Matt D

Tully's entire character was about the illusion of class.

In some ways, it was a loaded question from me, since I think Bock is a wildly smarter worker and from I've up til the end of 84 could work just as hard if not harder at his age at that point. I think he may have been more versatile at this point too. And I haven't even seen him work face yet. Granted, I haven't seen a full range of matches either. EDIT: Also, Dylan. You're killing me. Watch that Blackwell/Bravo match! I think it had a lot of what you were looking for in the Robinson match, but loads better, and will be another piece of your Blackwell puzzle, even if it probably wouldn't be more than middle of the pack for me if it were on the set.

Tully could have absolutely been in on it from the get go, you know.

Past Dylan we're all on somewhere between discs 2-4 on the AWA set, tops? Mainly.

Is it too soon for us to start a note comparing and contrasting Bockwinkel and Flair?

I don't get why WM IX was so high relative to VIII and even VII. Was it because Hogan was somehow fresh again? They had just lost Warrior and DBS. Were people so into Luger/Hennig, Doink/Crush, and Hart/Yoko? Michaels/Tatanka? Was there boost because of Raw's debut back in January? VIII was much more stacked card with Sid/Hogan, Flair/Savage, Piper/Hart, Jake/Taker, Diasters/Money Inc. And VII was super stacked relatively. Were just more houses PPV-ready in 93? I can buy that.

The High Rollers: The Gambler, Hustler Rip Rogers, and The Big Don Tommy Rich

I feel like people haven't made enough Repo Man jokes.

I Don't even LIKE Kane that much! I was arguing against a Shawn Michaels match more than anything else there. Then you guys got all hyperbole on me and... bah. Team Mustache: Gator Scott Hall, Big Bully Busisk. Magnum TA.

Road Warrior Hawk, American Starship Eagle, and Birdman Koko B Ware, managed by Johnny Polo.

The Giants of Diplomacy: Sheik Ayatollah Blackwell/Makhan Singh/Panama Gang http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqdLP9Lr1LI

It'd probably be way more annoying if he didn't draw like crazy whenever he did that. Mid-South is a thousand times stronger anytime Watts is on camera or announcing. He was singularly excellent at getting the storylines over in the most passionate way possible and he knew his audience and spoke directly to their hearts. It's not MY heart. It's definitely not your heart. But it's weird to go after something so effective like that.

In retrospect I really didn't dislike Curt's offense THAT much in the match. It seemed a bit scattered but it all looked good. Bret Hart VS Jim Brunzell 05.04.1986 MLG Toronto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17NRltsky-A This is a couple of years earlier and Brunzell has a bit more zing. Nice back and forth early on with some tit for tat stuff before Brunzell starts on the leg. I'm not going to say a ton about this but I will say that Brunzell had the single most important trait for a 80s WWF wrestler: he was really good at wrestling out of a chinlock. Good at timing his hope spots, good at getting yanked back down and good at getting out. Here, the atomic drop where Bret hung on was particularly good. I also really liked the way Bret kicked his foot onto the rope after the dropkick late in the match. Cheap finish but what are you going to do. You want to know a sign that Brunzell was pretty damn good? I don't think Monsoon criticized him once. Worth watching. There's at least one other match between the two I'll try to catch later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-noOiX4t-ps Jim Brunzell vs "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig 9/11/88 Super early Perfect match in WWF and really, if you're going to debut the guy, why not do it against a guy like Brunzell. This is sort of like an AWA match on fast forward in some points, dumbed down in others, and a bit more like comfort food in even others. Brunzell wins the matwork early on. He tries to set up the figure four. Hennig does a king of the mountain segment, confusing Superstar. There's this awesome jump up after a sunset flip, and Hennig has some fast and brutal strikes. They keep going back to the chinlock, but they use it to build to hope spots that Hennig cheats to get back on top. they never just sit in it for long. There's a segment with backwork which Brunzell sells pretty well. The real comeback begins when Brunzell decides to cheat too. Hennig takes a super bump over the top and goes back to selling the leg. And even that gets cut off. Really great comeback shot and then sleeper by hennig. Finish kind of comes out of nowhere, but you can sort of believe it as a reversal off of a dropkick attempt. It's a match well worth watching though I'm sure it's not as high end as it could be. Hennig always seems lacking on top when he's a heel (at least in WWF).

Part of me wants to watch a bunch of WCW JYD and make an argument how he's better than Angle. But I have all this AWA to watch and then want to watch every Killer Bees match ever.

care to explain how?

Kane doesn't turn, really. He just IS. They usually don't bother making sense of it.

Turned Heel on Hardy Turned Face last year. Did I miss any? I know he swerved the New Blood/Breed/Whatever for a night.

That's my list ( I'd probably switch out the last one for the Demolition © vs British Bulldogs - MSG - 7/25/88 match too) but for the sixty-forth time, to me it's not necessarily about great matches, but about trends over time. You can watch a two minute span of just about any Demolition match (especially when Eadie's in the ring), and track those two minutes and everything they do in it will make sense, build towards something, and be grounded, meaningful and believable, and yeah, get over. I get how people who subscribe to the "great match" mentality will balk at that as being unimportant or about "what might have been." but to me, it's almost exactly the difference between the Shawn Michaels note and this one. With Shawn, it's about finding the great matches, because if you pick apart the work itself, it doesn't hold up under analysis. No, Demolition does not have a ton of great matches. But if you pick apart the work, what they do, what they make their opponents do, it really DOES hold up under analysis. When you add in how many different roles they could play successfully (and smartly and at the right time) while still maintaining their identity and how they switched up structure between matches and didn't follow a formula, they're a great team. That they were able to balk at the heel in peril WWF structure and make the faces earn every bit of offense upon them makes them a great team. To me, but I fully admit that my criteria is very different than a lot of people's. but at least I explain why I like them and at length. You can bounce off Vic and try to meet him on his points (because he does think that they have a shit ton of great matches; I think they have a few) or you can engage me on mine. Or you can find your own. I see wrestling as symbolic. I like structure. I like every move mattering and every bit of offense, every hot tag, every iota of anything being earned. Do they have great matches? Maybe. Do they have great wrestling? Absolutely. In the late 80s WWF environment, those two things do not necessarily go hand in hand. I am arguing some very specific things, but things that I think are important and remarkable and really stand out. It's okay if you don't care about what I care about and don't want to argue with me on those elements, but I don't think I can add much more to what I've already said.

I think trick here would be to look at other Rockers' matches from this point in 88.

And it's possible shoe might have liked that match even more. That argument seems like a taste thing to me. if the guy likes flashy, entertaining offense over storytelling, then that's fine.

Nothing says confidence like the fact they're seemingly aiming towards Bryan and Sheen interacting.

So as far as I can tell, fairly big names went to Hawaii to work for Rocky's mother throughout the 80s. Do we have any of this footage? Did they have local TV?

The Luger match is on youtube and it's a fun. Luger sells and stooges great for Tito and fits into the formula perfectly, cheating to overcome Tito's superior wrestling and speed only for Tito to get back control until he finally takes over, at which point tito has some fun hope spots that get cut off. Nasty looking finish with the forearm too. Well worth watching. I love how there's a Tito vs Flair match, a Tito vs Windham match, and a Tito vs Luger match (and Tito vs Arn and Tully of course). The best of the bunch is the Windham one though.

Holy crap. The four minutes where One Man Gang and Jerry Blackwell are wrestling each other is the single greatest thing in all the history of wrestling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEt4AuUtHdI