Acknowledging the Past

[khawk20]

There were quite a few one-shot appearances in MSG. The Von Erichs separately, Steamboat/Youngblood, Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, Tiger Mask, etc. It's kind of what gave MSG its prominent place in wrestling. They weren't part of any angle, just wrestling.

Very true. If someone made an actual list of one-offs (or two-offs) that appeared in MSG in the 70's through early 1984 there would be a lot of great, great names on there.

[Al]

My personal favorites, the Crush Gals and Matsumoto/Nakano actually appearing in separate matches on a show in 1986.

[Exposer]

My personal favorites, the Crush Gals and Matsumoto/Nakano actually appearing in separate matches on a show in 1986.

WWF @ Boston, MA - Boston Garden - March 8, 1986

Televised on NESN - featured Gorilla Monsoon & Lord Alfred Hayes on commentary:

All American Wrestling - 5/11/86: Sivi Afi pinned Rene Goulet with a flying bodypress at 11:06

All American Wrestling - 4/27/86: Jake Roberts pinned Jose Luis Rivera with the DDT at 10:30

The Crush Girls (Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka) defeated Judy Martin & Donna Christianello at 15:33 when Asuka pinned Christianello following a giant swing

Jim Neidhart (w/ Jimmy Hart) pinned Scott McGhee with a powerslam at 5:59

Prime Time Wrestling - 7/28/86: Ricky Steamboat pinned Bret Hart (w/ Jimmy Hart) at 15:08 when the momentum of a crossbody by Hart put Steamboat on top; during the bout, Jimmy Hart briefly joined the commentary team at ringside (The Hart Foundation, The Bret Hart Story: The Best There Is, Was, and Ever Will Be)

WWF IC Champion Randy Savage (w/ Miss Elizabeth) defeated Tito Santana via disqualification at 7:17 after Santana shoved referee Danny Davis to the mat

Velvet McIntyre & Dawn Marie defeated Bull Nakano & Dump Masamoto at 8:27 when Velvet pinned Nakano with a victory roll

Cpl. Kirchner pinned Iron Mike Sharpe after hitting him with his own forearm at 9:56

Ted Arcidi defeated Barry O via submission with a bearhug at 3:13

Prime Time Wrestling - 10/21/86: WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan & the Junkyard Dog defeated Terry & Dory Funk Jr. (w/ Jimmy Hart) when Hogan pinned Terry with a clothesline at 11:32 as the Funks were hanging JYD over the top with their bullrope

 

Yes, totally bizarre.

[flyonthewall2983]

I assume he wanted the Von Erichs for the same reason he wanted every other big territory star: to make money with and keep other people from making money with them. With the WWF marketing machine behind them I think they'd have done big business with Kevin & Kerry as a tag headlining the non-Hogan shows. How long they could have lasted on the road in a promotion where their dad wasn't the owner and all the local cops didn't know who they were is a different story.

One thing I heard is that Kevin was a potential guy to beat Sheik in case it didn't pan out with Hogan.

[khawk20]

I just can't see that at all.

[WingedEagle]

My personal favorites, the Crush Gals and Matsumoto/Nakano actually appearing in separate matches on a show in 1986.

WWF @ Boston, MA - Boston Garden - March 8, 1986

Televised on NESN - featured Gorilla Monsoon & Lord Alfred Hayes on commentary:

All American Wrestling - 5/11/86: Sivi Afi pinned Rene Goulet with a flying bodypress at 11:06

All American Wrestling - 4/27/86: Jake Roberts pinned Jose Luis Rivera with the DDT at 10:30

The Crush Girls (Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka) defeated Judy Martin & Donna Christianello at 15:33 when Asuka pinned Christianello following a giant swing

Jim Neidhart (w/ Jimmy Hart) pinned Scott McGhee with a powerslam at 5:59

Prime Time Wrestling - 7/28/86: Ricky Steamboat pinned Bret Hart (w/ Jimmy Hart) at 15:08 when the momentum of a crossbody by Hart put Steamboat on top; during the bout, Jimmy Hart briefly joined the commentary team at ringside (The Hart Foundation, The Bret Hart Story: The Best There Is, Was, and Ever Will Be)

WWF IC Champion Randy Savage (w/ Miss Elizabeth) defeated Tito Santana via disqualification at 7:17 after Santana shoved referee Danny Davis to the mat

Velvet McIntyre & Dawn Marie defeated Bull Nakano & Dump Masamoto at 8:27 when Velvet pinned Nakano with a victory roll

Cpl. Kirchner pinned Iron Mike Sharpe after hitting him with his own forearm at 9:56

Ted Arcidi defeated Barry O via submission with a bearhug at 3:13

Prime Time Wrestling - 10/21/86: WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan & the Junkyard Dog defeated Terry & Dory Funk Jr. (w/ Jimmy Hart) when Hogan pinned Terry with a clothesline at 11:32 as the Funks were hanging JYD over the top with their bullrope

 

Yes, totally bizarre.

