Cox

Conrad doesn’t break through any of Bruce’s bullshit. He is basically a smart mark/Meltzer strawman that exists for Bruce to knock down so that smart fans can claim that he asks Bruce the tough questions while Bruce runs roughshod over him. I’m starting to tire of the format to be honest. He’s finally going to get the podcast he thought he was getting when he got Tony to start doing these but between tiring of the format and Bischoff being an even more smug version of Bruce, I can’t imagine a podcast I’d want to listen to less that doesn’t feature Vince Russo.

I wonder if Conrad was just the wrong host for this podcast. Tony Schiavone is not Bruce Prichard. They both worked in production, but Bruce went on to work with talent and in creative, whereas Tony mostly stayed with television for his career. Thus, they are going to have drastically different experiences within pro wrestling. Plus, for Tony, this was largely just a job, whereas for Bruce, it was a lifestyle. I'm sure Tony has some fondness for the old Crockett territory and the wrestlers associated with them, and probably has some good stories about the dysfunction within WCW during the Nitro era, but he didn't live and breathe wrestling the way Bruce did (and this is not a knock, if anything treating wrestling like a job probably preserved Tony's sanity when things went sideways, which in WCW was usually "always"). A show that focused on that stuff may not be as popular as what they do on Bruce's show, but it still could have been an enjoyable, easy hour or so podcast a week, but Conrad trying to shoehorn Tony in as being the Bruce of WCW, when that wasn't what he was, and then getting frustrated when Tony wasn't the Bruce of WCW, didn't make a lot of sense to me. So good on Tony. He went in, made a few bucks to help pay for his daughter's wedding, and when they exhausted the content for the show right before baseball season kicks back into gear, he got out. Hopefully he won't be a stranger to the wrestling scene moving forward, but even if he is, I'm glad his show existed, even if I rarely listened.

One of the interesting things that I took away from the Royal Rumble 1988 episode was how much of an after thought the actual Rumble itself was. The primary motivations of this show were first, to harm the Bunkhouse Stampede PPV, and second, to hype Hogan/Andre II on The Main Event two weeks later. They thought so little of the actual Rumble match itself that they didn't even bother to cancel the other house show that night (a B-show in Nova Scotia, no less) so they could load the match with more names. Pat Patterson came up with the idea, and Dick Ebersol saw the potential in it, but it didn't seem like Vince really got it. Then the show did a huge rating even with the Crockett PPV at the same time and only then did Vince seem to understand that he had a pretty cool concept that could make them some money.

I was blocked by the Young Bucks this week for tweeting (not at them, mind you, because I don't follow them and generally try to avoid being a dick on Twitter unless absolutely necessary) that I didn't think they were as good as the Midnight Express, whom I consider to be the greatest tag team of all time. Which is fine. Like I said, I don't follow them and I rarely saw anything retweeted into my feed that made me think that I needed to follow them. I just thought it was funny that they found my tweet from vanity searching and felt the need to block me for essentially saying that I did not believe them to be the greatest tag team of all time, especially since I actually like them, just not at the level of their most ardent fans.

I have enjoyed some of their matches, and respect the hell out of their hustle and finding ways to make money in an environment that is often not conductive to making money for talent. But for me, there are other teams from the past few years I'd rather ahead of them (Revival, Usos, DIY, The Bar, just to name a few) and I certainly would not put them on the level of all time great working and drawing tag teams like the Midnight Express, Rock 'n' Roll Express, etc. The 2019 (or 2022, depending on when Dave lists their debut) WON Hall of Fame ballot is going to be potentially the biggest bloodbath in the history of those awards (and think of the ground that covers) when they go on the ballot. The folks who think they should be in will be very vocal and loud in believing they should be in, and the folks who don't think they should be in will be very vocal and loud in believing they should not be in. We'll get a preview of that next year when Kenny Omega goes on the ballot but the real bloodbath will be the Bucks. I might have to stop following wrestling on the internet by that point for my own sanity.

He wasn't wrong. I think sometimes these shows get lost in the weeds. Do people really care about who guys are working with on the house shows? More often than not, there are two reasons why a guy would be working with somebody on a house show: because he's in a program with that guy, or because there are two guys without a program who need somebody to work with to fill shows. There's some areas I think are absolutely worth getting lost into the weeds over, but house show programs are not one of them.

