Johnny Guitar

Flair vs Windham, Arn and the Blonds would have been fun and produced a ton of great matches. The only problem with it that I see, is that the hardcore WCW fans wouldn't/didn't really like the idea of Flair & Arn on opposing sides. See Fall Brawl 95. Although the booking for that is too blame as well. Saying that though. I think the idea in late 89/early 90 of Luger bringing Arn & Tully back to feud with Flair/Sting & Pillman would have been awesome. I think at that point in time fans would have bought it. By 93 I think the best course of action was Flair,Arn & Eaton vs The Blonds & Windham ( and later Rude).

Who was in charge backstage at the various venue's at Wrestlemania 2? I guess Vince and Gorilla handled all the pre show stuff in New York and Chicago. But what happened when they were on air? I've always got the impression that which ever of those two was broadcasting, the other ran back stage. Although everything was ultimatley Vince's call. Was George Scott still with the company? If so. I'm guessing he might have been in LA. How much power did Patterson have at this point? I'm guessing that after Long Island went off the air, Vince was in constant phone contact with the other 2 venues. But it seems weird for a major WWF event to be running without Vince backstage to take a constant hands on approach. Which is probably one of the reasons that WWE has never done a split broadcast again.

great post johnny. Is this thread for anyones fan history?

I loved the Raven character (maybe because at this point in my life I was a drugged out miserable grunge freak), but I can see why people don't. I think what's kind of gotten lost over time is that whether you liked the gimmick or not. Scott Levy felt that his career had hit a dead end after WCW and the WWF and that he had to totally reinvent himself if he was going to have any kind of long term success in wrestling and I think he managed that. Although like Loss pointed out I'm amazed that at the time the ECW didn't laugh him out of the building. I don't recall him ever getting any "Scotty Flamingo" or "Johnny Polo" chants. (although my mind may have blocked it out). Which contrasts with Justin Credible who was plauged with "Aldo" chants for at least a year when he changed gimmicks. I wonder if its even possible nowadays for a guy to to totally reinvent himself from one company to the next with a different gimmick that gets over. there must be someone who's done it in the last few years.

Yeah I remember reading in Powerslam (which probably got the info from the Observer or the Torch) that WCW wanted to re-establish a Light heavyweight/Cruiserweight division as late back as late 1994. In fact it kind of became a running joke in that mag over the next year as each month was supposed to be the start of the tournament and it never got going. Kind of weird looking back on it now as the only people WCW had at the time were Pillman and Wright. And although they had the talent agreement with New Japan and had promoted the WWC PPV, which means that Bischoff had to be aware of Eddy, Benoit, Malenko and Rey. It still took him a year to 18 months to bring them in.

The fact that this feud drew as well as it did. I think you have to put down to the aura that Vader still possessed and how much people still believed in him. Because nothing in the booking of it presented Vader as a threat to Hogan and made you belive that he was going to beat him. I think those first two years in WCW were the absolute low point for Hogan. As bad as he may have been at some points in the WWF he still had Vince exerting some sort of control over him. In WCW he ran roughshod over Bischoff and in turn the roster, which did nobody, including himself any favors.

One of the cool things about wrestling nowadays is that no matter how jaded you are about the current scene. Somebody outhere somewhere has a match on tape from the past that they can throw out there and say "Look at this. This match rocks!". So your jaded ass watches it with a "yeah, might be good" attitude. And by the end of it the 12 year old mark in you has beaten that jaded old fucker to death. Like Flik I watched this on Loss' recomdendation. Tremdous! The best WWF tag team match of all time? I don't know. I'm still trying to process it. There's been some good WWF tag bouts. This match makes that argument really weird when you look at it as one team consits of one half of the Hart Foundation and The British Bulldogs. Who obviously had some great matches. I have no problem as this being a match a brought up for one of the best tag matches in NA in the 90's. I thought Todd would ruin this match, but aside from the odd dumb remark, he mostley shut up and let Jim Ross call it. And thank god. Jim ross was great in this. Ross always seemed conflicted from 93 to 97. Betweening putting over the dumb shit Vince wanted and the guys he liked/respected