 

 

Wow. Any footage of this show available?

[Matt D]

Pretty sure that the ladies matches are on youtube at least.

[blueminister]

There'a thread somewhere in the megathread archive about interesting things said on boards that quotes Vince's drug issues as well as how his system of yes men and his daughter have become barriers to reality and actually made improving the company impossible.

I don't want this to come off as geek feelings but I think Stephanie being the only head of creative in wrestling history to operate in a consequence-free environment makes improving the company impossible. Vince as 1970s Stan Lee "only follows the wrestling product at a macro level but enjoys the freedom to interfere arbitrarily" doesn't help. (Examples: the wrestlers striking during the Miz/Truth/Punk/HHH/Ace angle; seemingly deciding over the course of commercial break to make AJ Raw GM.)

[khawk20]

Wow. Any footage of this show available?

It aired on WWE Classics a while back. It's out there.

[jdw]

The whole card should be in circulation. Did anyone check these out for the WWF 80s redux set?

[JerryvonKramer]

As an afterthought to this thread, when does the point come when a name just becomes like a legend acknowledged in the distant past rather than in the collective memory?

 

To use a bit of comic-book lingo, it sometimes feels like everything that happened from Wrestlemania I is "in continuity" WWE kayfabe-wise, but anything that happened before that -- say Lou Thesz or Buddy Rogers or even the 1970s in general -- is considered ancient history. Something like Golden-age 30s and 40s Batman from the vantage point of present-day continuity.

 

Does there come a point where Hulk Hogan's 80s run is considered ancient history in that way or will it always be that present-day continuity kinda starts in 1985?

 

Am I overstating this even and is it already considered ancient history from the modern 18-year old fan? I dunno.

[Loss]

I think all of the supercards make it more difficult to completely move on, along with the increase in footage availability. As long as Wrestlemania is around, people will either remember or wonder about the very first one. Part of that is also that the promoter running things now is the same promoter running things then.

 

Wrestling has changed quite a bit since 1984 when Vince started expansion, but there hasn't been a seismic shift on that level since then -- one that changes the technology people use to watch wrestling. WCW folding is probably the most significant thing to happen since that time, but I'm not sure that had the same impact as national expansion to accompany cable TV. Or maybe it did. I'm thinking out loud.

[khawk20]

I think if WCW had returned to prominence instead of going under, there would have been many more events of interest born out of the natural rivalry between the two companies and the movement back and forth of wrestlers continuing.

 

The thing is, until a day could ever come that another North American company could reasonably and viably compete with WWE, the signifigance of WCW folding remains more speculative than concrete. "Wow, imagine if WCW had come back to being competitive!" is a discussion that can't happen until another challenger emerges.

 

...and, for the record, I don't see that happening anytime even remotely soon, or even further down the road. So the folding of WCW will always be on the back-burner in terms of how fans think of it's impact.

[JerryvonKramer]

I feel like even WCW's significance has a man-managed in-continuity narrative though.

 

It enters continuity in 1996 and the story is as follows:

 

- Ric Flair was once a great wrestler who was part of a group known as the Four Horsemen and won many titles

- NWO

- Eric wanted to put us out of business

- dirty tactics

- 82 weeks

- Tony Schiavone mentioned Foley winning the title on air and millions and millions of people turned over

- Stone Cold Stone Cold Stone Cold

- Stone Cold

- The Rock

- Stone Cold!

 

That's the story of WCW. I do wonder how much of that is internalized by the average fan.

[SteveJRogers]

I feel like even WCW's significance has a man-managed in-continuity narrative though.

 

It enters continuity in 1996 and the story is as follows:

 

- Ric Flair was once a great wrestler who was part of a group known as the Four Horsemen and won many titles

- NWO

- Eric wanted to put us out of business

- dirty tactics

- 82 weeks

- Tony Schiavone mentioned Foley winning the title on air and millions and millions of people turned over

- Stone Cold Stone Cold Stone Cold

- Stone Cold

- The Rock

- Stone Cold!

 

That's the story of WCW. I do wonder how much of that is internalized by the average fan.

Oh this era on WTBBP should be LOADS of FUN! =

 

There is one problem though with the correlation with comic books, and while I'll agree that following pro wrestling can be like following a comic book, the "continuity" of comic books is made official by the publisher, or by whomever is writing that particular character at the moment.

