Cox

How many of those guys are even still active? Maff, Red, Briscoe, Homicide, Quiet Storm, Spanky, Super Crazy, and the main event guys? That's like half the show.

That's a good point, and considering Steve Bradley killed himself at least in part because he was never able to make it as a pro wrestler, I'd say he wins this category pretty easily.

You'll have money from me at some point this week, in that case. Crap, I've already watched almost two years' worth of TV, why not add this set on top of it as well?

From watching the TV, it just felt like they had good momentum with Smothers as champ, and the finish just came off as a way to create a rematch and keep Smothers/DWB going. Not that it mattered, since Smothers was ultimately only a transitionary champion, but it felt like they built to this one big moment with Smothers winning the belt, and then a month later, they're holding the belt up. It definitely felt like they were building to something with Horner and Smothers. They spent a few weeks teasing it, with Smothers always calling Horner his best friend (when they hadn't really done anything on TV before that to establish them as best friends), which smelled like a turn was coming, but it never happened. I think it's ultimately for the best, as heel or face, I think Horner would have been bland as a top heel, and turning Brian Lee heel wound up giving him a direction he had lacked since the Sullivan feud ended and gave him a personality he had lacked, period. It felt abrupt for a SMW turn, though, but I guess that's because Tony Atlas had decided not to come in (and probably made a smart decision, at that). So far, 1993 has definitely been better than 1992 (which I also enjoyed). The TV format can get repetitive with all of the squash matches, but the good promos keep things moving along and there's usually at least one decent TV match and clips of other matches that look like they were pretty fun, so I'm enjoying it.

Agreed on the Armstrongs - they are a really underrated good tag team. One of the great "what ifs" I think with SMW is what if Steve Armstrong hadn't gone to All Japan in 1994. According to the WON at that time (and I assume this came straight from Cornette), they were going to turn heel, side with Cornette, and feud with the Rock 'n' Roll and their dad, which I think would have been AWESOME and would have resulted in great tag team matches. Instead, Steve Armstrong leaves, the Gangstas get the top heel tag team spot in the fall, and SMW starts its death spiral. Too bad.

And Kofi almost wiped out into Vickie when he was thrown out, too.

Watching the TV, it really feels like this just came out of nowhere. One week, Brian Lee is a directionless babyface, and the next he's turning on Smothers and hooking up with Tammy. But you're right, it turns into a hot feud quickly, and Brian Lee is much better as a heel than he was as a babyface.

That was a second time where they had buried O'Haire. They had taken him off of TV for a while during the invasion, were set to bring him back after Wrestlemania 19, gave him weeks of hypes with those vignettes, before his push died again.

I think it's worth pointing out that this thread was started five years ago, and if anything, TNA has only made their case stronger since this thread was started for being the worst wrestling promotion of all time, and it had a pretty damned strong case for being the worst promotion ever five years ago.

When Woman managed the Sullivan/Tazmaniac team in ECW, I swear she looked taller than both of them, wearing high heels and all. She may very well have been taller than both without heels.

