Interesting notes/tidbits/BS found in the PWT Wrestling Observer scans

[Tim Evans]

I'm reading some old Observers from 1989 and Dave brings up how some fans at the World Class tv tapings kept booing Eric Embry and Chris Adams and they snapped and kicked out those fans. Did any of this ever make tv? Dave's JYD type hatred for Embry is a little weird.

[Phil Schneider]

Dave hated 89 Embry? Man Meltzer has always sucked

[rovert]

I thought conventional newsletter wisdom was Embry was an overpushed, egocentric mediocre worker. That was definitively the reference points I had going into Disc 9/10 of the Texas set. Bruce Mitchell and Wade Keller recently talked about him on audio while lauding him as a pretty good talker and a poster boy for the power of self belief in wrestling there still was tittering going on.

[kjh]

Dave's opinion is shaped by his sources. If Foley's first book is anything to go by, then "overpushed, egocentric mediocre worker" would probably be the viewpoint being pushed by his World Class sources at the time.

[Loss]

The whole tearing down of the World Class banner was epic and had Bischoff been able to hang on to WCW with the Fusient deal, I always thought that would have been a great way to lead to a re-launch.

 

After whatever lame main event they put forth with a bad finish, wrestlers come out and start brawling. Whoever you want as your big star (we'll say Goldberg for this example) starts tearing down everything in the arena that has the letters WCW on it and says the company is done. No more. This prompts other wrestlers to clear the locker room and you get what looks like a full scale riot.

 

The last image is of someone starting to hang up the banner for whatever the new company name would be.

 

Then, as planned at the time, they go black for six weeks or so. Then come back with the new company name, new faces (guys like RVD they would have had by this point) and tournaments to crown new champions. New announcers, new set, with some shuffling of the deck with the roster done during the down time.

 

I'm not saying it definitely would have worked, but it's an interesting idea that would have worked or not worked based on how it was timed and executed.

[Bix]

Embry was having great matches, got over, and got the Sportatorium drawing well again, climaxing in the first sellout in years for the aforementioned match w/ P.Y. Chu'Hi that led to him and Pringle tearing down the WCCW banner.

 

He had a bad case of bookeritis and nobody had any reason to expect anything he did to work, but it did.

[jdw]

I think Embry had two major issues that hit hardcores at the time:

 

* the book in an era when Dusty+Book=Evil

 

* didn't have the "look"

 

The first was an automatic negative that booker-wrestlers had to always fight back from to get credit from hardcores... unless of course you happened to be Our Hero Ric, when everything was okay with him having the book and Mean Old Herd was the heel.

 

When you start with that negative, then push the fuck out of yourself to the point of revolving the promotion around yourself... you were pretty much fucked to hardcores in that era. Maybe Eddie Gilbert got away with it in the 80s, but his run (in Bama I want to say?) was extremely short and who knows how it would have played out if it went as long as Embry's.

 

The second is that Embry didn't have the look. Little guy, in a bit of not-so-great shape, opposite some big ass guys. As much as Dave railed against juice, there also were all those comments about Race not having the "look" of an NWA Champ, of Jumbo and others putting on weight, etc. Look did matter to a degree.

 

Embry was a little guy pushing himself to the moon... that's well into the "Leans Against" category for hardcores at the time.

 

Not justifying it. But that's a big part of what it was.

 

In addition, World Class had been thought of as a dump past it's prime by that point, and had the unfortunate problem of pretty much all hardcores having watched a chunk of the glory days... and Dave happening to be in town for a run of those hots days. It was next to impossible for Embry to do anything that made people put it in that class.

 

Consider post-Exodus All Japan. It almost doesn't matter how much people pimped Pro Wrestling Love Mutoh or Kawada finally getting a Long Run with the TC. All Japan had a glorious run in the 90s, and there were legendary matches in the 80s... we all saw them, watched through a lot of them... it would be a uphill struggle for people pimping 2001-2005 AJPW to convince some of us old goats set in our ways that it's worthy of being called "great".

 

That's not entirely fair. In a sense, World Class / Dallas by the time of Embry wasn't really World Class anymore. All Japan of the 00's wasn't really All Japan anymore. You sort of have to set aside the past and judge it on it's own.

 

Setting all that aside, I pretty confident there were items in the WON about business being up, and Embry's angles getting credit for it.

 

John

[Loss]

Even Flair felt a little criticism over having the book. There's the infamous line where Dave said he was starting to look like Jimmy Carter, the whole deals with Shane Douglas and Paul E. being driven out of the company for questionable reasons, and probably more. It's hardly harsh criticism compared to other wrestler/bookers, but that's actually pretty biting compared to most of the criticism Flair has historically gotten among the sheet readers.

[Loss]

Lest I forget that Sting refusing to do a job for Terry Funk was the worst thing to ever happen that people were still talking about a few years later.

[jdw]

I don't think that hardcores gave a shit that Douglas got driven out: they were Flair Fans, and Douglas was a nobody at the time. Paul E at the time also wasn't beloved like Cornette, so there weren't a lot of people taking his side in things.

 

I don't recall if much of Gilbert's knocks on WCW were aimed at Flair when he did his Torch Talk and the stuff with Mat Results.

 

Flair did get some criticism for being stressed and aging under the pressure of the Book. But relative to Dusty pushing himself... not even close. Hogan when he had major control in WCW, or Nash? No. DDP didn't have the book but had major influence with Eric and had general control of his storylines when he wasn't involved with the Big Boys (i.e. people who could overridge him in storylines). DDP got heat at the time for doing the storylines to make himself look good, then reworking them to give himself an excuse when he was forced to lose.

