Cox

I look forward to the WON Hall of Fame every year, but with each passing year, it becomes more and more apparent that the Hall of Fame is a vehicle to confirm Dave's biases. I think a lot of great research has resulted from the WON Hall of Fame, but I also don't think it has had much effect on the Hall of Fame electorate, outside of some corners of the internet. I don't say this to discourage folks from doing the research, in fact I hope it continues because I think some folks like me who don't vote for the HOF have learned a lot from their work, but I also don't think it has as much influence with voters, and that's mostly because I don't think it's had much influence on Dave. If Dave isn't posting that research, if Dave isn't speaking to it in any direction either way, and if Dave isn't open to changing his mind on long-held beliefs (such as that JYD is not a strong candidate), then the guys who make it in will largely be guys who have been praised in the Observer. I also think it's easy to get discouraged by Sting being elected in, and I do think he's a bad candidate, but bad candidates are going to make it in (although if Edge ever makes it in, I am going to riot). I think the best way to look at the Hall of Fame is to try to pimp worthy candidates rather than disparage bad ones. Try to get as many good candidates in the WON, and if a bad candidate like Sting makes it in occasionally, so be it. I think a lot of great conversations have been started on worthy candidates, and I don't think JYD would have had a prayer of making it back on the ballot, let alone getting 32% of the vote, without the great work that's been done by historians. If Sting being a Hall of Famer is the price we have to pay to get real discussions going about JYD or Kerry Von Erich, so be it.

I think Gabe has one of the best eyes for talent you'll ever see. The list of legitimately talented people who have come through his promotions, which often have had shoestring budgets, that he's been able to find and mold into future stars, is quite long. But his actual booking is much more questionable, with weird promotional ideas that rarely seem to work, and cringeworthy names for gimmick matches (Squared Circle of Survival? Really?). The job he should have is a talent relations position with WWE or another company, where he identifies guys who should be in developmental but creative is definitely not his strong point, and having him run creative for three different FloSlam promotions, in addition to his questionable creative ideas, seems like a recipe to burn him out quickly.

No, but you have to listen to Bryan Alvarez by listening to the podcasts, and that alone is enough reason for me to skip the podcasts and read the Observer. If you can tolerate Bryan's fake radio voice and bad opinions more than I can, your mileage may vary.

Heard about this on Between the Sheets. What a tragedy. Condolences to his family. Cancer is the absolute worst.

Only somewhat related, but I thought Bruce complaining about Baba using an interpreter was BS. Baba had every right to try to conduct business with the WWF in his native language to make sure he was as comfortable as possible in communicating the terms of what he wanted to do. You can complain about what he wanted and what he was willing to pay, but it struck me as unfair to complain that Baba wanted to speak Japanese while negotiating when that is his native tongue. Back on topic, it wouldn't surprise me if Bruce's Meltzer hating is a gimmick to get attention. It wouldn't surprise me if he legitimately did hate Bruce Mitchell, since so many people in the business do, but it's possible that at various points he had been on friendly terms with Dave and if he played up his Meltzer hate since it gets headlines and helps attract listeners.

The Young Bucks could for PWG as well. Just like the ROH crew of ten years ago like Joe, Danielson, Punk (when he doesn't completely hate the business), Cabana, Aries, Strong, etc probably feels the same way about that company. People tend to remember the places they made their break fondly.

I was at the PWF show talked about on this week's show, and I really liked it. At this time, I remember really preferring PWF to ROH, because I always felt like ROH booked matches, but PWF booked shows, if this makes sense. I think ROH got better about this as they went along, but it seemed like most of the ROH matches were very same-y around this time, but PWF had a greater variety. I went to as many of the PWF/World-1 shows I could from this time, and they were usually a ton of fun, and running the day after ROH shows let them use ROH fly in guys against guys they wouldn't necessarily have worked against in ROH. Also, I think the Chi Chi Cruz described on this show is a different Chi Chi Cruz that worked in Winnipeg and Memphis. Almost positive about that.

