ohtani's jacket

Don't forget that All In wrestling was popular in England in the 1930s until the London City Council banned it. When wrestling returned under the Mountevans rules, wresters were meant to adhere to the rules. Over time, those rules were bent or manipulated for dramatic effect since it was all a work. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a State Athletic Commission or any other authority that had quite that much influence over an American promotion. The closest equivalent I can think of is the Comisión de Box y Lucha Libre Mexico D.F. Another factor, aside from ITV regulations, is the fact that Joint barely made an effort to create any sort of continuity on television. Occasionally, there would be a rematch of a match that happened on television a few weeks ago, or the continuation of a heel or face turn, but it was largely up to Kent Walton to catch those details. Promos and angles were rare, and what the audience tuned into for the most part was a house show from a specific part of the UK. There was barely any self-promotion aside from Walton praising the local promoters every now and again. It was an outdated television format by the time the 70s rolled round. The presentation was similar to the original 1950s US wrestling broadcasts. That said, the big name heels were always in demand for TV. Breaks and McManus appeared on TV far more than the blue eyes. As did Haystacks and Kendo when he was a heel. Speaking of All In wrestling, I am certain that fans of American wrestling would gravitate heavily towards the independent UK promotions of the time if there was more footage available. I can imagine the likes of Dominic Pye being hugely popular with American fans.

Bob Backlund vs. Superstar Billy Graham (WWF, 12/28/82) This was another harmless bout between the two. It wasn't a great Backlund match but they can't all be four star classics. At least it forced Backlund to step outside his usual match structure and work a reasonably entertaining sprint. The match was mostly built around Vince and Gorilla squabbling over whether special guest referee Swede Hansen was going to remain impartial. That led to an exciting finish where it didn't seem like Hansen was going to call for the submission on Backland's chicken wing. He finally called it and Graham and Hansen ended up trading blows after the bout, leading to Gorilla trolling Vince over whether he was convinced about Hansen being impartial or not. One of the lumberjacks was Masa Saito. It was never gonna happen, but a Masa Saito vs. Backlund feud would have been cool.

A quick look at other shows from 1975 lists Jim Breaks, Alan Dennison and Sid Cooper, Mick McManus, Brian Maxine, Bobby Barnes, Steve Logan, Giant Haystacks and others making regular appearances. There's a Woking taping from 11/5/75 that has three straight heel vs. face matches featuring Sid Cooper, Bobby Barnes and Judo Al Hayes with Zoltan Boscik and Klondyke Jake matches that were taped but didn't air, so it was likely an entire show of heel vs. blue eye matches. Wrestlers were expected to wrestle clean , and it is true that there was less violence than in other countries and that the refs upheld the rules more strictly than in other places, however it wasn't a technical wrestling paradise. I wish it were, but it was professional wrestling and people came to see the personalities as much as the action that happened inside the ring.

This was an extremely fun undercard bout although it was basically cut into a highlights reel by the Televisa people. The focus appeared to be on Felino vs. Averno, which was a cool matchup. I expected that they'd be the final pair, so I was surprised when it wound up being Felino vs. Mephisto. Then I put two and two together and realized they had a title match the following week. Virus went the distance and got to square off against the Infernales, which I enjoyed. I was also taken by Maximo. I don't think I've ever seen him this young. This was a really entertaining episode of CMLL TV wrestling-wise.

Bob Backlund vs. Superstar Billy Graham (WWF, 11/22/82) I've gotta be honest, this wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It wasn't a particularly good match, but I expected it to be a low point in my WWF viewing and it wasn't anywhere near that bad. The reasons for that were that it was only 12 minutes long (which is non-offensive in itself) and story-wise I liked the idea of the ex-champion coming back for revenge several years later. From that point of view, even the gimmick change worked. I also thought it was interesting that Backlund was using headbutts, fingers to the eye and closed fists, indicating exactly how he pissed he was at Superstar destroying the championship belt.

