Indikator

I think I need to listen to this now. But I also fear that I won't know enough about it, this should be a question for Gernot Freiberger. It's difficult to say who knows much about certain European promotions, Landauer probably only really joined the scene around 1998. I know Eckstein was a cameraman for Völlink in Karlsruhe, that should be interesting. But I couldn't tell you who could have juicy stories about the WFA shows and the newsletter scene from back then. Going further into a tangent, but it might be interesting for Robert - so you probably are aware of the Lasartesse book. That was written by Andreas Matle, who did write a newsletter around 1980. And I now know that he was kinda the protege of Paul Berger for a time, I read some letters in the NISH where he was mentioned. Sadly it seems that he was perceived as a mark, so they or someone else probably would have bankrupted him if he tried to promote shows. Hopefully that didn't happen. Anyways, it seems unlikely that the old guard was acting nicely towards the new generation, so you will always have to expect a generational divide and thus less knowledge about such days. You would really need an inside source for things like Völlink and WWS and Sven Hansen etc.. Only once Ian Rotten comes to Hannover and Lugner City ( ) do things get better. Edit: In regards to the Jumbo Tsuruta Hepatitis story, I found it fascinating to read the notes that Cagematch had when they added older Japanese shows. If a show had all the match times it had more often than not notes at the start or end of a tour and it mentioned stuff like Misawa missing the 1983 Grand Champion Carnival tour because of Hepatitis, as did Killer Khan exactly two years later in June 1985. I am not sure who their source for Showa puroresu is, but I absolutely have to put him or her over. Great stuff What do you do once you have done an edit? More edits, of course. Alaska Catch = run of the mill handicap match. Often enough it was not filled with jobbers and you didn't know who'd win. They have been around since the 1950s, but there is the possibility that the name was retroactively used in some instances. I would expect that there had to be somebody who introduced the match type, like the Kangaroos and the Australian Tag match, but I could only come up with Ski Hi Lee and that match never really was attributed to him. One of the more famous post war guys, the "stateless" IK succumbed to a heart attack after such a match in 1955. Robert, you absolutely need to google his real name František Křivinka and check out the new'ish article about him ("...osteuropäische Volkskunde"). I need to get that complete article, it might teach me how to approach such people with the available possibilities. It's not like you ever drown in available sources :/

Great concept and execution!

The fundamental problem with your review is that you disregard the very promotional nature of AMBITION. It has only survived because they can now put it on as a sideshow attraction during a 3-4 day tournament weekend. Just check out the Hikaru Sato weekend to see how much of a financial debacle the double shot system could be (2 days, one day wrestling, the other AMBITION). Because of the placement of the show they now have established AMBITION as a complementary niche attraction for their tournaments. It is almost absurd to view the match length as a booking decision unrelated to the weekend as a whole. Also, you might even want to perceive this weakness rather as an advantage. Or do you prefer the more artificially stretched matchups like Rico Bushido vs Carnage? AMBITION has a completely different flow for a reason. In the end your perception of AMBITION will to a degree boil down to the question if you have ever attended a whole tournament weekend live. I was at the very first event in 2010 with Daniel Bryan and could see a good percentage of the small crowd not being able to enjoy this concept at all. And I can't exactly blame them for that. What I can blame you for is your sub-par Blackmunk'ish review (you may now feel offended )

Can you even fathom that Mighty Atlas Morris Shapiro worked a lot of really small time shows in Upstate New York in the 1930s when he was still in the army? They really put an emphasis on that background as if it were a more modern gimmick like Sgt. Slaughter. I assume that the style was rather scientific, as all the places with lots of local wrestlers and few touring wrestlers were. Well, if they were able to avoid the carny problem, which means that their training wasn't that good from a modern perspective and that they basically just knew one or two holds and otherwise were pretty much lacking. You mentioned Mighty Ursus Jess Ortega, I expect that he was from the Argentina circuit and he quite possibly never wrestled in Mexico. Recently I found the shipping papers of the boat that Ramon Cernadas and Hombre Montana (Leon Finkelstein, not Harry Finkelstein who was also Harry Lewis) used to get to America at the very beginning of 1951 from Buenos Aires. Keep up the good work