Styles commentry is horrendous in this. I've always felt that this is a match (abeilt decent) where ECW shoots themselves in the foot on a quite few levels. As Loss said, this thrown out cold for the sole purpose of getting ECW over. Not the guys. Thats not nessercilary a bad thing, as ECW was trying to bulid its rep. But then it did get over and there's no follow up. You would have thought that this could have at least led to rematch or two, before transitioning into Benoit/Malenko vs Snow/Guerrero. Styles' comment about more wrestling in 5 minutes than on PPV in the last 5 years is terrible. Because the momnet I hear it I stop concentrating on the match in hand and start thinking about all the matches that were on PPV in that 5 year time frame that smoke this. So by the end of the match all i think was that this wasn't as good a wrestling match as say the Rude/Steamboat Ironman and that Joey Styles is an idiot. Benoit/Snow is a decent match. But it exists in a vaccum. and sadly doesn't really mean anything in the big picture.

Me too. But as far as wrestling goes. For years I've thought that when Vince knows his time is up he's going to pull a "scorched earth/poison the wells" deal. The man's a complete control freak. The thought that WWE could or would continue without him must drive him nuts. He's got to have the last laugh. They say you always hurt the one you love the most.

So who's Vincent? Shane, Stephanie or HHH? Coppala has always said that if he'd made The Godfather Part 4. It would have been about how Vincent eventually drove the family business into decline and death.

Also 1995 would have been SOOOOO much better if the Kliq was a benign and cooperative force politically too. Agreed. The 1995 WWF roster was actually pretty great. It's just that nearly everyone and everything was either badly booked or badly mis-packaged. In bizarro world this was one of the best years in company history. It's another in the long line of great "what if's?" in wrestling. So many different things could have sprung from this. I know the inspiration for "The Clique" was Buddy Rodger's group of workers, back in the 50's. I've always wondered if this some half assed attempt to form a union, post steriod trial. As Vince was arguably at his weakest back then. Bret, Shawn, Nash & Hall, with Owen, Davey & Kid as a group would have had Vince by the nuts. they were basically all his stars. Except Undertaker. Added to that people like Austin and Foley when they showed up, who Bret and Nash where high on.

I've always thought that it's a shame that Bret and Shawn got so dragged down in politics, and thats what ended up defining their feud. You could have run dozen's of matches between them, trading wins, before you had to get to the gimmicks. Ironman, Ladder, Cage, Best of 3 etc. They should have been "Flair/Steamboat" for the 90's.

I think Bischoff became The Man in Charge after Clash 24, which drew a decent crowd and rating for the time. I thought Flair was the head booker throughout '94, with guys like Fuller and Dundee helping him. Didn't Bischoff make Flair the head booker after the meeting the guys had with Turner and Ric was the only guy that Ted actually knew ?

I'm pretty sure I read in, I want to say it was a magazine called Wrestling's Main Event ? that Owen and Benoit were actually going to be in this tournament as the canadian pick. And Muta and Chono were the original japanese seed.

Yeah I hated it too. Owen & Jeff were/are great at playing annoying dickhead's, who you wanted to see get their asse's kicked. They didn't need Debra.

Although there's lot's of stuff to hate about the booking in WWF 1999. One of the things that pisse's me off the most is the tag team scene. Owen Hart & Jeff Jarrett could have been one of the great heel tag teams of all time. Neither man was relly cut out for main event single status, but tagging would have allowed both of them to play to their strengths and given them a meaningful place on the roster. Under a decent booker. Something like Owen/Jarrett vs Edge/Christian and the Hardys. Could have produced a whole bunch of decent matches and elevated everyone involved.

SNME match against Savage

All this talk about the Super Bowl makes me wish that Pillman had gone through with his plan to to storm the pitch and handcuff himself to the goal at the 1996 event.