Every thread should be diverted with WoS talk. Bob Backlund vs. Jimmy Snuka (WWF, 9/18/82) Snuka is so over at this point that he gets cheered over Backlund. Bob-haters are always going on about how he was disliked in Philly, but this is the first time I've heard him booed. Another slow match. They get into a tangled mess where both men are trying to cut the blood supply off from opposing limbs. Dick and Kal grow restless over the amount of "inaction" and Dick practically shoots his load when they run the ropes. Fortunately for me, the downtime gives Kal the chance to go on bizarre rants. He starts rattling off the great champions of the past and then wonders who would win a fight between Backlund and Londos (good question.) He also starts rambling about the old days when matches went 8 or 9 hours and guys would come home from the wrestling at 2 or 3 in the morning and have to explain to their wives where they'd been. He's particularly amused by this and goes on about divorce rates and husbands being whacked over the head with rolling pins. As for the match, advice to readers -- watch the Snuka/Backlund cage match and ignore the rest.

It may have been inspired by Freddie Mercury, though Freddie didn't dye his hair different colors. I'm not really a fan of the gimmick change, or the drop off work, though I can understand he may have been tired of doing the Beautiful Bobby Barnes schtick. He was such an entertaining worker in the 70s.

She'd been wrestling for a good ten years at the time, though. That's a lot of mileage on a Joshi pro wrestler from that era. I suspect she would have slowed down regardless of her illness. She still had some bangers when she was working her way through her health problems in '97. I kind of like some of her GAEA stuff. It's not the way you wanna remember Dynamite Kansai and others of her generation, but everybody gets old eventually and there was some decent post-prime stuff from her up until the period I'm familiar with (2004.)

Bob Backlund vs. Jimmy Snuka (WWF, 7/31/82) This was a whole bunch of nothing. Snuka made a big deal about going backstage and bringing Lou Albano to ringside since Backlund had Skaaland with him, which is fair enough. Rudman was obsessed with this joke he thought up about changing Fred Blassie's pencil neck geek to fat neck freak. He also addressed drug users telling them there's no bigger high than the high Backlund gets from coming to the ring. That may be true. Instead of Backlund controlling the beginning of the bout, it was Snuka on top, and it wasn't pretty. The match ended with a big brawl where Skaaland threw shome shitty looking punches at Albano, who did an even shittier job of selling them. Bob did land a nasty looking piledriver on the Superfly, though.

That reminds me of Bobby Barnes in the UK who went from being a Gorgeous George type to a punk rocker with dyed hair. I wonder if Vince was serious or he was trying to push Howdy Doody out the door.

Bob Backlund vs. Greg Valentine (WWF, 4/23/84) It's so weird seeing Backlund as a former world heavyweight champion, but kind of cool seeing him square off with Valentine one last time as the Hammer's the opponent most synonymous with Backlund in my mind. I'm not sure of the circumstances surrounding Backlund's departure from the WWF. He didn't last too long after the death of Vince Sr. I wonder what sort of role there would have been for him if he'd stayed on in the WWF. Could he have hung around the IC level? Turned heel at some point? Does he have a place in the Rock 'n' Roll era?

What's my boy Super Parka doing at an Arena Coliseo show? He brings the Monterrey vibes with him and these guys have a fun, crowd-pleasing trios match. Casas is over with the Coliseo crowd. Do something with him CMLL! He works some fun exchanges with Black Tiger throughout the match. El Terrible has been forgotten about it seems, but he's growing his hair out for a rainy day. Porky does an amusing job of mocking Terrible's facial expressions. Super Parka is super throughout and I would have loved to have seen him have a problem run in Mexico City. They probably wouldn't have done much with him, but I'm sure he would have made every match better. This was one of those nothing matches on paper that was a total surprise because the workers were allowed to work their craft.

