Sean Liska

1/8: Slater/Orton//Brisco-Dory/Valentine/Red Dog Lane: Solid match, maybe not as good as you would think with the talent involved. Seeing Orton as a face is fun. But the big story if Slater turning heel and joining the House of Humperdink (Humperdink is managing all the heels here). The heels all attack and Piper comes out for the save. Don Kernodle has a match with Johnny Weaver. Steamboat is at ringside,and somehow Kernodle gets a hold of Ricky's coat and tears it up. But wait! It's a trick! Steamboat was actually wearing Kernodle's jacket, Kernodle tore up his own clothes! Slaughter comes out and yells about how he bought the coat for Kernodle and it cost him $300, I love this, There's a ton of Humperdink on these shows, who's solid, but if they had a Heenan/Hart/Cornette level guy the territory would really be flying.

The 1/1 episode has some Final Conflict build with Kernodle not releasing a cobra clutch on Tommy GIlbert and Steamboast making the save. Kernodle cuts an angry promo saying Slaughter is at the White House for an important event but they promise to finish Steamboat and Youngblood in 83, Masa Fuchi was in Mid-Atlantic? And he's facing Ricky Steamboat? If that's not the point of this thread, I don't know what is. Solid TV match built around Fuchi working Steamboat's arm. Steamboat cuts a promo after his match, Kernodle interrupts, a brawl ensues, and it continues through the entire closing credits. Good stuff.

It's one of the most important years any wrestling company has ever had - Mid-Atlantic in 1983 builds up a Steamboast/Youngblood-Slaughter/Kernodle match that causes a legendary traffic jam in Greensboro. And it leads to the creation of Starrcade, closed-circuit, indirectly to PPV, a million different things. You all know the story, this place is smart. While pieces of episodes from this year have previously been available, we now have entire episodes from the first 10 months up on the WWE Network. So my goal here is to just post when I see something significant, and Mid-Atlantic experts can let me know if it's new or something in circulation.

Twitter Dave just lost his mind at some point recently. Newsletter Dave is still very good with lots of cool scoops in the recent Observer.

So can we send a fruit basket to WWE HQ as thanks and beg them for Georgia?

A lot of the '81-'82 stuff was in Classics on Demand, but the '83 stuff is all new. That's what I thought. So we're going to see classic stuff from Flair, Piper, Steamboat, Brisoes, Race, etc, that hasn't been seen in 35 years. Why isn't the internet freaking out with me?! This is fantastic.

A lot of these episodes in full haven't ever been in circulation, right? I know McAdam had a lot of stuff, but am I correct in this being a huge day for us territorial wrestling nuts? Especially to have 83 when things were on fire?

So can anyone tell from Dave's Twitter account if he thinks NJPW in-ring is better than WWE and people who don't like NJPW or the Bucks have a limited view of wrestling? I can't tell from the couple dozen tweets on my timeline every day I need clarification.

Thanks for the heads up on 1/8, I've been checking every day since 1/1.

To me the easy move is giving the belt to Naito for a year or two and letting him ride this wave of momentum. But, and I hate to use this crutch, while they continue this five-year streak of business increasing every year in many areas, including the Dome show this year doing 9k more paid than last year, I can't kill Gedo until one of his moves proves to be a real mistake. And they came up with a hot clever way to keep Naito strong on the 1/5 show.

Hmm. I wanted Naito to win but can't really argue with trying to create another Inoki/Baba/Rikidozan level figure. Or even 84-88 Hogan as a comp.

SD ratings have been consistently increasing since putting the belt on AJ and pivoting to this AJ/Owens/Zayn//Bryan/Shane story, doing over 2.7 million viewers this week. Nice to see good creative (IMO) being rewarded.

My resolution lasr year was to let Dave enjoy NJPW and PWG and not be bothered by him pissing on the sanctity to 90s AJPW. It lasted 4 days until the 6 star rating. This year? Balance work/life/relationships with watching as much wrestling as humanly possible, whether 70s Florida or 2018 ICW and OTT.

