Cox

Which is probably better than how Shane ended up, with no money, no power, and after last night's stunt, definitely no dignity.

I sure hope WWE is just moving developmental somewhere and not shutting it down, as they've threatened to do in the past. I think having a developmental territory nearby is good if HHH or others who work out of Connecticut plan on being more hands-on with the territory, so there are positives to be had with developmental based near WWE HQ.

He mentions Snowman in the bio, but while listing the African American babyfaces Watts tried (and failed) to push as the top guy after JYD left:

I don't think so. Savannah Jack died recently and in Dave's Observer obit, he says Savannah Jack's career ended due to heart problems in 1987. He does not mention the Snowman at all.

Rhino, like a lot of folks, was never the same after neck surgery, and you have to think working ECW and doing the gore as much as he did, he would have eventually needed the surgery even if ECW never went out of business (and at least being in WWF, he worked somewhere that would actually PAY for the neck surgery). I think Rhino was doomed no matter what, as were so many late 90's workers by the style becoming so crazy. A few more guys: Robbie Eagle/The Stro Lance Storm Devon Storm/Crowbar 911 The Blue Meanie

I'm zipping past a lot of this and not updating here as much as I should, but I'm now into April of '94 (right before the Bluegrass Brawl) so feels like as good a time as any to chime in with new thoughts, especially since the promotion is about to undergo another change in the guard. -Dirty White Boy vs Brian Lee is winding down, and really feels at this point like a feud that's a bit too long in the tooth. I mean, they started building towards this in August '93 and here we are in April '94, White Boy has already won the heavyweight title, and it just feels like they're killing time until DWB's next feud. That said, it was a fun, entertaining feud, probably the 2nd best heavyweight title feud in SMW history behind Smothers/DWB. I haven't seen any of their major matches yet (the SMW set, which arrived yesterday, will help fill in some gaps for me, as I don't appear to have any major SMW shows from late '93 into '94) but I've heard good things and I'm looking forward to seeing the Lee/DWB chain match, since I loved DWB in the chain match with Smothers from the previous year. -Speaking of feuds winding down, the Heavenly Bodies are about to go full-time to the WWF (well, for a year or so), and they will have their last ever match with each other at the Bluegrass Brawl. Funny, I suspect they probably figured they'd wrestle again at some point, as I'm pretty sure the idea was always to bring back the Bodies for part-time shots here and there, but unless I'm mistaken, I don't think they will have another match with each other ever again. Kind of sad that this is really the end of Rock 'n' Roll vs Jim Cornette, but I guess it had to happen at some point. -Really enjoy the week to week progression of Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch. Every week they get better and better. As I've said, it's sad knowing that this is as good as they'll ever get, but it doesn't keep me from enjoying them here. The Candido/Smothers feud has been really fun, with Candido's promo about how Tracy Smothers is really Vito Marinara from Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania got a real laugh out of me (and broke Brian Matthews, the backstage interviewer, whose expression almost never changes, so props for that). Also, both their performance and Brian Lee's performance in the Tammy training video for her mixed tag matches with the Dirty Whites (Boy and Girl) was hilarious. How they managed to convince people that Tammy Fytch, clearly somebody who works out and keeps in good shape, is a non-athlete is pretty remarkable. Looking forward to the Lee/Candido feud with the Rock 'n' Roll over the next few months. -The Thrillseekers are here, and so are their amazing videos. In all seriousness, I think these videos are great - yes, they are cheesy as hell, but they are well produced, establish characters for both Storm and Jericho, and make them seem likable and fun, not an easy task considering one guy is an aloof prick and the other is a sloppy drunk douche (tm David "Bix" Bixenspan). I have to say, I think I enjoy Storm here more than I have anywhere else. He actually shows decent fire in the ring, shows a little bit of personality, and his work looks decent in squashes. I like to think that, in some alternate timeline out there, Lance Storm stays in SMW until it closes, learns to work southern style, and improves greatly at it like Candido did, and becomes a much less boring, uninteresting black hole than he became. Alas, he's merely an aloof prick now. -Prince Kharis is the shits. Not sure what Cornette was thinking in a territory where he tried to strive at least a semblance of believability to have a dude doing a 3,500 year old mummy gimmick. As far as I'm concerned, anytime he talks about how wrestling needs less goofy gimmicks or more realism, somebody needs to tell him, "Dude, you had a guy doing a 3,500 year old mummy gimmick in your territory, go fuck yourself." Kinda makes him bitching about having to be at ringside for the Undertaker/Yokozuna spectacle at the Royal Rumble in '94 ring hollow. And Daryl Van Horne...I'm just not seeing it here. He seems to do promos based on getting the boys to pop for saying stuff like "felching" and to get in the Observer for mentioning porn stars, than he cares about getting himself or his guy over. I know he has a good rep in some circles, but I'm not seeing it at all, and it's not just that he's stuck with the anchor that is Prince Kharis. -Bob Armstrong is no longer The Bullet and is back in the commissioner's chair. I know he doesn't go away completely, and he'll still be around to cut awesome promos about Scandanavian snake feces, but it's kind of disappointing that he'll no longer be portrayed as a main event player for the rest of the run (unless he has a main event run that I'm not aware of). Sure, the guy is old, but he's still decent in the ring and cuts a hell of a promo. Got some cool stuff on the horizon (Lee and Candido vs Rock 'n' Rolls, Randy Savage coming in for a few shots) and some not so cool stuff (the Prince Kharis/Dirty White Boy program, the Jake feud that sadly never gains momentum) so I'm looking forward to seeing how '94 plays out. The rep I've heard is that '93 is pretty great but '94 starts the slow decline with a lot of things that Cornette had planned not really working out, so it will be interesting to see when the decline kicks in and how it tracks until the end of the TV.

