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The interesting Dave Meltzer posts thread


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ECW:

It had no chance to make money, just as Smoky Mountain (a territory) had no chance to make money.

 

The big boys had already taken over. Paul truly believed because of booking and his ability to manipulate everyone, he could overcome his huge financial disadvantages.

 

At the end, he realized he couldn't. He could have gone on. There were people willing to put in money but, like with Cornette, they faced the fact that it couldn't work. Not that it wasn't working. That it couldn't work.

 

The Vince supporting him stuff is so overblown. That's pretty much a myth created on a DVD.

 

Paying someone in a business losing $1 million per year a $52,000 per year consultant contract is not financially backing the company.

 

He did give a loan of $600,000 to keep him from going under in 2000, but that was to avoid a lawsuit since they had just started a TV deal and while still under contract, Vince started negotiating to steal the deal. And they were a lot more than $600,000 in debt. If Vince was really supporting them, they'd have never folded.

 

The territory idea wouldn't work. They'd have the run the same markets too often and burn them out, plus the whole "dream" was PPV and national merchandise deals because that's the revenue stream the guys he was competing with had.

 

They needed 1,700 paid the last year or two at a house show just to break even. Every now and then they got it, but never consistently. He lost money in Philadelphia selling out because the crowd made for great TV. He always termed the ECW Arena a loss leader in his eyes.

Earnings:

Rock made $10 million in 2000. He was the second highest single-year earner behind Austin.

Was Undertaker ever Red River Jack?

Myth was started by Brody, who said they used Calaway as Jack at different times. Since Matysik was his best friend in wrestling, he must have told him the same thing. Seems like a silly thing to make up, given that Calaway wasn't even a name in the business before Brody died. Calaway has done interviews saying he did the gimmick as well. Rick Davidson was the guy on TV.

Wrestlers' opinions of Scott Hall & Lex Luger:

Everyone I've talked with in wrestling about Hall as far as top guys go all say he was overrated and very difficult to have a good match with, but not impossible. Most respect that he was very smart as far as his ability to play to the cameras, and you get mixed responses on whether he was generous (putting people over)or cleverly selfish (lost to people in a manner he made sure he was the one getting over).

 

Regarding Luger and Steamboat, I talked to Steamboat regularly in 1989 when they had their great matches and Steamboat told me in specific that Lex called the Philadelphia and Baltimore matches, which were the two best ones of the series. He said Lex didn't want to call them because Steamboat was the veteran, but Steamboat told him that the heel calls.

The WWE significance of the Signature Pharmacy bust in a nutshell:

Too bad these reporters have zero sophistication on the issue.

 

Marion Jones was taking undetectable drugs provided by Balco, hence she wasn't caught. If certain wealthy WWE people had contacts with a lab making designer drugs, they could (and likely do) sneak through.

 

His rank-and-file $75,000 to $500,000 per year guys can't afford that stuff and are taking stuff prescribed by their local doctor, the real stuff the tests should catch.

 

The drugs his guys were taking with the except of the GH brigade, were the easiest to detect in a test.

 

Not one NFL or MLB player to this point was found on the Signature list passing for steroids the test should find. It's always GH, and everyone knows you can't really test accurately for htat.

 

There are 1700 NFL players and 700 MLB players. Not one. There are 67 WWE male roster guys and a dozen passed the test while taking drugs like Test and Stanazolol.

Hogan & Flair's importance in WCW:

Flair drew bigger ratings than Hogan, and WCW was all about ratings.

 

Hogan drew bigger buy rates than Flair and sold more tickets. Hogan was a bigger national star.

 

Flair was a bigger star in the Southeast.

 

Hogan's coming didn't turn WCW around. Nitro did and a roster that had more star power than any roster in history. In WCW's best year and hottest period, Goldberg was the draw. When WCW was doing those 30,000 fan Nitros, Hogan was doing one of his retirements and the company was doing its biggest house show business ever without him.

 

Hogan being portrayed as a bigger star than Flair wasn't bad. Flair not being competitive, that's bad. Flair being asked to put over Shane Douglas, and be used to get heat on so Brian Adams could make the save in an angle when Flair was the company's No. 2 ratings draw at the time? Insanity.

 

Anyone confusing the NWO with the Horsemen doesn't get it. The Horseman were about making the faces look good, to the extreme. If anything, they lost too much and sold too much. the NWO were about making the faces look impotent and not giving back at all. Both should have been closer to the center for long-term but Dusty booked to make himself look strong and the Horseman's job was to make Dusty look like he was still in his prime. The NWO was all about keeping the top spots for themselves and burying everyone else. Both versions killed companies.

