Johnny Sorrow

On the latest radio show, Dave points out that comparing a touring Rock band to wrestling is ridiculous. It's all from a WWE legal letter or political ad that compared wrestlers to tennis players, golfers, and rock musicians who tour. Dave seems to feel that "rock stars" still promote their shows through the local promoters and it's not a nationwide thing at least that's how it was in the old days...Dave did say he wasn't all that up to date on the "Rock star" thing. And besides Because, I guess "rock and roll concerts" have never been like wrestling, with the sleazy promoters and entertainment.

I work with a girl at the club who's a big ICP/ Juggelette". She's very nice, not really stupid, but maybe smokes too much weed. I was talking to her one night and for some reason wrestling came up and she sorta laughed at me when I admitted I was a fan. I said to her that I thought she'd get it, "after all, those gatherings you go to have wrestling." She's all, "Oh but that's real! I saw a guy get all cut up with glass, etc, etc". I started to explain how guys will actually cut themselves up and shit for a fake sport, and the idea baffled her. It was then one of those times when a person has to stop before saying something like, "Come on, you're not stupid" as to not offend. So I dropped it and went back to my booth.

Bravo, sir.

Or Yogi Berra? "Despite Berra's skills, his persona of being stupid will limit how far he can get over".

I think it's terrible slight on Dave's part that he isn't giving any attention to the rising popularity of Roller Derby. His love of Derby always made sense as that it was a popular fake sport. It's back, and draws a lot of dedicated fans. He could throw his weight behind it and maybe help out the business.

Holy shit, hahaha.

You gotta see the ads that run during "Jerry Lawler's Memphis Wrestling".

The best thing about that is that you couldn't resist making a "blow-off angle with the Tornado" pun. Bravo.

From the ads at WO. RF...you the man.

So I have absolutely no desire to listen Todd Martin on the F4W Radio, but they task me by having him and Alverez host a show with Cornette about the History of Smokey Mountain Wrestling. Seriously, is this some weird goofball attempt to get people who don't want to listen to Todd to listen? "Hey, Old School DVDVR types who make fun of Todd on a weekly basis...Here's Jim Cornette talking about a promotion you all seem to have loved and have been wanting to hear stories about...hosted by ME and Todd! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"

"Dave, may I just say. You look FABULOUS." Seriously, that suit rules. If I'm doing a UFC countdown show, I'd want my incredibly informed, yet somehat eccentric analysist to dress like that.

1972 Sammartino wins battle royal Battle Royal in Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 1973 May 24 Dory Funk, Jr. vs. Harley Race NWA World Heavyweight Championship Kansas City, MO 1974 January 27 Jack Brisco vs. Dory Funk, Jr. NWA World Heavyweight Championship Tokyo, Japan 1975 March 17 Bruno Sammartino vs. Spiros Arion WWWF Heavyweight Championship New York, NY 1976 April 26 Bruno Sammartino vs. Stan Hansen WWWF Heavyweight Championship New York, NY 1977 April 30 Bruno Sammartino vs. Billy Graham WWWF Heavyweight Championship Baltimore, MD 1978 February 20 Billy Graham vs. Bob Backlund WWWF Heavyweight Championship New York, NY 1979 August 21 Harley Race vs. Dusty Rhodes NWA World Heavyweight Championship Tampa, FL And for fun, the Eighties: 1980 August 9 Bruno Sammartino vs. Larry Zbyszko Showdown at Shea Flushing, NY Steel Cage match 1981 May 2 André the Giant vs. Killer Khan Rochester, NY 1982 June 28 Bob Backlund vs. Jimmy Snuka WWF Heavyweight Championship New York, NY Steel Cage match 1983 June 10 Ric Flair vs. Harley Race NWA World Heavyweight Championship St. Louis, MO 1984 May 6 Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich NWA World Heavyweight Championship David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions Irving, TX 1985 March 31 Hulk Hogan and Mr. T vs. Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff WrestleMania New York, NY 1986 July 26 Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes NWA World Heavyweight Championship The Great American Bash 1986 Greensboro, NC Steel Cage match 1987 March 29 Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat WWF Intercontinental Championship WrestleMania III Pontiac, MI 1988 February 5 Hulk Hogan vs. André the Giant WWF Championship The Main Event Indianapolis, IN 1989 May 7 Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair NWA World Heavyweight Championship WrestleWar Nashville, TN The weirdest thing about the Seventies stuff, is that PWI and the sister mags LOVED the NWA especially Florida. But Bruno meant more. I actually forgot that back in the day I always wanted to see this Bruno vs Spiros Arion match.

