Matt D

I do think Buck could have been a pretty good heel in 94 ECW just by going opposite to type and controlling the pacing of the match in a way that would drive the crowd irate, kind of like Foley did, but without that vaguely ironic undertone.

You Vill Have Fun. Or Else.

Shawn Michaels/Bret Hart/Diesel vs Mabel/British Bulldog/Yokozuna - 11/10/95 - Nassau Coliseum - Handheld 94/95/96 WWF is a bit of a blind spot for me still but I'd never even heard of this match until I started looking at fancam lists for Dustin matches and on paper it's fascinating. The idea of Bret and Shawn teaming this late in the game is compelling in and of itself. The whole show is interesting actually. Skip vs Ahmed Johnson, Dean Douglas vs Savio, early Goldust vs Jannetty, Smoking Gunns vs the insane team of Jean Pierre LaFitte the Pirate and Kama the Ultimate Fighting Machine, Yankem vs Godwinn (okay maybe not that), Heel Owen vs Face Bam Bam, Hunter vs Razor. - It should be noted that Backlund is the special ref in this and does absolutely nothing until the post-match stuff. I forgot and thought it was Chioda at one part of the match. - Bret's body language is interesting in this from the get go. He moves to the apron first and is sort of lacon, leaning on the top rope and watching. Shawn and Diesel high five and butt pat and he just watches. The crowd sounds pretty hot, though some of that could be where it's being filmed from. They're taunting Bulldog and Yoko with a USA chant which neither Mabel or Bret entirely know how to deal with. -Shine #1: Fun Bulldog vs Shawn segment to start. Bulldog really keeps up with him. Best part is a cutesy eyepoke from Shawn. Diesel cheers on. Bret watches. Diesel comes in and hits some power moves on Bulldog. Yoko tags in and the crowd really wants to see it. -Transition to Heat #1: OHHHHkay, I see what's going on here. We're right before Survivor Series 95. Diesel hits the ropes off of a Yoko shoulder block and knocks Bret off the apron. Bret storms back in. Shawn plays peacemaker. I had to go back and check to make sure they didn't run this on Raw. Yoko capitalizes, going to Diesel's eyes and then knocking Shawn off the apron. Diesel fights back, almost gets him down but gets squashed by a samoan drops off the ropes. Bret breaks up the pin. -Heat #1: Ok, so there is no heat. Bulldog misses an elbow. Mabel misses an elbow. Diesel rolls to bret for the tag for (not so) Hot Tag #1. I was going to say that Diesel as face in peril with two hugely smaller guys on the apron, both of whom are known for their selling, would have been really weird. -Face Comeback #1/Face Shine #2: Bret Five Moves Of Dooms Bulldog but Mabel breaks up the Sharpshooter for Transition to Heat #2.It's a shame that we didn't get more tags with Bret after he really developed them because it's a really good way to fill time, hit a comeback. -Heat #2: Mabel tags in. Bret is still selling. Shawn is pissed on the apron, though I'm not sure why. I don't know how many times Mabel wrestled Bret but it's a good match up. Mabel just demolishes Bret in the corner, rakes his eye all the way across the ring on the top rope and tags in Yoko. USA chant starts back up for Bret. Poor guy. Nerve hold time, but at least the crowd is into it. Oh man, Mabel grabs the HUGE Japanese flag from Cornette or Fuji or whoever's on the outside that I can't see due to the fancam and waves it from the corner. Great visual and the fans eat it up. Massive heat. Shawn's on the second rope cheerleading for Bret to get up. Surreal. Bulldog tags in and we get a headlock spot with missed tags and irate Michaels charging in and heels switching and Yoko legdrops and all that good stuff. Mabel's great in this. He eats a second rope hope clothesline by Bret but only weeble wobbles, then rights himself and falls forward, not backwards, landing with a headbutt. Nice cutoff. Bret gets out of the corner at the last second, dives and rolls with great timing to Hot Tag #2 to Diesel. -Face Comeback #2/Finish - Diesel cleans house. Everything breaks down. They do a "whip all three heels into the center of the ring" spot which Bret accomplishes on Mabel by getting behind him and pushing, which is a nice, believable touch. Some nice looking stuff here. The Diesel big boot on Mabel looks good. I really like the Rocket Launcher splash that Diesel and Shawn do. Yoko tries to splash to break up the pin but Shawn moves and he lands on Mabel. The second gets involved but gets tossed and Shawn hits SCM in the middle of the ring for the win. -Post match, Bret has to deal with the indignity of celebrating to Sexy Boy, which he does by hanging out in the babyface corner, leaning forward, his back to everyone. Backlund remembers he's getting a paycheck that night and stomps over to attack Bret from behind. Diesel catches him and tosses him. Bret walks over and tries to figure out what the hell just happened. Shawn plays peacemaker again. Bret stalks around annoyed. Shawn pats him on the butt as he leaves. Well, I'm not sure if it's must see or anything but if I had been at this show and it was my main event, I would have been fairly happy with it.

