Matt D

He has some problems with the timelines in the shoot, but what I worked it out to is that he gets injured right around the title switch, has a ghastly knee replacement surgery (he keeps talking about cadaver ligaments or something), and then it doesn't take and at Slamboree 94, within a few minutes of the match starts, it just "disintegrates" and he and Flair have to scramble to work the rest of the match.

Barry had a definite formula on TV in late winter-early summer 93. He was doing the same match every week from right before when he got the NWA Belt to well into his run. It's really interesting if you watch those matches back to back. And It's not a bizarro mystery, John. He cleared it up in his shoot. His knee literally decomposed completely in the midst of that Flair match, just a few minutes in. The replacement didn't take and it had decayed within his knee and poof, once he put pressure on it, it went again.

The weirdest thing, to me, is that when Hennig comes back later in the year, they pretend this stuff never happened.

Mine is easily Rude winning the US Belt off of Sting and Bobby Eaton trying to delay the ambulance and all that.

Bulldog's last WWE match vs Eddy was really quite good though. Track it down. Also, Re: Windham. You have to keep in mind he had his knee totally reconstructed in 93 and then when he came back in 94, it literally decomposed and fell apart in his first match back with Flair.

Herc is awesome in 91. He's got a string of good PTW matches and the best Inverted Atomic Drop in wrestling history that year. And honestly, that survivor series team is pretty good. Steve Mfing Keirn who had the craziest moveset in the WWF in 1991, John Nord, who had probably the best looking offense in the WWF in 1991, and Herc who really did have a good year in 91 (I suggest checking out the bossman matches). 3 out of 4 isn't bad.

I love Darsow taking credit for the Goldberg gimmick.

Now the Jerry Flynn match, on the other hand, holds up!

I kinda like the japanese themed Rude one, but the best part of these in general was Ric talking about arn's proclivities.

There isn't a wrestling fan in the States that doesn't, at least a little, want to be involved in what's going on. Past a heel specifically taunting members of the crowd or a babyface asking the crowd if they want "one more" of a move, I don't think there's anything that involves them so directly as the ten-count punches in the corner.

The heel winning at Wrestlemania was a big deal. It just didn't happen.

Goldberg vs Jerry Flynn from the 3/26/98 Thunder is the best Goldberg squash.

Larry Z used to make bets while announcing on how many clotheslines he'd see in a match.

To give Hunter fair credit, were I to give him a second moment, it would be the reaction he got on Raw that night when he came back from that injury. And number 3 would be that promo in the ring with Cena where he just demolished him.

I feel like 2000 is the moment since it's the first time a Heel came out of wrestlemania on top and no one was expecting it.

Having read those issues recently, some of that to me seems that he was just busy with his life and some of it was obvious frustration over what he felt to be the WWF's manipulation of the media and its sort of self-actualizing myth. If you read the late 84 stuff, he was predicting that the WWF surge was going to ultimately be a failure, that the steam was running out and that they were getting over extended, that the power of Hulkamania had a relatively short shelf-life. And then they turn the corner into 85 and right into Rock'n'Wrestling, with a whole new breed of fan entering into things that couldn't have been more divergent in tastes and desires than Dave and his reader-base. Moreover, this new breed of fan was going to not only allow WWF to thrive by presenting a product diametrically opposed to what he liked, but it was also going to define wrestling in the rest of the country. From the feel that I get from the text, I think it was that frustration that really pushed him over the edge. For a little bit it looked to him (maybe overly optimistic) as if the WWF style was just a little surge that appealed to certain traditional elements of the fanbase for a little bit, but that it would cycle back around to what he he felt was proper. But then as things progressed, it became so successful that it changed the fanbase itself and in doing so, ensured its own survival for YEARS. In 85 it became strictly evident that McMahon's take on wrestling was not going away anytime soon.

I love Windham in 93 because he had this real presence as champion but his TV matches once he gets the belt (outside of this one, if I remember correctly) start to fall into a real formula. Which isn't bad but it does make them a little more slight than they could be. I don't think it's my favorite Face Regal match in 93 though. That would be vs Barbarian from the TV title tournament, which is more of a novelty, I suppose, but it's a lot of fun.

The twitter drop should totally be a stomp.

Apparently not:http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.php?showtopic=54186 Anti-japan bias. If Power Hall isn't the greatest wrestling theme ever, it sure is very close to it. I think it was more Pro-Queen bias, but whatever.

I have no idea how I, of all people, hadn't realized there had been Savage/Smash/Crush vs Warrior/LOD matches.

One element to dave's coverage leading up to Wrestlemania is that WWF and Vince had really created a media understanding of how big wrestling was... basically they had created a flim-flam style and then that in itself brought the substance. He changed and created his own reality through the media. He convinced the media that there was buzz and in doing so he actually created the buzz in the first place.

I suspect we can go back through the WON's and find that Slaughter-Hogan at Mania '91 was a very early idea, frankly the whole point of Slaughter's heel gimmick. Remember the original building the event was going to be in. Who knows what goes on inside the head of Vince and Hogan, it's likely that Hogan dropped the title to Warrior knowning he was getting it back the following year from "someone". Warrior not doing well was known pretty early. Savage did well in his run, but they still took it off to give it back to Hogan. John What Slaughter claims is that he wasn't supposed to get the Title. It would still be Hogan vs Slaughter with Sarge as the heel (which he was disappointed about) but not for the title. That might have just been ego on his point in that he claims that he didn't need the title in 84 and he didn't need it for this feud either, but the claim is that it wasn't until Macho's hand was injured that he started to get cycled into house show matches with Warrior and the Rumble match crystallized.

I started to look at the late 90-early 91 Observers to check but I decided to stop and do some actual work after the first sighting of "Bore-us Zhukov" for some reason.

I've heard Slaughter say that if Savage hadn't had his Hand injury, they would have likely kept the belt on Warrior and Savage/Warrior would have been at the Rumble. I'm not sure how that skews WM VII plans as Hogan/Slaughter was apparently already set, but was to be non-title.

Scotty was basically made for 1993 Memphis. Scotty makes Christopher 20x more entertaining just by giving him someone to play off of.