Dark Side of the Ring

[Ricky Jackson]

He had also been temporarily fired in late 86, right as his big feud with Piper was heating up, so yeah, things must've been pretty bad

[sek69]

2 minutes ago, Ricky Jackson said:

He had also been temporarily fired in late 86, right as his big feud with Piper was heating up, so yeah, things must've been pretty bad

They kind of implied that was due to the fight with Dan Spivey, which also was due to his drug use. It was amazing seeing guys who were in 80s WWF being like "wow that's a lot of coke" when the average tour back then was equivalent to the GNP of Columbia.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

Also wild he gained that much weight doing that much coke.

[The Thread Killer]

I have to admit, as a local fan it was nice to see The Kelly Twins and The Canadian Wildman get some form of exposure and kind of publicity even though it was for tragic reasons. Dave McKigney was such an interesting, influential and tragic figure in Canadian Pro Wrestling.

I also have to say…robbing a dead body is pretty much an all time scumbag move, even in the world of Pro Wrestling. Seriously, WTF?

[Zoo Enthusiast]

Yeah I audibly said “what the fuck” when that came out.

[sek69]

On 7/12/2023 at 8:34 PM, The Thread Killer said:

I also have to say…robbing a dead body is pretty much an all time scumbag move, even in the world of Pro Wrestling. Seriously, WTF?

I've been pretty broke in my life, but never have I  been "rob a recently deceased body" broke. 

[The Thread Killer]

On 7/12/2023 at 8:53 PM, Zoo Enthusiast said:

Yeah I audibly said “what the fuck” when that came out.

 

12 hours ago, sek69 said:

I've been pretty broke in my life, but never have I  been "rob a recently deceased body" broke. 

Sabu broke into the Pro Wrestling business doing “Bearman” tours for Dave McKigney, wrestling as “Terry SR.” McKigney was good friends with The Sheik as for the longest time, McKigney was the only promoter who would still book The Sheik. When I was a kid, McKigney was running independent shows all over small towns north of Toronto featuring The Sheik vs. Whipper Watson Jr. and then McKigney wrestling the bear.

A few years ago, Sabu was doing a shoot interview where he told the story about Adonis dying doing that Bearman tour. He told the part of the story about the other wrestlers robbing Adonis’s dead body at the scene of the crash. They actually used an audio clip of that interview in the DSOR episode.

I remember the interviewer being absolutely shocked at the idea that there was the crash, Adonis was lying there in the van dead, and other wrestlers came to the scene, and basically robbed his dead body.

Sabu told a story about the exact same thing happening to him. I don’t know if you remember, but a few years ago, Sabu was working for that Extreme Rising promotion in Philadelphia that was run by Shane Douglas. Sabu was in his motel and overdosed on Soma. He missed an autograph signing, so the promoter sent some guys to check on Sabu at the motel. They broke into his room and found him, and they thought he was dead, at the time it was actually reported online that Sabu had died. The wrestlers who went into his room and found him, robbed him of thousands of dollars in cash that he had been paid by the promoter and had in his room, and they also stole his watch, his boots, and the shoes off his feet as well. Then the called the cops to report he was dead…only to have the paramedics come to the scene and discover he was still alive. (I guess when you overdose on Soma it lowers your heart rate and blood pressure so much that you can’t feel a pulse.) Sabu got rushed to the hospital and when he eventually got out, he had no money and not even anything to put on his feet.

And as he put it during his interview, these were his “friends” who did this to him. “The Boys.”

[KawadaSmile]

I'm very fucking late to the DSotR discourse, but I just wanted to talk about Brawl For All, which will turn 25 in a couple of days. Russo, JR and Cornette talk about Steve Williams being a star in the WWF if not for Bart Gunn KO'ing him, and I never got why. By 1998 that man was looking ROUGH. 

Was JR that big of a homie that he'd push a Dr. Death/SCSA feud?

[Zoo Enthusiast]

On 7/27/2023 at 6:54 PM, KawadaSmile said:

I'm very fucking late to the DSotR discourse, but I just wanted to talk about Brawl For All, which will turn 25 in a couple of days. Russo, JR and Cornette talk about Steve Williams being a star in the WWF if not for Bart Gunn KO'ing him, and I never got why. By 1998 that man was looking ROUGH. 

Was JR that big of a homie that he'd push a Dr. Death/SCSA feud?

I think absolutely yes.

[Al]

Austin in late ‘98 was running out of opponents, so I don’t think Williams in theory was the worst idea. But once he started I think it was very quickly apparent that Williams was not suitable for a main event role.

[PeteF3]

I would add that the bar for something as or more compelling than the endless Undertaker-Kane CAHOOTS angle is not as high as people like to think.

[Robert S]

4 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

I would add that the bar for something as or more compelling than the endless Undertaker-Kane CAHOOTS angle is not as high as people like to think.

This. A couple of years ago I wanted to go through 98+99 WWF (as this is a period where WWF was off-the-air over here and even when they finally found a new station I rarely watched it) and man did the quality of the shows fell off a cliff in mid 98 when that angle started.

