PhilTLL

The Machines, Wendi Richter, The British Bulldogs, Ricky Steamboat Have to doublecheck, but I believe Demolition had music from their debut, which was January 1987.

During a quick inset interview during an Arn squash on WCW 10/6/90, Bobby Eaton manages to blurt out "Sid, you beat Bobby Eaton, so what?" Bless this man.

A nice piece of work here to build the Nasty Boys, who are looking surprisingly dangerous after a win over the Southern Boys. Especially considering their strange penchant in their first few weeks for giving a bunch to jobber teams before beating them. The table spot feels pretty vicious for the time.

Except, your original post had nothing to do with a podcast...or at least you weren't clear about it. I'd love more programming like what we got with Austin/Vince. I wonder how hard they begged Austin to make the SAS part of the Network after that, and how hard he laughed. More on topic, WWEN is available in the same viewing modes as Netflix pretty much, and even given WWE's demographic issues, there has to be some familiarity/overlap of subscribers. Certainly plenty of WWE fans own game consoles. I haven't kept up with the programming lately to see if they're still failing to advertise how easy it is to watch on TV, but it seems to me if that's a problem for them, it's their fault. For example, offering a free month of WWEN with the purchase of 2K15 and a guided (automatic?) installation of the app seems like a no-brainer. The geographic thing, I have no easy answers for--I can't blame anyone overseas for getting very frustrated and refusing to buy, especially if they have to jump through hoops and do it grey-market. It is pretty amusing to watch companies desperately try to put regional limitations on a product that moves across a gigantic global network.

I was one of the few votes for phone/tablet, but that's a very small percentage of my viewing. Most happens on a Roku 2 or 3. I will say the Android app is pretty good.

This would be fantastic. If Bruno can't be enticed, Regal would be a great choice. And if they can make highlights out of Koko B. Ware's WWF run, they can make plenty of Larry's AWA, WCW, and announcing work.

Given the composition of the lists, it appears "good game" 好勝負 means good/very good matches, and "name game" 名勝負 means excellent ones.

At some time recently Network stopped saving my resume points on any and all devices. Seems like an account-side problem. Fun!

Hell, un-repackaged Ric Flair is still pretty influential among NFL players and other cool people.

- Watch acquired sets of territory TV alongside '80s sets - Keep mining collections for specific feuds (i.e, I have what feels like dozens of Santana/Valentine matches) - Delve deeper into lucha - Punch through on my WCW rewatch, currently in the doldrums of late 1990. Ways to accomplish this: Be more liberal with the FF button when crap is obviously crap, use other rewatch projects to freshen up.

Bret-Owen vs Steiners is my favorite Coliseum match. Perfect-Piper from Battle of the WWF Superstars is really good too. WrestleFest '94, home of said Harts/Steiners match, is a pretty solid watch front to back. Good Martel/Savage match, HBK/Razor in decent action. Invasion '92 has an exclusive of the good first Bret/Flair match from November 1991. And SuperTape 1 is probably easier to hunt down for the 1/90 Rockers/Powers match than the MSG show itself. I could probably come up with a bunch of these if I looked at the match listings.

And I would like to mention that my Grateful Dead collection ends where Vince Welnick's tenure begins. Sad, but what can you do.

I could be remembering incorrectly, but I don't think the Mongo turn involved Savage at all. He was the football players' coach and he ate the beatdown along with Greene afterwards.

So I'm watching Rude/Warrior from Copps Coliseum 5/1/89--another decent effort from these two, interesting structure as Rude has to work a bit of control without actually getting much offense. Literally a few punches, a piledriver, and a camel clutch, and the rest is cutoffs. But the most remarkable thing is not Rude's piledriver, it's Warrior's, which is one of the most competent moves I've ever seen from him. It's actually...quite good. What. I haven't watched their PPV matches in years but I damn sure don't remember that. (So I went back and sure enough, Warrior piledriver at SummerSlam. I stand corrected. It's still pretty much their best match, of course, with Rude's absurd bumps and a double heat segment.) Heck, I also don't remember ever seeing him try a slingshot suplex, but there it was in this match. And it wasn't terrible either! Rude really would do anything for Warrior, apparently.

I was actually looking for this answer myself recently--the first match in the '84-85 Santana/Valentine feud was 3/31/84 in Philly. First MSG was 6/16.

Larry Z cuts an unbelievable promo on Worldwide 5/21/1994. So good I have to transcribe it: "You know, I understand Lord Regal is now looking up my background. He's smart enough to do some research, he's finding out about his opponent. Did you find out, Regal, that in front of 50,000 people, I retired my mentor, a man who was the greatest of the greats of his time? Did you do some research, your worship, and find out that I carried that burden for 18 glorious years? And did you do some research into my soul and find out how it feels? You know I'm not royalty, Mean Gene, let me tell you exactly what I am. I'm a Polak from the hills of Pennsylvania. And I have accomplished my dream twice, I have retired legends, and if you don't believe me, your worship, you just go ask our commissioner. Because he is one of them. You know what the man sees here, Mean Gene, is Larry Zbyszko, mild mannered professional broadcaster for World Championship Wrestling--a great company to work for. But inside that ring, your worship, I can make Vladimir Shevonovsky look like Dr. Billy Graham! And I'm going to do it for the people of Philadelphia, I'm going to do it for my past, and I'm going to do it for the people of America! See ya in Larryland, jerk!"