Show of hands, and I'm just curious: how many people here really loved Bunkhouse Buck back in 1994?

The Orig Williams book talks a lot about his troupe of female wrestlers. The book is carny as hell though.

I have different ways of watching different things. Time is such an issue for me that I usually do real time play by play. I imagine reading my write ups are a terrible chore and I mainly have them for my own sake so I can go back later. I assume they're some sort of a resource for SOMEONE but I can't always imagine how. The honest truth is that with my attention span , it helps me a lot to keep the narrative of a match straight while I'm watching it. I try to hit various things like transitions, interesting offense/selling, cut offs, etc. The bones and muscle of the story. I can go back a year later and everything I care about in the match is right there for me. They were also a ton of help when I wrote my Buddy essay so they can be useful if I want to put the work in to come to broader conclusions. They're also a ton of help when I am ranking 80s sets and what not. I usually watch current WWE stuff and come out with a sentence or two. I kind of like is my bullet point/real time with some edits style that I used for the two Snuka matches over the last couple of days. I could see myself going with that for things that I'm not watching as some sort of "project" but aren't new things I'm just breezing through. Ultimately I A> Enjoy myself and B> make it through a decent amount of content, so I suppose on those levels it's a success.

-Snuka's early Flair flop is ridiculous, especially relative to the violence of the double forearm he got hit with. -I don't think Brody should ever do a leapfrog. I'm just saying.The dropkick is okay, I guess. -His stuff looks pretty good here, though and Terry's selling of it is downright great, especially the kicks. -Dory shouldn't dropkick. -I liked the Dory/Snuka rope running, though it was sloppy as hell. There was something organic about it and the Brody punch to break up the toe-hold was huge. It was huge and sort of led to a mini transition with Snuka taking over with the headlock afterwards. -It'd be nice if Dory worked a little harder from underneath in the headlock. They keep it moving at least, but his selling felt lifeless to me. -The ending of this segment is smart with Terry's little distracting swipe which builds up tension for the Terry vs Brody section. -Terry is such a great FIP. He sells so broadly and all over the ring. His hope spots are so desperate but this is japan not the south so we don't a bunch of cut off hope spots leading to a hot tag. Instead he gets a premature tag to Dory and Terry just dives from the top to the outside and the next thing I know Dory has Snuka in an abdominal stretch. -After the reset that brings Terry back in, we get a really good punchfest between he and Brody. If there's a narrative to the match, I've sort of lost it by his point.The action's good, but I can't say I care a ton about what I'm watching. -Ok, almost on cue, they start giving me some legwork, which is nice. I love Terry coming in to stop Brody from breaking up the toehold, since he broke it up earlier in the match. Snuka seems to be in the thing forever while we get the Hansen clothesline on the outside. I love Dory's confused look as he tries to figure out where his brother is. -Dory going into Brie Mode in response is sort of great. I have no idea if it's a blade job or not. That's how good his punch flurry is. He's fighting Brody at his own game though and ultimately loses that fight. -The Dory showing fighting spirit against impossible odds stuff is compelling. I don't really love Dory's selling or anything, but I don't need to. The story itself is compelling enough. I don't see why Brody's tag was particularly impressive. He already interfered to break up the spinning toe hold twice. Does he get DQed if he does it three times or something? It was stupid of Dory to put the hold on again in the first place but he was beat up and desperate. It doesn't kill the back half for me which I thought was good. They took a few connective pieces from the first half of the match which helped but ultimately, I thought the whole thing was more disjointed than I would have liked. None of that is particularly fair to the match though. It was better than I was expecting from an excitement/action/execution standpoint, certainly, and it was probably the right match for the crowd. It's not good to judge entirely on what you would rather see as opposed to the match you did see, but I know what I like at least. I will say that in a vacuum I liked just about everything from the reset with Terry and Brody punching each on. I just didn't love the match as a whole.

