Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[Laz]

Daaaaaaaaamn

[joeg]

Yep. I dunno if anybody else here was a regular at the indie shows in the mid-Atlantic area (ROH, ECWA, MCW, etc) the way I was as a kid, but Feinstein was always a fixture there and he was always friendly with the teenage kids. If you and your friends were at an ECWA show one week and and ROH show the next he remembered you and your names, remembered your parents names, he'd reach out on AIM or myspace to make sure you coming to the next show. He was kinda nerdy, but no more nerdy than anybody else at a wrestling show. It never felt weird. At the time it felt like that bartender who always takes care of the regulars. A few years later I was a freshman at college and news broke about the trouble he'd gotten into and it was like wow he wasn't just this good hearted if slightly awkward guy, he was a predator who was trying to groom the kids who went to those shows.     

[gordi]

Possibly the worst thing about that is how it might then make you suspicious of anyone who is just being kind without an agenda.

On a lighter note:

Over on DVDVR, a question was raised about how Japanese announcing and commentating differs from what we are used to in English. What I've done here is translate some of the commentary from the legendary Kawada vs Misawa June '94 match. I thought I'd cross-post it here in case anyone was interested.

My Japanese is good enough for most daily life situations, but listening to news or sports commentary at full speed is still tough for me. It's likely I've missed some of the nuances of what the announcers are saying.

 

At the top of the show:

Fukuzawa: If you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not., because we've learned that at our competition, Yoshiaki Fujiwara is going to wrestle Shinya Hashimoto for their world title! Heh. That's gonna put some butts in the seats.. Hah. 

Baba: Will you stop!

Wakabayashi: Fans, we've got a great night of action here for you here on Super Power Series! Abdullah The Butcher and  Giant Kamala are here! In tag team action, we've got Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Akira Taue & Tamon Honda... and what a main event we've got for you this evening!

Baba: A Triple Crown Title Match.

Wakabayashi: Champion Mitsuharu Misawa takes on top contender Toshiaki Kawada. It should be a real slobber-knocker!

Fukuzawa:  Both of those ham 'n' eggers attended Ashikaga Institute of Technology in Tochigi. What do you have to do there to graduate? Milk a cow with your left hand?

Baba: Gimme a break!

Fukuzawa: It's the greatest night in the history of our sport!

 

At around the 25-minute mark, Kawada crushes Misawa, whi is bleeding from his ear, with a dangerous backdrop followed up by two folding powerbombs:

Baba: Oh! Right on the external occipital protuberance!

Wakabayashi: Will somebody stop the damned match?

Baba: Good Gawd almighty!

Wakabayashi: Buh Gawd! Count faster! Put them out of their misery!

Fukuzawa: You know what's at stake? A man'll do anything!

Wakabayashi: Pulling out all the stops, Toshiaki Kawada doing whatever necessary to hang in there.

Fukuzawa: I'd do that to my own grandmother if I had to.

Baba: I'm sure you would.

 

Misawa puts Kawada away with the tiger driver '91:

Fukuzawa: Tiger Driver '91! Tiger Driver '91! Tiger Driver '91! 

Wakabayashi: As Gawd is my witness, Kawada has been broken in half!

Baba: What a maneuver!

Wakabayashi: He gave us everything he had in him, tonight.

Baba: This was the greatest night in the history of our sport.

Fukuzawa: The pleasure was all yours, Baba.

 

[Dav'oh]

I see what you did there...

Is Baba the really deep-voiced, mumble-mouthed, semi-comatose commentator I occasionally hear on AJPW matches? Whoever it is, he never gets mentioned in "Worst Commentator" discussions. Is that just out of respect, or are his comments so insightful/witty/interesting that how he says it is irrelevant. Because I can't imagine hearing him in his native tongue would make him any better, otherwise.

[gordi]

I imagine it's out of respect. I'd also assume he knows what he is talking about and makes the occasional trenchant or insightful comment.

Apparently, and astonishingly, AJPW has another guy with a similar voice who also does commentary (!) I don't know if he got the job because or in spite of that... but if it's true that means that sometimes the guy we think is Baba is in fact someone else. I think ohtani's jacket might have some insight into that. It was most likely he who told me about it.

