rainmakerrtv

Coming to the end of this on my second viewing. Where the heck has Mike Jackson been all my life? If there were ever an enhancement guy that I'd actively wish for a compilation, it would be Mike Jackson.

Iron Sheik briefly coming back to the WWF in Summer of 1988. Pork Chop Cash doing job duty in a WWF match against Tito Santana.

Hmm, that checks out, I do remember seeing pics in an Apter mag of the face painted PoP at some indy show in the early 90s being managed by WWF jobber Sonny Blaze , of all people. Can't find any record of it, though.

Weren't the PoP back as a team in Abram's UWF, conplete with face paint?

Oh, and who exactly were the pair of Samoans who briefly harassed "Making A Difference" Fatu? I think it was Tama and somebody else (Yes, I know, Tama was Tongan ... although he was also Samoan Savage, IMSMR).

OK, am I the only one who remembers the WCW caveman? I first heard about it on some hotline report that, among other things, WCW were planning to bring a cave man costume. Then, on a couple of their TV shows, there was a disturbance in the crowd caused by some guy dressed like Fred Flintstone and swinging a huge club. Then ... nothing. It was one of those blink and you will miss it appearances, like the Blackharts or the first run of the Bruise Brothers in WCW. This was in the early 90s. Please, tell me I am not the only one who remembers this.

sure, I was just unaware that Liz had remarried after Savage.

Sorry to nit pick, but did it really destroy two marriages? Liz had long since split with Savage, had she gotten re-married since then? I still don't know what to make of Luger, I have gone back and forth on him over the years. He definitely had a fair sized bunch of good matches (not all of them with Flair), he was a solid promo, he seemed pretty over at different points in his career, why didn't he connect? Why could't he really follow through? Did it all boil down to that he didn't have a real love or dedication to the business? It reminds me of his shoot interview : he is intelligent, well spoken, personable, I don't recall him being particularly cagey or evasive, but he still comes out of it as an enigma.

I thought up a guy like that once. I imagined him with a manager who was the mouth and he'd come out to "Dirty Deeds" by AC/DC. This makes me think of Deathstroke in Identity Crisis : "Slade, this isn't any of your concern." "For the amount of money he is paying me? It most certainly is." Continuing the comic book theme, maybe they could even redo the storyline where Mirror Master bails on the Injustice League because Bruce Wayne offers him more money than Lex Luthor was paying him.

Well, only one of those guys (Arn) jumped from JCP, the other guys were from Turner. Of those guys, Flair had left WCW to get away from Herd's attempts to ruin his career and drastically cut his play, and he jumped back because Herd was gone and Vince had told him he didn't really have anything for him. Arn had left JCP for pay issues (I think it might have been caused by Crocket's bookkeeping catching up with him, JCP had just renegotiatied a bunch of huge contracts because he thought he had a lot of money coming in, but by the time he got to Arn and Tully he found out they were going broke). When he jumped back, it was partly for pay issues but also a large part because the travel schedule was giving him hardly any time with his family. The Steiners idn't jump right back to WCW, they spent some time in ECW and Japan before going to WCW. I'm not sure exactly what the reason was they left the WWF, but it probably didn't help that the tag division was de-emphasized. Lex left as part of WCW ramping up their first real aggressive moves to beat the WWF, but his career in WWF had pretty much run its course, having been a tag wrestler for the last while. Apart from Arn, all of these guys had gone to the WWF in a big splash, but after that the WWF just didn't really know what to do with them. As far as revisionist talk, I don't know if it is all that revisionist. Like most things, there were pluses and minuses. When ATM Eric opened up the Turner vaults, a lot of people were making a lot more money than they ever had before, and the lighter travel schedule was a big perk, but a lot of people were very frustrated by their careers being in the hands of people they didn't respect. By all accounts, the backstage politics was much worse than in the WWF (and WWF was no paradise that way) and, if you weren't at the top, you were put in your place and that is where you would stay. As for the micromanagement, that seems to be more of a recent issue with Vince, although I admit I don't really know that much about it in that period.

But was he actually a marine?

I had actually heard from various shoots (Windham, Magnum vs. Nikita) that around the beginning of the Rock 'n' Wrestlin era, JCP paycheques were very poor due to weak houses. Windham said he bailed on Dusty and JCP for the WWF because his pay was so bad, and when Magnum commented how bad the houses were when he came in, Nikita added that they were even worse the year before. Maybe there was a significant jump with the addition of the Four Horsemen and the Midnights vs RnR feud, but I'm not the guy with the numbers.

USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST If hating on Bonnie Tyler's Ravishing isn't a bannable offense, it should be. Is that what that was a knock-off of? I had no idea. I think history has proven me right on that one though. Of course, like most people, I fall into the category of either "Bonnie Tyler only recorded one song" or "Bonnie Tyler and Laura Branigan are the same person" Bonnie Tyler had 3 songs : "It's A Heartache" , "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", and "Holding Out For A Hero". And she wasn't the same person as Laura Branigan, she was the same person as Rod Stewart. The One Hit Wonder Cop.

I meant "later" relative to his work in PNW (assuming it was the same guy). I never knew he was in the WWF . Then again, that particular time period is a bit of a blank spot for me. I just found it a bit strange as, before they became an official group, you would see the future horsemen on occasion teaming with the likes of Bob Roop or Buddy Landell. Once they formed, it was pretty much all Horsemen, all the time. Then Bam, out of nowhere, one time only, Steve Regal. Watching this for the second time, I notice Ole was pretty much on the shelf right at the start of the group. I think the first time on the set I hear the words "Four Horsemen" are when they are discussing Ole being taken out of action, or at the very least right before it. Sombody else can put together the actual numbers, but it seems like the longest lasting version of the Horsemen was actually the Three Horsemen of Flair, Arn and Tully (with three periods, the time after Dusty broke Ole's leg, the time when Ole was MIA and Lex was trying to get in, and the post-Lex pre-Barry period), or at least fairly close to the duration of the Lex Horsemen.

Just touching on one point of jdw's post : Looking back on it now, for all that Hogan's big WWF run started with a title win over Sheik and ended with a title loss to Yokozuna, I am hard pressed to think of too many main Hogan storylines in between that were based on jingoistic patriotism. I don't think Volkoff or the Sheik got more than isolated shots, most of the main foreign heels he faced (Kamala, Killer Khan, Dino Bravo) there didn't seem to be a big "USA! USA!" element to them. For all that two of his biggest feuds were against a "Scotsman" and a Frenchman, the first was about Piper being an obnoxious devious asshole and the second was about Hogan's unbeatable huge best friend turning on him. The most jingoistic storyline of that run was not against a foreign wrestler, but rather an American turncoat (Sgt. Slaughter).

Ok, now I just find this bizarre. Tully Blanchard is facing George South and Rocky Kernodle in a random TV match while teaming with *Steve Fricking Regal*! First of all, at this point you usually didn't see the Horsemen teaming with non-Horsemen (at least Leo Burke showing up later made sense as a hired gun to go after Garvin when they were readying a sneak attack). Secondly, I didn't even know Mr. Electricity had ever worked for Crockett. is there some sort of abandonned storyline I don't know about where Regal was trying to get into the Horsemen or something? It just seems so out of the blue. Tangents : A) Is the Steve Regal who shows up in the Buddy Rose set the same "Mr. Electricity" Steve Regal who later worked in the AWA? They really don't look much alike. Is it just me, or were the four Horsemen not really 100% a team until after Ole left? Once they formed, they wouldn't team with outsiders for the most part, but they still seemed to be 3 distinct sub-units (Flair, Tully, the Andersons) who were buddies that looked out for each other rather than an all the way unified force. Maybe it was just JJ. You never saw him out with just Flair or the Andersons, he was either there when Tully was or not at all. Once Lex came in , then you would see him coming to the ring with any of the Four Horsemen.

For a prime example, check out the DVDVR best of the 80s WWF set. Hulk Hogan pounds on Don Muraco for several minutes, Muraco throws the salt, DQ, end of match. Or any WWF matches where the time limit just rings out of nowhere, with no warning and no real place in the flow of the match. It's as though the matches didn't really end, they just stopped happening, if you get my distinction.

Just mentioning a few positive things I have to say about Hogan that haven't been mentioned yet : The Paul Orndorff heel turn/feud had a very cool and interesting storyline. Hulk Hgan put in a lot of work for charity and PR and by all accounts was great with meeting kids for Make A Wish, in stark contrast to what I hear about Ultimate Warrior. Any Hulk Hogan character in the better wrestling video games (particularly Fire Pro) is a whole lot of fun to play. I was never a Hulk booster, but loved whalloping people with Axe Bombers and dropping the Big Leg on them.

I thought Tammy Fytch in SMW was awesome .. excelent heel for the territory.

OK, I'm clueless - how can I get a copy of the Buddy Rose set? Contact goodhelmet, it's right up there with his Dick Murdoch and Barry Windham sets (granted I already loved Barry going into that set.)

Now I'm depressed, because I have just finished the Buddy Rose set and now there is no more Buddy Rose to watch