The match absolutely has great visuals and I completely buy Steaboat's visceral rage in his comeback. I'm just a stickler for details. Also, on my end, action packed isn't a huge deal since I've seen some very action packed stuff out of Portland in this same time period very recently. (And yeah, we're in the same boat with the small kid rampaging about with her giant stuffed Minnie Mouse, with the bigger kid in the midst of a 11 hour Lord of the Rings marathon which is how I got to watch the match earlier today).

I always like that you have Lars as a counterpoint since he comes from a very different sort of background as most of us, but sometimes it's funny when he says something that we'd probably have no problem with at all as a community but the parts of the internet fandom he's come across might be up in arms about and he feels like he has to make a disclaimer. I realize the show has a broader audience than JUST us, but it's still sort of funny.

I decided to take a look at this for the first time. I have some definite structural problems with it that prevent me from liking it more. Some of the issues with the selling might be more forgivable if it was tighter. Thoughts: -Egregious early selling mostly because none of it matters or escalates. i don't buy Steamboat's getting that hurt because he snaps back with too much ease. If it was an arena show maybe? -Everything gets somewhat better once Steamboat starts selling on the outside though. He's doing more consistent selling at this point and not just the immediate bump/sell. -I don't like the Steamboat chinlock. It would have worked so much better if he went back to the side headlock base again since there was an extended spot-sequence between bases earlier. We don't hit the act break until Snuka starts biting and what not so it would give the whole match a ton more coherence with such a minor change. -Given how well they recover, you can look at the botch as an extension of the missed top rope moves throughout the match. Snuka suffers for going for high risk moves when he's doing great by brawling/grinding/roughing Steamboat up. Honestly, it feels like he responds to the blown spot by going for blood, which is a very natural and organic reaction. -The transition to Steamboat's initial comeback is a little silly because what the hell was Snuka doing with that jump into the corner? I mean that's not super uncommon or anything to see someone get posted in a weird way after missing an impossible corner splash and that one might have been a normal Snuka spot I just haven't seen before but it lead to the Steamboat splash spot which was huge so it stood out as hugely contrived. Also, I don't love the splash actually hitting since the REAL comeback doesn't start until the missed diving headbutt a minute later. Steamboat missing the splash and coming back after the missed diving headbutt would have meant so much than him hitting a huge move and just getting a two count. -That said, the visual of a bloody Steamboat reading to do the splash is awesome and the timing on the missed diving headbutt was pretty great. -I would have been cool with the pile driver if Snuka had just gotten his foot up on the rope with better (as in later) timing. Steamboat is so worked up/pissed off that he basically lets Snuka recover post-piledriver (enough that he's back in the match and on his feet) because he doesn't capitalize with the wrestling he does best. He just beats him back to life. You could say that how out cold Snuka seemed during the tree of woe at the end could be a lingering effect of the pile driver. -That said, if you DON'T attribute it to that (And there's good reason not to), it's one of the shittiest looking tree of woes you'll ever see. I did buy the DQ finish as Steamboat being that pissed and Snuka gets to get his heat back post match. I don't know. i had some real problems with it but I was still expecting much worse.

Well if it's just Mania placement we're worried about, who cares? I'm drooling over the idea of weekly TV matches of Bryan/Harper vs Cody/Goldust or Bryan/Harper/Rowan vs Rey/Usos. I care about that way more than a Bryan vs Shawn or Hunter or Bryan/Cena/Orton or whatever else the "Best Possible Scenario" Mania match would have been.

I missed it. Break down why. Tim can do the counterpoint.

Ah I was curious what Parv thought. Sorry for the lack of clarity. Past Bonnema doing a great job explaining the traditional babyface control psychology, I think it's not much to write home about, but I think Parv might rate it higher than the Martel/Rose match.

Had some time today. Some of the enthusiasm in this was great. I've lived in this stuff for the last year so I'm glad you enjoyed it and it was nice to hear all the analysis. I do think Portland gains from watching in context, but then, so does everything else. It still stands up great on its own. I need to check out those Chris Colt continental matches at some point. I actually need to see more Continental in general. I am with Pete over Parv on Logic over Spots. It's sort of the difference between doing the work yourself or having them do it for you. Did you watch the Martel vs Race that they hit on the last Portland show? Frankly, I think Pete and I could be an intellectual wrestling bloc of some sort. Probably a very boring one.

