Kronos

Freaking awesome. Already settled up with Will.

Ditch, what Naylor said, in the context of this week's ROH TV. . . http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...c=48552&hl=

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3s6y7_me...hogan-bru_sport Here's the headlights comment from SS 89 -- but it's not certain it's Liz, and he doesn't mention double-team.

Heh, so maybe he belongs in the MYTHs thread.

D'oh! That's what I get for going to sleep since I put the show on after midnight. LOL So it was a fake swerve. Interesting. I'll finish it tonight, probably.

Last night, I was watching the first part of the Nitro in 1998 that was filmed at the dome -- they claimed to have 35,000 people at the show for which the main event was Hogan/Goldberg. Hogan comes out and cuts a promo about how Goldberg ain't nuthin and doesn't deserve to fight him, so he's got some other NWO Brother to fight him instead. It's clear that the people had come to see Hogan/Goldberg. Now, I didn't see the end of the show yet, but I assume Hogan did not wrestle. What were they thinking? Did they think it would just bring some "cool" heel heat? Or did Hogan back out at the last second? Anyway, it was a crappy thing to do to the fans -- especially THAT MANY.

I think during that 1995 run they were testing out a heel turn for him, IIRC. But yeah, he always fought a little dirty and acted like a jerk to a lot of faces. One of my biggest "outrages" growing up was during the 92 Rumble and Sid throws Hogan out. Hogan is complaining and goes back to eliminate Sid. In the original commentary that was on the PPV, Monsoon was actually speaking out against how Hogan was acting. Later, on TV, when they showed the ending of the Rumble, they had gone back and redone the commentary so Monsoon was talking about Hogan being robbed. Yeah, I had heard that the fans actually boo'd Hogan in the original, though I have yet to see the PPV recording.

If I am getting it: It's basically the concept that we have certain elements we use in putting together a story, and that those elements tend to be common across storylines. You pick and choose "tropes" when building the story. So, in wrestling a story is put together using a heel manager or a specific finisher or a Heel/Face conflict or whatever. Understanding after the fact how the story was put together can sometimes help to make better stories down the road.

The more I watch Hogan from the 80's and even pre-NWO 90's (especially early 96 Nitro), the more I find that he subverts the FACES ARE ALWAYS GOOD trope. I know we have talked about it before, but he does sneaky things all the time -- and he treats others like crap. In a lot of ways, 1995-era Hogan is one of the first Tweeners. I don't feel like going into it tonight, but I just remembered that a few years back I wrote a paper for a grad class called, "Myth, Parable, and Professional Wrestling". It's primary topic was essentially tropes, though I did not know the term then. I had four or five Myths (things wrestling teaches about how we wish life were or how it ought to be) and four or five Parables (hard truths we learn about real life from wrestling). Each one contained a couple of very markish examples of characters or angles or events. Tomorrow, I will dig it out and lists the myths/parables and see how they hold up in this context -- it would be interesting to see if anyone else comes up with some of my illustrations (all WWE-based, as it was the only rasslin I knew at the time).

A slight digression, but this site is amazing. Thanks for sharing, Bix. A lot of these tropes are things my friends and I have recognized. Ex: "Hollywood Homely" is something we always call the "glasses and ponytail effect", in which a hot chick is told to us to be ugly just because she has glasses and a ponytail. . . They have good comments about rasslin, too. I like the quote from JR about how it seems that they WANT people to use those weapons that always seem to be kept under the ring.

I don't know that that's going to happen. Are people who disagree with me on message boards labeled as gay bashers? Random aside -- on a women's wrestling forum I frequent called Captured-Beauty, there's a massive percentage of active posters who are gay males. While a number of us are straight and there are a few women, I would guess that 50% of the most active are gay and open about it. It's probably why we are able to have more substantive discussions beyond simply "she's hot" or "she's got a great @$$" -- though of course those comments do happen. There also ends up being a little discussion on their hairstyles, ring gear, and shoes.

Can't wait to participate and to get the first two discs for my own amusement.

The funny thing about it is that the editorial doesn't say ANYTHING, except that he expects Steamboat to fail. I like the first comment, which calls the piece "melodramatic shite". BTW, I see the term "bike ride" fairly often in discussing older matches. Can someone enlighten me?

I am not that familiar with Jim's burning his bridges with Vince. Did they get crossways when he was at OVW?

Are you saying that the more realistic-style wrestling of the 50's, for example, comes across to us as fake because they don't follow patterns we are used to from more "skilled" workers like Funk/Baba/Backlund? That may be true from the 1960's stuff I have seen.

Are you watching these off wwe.com? I think it's great that they're on there (reminds me, my annual sub is up in May ). I've been wanting to watch these since seeing Survivor Series 1987 for the first time recently. I already knew I liked Mania III, and I fell in love with SS -- the whole show (bar maybe the Hogan/Andre confrontation in the end) is beyond fun. It just makes me think that 1987 may have been a good year if it was bookended by such greatness. Perhaps an apex of the cartoon 80's era that started 3 years before? And then I realize that there's dozens of episodes of Challenge from the period available in my subscription, and I know I have to watch them and see if I am right.

This one may or may not be a myth, but it popped into my head from the other thread: Vince, Jr invented Sports Entertainment with the coming of Hogan and Mania I. I was just thinking about the WCCW I have seen from 82-83. It's full of skits, music videos, lots of talking, and OTT, sometimes cartoonish characters. The wrestling is often quite good, but the shows are a whole production beyond simply wrestling and a few interviews. Could we say that Fritz pioneered it? It's something different than the GCW or the MACW I have seen from the era, which seems to have stuck basically to interviews and ring action. World Class is on a different level.