 

For example, the stories of the Silver Age Batman in the 1950s were pretty much left to the dustbin of history as being childish fluff. Until a writer named Grant Morrison decided to smush some of the goofier elements into his run on Batman in the late 2000s through today.

 

Hell, Morrison took a completely out of continuity graphic novel instance of Batman impregnating the daughter of an Eco-terriorist, and creating a character for his run out of it.

 

And probably the most famous Batman related one, Alan Moore did a graphic novel that was NEVER meant to be involved in continuity, it wasn't an Elseworlds (what DC refers to an imprint that tells stories of its characters out of traditional elements), and it wasn't an Imaginary Story (what DC referred to those type of stories during the Silver and Bronze Age), but it was a simple graphic novel one-shot story. In it though, Barbara Gordon, the then former Batgirl (she retired from costume heroing shortly before this) was shot in the spine by The Joker. Several creators took this though, and ran with it as a new way to tell Barbara Gordon stories with her as a wheelchair bound hero, eventually a computer whiz at the head of a DC Universe wide network for Batman and other heroes under the name Oracle.

 

But in terms of wrestling, and as Loss said, especially in the age of information and with supercards and PPVs being on video and whatnot, it is hard to keep retcons from becoming part of cannon the way a comic book publisher can.

 

Though, I will give you this though, there are examples of this in non-scripted sports:

 

NFL: The National Football League tends to treat it's history as starting once the Super Bowl started in 1967 and the merger of the NFL and AFL was pretty much in motion. Everything else if you believe the NFL sanitized history was akin to playing in smoky Bingo Halls and VFW Halls!

 

NHL: There is a sense, well maybe here in America, that modern NHL history starts with the Oiler dynasty of the 1980s and the rise of Gretzky.

 

NBA: Bird & Magic...need I say more about pro basketball in America!

 

The only major team sport that acknowledges and treasures it's past as an ever flowing history is Major League Baseball.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I feel like even WCW's significance has a man-managed in-continuity narrative though.

 

It enters continuity in 1996 and the story is as follows:

 

- Ric Flair was once a great wrestler who was part of a group known as the Four Horsemen and won many titles

- NWO

- Eric wanted to put us out of business

- dirty tactics

- 82 weeks

- Tony Schiavone mentioned Foley winning the title on air and millions and millions of people turned over

- Stone Cold Stone Cold Stone Cold

- Stone Cold

- The Rock

- Stone Cold!

 

That's the story of WCW. I do wonder how much of that is internalized by the average fan.

The WWE has backed off of all this in it's recent DVD releases, to be fair.

[Steve Gennarelli]

It will be interesting later this year around Dec when "The History of WWE" comes to DVD.

 

Being that this is the 50th year of WWE and the fact that Bruno & Vince have reconcilled, I want to see a more factual telling of the history of the company.

 

I'm glad that Dave Meltzer has played a role in "hyping" Bruno and his contribution to wrestling and to the WWE. For instance, the other day on the Observer

website, Bruno won a poll that asked who the greatest WWE champion of all time was. If it wasn't for all of the Bruno coverage and interviews Dave has had this

year, I'm sure Stone Cold or even Hogan would have won that.

[RodTrongard'sHair]

Acknowledging the past is a great thing. But letting it dominate the future is suicidal. Imagine if the 3 biggest matches of Wrestlemania had been Hogan just narrowly defeating Bruno Sammartino, Piper getting squashed by a returning Gorilla Monsoon and Chief Jay Strongbow coming out of retirement to end the evil menace of Paul Orndorff once and for all? If someone had suggested that card to Vince in 85 he would have been fired or laughed out of the room but that's basically what we are getting for a Wrestlemania this year.

I haven't been on this board in awhile and I found this post interesting because I had almost this exact same conversation about a month ago.

 

There is a saying in the business world that if you aren't moving forward then you are dying. Sadly, pro wrestling is slowly dying and it is evident by the amount of sentiment and nostalgia going in the WWE.

 

That isn't to say there is anything wrong with nostalgia in-and-of itself, but as thebrainfollower posted, letting it dominate the future is suicidal. I don't watch Raw every week, but it does seem like that when I do I either always hit the nostalgia nights (anniversaries or the back to the 80's night). I think this is because the WWE simply can't produce stars anymore. Cena is arguably the biggest star right now and C.M. Punk kind of floats on the edge of stardom, but everyone else is stuck in the middle. As others have pointed out, that is why the part-timers have to be brought in for the Wrestlemania main events because if they didn't you wouldn't have much to draw fans in for the show.