Can we start a movement to get Regal added to the WON Hall of Fame ballot? I think he may have more of a case than people think. I see things like the tweets linked below from Chris Harrington, and how high he placed on the PWO GWE Project, and then add that I think he's been very influential in WWE developmental the past 5 years, and I think he deserves to have his case heard. I think it's very likely he'll be one and done, but I think there's a case here, even if he never got a main event run anywhere (which obviously is not a disqualifier with guys like Ultimo Dragon already in). https://twitter.com/mookieghana/status/938915552831078400 https://twitter.com/mookieghana/status/938915828904398848 https://twitter.com/mookieghana/status/938916900805005312

I'd love to know how the breakdown of how many people are voting in each of the four "buckets" that Dave uses (Reporters, Historians, Former Wrestlers, Current Wrestlers) that Dave places voters. My guess is that far more people are voting in the Reporters and Historians categories than the two wrestler categories, so I wonder if having "Hall of Fame support" in, say, the Current Wrestlers category is essentially meaningless, because not enough current wrestlers are voting, whereas having HOF support in the Reporters category is very important, as the top three vote-getters in the Reporters category all made it in (Styles placed 7th in the Current Wrestlers category, the highest any inductee fared).

One thing I noticed while looking through the results is that Edge appears to be finally getting some momentum for the HOF after years of Dave stumping for him. He improved his overall percentage 9 points, from 40% to 49%, and was in the top 30 in all four voting quadrants for the first time. He also appears to be getting significant support in the Reporters category, and the top three in that category were all voted in this year. Of the top 5 in the Reporters category from 2016, 2 were elected last year and 1 other (Morales) went in this year, though the other two (Big Daddy and Blue Panther) each saw significant drops in their Reporters support that coincided with their own drops this year. One thing that I've always found curious, when compared to the Baseball Hall of Fame, is how support for candidates tend to ebb and flow in strange directions, rather than candidates building momentum. On the baseball hall of fame ballot, you'll usually see down ballot guys lose support as the years progress, as writers begin to realize that those candidates have no real chance at induction and thus use their votes to support candidates that have a better chance of induction, but on the WON HOF ballot, you'll see wrestlers that are at the cusp of going in suddenly and inexplicably lose support and then never get voted in. I think there have been more than a few candidates that were within a vote or two of getting in who wind up falling off the ballot, never to make it in. Seeing that happen again this year with Cien Caras, who was three votes shy of election but could fall off the ballot if he doesn't get 50% next year, just drives home to me how weird the Observer Hall of Fame is.

The WON HOF ballot had 74 wrestlers and 15 non-wrestlers this year. Even with 5 acts being voted in, 6 acts falling off the ballot, and a relatively light 2 wrestlers being added next year, that's still 66 wrestlers and 14 non-wrestlers to vote on next year. I think we can go a few years without adding anybody new to the ballot and have no shortage of discussion. I had considered this as well, and it makes me curious as to how one is deemed qualified to vote in a particular region. Is it purely on the honor system? But someone who watches 2017 AJ Styles matches for the first time in 2037 is going to have a completely different perspective than someone who watched them in 2017. And I don't dispute the value of rewatching and reevaluating old footage as a fan, but I do think it's kind of silly to say that someone can't be considered a great worker unless their matches hold up 20 years after they've retired. As for Tamura, it's not like he was a complete nobody. He was voted Best Technical Wrestler by Observer readers in 1998. I have always supported the 45/25 rule with the HOF (45 years old or 25 years after their debut). This is not so long after their debut to where their body of work has been forgotten, but long enough to where we have an idea of how much of their body of work had some sort of lasting impact or legacy. AJ getting on the ballot five years from now would have been perfect, because we would have some perspective on his career after his WWE run and we would see if that had any lasting impact.

I can see the case that Red Bastien may have been hurt by not having gone in the ballot after his prime. But that's because there's no real footage of his available. Nowadays, there is no shortage of available footage for any wrestler who may be added to the ballot in the next 20 years. I suspect that every major, and many minor, AJ Styles match that has taken place over the past 20 years is available in some form. His body of work will be represented 5 or 10 years from now if he were to be added to the ballot later. This is more about Dave's opinion of watching old footage, but moving forward, any voter who wants to watch a wrestler's entire body of work will be able to do so without much issue. I don't think Tamura's issue was that people forgot his legacy, but that not enough people followed his career in the first place. Shoot style candidates have traditionally not fared well unless they have a major Japanese promotion run to pair with it, with Suzuki being an example of this. If Tamura had gone to New Japan at some point, he would have fared much better on the ballot. Same with Volk Han, who probably came closer than any other pure shoot style candidate to making it.

