Matt D

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.

Lots of good stuff all around. I'm a little sad you didn't have a paragraph about the Warrior to ECW rumors though. He commented online about those at the time and it was pretty hilarious.

World's worst Bill Watts.

There was a guy posting things on justin.tv a few years back and he kept to a schedule and a lot of my watching fell on that schedule until I ended up getting way behind.

I'm going with Viscera. They had a 3 minute match. Angle ate Viscera's offense really well. The transition was good. His entire offense was three nice looking dropkicks. and it had a Steve Blackman cameo. That's about all I want from a Kurt Angle match.

I do think you can look at his GM run as an example. He was getting heat on everyone without any real benefit to it to anyone.

I also think there were some marketable elements to Ranger Ross.

Austin knew how to garner sympathy as a babyface and keep things interesting during a match as a heel. That's a hell of an advantage Hunter didn't have. He also was pretty good at keeping his act fresh except for, maybe, when he was the GM.

I jotted off some thoughts of that match to Dylan. I am not in a mental state to edit them, so I'll just toss them here: ------------------------ I feel like what people say about Race isn't that off. Due to his lack of prolonged selling, any long face limbwork just becomes "control." which I like with Demotiion as a counterpoint to shitty 80s WWF heel in peril wrestling and because Eadie is so good at making people work for it, but in a match like this it's just frustrating. He sells in general and he lets things matter in general, but it's sort of meaningless selling. Better than Angle, worse than real greats. Things have weight but not necessarily meaning. He sold after he won the fall but didn't during the action itself. He sort of sold when it didn't matter at all. I do think that Bonnema really sold the "control" aspect, which I rarely have ever seen an announcer do. It's literally the only way to look at that match and explain the story of it, so good on him.

I wonder if that pissed Moolah off.