rainmakerrtv

Johnny Weaver.

The Bushwackers/Sheepherders? They wouldn't have been available. They were working for Vince. Top of the thread said no restrictions, but if we consider Butch and Luke unusable ... Boyd/Bigfoot Sheepherders.

Chicago hit the Top 10 for the first time in 1970 with "Make Me Smile", "25 or 6 to 4" and "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" They hit the Top 10 for the final times in 1988-89 with "I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love", "Look Away", "You're Not Alone" and "What Kind Of Man Would I Be?" They hit #1 for the first time in 1976 with "If You Leave Me Now", and the final time in 1988 with "Look Away" that was amazingly enough Billboards #1 single of the year for 1988. So... Long term appeal = GREAT~! Band in the case of Chicago? Or were/are they simply an effective charting pop band? When you think of great bands that have been around since they were formed (1967), does Chicago really come to mind? Strangely, this is the second time I have posted this today (on 2 different boards), but .... Chicago's first 2 albums were awesome. I can't really vouch for the other 87. Back to wrestling talk ...

Bockwinkel seemed to do a good job of checking out. He kept going for a good long time, but I think he was still having solid matches at the end, he didn't look like he was half crippled, has only made extremely rare appearances in the ring since his retirement, and overall seems fairly content with his lot these days.

How about a politics folder?

Crap. Sorry, Jerry.

I wanted to slap that little so and so in the face every time he showed up on TV, so, yeah ...

Inspired by JVK's recent Best Babyface post, I figured we could dig into what makes a great heel (I apologize if this has been discussed before). There are a lot of different styles of heel, but what are the common qualities that define being a great heel? I've said this before in a thread on DVDVR, but I feel that the official best heel of all time is Arn Anderson. The reason being that he could intimidate as a tough asskicker *and* he could pussy out like a chickenshit coward, all within the same match, and it always had credibility and it always made sense. I believe that a purely tough heel can work, but as Lars Frederiksen pointed out in a Good Will Wrestling podcast, one of the problems today is that everybody is trying to be the tough guy heel. They all want to get away with whatever they want, but nobody wants to show "weakness". The wrestling world could use a few more Arn Andersons right now. Edit : Adding JerryvonKramer's guidelines. Breaking It Down 3: Best Heels Ok, so much like the faces thread, I want to breakdown what the heel does in the match and then work out who does what best. The categories this time I'd say are: Working the crowd Best Offence (heat segment) Best selling Best "bump and grind" (i.e. selling of face's comeback, knocked down, get up, knocked down, get up, etc.) Best at calling it in the ring The heel categories are a bit looser than the babyface ones, so let me know any I've missed

I can't wait until I get to the WrestleMania material, not for any particular match, just no more fricking Billionaire Ted.

That's exactly what they were doing.

Can we get some sort of definitive word on Greg Gagne? I confess I haven't seen any High Flyers, but I did initially catch his last run in the AWA when it happened and couldn't quite get the criticism. I didn't think he was as horrible as he was made out to be, I thought he was a solid worker but rather vanilla, still not out and out bad. Then later I watched his Hennig matches on goodhelmet's comp, and goddamn if he didn't come off as one of the most awkward guys I've ever seen in the ring. I don't automatically hate ungainly looking wrestlers (I'm still a big Akira Taue fan), but Greg seemed to be working in higher gravity than everyone else. So was this guy any good or not?

I've heard tell of him having a match against World Champion Randy Savage in Los Angeles that was dubbed a classic "work smarter, not harder" match. Does anyone have a date and can they vouch for this? I'd like to give it a look, it sounds interesting.

From what I remember, and I might be totally wrong about this, Pro Westling Plus was only on TSN sporadically and always in different time slots, similar to the AWA show. It seems to me it was a hard show to follow regularly, although I do remember watching it quite a bit around 1986-87. Anyway, and this is based on 25 year old memories, the promotions I remember being featured on the show for sure were WCCW, Stampede, Florida, and maybe Memphis. I'm sure there were many others, but I don't remember Crockett. I can remember Luger being featured, but I'm pretty sure it was while he was still in Florida. Somebody else out there probably has much better info on the subject than I do. As for Worldwide, I'm almost 100% sure it wasn't available in Calgary during the 80s, but I don't know about the rest of Canada...maybe in the east?. Of course, the Apter mags (and non-Apter mags) were widely available, so us Canadians could follow Crockett that way. Quite right about Pro Wrestling Plus. As for the Apter mags (and others), there were loads of them in magazine stores and grocery stores but I got the feeling I was the only one reading them of any consistency. Among my peers, I always seemed to be the only one who had any idea about non WWF wrestling and didn't dismiss it out of hand. I found it hard to understand, WWF programming at the time was pretty much all squash matches, so any other shows would have at least more potential for something interesting happening. As late as 1997, when the NWO was in full bloom, I remember having a conversation with fellow wrestling fans (some of whom were older than me) and they were completely ignorant of any non-WWF wrestling before the NWO, even with it having been on TSN since early 91, and their views were completely canalized by WWF history.