Why the Congressional requests were worded the way they were:

they know full well they [TNA] don't test and don't have records. The letter is a formality to call them on the carpet for being in an industry with a clear history of drug problems and them doing nothing regarding it.

 

Same reason they asked WWE for records of their studies of the problem. They know full well they never studied the problem, and it's to ask them why they've ignored the problem for so long.

Gee, I wonder what he mean by that:

Reminds me of a conversation Vince had with Studd in 1984.

 

He told Studd that Andre needed an opponent and it would be a huge money slot. John was the best guy for it but he needed him bigger because he didn't pose enough of a physical threat. Keep in mind he weighed 320 on that day.

The British Bulldogs and the WWF expansion:

Okay, on the Watts thing, it was Joel Watts, not Erik, because Joel got the tapes from me and loved those guys. The idea was to feud them with the R&R's. Joel pushed for it, but Bill Dundee, who was the booker, said they would never draw any money. Bill finally okayed it 2-3 days after the Bulldogs (who weren't known yet as the Bulldogs) had agreed to go to WWF.

 

They had been there for a few weeks after Stu sold Stampede, since the deal was Bret, Neidhart, Dynamite and Davey would get jobs in exchange for the sale. WWF at first didn't want any of them (Vince now writes history claiming he bought the territory to get them, in fact, he bought because Stu had great TV outlets throughout Western Canada, then after one year, reneged on paying him which is why Stu re-opened, but without his TV's). Dynamite knew it and they quit. I think they got the new All Japan deal in late 84 so they were getting $6200 per week, or in that neighborhood. Neidhart worked a year in Mid South and spoke highly of it, so my guess is had the call come at the right time, they'd have taken it. I don't think Bill ever contacted them, because Joel told me Bill gave the green light, and I told Joel they had just signed with WWF to go back.

 

Vince was losing money on his expansion until Mania of 1985, which was the big success that saved the company. They were way behind on bills. Inoki's big booking fee ($500,000) came at a time when a lot of TV stations were getting concerned, to say the least, about being behind in money. I don't recall any serious money issues after Mania I until the 92-96 period when attendance fell to dangerously bad levels and the other revenue streams weren't what they are today, nor did they have international developed like now. Vince took out a few high dollar loans to keep going in the 90s, but the late 97 turnaround allowed him to pay them back and get rich a second time.

I didn't mean Stu re-opened without TVs, but Vince had gotten valuable Western Canadian TV outlets for late 1984 when he made his move.

 

I just find it hilarious that Vince now tells the story about how Bret, Dynamite & Davey were such great talents that he knew about, and that's why he wanted to buy the territory, when it was all about getting everyone's TVs and being the monopoly promotion everywhere.

The Andersons and other tangents (from a giant Ole thread):

More money than the Road Warriors? No way. Road Warriors drew everywhere they went early on as attractions. Yes, as far as weekly in the same city, I'm sure the Andersons would be better because the Warriors burned places out by killing their opponents, but the Road Warriors were international superstars in demand everywhere. They remained major stars in big money territories from 1983 through 1992, when they broke up. Promoters flew them in for special events everywhere. They weren't just territorial stars, even in the territory days. From the start, they did Georgia, Mid South, Jarrett right away and were successful; were stars in AWA & Crockett at the same time; plus worked big shows in Montreal, Oregon, KC and everywhere else, not to mention Japan where they made $10,000 per week from their third year in the business. Road Warriors were not the main event, but they were high on the card and leading attractions on $100,000 houses too numerous to mention in the U.S., nightly in Japan and some gates that topped $750,000 and headlined a Tokyo Dome show that did more than $2 million and were so strong they were put over Hogan & Tenryu. I don't believe Gene & Ole ever headlined a $100,000 house in their lives, which may not be totally fair because it wasn't as much of a big show business when they were stars, but they didn't draw more money then the Road Warriors. Road Warriors vs. Hogan & Tenryu in one night drew more money than the entire Georgia promotion would do in seven months. And the Andersons made nowhere close.

 

Gene & Ole were making $1,000 per week at the peak of the Anderson Brothers as a tag team in Georgia. Ole later made $2,400 a week and points, as booker and top heel in Atlanta, but Gene was long gone by then. If money was the be-all and end-all for Ole, why was he never a national star? Your clear-cut Hall of Fame guys, Brisco, Bruno, Wahoo, Mascaras, Valentine, Dusty, Ladd, Sheik, Funk, etc. from that era may have worked territories as well, and Dusty was based in Florida forever, then the Carolinas forever, but they also worked big dates outside of their territory because they were in demand for big shows all over the world. The idea they were so good they didn't have to leave is valid--to a point. But the only Hall of Fame comparison to that would be Lawler and Fargo, both of whom had years of drawing 300,000 and up fans in one city during the course of a year, something very few men in history have ever done, and once you bring up the television wrestling tradition that one started and the other made bigger, you are talking about a different stratosphere.

