Robert S

I haven't watched NXT in two months or so, but did Duke & Shafir suddenly become not horrible in the ring? I'll put the over/under by when he becomes "just another guy" at 4 weeks.

From a kayfabe point-of-view the ending was strange. The match was titles vs. masks and the Steiners won basically by unmasking Reed. I suppose the idea was that the mask should have gone of "accidentally" at the headlock and when it did not Rick called an audible and removed it manually.

Using that Churchill "we shall fight them on the beaches" speech in the opening montage of the show did not help to change that image. Wolfe has some bad luck on these shows, he also got his face rearranged on the first NXT War Games show.

There were also a bunch of WCW-NJPW co-promoted events: the Tokyo Dome show in March 91 and the 1/4 Tokyo Dome shows in 92 and 93 plus the North Korea shows in 95. The first of these shows had Steiner vs. Hase & Sasaki, for example.

Tommy Cairo? Ironman Tommy Cairo wrestled in UWFi? That has to be the strangest gaijin booking in the history of gaijin bookings.

That site is still around? I don't think I have visited it in at least 10 years, though 20 years ago, it was a great source.

Austria I would suppose has pro-wrestling as long as the US (I definitely know that there was pro wrestling (called "Freistilringen" - freestyle wrestling) in the early 50ies and I did never spend any time on doing any historical research). There were also those clips of Jim Londos in Greece from the 30ies, but I assume those were one-ofs. cagematch has results from wrestling shows from Italy from the 1930ies (starring Henry Deglane) and the 50ies (having guys like Karl Gotch, Dick Steinborn and Primo Carnera and a bunch of Austrians like Georg Blemenschütz and Adi Berber). Not sure if these indicates one-of shows / tours or regular existance of pro wrestling in those countries. I suppose at one point or another there were shows basically everywhere in western Europe (you can find single shows in cagematch for many countries like Belgium or Spain, Portugal). I am sure that there was pro wrestling imported from Mexico in some Central American countries before 1970. Panama and Guatemala are obvious candidates (which cagematch confirms). Maybe there was also wrestling in some Carribean countries, though considering that wrestling in Puerto Rico seemed to have started only in the early 70ies, those were probably no regular things. Maybe the Florida territory ran a show here or there (there are a couple of results of shows in the Bahamas and Puerto Rico from 1969 on cagematch).

Thanks. I should have known better than to trust youtube with the date (especially as Liger was already in Stampede in June of 1987).

I am wondering what is out there in regards of Jushin Liger matches outside of Japan. I was going a bit through youtube and this is what is available there (dates of All Star stuff definitely is sketchy, I just tried to match the listings with Cagematch) - minus WCW, of course (and only looking at 1999 or earlier): All Star 1986-09-27 - Fuji Yamada & Clive Myers vs John Wilkie & Zigue Zag - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXJbGG7fCok 1986-09-27 - Fuji Yamada & Clive Myers vs Blondie Barratt & Rocky Moran - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TivpEyrXbA 1986-11-25 - Fuji Yamada vs Rocky Moran - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-dEE_WKXXY + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu1CmsER97g 1986-12-27 - Fuji Yamada vs John Wilkie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EGiAW_xMd8 + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mizhHalBqN8 1987-01-13 - Clive Myers & Fuji Yamada vs Mark Rocco & Kendo Nagasaki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVDZIrMAybo 1987-06-13 - Fuji Yamada vs Mark Rocco - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f9Sheqndlo Stampede 1987-06-12 - Keiichi Yamada vs Viet Cong Express #2 (Fumihiro Niikura) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5zZECZoQU 1987-07-17 - Vietcong Express vs Keiichi Yamada & Keith Hart - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGULkfe6TEo 1987-07-24 - Owen Hart & Keiichi Yamada vs Makhan Singh & Great Gama - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnWkCCSZ_F8 1987-07-31 - Owen Hart & Keiichi Yamada & Hiroshi Hase vs Makhan Singh & Great Gama & Gerry Morrow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbMWonGSPD0 Reslo Fuji Yamada vs Mark Rocco - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAcC0BZZENo Fuji Yamada vs Rocky Moran - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCdjCg_cMcU Fuji Yamada vs Mighty Chang - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PITwAUMwg6s Fuji Yamada vs Sean South (1989-03) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWrzS5_drQE Fuji Yamada vs Skull Murphy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKLY8-5PDAQ CWA 1992-19-12 - Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Franz Schuhmann - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO1-J7lm-gc + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-VDm5Hfemg 1993-12-18 - David Finlay vs. Jushin Thunder Liger - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g8Pt7w2GlI AAA 1994-05-15 - Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask (Koji Kanemoto) & El Hijo del Santo & Octagon vs Eddie Guerrero & La Parka Blue Panther & Psicosis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnx9rUmaFE0 + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDd6DAvlgSM Misc USA 1996-06-01 - Jushin Liger vs Great Sasuke - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0A225ulKaM CMLL 1996-11-15 - Dr. Wagner Jr vs Jushin Thunder Liger - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRjESmOukcE 1999-11-19 - Mascara Ano 2000 & Scorpio Jr & Shocker vs Jushin Thunder Liger & Mr. Niebla & Tarzan Boy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC-oBmeirwE 1999-11-26 - Jushin Thunder Liger vs Shocker - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y848fIW-Uq4 I suppose for England & Wales there is not much more available. For Stampede, Cagematch lists 4 more TV matches. The Schuhmann match here is incomplete, though there is a full handheld version available, I think. I am mostly curious about Mexico stuff, because there has to be more.