 

I prefer not knowing, to be honest. I get a kick out of only kind of understanding what's going on and filling in the blanks for myself. That's basically how I get through life in Japan: by figuring out the gist of things based on pitch and tone, (and facial expressions and body language) as much as by the words and phrases I'm able to catch.

[Mattsdmf]

After only a couple weeks away from it, I got the itch to watch wrestling again but this time, I love watching IWA Mid-South shows from 2001-2003.  It’s so fun watching some of the weekly Clarksville, IN shows as they would set up angles and matches that would carry on to the next small show and set up matches for the bigger shows. Particularly in 2003, they were building to a cage match between Ian Rotten and Bull Pain and instead of having them wrestle each other, they would either cut promos or Bull would just squash jobbers and call out Rotten.

I really love the scuzzy look of the Clarksville building. Looks more like a run down garage then a community center.  Also the crowds are fun. You have equal parts families and older folks who come to boo the heels and cheer the faces, the few who might want to see workrate and then the deathmatch vampires. Even though there’s less then 100 people at any given time, they still add to the atmosphere.

Watching these shows reminded me how I really enjoyed the indie scene of the early to mid 2000s.  And I wish I had gotten into IWA MS more back then other than watching a match compilation here and there.

[MoS]

I thought of this while going through results of WWE cards: why has WWE never run a show in Yankee Stadium? It's in their home market and surely they would sell out for a big event. Even when they did a WrestleMania in the area, they preferred NJ.

[Ricky Jackson]

Good question. I guess there are a few reasons. I believe only two wrestling cards were ever held at the old, pre-2009 (or pre-1976 if you consider the result of the massive renovations in the 70s a completely new stadium) Yankee Stadium - one in the 30s and one at the peak of the Rocca era in the early 50s, and both pre-McMahon family promoting. Neither drew well, and as a result the stadium was never looked at as an option for future cards. The big cards of the 70s were all held at Shea Stadium instead, although I think Bruno once pitched the idea of a dream match between him and Andre being held at Yankee Stadium. Some major Ali fights were held at Yankee Stadium in the 70s. So I guess the lack of history is one factor. For years there was the concern of poor weather for a Mania in the New York area, until 2013. One of the reasons they ran MetLife that year was because they wanted to beat the NFL to the punch, (they held a Super Bowl there in 2014), which at times has been a Vince obsession regarding Mania sites. If the mindset regarding running a Mania in colder weather was different around 2010, there may have been a good chance they ran a Mania at Yankee Stadium then, when the new version had recently opened. Lower attendance for Yankee Stadium compared to MetLife and perhaps difficulty scheduling an event there with the MLB season starting around the same time are other factors 

[Cornette's racket]

6 minutes ago, Ricky Jackson said:

Good question. I guess there are a few reasons. I believe only two wrestling cards were ever held at the old, pre-2009 (or pre-1976 if you consider the result of the massive renovations in the 70s a completely new stadium) Yankee Stadium - one in the 30s and one at the peak of the Rocca era in the early 50s, and both pre-McMahon family promoting. Neither drew well, and as a result the stadium was never looked at as an option for future cards. The big cards of the 70s were all held at Shea Stadium instead, although I think Bruno once pitched the idea of a dream match between him and Andre being held at Yankee Stadium. Some major Ali fights were held at Yankee Stadium in the 70s. So I guess the lack of history is one factor. For years there was the concern of poor weather for a Mania in the New York area, until 2013. One of the reasons they ran MetLife that year was because they wanted to beat the NFL to the punch, (they held a Super Bowl there in 2014), which at times has been a Vince obsession regarding Mania sites. If the mindset regarding running a Mania in colder weather was different around 2010, there may have been a good chance they ran a Mania at Yankee Stadium then, when the new version had recently opened. Lower attendance for Yankee Stadium compared to MetLife and perhaps difficulty scheduling an event there with the MLB season starting around the same time are other factors 

Well wasn't the closing of Yankee stadium in the 1970's a case of if they didn't they'd lose it because it was an awful condition ? I consider there being only two Yankee stadiums. But anyway to answer the question, I mean they had MSG so maybe they didn't feel the need to run Yankee stadium and shea stadium was in New Jersey so they didn't see a need to run two venues in New York.

