Johnny Guitar

That's possible. That's entirely possible. Harley getting his seventh just seems like natural progression and a way to give some extra "oomph" to the match and therefore Flair when he regained it. "Look fans. Lou Thesz was great. He was NWA World Champion 6 times and Harley Race was beaten that record". Thesz's record had stood for 18 years. Some had to beat it eventually.

Not really! Regardless of how hard he worked. DDP liked to pre plan his matches out in detail, which would have drawn some heat from some guys. They would see it as proof he couldn't really work. Plus being Bischoff's neighbour didn't help his rep.

Vince Sr was a pretty shrewd dude. Whoever else he could have pushed in Backlund's spot it would have made money.

I dropped acid before I went to this card.

Steamboat's not a bad choice in hindsight, but probably not for that era at the time. Purely because Vince Sr knew what he was doing. The man knew what he was doing. Along with Sam and Eddie and a few others.

As far as I remember the Savage/Steph stuff came up during the DVDR sleaze thread. Which although may have contained some truth. But was mostly bullshit rumor's and wish fullfillment. It was one of those things that people were desparate to belive was true. So wether it was or not it took on a life of it's own.

I pretty much agree with this. It hasn't been perfect, but The Shield have been booked strong by modern day WWE standards. And way better than any of us could have imagined. All 3 guys have done great in their role. WWE need to get over their fixation with jobbing out guys who get over and need to pay their due's and actually the push the guys who get over. Yeah there is always going to be some primmadonnas. But the territories and WCW & ECW are dead. TNA and ROH are not cutting the mustard. There's no one left to really pouch talent from.Their going to have to build their own.

According to History of WWE. It was 11,492 attendance from 8813 paid.

I was reading the WON from around this time, and unbelievably, the angle was a huge flop. Savage vs Jake on house shows set all-time lows in every building it headlined in on the first run except Nassau Coliseum, the only arena where they drew well. Wrestling fans suck. This angle more than anything else defined my childhood wrestling experience. Nearly everyone in my family gave me shit for watching wrestling. Watching this one saturday morning with 2 of my cousins. One of them flipped the FUCK OUT watching this angle (fear of snakes). I can see how it failed. It was way too hardcore for the time. Fuck its way too hardcore for now. The cobra might of been de-venomised and de-fanged. But thats a real fucking cobra chewing on a dude's arm. That is fucking mental! however you slice it.

They ran some obscure towns for sure. I think Fargo or some other town in the Dakota's (Not Sturgis!) they actually built up and drew well in during the boom years. Although to be honest when I think of WCW towns it's still Crockett Country, Georgia,Florida, Chicago, Baltimore & Philly. WWE had some deals on some buildings in some cities which locked WCW out. St Louis is a good example. After the Kiel Auditorium and Checkerdome were closed in the early 90's. The only building (20,000 or less) was the new Kiel Center. WCW,if they wanted to promote in St Louis had to go the stadium route. TWA dome in ST louis. They were faced with a similar situation in Houston, San Antonio and New Orleans too. They ran actually ran some houses shows in Ontario back in 1990. They held a card at the Skydome in 1993 and drew decent crowd in 1997 in Montreal for Hogan vs Jacques Rougeau. I totally blanked on the Skydome show. According to Cawthon's site, there were less than 4,000 people in a a stadium that can hold 70,000. Yup. I had also blanked that the Hogan-Rougeau match happened on a proper WCW show, for some reason I had it in my head that it was a Rougeau-promoted indy show. WWE had definatley locked them out of the Maple Leaf Gardens, but they could have run the Ricoh Colisem,which was 10,000 seat.

They ran actually ran some houses shows in Ontario back in 1990. They held a card at the Skydome in 1993 and drew decent crowd in 1997 in Montreal for Hogan vs Jacques Rougeau. WCW was all over the place with where they were and weren't running and where they did TV and PPV. LA was one of their hottest markets during the boom period and it didn't get a single TV or PPV. Philly, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Chicago, Boston and Atlanta were all hot markets and not a single PPV. On the flipside they ran 4 years straight at a bike rally in front of people who didn't care and didn't pay just so the boss and his friends could party.

Which is sad on so many levels.