I don't even know what this means. The Christmas match pulls together both the Flair-Kerry story and the dawn of the Freebirds feud. Seems pretty obvious. There is no historical significance to those elements. Freebirds were already established in Georgia, Flair vs Kerry is just another main event program. The wrestling business would not have been impacted in the slightest had these things not happened. The first turn in wrestling was important, not Michael Hayes slamming the door on Kerry. The first time they did the tire angle was kinda important, not all the other times it was rehashed. Wrestling always tries out new stuff, when it works out it will be copied, if it doesn't work out then nobody will repeat that mistake. And Lawler vs Funk could be seen as such a mistake (at least from a 1980's promoters perspective). Also, Lawler vs Kaufman is not exactly original either, for instance you had Burt Lancaster vs Gorgeous George. Some of you might have seen the early 1910's footage of Gustav Fristensky vs Josef Smejkal on Youtube. That was an attempt to introduce biweekly outdoors shows in Vienna between major draws (Stanislaus Zbyszko, Dr. Benjamin Roller, the absolute Euro elite). They probably tried the more American approach, which means trying rip off gamblers. And most of these shows only had a single match, unlike the Euro tournament mode with 3-7 matches a night. But that idea was abandoned after about two months. And 20 years later Henri Irslinger tried to introduce biweekly shows in that town in the style of UK All-In Wrestling shows. In the end that didn't work out either. So these flops did not change the Vienna wrestling scene, meaning that they were not that important. On the other hand you have the Masked Marvel. Remember how they had a NYC tournament where Mort Henderson gained infamy as the Masked Marvel? Well you had that exact angle a couple years before in Vienna. "Coincidentially" Stanislaus Zybszko was at both tournaments. They even replicated an angle, in which the Masked Marvel flees through the city to avoid the press so that his identity can be kept hidden (horse carriage in Vienna, motorcycle in NYC). So the Vienna tournament was important, and if you consider the influx of masked men in the US you can say the same for Mort Henderson. The Vienna masked man probably was a government worker called Franz Höllriegl, one magazine apparently got the confirmation by getting official police info Now regarding lucha libre trios matches, it is possible that Santo vs Los Misioneros de la Muerte led to a resurgence of trios matches. But if you look at random months on the homepage of thecubsfan, that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. I have noticed that by the early 1980's wrestling cards worldwide tend to bloat up a lot and often enough have 6-9 matches. And if you wonder how trios matches probably got popular, look at the 1952 EMLL opposition which had TV (if they weren't primarily a TV promotion). " indy (SAT) 03/15/1952 Arena Televicentro, Miguel Hidalgo, Distrito Federal [Lucha Libre 31] 1) El Bulldog, Lobo Negro, Medico Asesino b Abel Krim, Gorillta Flores, Tonina Jackson Event Notes: noted as first trios match in Mexico (though Guadalajara at least was doing trios prior) " Edit: I forgot to praise the line And while we're at it. One of the Dump Matsumoto vs Chigusa Nagayo hair vs. hair matches was important. Not because it was an awesome display, had a great big match feeling and was captivating. It was important because they lost their TV slot due to blood iirc.

Why is a big house or a good angle important? You wouldn't need Flair-Kerry 12/25/82, you would need the match where David (or better, Kevin) was successful enough for Fritz to warrant that his territory should be carried by his young and skinnier rookie boys.

I think you got them from my brother then. Nothing else was on Ebay so I couldn't get the other volumes. I have been virtually ignoring Ebay for years now since they scrapped the wildcard search so I would miss new stuff on there. Ebay did get me a professionally produced WWWF TV bootleg tape from ca. 1980 so I can't complain (I believe a video rental company was so audacious and scrupulous) . Although I can only complain that my brother has lost sight of that DVD convert...

That was probably on a VDB show, where they disregard fake punches in favor of forearm shots and uppercuts and the like. It's pretty much the reason I kinda soured on the style that I could deride as "the Southern kick-punch travesty" . Come to think of it, which VDB/CCC shows are even in circulation? I know I converted some stuff ages ago so I never looked what others did. Might be a good time to upload stuff onto Jetlags Youtube account *hint*

You mean the Sheik who survived Dick The Bruiser and the defection by the Jack Cain/Tony Marino faction?

