Marty Posted June 27, 2012 Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 Abdullah is still wrestling, so far as I know. At the very least I'm pretty sure he wrestled last year. Having debuted in '58, he's well past the 50 year mark in his career. Has anyone else managed that? Great Kojika and Dory Funk Jr have both wrestled this year after debuting in '63. Note: I don't think Mae Young and Moolah's various "matches" in WWE from 2000 on should really count... Have you seen Abby matches in recent years? Really not a lot more to them than Mae Young style stuff. Actually Mae still bumps so if anything she's more serious than Abby Yeah, that match that Devon "Hannibal" Nicholson is suing the WWE and Abby over didn't involve much from Abby aside from getting busted open and busting Hannibal open with his fork, if memory serves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLIK Posted June 27, 2012 Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 This might be a "who gives a shit" sort of thing, but what's the deal with Super Delfin's name? Reading the katakana I think it reads as "Spell Delfin." 0:26 Delfin's name in blue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1n7Mg55VUs "スペル デルフィン" "スペル" = su-pe-ru - "spell" Super Tiger @ 1:37: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE_nRlOm7vU "スーパー タイガー" "スーパー" = suu-paa - "super" He's always anounced as Spell Delfin in Japan but somehow among English speaking fans it got translated to Super. Used to bug me to no end that the 2nd part wasn't translated to Dolphin tho. Course then, a few years back, Delfin's cousin briefely used the name Super Dolphin (among the many gimmicks he's had) to confuse things even more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Posted June 27, 2012 Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 I think Mae Young wrestled more legitimate matches on the indies at least a decade ago. I'd have no problem saying she had a 50+ year career. She started in 1940 or so, so she would only have needed a match around 1990 to count. Everything else is icing on the cake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted June 27, 2012 Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 Question: why is footage pre-70s so difficult to come by and why is 70s footage itself generally really quite shitty? Plenty of other TV shows from that time frame and long before exist in high quality, so why the utter crapness of the 70s stuff? It was like it was all filmed on old-fashioned 1920-style cameras. Anyone know about this? I mean the 70s is not that long ago in the general scheme of most entertainment or sports, yet in wrestling terms it seems like the distant dark ages. Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbBAHsgUXxI That's Dory Funk Jr vs. Jack Brisco from 1972. Shockingly bad quality for the time. I mean Jesus Christ, The Godfather was made that year. What gives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted June 27, 2012 Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 Videotape was in it's infancy then, and I'm sure promotions put quantity over quality and didn't think about how great it would look on television. TV screens in the 70's were about the size of a large serving plate and a good deal of them were in black and white. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted June 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 27, 2012 Not to mention that a promotion didn't really need to have well-produced TV to be successful, and that they saw no value in archiving footage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 That's not too far from what you'd see out of a typical boxing match of that era. The quality of live sports wasn't tremendously good for a long time. (Though I wish they would use less camera cuts nowadays.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditch Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 Willing to grant that point about Abby re: Mae. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 Abby also outweights Mae by 300 pounds. It wouldn't be safe for a man his age/size to be taking any bumps. Hell, it's not safe for Mae either, but that much extra weight adds a lot more force to the impact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 Question: why is footage pre-70s so difficult to come by and why is 70s footage itself generally really quite shitty? Plenty of other TV shows from that time frame and long before exist in high quality, so why the utter crapness of the 70s stuff? It was like it was all filmed on old-fashioned 1920-style cameras. Anyone know about this? I mean the 70s is not that long ago in the general scheme of most entertainment or sports, yet in wrestling terms it seems like the distant dark ages. Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbBAHsgUXxI That's Dory Funk Jr vs. Jack Brisco from 1972. Shockingly bad quality for the time. I mean Jesus Christ, The Godfather was made that year. What gives? The Japanese footage from the 70s is pretty good quality. Footage from the 50s is relatively abundant, probably because wrestling was fairly popular on a mainstream level for a few years and on network TV until around 55 or so. Wrestling in NA in the 60s was of course territorial and off network TV and thus more scarce. Same with the 70s. Like Al said, sports footage in general from the 70s is nothing special, and an MSG show from the 70s is roughly the same quality as a 70s World Series or Super Bowl, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 I've seen some 70's Japanese stuff recently from that looks like it's from the early 90's compared to other feds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted June 28, 2012 Report Share Posted June 28, 2012 I've seen some 70's Japanese stuff recently from that looks like it's from the early 90's compared to other feds.Japanese wrestling was shot by network TV sports crews. Big difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Abdullah is still wrestling, so far as I know. At the very least I'm pretty sure he wrestled last year. Having debuted in '58, he's well past the 50 year mark in his career. Has anyone else managed that? Great Kojika and Dory Funk Jr have both wrestled this year after debuting in '63. Note: I don't think Mae Young and Moolah's various "matches" in WWE from 2000 on should really count... The Sheik wrestled from 49-98 Bobo Brazil did 51-93 Santo did like 34-82 Blue Demon did 48-88 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 And oh yeah, one that all of us should have remembered before now: Lou Thesz. First pro match was in 1932, last one was in 1990. