Matt D

There's something to that. Dibiase turned Herc, Bossman, Virgil, and later on Bam Bam.

I wish you guys had gotten into the rumor of Heyman being the one to screw up the Lawler vs Luger unification match. Also, that Sting vs Rude flash is PROBABLY the single most important night of wrestling I had as a youth watching. Eaton being a secret turncoat and trying to delay Sting is one of the most vivid memories I have from that period. The Larry stuff on WCW Chicago TV post turn is really good. he has lots of local promos where they treat him like a returning hero. The rumor I remember is that they were going to bring in Diamond Studd to the DA, not Big Josh. I know Borne certainly didn't mention anything like that in his shoot. He had the US tag belt earlier in the year with Simmons but I don't remember past that. He was out the second Watts came in though.

http://www.wrestlezone.com/news/273429-ran...-bryan-and-more Orton's absolutely hilarious in this.

Archibald Peck?

Rose vs Red Bastein - Oct 20, 1979 I'm not sure I'e seen much of Bastein. Set up is tons of fun. He comes in masked and takes it off at the start of the match as Buddy is freaking out. The idea is that Buddy would have never signed this match otherwise. Buddy shouts that this isn't a hair match. They send Rip away again. Bastein clears house and knocks Buddy out of the ring. They come back in and start working a grinding headlock base with Buddy desperate to get out. He goes back to this sort of thing now and again, but he works it really well, and it's not always the same thing either. This time it's a side headlock and Buddy keeps trying to cheat only to get stopped by Barr. Bastein looks like a grizzled old bastard. This is maybe a bit too grindy considering the heat at the beginning of the match. They switch things up with a few punches or Bastein running the turnbuckle around with the headlock or Buddy trying to turn him into a pin but it's maybe a bit too much of the same here. There is a fun spot where Buddy tries to get out of the ring only to get pulled back in. Out of context, I can see why Barr's refereeing would frustrate people but he was completely part of the act. HA, Bastein goes up the turnbuckle again but Buddy nails him with a belly to back. That was satisfying. I love repetition spots leading to comebacks. Love it. Buddy goes straight to the back too. Bastein reverses it and gets the sleeper on to put Rose out. Now that Rose lost, they play it up like he has to give him a hair match. This was an effective match. I thought the headlock stuff went a bit long without enough variation but they really paid it off in a satisfying way and this one time, I was okay with the heat segment being really short since it sets up the next match. Sometimes less is more and this really worked as a sub-ten minute match. It wasn't the most exciting thing in the world but it sure accomplished what it set out to do. The post match promo where Bastein calls Buddy pumpkin head is weirdly hilarious. He's there to get revenge for Pardee which is an awesome little story.

Adams is totally an Arn Anderson type. Madison is sort of like Jefferson's Tully come to think of it.

Honestly, the trick is to do what Watts did in 84 and what Hunter actually did in 2006 and tie himself to a hot talent and just work tag matches.

Or hey, the 88 Demos vs Harts match which is legitimately great.

I don't even like this match.

I'm just sad that no one else wants to come up with Chikara characters based on Dylan.

Part of me is hugely amused by the fact they are destroying the Kane doesn't have ten good matches argument almost singlehandedly.

I usually fall close in line with Dylan (or closer than most) and the strap match is, at least, not in my bottom 30. the handheld Wahoo vs Manny is 149, but that's another story.

