Matt D

Re: the Great American Bash. I just read this today actually, from a July 93 Observer: "7/3 Omni card billed as "The Great American Bash" was canceled a few days ahead of time. Reason given was that Vader, Barry Windham and Paul Orndorff would all be unable to wrestle, but that has been the case for weeks at every house show, none of which were canceled. Real reason appears to be that the last time a house show totally bombed at the Omni drawing 1,100, Kip Frey was done and Bill Watts was brought in. They can die on the road but nobody at TBS knows about it. If they die at the Omni, since the Turner employees can attend those shows, people start asking questions about how the company is being run. Better to punt than try and run on fourth-and-long. Definitely a bad sign when an Omni house show is canceled, although Bill Watts did the same thing when the same situation was about to occur."

I wish we had more, longer matches from his Florida run. I love the one we have with Windham, just for his intensity.

Fantastics vs Guerreros was a lot of fun but definitely a mess at times. There were some spots that get an A for effort but were just all over the place and the pacing was enjoyably chaotic but it was a little jarring as they had a few mini heat segments towards the end which was less than the sum of its parts. I imagine it was a very fun match to watch live at the time though.

Koko's increasingly a commodity to be brought in now though.

What's Tatanka's best match? I like the Royal Rumble match vs Bam Bam in 94 but I would hate for that to be someone's "best match."

Is there historical precedent in 83 to Brody jobbing on that sort of a stage? I'm just curious now.

Did Brody know he was jobbing?

I kind of want Kris to show his work on this one.

If Sting isn't interacting with Luke Harper anymore, then I'm kind of not interested at Summerslam at all. That was the one thing I was really looking forward to.

It's not that he does the comedy, but when in the match he often does it.

Unfortunately, this is what happened to it at the turn of the century:

There is a December 92 Nastys vs Money Inc match I like

You don't think Arn/Larry vs Dustin/Steamboat is excellent? Just to name one.

I watched 10/12/86. It felt about 40% longer than it actually was, which was a testament to Hansen's violence in the beginning. I really like Hansen outside of Japan so much more than Hansen in Japan. Colon's offense on the comeback was starting to lose me a little right up til the point he bit. I think it came right after an unfortunate back body drop, but the bite pulled me back in and I loved the revenge low blow. Really, the fact that Hansen was so giving on the comeback meant that it barely mattered what Colon actually did. I thought the BS on the finish took a few seconds too long to happen, but that was partially counterbalanced by how quickly Hansen hit the lariat, as if he realized that he needed to really just take care of business and get out of there. It goes on that ever growing "best matches that are under ten minutes" list and has me looking forward to watching more of this. Thanks for goc for putting it all together.

I don't feel qualified to rate them and won't be by the time voting happens

I know my limits, which apparently are "able to help source 1983 broadcast TV shows for references that Buddy Rose would probably make in promos after using his cutting edge VCR to record his 'stories' all day." Though we are back from all the summer vacations as of about 25 minutes ago. Now I just have to catch up on work.

While I am STARVING for some Bock we haven't seen, I can live with stuff like the Bracero match.

It's interesting how split everyone is on this.

Piper would do the escalating punch drunk comeback.

That's the exact joke I made on the latest This Week In Wrestling podcast.It scares me how our senses of humor match up sometimes. Then there was the time Parv commented how Johnny logic isn't that far off from the connective narratives I overlay onto matches sometimes. Truly terrifying stuff.

Callahan can be their Spike Dudley

I'm going to help out Wahoo's Leg starting next month. That's where I am here. Mid-south is awesome and I look forward to reading what rainmaker or lowblow does with it. Also I will either try to keep goc from doing anything rash or egg him on depending on the moon.

The Meltzer criticism wasn't the comedy but laziness, right? I'm asking if that was basically the same thing in Meltzer's eyes.

I never really made the connection of "comedy = laziness" with Murdoch before. I wonder if that's a point of disconnect between Meltzer and people who support Murdoch. I do think that sometimes he goes to comedy (even good comedy) at the wrong time. It never comes off as lazy to me, though. He seems to put a lot of effort into it, maybe even more so than if he went with more conventional work at that point in a match.

Even with the ratings as they are now, you have to imagine some good number will hit at some point (maybe around Mania), and someone could probably make a few bucks by buying relatively low. Hogan didn't mean a whole lot to their bottom line recently. I get a sense that WWE's stock is more based around BS than a lot of things. There's not a lot of understanding on how the business operates and thus it can get affected both ways by things that are pretty meaningless ultimately or are outright fantasy.