WrestlingPower

For full disclosure, it was a 3+ hr show and I was running low on either battery or tape (VHS-Cs were 90 min each) and chose to tape the intros & last few min only. They showed some of it on TV as well since that was a part of the story of Buddy Landel's face turn.

I can't imagine it would be a premium channel otherwise why would it be any different than 24/7 where subscriptions have been dropping for a while now. It is unfortunate that a regular channel would have commercials but that's a reality we would have to deal with. I have no doubts they could make this thing work content wise and even advertiser wise (probably) but my concern would be getting companies to carry it. Unless they can somehow work a contractual deal where companies that carry the 24/7 have to carry it but not sure how that would work. This is an interesting time to try it though since wrestling in general is about as cold as I've ever seen it among general public/former fans. You'd think anyone nostalgic enough to watch (ie the target audience) is already finding stuff for free on youtube or is a hardcore that has old footage like us. Neither of those groups is looking for yet another outlet for more footage (as Flik said). Anyone not in those core groups who is a former fan has LONG since moved on with life and might stop and watch for 10-15 min at a time if they are lucky.

I filmed the clipped raw footage version. The only other version I'm aware of is the one Bix mentioned but at least the copy I got isn't the greatest vq. To me the Thugs/Bodies match on that show was much better as far as deserving to go on the set.

Still fascinated with the discussion over wrestlers who were never on the ballot, I did some research on those that received less than 10% of the vote & fell off the ballot over the years. If I interpreted it right I think the original rule was that once you fell off the ballot, you could go back on in 2 years. I think the criteria for that was either a continuing career that would make someone a stronger candidate or historical candidates that had more info uncovered on them and/or someone making a good case for them & promising to vote for them. 1998 (first year of voting): Fuerza Guerrera, Scott Hall, Curt Hennig, Mark Lewin, Lex Luger, Don Muraco, Kevin Nash, Paul Orndorff, Blue Panther, Ken Patera, Jake Roberts, Rick Rude, Hans Schmidt, Davey Boy Smith, Steiner Bros., Sting, Akira Taue, Barry Windham 1999: Curtis Iaukea, Bill Miller, Masa Saito, Tiger Jeet Singh, Sgt. Slaughter, Kerry Von Erich, Doc Death 2000: Lou Albano, Masa Chono, Masakatsu Funaki, Chavo Guerrero, Konnan, Bas Rutten, Sabu, Ken Shamrock 2001: Eric Bischoff, Cien Caras 2002: Andersons, Pedro Morales 2003: Yuji Nagata, Fuerza Guerrera, Yoshihiro Takayama 2004: Atlantis, Pepper Gomez, Gordman & Goliath, Gran Hamada, La Parka, Great Sasuke, Ben & Mike Sharpe, Dr. Wagner Jr. 2005: Lonnie Mayne, Don Muraco, Takayama 2006: Arn Anderson, Booker T, Davey Boy Smith I stopped here due to not having later years on paper and figuring this proves that most if not all of the names we have been debating were obviously never on. Some interesting things here in that Saito, Konnan, and Bill Miller fell off the ballot & eventually got in. So there were obviously some people championing Miller, Hans Schmidt, and maybe others to get them back on. I'm guessing Jake Roberts fell off & never went back on due to his career being pretty much over at the point he fell off. But you could probably say the same for Slaughter and now he's seen as one of the stronger candidates. I also found it interesting on the above list as compared to Dylan's research that I would assume guys like Lonnie Mayne and Gordman & Goliath were Meltzer favorites due to where he grew up & their #s & longevity couldn't hold a candle to Blackwell, Dundee, High Flyers, etc. I think we have really uncovered some interesting stuff here as I would be curious to hear the original criteria for who was considered to go on & who not. I think we agreed last week that the main problems were probably when the original ballot was formulated & the difficulty in getting people added since to correct oversights. One other thing I noticed in research is just how much the balloting pool has grown over the years. The first year a guy could get in with 13-15 people voting for them. Last year it took 109 American votes for a guy in that region to get in. So obviously Meltzer isn't averse to adding voters, I guess you could just argue about how he finds them.

