Matt D

Amusingly, from a layman's perspective, late era Buddy Rose, Ken Patera, and Greg Gagne are all jokes. This is why Dylan's blood pressure is so high.

Short answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wrestli..._(Indianapolis)

boring is fuck is more realistic than memphis? That seems like a believable statement to me.

I feel like DEAN has grown into a sort of eccentric but awesome wrestling hermit living out in the wilderness and sending dispatches in the form of ships in a bottle carried far and wide by oversized falcons.

So, just like Patera.

Did Pedro take bumps like this all the time in the early 70s? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW5Y2jHuLO0 geez, fuji too. I guess that's one way to build the early parts of a match around insane bumps. Actually, it's a pretty smartly laid out 3 minutes (of what we have at least) match. I can't say too much for the execution save for the big over the to bumps though. EDIT: watching Patera vs Pedro from 10.20.1980 now. He took another huge over the top bump. Also, he pulls his tights up more than any wrestler I've ever seen. Goes WAY out of his way to interact with the crowd though. It's a fun match, except for the bearhug goes on too long even if they do a few cool things with it, oh and pedro's late match eye-rakes in order to keep Patera from coming back are ridiculous. Them tossing the ref together is just awesome.

I think Brunzell is the real surprise out of the AWA set so far. I knew Martel was good (though not AS good). I believed people about Blackwell, Debeers, and Buddy. But Brunzell is a guy I never really gave a second thought to. The Killer Bees are not the most dynamic of the 80s WWF babyface teams. I'd watch the Rogs or Harts or yeah, Bulldogs if had a choice, generally, though I have a list of every Brunzell WWF match that probably made tape to check out after the AWA project is done.

I bet there are people who would piss off dylan more than those three

Perfect was super over in Nov-Dec-Jan, absolutely.

YES The very, very best thing about the AWA Crowds is when they get all excited for Saito's Sumo pre-match ritual, and guess what? They do it for Kendo Nagasaki too. In general, I hate these cheating, bullying face-loving jerks, but they almost redeem themselves solely with this. Also, I love Billy Robinson as Kamala's mouthpiece. Just saying. "Koo-Mala."

I will say it again. Crush was tremendously over in the summer/early fall of 1992. This is before he REALLY took on the accent and kids LOVED the Crush hand motion and the finisher. it's the sort of Superstars/Wrestling Challenge crowd reaction I don't think I saw in WWF that year other than Sid RIGHT before the Royal Rumble.

On the other hand, WWE seems fairly aware of this, so I wonder what nefarious thing they'll make him do next.

that could have been a hot angle in front of a different crowd.

Brackets and Rankings. why the hell not?

I love when Slaughter shows up and goes on about the Sheik and how he beat him all around Madison Square Garden. "No, I'm talking about Shiek Adnan Al-Kassie." "THERE'S ANOTHER SHIEK?!"

Also, I buy Miss Piggy more a a three dimensional character and a real living entity than Michael Cole.

It's just the way it's always been. On WM 8 you had the Nasty Boys, the Mountie, and Repo Man in an 8 man tag RIGHT before the fairly emotionally charged Macho vs Flair match and it worked. It all worked. Vince takes the circus approach. Here's the clown. If you don't like that, the lion tamer is next, and if you don't like that, here come the acrobats, and hey, let's finish with a bit of Shakespeare just to hammer it all home. I find Jimmy Valiant vs Paul Jones (ESPECIALLY When he started doing the military stuff) as outlandish as anything WWE generally does. But that works on the same show as Arn and Ole vs Buzz Sawyer and Dick Slater. It's wrestling. When Punk was clubbering Lawler's face over and over and over at the end, it worked, everything else before it be damned.

The problems with Angle's work are the easiest things in the world to explain and understand.

If only I was better with photoshop.

When do we talk about ANYONE out of context. I think maybe once in a blue moon there's a "How would Wrestler X do today?" And there's the occasional GOAT or WON HOF stuff, but in general, even then, it's all pretty grounded in context. 70% of those notes end up being about drawing or headlining anyway, about numbers in context. EDIT: Except that's not what he's really saying. What I think he's saying is that you can only evaluate a wrestler from 1986 if you put yourself in the mindset of a fan/observer/evaluator from 1986.

Actually,the other thing is this. When looking at the old stuff, the people doing it (myself included but I'm a pretty small voice in the grand scheme of things. I don't think anyone really pays attention to me relative to other people) are not just shitting on everything and not every idea is revisionist. For every stock pick that goes down, there's one that goes up, using the same criteria.

The interviews are the worst. You see this guy standing next to some poor shlub of an interviewer and he looks like he's just a crazy, madman who's about to put fear into your heart and then he sounds a little like your creepy uncle who spends every family gathering sleeping on the couch. Also, it's not like we look at things with anything but open and oft-discussed criteria. When we say Kurt Angle is terrible, we explain why we think so and it's all reasonable. Other people might use other criteria to say he's excellent and I think we'd generally acknowledge he's successful along some of those lines. It's just not what we care about (using generalizations again). Tastes change. People here and on DVDVR generally say "Yes, he was thought to be good at the time when these traits were considered more important, but looking back with the additional footage we have and now that we find these other traits more important, we don't find him to be good at all." That's all people are saying. How is that anything but reasonable? It's all opinion, since wrestling is an art form. What's most important if you're making claims is to acknowledge what you're talking about and how you came to those conclusions. When it comes to things like drawing, a lot of people go well out of their way to try to back up what they're saying. Dylan can make a case for the High Flyers drawing better than the Midnight Express. He's not just saying that because it's a fun whim for him. He's looked at this stuff in detail.

With Borne, at least he could be on the apron as Evan played FIP

I don't know if it's so cut and dry. There was a level of autonomy that Apter had that Tunney or Marlin didn't. Apter was out there in the field DOING SHIT instead of following a loose script. It still doesn't mean he should be given the credit, but I do think he served in a different role than Marlin or Tunney. I think on some level I'd compare him more to Monsoon or JJ Dillon under Dusty actually, but i'm really just pulling stuff out of my ass here.

I'm still reading these. What the hell was Verne doing running shows in Anchorage? That had to be crazy travel for everyone?