Kayfabe Memories is a massive site, but there's not a lot of posting going on outside of statistics, show reports, quick trivia questions, etc. It's too bad because there seems to be a real wealth of knowledge there. Wrestlingclassics is almost incidentally about wrestling these days. It's a lot of fun, and I post there regularly, but it's a running joke that the "OT" threads outnumber the wrestling ones. What are S&W or CKC -- not familiar with those sites? Talk some more about this "ocean of fetishists". How do you mean? Do you mean people who worship Indy puro, that sort of thing? I know that as a women's wrestling fan, when I saw my first Toyota/Hokuto match, I went ballistic. I couldn't believe that it could be so intense, so fast, and so wonderful. Not sure if being a Wrestlicious fan might bring in those people. But I started following the chicks as a Mickie James fan (I still love her), discovered SHIMMER from looking up Roxxi Laveaux on wiki, and found joshi after that. So it's possible. . .

It really had no production value at all -- aside from the crowds and the slightly better announcing, it could have almost been any indy show today. Also, the episodes began with almost identical intro scripts from Vince -- I had to doublecheck to make sure I hadn't simply been given two of the same episode on my disc when the second show began. The interview segments with Buddy Rogers were absolutely horrible; I know that guy's kind of a big deal (hehe, Anchorman), but he was awful and had no business doing a five minute interview "show". That said, the action did get a lot better from that first episode I was watching when I typed last night. I watched three consecutive episodes -- about two hours in all. Curt Hennig had the singles match I mentioned. He also wrestled in a tag with Eddie Gilbert against Jose Estrada/someone-I-can't-recall. Their ringwork was excellent, considering it was a 5-minute match. Gilbert was pulling some what I am guessing for the time period were crazy flying headscissors and fast action. Hennig looked really good, too, and the heels didn't look at all squashed. The crowds picked up in the later episodes, too, getting into the matches. Don Muraco looked decent, and Rocky Johnson was fun. The biggest discovery for me was Fuji/Saito. Fuji was wicked fun with his expressions, and his ringwork was well above most of the jobbers and dullards on the show. He and Saito made a credible and entertaining heel team, and I look forward to seeing more of them on subsequent episodes. (I have about six more consecutive ones finishing off 1982 before my collection jumps to January 84.) The other surprise to me was the Strongbow brothers. I only watched one match they had with the Japanese pair for the tag belts F & S held. Julius would do this little Indian dance everytime something cool happened, and it really got the crowds going. Those guys were fun to watch, too. All in all, as I said before, these eps compare to World Class in '82-83 for sheer fun, even if some of the WWF's action turned out to be quite good. Fritz seems to have taken Sports Entertainment to another level for the era without insulting the old-school fans, and Vince wasn't there yet. But I am still going to try to watch it more.

That's quite a possibility -- he can't criticize his current employers without endangering his job. Still, though, would that not mean such rants would burn his bridges with Vince? Maybe he doesn't care, but it is of course possible that TNA will not be around forever. . .

A bit of quick fishing: Wrestlecrap has a very active forum, and these people seem to be fans of the current product. Substantive discussion? That's another question. Some current forum topics that have at least 2 pages: Do you get Gay Vibes from the Legacy (3) Times when Triple H bugged you the most (7 pages -- most of the answers are one sentence) Lockdown 2009 (33 pages, many 1 line responses) Wrestlingforums.com is massively active, and it has a lot of recent topics about the current industry [far more than DVDVR]; a lot of the topics are also of the all-time list theme. One interesting topic is "What is the IWC?" by a guy who didn't understand the acronym. One response: I know this post makes me sound like a snob. I think I have just been spoiled because when I got into the IWC in late 2007, I almost accidentally moved from the ROH forums (which got real old real fast) to places like this. I don't write a lot, but I sure read the crap out of these forums that have the same guys -- PWO, DVDVR, TOA, etc.

As long as I am rambling. . .I am currently watching Championship Wrestling from Oct 1982. Dear Lord, this stuff is dull. World Class blows it out of the water, and so does Mid-Atlantic (I haven't seen much Memphis, Mid-south, or Georgia from the era -- but the Georgia 1979 comp I have is so much more engaging). Curt Henning/Barry Hart vs Fuji/Saito is happening right now and is quite good, actually -- but the crowd is bored. They're chanting "We want Backlund" and "We want Snuka" -- but of course because this is TV, Bob's nowhere to be found. Broken-down Billy Graham is just shameful, but he gets 1 min squashes so he doesn't have time to look too bad. Rogers Corner? Let's just say it was a good thing they got Piper not long after this. . .

BTW, John, I just logged in to TOA for the first time in almost a year. I realized it was your thread about the 80's set that I was referencing. Nice work. Will you activate my acct under codegreen817? I think my old account probably got purged. . . Dylan, it makes me sad that some people feel all the discussions have been done, because it's still so new and fresh to me. Oh, well, nothing to be done for it, I guess. You could always have threads comparing DG and MichPro -- oh, wait. . .

Yeah, it's a fascinating article. But WWE is genius booking compared to what happens week in and week out at TNA. It doesn't lose any credibility for Jim in my eyes -- because he's a master of the game. But it does make this particular article require a grain of salt. . . (or perhaps simply be unintentionally ironic)