Matt D

I get the sense that the reboot hasn't happened yet. Last Monday was more of a teaser for what will come after the real transition, and we haven't even had a teaser for Smackdown.

So, it's July, if people want to do a few weeks, I'm away from the 15th to the 19th, but I'm willing to spin the wheel on the 20th or the 21st. This gives everyone a couple of weeks to express interest. Let me know here.

Presumably it's so they could do the watch along. I just ff'd through with my 15 second skip (which at 1.5 speed took about 30 seconds of my day).

Just got the kids down (first night sharing a room. I have dread). Anything Bischoff-y tonight so far?

Tossing this here, but this is Conrad on the Arn show, which is basically everything I wanted the Arn show to be. The fact he's leading with the "John Cena's agent" bit is really telling. When it was first announced, I didn't know if they were going to touch that at all. SN: What can expect out of this podcast that is different than the ones you are doing right now? CT: Everything in his career up until now. The high potential in doing a podcast with Arn is that Arn was John Cena’s agent. So all that stuff that Bruce missed because he was gone, Arn is there to fill in the blanks for. Everything from The Undertaker’s streak ending to CM Punk leaving. So it’s going to be everything in between including the territory days from Georgia Championship Wrestling, the Alabama territories and talk about matches in Pensacola and when he made the jump to Jim Crockett Promotions which led to the Four Horseman, where he made a name for himself. Who else has had a career like that going from the territory days to the NWA to Jim Crockett Promotions? It’s WCW, and it’s WWE/WWF. It’s a unique story and one we have never had before because except for the show that I had with Ric (Flair), I have been with office and never an actual in-ring performer. So it’s a different take and coming from someone who’s never done a shoot interview or a real book and never really broken kayfabe. The idea that we get to do that now is great because everyone will get to hear what they have listened to for years backstage. It’s a unique combination. It’s going to be a really popular show. Link to interview: https://www.mandatory.com/wrestlezone/news/1108915-conrad-thompson-starrcast-iii-arn-anderson-ric-flair#O2iOskri6t7ufWuV.99

This week's was really good with a lot of talk about his relationship with Vince.

You know what this AEW demand talk reminds me of? The initial demand for NXT seats. It felt like a huge deal a few years ago when they were coming by Bel Air, MD for the first time. It felt like you could be a part of something by going. The second time they came around? Not so much. Now? Not at all.

@The Thread Killer I've listened to a lot of the Bischoff podcasts too, even though i don't often comment there. I usually listen over the span of a few days given the length and that I do it on my commute. That said, you get the sense that he's learned a lot, from market research back in the day and from going back over all of these shows. I don't agree with everything, of course, but I usually think that he's pretty reasonable about a lot of things. He claims to value long-term storytelling, surprises, in-ring storytelling, etc. He comes off as very consistent about which creative decisions he agrees with and which ones he regrets from decades ago. You hear a lot of patterns and they at least sound reasonable. Would you agree?

Re: NFF. Some are tagged. Some aren't, and the tag search is generally limited to 10 or 20 posts just by its nature. I think we can come up with a master list at some point soon though. Re: Gems. Were we to hypothetically get Crockett Cup 87 tomorrow, what's already out there? I know we have the full match of Flair vs Windham, right? Do we have the Ole vs Bubba cage match? The tag finals? There are a few really good looking matches at least.

It's bonkers that the solution is booking everything 2/3 falls like Houston or Portland.

It's a clunky platform for that and there's no master list, but I'll see what we can do.

Phil and I covered it for NFF. http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2019/06/new-footage-friday-1986-crockett-cup.html?m=1

I'm another hour in and will double down on the no commentary thing. Tully and Arn's chatter and coordination ("Arn, I need your knee!"), Precious' constant yelling, etc. It'd be one thing if we had Jim Ross and David Crockett tripping over each other at the time, but it'd be a crime to dump even someone like Tony over this decades after the fact.

They only kept this thing from us for almost twenty years. No big deal....

I disagree. I'm only midway through but I'm much happier to hear the crowd booing Wahoo or them being supercharged for Valiant against Ivan without some sort of artificial after the fact commentary overlaying it.

Four Hours. Crockett Cup. 1986.

Does any Michel Martel exist? 70s Canada and PR feel like relatively tricky places to get footage from but I'd be curious to see him.

Is the Jerichoholic Ninja there?

Just think. They would have been spared ten minutes of that if they let Nattie and Alexa wrestle.

Have you tried the 15 second skip button?

Did it look like they were turning Brock with all of this Heyman stuff?

Also about whether or not the crowd will rise up and overthrow the government in the middle of the HHH vs Orton match.

That's a fair stance to have.

So WWE does a lot less promotion online of their Saudi tours than they do of other things, so a cursory glance at WWE.com didn't show me a lot of PR stuff from the last day or two. That said, I did see all of the Ghana photos and I've seen a lot of other stuff with Kofi over the years and I think, if nothing else, he seems like the sort of the guy who tries to make the most positive experience possible out of this sort of thing. I don't know the itinerary for a tour like this. I'd assume that WWE would play towards what they know and how they interact with other organizations and countries but also that a lot is out of their hands as this is very much a vanity project by a money mark. I can see Kofi interacting with a lot of fans on the ground level and meeting people and maybe meeting kids. I can also see him not having that sort of opportunity. I don't think Kofi's going to come into this sort of a situation blind, not on the third show with guys either forced to sit or sitting by choice. I can see him trying to make the best of this situation and separating the people from their government if he had the opportunity to do so. It's a PR statement and one full of hyperbole. In it, he mentioned the crowd, the people, the culture, the pyro and money that goes into it. He didn't mention the government or their initiative or anything else. I don't think his statement is nearly as bad as a lot of the other things we've seen come out of this arrangement.