Johnny Sorrow

I took a big break starting slowly in Summer 1987, watched some in 88, and then nothing in 89. Starting 91 it was a slow build back with spurts here and there until 94ish when I got totally sucked back in. And have been since then.

Naw, he beat Khali on RAW with a meathook clothesline.

Shoemaker was on some local AM Talk show host show today in Denver. It was pretty interesting as the host, Peter Boyles, who's a typical conservative AM radio type, worked for Verne when he was young as a ring crew guy and driver. So he had some cool stories. Shoemaker really seemed like a nice guy, but during the interview he was getting some things wrong. Still, it was cool to listen to wrestling talk during my commute. Honestly, Boyles' stories were more interesting than Shoemakers's. http://www.710knus.com/PhotoPages/Photos.aspx?AlbumID=144390

I'm pretty sure if you look at the attendance numbers The Grateful Dead were the biggest band of 1990.

This was so much fucking fun to do and to listen to . Podcast perfection.

I don't know about the NFL, but there are plenty of sports fans who don't like the way the modern game is played compared to the sport they grew up on. And plenty of older fans who have dinky memories about the way their sport used to be played. Complaining about wrestling is nothing new. When I watch Crockett, I'm enamoured with the excellent wrestling, but the Observer was full of criticism at the time. The same is true of WCW. My favourite period for that promotion was the early 90s when they were in the doldrums, but I don't care, because when I look back on WCW I pick out the good stuff and don't particularly care about whether the promotion was a success. At some point in the future, people may do the same with the current WWE product, cherry picking the good stuff that Cena, Punk or Bryan produced without caring about the ongoing criticisms of the booking. Wrestling is more of a creative pursuit than sports. Creativity dries up and folks burn out. A lot of people give up on television shows after a few seasons. I gave up on the comics I was obsessed with as a child. Folks stop listening to their favourite bands or the musical genre they were into. Throughout wrestling history, we've seen that promotions can only be super successful for short periods at a time. Compared to most other forms of entertainment, it's a wonder that wrestling is still chugging along. It should have disappeared at the end of the 80s. But it hasn't, instead it's passed a lot of us by. You'd have to be the hardest of the hardcore to watch the same promotion continuously for twenty or thirty years without dropping out at some point. Only men like Johnny Sorrow are capable of such feats. Hey, even I had my period of time not watching wrestling. From mid 88 til 91 I barely watched and from 91 to 94 it was sporadic . Shit I didn't watch any in 89, lol.

This fucking rules.

I fucking loved that match. That was bad ass.

Face Big E rules, and Ambrose's arms are getting bigger by the day.

That finish was fucking badass.

Renee in leather pants and Truth's conspiracy theories start the show well.

Yeah, I was going with the op's thing about fame in general when I say Savage is one of the most well known. The Rock is a definite number two though, he completely slipped my mind. I'm wondering how much of Andre's fame currently is more a result of The Princess Bride continuing to grow from generation to generation as a beloved movie? Which reminds me of this bit of awesomeness. I need this framed and on my wall, post haste.

I just saw Patera vs Backlund from MSG 1/21/80. Holy shit, what a great fucking match. Patera tries to out-wrestle Bob at first but keeps getting stymied, he finally gets some control with his strength, and when he has Bob in the arm stretcher his trash talk is fucking great. "I'M GONNA SEND HIM BACK TO MINNESOTA IN A BOX!" Even the typical WWF wonky finish works.

I didn't even think of The Rock and Andre, that's a good point. But I'm thinking more people are aware of Savage than Austin, and, as much as it pains ME..Bruno.

An aside, but I'd put Macho Man ahead of everybody except Hogan as far as "big star". When TIME magazine does an Obit with a pic and "guest writer", it means you transcended wrestling.

The crowds chanting "YES!", HBK on RAW, Bryan himself, Cole, Lawler. ..

But it's HHH and Steph saying it as the characters who we think have terrible opinions.

This show was a blast to do, and blast to listen to. Funny as fuck and you don't need to have seen the matches and promos to enjoy it. I think we make people want to find these matches and promos.

And yes, I was as stoned as a biblical whore for this show.

edit: forget it

Again, so many of those "rules" are gone by now that the article is now a historical piece.

Yeah, Lawler recently did an interview where he said that his hatred of ECW was all a work. He may have disliked Heyman, but he had no ill feelings about ECW.

That whole main event was fucking awesome. I was cheering here in my room.

The fact that it was JBL who was doing it just made it weird. He's really not the "uber-conservative/ xenophobic" guy his old character was. He's more or less one of those "Fiscal conservative/ socially liberal" types generally.