Goldust vs Bam Bam Bigelow - Survivor Series 1995 This is almost completely a blind spot for me. I had no idea that Bam Bam lasted so long into 1995, though I know he had a lead babyface run around KOTR that got quashed by the Clique or something. It's interesting how they portray him, as if he was some sort of famous Hollywood star. This was set up on Superstars with an interview with Lawler. Goldy quotes House of Wax and Lawler is pretty funny in parroting the movie name. I really love the movie quote thing. It's a shame they went away from that later on. Anyway, this is Bam Bam sort of returning the favor on his way out. It reminds me a little of him beating Bossman at Royal Rumble 1993 on his way in. As with the Jannetty and first Vega match they really make a big deal out of the entrance. JR claims that it's in his contract. I think his theme restarts three times during the entrance. It's long enough that I've had to revamp my expectations for the match. It may not seem it but there's a huge difference between a nine minute match and a thirteen minute match. They go to toe from the get go. Goldust actually outpunches Bigelow. They're selling that Bam Bam doesn't know how to deal with him which is something they really hadn't played up well in his first couple of matches. Dustin looks really smooth here, actually. He's got a real zip to him. It's fairly even until Dustin accidentally punches the pole on the outside. Weirdly enough this somehow lets Goldust take advantage, catching Bam Bam after he follows him into the ring. He clotheslines him over the top, plays to the crowd/camera, and catches Bam Bam on his way back in again. Bam Bam fights out of the corner but gets cut off quickly. After a bit of grinding, Dustin tosses him again, this time following him out and slamming him onto the stairs. Bam Bam finally grabs a foot and swings him around into a belly to back but he misses a falling headbutt and Dustin takes back over, smothering Bam Bam for a moment and then going for a seated chinlock/neckwrench. Bam Bam gets him into an electric chair out of it and falls backwards. JR cannily points out that Bam Bam has been unable to put two offensive moves together. They go back to the punches but Dustin gets the better of it and hits a flying clothesline and goes back to the grounded chinlock. Bam Bam turns it into another belly to back and starts his comeback. He hits a few nice clotheslines but misses a corner splash. Dustin hits the out of nowhere Bulldog and picks up the three count. It was worked well enough but the transition to the heat was really confusing. Dustin got the advantage after accidentally punching the pole? Regardless, this was wrestled far differently than the Jannetty match and Goldust came out of this looking like much more of a force. It wasn't a better match but it was a more useful match in getting across the character and what I think they wanted to do with him. They may not have had it so thoroughly worked out the month before. Vince/JR/Perfect wasn't a bad announce team. Goldust vs Razor Ramon - IC Title - Royal Rumble 1996 They really did rush Goldust right to the IC title, didn't they? Razor's obviously on the way out but I forget if he had told Vince about it yet or not. The set up of this everyone knows, I think. Flowers, a gift of a photo, the Razor heart "tattoo". The pretty memorable backstage brawl that ended up in the snow. The idea was that the mind games had taken Razor to the brink Marlena debuts here. I liked the usher. If they ever bring Naylor back in, he'd make an awesome usher for Goldust. Entrances/introductions are more than six minutes. Pose. Toothpick. Effeminate stalling. Razor finally grabs and arm and just wrenches Goldust around the ring before locking in an armbar and paintbrushing him. Headlock, break, consulting with Marlena. Lock-up, go behind, reversal by Goldust, fondling, scramble away. Lock up. Press into corner. Clean Break? No, fondle. Shove away. Effeminate stalling. Back to the arm meanly. Hammerlock. Reversal. Big Goldust slap. Drop toehold and more paintbrush, then a shot to the rear. Goldust likes it. Razor punch and to the outside. Goldust hides behind Marlena. And this is a pretty good opening altogether. It's very character driven but Goldust is playing the character well. Back in the ring they do some chain wrestling (a minor amount). Razor gets another shot in and Goldust rolls out and uses Marlena as a shield again. Both Dustin and Terri play this role pretty well. Goldust comes back in and stalls and now the fans are really on him. They went past the breaking point. When Razor finally gets a clothesline on him knocking him out the fans love it. And they go right back to using Marlena as a shield. This time Razor picks her up and moves her. Dustin's right there to nail him and slam his back into the top of the apron twice, followed up by a huge punch. Great transition, not because of the idea of it, which was just okay but by the execution and timing and the way Dustin made it work and Razor made it believable. They come back into the ring with a double axe handle to the spine. Razor hits the corner hard three times and Dustin follows up with the bulldog for a near fall (believable since he beat Bigelow with that at Survivor series). Dustin does a slingshot belly to back which he should use now because it looks pretty cool. He follows it up by bringing him to the bottom rope, face first, and to Marlena who blows gold dust at him. Razor fires back but drops his head and gets his face slammed into the mat. Dustin follows up with a swinging neckbreaker and then a sleeper. It's interesting just how varied his offense has been just in the two years or so that I've looked at him as Goldust. The stakes are high here and the fans are sort of getting behind Razor but I've seen a lot better sleepers, both from the top and the bottom. Finally Razor starts to fight up, pressing the ref into the corner while still in the sleeper and mulekicks his way out. Both guys selling. Goldust is up first for a two count but then Razor kicks out and starts blocking punches to start his comeback. On paper the mule kick/kick out/comeback should have worked better I think. The fans didn't pop for it even though they set it up well. Razor hits a chokeslam and fallaway slam for a two counts, but Goldust gets the eyes as they start to head towards the finish. Goldust gets into moonsault position which would be fine now, since he uses that turnaround crossbody a lot but was blatantly obvious in this match. It's the set up for the second rope belly to back. Razor catches him and hits it while Marlena comes in, distracting the ref first by getting into the ring and then twisting her ankle. While the ref is distracted distracted, the 1-2-3 Kid comes out of the crowd and hits a nasty spin kick off the top. Goldust crawls over for the pin and the belt. There was a lot to like about the match, certainly. I thought everything up to the transition to the heat segment paid off really well. There were a couple of layout issues later on though. Was the Kid in the crowd just waiting to come out when he had an opportunity? Were they in cahoots? In general I like Marlena being there because the fans were supposed to expect that the mind games were the plan all along and instead he brings her out. I guess she could have been another feint and the Kid could have been the real plan but I don't really buy that. Had Marlena planned to leap up on the apron whenever Razor started to hit the belly to back regardless? A lot of things just seemed to happen because they were supposed to, which is never a good feeling coming out of a match. I also think the mule kick transition to comeback was a little flat. Maybe they gave away too many Razor punches early on?