My guess is it will wind up being branded a "Bullet Club" show and will have mostly ROH and New Japan talent. It will basically be if nWo Souled Out was the biggest event WCW ran in 1998.

Their best chance at doing this would be if they could book a 10,000 seat arena during Wrestlemania weekend but my guess is that's likely impossible. With 60,000+ wrestling fans in town already, it would be more conceivable to find a way to get 10,000 into the building than any other weekend, when they would have to travel specifically to see one show. My guess is they probably won't be able to do that. That said, even though I don't really like the Bucks or Cody, I hope this is successful. I don't know if I'd like their vision of wrestling (I suspect I wouldn't) but it would be nice to see a successful US based wrestling promotion in the year 2017 that isn't WWE. I'm not even a WWE hater, but they've felt so stale for so long, even when the in-ring has been good to great. If you look at how wrestling was presented in the 80's to the 2000's, it felt like there was a real evolution. 1981 is very different from 1988, which is different from 1995, which is different from 2002. But has wrestling drastically changed in the past 15 years? WWE has dominated the US, and their show looks identical now, albeit with a much more toned down product. TNA tried for years to replace WCW, with much smaller viewership but with more of the incompetence. ROH has grown but has only recently solidified themselves as the #2 group. WWE has more good workers now than they have had at any point and yet, the product feels so stale because it has stayed so safe. They need a threat, however small, to kick themselves in the ass and freshen things up. I'm not sure if the Bullet Club are the thing that will accomplish that, but even though I mostly don't like any of them (Hangman Page is OK, and I'll never hate on a Tongan), I hope they find success for the good of the US wrestling scene.

I think there was a pretty big market for Ronda at one point, as she made a lot of talk show rounds and starred in a few movies. I remember seeing somebody at work wearing a "DO NOTHING BITCH" t-shirt on the night of her comeback fight with Amanda Nunes, so I think she crossed over a lot, particularly with women. But I think the buzz around her is completely gone after the second loss, and the film work has seemingly dried up, which is probably why she's looking at a WWE career at this point.

I think this was more about Lawler's performance than Carrey's. My thinking is that Carrey knew Lawler is not a trained actor, and wanted to make sure Lawler had a genuine reaction of dislike towards Kaufman in the Mid South Coliseum and Letterman scenes, even though in real life it was all a work (which they eventually revealed in a later scene) so Carrey acted antagonistic towards Lawler on the set to make sure on-screen, Lawler looked like he hated Kaufman's guts. That way, if there were people watching the film who didn't know that everything was a work, it added power to that scene later in the film. I think Bruce has brought this up on the show before. I don't think the two sides of this necessarily contradict one another. In the end, in both versions of the story, Vince created the Survivor Series to keep Crockett off of PPV in the vast majority of the country. That has always been the story, and it's even the story Bruce pushes here, he just phrases it in a different way than has always been carried by the sheets. Dave has also always told this story framed through the lens of his local cable operator in San Jose, which was one of the few that carried Starrcade, so it is possible that his local cable company was unaware that many of the cable companies had pushed for the WWF to offer a show to compete with Starrcade, and momentarily thought they could carry both, before Vince declared that they could only carry one. I think both tellings of how this came to be can coexist, even though I do expect Meltzer to say that Bruce is lying. As an aside, I thought Survivor Series 1987 didn't really lend itself to an alternative commentary track by Bruce and Conrad. It wasn't a great show, and Bruce and Conrad rarely seemed interested in what was going on in the ring unless something was happening that they didn't like (Honky walking out, too many people in the tag team match, Hogan getting counted out). It was mostly stuff like "I don't know when we'll talk about him again, so do you have any Dangerous Danny Davis stories," and then Bruce would not have any Dangerous Danny Davis stories. As usual, the best moments of this show were when Bruce was talking about things Vince would have blown a gasket over, like the ring apron or the referee's untucked shirt in the tag team match.