I think if Pillman hadn't been in the car accident the match would have happened. Shane and Brian were friends so they wouldn't have had a problem working together. I think there would have been some "controversial" finish to the match that protected both men, as that was the logical way for the angle to play out.

I think it might have been a little over hyped at the time, but I can see why. After a shaky start as the Ringmaster. It his first good /memorable WWF match under the gimmick that made him a megastar. His last good, big high profile match before that was against Ricky Steamboat at the Clash of the Champions way back in August 94. Apart from the few months he spent in ECW in late 1995 getting his mike work down, Austin had spent over a year basically twisting in the wind either due to injuries, politics or bad booking. It's not a great match, but it was good match that Austin needed to estabish himself in the WWF.

Were the Tunney's threatened by Vince? although they were working with the Crocketts. When that deal fell through they seemed happy to go with Vince based on the relationship they had with his dad. The beginning of the WWF national expansion is an interesting time because alot of people seemed to know what Vince was planning. but choosed to handle it diffferntly. Sam Muchnick, stu hart and The Lebells all wanted to retire and seemed quire happy to let Vince take over. eddie Graham and Don Owen were left alone for the most part, as they were tight with Vince Sr. As were the tunneys, who basically merged with Vince. In fact apart from promoting in St louis. It wasn't the NWA that Vince went after first. It was the AWA.

Listening to Gorilla's commentry years later. I kind of get the impression he was alllowed to say whatever he wanted (as long as it didn't disrupte the " current storyline" or mention someone who was in JCP). So he could name drop people from the past like Johnny Valentine or Bobo Brazil, but he couldn't mention Ric Flair or the fact that Andre beat Hogan at Shea Stadium What was the deal with that anyway? Given that Superstars was hardly a live show and VKM was sitting RIGHT THERE doing commentary with him, I assume that line had to be okayed. I remember McMahon saying something after Piper went off about how Atlas was re-embracing his heritage and made some comment about Piper & his kilt then Roddy backed right down. It struck me as odd then and it still is one of those weird meaningless things I still wonder about. Was it pre-emptive against some imagined horde of people watching Savoldi's ICW who might care about Tony Atlas or something? They even parioded this years later when Ron Simmons debuted, with Vince not really recoginizing him and lawler screaming "Thats Ron Simmons". Vince always seems to flip/flop about who would be recognized and who wouldn't when they either returned or debuted in the WWF. It seemed to depend on what side of the bed he got out of that morning. I remember it blew my mind when Jim Cornette showed up on Raw and Heenan was going "Do you know who that is?" and Vince matter of factly going "Yeah that's Jim Cornette". Yet a few months earlier he didn't recognize Lex Luger when he debuted.

I've just watched a clip on Youtube with Bam Bam Bigelow, who puts over Jimmy Hart as the best head booker WCW never had ( he gives him his props for WCW Saturday Night. Which was great). How he new all the boys. Had their respect. Knew what they could and couldn't do. And basically just knew what worked in wrestling. As far as I know. He seems to be like Bobby Eaton, in that he's one of the few people in wrestling that everyones seems to love and/or respect and doesn't have a bad word to say about them. I don't think Jimmy could have saved WCW on TNT and TBS. I think AOL/Time Warner would have found some reason to pull the plug sooner or later. But he might have at least been able to keep them on a level where they still seen as a viable product for some else to buy and get another network deal. If not, at the very least his stuff would have been a million times better than what we got from Russo.

I remember Dave making references in the WON to the WWF's Memphis-style booking at the time, in the sense that they were running way more angles than normal and seemed to be booking for their hardcore fans more than casual fans. The Hogan and Luger megapushes would seem to challenge that, but I do see the point. Although the hardcore WWF fans decide to shit all over the Hogan and Luger megapushes and embrace Bret Hart.

Bret "Hit them up for as much money as possible, man" Hart: Despite never being more than a modest draw at best, and never earning more than high 6 figures a year. Bret Hart works the WWF and WCW into a huge multi million dollar bidding war for his services, and ends up taking Vince for a million and Bischoff for 9 million.