From the Grizzly Smith Obit: I've always fucking LOVED that story and I don't care if it's bullshit. Bill Watts as some "Micheal Corleone Of Wrestling" is just awesome shit.

I posted this at DVDVR, but I thought I'd share it cause I'm thinking it's funnier everytime I listen to the messages. So, I didn't get home from work until 4:30 am last night. I had a late, late dinner and couldn't fall asleep. I stayed up watching the World Cup with a roommate for awhile, then went to my room and started watching more of Goodhelmet's 4 Horsemen set, DVD #36 which is chock full of classic Flair, Arn, JJ, Tully, Luger, Sting etc promos. I eventually fell asleep with the TV still on and my phone must've fallen out of my pocket. I woke up eventually to turn off the TV as the menu music started after the DVD ended and it's loud Punk Rock. I immediately fell back to sleep hearing nothing else, and got up a few hours later. This time I heard my phone beeping, found it in the sheets, and there were 4 messages from my Dad and Step-Mom in New Jersey. I freaked out, thinking someone's sick or dead. Then I listened to the first message and it was my Step-Mom saying, "Johnny, what's going on? You just called and you weren't answering and it sounds like there's a bunch of screaming crazy people there! Call us back!" It took me a second, and then I realized that I had been accidentlly dialing and disconnecting and redialing with my feet as I rolled around. The next two messages were more of the same from her, freaking out more and more. The last message was from my Dad who had gotten home and heard the last call. "Johnny! Call us back. We're really worried here, and you're not answering! And there's a crazy man there screaming at you, do you need help?"

I like AJ just fine, but to imply that AJ is better in ring than Arn was is ridiculous, in my opinion. Arn's on a whole different level above AJ Styles.

They fired Duggan. And as far as I can remember, he sat at home for a few months and he was rehired and it never seemed like he was gone. My memory of the time is hazy.

I would have loved to have done mushrooms with Steve Williams in Japan.

Yeah, I did. (It's a great show btw, for those who haven't heard it yet.) I have to laugh at the "no bumping" in Memphis deal. And as far as Luger goes, one thing I noted from the Horsemen set is that his initial face turn made him look like a dick. It's a Bunkhouse Stampede match, the final four guys are Luger, Ar, Tully, and JJ Dillon. JJ tells the ref that it's over and they'll split the money. The ref says there must be a winner, so JJ asks the guys for a favor. Can he have this one? Arn and Tully are all, "You got it, Man." and jump over the top rope. Luger doesn't and tosses JJ. I hadn't seen this since it happened and I was thinking, "What a dick Luger is." Then they went back and taped an interview where Luger tells JJ he doesn't want anymore outside interference in his matches and showed it as a "lost" interview or some such thing, and they had Luger cut the babyface turn promo of all time on TBS.

I thought of this the other night as I was continuing to watch Will's Horsemen set while drinking heavily. Most of the set is stuff I remember watching but when it get's to Ronnie Garvin winning the belt from Flair, it's in the era of my life where I wasn't really watching wrestling regularly anymore. Me and my pals would occasionally catch a show in Philly, but overall, I had stopped watching. I remember finding out that Garvin won the belt, and we actually did go to see Starrcade 87 on closed circuit TV at the Philly Civic Center where the Philly crowd was cheering like mad for Flair like we always did, and booing Garvin. Looking back, everyone seems to go on about how Garvin winning the belt came out of nowhere. But they actually had been having Garvin fueding with Flair off and on for years. Especially on TBS, as opposed to Worldwide where Ronnie Garvin was non existant around 85 except as Miss Atlanta Lively. Even the Flair/ Jimmy Garvin fued now looks like just a build up to another Ronnie/ Flair program. And after finally seeing the match where Garvin wins the belt, holy shit the crowd was HOT for Garvin. And he DID defend the belt during his reign instead of the "history" of him not defending it to get ready for Starrcade. Anyway the thing was, that Chicago crowd was all about Flair, just like the Philly crowd was, and everyone still goes on about how Garvin was a terrible choice at the time, when he actually was perfect, considering that there was no one else at the time. They were just setting up Luger for the turn and eventual program with Flair. I guess Windham would have worked, but they really did have a long history of Garvin being a thorn in Flair's side. I'm not saying that the Ron Garvin Title reign was some great deal, but "history" seems to say "They picked a guy randomly to beat Flair and lose it back at Starrcade" when the fact is they had been building Ron Garvin to beat Flair for years. Any other stuff that is considered "common knowledge" that maybe just isn't on the mark?