 

Ric got it soft. And perhaps he deserved to: I don't think the booking under him was that bad on top. Undercards were kind of solid, so the group of folks working on it weren't bad. We all know Ric, and he's not the type of guy who is going to sit down and block out what everyone's storyline is. He almost certainly was a Head who let everyone else come up with ideas and signed off on them, or let the group collectively decide what worked and what didn't.

 

John

[KrisZ]

Meltz went in on Robert Fuller as well at this time for his booking of Memphis and he was pretty much universally against active wrestlers as bookers at that time.

 

The key to this is what jdw said about World Class' glory days and how Meltz was there during that time so of course what they did was going to be compared to that period BUT.............he did have a lot of positive stuff to say about Michael Hayes & Skandor Akbar's booking of World Class in early 1988.

[rovert]

Dave's opinion is shaped by his sources. If Foley's first book is anything to go by, then "overpushed, egocentric mediocre worker" would probably be the viewpoint being pushed by his World Class sources at the time.

In his shoot Embry was extremely hurt about what Foley wrote in his book where it was portrayed that Embry dedicated that Foley would be jobbed in seconds in his final match for the company while Eric said that if Foley was unhappy he should have spoke up as he would have worked it out.

 

Embry was having great matches, got over, and got the Sportatorium drawing well again, climaxing in the first sellout in years for the aforementioned match w/ P.Y. Chu'Hi that led to him and Pringle tearing down the WCCW banner.

 

He had a bad case of bookeritis and nobody had any reason to expect anything he did to work, but it did.

Keller and Mitchell thought Embry was excellent at preaching to the converted but couldnt gain the promotion one extra fan.

[jdw]

Lest I forget that Sting refusing to do a job for Terry Funk was the worst thing to ever happen that people were still talking about a few years later.

Hell... I've forgotten about that.

 

Of course Ric refusing to job to Lex the first time Herd wanted to change the title at a house show, then refusing to job to Lex at the Bash without a fat contract extension (when already having a year left on his contract), then refusing to job to Barry... that was Okay because it was Ric.

 

I'll grant that Ric had creative control, so he was largely within his rights. On the other hand, it wasn't that he was unwilling to job the title at the Bash for creative reasons. It was about money and getting paid off for doing the job.

 

But that kinda got forgotten for quite a few years, or only remembered with Ric being the hero of the story and Herd being the idiot villan. Sure, Herd was an idiot for the first house show suggestion. The stuff in mid-1991... probably not.

 

John

[Loss]

Would have been interesting to see the politics if Flair had still been around when Rude came in later in the year. Going with Rude in that spot over Flair would have made more sense, even if Flair was still around. Rude was never a huge draw or anything, but at that point, WCW would have had a hot heel who could work on top and do good promos and have good matches. It would have been the right time to start phasing Flair down.

[Tim Evans]

From the September 18th 1989 Observer:

 

The Cleveland rock band called " The Bastard Squad" has written a song called "If I only had a brain" and when they perform it, they dedicate it to Kerry Von Erich.

Someone needs to find that song and put it on one of the Schneider comps or something.

[Ditch]

There was a Hogan & Bret Hart vs Fujinami & Maeda match in early '84.

 

edit: AJ 2/28/84 had Bockwinkel, Steamboat & Super Destroyer 2 against Tenryu, Hara & Fuchi. I assume that wasn't taped.

[jdw]

No. The only Bock that aired on that series were the two title matches.

 

John

[tomk]

Meltz went in on Robert Fuller as well at this time for his booking of Memphis and he was pretty much universally against active wrestlers as bookers at that time.

 

Well active wrestlers who weren't Eddie Gilbert. I always assumed that some of the coverage of Fuller had to do with a jealous Gilbert in his ear as well.

[goc]

So I've been reading 89 Observers recently and I'm up to July right now. Can anyone can give me more info on Mark Young, a.k.a. Vince Young in the NWA, and Carl Styles from Portland?

[Bix]

Mark Young = Mark Scarpa = Jay Strongbow's son. Besides his cups of coffee in WCW and the WWF a a JTTS type, he worked in Continental as Pvt. Pyle When Gilbert was booking, had a tour or two of AJPW, and worked in South Atlantic early on when they had name guys like Ricky Steamboat, Robert Fuller, and Matt Borne. I have no idea if he did anything after 1990.

[Tim Evans]

Carl Styles had a pretty big run in the final days of Portland Wrestling as a lackey to the Grappler. He also had a run in Memphis in the early 90's teaming with Tom Prichard and Eric Embry vs guys like Lawler and Dirty White Boy. Didn't he also wrestle with a glass Eye? I remember reading in the old John Mcadam lists about how he did a angle with some heel where he got his eye taken out as heel heat.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I remember reading in the old John Mcadam lists about how he did a angle with some heel where he got his eye taken out as heel heat.

I hope the heel stole it and did a promo yelling, "I got yer eye! Hahaha!"

[Stuttsy]

For anyone curious where he is now, Carl Styles runs small indys in western North Carolina a few times per year, occasionally using Tracy Smothers as his top name.

[cm funk]

From the 3/7/94 Observer, regarding Jim Ross' contract expiring and not being renewed around the time of his first bout with Bell's Palsy:

 

It is believed Titan wanted to change Ross' image from being a straight announcer to a comedy character role wearing a cowboy hat and using the name J.R., doing a J.R. Ewing type character.

[MikeCampbell]

It is believed Titan wanted to change Ross' image from being a straight announcer to a comedy character role wearing a cowboy hat and using the name J.R., doing a J.R. Ewing type character.

Funny enough, at Super Brawl II Jesse Ventura comments that if Ross wore a big cowboy hat that he'd look like JR Ewing.