If he's on this message board under another name, I apologize, but I find everything that Scott Cornish does to be aggressively unfunny. I had stopped listening to this show a few weeks ago but I had a long car ride to make by myself, and had listened to all of my podcasts for the week, so I decided to listen to this week's episode for the Tom Prichard interview. And, well, I'm now 2 hours into the show, they're still in the top 10, and that Impressionist Jim Ross segment is 15 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

After listening to this last night, something finally became clear to me: TNA is not the successor promotion of WCW. It's the successor promotion of the Global Wrestling Federation. It's basically the GWF with more money.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that Bruce didn't tell Conrad the pretty obvious answer as to why Hogan won by countout - to set up rematches on the house shows. That is usually something Bruce would have jumped on, as a way of educating the audience as to what wrestling was like in that era, and he didn't jump at this opportunity, for whatever reason. Maybe because he was sick. As for Savage vs Dusty, I think it was to set up Savage for a run with Warrior and Dusty for his new program with DiBiase, as well as ending the Dusty/Savage program once and for all after an 8 month run through three different PPVs. It was actually pretty smart booking since it managed to accomplish all three effectively in only two minutes.

I generally like this show, and I generally like Conrad, but I wish he'd stop asking Bruce for salary figures for the boys. Prichard rarely seems to remember, he is disinclined to share that information when he does remember, and it's really none of anyone's business what they were making anyway. If it's a matter of public record or if it is absolutely pertinent to a story it's one thing, but what Akeem was making in 1990 is not that important to the overall story of Survivor Series for that year.

Meltzer's ratings, like them or not, do carry more weight than the average fan's. Dave has been putting out the Observer now for over 35 years, and has reviewed more matches than just about any wrestling fan alive. In his first book, Mick Foley described how getting a positive review of his matches meant something to him, and I'm sure he's not alone there. I don't always agree with Dave's ratings, and I'd encourage anybody who doesn't like his reviews to simply avoid them, but to say they carry no weight is factually incorrect. They carry a ton of weight, both within wrestling fandom and in the wrestling business, and if they didn't carry any weight, nobody would bother getting up in arms with his reviews in the first place.

FYI, I've talked to Joe Rules about winning the JAPW Heavyweight Title in that battle royal. He told me that he wasn't supposed to win the battle royal, which is why he put the title on the line in the next match against Pitbull and lost it, because Pitbull was supposed to win the title.

I think what prevents TNA from qualifying as one of the great cons in wrestling history is that it never made money for Dixie. She does deserve credit for keeping this thing going long past the point where she should have, and for somehow escaping the legal system unscathed in this latest round, but she also lost $70 million of her inheritance trying to prove she's a wrestling promoter. Great con for the people she keeps employing and who keep benefiting from it, but not so great for her.

About the Candido section of today's podcast; I'm going to go the other way and say I think Candido going to ECW, while giving us better matches than he would have if he had stayed with WWE as a trainer, was probably ultimately a bad career move. It seems like a lot of the issues Candido had were only intensified working in the ECW party atmosphere. If he had gotten that All Japan job discussed, it might have been one thing, but I think working only ECW was probably a long term bad decision. On the other hand, if he stays on as a trainer and winds up in Memphis or eventually OVW, I think he winds up working in either of those places as a wrestler, as a player-coach type of deal. He probably has just as good a run in those places as he did in ECW. And I think his talent would have been undeniable enough that he would have gotten another shot at a real WWF run in 1997 or 1998, especially as the Monday Night Wars heated up. And on top of all of that, I think he would have been a pretty damn good trainer. So while I totally understand why Candido thought leaving to keep wrestling was a good idea, especially as young as he was, I think there's an alternate universe where he gets a second chance at a WWF run in the late 90's and possibly has fewer issues with addiction.