Is someone else controlling your mouse or thumb today, or did you click on this yourself?

I recently rewatched Edge/M. Hardy in a cage from Unforgiven 2005 for the first time in a few years and came away thinking it was terrific, and somewhat slept on in my browsing experience. Of course the feud was uniquely heated, and I'd have to watch it again to see how much of it was Edge being great--it's pretty Matt-focused. But I would definitely feel comfortable calling it a great match. Really strong intensity, brawling, spots, pacing, and blood. Pretty easily among the best WWE matches in 2005 off the top of my head. Note: I saw it live and would call it the best match of the few I've ever seen live, but it didn't hit me at the time as an all-time great. So I feel like I'm fairly safe from rose-colored glasses here, ha.

Pretty good promos from both guys before the match. I always liked Perfect's ability to go from joking to serious in an instant, and Kerry is pretty clear-headed and just right between goofy and confident. His little tornado analogy is cartoonish enough to be fun and sensible enough to be a good boast. Perhaps they gave him an outline. Match is a decent enough 6:00. Kerry is clearly fired up. Perfect shows the kids the pitfalls of hubris, literally losing right after mouthing off, and what a pop.

Just watched the Sheik/Slaughter match from MSG in April 84 and it was absolutely amazing! Even McMahon got caught in the middle of it in the dressing room. Oh man, if you think that one is good--which it definitely is!--just wait. 5/21/84 and the Boot Camp are two of my (and many people's) favorite matches ever.

There are quite a few matches where Dusty blows off the action to talk about himself or something else, but yeah, there are plenty where his tongue-tied amazement actually gets the action over. Dusty, at Starrcade '96 during Liger/Rey, cracking up and going totally raunchy when he hears Tenay use the name "dragon screw leg whip" is one of my all-time favorite announcing moments. "Imonna save that one for later on tonight! 'Ooh honey, what was that?' 'That was a dragon screw leg whip!'"

He had the plastic surgeries done around 2004, right? Kind of a shame they blew so many Texas legends before they ever ran the HOF in Dallas, especially doing the Funks and the Von Erichs in the same year in Houston. It's not like Vince didn't see Mania in Jerryworld flash in front of his eyes the moment the blueprints were made. Freebirds seem obvious enough, but it would have been neat to do both at once. Hansen doesn't seem like a typical candidate for one of the underneath spots, but they did bring him in to induct, so maybe there's a chance. Barry? Dustin if he ever retires? (gulp) Layfield?

They loaded Raw's Backlash (5/1, Hogan appearance) and Vengeance (6/26, both world titles plus Angle/HBK 2, felt like a stab at adding a Big Five), and they did 320k and 420k respectively. SmackDown's Judgment Day (5/22, Cena/JBL I Quit, Eddie/Rey) did 280 and GAB (7/24, Batista/JBL, Eddie/Rey) did 260. Plus One Night Stand (buys not listed) was on 6/12. I think those numbers are decent, considering Raw was the focus and there were 5 PPVs in 3 months, but hard to say if they moved the peg or just held it steady. And it's hard to say the extent that a semi-main program moves numbers. Those are similar to summer 2004 and up from fall 2004, but both years were a decline from 2003, when Mania bombed but almost everything else was drawing in the mid 300s and up. 2003 was the first year of brand split PPVs, but before they went to 16 a year. As is well known, 16 at a lower buy > 12 at a higher buy was the principle, but the numbers were permanently down even when they pared back the shows a few years later. 2005 Raw PPVs after SummerSlam (640, for the record) were back in line with SmackDown, doing 250 for Unforgiven (Cena/Angle, Hardy/Edge cage) and Taboo Tuesday (Cena/Angle/HBK, Flair/HHH cage). No Mercy (Batista/Eddie) got 230, Survivor Series 400, then SmackDown closed the year strong with 320 for Armageddon (Taker/Orton HITC), though obviously that's post-Eddie and post-Eddie/Rey. The first New Year's Revolution hosted Elimination Chamber and drew a strong 335. Per the spreadsheet on prowrestlinghistory.com, numbers worldwide. And if I can add what is now a total cliché, holy moly, WWE had a huge and formidable talent base in the 2000s.

This one's easy. "Rusev recognizes that his home country of Bulgaria [that's acknowledged, right?] was much better off under the guidance of glorious Russia--just like Poland, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, Germany! It was only through decadence and deception that the West escaped the Motherland's grasp! We declare Rusev the European champion, and he will unite Europe in a new birth of power!" Etc.

In this week's WON he points out how Punk is sort of being used in UFC the way he complained about part-timers being used in WWE, and he makes a first reference to "Johnson," just Johnson. It's easy enough to figure out he means Rock, but it's a classic Dave fundamentals-of-writing mistake.