I would say that while I overall agree that Del Ray was a better fit in the Bodies than Stan Lane, I think Stan Lane had better chemistry with the Rock 'n' Roll, and considering that was their main feud for a good chunk of SMW's existence, I think that counts for something. I don't think Lane would have been as good against the Armstrongs or against the Thugs, but I preferred Lane and Prichard vs Morton and Gibson than I did Prichard and Del Ray.

I'd say at this point that having weekly football parties with the big TV, DirecTV (or Red Zone Channel), food, etc. has trumped going to the games live. Between the long TV timeouts, most of the affordable seats being miles away from the field, tailgating restrictions, etc, going to a live NFL game has never been less fun, and with the technological advancements with televisions, sitting home and watching games on TV with a bunch of friends, flipping around through games, has become a much more enjoyable experience. At least that's the way I look at it these days.

After disapearing for a while Brian XL came back not long ago but i'm not sure if that was just a temp thing or if he retired again. Funny because here we are two weeks later, and I went to an indy show in Rahway, NJ where one of the wrestlers on the show was....Brian XL! He was in a crazy bullshit six way match that included Red, so that's two guys from the first ROH show in one match. So he is still active and didn't look terrible.

I think Dave's match recommendations have gotten so loony that they have a reverse effect on me. I actively stay away from every match he praises. Not that I have to try very hard not to watch current New Japan, mind you...

Maybe WWE thinks they can market pink and black "WHO FARTED?" t-shirts for Nattie?

I don't know that I had a "breaking point," but I've definitely had points where I thought this wasn't for me before. I do remember specifically going to a Raw/Smackdown double taping in July of 2006, it might have been July 4th weekend. I remember going to the show with two of my friends, and being surrounded by kids with their parents, and thinking to myself, "What am I doing here? I'm the only adult who isn't here with a kid." Prior to that, I'd go to a lot of WWE TV tapings in Philly and New Jersey, but I haven't gone to one since, only PPVs and a house show, and that's mostly because I've been fortunate enough to not have to pay to get in. Still, even after that point I'd watch the TV, if not regularly then at least frequently, but over the past year, that has dropped considerably, to where I never watch the current TV unless I can't find anything else on. I'll watch Wrestlemania this year and have my yearly Wrestlemania party at my house, which has become a fun time for me and my friends, but I doubt I'll ever regularly watch current WWE TV again, unless things change. I just feel at some point, their interests and mine stopped intersecting. I still like wrestling, as evidenced by the fact that I've watched almost a year of SMW TV in the past month, and I really enjoy the stuff I do with UWC, producing a weekly wrestling TV show and (to a lesser degree) play by play announcing. But WWE TV just isn't for me, and TNA was never for me.

One of the things that surprised me about the SMW TV I've been watching is that the Bruise Brothers aren't that bad here. They were never asked to wrestle a straight tag unless it was against the Rock 'n' Roll (who could have a good straight tag with just about anybody), and are more often than not just asked to beat the snot out of people, which hid their flaws quite well. It would be a HUGE stretch for me to say I'm a fan, both because they aren't that good and the aforementioned neo-Nazism. But they had some fun squashes and were carried to good matches by the Rock 'n' Roll and the Bodies.

Weren't they doing this because he had been traded to Smackdown, and UPN wanted the porn star gimmick toned down, and wanted the name rhyming with "penis" to go away?

Shit. I just got to the part in my SMW rewatch where Mike and Doug are feuding with the Heavenly Bodies. That's going to be kind of hard to sit through. RIP, it's too bad his only real American exposure came after his peak.

I'll throw a few guys at you as well, with an emphasis on SMW and ECW since I know you watched a shit ton of both for the sets. Keep in mind, I think the majority of these guys are much better than HHH, but interested in your analysis. Brian Lee Chris Candido Harris Brothers Sandman Rocco Rock (I'm going to assume Johnny Grunge is an easy no, but if it's not, feel free to explain why) New Jack Tim Horner Balls Mahoney Nightstalker And not SMW/ECW, but since you did Meng... Barbarian

Was PG-13's appearances on Raw the only time that WWF acknowledged the USWA on air? Maybe when Doug Gilbert worked the '96 Rumble too, but other than that, I can't think of any other time they would have acknowledged their relationship with USWA, certainly not in the way they did with Smoky Mountain in '93.