[Ricky Jackson]

From a pure practicality perspective, yes, there were enough other stadium/arena options in the area. But you would think the cachet of running at Yankee Stadium, a legendary, world famous venue, would've been attractive at some point. The WWF would've gotten a bigger "rub", so to speak, from running a show where Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, etc and great Yankee dynasties called home. It would've made them seem more important than running at Shea 

[NintendoLogic]

Shea Stadium actually was in NYC-Queens, to be exact. None of the WWF's cards at Shea came close to selling out, so they probably saw no reason to try to run a larger stadium. As for today, it probably just comes down to capacity. MetLife holds about 30,000 more spectators than Yankee Stadium, which means significantly more revenue both at the gate and in merchandise sales.

[MoS]

Thanks for the answers guys. I can see the capacity argument in the modern era. It's interesting, because I would have thought they would have run at least one Yankee Stadium show - or even one stadium show in the NY area - during the Hogan era, when WWF was expanding its fanbase greatly but still considered New York its home territory. 

[PeteF3]

Interestingly, there was noise in 1997 about a meeting between George Steinbrenner and Eric Bischoff to hold a Nitro at Yankee Stadium. That would have been maybe the ultimate "fuck you" move from Bischoff and now I'm kind of sad it never came to be.

[Cornette's racket]

6 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Shea Stadium actually was in NYC-Queens, to be exact. None of the WWF's cards at Shea came close to selling out, so they probably saw no reason to try to run a larger stadium. As for today, it probably just comes down to capacity. MetLife holds about 30,000 more spectators than Yankee Stadium, which means significantly more revenue both at the gate and in merchandise sales.

You are of course correct. I was looking at met life and shea and got the two mixed up. 

[brockobama]

Anyone happen to be familiar with the state of PPV services in Japan these days? Based on how much it came up in Observers in the late 90s and early 00s I have at least something of a grasp on it during that era but I'm curious about how that's changed over the decades and how it might relate to wrestling.

Also, been watching a lot of ECW Hardcore TV recently and it got me and my friend to talking about Shane Douglas and Francine. Has there ever been a better man and woman duo in wrestling, one where they jelled together perfectly, played their respective parts well, and both could talk? We bandied around Tully and Baby Doll, Sunny and Sherri and their various partners, but none of them felt like they were both on the same level as those two. We thought Sullivan and Woman had a shot but we've seen precious little of that footage.

[El-P]

7 hours ago, brockobama said:

Also, been watching a lot of ECW Hardcore TV recently and it got me and my friend to talking about Shane Douglas and Francine. Has there ever been a better man and woman duo in wrestling, one where they jelled together perfectly, played their respective parts well, and both could talk? We bandied around Tully and Baby Doll, Sunny and Sherri and their various partners, but none of them felt like they were both on the same level as those two. We thought Sullivan and Woman had a shot but we've seen precious little of that footage.

Totally agree. Shane & Francine was an awesome pair. The only one I'd even put in the same category, although in a completely different style is Savage & Sherri. But Shane & Francine together were monstruous heet-seekers. The promos were awesome, the intro was perfect, Francine was a terrific valet (honestly I put her against anyone), she wasn't afraid to bump hard and show ass (well, literally) and Shane was great in getting her involved the best way possible. This is neither here nor there, but you gotta love the fact Francine seems like an adorable person IRL (from the interviews she did the last few years).

I kinda got that feel back a bit when Cody & Brandi were working heels a few years ago, maybe that's why I became interested then (as Cody in WWE was exactly zilch to me).

[Pterois]

I'm pretty sure there were people at the time who were more interested in a Fujiwara/Hashimoto bout than a Misawa/Kawada one. It had the potential of being the Japanese fingerpoke of doom. Thank you gordy, I'd love to understand Japanese to know what the commentators say.

[pmo]

On 5/1/2020 at 3:08 PM, MoS said:

Thanks for the answers guys. I can see the capacity argument in the modern era. It's interesting, because I would have thought they would have run at least one Yankee Stadium show - or even one stadium show in the NY area - during the Hogan era, when WWF was expanding its fanbase greatly but still considered New York its home territory. 

Yeah I think there are some other factors.  Yankee Stadium is notoriously hard to get to and the second stadium sight lines would have been terrible, especially in the upper deck which had a large overhang.  Shea was proto cookie cutter and all the seats, save of a few rows in the back had a clear unobstructed view.  There's a reason football didn't return until the 3rd stadium was built it was just too hard a configuration.  

