Matt D

They really do need to bring back the nicknames in the actual ring names. Dashing Cody Rhodes works surprisingly well.

I've got my own opinions about hogan in the 80s, but given the title of the note, I will say that Meltzer in early-mid 84 kept calling Hogan's matches the best "action" on the WWF house shows like it was a no brainer to say as much. I'm not sure when he changed his tune. Well, that's so long as he was in there with someone other than Studd, let me add. It's also a testament to the poor undercards, but still worth noting.

From what I've read, Dave presented the Meadowlands show as a surefire thing. It was the great hope with a can't miss card, no matter the fact all they had was Spanish language TV and it was to be the first strike into Vince's territory. I think Flair having the title was almost as big a deal as his personality or his work in the ring. On the other hand, my gut says that Hogan with the WWF title wasn't a big deal at all.

I'm a little surprised that when Vince picked up Georgia Championship Wrestling and then ran the Omni he didn't make more of an effort to pick up a headliner there. I doubt he could have gotten Bob or Brad Armstrong for obvious reasons and Masked Superstar had just left but he could have picked up Bundy, Roberts or Ron Garvin earlier, I imagine. Another thing I'd be interested in seeing analysis on is just how effective the Road Warriors were as a draw vs Hogan in 84.

Reading this stuff, it's just amazing to me how heated the war was. I was 3 in 84 and didn't get into wrestling until 90 or so, but Vince's expansion is just way more interesting to me than the Monday Night Wars that I did live through. The expansion was a battle on a dozen fronts. Vince had to be in a coke filled manic rush 20 hours a day just to manage everything that he did. For example, the planning of the Georgia/Crockett Meadowlands Supershow leading Vince to get the Briscos to sell their shares in Georgia or all the anti-trust stuff. It all seems like it happened so quickly. I know there's the Sex, Lies, and Headlocks book. Does it cover this era well? I want to read more and I feel like there aren't many books on the expansion.

One last thing: What was up with Andre having part ownership of the Montreal promotion for a while? I've never heard anything about that before.

In the WON I read, there was a lot of talk about.. Actually, let me take a look at what Dave said. Apparently, Vince tried to buy the Maple Leaf TV time (like he had elsewhere). He'd already run shows in Kingston. He cited Piper, Snuka, Slaughter and Santana as already having huge Toronto following, for Vince's invasion. He thought Tunney would go into Buffalo and Rochester if Vince invaded, as Frank Tunney had promoted there successfully before he died. Most interesting quote is what he ended the paragraph with: "Actually, McMahon's raids of Mid Atlantic talent may be more beneficial to him in Toronto than Greensboro."

So far, the other interesting things I've come across are how Southwest is really portrayed as ECW (or worse), as a place where they thrive on blood and on gimmick matches (a Texas Brawl: a battle royal/street fight with weapons), and how threatened Toronto and Tunney seemed by Vince, which... well, I am really curious how that turned out like it did.

The sort of thing that brought him to the game: Dave in the May 84 Observer after going over each territory and Vince's invasion: "... The inevitable end, as I've stated before is that in a few years, maybe two years, maybe five, there will be just a few promotions left. They will all run basically major cities. Eventually small minor league groups will pop up from time-to-time, some will make some money in small wrestling-starved towns, most won't. The question to be answered here is where wrestling's new blood comes from. Who was the last person WWF actually developed into a star? If promotions like Oregon and Memphis fail, the business will be much worse off in the long run..." Also in the same WON "... The Memphis fans are used to a completely different brand of wrestling than the rest of us. It's not really wrestling, it's more wrestling with a comedy flair. For the most part I've felt the same way about Memphis wrestling as I feel about Indoor Soccer. I love soccer, and indoor soccer is not soccer, but I actually like it better than soccer."

7/86 – 1/89. Definitely more than a year, with him inaugurating the King title as something to be defended and having a main event run with Hogan. But yeah, I get your point.

We talk about formulas (formulae?) a bit now and again, and I've come across one that's undeniable: Barry Windham in early 93 right after he won the NWA title. Every TV match (examples: vs Z-Man, Brad Armstrong, Johnny Gunn, Mike Winner) would go like this. Barry starts out strong using feeling-out leverage stuff. The Face takes over using either mat wrestling or lots of arm drags. Barry takes over on offenses for a minute or two with a few power moves. The face makes a wild comeback getting in a lot of stuff. Barry uses cleverness to dodge a big face move (holding the rope to counter the russian legsweep, moving out of the way of a top rope dive, letting Gunn stun gun himself by moving out of the way, moving out of the way of a corner charge), IMMEDIATE jumping DDT. Pin. I've been watching a ton of 93 WCW and it was a bit striking to see it play out that way in match after match after match.