It's been almost 20 years since this match happened, so I'm trying to keep an open mind. I don't think the divide between lucha fans is as strong as it was at the time (hopefully not), so there's nothing for me to gain from trashing this. The biggest positive was it was two younger stars trying hard to have a dramatic and suspenseful title match. They don't quite get the rhythm right but effort's appreciated. Like a lot of lucha at the time, the match is entirely built around the third caida and they go all out to have a spectacular fall. The enthusiasm outweighs the execution for the most part, but I can understand the excitement over this bout.

I was ready to hate on this, but it was actually pretty good. It's not a sublime Kawada performance. If you're looking for a sublime Kawada performance, you're watching the wrong decade. However, it was perfectly good meathead wrestling. Everything they did was hard-hitting and made sense from one beat to the next. Far better than I expected.

Bob Backlund vs. Bob Orton Jr. (WWF, 6/26/82) This was a fun lumberjack match with Orton doing an excellent job of playing to the cheap seats, but like I said in my previous post, I really wish we'd seen more of this feud. They had a match at MSG in August of '82 that wasn't taped. The August MSG card that was taped featured the excellent Buddy Rose match, so I can't complain too much, but they moved on from this a bit too quickly on television. In fact, the finish sets up a new feud between Orton and a disgustingly roided Ivan Putski.

Bob Backlund vs. Bob Orton Jr. (WWF, 5/22/82) This was a really good match. I wish they'd had a longer feud against each other as they were evenly matched. Orton wasn't the most demonstrative heel in the history of professional wrestling, but he knew how to get under an opponent's skin and he was a proficient stooge and bumper on top of being a competent wrestler. That made him a solid match up for killer Bobby Backlund, who could mow through an opponent if they didn't have their wits about them.

I'm so glad you mentioned his hair! What's up with that?

I don't think I've seen that before. Surely, I'd remember him putting the snake in his mouth. It's from '71 which again points to more lax broadcasting standards.

Bob Backlund vs. Sgt. Slaughter (WWF, 10/20/80) Howard Finkel can barely stifle his laughter when Slaughter gets on the house mic and starts singing the Marines Hymn. Backlund sure liked to get his shine at the beginning of a match. Has there ever been a babyface who had a longer shine than Bob Backlund? He's a kick-ass, killer babyface, so it's not terrible to watch, but it's half the match. And when Slaughter takes take over, it becomes a back and forth brawl where the Sarge ends up bleeding. Backlund's feats of strength never cease to amaze. The dude was a freak with that shit. This is good stuff, but when Slaughter gets Backlund in the Cobra Clutch, Skaaland hits Slaughter over the head with a chair. That's some bullshit right there. If heel managers aren't allowed to stay at ringside at MSG then how the hell can Skaaland justify pulling that shit? Not only that, but Backlund gives Slaughter a piledriver after the chair shot. That's a heel turn in my books. Such a bizarre finish. They did a similar spot in Philly three years later but it was after the bell and Skaaland was looking to prevent his man from suffering an injury. This shit was bogus.