Mid-South Coliseum 1982.

I don't know, I was there Tuesday and I still love SD. Vince wants to build a main event scene for a national TV show around AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and Daniel Bryan, I'm not fighting him. The tag scene is on fire, this Rusev love is crazy. I have faith they'll do something with Mojo since he has so many things they like, it would be weird if a talented big guy with famous friends couldn't catch a break. I actually like Roode and Ziggler. The Fashion Files/Ascension stuff feels like Ryan Ward writing out of the old NXT days. Bludgeon Brothers are so absurdly old school but I enjoy it. The 2 hours goes by so fast after sitting through Raw. I'm very grateful that there's still a mainstream American wrestling show I can regularly look forward to and enjoy.

I went to both RAW and SD. RAW was so hard to sit through, with Reigns-Joe being the only real highlight, and the Chicago crowd being oddly quiet all night by their standards even for a Cena match SD felt like a big party, with the crowd going nuts for Bryan to start the show, and then feeling like an ECW show with the Rusev stuff where it was like the crowd just decided they were going to make someone a star. So much fun.

I've told Loss this - I absolutely love this board. In this era of 6 stars, this is the only place where there are people like me, who'll put a good Dundee expiration of time match up there with modern NJPW. But not just that I share tastes with people, that people here are as crazy about wrestling as I am, that finding unseen 1981 NJPW handhelds is genuinely a big deal to you all like it is to me. And stuff like the 2K project, the 80s Yearbooks, those handhelds, invaluable stuff, can't say enough about how much I appreciate this place.

This thread has taught me that I haven't watched enough of the good Bucks stuff and I've seen too much of the "wink wink" talk into the camera about star ratings stuff.

The Mid-South Coliseum account just tweeted to the Libertyland account that Dave Brown skipped work today (he sometimes goes to operate a classic roller coaster) to attend a Memphis basketball game. Dave called the Mid-South Coliseum a tattle tail. Twitter is great if you use it right. Don't let the trolls kill it for you.

The great thing about Twitter is it's what you make of it. You don't have to follow Cornette or Rovert or Russo or the Bucks or Meltzer if you don't want drama (hate to throw Dave in there but it's true). Follow drama-free good people - Loss, KrisZ, Mookie, luchablog, accounts that post random old wrestling gifs, the remarkable Meltzer in the 90s one, Dylan, etc. I'm different than many in that I use this crazy access we have to celebrities to say nice things to them! I love watching a great Memphis TV show and tweeting something to Lawler, Dave Brown, Dutch, etc, and getting likes showing that they saw it. That's awesome.

My Twitter mostly consists of checking in with Dave Brown every few months when I see something cool on old Memphis TV and I still got blocked by Rovert.

Have these Mid-Atlantic TVs from this era been available anywhere of will we be doing this all together? I know they put up like 20 episodes from I think 81 on Classics. Either way this is great news.

All right, let's talk Young Bucks. They're a huge independent draw. But their independent schtick, the way it's so meta and insider, their inside jokes at the camera during matches, the jokes inside matches, it's everything I don't want from indy wrestling. I'm old and remember the days of peak indy wrestling being Danielson and Joe stiffing each other. Punk cutting tremendous promos, the Raven-Punk feud full of authentic emotion if not workrate. But they're super successful and have ROH doing their best business ever. Am I out of touch? Am I allowed to not enjoy it like Meltzer hated 80s WWF? Is this just the direction indy wrestling is heading and I should fold my cards now or are there viable alternatives like ICW. What sayeth PWO on the Bucks and the future of alternative wrestling?

ICW. OTT. CMLL. SD and NXT. Just my tastes. Really not a fan of most NJPW big shows although I enjoy the Korakuen shows more than most of their fans.

I'd go Takeover: Brooklyn - partially biased by being there live, but it was such a great night, everything delivered, Asuka-Moon was so great live. Big fan of Shug's Hoose Party Night 2 from ICW. CMLL had a fun Anniversario even though it didn't have marquee matches. OTT had some of the most fun shows of the year to watch.