Indikator

I think the hundreds of independent Doinks were a bigger reason.

So one day I watched some old movie which Robert S might know (wenn nicht, dann bist du ein liederlicher Österreicher ) and it had an original pope entrance. I was pretty floored by it and not only because it was that POS Pius XII. So here it is for you to to witness.

This. Jack Claybourne, Luther Lindsay, Samara Seelie, Bearcat Wright, Bobo Brazil. Was anyone of those guys other than Bobo percieved as a bad wrestler? Maybe Yohe can be the judge on Bearcat. After receiving the new Vance Nevada update I went through +1500 results pages from the 1950s and managed to find quite a number of "new" Tunney shows (Hamilton, London) and it was really interesting to see how Tunney pushed them. As there isn't much pre-1950 available it's possible that Claybourne preceded him but I think that Bobo in 1951 totally blew up there. A short while later you had Lindsay and Claybourne being quite successful as a tag team. And a couple of years later Bearcat was pushed as well. And it does make sense as Waldo Von Erich once remarked that he had to turn heel as Whipper Billy Watson was the white face and likely tried to keep it that way. So he teamed a lot with those guys and Prince Maiava & Suni War Cloud (I found a show that might incline that Ilio DiPaolo was a successful draw there!). Whipper might have been lucky that strongman Doug Hepburn didn't really adapt to wrestling... or not if you consider that he had a stake in the promotion. In similar fashion it was neat to see how the nazi gimmick blew up and how they made everyone a nazi. Has a single match of the Fritz von Erich & Karl von Schober(g) team survived on tape?

I actually asked her about that around 2009 and she had a "what the hell are you talking about" look on her face. So who knows

Quasimodo had to leave a German tournament early because of his shittyness.

It will be interesting to see how EVOLVE will be compared to the worked shoot AMBITION project by wXw, which will have a show next week with Gulak vs Sabre. A "straight" wrestling product can have many stylistically differences so it will be interesting to see how such matches might differ and see what type will be more popular on dvd & for live attendees.

I merely meant that it could be construed in such a way. The thing we have to consider that with the current wrestling business many people will have to learn different concepts. So where older Euro/Lucha fans were used to have certain workers sparsely used as special attractions nowadays people always assume that you will see a popular wrestler each week on tv. I have always loved to learn new booking patterns (e.g. the 3 month MSG challenger cycle) and when you enter old Euro tournaments into a database you tend to notice fine nuances at times and when you get +300 shows in NYC for a calender year from the great Don Luce you learn of other nuances and you see a variety of measures that did or did not work out. You can guess how disillusioned I am by the fact that the old lucha magazines mostly only have spot show previews and as a no habla espanol person I have little use for the arena reports from the usual big venues. One thing that might be worthy to be discussed - could it help to put similar emphasis on UK title reigns like one might do with Mexican titles? I tend to believe that in a tournament setting it was more important to see who the tournament was built around but it seems rather plausible to use similar of not the same standards for Mexico and the UK

In regards to the pantherwagner post I have to ask aloud why anyone should even care about the question if a wrestler could only be successful as a special attraction. Or would you use that argument against Andre the Giant? Man, I sound like a broken record

I am not aware of Seles changing anything, I was 10 years old when she was stabbed. For Europe, I guess the violent working class football fans was replaced by working class immigrants who didn't go that much to games. Then there was quite an attendance surge and you had more white middle class fans, just check out the ticket prices nowadays everywhere and the officials thought that you need more VIP fans so the old working class fan culture has been slowly phased out over the last 20 years. And there are no more miners and lumberjacks anymore.

There was a down phase in the early 50s, then Kaiser and his IBV had a good year in either 54 or 55 there with Blemenschütz on top so of course Blemenschütz decided to oust the IBV and take control. The venue (skating rink) owners were really in charge so they got rid of Blemenschütz around 1980 and replaced him with Wanz. At least that is my current knowledge of the issue. The lack of post war sources would make working on this area rather ineffective so it has been laying dormant pretty much. Best case scenario would be that the sons of Selenkowitsch and Zurth start sharing their fathers collections and the NISH dropping their archivists stance, but don't hold your breath. Austria will get interesting once ANNO will have papers from 1946. If they decide not to go past 1945 I'll declare war on your country (I have already accumulated thousands of clippings from there, so if you or somebody else wants them just drop a PM and hope I notice it). At least Zefys has now at least one good 190X Berlin paper...