[Al]

I would also note that Yankee Stadium in the ‘70s probably would not have been a desirable venue. Despite the history the stadium itself was in bad condition pre-renovation and the Bronx at the time had a real crime problem. (Not that Queens was great, but Shea is near an airport). Today is better, but MetLife is probably more desirable than any other stadium for wrestling.

[ohtani's jacket]

21 hours ago, brockobama said:

Anyone happen to be familiar with the state of PPV services in Japan these days? Based on how much it came up in Observers in the late 90s and early 00s I have at least something of a grasp on it during that era but I'm curious about how that's changed over the decades and how it might relate to wrestling.

Also, been watching a lot of ECW Hardcore TV recently and it got me and my friend to talking about Shane Douglas and Francine. Has there ever been a better man and woman duo in wrestling, one where they jelled together perfectly, played their respective parts well, and both could talk? We bandied around Tully and Baby Doll, Sunny and Sherri and their various partners, but none of them felt like they were both on the same level as those two. We thought Sullivan and Woman had a shot but we've seen precious little of that footage.

Japan has a few cable and satellite providers, but most people are turning to streaming services. Around 20% of the population subscribe to a streaming service with Netflix being the most popular due to its original Japanese content. Pay TV penetration remains low, however, with only around 25% of households subscribing to a platform. 

[JRH]

Speaking of places I'd like the WWE to run, I'm surprised WWE never did any shows at Fenway Park, especially during Cena's run on top.

[NintendoLogic]

https://twitter.com/RickRudeSells

The greatest Twitter account in the history of our sport.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I just watched a 28 minute Shane Douglas promo in February 1995 (before there was Triple H, there was Shane Douglas. The similarities between the two are eerie. I do think HHH's redeeming quality is that he at least has a sense of humor. Douglas is so self-serious). It did give me a good review of Shane's career in ECW in 1993 & 1994. I dont think I had seen the famous throwing down of the NWA title, pretty crazy moment. 

Here's my question since I was a kid on the internet in the late 90s I would hear about how Shane Douglas hates Ric Flair and they eventually ran this as a part of the whole New Blood vs Millionaire's Club in 2000. I could never figure out why when I would search on the internet, I would just hear generic politics. Douglas makes a big point in this insanely long diatribe that he really hates Flair for politicking him out of a main event run in WCW. I checked Cagematch. Douglas left WCW in April of 1993 and I know they had to emergency replace him with Tom Zenk under hood for Slamboree in May. Flair was in WWF at the start of 1993 and returned what February 1993, MAYBE January 1993. You are telling me in three months Ric Flair rubbed Shane Douglas the wrong way so bad he left WCW? That seems bizarre to me. Here are my questions:

Did Shane leave WCW in April of 1993? Or was he fired? I assume he left because he left them in quite the lurch.

Why did he leave?

Is there any merit to his claim that Flair politicked him out of a main event run in three months?

Did Steamboat or anyone else push for a Douglas push?

1993 was the year of Vader, Douglas as a plucky white meat babyface, I could see him getting some mileage out of that, but hard to believe he was ready for primetime. 

Any thoughts on this would be great, always something I wanted to know. I think I heard Flair talk about it once with Austin or on his show claiming he didnt know what the Douglas heat was all about. Flair seems to have a clear memory of the 70s and 80s because he was having such a great time. The 90s seem really, really foggy for Flair and I think he has repressed a lot of those memories. So I dont think Flair can be trusted, but it really wouldnt surprise me if Flair was telling the truth and really no clue why Douglas was so pissed. 

 

[Rocco]

Douglas was also in WCW in 89 and 90 when Flair I think was the booker at that point so maybe there's something there.

[PeteF3]

Per Cornette: in early '90 Douglas was booked for a TV match against Cornette that was supposed to end on a DQ. Douglas was upset that he wasn't even able to pin a manager, so he went over the heads of Cornette (who booked the program) and Flair (the head booker) directly to Jim Herd to get it changed. I think a lot of the animosity started there. Douglas may have had a right to be upset, but a.) Cornette was the one guy on the committee trying to do something with the Dudes, and b.) going over your boss' head for a fairly simple complaint is a pretty bullshit tactic.