The thought behind it might have been terrible, but I thought the execution was actually quite funny right until Vince stood up. And then again at the very end. The Daniel Bryan line was especially funny and surprisingly self-aware. It's always bad when Vince gets into excrement though .... Granted, the execution of the Gooker segment is actually pretty amazing too. Mean Gene does such a good job with it that the live crowd goes from being miserable and hateful to actually really enjoying it. It boggled my mind the last time I watched that segment.

To be fair, Sheamus has been pushed steadily since January. He really is due his trademarked WWE depushing so that he doesn't start to think he's bigger than the company. And if I want to keep the pro wrestling internet cliches going, I could say that the fact that he's HHH's training buddy is obviously what's been protecting him up until now!

http://pwchronicle.blogspot.com/2005/11/in...hon-part-1.html I wish we lived in a world where Pro Wrestling Chronicle had gone on for more than the few months it was running. What a great site.

We can certainly look at Heenan with Haku. The Islanders turned heel on the Can-Ams right after Mania III. I don't remember them doing much with Strike Force on TV, but they had to feud with them over that winter, no? Their big feud was with the Bulldogs which was centered around Matilda so it's not exactly a great example. I really love Heenan in the Race/Haku Royal Rumble match. It was good for what it was (especially given Race's physical limitations; he said in his book that Haku, as opposed to someone like Honky, was someone he respected and wanted to drop the crown to), but it also helped in the build towards Mania that year since a lot of the Main Event was centered around who Liz would side with, if anyone. They just didn't do anything with Haku after that. After Duggan, I really can't think of one meaningful feud he had with television support. He was a sidenote in the Piper vs Heenan Family and Bossman vs Heenan Family feuds. He had house show matches with Steamboat throughout 91 but they never built to them in any way. Even with Heenan, they just didn't utilize the guy except for as a gatekeeper.

The fans do seem to go nuts whenever he gives someone (Young, Tarver) an absolute mauling though, which is something I never remember him doing much in years past. I was very surprised at how nuts the crowd went during the Tarver/Cena tag match. Even for little things like when Cena would short-arm the tag. Then they really got into the beatdown after the match. I think it shows that that's the Cena they want to see. That original character from when he first turned face. More "Stone Cold-ish" I guess. Should we start wearing "P.S. Was Right" shirts then?

They never really did go full on face with the Faces of Fear against Hall and Nash, did they? They were in matches with them and the fans got behind them in that context, as one of the only real threats to the Outsiders, but they weren't really booked as monster faces. I wonder if that would have made a difference. Otherwise, I'm not sure who they could have put them with. Jim Mitchell?

The fans do seem to go nuts whenever he gives someone (Young, Tarver) an absolute mauling though, which is something I never remember him doing much in years past.

I get the idea of needing content for content's sake but ouch.

Hogan didn't do it on TV before early 89 nearly as much as he would a year or two later. Btw, the grapevine (the grapevine being Vic) tells me that the May 24, 1986 Boston Garden match is the one to watch for Savage's first heel run. I haven't seen this yet. Pretty sure this is it though. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8mq1r_hu...-wwf-titl_sport http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8mq51_hu...vage-pt-2_sport Edit: as a kid I didn't see any of 89 NWA, but when Muta showed up in 91-92, when I did start watching, it was always super exciting to me. Like a super special attraction. I was glued to the set and the moonsault was something downright mythical. And that's the impression I had after missing his big run.

I really love Savage/Neidhart from the SNME right after Mania. It was this weird period after Sherri joined up but before he had won the Crown from Duggan and it's the match to give him his heat back, with the maddening concept that for some reason he has to get through Neidhart to get another shot at Hogan. It's really more about Sherri and showing off what she can offer relative to Liz, but it all ends up working really well. It's a smart little match. As for which Hogan/Savage match IS considered the best, I'm blanking. Just looking at the early time period... According to Graham's site, there are 3 MSG matches in 85-early 86 but they all go less than 10 mins, even the lumberjack one. They feuded in Boston in spring 86 with one match that went 13 mins and a follow up that was shorter and paid-off/transitioned with Hogan/Steele vs Savage/Adonis. There's a PRISM taped Spectrum match in mid 85 that went 11 and a 14 min Maple Leaf Gardens one from just about the same time. And I'm pretty sure there's at least one Detroit one that went 11 (think that's on the unreleased archive Hogan DVD). None of that's particularly helpful. I kind of want to watch as many as I can track down now though. (And that Race/Savage match from 87 too. It's interesting watching broken down Harley vs guys who are actually good).

