Indikator

There were upsides but just look at continental Europe, the business there pretty much committed suicide because of such practices. By being horrible human beings the wrestlers wanted to save their spots, but in the end they just limited their opportunities.

Didn't Gedo and Jado start with Takeshi Gundam and debut in Europe?

Don't we all remember the myriads of "southern 1980's rasslin' cartoons"? I actually couldn't tell you what Cornette ever did that could be described that way. Maybe Prince Kharis, but otherwise I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

I really liked End vs Everett as Tommy exploited all of Everetts weaknesses, I described Everett as having a "Low Wrestling IQ" to other fans attending - and I didn't try to be mean with that phrase! So with that in mind I do think that the match structure was fine as End had a reason to constantly disrupt the PWO beloved schematic flow of a stereotypical wrestling match. I have not seen the match on tape yet I should add. Did you also get Ambition? Since they decided to have those events during the +3 day weekends the atmosphere has gotten 100x better and I would expect that it makes a video purchase a lot more worthwhile (the crowd is no in pro wrestling mode!). Prior to I think it was Night 2 the wXw office guys had something of an inofficial Q&A with the fans and they did say that the moved Ambition to the tournament weekend as a last ditch effort and it totally was the best thing that could happen to it. They elaborated that "so many guys do BJJ sparrings prior to the show that it would be kind of stupid not to run such a brand as they'd just continue with such shows behind closed doors" . What a ridiculous reason not to cancel a concept but I surely don't mind

What I found today https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Larry/Lanning I wrestled professionally from 1975-2005 for NWA-AWA & WWF plus many more. I was the 1st Undertaker from 1988-91..... It's a major pain in the ass to keep an eye on obituaries as at least 50% of the claims are either untraceable or pure crap. At one point I thought I had found the original heavyweight Little Beaver from the 1930s but then I did find an article which made him about 10 years older. At one point I made a textfile of all the WWE unknowns we have so that Wilbur Henderson from the FB Tribute Site would have it a bit easier to wade through all those phoney WWE wrestlers

Thank you for this phrase, I wasn't aware of that meaning yet. That's actually my favorite part of research, realizing such things. I laughed at a weekly newspaper from Vienna that had an article after a 1900 tournament in which they stated that they only had coverage because otherwise the venue would have gone bankrupt and the poor workers would have lost their precious jobs. Because of that the altruistic newspaper didn't lambast the deplorable wrestling tournament until now *cue damning review* . I read "Hooker" by Thesz a bit in the last few days and found it interesting how he noted that promoters like Muchnick and Lutteroth were unable to differentiate between a worked match and a shoot. It's interesting to see that even such people who had to deal with wrestling professionally weren't necessarily aware of such things. So who are we to decide who was plain naive. In similar fashion I have learnt that some Euro Jiu Jitsu "expert" (Erich Rahn) made a PR video in 1912 and it has to be so laughably bad that I just have to see it and read about how people reacted to him and the video in the 20th century. I think looking at how "legit" martial arts dealt with such credibility issues could improve how we should answer such questions.

I expect that European TV in general focused on the more suitable wrestlers, especially in countries with an influencial church you couldn't go for comedy and brawls. You had technical bouts on TV and the bloody brawls on house shows. A single bloody match could have probably gotten a TV show cancelled in all of Europe.

The comedy aspect was definitely existing in the European tournament setting. As you had a roster wrestlers who weren't main eventers desperately needed a niche, and if you were likeable comedy spots were a great way to make you an important babyface for the troupe. For me the earliest match report that reads like some midget match in regards to comedy spots was from 190X. And with everything in wrestling - if it was popular and got over in one place then surely will it be copied by others. The only question is when it happened. Likely one angry newspaper writer will have reported it. Weirdly enough what I have read in that regard was mostly positive, like a jolly good fellow who spices up his performances. Of course I mainly have Austrian match reports accessible, that might explain it. Somebody needs put frigid Prussian newspapers online, upscale UK newspapers could be hilarious as well. The tournaments made pretty much everything in wrestling as we know it necessary, like characters, dynamics, finishes, decent matchmaking etc. . Look at the needs of a multi week tournament and tell me why it should have been invented in some Kansas town that only had two matches per show. I did also notice that the middleweight contortionists with nicknames like "human eel" used such comedic spots. Quite possibly only the one match of Fritz Kley is surviving video of one of those wrestlers.

Last year Jimmy Havoc wrestled in Oberhausen wearing a "Die Havoc Die" shirt and ze Germans chanted "The Havoc The" (or was it Jimmy?) . I was sad not to have witnessed that live.

And it's basically just the count for the move that was performed in the end of the video. Cesca vs Ben Chemoul was btw a matchup you could see in North America . I assume that Kola Kwariani signed them for their tour and as they have been virtually forgotten I have to assume furthermore that they flopped. It is hard to say if Kola stopped booking Euro guys because of those two or if he had retired because of unrelated matters.

It's still better than "Let's apply JCP 198X logic to everything that ever happened" like in the touring world champ thread (Stooging Thesz, jeez) To me jdw and Farmer make good contributions looking at a matter from different angles. They can even contradict, it wouldn't make any one of said points illogical.

Many, of course. But it reduced the risk of having wrestlers with a good pedigree who leave the business after a couple of years. You will be left with guys who will have to wrestle until they drop dead (so no wasted pushes), who more often than not have an unhealthy lifestyle and will because of all these things not turn away from the business and expose it nonchalantly. The aspect of hazing the rookies helps making the wrestling community tightly knit

While I understand the point I think that wrestling has always been one way for the common fan to vent in whatever manner he or she wants to. Remember, wrestling is the (faux-)sport that established heels, there is a need to hate somebody! I've read enough from the 50s about female fans who made up half the audience just to see bodybuilders in a proto-chippendale act. And whenever I read about the other half of fans from back then they mention that they are the most normal, polite people who have to be nice all week long and "enjoy" a wrestling show by ranting and raving like a lunatic. So it comes to the question - do those modern people really waste their time? What if it's part of their weekly routine and helps them to place their anger? It's likely impossible to determine if hate watching anything is a detriment to another person's life. You can suggest the person to skip the show in question for 1-2 weeks, but don't be pissed if they resume their routine.

