Matt D

What if you team Bubba and Gang?

I kind of like Bill Irwin both in 80-81 Memphis and in GWF eventually.

Hey, PWO is the WON Watchdog Group. Actually, I think PWO has really broadened itself in the last few years. I used to joke that's what it was and now the joke doesn't even really make sense.

Where were they?

You don't even placate me in jest. You have Eddie Gilbert under the mask, playing on their past together. Sting just mauls him incessantly. Towards the end of the match, there's a ref bump and Sting unmasks him in a big moment, but he gets it back on. At that point a second Black Scorpion comes out and tosses the mangled Gilbert out. Fans are pissed to no end since there's a big size difference between the two. The fresh second Scorpion gets a cheap win as the groggy ref can't tell the difference. Second Scorpion unmasks and it's Windham. Next WCW SN (or Clash, i'm flexible). Flair comes out and he's proud of Barry but it's tense. Too tense. Barry turns on Flair with Sid and they start to beat him down. Arn fights back and Doom runs out to make it 4 on 2. Flair and Arn get laid out. The build to War Games is Flair and Arn recruiting Sting and Luger for Horsemen War. Maybe Sid gets Luger's belt as part of the build and to get over the heel Horsemen as the second coming of the "All the belts" version from years earlier, maybe not.

Can I do my Black Scorpion to War Games 91 fantasy booking again if everyone else is doing it?

Hey according to Portland TV Stasiak had the WWWF belt for years and had more main events in MSG than anyone else in the 70s. I don't know what you guys are talking about.

The TV build was to Taker vs Warrior. I THINK there was actually some sort of Slaughter/Taker Team-Up on TV before the PPV actually. I forget how though. Hogan/Warrior vs Slaughter/Taker would have made a decent amount of sense.

What a boon you have provided for western civilization here.

It's because the main event was really "Hogan and Warrior team up!" Who they went up against didn't matter a whole lot. Also, the real main event was the Match Made in Heaven. If you're WWF and you want another guy to put with Sarge who would mean at least something to the fans and is a little bit fresh, who do you use? Cuban Assassin? Adnan for what it's worth didn't matter a lick to WWF watching kids. Unless they were from a very specific part of the country I can't imagine any of them knew that he'd been a manager at all before his WWF run.

So they decided that Flair would be the Scorpion as early as October?

Me too, but that's because I was a 10 year old kid and legit scared by it. It made wrestling no longer fun to me. I was a wuss.

I think you're also overstating the importance of the 91 Summerslam main event. He wasn't there as a force by any means. He was just one of Slaughters cronies in the match. The fact that it was 3 vs 2 means that he was basically half a guy. The real story was all centered around Hogan getting revenge on Savage, Hogan and Warrior working as a Unit and what Sid would do. Sheik is in there as basically a cipher. I can't imagine he got that much better a payday than the babyfaces in the six-man tag opener for instance.

How badly did things fall off with Sting? Would they have the Starrcade buys yet?

Re: Stevens, Wasn't his deal almost entirely the athleticism? I'm not going to compare him to RVD, but more like heel WWF Hennig where the near entirety of what made him so special to people were the bumps and since we have so little from his prime, we just don't see that. Instead, maybe an over-reliance upon that as a tool meant that he never had to develop the ring general toolset? That's mostly guesswork though tied in with my insane "athleticism as a crutch" pet theory.

Why did they put the belt back on him at the beginning of 91 instead of keeping it on Sting? Was it to build towards Luger getting it finally or what?

I really do want the classical Orton cashes in, becomes corporate Champ, Bryan is screwed out of his rematch and has to win the Rumble to get a match at Mania storyline. I want this to be Austin/Rock in 98-99 almost exactly. i also want Orton's Rumble opponent to be Christian to play up what happened a few years ago when we had the real life version of this but that might be asking too much.

I don't even think I saw more than a couple. For my purposes, I got the picture pretty quickly.

Adnan is weird to me. If someone told you in, let's say 1988 that Adnan Al Kassie was going to be in the main event of Summerslam in 91, that would be weirder to me than saying Mustafa would be.

My major windows to watch wrestling that fits into my life are when I'm on the exercise bike for maybe 4 hours a week and to watch old TV shows while at work. For the former, I have my laptop set up by the bike where I'm a captive audience and can maintain concentration on what I'm watching. For the latter, old memphis works great that way as do Superstars/Wrestling challenge/etc. I'm working through 84 memphis tv and 94 WWF tv at work that way. I haven't watched things with people regularly since college ten years ago but this works pretty well for me.

I have Youtube. And the AWA 80s set. And a Dangerous Alliance set. And Youtube.

How is Bryan as a draw compared to those guys?

Also were Hardcore fans ever into Dusty? At least past, I don't know, Florida? If you frame it that way, I don't think you have an argument.

Except for Doctor Who

That was considered pretty hilarious at the time.