I do love the Punk/Colt story about them bicycling past a guy with an ROH shirt though.

Alright, Xmas is over. There was a lot of other Portland to watch in here, including Chris Colt matches, so I had to get through those first. It's a good thing I did. I wouldn't have realized that they were claiming Kim Song was gone already due to being an illegal alien (that popped the crowd) which is why Stasiak got moved into the tag match. I love the Rose/Borne angle right now. Buddy still wants him to join the army so they can be a family. It's all head games as he says Regal's using him. He wants a match with him with three potential stips if he wins: 1.) Head Shaved or 2.) Leave the Territory or 3.) Join the army and be an family. Borne's choice. Borne comes out and flips the stips. 1.) Leave, 2.) Shave head, or 3.) Go Babyface. I think the domestic abuse is JUST about to happen though (it might have already?) which will heat things up in a big way but will also KO this element of the angle (He announces the divorce on the 21st on the Live at Noon talk show, so I actually think it could happen between the 17th and the 21st but it's probably not worth overthinking. It's interesting to watch Borne's body language, though. FWIW, Rose says the offer is still on the table there). Meanwhile, Buddy and Regal had their match thrown. Buddy won after Stasiak interfered. They'll have a rematch upcoming with the army locked in a cage at ringside. Buddy Rose/Mike Masters vs Matt Borne/Steve Regal - 2/3 Falls - 10/17/81 Stasiak, Masters and Rose are now the Army. Masters is an interesting cat. He reminds me, unsurprisingly of Chris Masters, which is not a bad thing to be reminded of. Muscleman, same sort of look (though far less tan and with unfortunate facial hair currently), full nelson, pretty good at working his gimmick in the ring from what I've seen. He also is playing up that once the full nelson is on he can't break it due to the blood in his hands or something, which means he keeps getting DQed after the match is over. Rose and Borne both have red tights on which works to the brother-in-law thing. I still feel bad for everyone involved that Regal is the still the top babyface. Rose and Borne to start. Buddy presses him against the rope with a few shots, but ends up dropkicked. Borne takes out Masters on the apron and both heels take a powder. Borne keeps winning top wristlock exchanges and Buddy, frustrated (and calling a hair pull that didn't happen), tags in Masters. After getting out finessed a bit, Masters wins a top wristlock exchange to Buddy's joy. In the next exchange though, Borne starts to win before Masters uses the hair to throw him off. They go to it again and Borne, pissed off, goes to the hair, to the fans' delight. Fun bit of storytelling to start. They ate four minutes with that and just got the fans more into things. Buddy tags in, gets tossed, gets rolled in, runs from Borne, tries to double team with Masters, but knocks him off the apron. Heels stall. Masters come back in to Borne's chagrin. More babyface finesse stuff as Borne gets Masters in his corner and tags Regal in. Another top wristlock but Regal immediately trips and starts some control armwork. They work out of an armlock with some or Regal's usual stuff. It's perfectly fine. Tag to Borne a nice flying stomp to a held down arm. Borne and Regal are doing a pretty good job with this. Masters is playing up that he's desperate for the tag and Regal, being a putz, finally lets him get it. Buddy slows things down while still stooging like a king for Regal threatening to hit him after a Regal clean break and then running when Regal threatens back. They repeat it for a Buddy clean break. The third one has him press Regal into his own corner and then the heel mauling starts. Lots of fun symmetry spots in