In theory they would have also matched up nicely with the Southern Rockers and Destruction Crew if they were in the WWF 93-95. That said are there any memorable good Southern Rockers, Destruction Crew, Bodydonnas or New Rockers matches? I don't think people think of those teams as ones that got over successfully. Not sure why one would think that Furnas/Lafon would have been more successful if they were working as foils to Bodydonnas, and NEw Rockers or Southern Rockers, Destruction Crew than they were opposite New Rockers, Bulldog/Owen. Furnas/Lafon Vs Owen/Bulldog could have been one of the great tag team feuds. In 1993 they would have been perfect foil's for Austin & Pillman.

No.Wrestling was way too lowbrow and under the radar for the BBC or newspapers like The Guardian to bother with. The rest of the press was mainly under the control of Rupert Murdoch, who coincidently owned Sky TV. In fact Sky had just finally turned a profit for the first time in March 1992, after losing a lot of money. Whilst the real big money was about to pour in from them getting the rights to show Premier League Football. No one was sure how successful that was going to be. Alot of people were pissed off that something they had been watching for years for free was now going to cost them money to watch it. The WWF had been and was still at that time a major part of Sky's success. With the uncertainty over the Premier League's success. Murdoch couldn't afford too lose the WWF, so their was no mention of the scandal on SKY news or in any of his papers like The Sun and The News of the World.

It's worth remembering that around this point in time WCW had just finished conducting a huge survey of the fanbase to findout exactly what it was they wanted. More wrestling and less skits were the overwhelming desires.

Shame your trip has hit a roadblock. But it'll be worth it when you eventually get there. I had the best year of my life travelling America. Some of it even involved wrestling.

Ok. I'm probably way too late and it's already been mentioned, but... what about Brian Pillman's appearence in Memphis? Granted nothing really memorable happened. But it was a case of probably the last name star showing up in Memphis before it closed down.

Mate. Fair play for doing this. I remember going fucking nuts watching WCW and WWF in 1999. Made even worse that it was the year that I spent travelling the US. 12 years of watching American wrestling and wishing I could go out there. And I picked fucking 1999!

I don't see Flair "bitching out" as necessarily a bad thing. I think that was one of the things the NWA champion had to do as part of the job. They were all mostly heels. At best tweeners, and their job was to put over the locals and then get out of town. We don't have the footage, but I bet there was tons of times were Lou Thesz bumped and stooged like a king. Flair was just following in that tradition.The only difference being that he was on national TV, so everyone got to see it. Made worse that his counterpart (Hogan) was running roughshed.

I believe that Dusty was helping out with some of the booking around this time.

I don't think people were ready for The Rockers too turn heel as a unit. It was a different time then. I know Shawn turned, but that was a breakup angle, which made sense. Everyone expected demolition, The Harts and even the Bushwackers to switch before the Rockers did.

I also believe WWF programming was on the terrestrial television before being shown on Sky Movies... It was. JN lister can give you the full breakdown, but WWF was on terrestrial tv by 1987. Regardless of who the actual GOAT is. It's more or less the same 5 names. Shawn, Bret, Savage, Austin & Taker. That get bandied about. Which is great and all, but as we approach 29 it seems sad that nobody who's made their bones in the last decade is really in contention. Rock, Jericho and Edge are probably the freshest names and they're not exactly spring chickens. How doe's Cena match up? He's probably the closest. Sorry, I forget who said it in the yearbooks, but that you could trace Savage's development over the years through WM. Shawn, Bret and Taker too, probably. As they rised up through the ranks. Apart from Cena is their anyone else to do that with. People seem to yo yo up and down the card. Not to rag on Hunter, but it feels like he should have a better WM résumé.

Wasn't one of them the guy who went on to trap RF? Xavier something-or-other? Seem to recall he was hardcore into Russo. John That's him. Xavier Von Russo. Completely delusional! I've always thought that the July 5 Nitro was interesting for the clear example it provided of how far WCW had dropped in exactly 6 months. -Jan 4 at the Georgia Dome drew 38,809; 34,788 paid. -Jul 5 at the Georgia Dome drew 25,338; 19,456 paid.

In that period post Bischoff/pre Russo in 99. Wasn't Craig Leathers put in charge of the booking committee? That's what Powerslam were reporting at the time, which I assume they took from the WO, as they did with pretty much all their info.

Yeah it was. Sorry about that. I'll edit my post.