Didn't they even have a dedicated TV show around that time containing mostly of late 70ies and early 80ies stuff? Because some of that stuff ended up on German TV as well.

People born in the 80ies are still all under 40. There are even only six wrestlers on the ballot, that were born in the 80ies (Orton, Naito, Omega, Ibushi, Caristico and Volador Jr.). So that is not a fair comparison. Plus there were more big promotions for guys born in the 60ies to be a star in (for US, that is). For 70ies and 80ies there was just WWF/WWE (in theory 70ies guys also had WCW, but there was only one 70ies guy, who got the heavyweight belt: Paul Wight (well, David Arquette was also born in the 70ies)), so the number of slots to be a star was pretty small.

That's actually a great comeback.

If they ever do a Raw vs. Smackdown vs. NXT Survivor Series show again, I hope to god that they won't do these aweful 5 vs. 5 vs. 5 matches ever again. Sure, somehow they managed to get some NXT people over, but they could easily have done this in "normal" elimination tag team matches and have non-messy matches at the same time. The booking was all over the places as well. Why the hell are Candice LeRae and Rhea Ripley teaming up with Io Shirai and Bianca Belair one night after they were facing off against each other in (at least in theory) the ultimate grudge match? (without having any problems with each other) I suppose the argument would be that the "brand is bigger than personal issues". In that case, fuck them. And why is Rhea Ripley suddenly a chickenshit heel? If they want to do the brand duel thing again next year, please do it in a round-robin way. E.g. each brand providing two 4 wrestler teams (per sex), one with a heel captain and one with a face captain. Then do something like Raw faces vs. NXT heels, NXT faces vs. Smackdown heels and Smackdown faces vs. Raw heels and get rid of the other three way dances as well (because those did not get anyone over). Also, if they want to continue to have NXT part of the main roster PPVs, they should either scratch the TakeOver shows or move those shows to non-PPV weekends. Because building up to two shows in parallel with some wrestlers being part of both shows in completely different roles just does not work. Especially, if the guys who should be heavily beaten up barely sell that (apart from wearing some bandages). And I would have never guessed that Rey Misterio Jr. was supposed to be the Joker. I was honestly thinking that he was promoting some clown care NGO.

I agree in principle, though in the let's call it shoot-version of pro wrestling (MMA), it's sometimes better for your bottom line to lose an exciting fight than to win a boring one.

I would go for Triple Threat Mania as there are six Triple Threat matches on the show. Considering that Triple Threat may be my least favorite gimmick match in wrestling, I don't know if I ever get through the whole show. I hope they are clever enough to not have three people in the ring at the same time in the 5 vs. 5 vs. 5 elimination matches, because it could get very bad that way.