The price is high relative to the drop off WWE made when they went from producing $60 monthly PPVs to the Network, which was $9.99 a month, which also offers the full WWE, WCW, and ECW PPV archive, all of the Saturday Night's Main Events and Clash of the Champions, and a large number of Raws, Nitros, ECW TVs, etc, and all of the various other content offered by the Network. Offering the entire WWN library, plus live streaming of WWN Live shows, for twice as much, strikes me as a bit high, and they will need to be aggressive in scooping up content if they want to compete with the WWE Network, otherwise I see this dying off quickly. And that first streaming Evolve show better be perfect.

On the Steve Corino/AWA title news mentioned in the Zero One section, Corino defended the AWA tag team titles, teaming with Ricky Landell, in UWC in December 2006, so this appears to be something that went on for a while. The same show saw Colby Corino, as a 9 year old boy, defeat Don Montoya in the main event, so it was a big show for the Corino family!

Bruce is either misremembering or is full of shit about Jesse Ventura pitching the idea of burning the American flag. Jesse left the WWF before SummerSlam 1990, so he wouldn't have been around when the Slaughter angle heated up. It might have been pitched by somebody who was working in commentary at the time, but I doubt it was pitched by Ventura.

Mongolian Mauler had a pair of matches on WCW Saturday Night in 1994. He showed up in an interview on February 12, wrestles Pillman on February 19, and then wrestles Brian Armstrong on February 26, before he was gone. Looks like he worked a Pro taping and a WCWSN taping that happened back to back days, before disappearing from WCW forever.

I really hope he has a better backup plan than "Go to TNA."

I wonder if Bob Ryder had anything to do with ECW's talks of going into the Gulf Coast/Baton Rouge area. Bob started working with ECW at the September 1995 ECW show, which I know because I was lucky enough to watch his Prodigy chat with Tod Gordon and Paul Heyman in person, along with Dave Prazak, Joel Gertner, and a few other people nobody on here would know. In fact, I think that's when Joel Gertner first approached Paul about working for him as ECW's Spanish ring announcer for the Rey Mysterio/Psicosis matches, as he could speak Spanish and do the intros properly. But anyway, with Bob already working with Paul and ECW doing the live chats from the ECW Arena at this point, and the shows taking place in Baton Rouge, I have to think Bob was trying to set up something there.

Dave, like everyone on Twitter, should probably not tweet. And I include myself on that list as well.

This episode is probably a good jumping off point if you are looking to drop this from your rotation. I like Bix and I like Brian Last, but the show becomes more and more about the Top 10 and the show lengths start to get really bloated with that stuff, and if you're listening more for the classic wrestling talk as I was, and not so much about the weird fringe characters that fascinate Last, then the show really starts to go downhill. Not to say that they ignore classic wrestling talk after this point, and it's not even to say that there aren't good shows after this point (any show with Cornette is usually strong, which makes me wonder if I should just listen to Cornette's podcast), but for me, the show isn't as strong as some of their earlier efforts. I think Bix leaving also probably has something to do with that as well, as some of the guest hosts that join the show after Bix leaves aren't very good. Again, not to slag Bix or Brian, but the show became less interesting to me the more it focuses on the Top 10.

I think having the entire electorate vote on the European/Atlantic/Pacific/African candidates is probably a bad idea at this point. The Wrestling Observer, while doing an excellent job at covering the United States, Canada, and Japan, and at times doing a great job of covering Mexico and an adequate job of covering Puerto Rico, has not really shown that much of an interest in covering Europe, Australia, New Zealand, or Africa. Maybe if Dave can put together a panel of 3-5 people in Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Africa, and even Puerto Rico (I nominate El Boricua) to vote on candidates from these areas. Maybe some years somebody gets in, maybe some years they don't, but opening these areas up to an electorate that by and large, are only guessing as to whether or not these candidates are deserving, doesn't seem to be doing anybody much good.

Yes, nobody says they're ordering a box of pizza, or 20 boxes of pizza, but they order a pizza, or 20 pizzas.