I have a weird affinity for this time period. My affinity for the NWA during this period is not weird at all, since Flair/Funk is great, Luger is on fire as a heel, and the Midnight Express turn was so greatly done, but I have a weird affinity for WWF in November 1989. I started watching the WWF when I was 10 years old in January 1990, so the first major event I watched was the Royal Rumble. But for years, I would go to the video store and look at whatever WWF videos were available and look at what the WWF events before I started watching were, because I always had a love of history, but there was no real internet to look these things up in 1990 (I am really showing my age here with my talk of video stores and no internet). So I'd look at the video tape for Survivor Series 1989 and see all of these guys on the tape, and I knew most of them because they were mostly still on WWF TV, but there were three guys on the tape I didn't know because they weren't on TV at that point, and I wasn't watching the NWA, and that was Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Barry Windham. I had read a WWF Magazine write up about The Widowmaker (back when I guess they thought he might come back after everything settled up with his dad and brother) but I had no idea who Arn and Tully were, and to make things weirder, they were the WWF tag team champions. I think I eventually convinced my mom to rent the tape, but even that didn't really solve everything, because Tully wasn't on the show. I started asking older people who used to team with Arn Anderson in the Brainbusters, and I think one of my Dad's friends even told me it was Ole Anderson, but eventually somebody corrected me and I figured out who Tully Blanchard was. So that's my weird Survivor Series 1989 story. You used to have to do a lot of asking around to find out these weird random things in 1990.

Or at the very least, let Tony pick the poll topics based on things that he would like to talk about.

I wonder if Conrad is the right host for a podcast with Tony Schiavone. They don't seem to have much chemistry from the few episodes I've listened to and Conrad seemed to think he could just use the format that worked with he and Bruce with Tony, but for the reasons mentioned above, that doesn't work because Schiavone is different from Prichard. Schiavone's main strength is his dirty sense of humor, but recall is not his thing. I think the idea is that this would be MLW's WCW version of the Prichard show, but it falls apart because Schiavone was not as involved in the WCW office, and in fact preferred his time with WWF to his time with WCW. I've said this before, but the main strength of the Prichard show is that it almost serves as an unauthorized biography of Vince McMahon, told through the lens of one of his top lieutenants in the WWF office. Besides WCW not having a singular leader like Vince McMahon (though Bischoff was close), Tony was never that top lieutenant. He worked in production, but he was never a big office guy, so the Prichard perspective just isn't there. Conrad getting mad at Schiavone for not being Bruce doesn't seem fair when they're different people who had different roles and different stories.

One thing that I enjoyed about this week's episode is that it added another viewpoint to the Montreal talk that I don't know has ever really been out there. We've had Bret's side through his book and through the Observer, we had Vince's side through the lens of WWF television in 1997 and 1998, and Shawn had his side presented through his book and shoot interviews, but Bruce talked about what it was like being in the WWF office. He's brought to light the frustrations of having to deal with three very large egos, three very stubborn men who didn't want to give an inch, and how that culminated in what happened at the Survivor Series. I think Bret's creative control clause ultimately trumps over all, so I tend to take his side more than any other, but Bruce has also made me realize that even before he had creative control, he wasn't always the easiest person to work with, and I can only imagine what having that veto ability did to amplify that (but that's Vince's fault for giving it to him, which is a whole other issue). I tend to think Bret would have been willing to drop it after Montreal but before starting with WCW, but I also can understand that because Bret had been difficult to work with in 1997, why folks in the office may not believe that and why they believe that Vince had to get the belt off of Bret at Survivor Series. It's much more of a morally gray issue than I think has ever been presented in the Observer, and even as somebody who generally sides with Bret, I do wonder why Dave never made more of an effort to understand the non-Bret sides, especially since Ross and Cornette would have had his ear by this point. You can believe that Bret is ultimately in the right while also acknowledging that he was a pain in the ass to work with and somebody who didn't react well to being moved down the card after Shawn had become a hotter heel after SummerSlam. I think that's probably why Bret ultimately wound up jumping, not because of the money, but because he was no longer going to be the top heel or the top babyface anymore with Austin and Michaels about to pass him, and that unlike in the past when he was moved down the cards, he was unlikely to get those spots back this time. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to believe, and a move to WCW should have freshened him up. Even if Shawn had become a hotter heel, he was still the hottest he had been in years after the heel turn and would have been a great addition to WCW if they knew what to do with him, but again, that's a whole other issue.

