Indikator

Attendance By the way, with all the Scherer talk here I wonder if he or any other source consistently inflated the numbers.

I wonder if the surgery thing might be comparable to Martin Stone

The first time I saw him live (Europe) was in February 2005 and he seemed to be not really there when I saw him after the show at the hotel we both were staying at, although back then I thought to myself he might just be jetlagged. Turns out he wrestled seven days earlier for All Star, so I fear he was already affected back then.

I wonder if George Steele was even aware of Gorgeous George Wagner as a potentially gay wrestler

Throwing in a name who maybe is criminally underrated for obvious reasons - Larry Moquin

I think there were 2-3 different publications of this kind in Germany 20 years ago and I think in the UK, too. So I guess that the concept is still somewhat valid in the mind of European publishers.

At the moment I would assume that Jeff Leen who wrote the Mildred Burke book might have the most knowledge about her girls, they were pretty much the center of the American business. I'm not sure how much involved the European gals were, I wouldn't be surprised about it. It's funny to read a program where it states that girl A "has the tendency to lose her top in battle"

Really interesting passage about Bob Sapp in the new issue.... years after it happened of course

Yes, generally people want to believe, but that has mostly to do with lack of knowledge. For me as a German it started with the "Those were the days..." sentiments that Catch fans had and then I found more and more statements like "nowadays everything is fake unlike the 1950s/1930s/1900s/189Xs". You just have to dig deeper and then you just can't assume this sincerity anymore. My brother recently spoke with a Dutch wrestler about their old kickboxers and I think the wrestler had interaction with I might be mistaken but I think it was Chris Dolman. Dolman was highly critical of pro wrestling - yet he had worked with Maeda as it was even pointed out. The "want to believe" is probably very widespread and will hinder older Shootstyle and MMA in a way.

Hack-Gotch II was such an obvious work they wouldn't accept bets on the match. At least it feels that way reading about it. People at the time certainly thought so. The hero worship of these guys, despite people of their era pretty clearly believing they were frauds, is astounding. That said, I wonder how much of this we see because we want to see. Are we prejudiced and see work because we are accustomed to wrestling being a charade? That is actually a very good question. Regarding Hack, I came across something by Michael Hitzler who pretty much said that Hack always bought his European victories. I wonder what he or other Hack adversaries said about the Hack vs Gotch matchups Recently I read of a Prague 1906 tournament finale in which Stanislaus Zbyszko was apparently shoot pinned for a whole minute (!) by Jakob Koch in a Greco Roman style match. There is a +60 year old German biographer of Jakob Koch who is pretty much what Chapman is for Gotch, I asked him if he had more information about this incident but he pretty much ignored that question in a mail. Likely he thinks Kochs matches were always legit. I guess I will talk about him about the general accusations and discussions at one point. In general one must notforget that these accusations were more often than not personal vendettas or merely done to protect their own businesses (the media involvement was anything but objective back then). What do I want to get to? I guess because of my fandom I pretty much assume that everything could be faked and probably was faked, but if there is something that would nowadays pretty much guarantee a shoot or a big dispute I would see that as a sign that there was no cooperation. Guilty until proven innocent. I assume that most people who started out as wrestling fans have similar doubts. And it's not like amateur wrestling was always as idyllic as people make it out to be, the Swedes in the 1912 Olympics oiled themselves up for instance.

Lasartesse was Ludwig von Krupp in NYC in the late 50s and +55 back then, but he managed to be the center of the tournaments he participated in so he is somewhat what Nick Bockwinkle might have ended up if he was a European. AFAIK Guajaro was more of a comedy worker. Bernie Wright is Steve Wrights brother.

Girls/Women fans are absolutely missing in todays wrestling business. I've seen a couple of articles stating that in Europe in the 1950s the majority of the fans were (sometimes sexually frustrated) housewives. But with boy groups and other ways to see the bodies of foreign bodybuilders there is no necessity for wrestling anymore like back then.

CC Milani (wasn't that John McAdams?) on WCMB: Was Superstar Billy Graham Used To His Absolute Best As Champ? I absolutely do. Graham talks out of both sides of his mouth sometimes. On one hand he talks about having drug issues and being completely burned out by the end of 1977. Then he talks about how they should have turned him. It just dawned on me- Graham wasn't the original Hulk Hogan. He was the original Kerry Von Erich.

The French called it lutte and lutteurs, catch/catcheurs is just the usual adjustment to the ~1930 boom in America that people like DeGlane, Irslington and Oakeley exported to Europe and South Africa. It would be really interesting to see as much footage as possible of those products. The French middleweights who had a bodybuilding background around 1950 were really successful. Interestingly Rene Lasartesse once wrote how the Hungarian booker Bela Barothy (IIRC it was in Berlin) welcomed one of those French middleweights only to instantly say to a right hand that he would let him go ASAP - he hadn't seen his wrestle, he based his decision on the way the wrestler handled himself, he was plain and didn't have the "it factor". Some things never change.

Filling the venues stopped being the most relevant thing in the 80s with increasing renting costs and no more $$$ through local tv. As soon as wrestling, on a worldwide scale, gets the benefits of internet on demand things might look up a lot. I sometimes wonder if ECW would have survived in a DVD era

A lot is missing, sure. Just look at the number of shows already implemented, doing a show takes up to 1-5 minutes, depending if you have to do research or adjust names, stipulations and other things. Now multiply 2.5 minutes by 150 000 and you can estimate how much time we spent already. Also, we can't do promotions if we don't have the data. So gimme all your results Now, what you should be interested in is this (look at the bottom) . As every match has an ID we can in the end link to every instance a match has been repeated on tv or DVD (the DVD section and the english homepage will hopefully be finished prior to the Mayans ending the world ) . Now if only we got our hands on detailed Showa AJPW/NJPW Tapings.....

Adjust for years/decades

The problem with Hamiltons idea is that nowadays guys rather want to be the cool heel or be funny, so the classic face-heel structure isn't comparable to todays situation

The goal of manipulation from above by fixing fights is that you want to earn money. The goal of manipulation from above by getting your fighters characters is that you want to earn money. While it's not a 100% copy of pro wrestling philosophy I fail to see a noteworthy difference as well.

TNAs UK station is going out of business. As Sky can't air non-WWE TNA might have a mid-sized disaster coming

Around 57:30 you use a lifetime contingent of "you know"s. And then Colt does the same I really liked this

I always thought "kisser" was a southern thing. But I'm from Europe so what do I know

I guess that has to be Hamburg, which was promoted by Sven Hansen. I've only seen some stuff from 1987 with Johnny Saint floating around