Karl Gotch wrote that Dick Beyer brought AJPW to it's knees, which is a bit bizarre to read. But of course I can see him hating Abby and Farhat, as he said as well that Gene Labell knew just a little judo and no wrestling. So it's clear that certain wrestling types won't get over with him. The Funks and other Americans trying to get their wrestler's booked in Japan didn't endear them to him either as he was trying to get "better" Europeans booked. So if you consider the success of UWF Vol 2 you can see the argument how the Detroit influence made All Japan inferior to the mixed martial arts hilarity done by Inoki. Inoki, who had featured Tiger Jeet Singh extensively. Wrestling is a stupid business.

More and more I believe that the 1940s have the disadvantage that it has been pretty much the most neglected decade when it comes to research (Not that it would be a unique situation, WWWF 1964 is just sad). Regarding Tillet I have to wonder which towns you would need in order to make a case for him. Newspapers.com has added the LA Times recently, who might benefit from that new material? Been filling quite a number of blanks recently, like the Hollywood Legion Stadium for 1948 currently. I really need to figure out how I could convince Yohe to get one of these office printer/scanner combos so that he can scan his stuff. Just consider how much 1977-1983 coverage has improved due to the things Jason Campbell put on prowrestlinghistory.com

The vicinity to Trieste is probably the reason for the newspaper. Not that it would be that weird otherwise, I've read German newspapers from Rio de Janeiro, Latvia and Missouri. In the Rio one you actually had Raicevich as the hero for the Italian emigrants. He was something like a world traveling Antonino Rocca, he might have wrestled in like 50 different countries. It's bizarre to read in said German newspaper how the Italian emigrants reacted to their hero pretty much how Rocca and Sammartino would have been treated decades later. Another traveling Italian hero would have been Olympic winner Ubaldo Bianchi, he probably was everywhere around the Mediterranean Sea after WWI. He had his own troupe and didn't venture that much out of his comfort zone, so I would definitely rate Raicevich higher. Phil Lions has researched a lot more recently, he specializes on Bulgaria

You guys might be too dismissive. Yes, at the end of the Bix era TGBL got a bit out of control with his Morning Zoo shenanigans aka Top 10, but already by the first show after the departure he was able to hold the show together quite well. The co-hosts have all been good, especially John McAdam. So you should at least look at the rundown, as it would be stupid to skip the interviews and the segments might be to your liking as well.

Do you realize that this should be praised and not perceived as an insult?

The Balls Mahoney story is saddening. But I am not sure if that was the exception rather than the norm. I just recently read a bit about Len Denton's rookie days in his book and the behaviour of a Killer Karl Kox is not that far off. In fact, those rookie hazing stories never really differ too much. I've had my fill of post war European stories and while they weren't on those new, fancy and hip drugs the wrestler's certainly weren't normal people either, you might wanna use the euphemism that they were "characters". The hazing was of course appalling. There is a reason why so few "normal" people were in the business at one point in the 80s. We will probably never really be able to appreciate the influx of skinny wimps in the business, I would probably prefer to be in a CHIKARA backstage setting (even at their most passive aggressive moment) compared to ECW or pretty much every 1980s territory. Donny might have fun at those shows Tom Burke is somehow involved in.

I'm fairly certain that it is not even a tv show, they probably used footage from two shows that month

+45 minutes in I thought to myself "Why am I even listening to this?" . Maybe spread out these things a bit more. Or maybe just some hints of random Bix knowledge would make those longer Brian Last segments not seem to be a potentially repetitive waste of time. That thought certainly won't make it any easier when I will listen to the top 10 the next time.