I've had a chance to get a few months further into my SMW watching, I'm around the end of May now. -Feels like they are starting to cycle more talent in and out now. Gone are Stan Lane, Bobby Eaton (who wasn't in for long but I think he still counts), Robert Fuller, Jimmy Golden, Kevin Sullivan (as a full-timer, as I believe he works some part time shots after this), and the Nightstalker. In are Jimmy Del Ray, Steve Armstrong, Chris Candido, Tammy Fytch, and soon the Bruise Brothers will be in. With Paul Orndorff, Ronnie Garvin, and the Fantastics having left at the end of '92/beginning of '93, the only guys there from the start still around are Brian Lee, Tim Horner, Jim Cornette, and the Dirty White Boy. As a result, it's starting to feel like a different promotion. -The Rage in the Cage angle with Cornette's team destroying Bob Armstrong and the subsequent promos have all been awesome. They did a great job slowly building to the point where Cornette has a problem with Armstrong over Armstrong foiling all of Cornette's plans, building to Armstrong popping Cornette over calling Brian a deserter, and then Cornette getting revenge by destroying Armstrong 6 on 1 in the cage in Knoxville. Armstrong has vowed revenge and has resigned as commissioner of SMW to become a wrestler again. It will be fun to watch this play out between Cornette and Armstrong's Army. -One recent thing that annoyed me. After Tracy Smothers won the Bluegrass Brawl chain match (one of my personal favorite matches of all time), a month later they do a real bullshit finish in a Smothers/Dirty White Boy Coward Waves the Flag match (Tim Horner starts beating down Don Wright with the flag while Smothers has DWB in a submission and somehow the ref calls this a win for DWB - why on Earth would Horner wave the flag when Smothers had the advantage in the match?) and hold the title up. Now, I get that Cornette wanted to try to keep the Smothers/DWB feud going while another heel challenger was set up, but the finish came off to me as being really cheap and hurt Smothers' momentum a little. I'm looking forward to SMW building up a new heel challenger for Smothers, and while I know it's going to be Brian Lee, I wonder if the original plan was to go heel with Horner before things changed? Smothers keeps making constant references as Horner being his best friend, and then they have a little disagreement after the Coward Waves the Flag match, so there are some neon signs pointing towards a Horner turn, but it never happened. I wonder why it was scrapped, other than Horner would have needed a strong heel manager to pull it off. For that matter, I wonder if another tag team fell through before Cornette got the Bruise Brothers to come in to feud with the Rock 'n' Roll - he keeps talking about how his new tag team has been on TV, cable TV, network TV, etc, and as far as I know, the Bruise Brothers had not yet had a run with either WWF or WCW by this point. -I like the addition of Jimmy Del Ray to the Heavenly Bodies. I had forgotten how good of an athlete he was. It kind of felt to me like Stan Lane was going through the motions towards the end of his run (and don't get me wrong, going through the motions Stan Lane vs. the Rock and Roll Express is still good, but it also felt a bit stale). Looking forward to their matches with the Armstrongs. -Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch have done some promos on TV, and it reminded me of something said in the Yearbook threads about SMW being a promo territory. I think it's true, and as a result, both seem stilted on promos when they first come in, with all the great promos all over the territory. That said, I know from experience that both will eventually become pretty good promos, and I think that's because SMW was such a good promo territory, and there are so many good promos in the territory that it's almost impossible not to become better (well, if we pretend that Tim Horner is still a horrible promo). It will be interesting to track their improvement over the next few months. -Random observation: did Kevin Sullivan bring Taz to SMW so he would have somebody shorter than him in his stable? That's where I'm at for now. Looking forward to the summer with Cornette/Armstrong, Smothers/Lee, Candido/Horner, Armstrongs/Bodies, Rock 'n' Roll/Bruise Brothers (if anybody can have a good tag match with the Bruises, it's the Rock 'n' Roll, right?), and DWB/Bobby Blaze (mostly because I look forward to just about anything the Dirty White Boy does). I'd say this looks to be just about the high point of SMW coming up, and it's a slow decline after DWB turns babyface (not that it was his fault, just that everything around the company seems to fall apart after the face turn for whatever reason), but still looking forward to watching it all, as the 1995 Yearbook thread makes it sound like there's some good stuff even as SMW is dying.

I think what the original poster was saying was that Raven would have been held back in school in order to be in the same grade as Dreamer when they were in high school. Not that Raven was held back as a personality. I think most would agree that Scott Levy, for the most part, overachieved as a wrestling personality for much of his career.

I wonder if that was an inside joke. Arn Andersin did a promo later in the same episode referencing a crazy stalker lady from St Louis that seemed to make Ricky Morton chuckle, so I wonder if they had problems with some chick who drive a brown van from St. Louis around this time.

I believe Shawn was under contract for a long time, I want to say at least 4-5 years. Considering Vince didn't let Shawn out of his contract, even after he retired, because he was worried about him showing up in WCW, I think it's safe to assume he wouldn't have released him unless Shawn gave him no other choice. And considering how much of a shithead Michaels during most of his short-lived WWF returns in the late 90's, I don't think Vince would have fired Shawn. I mean, look at how long it took him to fire Matt Hardy, and Hardy had a much worse drug problem and TNA isn't anywhere near the problem WCW was in the late 90's - and they still hung onto Hardy until they really had no other alternative.

Curt Hennig was premature too. Unless 44 is considered a ripe old age...and in wrestling, it very well might.

As a huge SMW mark, I've been hoping that somehow, this match found its way onto a handheld somewhere, from April 1993: 5. The Rock-n-Roll Express beat The Heavenly Bodies (Lane & Eaton). Not sure if it was Ricky and Robert (Gibson missed a few shots around this time and was replaced by Tim Horner), and even though the description says Lane and Eaton, I'm not sure it was them, as from the next night on, it was Lane and Prichard vs the Rock 'n' Roll. But even though there are literally hundreds of Rock 'n' Roll vs Midnight Express matches on tape, I'm really curious as to what their 1993 version of that match looks like.

Plus, WWE only likes to induct one dead person per year, and if they're inducting Yoko, that leaves no room for Savage.

That's such an obvious direction for this program that I expect Vince McMahon to change his mind the weekend of Elimination Chamber because it's too predictable.