With all the road stories you hear from the 80s of guys getting away with stuff due to giving cops autographs, pictures, tickets, whatever, of all people I'm sure this article could be three times as long with the stuff he never got charged with. A friend of mine was a cop in Chapel Hill within the last 5 years & says they would routinely get calls to haul Flair out of a bar & tell him to go home.

I don't know that he ever flamed out so much as people maybe got tired of his style. Even by that point you could practically call his match. Not unlike Bret Hart during his prime. And I really do think his work is in the same category as Benoit, Eddy, guys like that already in. In early ROH he was clearly seen as the biggest star there and was a draw for them. I guess this argument is just a piece of my frustration over Meltzer ignoring the indies' place in the wrestling scene & treats them as insignificant compared to the "major leagues" so I pointed out that Daniels had an extended stay in the #2 promotion in the country for most of the past 8 years. I'm just saying if you were to add an indy guy he would be a good one to add. And depending on how the next few years of Danielson's career go I wouldn't think it would be too wacky of an assertion that his work is at that level as well, in fact as a worker he's certainly better than Daniels and meant more to ROH.

I hadn't read the thread in a couple days. Now that someone mentioned Britney, that's kind of what I was getting at. She got out of the public eye for a while & maybe cleaned herself up and made a comeback. That's what he needs to do. He needs to somehow realize that he needs to make a clean break from everything & get his crap straight first and decide what to do with his life. The wrestling thing is all he ever wanted & lived for & he sees it slipping away & doesn't know how to cope. It's got to be tiring living a life constantly in the public eye & trying to do things on a daily basis to keep your name out there. I think I read that he tweeted something about being tired of it all. Hopefully he will realize what's important & figure out a way to be productive & move forward & use that as motivation to clean up. My guess is he needs the motivation and being a human tabloid & feeding into that himself isn't helping any.

Has anyone gotten in Meltzer's ear about representing the indies in the HOF? The independent wrestling scene in the US has been pretty prominent since the late 90s and I think not including a guy like Christopher Daniels on the ballot is an oversight. Even if you write off the indies as being insignificant as compared to national promotions, there are other guys who have gotten in largely due to their body of work so in that way Daniels deserves to be on there as well not to mention he has worked for national promotion for most of the past 6-7 years and headlined some shows.

First off I'll admit I'm a Hardy apologist having known them pre-WWF. I think people really need to just leave them alone. Sure they have a penchant for making bad decisions and due to wrestling have become kind of attention whores over the years but no one that doesn't directly interract with them can speak definitively what their problems are & how serious they are. I think if people just left them alone & didn't make a big deal about every little thing they do they might realize what's important and grow up and get their lives together. Both guys, Matt especially backstage, have a lot to offer the wrestling business & I hate to see them piss it all away after that's all they've worked for since their teenage years. They just need some time & space out of public eye for a while.

"Death knell" SMW as you call it really was short lived I think. Sure the TV production values had fallen and the announcers too seemed like it was getting down to whoever they could have drive in for cheap, but talent didn't start to fall off until right before the end. I remember everyone was extremely excited coming off the Super Bowl/Fanweek shows. SMW historically cooled off in Sept/Oct due to back to school time & heated things up for Thanksgiving Thunder. 95 was notable for Snow & Unabom leaving in Aug along with the cool down. It really wasn't until the use of Wolfman, Sgt. Rock, Cornette vs. the midget etc. in building Thanksgiving that things started to look rough. Even the good stuff they had at the time seemed kind of stale as the only "fresh" talent they had at that time was Brad Armstrong coming off years of being buried on WCW TV. In hindsight, Cornette had to know the end was probably near & he couldn't afford the TV clearances much less bringing in high priced new talent. They were even going to have an interpromotional feud w/ a Knoxville indy if the promotion had gone a couple months longer.

It appears to be down again.