The new wXw touring concept gave them access to quite a lot of new local customers, which gave their tournaments a considerable attendance boost actually. They diversified their product and improved attendance. It was quite a gamble to try out a huge number of new towns but even the expensive big cities (Frankfurt, Munich) caught on immediately. Meanwhile all the fans who now prefer the current UK Supershow scene (which is vastly superior to the one of ten years ago) are not really happy with the development of wXw. In the end this does also mean that the kind of superfan who will have other networks subscriptions will not really be the target group. wXw was always at a disadvantage when having a comparable product. I mean, if I remember how much more often King Of Europe 2007 DVD set was preordered compared to wXw 16 Carat Gold 2007.... it's either ridiculous or plain tragic. I guess the smark fan who will have not one single subscription will have at least 1-2 months each year for the tournaments. On the other hand the local German fan might only have a wXw subscription, maybe a considerable amount of people will have an ongoing subscription. Compare the price of a year to a Carat DVD set and you might be able to convince a good number of fans to give it a try, and with that you might even be able to warm them up to the ongoing and shows, especially the ones with a local flavour. It probably is a good idea not to focus on the smark fan and try to maximize the efforts regarding the more casual fan.

I wouldn't trust certain conceptions about undercarders. How many of you know that there were two Ivan The Terrible midgets? Currently I'm doing 70's Farhat'ish shows and not only do they give a crap if it's Kurt or Karl for certain nazi gimmicks, I've even had a case where I think it was Karl Von Brauner was written down in a source as Kurt Von Steiger or something like that. Often enough nobody gives a single damn about those who never came close to main events, so I wouldn't necessarily be surprised about misconceptions. With midget's I wouldn't count on pictures being correctly labeled, either. And maybe Lord Littlebrook used the Moolah technique of randomly renaming the people in his troupe to obscure the fact that they always wrestle each other. Because that's what she did, just check out Moolah's troupe around 1967-1972 and you will have lots of aliases being used that nobody ever gave a damn about.

I need to see this. I wonder how similar it would have been to their matches in Germany, where they had a number of matches when Beyer was on his world tour in 1972 wrestling for Gustl Kaiser (3-4 Kaiser tournaments ended with these two battling for the tournament victory on the last day). Just like with Andrè in IWE you might find hints what their Euro matches might have been.

Earliest 3rd generation family I am aware of are the Hans Schwarz's , a Bavarian family where Sr. debuted around 1905, Jr. in 1930 and Hans Schwarz III was only active for a tiny bit around 1958, He might have only worked Berlin. Because of the state of pre-WWII UK wrestling it's difficult to assess if they would have some cases who might count as amateur wrestling was more prevelant. Granted, Hans Schwarz III probably had less than 100 matches in his career but Sr. and Jr. more than make up for it. Hans Schwarz Jr. is by the way my number 1 when it comes to the question "Who lost his prime years to WWII" as he was pretty much a super rookie so WWII would have been his peak range.

I rather have the impression that many things, if not everything is getting streamlined. So accents are phased out in order to have one common denominator of a language that is an amalgam of the more accessible aspects of a language. (@Gutenberger: Überleg mal die Ausbreitung von Hochdeutsch und wie immer weniger Berliner Schnauze können) It's basically the effect that huge cities (+5million) with all kinds of people from all over the world have. As the media is centered there and media people and artists gravitate there you just end up with some kinda bland mesh of a language. And don't forget how MTV began a process of streamlining music worldwide. Whenever I Reggaeton I just shake my head wondering why the rich and beautiful music history of that area was replaced by this wretched pile of shit. Then I consider how music has been streamlined since 1980. It's not necessarily bias, it's just globalisation of some sorts.

We do actually have 62 matches (1979-1983) for a wrestler simply called "Wee Willie". Mostly ICW Poffo. As there have been instances where a midget name was recycled (for example there was one Ivan the Terrible midget in the 1950s and in the 1980s , Farmer Pete is giving us troubles) it might have been a good idea not to assign it to the biography hastily, And you know, you could have just asked about stuff.

One thing I have noticed when researching Southern wrestling in the 1950's is that there were quite some Canadians working there. It's possible that they were edged out in favour of nepotism and as the pure wrestling ability of those was inferior it likely resulted in the bad reputation of southern wrestling. We all know of the good reputation of the Hamilton boys, so if such able wrestlers get replaced by scientifically inept kickpunch guys there will be many people who will be dismissive of all their abilities. The behaviour of the promoters did not help, either.