I don't know, Bix told me about a few of Lance's commentaries on his website, including the Q&A's, and Lance can seem like a huge dick on there. Granted, some of the questions he gets on there aren't exactly brilliant, but...I mean, he knows he can pick and choose the best questions rather than just answering everything, right?

After a few month break, I've started watching these DVDs again and I'm in February of '93 now. -The Stud Stable/Heavenly Bodies stuff was really well done. I'd say they did a better job building to this feud than they did building to Bodies/RnR, as they gave it a nice, slow build, with the two teams starting as friends, but since they were heels, both sides were condescending towards one another. Finally, it built to a head where both teams were looking for blood, after Cornette went all "four flat tires" on Fuller and Golden and stole their tag team title shot (and then stole the tag team titles thanks to the arrival of Bobby Eaton). I can't wait until the Pikeville brawl between these three teams, and I'm looking forward to seeing Arn Anderson in the next few weeks. For that big three team street fight, you're going to have two of the all time best promo men (Arn and Cornette), three really good, underrated promos (Morton, Fuller, and Mantell), and three decent promo guys in their own right (Lane, Prichard, and Golden). Should be good stuff. -DWB/Tim Horner has winded down and it looked like they were going to go with Horner/Orndorff as a program before Orndorff went back to WCW. Now I've been watching the slow build to Smothers/DWB, first with Smothers winning the TV title tournament beating White Boy, then White Boy promising every week that Smothers would not win the $5,000 bonus at the end, then White Boy subbing Orndorff in for Paul Lee one week (in Orndorff's swan song) to White Boy finally taking out Smothers before his last match for the $5,000 bonus and helping the Nightstalker beat Smothers. Then they went with heavy heat with White Boy handcuffing Smothers to the ropes and burning his Confederate flag (and as an aside, I feel REALLY uncomfortable with Smothers handing that flag to kids in the audience to wave on his way to the ring, but that's my own regional biases I guess). Good stuff, and another feud I'm looking forward to watching conclude in Pikeville. -I also liked the little mini angle they did with Reno Riggins and Ron Wright, where Wright tries to get Riggins to join his stable. First he offers him a spot, Riggins needs a few weeks to think about it, finally turning Wright down. First Wright tries to manage Robbie Eagle to get revenge on Riggins, and when that doesn't work, the Dirty White Boy attacks him and beats the snot out of him in a vicious little squash match until Smothers makes the save (another part of their slow build). Kind of a shame Riggins didn't really stick around here, as I could see him eventually meaning something, but I think he goes back to being a TV jobber shortly thereafter. -Brian Lee is back, and his fired up promos on Kevin Sullivan are better than anything he was doing as the babyface champion. I just think he was in the wrong role when the promotion started off, and here as a secondary face looking for revenge, he works a lot better. Kevin Sullivan is yet another great promo guy they have working the territory. Overall, good stuff, and it feels like things are picking up here. It also feels like stories are less rushed than they were in the past, like with the Horner/DWB feud or Bodies/RnR. Looking forward to continuing to watch and see how '93 progresses.

Yeah, but knowing how much of a con man Ric turned out to be, that was probably a huge work to get Meltzer (and by extension, the sheet reading fans that adored Flair) to buy into the retirement.

Yes. There is a lot of nauseating stuff about the Havoc match, even though it's a terrific match. Flair losing a retirement match and then not even getting a sendoff was pretty bad too. In retrospect, I wonder if that was a sign that nobody expected Flair to stay retired, but they didn't want to make Flair just a midcard guy with Flair on top, so they called it a retirement and just brought him back in '95 when he could mean something again.

Tito Santana wrestled on the main card at eight straight Wrestlemanias. Lance couldn't even get onto one. Dudes who got Wrestlemania matches over Lance during his time with the company: Maven, Mark Jindrak, the Bashams, Ultimo Dragon, Jazz (twice!), Shannon Moore, and other totally non-consequential people. They figured out how to get 49 wrestlers onto the Wrestlemania XX card but couldn't find a spot for Lance. He wasn't even important enough to be the George Welles of early 00's WWE.

I think this is something Cornette tried to get better at in SMW, as Prichard was likely used to doing his own promos (and despite being a total Piper clone, was a pretty decent promo), and it also feels like Stan Lane has more to say at this point than he did in the Midnight Express. It was really easy for Cornette to monopolize the mic time when Bobby Eaton was in the group, but with Prichard and Lane both there wanting to talk, he had to tone that back just a little bit. It will be interesting to see how that continues to develop into '94 and '95 as I keep watching SMW TV, when the Bodies go up north to WWF and Cornette starts managing different guys.