Only wrestlers should count where the backstage area emptied just to witness his or her shittyness.

So Misawa vs Kawada was Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels with neither being a whiny bitch?

Would you prefer "Social Media Era" or even "T&T (Twitter and Tout) Era" ?

Don't forget that you needed to be a booking office/agency in order to become NWA member (that's why guys like Ed Contos were refused *cough*), so Kohler and probably also Leonard Schwartz are basically territories. It's difficult and takes a lot of time to decipher what happened back then. Originally Schwartz got his wrestlers from Jack Pfefer and then Al Haft , but Luce recently sent around the research for Lexington, KY 1952 and one first and second glance it seems that Leonard Schwarz was the main supplier of talent and I shouldn't say that Lexington was a Haft town. I need to move hundreds of shows anyways and now it seems that Schwartz (Clarks Sports Inc.) will soon be accessible like the aforementioned links. At least there is an upside to this ludicrous amount of work, as I can show you guys stuff like our Pfefer index. Currently for us Detroit is one major pain in the ass (were Harry Light's direct predecessors Eddie Lewis and Adam Weißmüller?), and Kohler likely got his talent from Weißmüller when he first expanded in the mid 30s. Haft was seemingly only part of this alliance, I haven't seen talent sharing between Kohler and Haft yet. Furthermore in regards to 1930s Chicago we can't yet tell where the main promoters like Kohler, Joe Coffey and Doc Krone got the talent from and who had an alliance. New York is not easier, maybe even worse Early on in my wrestling fandom I got myself the Rene Lasartesse Book, he was the Swiss guy who worked in NY 1957-1958 as Ludwig Von Krupp with fellow neutral Paul Berger. There he stated that they were booked by Kola Kwariani for the whole duration of their stints (Berger left first) and based on their matches I thought that this meant that they worked for McMahon and that Kwariani was McMahons booker. This doesn't necessarily make sense if you have read the new Hornbaker book. I don't want to say that it's wrong and I've only read it once (I will probably have to read it multiple times in order to get all the timelines right) but it does seem that Kwariani was not alligned with McMahon at the time. Yet Berger and Lasartesse were on McMahons Capitol Arena TV show and pretty much every venue in the region as well, so I wouldn't as of now say that Kwariani was boycotted by McMahon back then. As far as I can tell my impression is that NYC had in the 1950 Rudy Dusek, Kola Kwariani, the Johnstons, Pedro Martinez, Jack Pfefer, Vince McMahon & Toots Mondt as big players more or less simultaniously. And I begin to think that from 1940-1960 no wrestlers wrestled exclusively in the NY area for only one of the aforementioned guys/alliances. Edit: Remember that Crockett and Rocca tried to invade NY in 1963? Check out Rocca's schedule and image what McMahon thought once it was clear what Crockett and Rocca were up to. All those other territories Rocca worked might have turned against McMahon! (You need to think like a paranoid promoter - which back then was probably the sensible approach)

The 1930s are just miles ahead of everything. With the help of Don Luce we have close to 400 shows in NYC in 1934 alone. Just check out Prowrestlinghistory.com to see how many shows were hold in Ohio back then.

I was floored when I saw that Fritz von Erich had a brother in Quebec called Karl von Erich in 1953. This was for promoter Sylvano Samson and it likely was the first place where Adkisson used the von Erich gimmick

Wouldn't Taker be Baron Von Raschke ~1985?

Holy fuck this has to be one of the greatest entrances of all time

I'm sorry but that is really stupid to compare. There is a huge difference between 1am-5am timeframes and everything past 6am, especially if you aren't a nightowl. I was delighted when I could watch the NJPW dome show in the morning this January, and I did live coverage for a website at the aforementioned time slots from 1am-5am for roughly 3 years, more often than not +2 times a week. Early in the morning >>>>>>> middle of the night for the majority.

Not sure why I didn't think of it earlier, but because of a video I just remembered the maybe first wrestling piracy issue. http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=004290;p=1#000003 "By the way, the French Pathe guys were sued as they apparently made an illegal bootleg video from a distance. It's a pity that I couldn't find out how the lawsuit turned out, but we do learn that the first big piracy issue happened already back then." I can't find the clipping right now so a translation of the newspaper article might take a while - if anyone is interested. As you can see few things in wrestling are ever new. For instance, I have found midget wrestling matches by a midget circus troupe from 1895 (somewhere in the Baltic states, I have to look again).

Even some German media site wrote how Spike wants to to change their image (can't remember if they mentioned the "lose wrestling for women" aspect) so this wouldn't make too much sense. But tv doesn't have to make sense. Also I guess RoH ownership and their track record would pretty much guarantee Spike that they'd not be utterly stupid like TNA and Dixie. So there is hope.

I was really occupied the last few weeks so only today did I read the WON obit(s) for Larry Winter. Turns out Meltzer mentions his rookie gimmick of "Andre Zavida" which probably is "Andre Zvezda" as he was - apparently - more known. So add at least a WWF tv match, a short stint in Kansas and a Stampede stint for Winters. It's the only "Andre Z*" we have for 105061 individual persons at Wrestlingdata, so it seems to work out. I'm always trying to flesh out such rookie/jobber gimmicks, so I'm happy that one pothole has been fixed.