I can't speak for Canada as a whole, but here is how it went in my part of Ontario. For a brief run we did get some syndicated NWA Crockett wrestling around the time of the 3 Horsemen (post-Luger, pre-Windham). I don't know what original show it was from, it had American content but Canadian bumpers (including Leo Burke and Milt Avruskin). The matches I remember it showing were Barry Windham vs. Mike Rotundo for the TV title (which was a bit of a shock, as I was coming back to wrestling after having watched it between Wrestlemania 1 and 2 and was wondering what had happened to US Express, and here they were feuding with each other in another company), Ric Flair vs Ricky Santana (yes, I wondered if he was related to Tito Santana), and Dusty Rhodes vs Bobby Eaton in a cage (another shock, as we had just gotten some AWA programming and I had just gotten used to the Original Midnight Express being managed by some guy with a portable phone, and here was this other Midnight Express being managed by some guy with a tennis racket). They showed 4-8 weeks of NWA, then switched over to AWA programming for a few weeks, then for some reason switched back over to NWA but showed the same 4-8 weeks they had already broadcast, which had the paradox of showing the Powers Of Pain when they had already jumped to the WWF. After that, there was no more NWA on my local TV. When I visited my grandparents in Newfoundland that summer, their US cable came from detroit, so I did see an NWA show with more surprises like Barry Windham and Ron Garvin having turned heel. Apart from one more visit to my grandparents the next year (where I saw the Great Muta for the first time), I didn't see any more NWA/WCW TV until Power Hour came to TSN in 1991. I became addicted to the Apter mags trying to keep up with what was going on, and rented every NWA tape at the local video stores multiple times. As for Pro Wrestling Plus, they rarely showed JCP footage, and when they did it was at least a year out of date. I remember them showing the Lex Luger Horsemen in an 8 man tag against 4 midcarders , but they were showing it in 1989-1990 . I do remember for some reason between shows TSN showed a couple of non WWF matches, but it was usually Lex taking the US Title from Nikita Koloff, which kept breaking my heart because I was a Nikita Fan (the other match they would show was, strangely, Steve Williams taking the UWF title from Big Bubba).

WCW started on TSN shortly after Flair took the belt back from Sting in 1991 . Soon after he jumped to the WWF, TBS and WGN were added to my cable package. So for this Canadian, at that point there was more (and better) WCW programming available than there was at that point WWF programming.

The weird thing is that I *just* finished watching the full original "Four Flat Tires" angle from Georgia between the Freebirds and Austin Idol & Kevin Sullivan right before putting on this disc. Odd coincidence.

This is just an idea for a thread I had the other day, don't know if it will fly but here goes. The idea is to discuss wrestlers who had reasonably long careers but don't normally get a lot of talk and discuss what their best match was. This isn't for great workers, no Rick Steamboat or Jushin Liger. It isn't really for bad workers (although that's in the eye of the beholder). It's for discussing the Al Perezes and Honky Tonk Mans (Men?) , the working wrestlers who may not have been considered spectacular but to remember the time (or times) they really took their chance to shine. Somebody suggests a name, then people suggest what they thought were their best (or really good underrated) matches and say why. Here goes ... first up, Tom Zenk. The Z-Man, career midcarder, briefly post-retirement internet sensation, good looking guy, never truly reached the upper level but generally solid wrestler. Best Match : Pillman vs. Z-Man Wrestlewar 5/17/92 for the WCW Light Heavyweight Title This initially looked like it would be a straightforward babyface match going in, but they rushed an angle just before the PPV and it was IMHO a pretty good one. Zenk and Pillman both get involved in a post-match skirmish with Pillman's new rival Scotty Flamingo, and in a joint interview afterwards, Z-Man makes the mistake of offering to put the title he hasn't won yet on the line against Flamingo. Pillman takes offense at Zenk seemingly taking for granted that he will win the belt and there is some tension going into the match. Pillman does a great job of telling the story of "You're my friend, but I am really pissed at you right now". Working with his former partner seemed to inspire Zenk to bring his A Game, and while it has been a while since I have watched this match, I remember getting very involved in it.

I got the impression they were slowly gearing up for Hogan vs. Windham, but Windham was gone before it could come to fruition. I distinctly remember Widowmaker targeting Hogan in some of his promos.

Ah, sorry, maybe they can move them into this thread, or just delete this thread. Whatever.

Done and done.

To split this off from the Hulk Hogan : Poor Sportsman thread, if you want to discuss the above mentioned side topic, please do it here.

I'm going from the RF Video shoot interview. At one point the interviewer asks him to name the most overrated wrestler he can think of. Barry pauses for thought, then says he will have to get back to that question. Later on in the interview, Barry is discussing his comeback as the Stalker, and mentioning how out of shape he was, then adds "In fact, further to your earlier question about the most overrated guys ... I'd have to say myself."