[PhilTLL]

I'm four years late to the show, but I've been binging it. Some are better than others. But I can't be the only one who thinks Jericho has sounded totally pilled out--probably benzos--on voiceovers the entire time. It's like putting the playback speed on 0.9x. The classic "drunk but not slurring" Xanax presentation.

[MLB]

Obviously, the booking and execution of Brawl for All was horrible. I wish we had gotten a BCC/Lion's Den type of stable with Shamrock, Severn, Blackman and Dr. Death instead. Regal was a hot mess, but it could've spared us of the Man's Man gimmick if he were involved. Tazz is another name that might've fit into this group down the line, possibly a mouthpiece for it. They were already running with gang warfare, another faction would have fit. They had the Lion's Den match concept that is still being used today. 

[PhilTLL]

Tales from the Territories is a flop. It's like Legends of Wrestling but with much worse editing and a terrible soundtrack, and without all the clips.

[rainmakerrtv]

As if it wasn't impossible already to take him seriously, it doesn't help the credibility of Russo at all that he can't get through a single sentence without saying "Bro".

[The Thread Killer]

On 8/2/2023 at 8:09 AM, rainmakerrtv said:

As if it wasn't impossible already to take him seriously, it doesn't help the credibility of Russo at all that he can't get through a single sentence without saying "Bro".

Tell me about it. I was finally starting to forget how much I couldn’t stand that jerk, but that episode brought it all back.

[fxnj]

Who do you people side with on the BATB 2000 debacle? Russo is Russo, but Bischoff also came across pretty bad between thinking that just having Jarrett lay down on a PPV match without doing Jarrett/Booker T later was a great idea and wanting to keep the title vacant until Halloween Havoc so Hogan can swoop in.

[rainmakerrtv]

2 hours ago, fxnj said:

Who do you people side with on the BATB 2000 debacle? Russo is Russo, but Bischoff also came across pretty bad between thinking that just having Jarrett lay down on a PPV match without doing Jarrett/Booker T later was a great idea and wanting to keep the title vacant until Halloween Havoc so Hogan can swoop in.

"A plague on both your houses."

[MoS]

I think it's a shitshow where both parties come out looking terrible. If I had to absolutely choose, I would choose Russo since, despite being objectively the worst thing to happen to pro wrestling, at least his scenario did not involve giving the title yet again to Hogan (just to David Arquette..). The only ones I feel really bad for are the fans who had to sit through the bullshit in real time, both this incident and all the other shit that was happening at that time. I am sure there are people posting on this board who were watching all of that unfold live, as and when these incidents happened. No wonder a lot of them got so burnt, they stopped watching wrestling forever when WCW folded. That entire generation of 2 million fans did not switch over to WWF and apparently never watched any wrestling again.

[Big Pete]

This era was actually my introduction to Pro Wrestling and back then for WCW it was a case of...

 

 

Whatever chance WCW had evaporated in late December/early January when they lost Goldberg, Bret Hart, Scott Hall, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn all in short order. There was some brief excitement when they did the April relaunch but the show was so rotten it just created a huge indifference.

Bash actually offered up a glimmer of hope because Booker T winning the title completely buried the lead. There was still that god awful New Blood Rising show, but WCW actually becomes reasonably easy to follow along with because they actually commit to Booker T, Big Poppa Pump, Sugar Shane Helms, The Natural Born Thrillerz etc.

In real time, I actually thought the whole thing was a play on Halloween Havoc '99 where Hogan laid down for Sting for reasons I'm unsure if they were ever made clear on television. I presumed it was all going to finally culminate in a Hogan/Bischoff vs. Jarrett/Russo match at Halloween Havoc 00 but it never came to fruition.

[flyonthewall2983]

On 8/1/2023 at 6:49 AM, PhilTLL said:

Tales from the Territories is a flop. It's like Legends of Wrestling but with much worse editing and a terrible soundtrack, and without all the clips.

I disagree, but don’t think it was meant to be a full time series anyway just something of an interesting side note to stories featured not exactly fitting the format, but essential to understanding the culture of the territory era. And some of the round tables were really good. Watching Jeff and Jerry Jarrett talk together was a touching thing to see.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

Marty Jannetty is such a gross dude.  Fitting choice for the season finale.

[MLB]

I caught the "Party" Marty episode, I mean wow. A lot of great footage even if you knew a lot of the stories. I did not know Shawn baptized Marty wtf? That's wild. Also, VKM talking about Jannetty, "Dammit! I love Marty but he's got a dark cloud over him!"  I had never heard about the scooter incident in India, I can't even-  

And good grief, did brother Bruti meet his match in Missy Beefcake or what?  

[NintendoLogic]

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It isn't a WWE production, so there shouldn't be the kind of revisionist history seen in company-produced documentaries on the subject. On the other hand, Dwayne may have his own axes to grind since he's likely been exposed to his share of company groupthink about big bad Ted Turner trying to put the WWF out of business. Also, I'm somewhat skeptical that the producers will be able to avoid being buffaloed by the likes of Bischoff and Russo.