this. Heels fully in charge for the first time, controlling the ring and using dirt tactics and a general beat down to the base of the spine. Regal takes a shot into the corner pretty well. I'll give him that. Buddy goes for the Robinson backbreaker to finish him off, but Regal floats over and hits the victory roll ("Regal Ride") for the fall. Nice, enjoyable first fall. Rose does his usual shtick of trying to get his partner to start. Barr has nothing to do with it. Buddy gets a cheapshot to Regal's back, though and makes a quick tag to Masters, who has a bear hug for one of his usual moves and goes right to it. I like how they gave Regal a flash win at the end of the first fall but have gone right back to the heat segment. Bear hugs aren't ever super compelling and Regal's pain face is all scrunchy and terrible but Masters does a pretty good job working it and they do the hope spots well, with Buddy interfering liberally. The context helps too as does the single camera long shot that lets us see Borne and Buddy cheerleading. Hot tag is pretty well laid out with Regal having to fight around the ring to get to Borne. He's a good fiery hot tag and does a great flying elbow drop. Masters desperately tags out to Rose who's not happy to get in there and for good reason as Borne beats him around the ring. Buddy uses his girth to reverse a vertical suplex into one of his own though and Bonnema puts over how tough Buddy is to put away which is really held up by the extended booking over time and it's something a lot of people watching Portland in bits and pieces don't understand. Anyway after a struggle, Rose gets the tag to Masters who is fresher and starts in on Borne. After a minute of mauling he goes for the full nelson. Borne's great at diving out of it twice, the second time positioning him right to make a hot tag to Regal, who takes out Masters. Blind tag to Buddy, though which leads into a nice spot where Masters drops down and Regal runs right into the Robinson backbreaker right on the damaged back for the fall. Regal starts out the third fall strong after the recovery period, but ends up reversed into the corner. Buddy tags Masters right in but after a slam gets tagged in himself and overshoots on trying a press slam. Regal floats over for a quick tag. Borne comes in, knocks buddy around,and puts on the airplane spin. Masters rushes in, though, puts the full nelson on Borne. Regal comes in to even the odds. Bell rings as they throw out the match and Regal and Rose brawl while Masters won't let go of the full nelson in the middle of the ring. All the undercard guys run in to try to break the full nelson and then try to separate Regal and Rose. Sort of nothing third fall but ultimately a pretty enjoyable match. I don't know if Regal's just most tolerable as a babyface in tag matches or if Buddy's just that good (he is) but he's able to have a different partner each week and manage to get a pretty good match out of him.

I'm going to try to take a look at some of those PPV matches that I didn't get to the other day in the next week or so. Also, I'm going to try to look at some of the fancams from 95-96 of which there seem a few. Not sure if my going through things is helpful or not but it's all stuff I really haven't seen so I'm looking forward to it.

I seriously need to watch more Hansen this year too. I've seen so little of him and that's a huge whole for a wrestler people whose opinions I care about place so high.

He'd be the hogan friend to turn on him like Orndorff.

I will concede the point since I haven't seen a ton of period Backlund.

Wrestling is going to devour your soul.

Backlund is totally a dick. His little bouncy taunt? Come on.

In the 1982 era is there any babyface that doesn't come across as a dick other than the trio of Steamboat, Santana, and Martel?