Rose vs Pardee - Hair match - 9/15/79 Buddy insists, after all, that this will be on TV since no one thought he'd win. They ban Rip from ringside and the crowd pops. They shake to begin and weirdly that sort of makes this feel like a big deal. Shine stuff is great. Buddy hits one arm drag and Pardee hits three before Buddy takes a powder. Rip comes back out and keeps brushing the hair. Buddy kicks and goes for a turnbuckle shot but Pardee reverses and hits a bunch of stuff before Buddy begs off and gets out. Crowd is super hot for this. Buddy keeps getting a quick advantage but Pardee turns it around including some really good rope running. Pardee works over the arm and Buddy's selling and stooging is amazing. He takes the hugest bump off of an over the top rope drape and makes it (and Pardee) look like a thousand bucks. The transition is Pardee charging into the corner after Buddy and going shoulder first beginning Buddy's armwork. They keep mentioning Louie Pinzelli who's going to do the haircut and he's a former boxing second and local hair-cut guy and just name dropping him like that adds a lot to the local feel of this. Portland always had such a great warm community feel to it. Anyway Pardee punches out of it, making sure to sell the arm still during his comeback and hits some fairly good looking but simple offense including a legdrop to the gut before Buddy tosses him out in true Bockwinkel fashion, leading to one of the first real king of the mountain segments I've seen out of this era's Buddy. It makes total sense here given the stakes and how energetic young Pardee was. Good stuff and a switch up of structure. They keep things interesting while Pardee is out by having Buddy almost get in with it to Barr. Barr actually wants to DQ Buddy here but Pardee, gallant young lion, refuses to take it. He instead reverses a shot into the ring post. Presuming Buddy is going over here they're doing a lot to really make Pardee look good. He hits a revenge spot on Buddy keeping him out and then lets him back in before really laying it in with running turnbuckle shots. This whole thing was kind of neat since it was a real portland twist. He finally misses a third dropkick as Buddy falls backwards for another transition. Pardee gets an immediate hope sunset flip making the crowd go nuts but Buddy starts in on the back and really begins to grind down. They tease another hope spot with Buddy putting his head down, but he hits the inside backbreaker immediately thereafter and picks up the win. I could have used a slightly hotter finish with Pardee getting a few more shots in before Buddy hit the backbreaker out of nowhere but in general this was really good. It had a good number of transitions but they all built to something and made sense. Buddy and Rip are awesome praying to the increasingly bald Pardee as if he was a monk and then saying that Kojak is in the ring. Good match that put over Pardee pretty well even in losing, that put over the gimmick match, that just made Rose look more formidable. And that just ratcheted up the heat on this stuff all the more for the Adonis loser leaves town match upcoming on Tuesday.

Have we done a note about "how wrong we were?"

Ric Flair is the greatest of all time.

I would say that Lance Storm was better than Dustin Rhodes for that sort of cash!

This note ballooned quickly. What was the deal with Snuka in 77. I know I saw him brought into portland around that time already seeming like an established face.

Shouldn't you be lauding him for trying to create quality content to improve the site instead of lambasting him for writing on it?

Duggan got heat on Andre. Come on.

Damn it if that studio audience in 1993 didn't love the Cole Twins

They presented it in a way that it was allowed. I'm okay with it. in another setting other than 1991 WWF it might have bothered me, but the rules are whatever they say the rules are. It's not real. Within the confines of the story they were telling, it worked. I also figured that the ref was just terrified of him, but that's probably more rationalization than it needed. The Jerry Lawler vs Kerry Von Erich match on the AWA set needs rationalization (the ref was a Memphis ref and thus didn't care when he blatantly saw the chain attacks fifty times in the match) because of the setting and how it was worked. This? Not so much.

A match can be all choking/avoidance of a choke and still be good. This match is good in context of Survivor Series where Taker really just goozled and contained Hogan to a huge degree. Here, Hogan plays a sort of scared desperation that I don't remember ever seeing out of him in trying to avoid the choke. Honestly, it's not really worth my time (or yours) to write up both matches, but I will say that I enjoy them both mainly in the context of each other and more broadly in a linear progression of how they laid out Hogan matches over the few years before it.

Ambrose submitting to taker (who then got absolutely demolished, no?) felt like an event and meant a whole lot more than Rollins losing to kane clean in the first match of a random Smackdown with no build. I'm fine with one of the Shield eating a loss but they should build it into a moment. Hell, WCW, for all its faults, made Chris Jericho beating Nick Patrick feel like it mattered since it was one of the first real losses for a NWO guy and they presented it as mattering.

Had Rollins eaten a pinfall yet in a singles match? I might have missed that.

The smackdown results seem like a good start. Shield's first pinfall loss is to Kane on a random Smackdown.