 

About 10 years ago, on another message board, I posted that I thought Vince McMahon was turning into Verne Gagne and I was told I was crazy, but as time is passing by I feel stronger that I am correct. The world has passed Vince by and he doesn't know or refuses to change. The domestic wrestling audience continues to hold steady at a fraction of what it once was and rather than moving forward to try to attract new fans they are trying to survive by bringing back the old fans. You can say that Undertaker, Rock, and Brock have become Crusher, Dick the Bruiser, and Baron Von Raschke in that their days have come and gone but they are still being counted on to bring warm butts on to the cold seats.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

There is a saying in the business world that if you aren't moving forward then you are dying. Sadly, pro wrestling is slowly dying and it is evident by the amount of sentiment and nostalgia going in the WWE.

There is truth to that, but things still are salvageable in ways that Verne's AWA wasn't. For starters, Cena still pushes in good teen demos, so they are getting new fans. WWE's problem doesn't seem to be so much time passing by Vince as much as they have structural issues that hinder their product. Some of those issues are their cold feet in creating new stars after Lesnar bailed, too much TV (which makes them job out any potential star in less than 6 months), and their inability to make wrestling cool again when it can never be cool in a PG era (the product is only nominally PG during the Road to Wrestlemania).

[Matt D]

They're really quite good at finding new revenue streams. Doesn't that basically make everything else moot? If the product ever really does get hot again, everything's going to light up like a jackpot because of how well diversified they are. If it doesn't, they'll keep plodding along indefinitely.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

They're really quite good at finding new revenue streams. Doesn't that basically make everything else moot? If the product ever really does get hot again, everything's going to light up like a jackpot because of how well diversified they are. If it doesn't, they'll keep plodding along indefinitely.

That's what I'm thinking. The truth is that unless WWE books two-years of wildly incompetent booking like WCW, where there are no payoffs of sorts (which WWE has never done historically for any meaningful length of time), they'll always draw good ratings (even if their numbers hover around 2.0, which is not likely to happen). As long as they have good ratings, they'll have television. As long as they have television, they'll continue to make a profit. And even their profit margin now is deceptive and it's deceptive in a good way for WWE. If WWE wanted to, they could double their profits merely by cutting asinine revenue streams like WWE Movies.

[Matt D]

Traditionally, I feel like Vince's biggest issue has always been not knowing what to do with their excess money. Part of me thinks that if, instead of screwing around with icoPRO and the WBF and the XFL and the movies, they had created a more robust developmental system or focused even more money into breaking into international markets like it looked like they'd be doing with Shane in Japan or whatever, and just doubled-down on their main product, they would have been so much better off.

[NintendoLogic]

The explosion in rights fees for sports programming has boosted WWE's revenue tremendously. What happens to their bottom line if/when that bubble bursts?

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Traditionally, I feel like Vince's biggest issue has always been not knowing what to do with their excess money. Part of me thinks that if, instead of screwing around with icoPRO and the WBF and the XFL and the movies, they had created a more robust developmental system or focused even more money into breaking into international markets like it looked like they'd be doing with Shane in Japan or whatever, and just doubled-down on their main product, they would have been so much better off.

Exactly. I've long felt that if WWE would provide for the initial capital around the country necessary to replicate a quasi-territorial system, where competition within the ranks depended on getting a developmental contract (so there would still be the aura of indy wrestling), they'd have a self-sustaining system. Think just how much OVW itself did. Think what several OVWs could do.

[RodTrongard'sHair]

Traditionally, I feel like Vince's biggest issue has always been not knowing what to do with their excess money. Part of me thinks that if, instead of screwing around with icoPRO and the WBF and the XFL and the movies, they had created a more robust developmental system or focused even more money into breaking into international markets like it looked like they'd be doing with Shane in Japan or whatever, and just doubled-down on their main product, they would have been so much better off.

Exactly. I've long felt that if WWE would provide for the initial capital around the country necessary to replicate a quasi-territorial system, where competition within the ranks depended on getting a developmental contract (so there would still be the aura of indy wrestling), they'd have a self-sustaining system. Think just how much OVW itself did. Think what several OVWs could do.

 

Is there any evidence in the current wrestling market that this would even be a viable option. It isn't like there are a bunch of indy promotions that are running on a weekly basis that are slef-sustaining and it wouldn't be worth the investment to go the one or two show a month option. I don't think most fans would support a minor league system over the WWE. They already have FCW which is basically what OVW was. They've tried multiple farm groups in the past and it has never worked anywhere near what you are describing.