Having been a big SMW fan back in the day and living very close to the territory, very happy to see this thread as well. Honestly Brian Lee wasn't that objectionable back in the day, sure he wasn't great, but people looked at things differently back then. He was somewhat green but it was no surprise for someone of that look & size to get a push. Don't know if I'm necessarily representative of the SMW fanbase since I was a sheet reader, but I didn't mind Lee at all until the Candido/Lee team split. By that point he had just worn out his welcome by being so limited. Another point from above, the promotional wars weren't nearly as bad back then, it really wasn't until the Monday Night Wars era that the big 2 really tried to raid each other much less try to pick the lesser promotions dry. I'm honestly surprised to read Lee was on anyone's radar at that point. When SMW started, it was really more an extension of the 80s, heels cheated a lot more then just for the sake of being heelish. It wasn't so much the idea of getting out of a match or cheating the fans out of anything, that's just the way wrestling was done then. Sorry if this comes off as too much of an SMW apologist, but it was a different world back then when by & large fans weren't as "smart", as in obsessed with work rate, knowing about how the business worked, etc.

yes but I'm not sure that's any different than Johnny Ace hiring people out of bikini catalogs.

Re: USWA Texas stuff, there was an Austin/Dundee match from there that aired on 24/7 recently. Did they just buy out whoever released those Austin & Foley tapes or do that have rights to that whole run of stuff? It seems like an odd subset of footage that I'm not sure who would have even had the rights to it.

Check out the Armstrongs tags from Crockett Cup 87, top notch stuff.

I would agree that Dave needs to expand his voting pool, but I could see him being very resistent to it. I would be curious to see how strictly he defines his "reporter" and "historian" categories. Do you automatically move from "random reader/fan" to "reporter" by writing articles for his site? What qualifies someone as a historian? I'm guessing if someone handed Dave a list of names of internet message board experts he would discount them as simply fans who happen to watch a lot of stuff thus unworthy of a ballot just because they aren't "official" reporters or historians. I would dare say there are many more "internet fans" who have a wider breadth of knowledge than some of the alleged experts who do vote. But it's not like Dave would probably take the time to see weigh anybody's credentials.

The best line I've heard on the Danielson thing is on the new Bryan & Vinny show, Vinny said that the NXT concept was such a failure that they basically rescued Danielson from it so the stench of winning it wouldn't follow him around.

Wasn't Sidello the woman who went up to Dory Funk Jr. right before a Slamboree match & claimed to be his long lost sister or something? I know this happened just can't remember who the woman was.

VERY interesting thread. I get tired of people complaining about stuff they "have" to watch. I agree with whoever said watch what you want to and forget the rest. I think we would have a lot more wrestling fans today if people went to the effort of getting stuff they enjoyed instead of burning out on the easy access stuff that they lose interest in. I've lost count of how many people I've heard that have given up on wrestling because they hated what they "had to" watch and "didn't have time" for other stuff so gave up completely. I still would like to think that some day I'll catch up on all I have. I probably have enough already that I haven't watched to last the rest of my life, but what's the point of owning all this stuff if I can't enjoy it by rewatching it? That's why I don't have to have everything. Theoretically I only get stuff I think I would ever watch. But honestly I could double my wrestling viewing (as if I had the time and maybe interest for that) and still be miserably behind. I can certainly see a day (and probably within 5 years) where I am totally disconnected with any current wrestling and can watch my stash. I already pretty much watch guys I'm already familiar with 80+% of the time so as the years go on there are less guys I'm a fan of. I actually consider it a good thing when I hear of more & more wrestling that doesn't interest me because that's less that will be thrown on the backlog.

Listening to the latest Observer radio, apparently star power & "aura" is something that should be factored into star rating a match now. He talked about how the Danielson match on the DGUSA PPV was probably the best match he'd seen all year except that neither had the star power or aura of Michaels & UT. It was either a better match or it wasn't. Does this now diminish the Dragon Gate 6-man or Kobashi/Joe which won the award in the past from being compared favorably against the WWE matches of those years?

Re: the Halloween party, Dave lives in NORTHERN California so I found it especially odd that he would even think anyone there would dress as Mistico Re: Murdoch, my guess is his "half the times I saw him" talking point is exaggerated. Like you said, it's subjective so I'm sure there were a few times he saw Murdoch that put that idea in his head & everytime after that he looked for something that reminded him of that point.

You do make some valid points about elevating talent on that card, but it all makes sense in the context of how it was presented. You're crazy to be disappointed with this DVD. It is worlds better than all the other ones they've done & worlds better than what actually happened with the invasion. That's really all you can ask for, and who isn't entertained by a Cornette shoot interview?