Johnny Guitar

Eddie Gilbert did. Pre Clash. But he was probably the only one.

Charleston, SC. This was an awesome segment that paid off nearly 7 months of storylines. A JCP/WCW guy taking out 4 WWF guys in the heart of Crockett Country made it all the sweeter.

I thought it was going to be thread about signs that fans had brought too events .

What a fucking mess! This year makes me so angry. If you could keep the timeslots and then cherry pick the talent. There's a great wrestling company lurking underneath the bullshit.

7500 was totally a good crowd. A) they were running Cobo Hall,which had about 13000 full capacity . And You need to forget that whole bullshit that is was a PACKED house EVERY night. They drew some great numbers at the Omni in 88. 16000 in fact which is a sellout. They also drew some low figures. The tides were changing. Monthly at the same venue wasn't going to cut it for large arena's

Also with Austin. After years in Tennessee,Texas and WCW, he'd learnt to get heat and show ass with best. Which was a situation that HHH never really got the full experience of.

When did this happen? Seems a good move. Are they still running the twelve events with eight of them free to air? Or is it just three months of television leading up to the PPV? I don't think most rational people ever really wanted a company on the level of WWE. They just wanted a promotion that learned from the mistakes of WCW and ECW,and utilized the decent talent that existed and still exists outside of Vince's world. Because there was clearly a fan base to draw from.

Fantastic! There was a real danger to this segment at the time. It's a shame that Terry was locked into ECW for most of the year. They needed him more than the WWF and he did some good stuff there. But I'd have much rather seen him work with Austin,Foley & Bret, which he did a bit. Plus Shawn and Pillman. Than Shane and Sabu which was old hat at this point.

Neither company was touring an area back then. The WWF's schedule was all over the place. Much worse than JCP's. It was completely in-humane with no rhyme or reason to it. The top Crockett guys also had access to the private planes. They weren't going to be driving to all the towns in the Michigan loop. Why do a spot show in Saginaw,when you can fly back to party in Detroit. It's also worth remembering that just because WWF and JCP were expanding not every area wanted or needed them. Or were really worth going to. The Mountain states. Montana,The Dakotas etc hadn't had a territory in decades and due to population size and travel distance weren't really financially viable. The South never really embraced the WWF until the attitude era and Cali never really accepted WCW until the Nitro era. Some towns were so burnt out or pissed off that nothing was going to re-heat them until a decent amount of time had passed to build up new fans. Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas and so on... Missouri (outside of St Louis) was the shits. Even when it had a territory!

New York. Then,as is now. Is the top media market in the US. LA,Chicago and San Fran were 2,3 & 4 at the time and still 2,3 & 6 today. Crockett needed to go to these areas in order to try and attract better advertising and sponsor's. In theory,not so much in practice. There is also a large population to potentially draw from for live events. Once you get the guys and equipment out to these locations.It makes sense to run some other shows relatively nearby to offset costs which is why locations like Poughkeepsie, Asbury Park, Hammond, Peoria and Reno are on the list. Some places like New Mexico are not huge markets in relation to say NY or LA. But as a large area that is "fresh turf" with no other companies running there. It could be worth a go at turning it into a JCP stronghold, especially as it borders on 2 former NWA strongholds, Amarillo and El Paso. The City's in Ohio and Michigan. Crockett "theoretically inherited" from GCW, but this was technically an area that was up for grabs at the start of the war as their respective territory's had collapsed and after the success of WM 3. Crockett would have been a fool not try and run a show in Detroit. Which was also a top media market. If JCP wanted to stay in business, they had too expand. The Carolina's, Virginia, Georgia & Florida are a great base, but they eventually burnt them out which would have happened much sooner without expansion. There was no reason that JCP couldn't have cracked these markets, because they had had some great success with expansion. Chicago was an AWA town. Vince went in first, but Crockett followed. And although they got relegated to the smaller UIC Pavillion. They had multiple sell out's and Chicago remained a strong town for WCW up until the bitter end. Philly was a hardcore WWF town, but Crockett gained a foothold. Although like in Chicago, they were forced to use a smaller building. Still they did some good to great business in the late 80's/early 90's and during the Nitro era. In fact apart from 94-97 when the hardcore fans turned to ECW. Philly was a strong JCP/WCW town. Baltimore was also a hardcore WWF town and is definitely the one town that they stole from Vince. They did booming business there during hot periods. Decent business during cold periods and like Chicago, Baltimore stuck with them to the bitter end. What they needed was at least another dozen cities like the above 3 outside the core territory. Which they might have been able to manage with a more focused plan.