Kaiser should be probably the choice as he was the one who was successful (afaik he left the business a milionaire) and good for the wrestling business as well. Look at the link, he promoted almost everyday seemingly so he had a full time territory and covered quite an area. The other promoters were either limited to one or two towns at some point or it was more a crash and burn style like in the metropoles of the 1950s (Hamburg, Munich, Berlin), I think it was 1970 when the Hannover promoter had 150k attendance for that tournament with +50 days, back then he was still touring with his roster/troupe a bit but he doesn't have the longevity of Kaiser. The main difference between Daddy and Hoffman or other people in his role is that he wasn't involved in the territory, at least not to my knowledge. But who would use that argument against guys like Lawler, Sammartino, Dick the Bruiser and Larry Zbyszko here? The more I think about the anti-Daddy arguments the more obvious it is that nobody really knows much about the British scene at all. Nobody uses old Philadelphia TV to see how WWE was booked. If somebody finally manages to get Ray Plunkett to send us his result lists the situation might improve in about 1-2 years

Good thread, here are my 2 cents on some cons where I might be able to give some perspective - I'm not exactly sure why the limited (!) amount of footage would speak against him - would you use the same amount against Sammartino or Lawler? - look at it like "one tournament is like one successfull main event feud and thus a good business period" - Not many people could have his standing in Japan and the AWA, name me one person who could do it and is considered a fluke I have a book about Gustl, which is quite interesting in it's own respect. In regards to Horsts wins: His placings in 1976 are 1, 1, 2, 1 and his Chris Taylor was in either second or first place in those tournaments. His placings in 1971 are 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 and Dick Beyer was the second in 5 consecutive tournaments Now, who here believes that a tournament with these final pairings was lacking? In 1965 they did such a "finals feud" vs Billy Robinson who one once and Horst won three times, who here would put that against Robinson? Horst was the #1 Kaiser guy from 1962 on, if he was present they built the tournament around him. Btw, we do probably have legit numbers for all of Kaisers post war tournaments. Between 1946 and 1976 he had 6404 tournament days, ~22 days per tournament and attendance was 12 473 474 - 1947 fans per day. I absolutely wouldn't mind a discussion if Kaiser might be HoF material solely based on that numbers in another thread. As a by-product of years of work you can see at http://wrestlingdata.com/index.php?befehl=shows&sort=liga&kategorie=8&liga=1485&jahr=1954&showart=&ansicht=1 an example for a year, iirc two tournaments from that year are missing. Check out how many matches the guys on the roster had to get a feel for it.

This is not the 1992 EMLL Kirilenko, whoever that was. And if somebody claims it was the same guy just say "oh so that was the guy who was accused of being a child molester?" That should resolve the identity question quickly. This guy died in 1983. There was a case around 1960 and the few items that I did find about it were sketchy and inconclusive and as he was wrestling soon afterwards he probably was acquitted. The US wrestling business did manage to get rid off Pancho Valentino so I can't see them tolerating a molester.

I tend to follow the Gran Jacobo and Bill Martinez Facebook accounts in order to be at some point in the far, far future to be able to start with adding old South American wrestling cards. Both guys wrestled extensively in South America and Europe so I might be able to pull it off without going insane in regards to stereotypical lucha names (for instance I do hope that Pantera Negra won't be a problem). I mean, if somebody wants to waste his time and write up all the cards on the accounts I can enter them a lot sooner. Personally, I'm too busy researching pre-WWII Latvia... I am not kidding. Seriously.

I am more troubled by the tendency of the IWC to think that every match needs a structure reminiscing of old Crockett matches or NWA world title matches in AJPW. Watch some 50s, watch some old Euro and enjoy Inoki and Hogan trading lock ups after near falls.

