rainmakerrtv

I figure the big , rough-and-tumble sailor is a reasonable wrestling archetype, Tugboat just seems to me to be a cartoonish variation on that archetype.

The word on Buddy is that he was his own worst enemy and every time he would start to get ahead, he would do something (or something would happen) that would screw it up. The legend is that he signed a contract with WWF after the closing of SMW and on the way out the door he slipped on a patch of ice and broke his ankle. A real shame, he was a great entertainer.

There is a fair stretch of his career where it could be said Dr. Tom was doing a Piper imitation in his interviews.

Who was the first of these, in your opinion? Group has to have a namesake. Oliver & Johnson's book says the Fabulous Ones. I wouldn't disagree with that. By all accounts, the Rock & Roll Express were created as the teeny-bopper B-show Fabs, the Fantastic Ones (as was their original name) were the replacement knock-off Fabs. A lot of subsequent teams (The Midnight Rockers, Southern Rockers, Rock & Roll Rockers, etc.) came from the Rock & Roll, but the Fabs were first.

Always loved this segment, especially the crazy brawl at the end. So so disapointed when they cut those guys out of the war games match. My brain might be making this up, but wasn't Goldberg one of the dudes that tried out? I think it has been established that that was Horshu AKA the future Luther Reigns.

I like Tarrantino .... I just thought Russo might have been deluding himself into thinking he was just like Tarrantino, much like he has deluded himself into thinking he draws ratings, understands what wrestling fans want, etc etc etc.

Russo?

So anyway, sorry about the Dusty Rhodes comparison. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Guess it boils down to Russo being like a lot of other bookers who only knew how to push themselves, except Russo was never a star in his own right, he just wrote himself to be. There was no way that he could claim so much of how he was pushing himself was going to bring ratings or buyrates, it was all just to make himself look big.

Dusty and Russo should never be in the same sentence... Shit. Sorry, let me explain. I love Dusty, but towards the end of his booking run he had some flaws that caused problems leading to the sale of JCP to Turner. I was just struck how Russo seemed to repeat and magnify these flaws in his run that destroyed WCW : constant screw job finishes, making himself the center of everything and jamming himself down everyone's throat, whenever he was not around having everyone say "Where's poochie?", believing his own hype. All, of course, while lacking all of Dusty's many conspicuous good qualities : creativity, ability to work the mic and connect with a crowd, fundamental love and understanding of wrestling, etc. etc. etc. It just seemed from watching that somebody had distilled the worst elements of Dusty and tried to see how much they could make it worse.

Having recently completed watching goodhelment's Death of WCW comp and rewatching his Four Horseman comp, 2 observations : 1) I wonder what would have been the effect on Russo's career if Reservoir Dogs had never come out. I really think he is convinced he is Quentin Tarrantino, a guy who used to run a video store who believes that rehashing storylines from a lot of b movies into a different setting makes him some sort of genius. 2) Vince Russo is the Dusty Rhodes of suck.

I remember on DVDVR joking about how Tommy Rich made his meth dealer his manager. Somebody then informed that they were at those shows and, yes, that's exactly what happened.

Are there any available pics of Mr. Donnie?

And then they sent him to ECW where Tazz messed him up real bad.

Yeah, that angle got a quick drop. John Actually, I don't recall Liz being mentioned again after Mania. Can anybody recall any appearances between Mania and the divorce?

They didn't even job him out, he just vanished from the program after 2 low key appearances.

similar to this, Kizarnie. Months of promos, then they throw him out there as part of MVP's losing streak gimmick, he made one more appearance in a battle royal and then out. Loch Ness in WCW got much the same treatment as the Yeti. Loch Ness is at least defensible because he retired from wrestling and went back to England due to health problems. Whether that's before or after they decided to job him out is unknown. The bigger question is why bring in 50 year old Giant Haystacks who was really only known in England and give him a big push instead of someone young? IMSMR, Hulk Hogan personally asked him to come out of retirement to be his next big feud ... then completely failed to put him over in any way when he showed up. His few ring performances after that were so bad they quickly jobbed him out to the Giant then sent him home. His health issues didn't occur until later (or perhaps that was only when they were made public).

similar to this, Kizarnie. Months of promos, then they throw him out there as part of MVP's losing streak gimmick, he made one more appearance in a battle royal and then out. Loch Ness in WCW got much the same treatment as the Yeti.

It's hard to top the classic "Dean Rasmussen - Braying Jackass" sections of DVDVR.

Just going to touch on this one aspect, based on some comments from the Arn Anderson shoot. Arn made some statements that would indicate that Mongo wasn't likely to get better even with time, based on a) he was starting out as a rookie very late in life relative to other wrestlers, and b ) a guy with a fair sized bank account going out and wrestling for fun and being paid a lot of money for it will not have the drive or desire to improve the way a young hungry wrestler fighting for his spot would. If Mongo was going to get better with time, he would have. When he stopped appearing in WCW (his contract ran out, he quit, he was fired, whatever, I don't really know), had he truly wanted to become a good wrestler , he could have tried to get a job with Vince or worked dates in the Indys or somehow continued his wrestling career. He did not. The Mongo we saw in WCW was the best Mongo we were going to see.

So I guess the final word on Nord is that, while he wasn't quite better than Triple H, people seem to like him more.

Maybe it's polluting the discussion to bring in Mexican crowds, but they really seemed to despise Los Gringos Locos. I remember Love Machine slowly turning his head and blowing out cigar smoke at the audience and they damn near rioted.

I really enjoyed his tag run in Mid South with Jake Roberts and I liked what he brought to those matches. Be damned if I could name a stand out singles match of his, though.

Strike Force v. Islanders (2/3 falls, msg 10/16/87 ) Killer Bees v. Islanders (msg 12/26/87 ) It makes me sad we just missed seeing the Islanders vs The Rockers . Also, here is the space where I traditionally shill that run of Demolition vs Brain Busters TV matches.

Don't have a link for it , but a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned Rockers vs Brainbusters, 1/23/1989 from MSG .

I think it boils down to, whalloping Bubba is something we would all like to do, but is something we really shouldn't do.