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Thesz hadn't wrestled for like a decade before that match though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Does anyone else think it was really stupid of RoH to bring in the Headbangers and give them a completely different gimmick? I could be wrong, but to me the value of signing the Headbangers is the gimmick. Otherwise they would have little value to me in any situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Thesz hadn't wrestled for like a decade before that match though.Yeah, his official retirement date is listed as 1979, but surely he had some return matches in the intervening period. Otherwise, he couldn't have qualified for that "only man to wrestle in seven different decades" hat trick. And besides that, even if it were just '32-'79, that's still a helluva run. Does anyone else think it was really stupid of RoH to bring in the Headbangers and give them a completely different gimmick? I could be wrong, but to me the value of signing the Headbangers is the gimmick.Yeah, that's weird. Of all the veterans that ROH could use, why those guys? They must be friends of someone important, is the only thing I can think of. ...this seems like a good time to mention my brilliant idea for popping ROH's business: hire Vince Russo as a heel manager who leads an entire stable of Attitude-era wrestlers against all the young smark darlings. And I mean the ones that all the smarks hated by the end of the Attitude era, guys like Bagwell and Godfather and Konnan and Billy Gunn and such. Maybe have X-Pac or Al Snow hanging around, just so we've got some ringers who can actually still have a watchable match. Have it all build up to a big cage match where Cornette beats Russo into a bloody pulp. It'll draw, I tell ya! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 That's actually a pretty good idea for an angle. If I was booking, just for perverse joy I would have Davey put over David Arquette after Russo interference in front of a smark-filled Philly or NYC crowd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cox Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Does anyone else think it was really stupid of RoH to bring in the Headbangers and give them a completely different gimmick? I could be wrong, but to me the value of signing the Headbangers is the gimmick.Yeah, that's weird. Of all the veterans that ROH could use, why those guys? They must be friends of someone important, is the only thing I can think of. Cornette gave them their first break in SMW, and I'm pretty sure got them their WWF jobs as well, so I assume he was the one who brought them in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 ...this seems like a good time to mention my brilliant idea for popping ROH's business: hire Vince Russo as a heel manager who leads an entire stable of Attitude-era wrestlers against all the young smark darlings. And I mean the ones that all the smarks hated by the end of the Attitude era, guys like Bagwell and Godfather and Konnan and Billy Gunn and such. Maybe have X-Pac or Al Snow hanging around, just so we've got some ringers who can actually still have a watchable match. Have it all build up to a big cage match where Cornette beats Russo into a bloody pulp. It'll draw, I tell ya!The ROH fans would just cheer Russo, Bagwell, etc. ironically and chant "this is wrestling." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Thesz hadn't wrestled for like a decade before that match though. Yeah, his official retirement date is listed as 1979, but surely he had some return matches in the intervening period. Otherwise, he couldn't have qualified for that "only man to wrestle in seven different decades" hat trick. And besides that, even if it were just '32-'79, that's still a helluva run. He worked a WWF Legends Battle Royal in 1987: http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/87.htm WWF @ East Rutherford, NJ - Meadowlands - November 16, 1987 (under 5,000) Lou Thesz won a battle royal by last eliminating Pat O'Connor at 11:11; other participants included: Nick Bockwinkel, Bobo Brazil, Gino Brito, Edouard Carpentier, Al Costello, the Crusher, Dominic DeNucci, Tony Garea, Rene Goulet, Gene Kiniski, Killer Kowalski, Pedro Morales, Baron Mikel Scicluna, Arnold Skaaland, Ray Stevens, Chief Jay Strongbow, & Art Thomas; order of elimination: Strongbow eliminated by ?; ? by Thesz at 2:35; ? by Costello at 4:44; Garea by Costello via a catapult at 4:46; Costello by DeNucci at 6:13; Goulet by Carpentier via a headscissors over the top at 6:23; DeNucci by Bockwinkel at 6:55; Brazil by Stevens via a punch at 7:15; the Crusher by Stevens via a backdrop at 8:20; Kiniski eliminated; Kowalski by Thesz via a punch as Kowalski sat on the top rope at 8:38; Stevens by O'Connor via a throw at 9:14; Bockwinkel by O'Connor & Thesz at 9:27; O'Connor by Thesz via a backdrop; after the contest, Thesz and O'Connor embraced out of respect Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 I'm late to the Benoit spots/ROH discussion, but in general I think any time his signature spots are used it brings up bad thoughts in peoples minds I remember when HHH first worked the crossface into a match many months later, the crowd audibly popped louder than they had for anything in the match, and it kind of made me sick. Then Michaels started using it as a regular spot for a while and I never liked it (and he sucked at the trapping the hand aspect anyway, it looked super shitty most of the time). Even when I see Bobby Roode use it in 2012 it still doesn't feel right. I don't like seeing Bryan do the diving headbutt either. I have to think that multiple Benoit spots being used on a show the 5 year anniversary weekend were conscious decisions by the talent. I liked Benoit as much as anyone else and I still respect his work ethic, dedication and athleticism, but inviting allusions to him is just stupid. I have a pretty low opinion of ROH's fanbase anyway, so I'm not surprised some idiots marked out and chanted for Benoit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 On a related point, when was the last time you saw a German suplex in WWE? It was a regular spot for half the roster for a while there. I know they limited the use of it due to neck injuries (though of course Benoit and Angle were still allowed to use them with flat/side bumps where they took most of the punishment).....but it seems like since Benoit offed himself that nobody uses the move anymore. The only guy I can recall using it as a spot since then was Shelton. Jericho and Bryan have probably used it a few times..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Del Rio has done a couple. MVP did a few as well. And they did a spot at that Fatal 4-Way PPV where Swagger Germaned Punk while Punk Germaned Rey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted June 29, 2012 Report Share Posted June 29, 2012 Del Rio has done a couple. MVP did a few as well. And they did a spot at that Fatal 4-Way PPV where Swagger Germaned Punk while Punk Germaned Rey. Yeah Del Rio murdered poor Sin Cara with one which people now use to illustrate all the stories of them at least at one stage having heat.: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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