.Johnny Stein was Kurt von Stroheim and the 2nd Kurt von Brauner so that would be a great find to compare his work... if there is anything out there from his latter days. I assume that his first US gimmick was Kurt Stein

In case anyone wants to do something that is slightly about fans and gender: I found a tremendous tidbit in a pre-WWI newspaper from a Latvian newspaper (in German) from 1910 in which the current events in St. Petersburg, Russia were reported in a column. It mentioned that wrestling shows in St. Petersburg had a predominately female audience while ballet shows had a predominately male audience and only concerts had an evenly mixed audience. To be precise: The male ballet audience was described as "rich men" but I assume that the female wrestling audience wasn't exactly poor themselves as afaik wrestling shows in general in Europe back then were geared toward an upscale audience as venues were rather small and gambling was often enough pushed as well. In the column entertainment establishments were described in general as "dreadfully expensive". It will probably take a long while until I have enough information about wages and the cost of living so I'll have to trust such sentences for now. So basically in Czar era Russia rich noble women lusted over wrestlers and rich noble men lusted over young ballerinas. And nobody was ever paid to have sex with such noble human beings *cough* Meanwhile in the US you had this (Tim Hornbaker research) Salt Lake City, Utah: Monday, March 27, 1911 (Colonial Theater) ... World Heavyweight Champion Frank Gotch b. Jack Leon (2-0) (25:00, 10:00) ... Mike Yokel failed to throw Danny Keefe and Adolph Lindroos both in 30:00 (Yokel beat Keefe in 8:00, but was held by Lindroos through the remaining time) ... Otto Ross and Alex Swanson drew (15:00) ... The Zimmerman Twins (Floyd and Lloyd) boxed an exhibition to a draw ... (promoter: Harry Heagren) ... (referee: Willard Bean) ... (large crowd in attendance) ... (paid receipts: $4,361) ............................... ............................... ............................... The newspaper claimed that the show drew the "most magnificent crowd ever seen at a sporting event in Salt Lake City." Among those in attendance were Mormon Church President Joseph F. Smith, Anton Lund, and John Henry Smith. "Several" women were also present.

Mainly due to Don Luce and Louis Golmitz we have knowledge of at least 395 shows in NYC in the year 1934. Why shouldn't there be +200 shows in 2014?

It's often enough blood finishes that are the referee stoppages, I should know as I enter them into a database. Only prior to 1975 you have more classic instances, then it is often enough an injury stoppage. The interesting part of it is when a wrestler either loses or wins a fall but can't continue in a 2 out of 3 Falls setting. There are even instances where a wrestler won the first fall but couldn't continue. And yeah, attention to detail is important... or rather should be. If I consider that Euro crowds 100 years had a 10 minute full nelson struggle as the high spot of the match if not the complete show - man, things have changed.

You'd think that the UK has left their "UK Supershow"-era behind and then 4FW happens -.-

Good thought, but there are also less blue collar jobs around that made the classic type of unruly wrestling fans (loggers, miners)

Recently I helped a friend with the organisation of his magazine collection and I have to say the sudden change in the WWF magazines in 1997 was quite something. Such an overhaul is really needed, considering the stagnant mindset of both WWE and TNA.

If you want to look at a small country with excellent talent scouting then Holland is your best target. Mostly I only know about East Germany, but it was apparent that the best players didn't necessarily make it. You had to be in the party first and foremost. Talent was secondary at best for your career. Spy on your teammates, suck up to the party officials and you will be "successful" by socialist/communist standards. And what happened after the German reunification? East German players saved our ass from 199X-200X. And West Germany had 4 times the population. I really don't think that US amateur wrestling should be looked like that, it neglects the fact that the other countries don't necessarily have invested more money into it and often enough they are also lacking knowledge. It was interesting for me to read Karl Gotch letters, he stated that he had no chance as nobody in his camp had the knowledge and WWII had eliminated many of his (potential) trainers.

Could some older fans please compare TNA with Global? The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Global might have been the more "successful" company aka slightly less disastrous.

A couple of weeks ago I did enter the WWA shows on Wrestlingdata. I did notice that there are some old newsletters on prowrestlinghistory.com which might help with promotions like Liberty All-Star Wrestling, there are some 1995'ish sheets where seemingly somebody involved (Ray Bagni? I have to look again) sent in reports. Hopefully in those reports you will have more than enough gossip, having read a fair number of sheets you can't deny that like half of the correspondents liked to influence coverage to their liking and grudges were common. I'm still pissed that MySpace is pretty much gone, I was able to get 90s results of Regional Championship Wrestling from there. Doing independent companies is insanely difficult.