It wasn't even that Savage lost but that he lost after hitting Hogan with everything he had and then having Hogan Hulk Up out of the elbow drop. From the people I've spoken with, I get the impression that the "consensus" tends not to think too highly of the WM match relative to other Savage/Hogan matches, but I do think that Savage showed solid desperation and did a lot of intense brawling and attacking outside the ring. You got the feeling that he was hitting Hogan with literally everything he could muster past maybe a ring bell to the throat. After Hogan kicks out of the Elbow (and god did Hogan ever love that pop. He became addicted to it in the years following), what's the point of watching another match with the two of them. It's already obvious that Savage can't put Hogan away no matter what. Hell, Honky was way smarter than that. On SNME, after he hits Hogan with the Shake, Rattle and Roll, he celebrates like a maniac for a few minutes before trying to pin him so as to protect his finisher. If Hulk rolled out of the way and didn't get hit by it, and then they added Sherri to the mix, they could have run it again, as is, at Summerslam. Instead, we got Zeus.

Hey, that was a Kung Fu: the Legend Continues reference there. Did you watch Time Trax too? I wish we could find Time Trax on bootleg DVD. And I kind of wish we could find Deadly Games too. The wife doesn't like that like she does Time Trax but Christopher Lloyd makes a great Dr. Wily. .. that's all I've got.

I'll admit that I went personal when it came to the tragedies and how they affected one's wrestling watching and what not (I'm sure no one wants to hear me going on about myself there), but I do agree that it's, at the very least, in the back of everyone's head now. That's probably a more useful way of thinking about it here. I had completely forgotten about the Angle/Michaels note, somehow. I'm rereading it, and it's so brutal for the first ten pages until Tom shows back up. You can just see half the people trying to work their minds around what was being said, because there was literally only one way for a huge chunk of them to even begin to understand it: "INDY BIAS!" It was so ingrained in their heads that Angle and Michaels were not just good but great and likely the greatest that they couldn't figure out how and why anyone would say otherwise. It wasn't even subjective to them. It was TRUTH, and you cannot argue against TRUTH with facts, and if you do, you're likely trying to cause trouble for the sake of it. Then Tom comes in and says "No, no, you have it all wrong. There are 24 people better ON RAW better than Michaels!" And then everything explodes again. It's sort of fascinating to watch it all play out. The scary part is that I don't think the argument has progressed much in the last five years. It's become more familiar to everyone but I still get this weird sense that people can't or won't wrap their heads around what the detractors are saying.

I'm late to the discussion and I've said this before, but I feel like a lot of it has to do with the deaths/tragedies in the 00s being a catalyst for people to look at things they might not have otherwise looked at and reexamine things that had just been accepted as "truth" with the astounding availability of matches giving people the means to really delve into things. In the midst of the 00s, it became very refreshing and relatively easy to look back at the 80s with a critical eye and find evidence to dismiss or confirm thoughts from the sheets that had held up for decades without much real examination. It also became easier to look at certain styles that had once seemed simplistic or dull and to find what makes them work and what makes them interesting. I also think that violence for the sake of violence and moves for the sake of moves and spots for the sake of spots are much more frowned upon now given what has happened. They're more apt to be forgiven if they build well as part of a story, if there seems like there's some sort of narrative point to them. If they don't however? Forget it. Excitement isn't an end unto itself for me anymore. Maybe that's hypocritical but I really don't think anyone has ever complained solely about someone having too many moves (as noted above). They complain about the moves not meaning anything, not having purpose, about the moves being a substitute for psychology and story in a match. I'm in the camp now that a wrestler can be great by doing nothing other than clubbering (and not even all that stiffly) so long as it's all logical and has weight and means something. For the first three-fourths of my life, I wouldn't have bought into that idea at all. Now I care way more about narrative than outright action. And I will agree with the sentiment here that the revisionist (or anti-smark, or pro-Role because a lot of the discussion is about wrestlers playing their Role well, or however you want to put it) guys are the ones who always back up their points. They HAVE to. Their points are, on paper, pretty out there, and they therefore didn't come to them overnight. No one wakes up some morning and is suddenly a fan of a guy who's generally thought of as a joke. When someone says Chris Masters is one of the best guys on TV this year, people are disbelieving. It's just a gut reaction. And I bet that Dylan was skeptical too the first time he saw a Masters match on Superstars and it was really quite good. The second time though? The third time? After a while the trends become apparent and the evidence to back up the points becomes ingrained within the points themselves. That's successful revisionism for you. It doesn't come from a vacuum. It creates itself. You first notice the facts and then you put together the theory. It's the people who come in arguing the traditional dogma that just gawk in the face of what's being said and say that X is X and everyone knows it's X and it has always been X and if you say otherwise you're just a troll or a blind follower or outright crazy. It AMAZES me that when people get upset about someone listing the usual anti-Angle and anti-Michaels points (usual in that they come up in almost every argument) there's never any real attempt to argue against them. There's just a sad, bemoaned tsking and dramatic shaking of the head and a Mark Henry joke or two. There were some attempts by people to argue traditional points with evidence in the Owen/Masters note, but it was all vague and intangible in the end. Very hard to grasp. It didn't go very well. That's the great thing about the DVDVR board. You can argue any point in the world so long as you have the evidence to back it up, and if your evidence is compelling, people will accept it. Anything at all is on the table.