Matt D

I came up with a totally different notion for the Rockers vs Rose/Somers cage match. It has one segment/element that is so terrible and undermining that it poisons the entire well. It's not a math equation. It doesn't get "points" for having a really well worked heat segment. Like I said, if anything, the heat segment being so good just makes the match worse since it's squandered.

Sabu also has the Scorp matches, which are better than any series RVD ever had. And the Mikey matches which are better than any RVD series as well. Honestly RVD is the closest thing to a channel changer for me in modern wrestling. Where do you stand on Miz when he's not wrestling Cesaro?

One of my absolute favorite things about heel Andre is that he is definitely the hero of his own story, whether it's him on the way to the ring to Wrestlemania III or cutting promos before Survivor Series 87 about all the fans being excited he's going to be back in the ring or celebrating with the Brainbusters after they win the tag belts. There's such a joie de vivre to him when he's playing this role, which is amazing considering the pain he was in and the frustration he had in life that we always hear about. I'm not sure I ever actually saw that Savage match. I have to check it out. Savage's title run is a bit of a hole for me.

Oh good, now your wife can point out commentary nuances for each match that you can post. I'm sure she'll love that.

It's an issue of excess I think. With Sabu I can pretend I am watching a different sort of wrestling with different rules. It's a genre all of its own with trappings all of its own and the very laws of physics work differently. Tables are somehow magnetic. Time loops in upon itself if something doesn't work right. It's the splintered wood twilight zone of wrestling. With RVD, I just kind of see a guy who can't consistently sell for shit and likes to hit all of his stuff.

Yeah, I realize on a reread that could come out with me saying that you did. Not my intent. You have your own views on this stuff and they're not WONish in the least. Alright, I've been meaning to watch the 72 match vs Strong Kobayashi. So I will check that out instead and we'll call it compromise.

I had the thing written up on DVDVR years ago. I'll take another look. Granted, we do like different things in wrestling and it's not an overly exciting match, but I think it's very, very far from the worst ever, middling at worst, and actually pretty effective in doing what it was trying to do. If you want me to write it up again, I will. To me, it's really damning of the WON at the time, more than anything else and how narrow-minded it was in what it considered good wrestling.

Oh, fuck that. Perfectly fine match. Should not at all gotten WON Worst Match of the Year. It's really smartly put together. Really smart and it's a good performance from Andre and yet another sign that Warrior could follow direction. It's not great (and we all hate long bear-hug spots), but it's a perfectly fine match. The house show matches where he loses in 20 seconds or whatever are another issue but the SNME match is one of the biggest expectation-reality gaps that I've ever had coming into a match I thought was going to be terrible.

I love late Andre. He's one of my favorite smart workers. He could move so little by that point that he knew he had to make every single movement and gesture matter. And he did. It's amazing.

To be fair, I've never seen Morton's run in SMW, but I still really enjoy Eaton into the mid 90s, even into his syndi show appearances in 97-98. I think we all just like heels more.

When I hit a huge gap of opinion with anyone about anything, the first, most important thing for me to do is to figure out why I feel how I do. The NEXT most important thing is to try to figure out why they feel like they do. Then it's a matter of understanding the differences.

Argh. Double post. Sorry.

I get where John is coming from but I really enjoyed that. Heyman is Heyman but some of those are questions I don't think anyone else who was in position to ask them would have thought to ask. Great job.

I am so glad you guys wanted to end things on a high note because I saw I had ten minutes left and ten more minutes of Russo talk would have killed me. Oh there is the Austin vs Dustin mention. Well played.

With the baby, if I get a total of five hours, that's not bad. Collection-wise, I have the Dangerous Alliance comp, the AWA set, and a hell of a lot of youtube?

I bet Johnny can smell out a narc.

Found 1969: http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbc...ic;f=9;t=005032 and 1968: http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbc...0999;p=1#000018

8-10 sounds like a pretty good number for me too. "watch" is a relative term, mind you.

Yohe has posted results for LA in those years. They're likely buries somewhere on Classics. http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbc...c;f=10;t=002319 I found the results for 65 if anyone's interested. and here's 66: http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbc...ic;f=9;t=004886

Has Yohe or anyone else ever gone into more detail about Morales' LA main eventing in the mid 60s?

I rather liked Steamboat vs Rude from the 88 Rumble, but you could tell Rude wasn't quite there yet. It was still a pretty good performance though.

It was a fun interview. I loved the talk about payoffs. I think the Dolph thing is easily the most interesting, but the bs on the timing on when Lawler became an announcer is pretty fascinating. If he replaced anyone, it was Hennig. Hell his first year of Supertars was a three man team WITH Savage. While he worked some cards, he wasn't really a focused wrestler til he'd been in the company for almost six years with KOTR 93.

Stupid question: I know NYC is sort of bulletproof in some ways, but did the 73-75 recession affect WWWF business at all?

Neither here nor there but I wish someone else would watch the Buddy vs Stasiak matches since I liked Stan's stchick there and wonder if he has a bum rap. He is not a super worker but he wasn't trying to be either.