The Wargames might be worth having in full, just because its the last proper one that WCW ever ran. The 1998 one was the 3man/3team mess and 2000's was Russo's clusterfuck that was Wargames in name only. Owen/Vader was great, but is not essential when talking about ONO. Dragon/Wright was great too. I think it could be included under the reasoning that WCW was going through a stage where they were putting more emphasis on the undercard with longer matches. I think I need to get in this yearbook.

One of the first tapes I ever got when I started tape trading was a "Best of US regional" comp which had a ton of the Moondogs/ Fabulous Ones matches on it. Fargo subbed in one of the matches for Steve Keirn . You know how certain moments in wrestling are burned into your mind. This is one of those for me. One of the Moondogs is pounding on Fargo. If you were being polite it looked like Jackie was no selling and "hulking up". But to me it looked more like he was having a fit. "Who the fuck is this guy? He's old as dirt and looks like hell" I thought. He then proceeds to unload on the Moondogs as the MidSouth Coliseum go nuts with a great call from Lance Russell "Jackie Fargo might not know alot about wrestling,but he sure knows alot about fighting". Tremendous!

It's going to get really depressing from here on out. I remember this time period as really frustrating as there is still the bare bones of a potentially good promotion under the dross. There's still some good talent left ,but it's all been so badly mishandled at this point and in some case's is going to get more dumped on.

I was thinking about this yesterday and aside from Watts, Duggan, Dibiase and JR, who else do you think they could get? Mr. Wrestling II is in his 70s (but then so is Watts), here are some other names of reasonably prominent Watts guys who are still alive: Bob Roop Jerry Stubbs Matt Bourne (legends contract as Doink?) Butch Reed Jim Cornette (highly unlikely?) Bobby Eaton Dennis Condrey (under WWE contract) Ricky Morton Robert Gibson Killer Kahn Chavo Guerrero Hector Guerrero Jake Roberts Tommy Rogers Bobby Fulton Terry Taylor Dutch Mantell 1. How many of these guys would be willing to be interviewed? 2. How many of the guys would the WWE BOTHER to contact? Part of me thinks they'll just think "Oh, we've got JR and DiBiase, they are familiar to the modern fans, and we've got Watts so don't need anyone else". Who know's. Goldberg came back and did some stuff for the WCW dvd, and they also got Kevin Sullivan and Harvey Schiller to do pieces's. Shane Douglas did stuff for the last Mick Foley DVD. Pretty much everyone is a possibility.

I thought so too. I enjoyed the Ladder match with Sabu. El-P should seek that out.

Watching some old school cards is depressing as hell,as you end up noticing how many people on it are either dead or crippled.

I think it's always worth reiterating how it took Vince Russo only 3 months to completely bypass the worse scenario in an already bad situation and head for straight out catastrophic clusterfuck! The stench of death was all over WCW at this point.

It's 20 year's ago since King of The Ring 1993. Often overlooked,but a pivitol turning point in company history. The end of Hulkamania, but the night that Bret Hart truly became a star.

*****

It was only 2 years ago that Austin was praising Joe and recommending that WWE should hire him as soon as possible. He's still tight with Punk and Cena. So if he went to WWE, he's got people too vouch for him. He needs to get out of TNA. There is no future there.

It's the longest drawn out death rattle in history!

They've done neither. What a fucking disgrace!

Loss started this thread nearly 6 and a half years ago. That's a lifetime in pro wrestling. Companies have risen and fallen in that time. And in that time, most of them, either hit a creative and/or financial peak. TNA has managed neither. They just exist, thanks to their money mark! What a waste!

I think it depends on the promotion and the context. When I first started tape trading in 1994. I remember being really stoked to finally see ECW. But to be honest the home video versions were kind of choppy and didn't really flow that well as a show. But it all looked much better in the context of a weekly TV show,where it could be chopped up, edited and shuffled around. I think every promotion looks better in individual match/highlight form, but sometimes you need to watch the whole show to get the full picture.

As bad as WCW was in 1999. I'll always maintain that it could have been salvaged Pre Russo.