Robert S

... motherfucker

So Vince has begun watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? How long until he realizes that Russo (or whoever) got the Angel gimmick on WWF TV 23 years ago?

Besides Okada, I am slowly coming around to the conclusion that Fujiwara might be the best candidate on the Japanese ballot. One of the great workers of the 80ies, still great in the 90ies and highly influential, even if he himself never was the star of the bigger shoot style promotions. The list of people that he at least had a hand in training is insane. With the New Japan guys like Maeda, Sayama, Takada, (Masakatsu) Funaki, (Minoru) Suzuki or Liger it is obviously hard to say how much was him and how much was Yamamoto, but even then, you still have basically the whole BattlArts roster / PWFG guys (Ikeda, Ishikawa, Yone, Otsuka, Usuda, Ono, Minoru Tanaka, Shoichi Funaki, ...) and some UWF or UWFi guys (e.g. Anjo and Kakihara).

They could also get Low Ki and Austin Aries to replace Drake Wuertz.

Sorry in advance for taking this further off-topic, but this is to some degree the story of my family. My grandfather was born in the late 1920s in South Tyrol and moved to Austria with his family, including my grandaunt (who is still alive, my grandfather passed away two years ago). South Tyrol was part Austria(-Hungary) until WW1 (and German-speaking going back to the early Middle Ages). After WW1, South Tyrol (in addition to the Italian-speaking region Trentino and part Friuli) fell to Italy. After the facists took power in the early 1920s, they began taking steps to Italianize South Tyrol, for example by forbidding German in schools (as a reaction, German was taught in secret home schools). Another example is that newborns got Italian names (my grandaunt still carries the Italian name in her passport; my grandfather either was born before that or he changed his name). In 1939, Mussolini and Hitler reached an agreement about the future of South Tyrol: the German speaking majority had the option to either become full Italians (giving up their language forever) or move to Germany (or rather what was Germany at that point). 85% of the population opted to move, though due to war, only a quarter or so of the people actually left South Tyrol. A third of those people moved back to South Tyrol after WW2. After WW2, there was some hope of Tyrolean reunification, but in the end, South Tyrol stayed part of Italy, though as an autonomous region. There was an underground movement pushing for reunification (using terrorism) until the 1970s or so. From my experience, for people of my generation (born after the 1970s) the troubles of the past are gone, the South Tyroleans feel themselves as full Italians, even if that may not be their first language. For older people it was way more difficult. My grandfather (who, as mentioned, was born in the late 1920s and left South Tyrol at the age of 14 or so) had so much aversion to anything Italian, that he would not even go to a Italian restaurant. My grandaunt never had such issues, which may be because she was only 3 years old when her family moved up, i.e. she had no memories of any oppression. On the other side, my sister is (de facto) married with a guy from Trentino (a region with a big Italian majority, that was part of Austria-Hungary until WW1 - his great-grandfather had three brothers; of the four siblings, two fought for Austria-Hungary and two for Italy, only the great-grandfather survived the war), and his family is the other way around: not trusting anything Austrian, pretending to have no clue about German (even though they learned it in school). (though that has improved over the last 20 years, thanks to my sister) And to come back to the initial topic: nowadays, the only region with a significant Italian-speaking population is the state captial (Bozen / Bolzano) and the towns around it. Aichner is from a valley that to my knowledge is almost exclusively German. But Italian is taught in school, maybe already starting in kindergarten.

That is not a new thing though. Lance Storm has told the story multiple times, that when the original brand split happened, the undercard guys (the guys (and girls) not drafted on the TV show) were told to check the website to find out where they ended up.

Maybe a bit off-topic, but would you put him above the Colony guys (Orange Cassidy, Drew Gulak and Tracy Williams), Ultramantis Black or Jigsaw?

Bix on a podcast together with JBL (or even better being the guest on JBL's podcast)? I guess I'll have to wear warm clothes tomorrow because this is one of these hell has frozen over moments.

What is the target audience for that series? I can't be (just) current and maybe lapsed fans. And if you take that away, almost everything they have done and could do is obscure. If the ratings on Wikipedia are somewhat reliable (both regarding the source and the metric itself), than there is not a big correlation between notoriety of the topic and the rating. In season 1, Gino Hernandez got the biggest rating, in season 2, the Jimmy Snuka - Nancy Argentino episode had less viewers than Herb Abrahms or David Schultz and this season, the Ultimate Warrior had one of the lesser ratings. The Benoit and Owen Hart episodes got good numbers, everything else just looks like white noise, depending on the statistical errors of the system and what else is on TV.

I don't know how I forgot that considering the stories Jericho wrote about his Germany experience in his first book.

Plus his work in CMLL (he even had a couple of matches in UWA and cagematch also lists one AAA match). Just considering when he was active, the only thing missing in his CV is a tournament or two in Germany or Austria and and a post-2000 indy-run. His longevity, his skill to reinvent himself and going everywhere is a bit like Terry Funk. Let's see if Jericho will work a WWE PPV main event at age 61.

Cena was much worse than Flair from the clips they showed. Cena said that Kanyon was simply not good enough while Flair's point was that Kanyon's time has come and gone. I have not watched much WWE post 2001, so I don't know for sure, but considering the injuries Kanyon had in the last years of his WWE run, I guess it is safe to say that Kanyon was physically breaking down and to some degree his biggest calling card was being a big, tall guy who did insane (at least for the time) spots.

You missed Marty Jannetty; and technically DiBiase and Hennig were with the company as well in January 96.

I guess Total Divas is a thing of the past?

That's a real sad story though I am sure by far not the only one of its kind. The first man I had to think about was the Great Antonio, who also had serious mental issues and basically lived on the street after his active career.

Not having seen it (and neither planning to do so): Was it worse than e.g. Mr. Pogo slicing up foreheads with a sickle 30 years ago?

The "No one starting in their 30s." part is not the worst idea for something that is considered to be a developmental league. If they sign older, experienced people, either put them straight on the main roster or put them through a couple of weeks long PC-crash-course for some details how they want their wrestlers to work. If veterans can't deal with that, they are probably just not good enough. Also: finally someone found Kona Reeves contact info.

There are about 5 great Steiners vs. Hase & Partner (Sasaki or Mutoh) matches, the Steiners vs. Hart Brothers match from a Coliseum Home Video VHS tape and the Steiners vs. MVC NWA tag title tournament match from 92 (I think it was a Clash) were also awesome. I guess the answer should be one of those (or the Nasties match).

Ole is in bad shape due to MS for something like 15 years now. A quick Google search brings up reports from the Four Horsemen HoF induction from 2012 where Ole apparently said that he would not have been physically able to attend the induction if he wanted to (and would have been invited as well, of course). There is no way that he is able to do any appearences now.

Hmm... is the Bill Clinton lookalike who did a couple of shots in mid 90ies WWF still active?

That can't be true, she looks much older. Cagematch has 1988 as her birth-year and her turning 33 in a week which looks to be about what I would have guessed. Quick googling also shows the 1988 birth-year much more likely than 1998. She signed in 2016 and at that point already owned a fitness studio, something very unlikely for a 18-year-old.

Thanks!

The Discord invite is expired. Can you please post a new one (in case I decide that I need an alternative to the Euro finals today)?

Were Mid-Atlantic and Florida running multiple crews in the 70ies or were they just doing double-shots nightly (or at least every other night)? Also Amarillo ran lots of shows considering what I know (or at least think to know) of the area of their territory (relatively sparsely populated, huge area).

The Dome Show that should have happened in May was moved to July, 25th. That is during the Summer Olympics. Weird choice...