KrisZ

I'm willing to bet most of those fans are from the UK

Dave needs to expand his voting base in certain areas like Mexico & Japan.

Yeah I would normally agree with that but Rock is a huge UFC guy and goes to all the big shows so this isn't some guy doing the rounds.

Albano was the mouthpiece for almost all of his wrestlers because they weren't good promos, I got a lot of WWF TV from 1979-81 especially and he was a heatseeker at those tapings more than Blassie or the Wiz.

How delusional is Rock, wrestling made him what he is today because he was protected and was made a star by WWE.

Dave wouldn't rate Blassie that high. He would have Jimmy Hart in his place. The "carried the heel side" doesn't sound right. Someone should track who was the manager of each heel that main evented MSG in the "Albano Era" - i.e. the person who was opposite the Champ and/or the Heel Champs. I don't think Lou come out on top. John This is who managed who in the main events at MSG from 1970-84. Albano dominated from 1970-72 as he managed just about every main event heel until Stasiak. Albano = Crusher Verdu, Mongols, Bulldog Brower, Ivan Koloff, Blackjack Mulligan, Tarzan Tyler, Luke Graham, Toru Tanaka, Freddie Blassie, Baron Mikel Scicluna, King Curtis Iaukea, George Steele, The Spoiler, Mr. Fuji, Moondog Mayne, Nikolai Volkoff, Valiants, Bobby Duncum, Bugsy McGraw, Ken Patera, Yukon Lumberjacks, Wild Samoans, Jimmy Snuka, Magnificent Muraco, Greg Valentine Wizard = Stan Stasiak, Pampero Firpo, Ernie Ladd, Don Leo Jonathan, Killer Kowalski, John Tolos, Superstar Billy Graham, Stan Hansen, Ken Patera, Greg Valentine, Pat Patterson, Sgt. Slaughter, Magnificent Muraco, Bob Orton Jr., Buddy Rose, Masked Superstar Blassie = Spiros Arion, Waldo Von Erich, Bruiser Brody, Baron Von Raschke, Peter Maivia, Iron Sheik, Swede Hanson, Killer Khan, Adrian Adonis, Jesse Ventura, Big John Studd

I like how he used Chris Benoit as an example for the age/active wrestler thing to be addressed but I think Kurt Angle is as big of an example for it personally. Him getting in when he did was totally ridiculous and everyone should know that by now.

I think that Dave knew that Jericho was pretty much a lock anyway so he had that one ready to roll.

It was disappointing anyway since the inductees are Jericho, Misterio, & Wladek Zbyszko. 3 bios being a lot for Dave to write is something else these days.

I wonder how much it heart Dave's heart to bury the Chael Sonnen story so low in the WON

Or they took some cash from Dana

He talked about how great it was the other day on WON Radio saying that Sonnen was awesome and how his promos brought a lot more buys than expected.

Meltz hasn't reported this has he

Yeah I got all the Classics to start off with then the TV afterwards and yeah the 6/5/89 match is the famous match but the 9/2/89 rematch is just as strong if not stronger. Regarding the supporting cast, in the early part of the decade on the heavyweight scene it was guys like Takashi Ishikawa who was fun and then guys like Rocky Hata & Motoshi Okuma who were the designated job guys in random tags then the later part of the decade it morphed into Shunji Takano, Shinichi Nakano, Hiroshi Wajima, & Isao Takagi as the whipping boys. The booking philosophy between New Japan & All-Japan was so different as well mainly because in All-Japan you had Dory Funk Jr. as the booker and looking at the early 80's it was very Americanized in that there was lots of blood with the heavy emphasis of gaijins being perceived as the stars along with Baba & Jumbo. Tenryu didn't really break through until 1983 when he got the nod as Jumbo's tag partner so you look at the first four years you had Baba & Jumbo as the top natives period with space between the rest but the gaijin were heavily spotlighted. Guys like Hansen, Brody, Race, Bockwinkel, Abby, Tiger Jeet, & The Sheik were the top guys until Tenryu moved up in 1983 and Choshu's Army came in in 1985. New Japan was doing the same featuring gaijin but it wasn't as heavy on top as they brought in the IWE guys with Inoki feuding with Rusher then transferring over to Choshu's Army after the turn in 1982 so their main events were predominantly Japanese starting then. Andre & Hogan were about the only gaijin that was perceived as big of a star to main event with the Japanese after that at least on the heavyweight level.

What's going to be fun to see is to see how everyone ranks the Can-Ams/Footloose series as the Can-Ams/Kikuchi & Kobashi match has been pimped forever but the Footloose series was pretty damn great in its own right but doesn't get talked about too much over the recent years. Regarding All-Japan and the natives, the only real natives that got pushed in that time was Baba, Jumbo, Tenryu, & Choshu then you had the guys right below them in Hamaguchi, Yatsu, & Hara so there probably won't be that breakout native star that we had in New Japan since they had so many natives feuding with each other rather than AJ who was gaijin heavy.

Yeah I got where you were going and I think he will end up being the Fujiwara of this set although Tenryu did have a higher profile going in than Fujiwara did.

Tenryu may be my favorite wrestler on the set right now especially after the turn. Him & Hara as a team was phenomenal and the Jumbo feud in general was my favorite feud on the set but I've loved Tenryu for 20 years.

I'm curious about who you talking about in the All-Japan set.

Oh yeah he was the first of the wrestlers to really embrace Dave with guys like Gilbert & Pillman following in his footsteps. What was funny though was when Brody was booking World Class in their darkest year of 1987, he never blamed Brody for the product sucking it was always something else.

Yeah Dave definitely has loved Brody from day one but he has had Larry co-sign for him on radio shows over the years and yes if you go to Wrestling Classics or the F4W boards and bring the Brody criticism you will get some anger for sure. And it's not saying that Brody wasn't good its just that he wasn't as great as he was ordained to be in these matches.

We are currently working on the All-Japan set and the Sayama of that set is definitely Bruiser Brody. Brody & Hansen as well although more Brody really drag down matches by being complete no selling assholes when they wanted to and making established guys look bad like Dory who they would make look like a complete jobber at times. Brody would sell for Baba of course since he was the boss and occasionally for others when in the right mood but more often than not it was him beating guys up and giving nothing in return. The best opponent for Brody & Hansen was Terry Funk because Terry was so awesome at taking punishment and selling that it actually didn't really bother you as much if he got his ass kicked because he was so awesome while in the same match Dory was made to look like Rocky King. Dave has been preaching the greatness of Brody for years as being the greatest brawler of his era or near that level but it's Hansen who was the best brawler of that team as he was more well-rounded than Brody was but he doesn't have a Larry Matsyzik championing his cause to Dave constantly like Brody did.

I think personally Cena should use the fact of Legendary not doing good at the box office as the motivation for his heel turn. He could do this whole thing about how no one wants to take him seriously as an actor just an action star.

I'm shocked that the original Tiger Mask didn't make it on here. The TV match with Masa Saito should've definitely been on it.

Floyd Jr. got a guaranteed 22.5 mill for his fight with Shane Mosley and ended up getting close to 30 mill all together. Mosley ended up getting close to 10 mill and HBO got 78.4 mill in revenue off the fight and a 1.4 PPV buyrate. That's a whole other league than UFC.

Boxers get paid well better than UFC fighters that's a fact. Boxing is far from dead it just doesn't have the top heavyweight draws right now.