Oh, Todd Oh, his burden. I'll just say this. TONIGHT Wade Barrett said that they all had agreed backstage before NXT started that they'd stick together in the end, and would "have fun" doing the show. As far as his bewilderment re: Bret Hart and Vince and the NXT guys...Vince was using the NXT chaos as an excuse to fire Bret Hart for bullshit reasons, as mentioned by Tyson Kidd. Also, Vince never said he was behind anything. It came off to me that he played up to them trying to kiss their asses by being "one of the guys" hoping they'd realize that it'd be smart to accept his BS cause he's the boss. OR Vince was fooled into thinking he was in charge of this but he was outplayed. As far as IF Vince was behind it , "why would he let them attack two weeks in a row"..chalk it up to Vince wanting to see "ruthless aggression". OR The NXT guys USED Vince to get what they wanted and as soon as they did, they laid him out, too. This isn't that hard.

Just to plant a seed in SLL's mind for the future. "Cheers" was the best booked promotion ever on television.

It's not explicitly stated, but in fairness to Vince, the fruit has been envisioned as an apple by so many people for so long that it may as well have been. It's a bit like Humpty Dumpty being an egg - never said anywhere in the original text, but the original text doesn't say otherwise, and it's so common in pop cultural depictions that you can just kinda roll with it. As for everything else...well...umm...yeah. This in particular jumps out at me: Aside from being a relatively religious Jew, I've developed an interest over the years in Zoroastrianism, which is sort of the missing link between your old school polytheistic religions and the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of today. It took the multiple gods of previous religions and neatly boiled them down into two different guys: Ahura Mazda, the "uncreated God" who was 100% good, and Angra Mainyu, who I don't think is ever explicitly called a god, but who was an "uncreated spirit" of 100% evil, and who is arguably the jump-off point for the modern day concept of the Devil. This simplified dualist "good vs. evil" notion is one of the major influences on later monotheistic religions, but one of the big differences is that Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were separate creations (uncreations?), and Angra Mainyu - while ultimately destined to fall to Ahura Mazda - could be something of a real competitor to him. By contrast, the Abrahamic God is the sole "uncreated" being in his religions. He created everything else, and no other entity poses any kind of true threat to him. Satan may have his origins in Angra Mainyu, but he's considerably less powerful, poses no threat to God, and could only rule the Earth if God let him. And well, God doesn't really do that. Offhand, the closest he came was God letting him get his kicks in on Job, for the sole purpose of showing Satan that even when given carte blanche to wreck a guy's shit, he was still basically powerless. For the most part, his M.O. is testing people's faith in the hopes that he can expose how flawed God's prize creation is, and by proxy, how flawed God is. World domination isn't really his bag. He's more interested in watching it all burn and rubbing God's face in it. But he can't really do that, because God is a bajillion times more powerful than he is, so he's basically stuck doing small-scale cons. Russo fucked up Christianity so bad that he actually became a really confused Zoroastrian. Also, take a look at this: Well, you conveniently glossed over it, Vince, but what he was going to do was sacrifice every single sinner on the fucking planet except for Noah, his family, and a shit ton of animals in a global flood. Seriously, how do you just miss one of the most famous stories of the Bible like that? I mean, I guess Noah and his family still carried the "sin gene", but it's pretty clear that God's big plan was "kill these sinful motherfuckers, and spare these guys because they're not so bad". "Sin gene" or no, he seemed to be putting an awful lot of faith in a "heel" like Noah to restore decency to the world after 40 days and 40 nights of hardcore sinner sacrificing. And if everyone was killed in the flood and only Noah and his family were left to repopulate the Earth, Russo can claim that "incest angles" have been around forever.

So, Nielson won't take any action and there are no precedents to go by? By precedents do you mean a network asking the audience to help "kill" a show by watching their show on in the same time slot? Because that's been happening in TV for as long as there's been TV. I remember some show on NBC with Jim Varney as the head of a clan of hillbillies who fight crime or some such thing that had promos where they told people to tune in and "Kill the Love Boat", ABC's Juggernaut. (Which worked about as well as what Dixie here is trying I know that those promos didn't specifically say the words "Ratings or Nielson" but the jist was the same, and that was before cable meant anything. And I seriously doubt Nielson gives two shits about some Wrestling owner saying something dopey on Facebook. Not taking away from how dumb it is that Dixie Carter thinks that DVR recordings are magical things that somehow send "ratings" to a magical land. That's a hoot. (She is awful pretty though. Shouldn't that take the edge off? Poor thing.)