Is the TV we have from '71 onwards predominantly Delaporte's promotion or do we have footage from other promotions as well? I would argue that there were even more gimmicks in the 60s than there were in the 70s, especially in the way of the success of L'Ange Blanc and other masked gimmicks. When I was going through all of the posters and match records we have from the era, I noted plenty of gimmicks that never aired on TV like the knockoff OSS 17 gimmick (the French version of James Bond), and so on. A lot of this stuff didn't make TV. That may have been because promoters wanted to push their top guys, or because politically the promoters were better off keeping the gimmickry stuff off the screens. We know that Catch was under attack in the early 60s for not being the sporting contest it portrayed itself as. We still don't know how the TV worked, tbh, which is something always bothered me. How did the broadcaster decide which promotion they would show each week? Was there an agreement amongst the promoters as to the rotation of the promotions or was it t the whim of the broadcaster? One thing that's notable about the catch broadcasts is that you very rarely see the workers dressed up in their gimmicks. This seemed to be intentionally kept off the screens. You don't see Spartacus in his Gladiator gear, for example, or M'Boa with his snake. You don't even see Batman in his full get up. There's an episode from 1969 where the heels are wearing their full costumes, but I can't think of too many other examples outside of the L'Ange Blanc run. Things appeared to be a lot more lax by '71, but I would counter that there wasn't a pick up in intensity with the gimmick workers. Rather, I think there's a serious decline in both the foreign talent available and local talent. There's a lot of amazing light heavyweight wrestling in the early 70s and some cool heavyweight stuff involving the feds, but there isn't a steady stream of new talent. When you don't have talented new wrestlers, you tend to get guys relying more on gimmicks to get over. However, gimmicks were always a part of French wrestling just like they were always a part of British wrestling. I'm fairly sure there was a steady overlap between 60s French gimmicks and the Paul Lincoln gimmicks of 1960s England. After all, there seemed to be an exchange of talent between the two.

Disgusting short for an atomicos match, but there were a bunch of talented dudes involved and they made the most of the time they were given. Atlantis continued his beef with Bucanero, two future Mistico matches were set-up against Averno and Ultimo Guerrero, Hector Garza continued to get his rudo act over, and they threw in a Black Warrior tope for good measure. It wound up being a high octane bout despite how criminally short it was.

Bob Backlund vs. Sgt. Slaughter (WWF, 10/22/83) This was a very good brawl between the two. It was a Sicilian stretcher match, but instead of doing a bunch of spots with the stretcher like most workers do, they beat the crap out of each other until Backlund finally got the chicken wing on Slaughter and the Sarge passed out. The refs dumped Slaughter out of the ring like he was a piece of trash and that was enough for Bob to win the bout. Great creepy/intense interview with Rudman afterwards. Why isn't Rudman in the booth? Love that guy. These two had a Texas Death Match the month before, but I can't find it anywhere. Let me know if it's out in the wild somewhere.

This was a good match. It was Takaiwa so there was some no-selling, but it was all in the name of high stakes drama. I've always had a soft spot for Takaiwa as he was part of some of the first matches I downloaded from the internet back in the days when it took 36 hours and several disconnected attempts to download anything. I love his unavoidable journeyman look that even a shaven head can't disguise and his earnestness to be the best possible worker that he can be. A bit like Kanemaru really. In this case like vs. like produced something good and gets the thumbs up from me.

This was a very good match that was overshadowed by a serious neck injury on a botched Olimpico dive. Atlantis and Panther, the two legends and former rivals, bucked recent trends in CMLL by attempting to produce meaningful falls and Panther insured that there was at least some matwork in the title match. The botched spot occurred early on in the tercera caida when Olimpico tried to do a running tope near the ringpost. He mistimed grabbing the top rope with his right hand, and instead of Atlantis catching him, he fell straight on his head. Babe Richard and the ringside doctor immediately ran to his aid. Galavision replayed the accident several times. Olimpico would be out for around five months, but it could have been worse. I felt bad for the guy. He was finally in the mix but once again he couldn't catch a break. They either improvised a finish or took things home early, but obviously the Olimpico injury put a dampner on things.

This had a surprisingly weak build-up for a WWE match, and features two of the biggest ham actors in the history of professional wrestling, but it's not bad considering that they weren't able to smash their way through any announcer tables and had to tell a story between the ropes. There are a few cringe moments but also some good stuff. You can occasionally see Taz and Michael Cole in the background. Cole looks bored, but Taz is focused on the match. I can only imagine the hyperbola if Cole were on commentary. The reason this match is a footnote in WWE history instead of something more fondly remembered is that Edge cheats to win and hams it up afterward. They also didn't take the feud much further than this. By the time Wrestlemania rolls around, Shawn squares off against Angle and Edge is competing in the Money in the Bank match.