I totally agree on this. There are at least two times when SMW announced a stip match where they had no intention of following through on the announced stipulations. They booked Dick Murdoch vs The Bullet with Cornette's hair vs. Bullet's mask, and when Bullet lost, he pulled off his mask only to have another one underneath. Any fans who bought a ticket to that show hoping to see one or the other had to feel completely jipped. Then, eight months later, Cornette pulls the same thing, advertising a Lee/Candido vs Rock 'n' Rolls match with Morton's hair up against Tammy's, and in the end, Candido gets his head shaved. That one killed Johnson City (their #2 town) and helped speed the decline of SMW. It's bait and switch tactics; advertise that the fans will get to see one thing or the other, and deliver neither. It just shows a contempt for the audience.

So I've been watching the SMW TV and I got to thinking about Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch. Every week I watch them, they get a little bit better. Tammy's first promos were a little wooden; now, she feels like a strong main event manager, no easy task in a territory that has Jim Cornette and Ron Wright. Chris also felt a little wooden at first, but eventually owns the "real world's champion" gimmick and elevates the crybaby gimmick and makes that work in ways a lesser worker wouldn't. His matches look better every week, too. That said, it's sad to me in ways to watch them knowing how things turn out. Tammy turned 20 in 1993, Candido turned 22. Yet after they leave SMW, they'll never be quite as good elsewhere as they are here, and their WCW run in particular is quite embarrassing. Tammy would become a star in the WWF for a very short period of time, but flames out hard, develops a serious drug problem, gains weight...she is all but out of wrestling before she even turns 30 years old. Candido never became a star, develops some of the same problems, and will never celebrate his 40th birthday. I don't want to make it sound like I'm not enjoying them, because I have enjoyed their work a lot, and suspect I will really enjoy them in 1994 as I assume both will continue to improve. At the same time, it's hard not to feel bittersweet about it knowing Tammy peaks before she can legally buy a drink, and knowing Chris will never quite get the opportunities his talents should have gotten him. At the very least, he should have lived long enough for Punk or somebody to go to bat for him and get him a trainer's job in FCW. It's a damn shame, but I guess that's the wrestling business.

I'm pretty far along into 1993 now, and I'm really digging the Dirty White Boy babyface turn. It's really the first major face turn in the company (the Bruise Brothers turned around the same time) and it's handled very well. It's a slow progression where DWB starts off as a heel who's unhappy with Brian Lee and Tammy Fytch for collecting a bounty that he feels he earned, and three months later, Wright (who had been storyline kidnapped by Lee and Fytch) climbs out of the wheelchair to make a save for DWB only to get laid out by Lee and carried out of the building. Somehow, the promotion has the two most vile, evil motherfuckers in the company for the first two years of the company's existence (save for MAYBE Cornette) and managed to make both of them sympathetic thanks to a series of masterfully laid out angles. I think it will be hard to imagine another storyline done better here. In a nice touch, none of the other babyfaces have embraced DWB yet, notably Tracy Smothers, whom they are making a big deal to note that he doesn't trust DWB. I assume that Smothers is seen as a surrogate for the fans, who might be willing to cheer DWB over the more hated Lee, but may not yet be ready to get behind him completely, so when the time comes and Smothers DOES accept DWB, the fans can get behind him completely. Really good stuff. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how much better Brian Lee is as a heel than as a babyface, and how much Tammy has improved over the course of six months. She seemed wooden and forced when she started, but now her promos are great, and I have to imagine that every woman fan in the area must want to kill her. And Tammy's Tips are a must-watch segment every week! Add Chris Candido to the improved category too...his promos felt a little stilted when he started here, but now his promos are a highlight of every episode.

I think the idea is to have Mania in large metropolitan areas. Most of those giant football stadiums are not in major metropolitan markets like New York, Atlanta, Miami, etc, or tourist locations like Orlando. Vince is probably worried that if he holds Wrestlemania in Columbus, Ohio or Knoxville, Tennessee, it will come off too small-time.

I don't know that I would agree with that. It may very well be a viewpoint that originated with Vince McMahon, but it's possible that Cena is misguided enough to believe it himself as well.

I love the random references to JR Benson that stemmed from Fan Week.

Rarely will watching wrestling make me say "Holy shit," but this did it for me. Ron Wright getting out of the chair to make the save was awesome, as was DWB crying over Wright. Great babyface turn right here. Considering they portrayed both of these guys as the most vile, evil men alive not even four months prior, this was a helluva job making both seem sympathetic.