978 but was placed on the injured list before the season started and never played a game, and wasn't on the active roster for the Super Bowl game (also published in numerous papers that Sunday). Of course, the NFL is bigger than French wrestling, possibly even at French catch's peak, so there's more out there to rebut such a claim, so it's not in his Wikipedia article while a specific passage talking about him never playing a game and amassing no statistics is. But that's what came to mind reading about ol' Flesh.

The non-West Coast WrestleManias from 1-10 were all in the afternoon (Eastern Time). Some of the early Rumbles were afternoon shows as well. It wasn't until 1995 that the WWF standardized every PPV as being on Sunday night.

It was a silent movie, as Toni explicitly explained to us. It was something to show during commercials.