It was such a weird argument. I think Dave confused Hardy leaving WWE in 2003 (where he worked one show for ROH and then went to TNA) with Hardy leaving WWE in 2009 (when he went straight to TNA). When Hardy left in 2003, he was hardly a hot act. He had been off and on television because of his drug issues, and his work had gotten noticeably worse as a result. When Hardy left in 2009, he was hot off the feud with Punk during a period where he legitimately might have been the second most popular wrestler on the planet. He didn't move numbers for TNA, but then again, nobody moves numbers for TNA, because it's TNA. And anyway, as somebody mentioned earlier, Hardy DID move numbers when he wrestled for ROH in 2003, even when he was ice cold. I can't find an ROH show that drew more than 700 fans before Death Before Dishonor 2003, which drew 1200. He wasn't exactly warmly embraced by the regulars, but he was the first person who drew actual women to an ROH show (which I think others have speculated before may have played a part in him not being warmly embraced by the regulars). I think he was still not in condition to perform and the match stunk, which is why he didn't come back, but to say he didn't draw would be false. So I don't know what's going on with Dave here, as pretty much none of the argument involving Hardy made a lick of sense, and he kept doubling down on it until I think he realized the Hardy stuff was wrong and deleted those tweets. But it's still a weird hill to die on. If ROH announced Cena for any one of their shows, that show would instantly be the highest drawing ROH show in history. Yes, there's no way of knowing for sure, since John Cena will never wrestle for ROH. But c'mon. John Cena might be the one guy who could actually move numbers for TNA.

I've been thinking about the WON HOF, and the more I think about it, the more I think it is absurdly structured. There are too many candidates and not enough votes per voter. It's somehow worse than the baseball Hall of Fame ballot, which has 12-15 legitimate candidates among 34 players on the ballot where voters can only vote for 10 players. Writers have been petitioning to add more spots on their ballot, or even allow writers to vote for unlimited candidates. It's somehow worse for the WON HOF, which has a ridiculous 74 wrestlers (not even including the non-wrestlers) across 6 geographical areas and only 10 votes. It leads to situations where voters have to make choices they shouldn't have to. Like, if I think Akira Taue is the second best guy on the ballot and want to vote for him, but think Jun Akiyama is a guy I think is worthy of induction, but is the 11th best wrestler on my ballot. I'd be better off abstaining from Japan all together and strategically putting those two votes in another category (like Mexico or US Historical, both of which have an abundance of worthy candidates) but in the process I'm dropping the guy I think is the second best guy on the ballot. Those are choices voters should not have to make. If a voter thinks there are 11 or 15 people worthy of induction, they should be able to vote for that many candidates. There's also the situation I think I bring up every year with people voting for candidates in categories they otherwise have no business voting in. For instance, Allan has done a great job talking up Big Daddy's candidacy (and rightfully so, he's a great candidate). This will hopefully lead to a lot of people voting for him. But I fear a lot of the people who might vote for Big Daddy based on Allan's lobbying but don't vote for other European candidates are voting no for candidates who may very well have good hall of fame cases, but don't have anybody publicly lobbying for them the way Allan has for Big Daddy (and this is not a criticism of Allan's great work on Big Daddy, but more a criticism in the flaw of Dave's voting system). It's a situation where, if a voter votes for one candidate in a geographical location, that voter should really be familiar with everybody in that geographic location, or else that voter may well be voting no on a worthy candidate in error. I doubt all voters are thinking that way, though. I'd love to see Dave lift the cap on the number of votes a voter can make, or move to a yes/no/abstain format, but unfortunately I don't think we will be seeing that anytime soon, so I think we're going to see a flawed system for the foreseeable future, which is too bad.

They will survive because this company will never die, no matter how bad or how insolvent it is. There's always somebody who will come along and keep this shithole afloat. I guess it's a good thing because it gives the boys a place to work, but it sure would be nice if a wrestling group that had half a clue had even one of the many opportunities this group has had.

That they've resisted any offers to stream their service, either through iPPV or a streaming service, is interesting too. I think they made the right decision in regards to most of the fly-by-night bad iPPV services that weren't able to handle demand, and history has shown that resisting FloSlam's money was probably for the best as well. Eventually I think they will move to a streaming service, either through Highspots or Powerbomb or one of the other streaming companies that have a proven track record, or they will start their own service, but that will be an interesting thing to follow with PWG as they continue to grow.

Listening to this today. I find it absolutely stunning that Meltzer tried to argue Edge as a better wrestler than Nick Bockwinkel. To me, I find that far more an indictment of his match criticism than what he thinks about PWG or what WWE matches he rates at five stars.

He had a great run through the SCI this year against Jason Cade, Aria Royal, and the four way final with Matt Riddle, Joey Lynch, and Anthony Henry, and then followed that up with a very good match with Joey Janela at SUP Graps the next night.