 

Gene & Ole weren't brought into California for the Battle Royals like the biggest superstars of that era were. They weren't brought into the AWA for a stadium show. They were never outside talent brought into the Superdome, at least when I was following the business. When I spoke to Jim Barnett about when TBS got national exposure in the late 70s and its stars became stars everywhere, he said the guys in demand were Rhodes, Rich, Atlas, Flair and Piper. Bill Eadie and John Walker were in more demand for outside dates. So while he was booker and top heel, even when he had national exposure, Ole was not in demand by promoters like a Hall of Fame wrestler should have been. The exception that I do remember to this, which was the smallest wrestling crowd I ever was at in the Cow Palace, was when Shire brought in Dusty vs. Ole as the main event in 1980 and there were maybe 500 fans.

 

They did one tour of Japan, I think, because they were not stars there at all, and All Japan in that era offered more money to mid-carders than Carolinas and Georgia main eventers earned on top for the most part.

 

When Paul Boesch and Eddie Graham in the early 70s brought in an outside tag team to headline, it was Stevens & Bockwinkel, for one-shots, even though they were AWA guys. For a local example, in the mid-60s, when Stevens & Patterson were SF's top tag team, they were brought into many other territories for big shows.

 

As far as Ole and the Hall of Fame goes. If Ole was a strong candidate, why do his peers, the wrestlers of the 70s, not see it? They were ultimately the same group of people who were the impetus to get Wahoo in, most of whom all voted for Benoit and Michaels, and almost none of whom voted for Ole when he was on the ballot, and this includes several wrestlers who were stars in the territory at the same time as Ole.

 

Yes, the first year in the first class I could have put Ole in, and did consider it because he was a great heel and awesome talker. Ultimately, was he a bigger star all over the world than Wahoo or Murdoch, who I considered as the borderline in 1996? My opinion was Wahoo carried many territories and was in demand by promoters for out dates. Ditto Murdoch, who was a huge star in Japan and St. Louis for out dates as well as a headliner in every territory he worked. If a guy wasn't clear cut bigger than them from their era or had an amazing local drawing record that couldn't be ignored, they weren't getting in. The entire reason for balloting was so a lot of people could look at the various candidates, from Moolah to Backlund to Albano, that were controversial and borderline.

 

After that point, it's been up to balloters. When it became clear that Ole was not going to make it, I switched to putting the Anderson Brothers as a team because people who were friends with Ole suggested the team was stronger than the individual, similar to what happened when it was clear Terry Gordy and Michael Hayes would never make it, so we grouped them as The Freebirds team. They never got serious support. It's not Murdoch, who his contemporaries were strong on, and wrestlers are strong on, but historians aren't and will probably never make it but has come close in the past. It's not Dragon and Undertaker who got great support from their contemporaries, but not as great from others.

 

Regarding Ole as a booker, I thought he was great in 1979 when we started watching Georgia, and had some great times after that as well, but by 1983, the place was going down bad. Yes, he booked Atlanta profitably in 1978 and 1979, but to make the comparison with Cornette and Heyman's success is ridiculous. First, Cornette & Heyman started companies basically from scratch, and booked during a period when they were fighting two national monster companies. At best, to their audience, they were going to be a fun No. 3. Ole got the book in 1978 or so of a company that made seven figure profits annually for at least four or five years. It was the only game in town, and it was an established juggernaut locally. By 1980, when Ole was the booker, that company was running in the red, and that was four years before McMahon expanded.

 

Now it would be unfair to blame Ole's booking alone, because Barnett overspent, and when Ole got rid of Barnett, even though the popularity of the product was down (similar to 2003 WWE), he did enough cost cutting to bring it back in the black. But in cost cutting but removing the base of talent, the shareholders were worried about it long-term, and went to Vince and cashed out. It should also be noted that Barnett overspent during the good years when everyone made money, and that attendance did drop in the 80s, which was due to Ole's booking.

Why are the Andersons no-brainers when their contemporaries, a few of whom had brains and several of whom were regulars in the same territory, didn't vote for them?

 

I can accept arguments for them them as borderline picks, but borderline at best. A no-brainer is Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki, Andre the Giant or Terry Funk. To argue they were that caliber of a star is ridiculous.

 

To me, the Andersons as no-brainers are the equivalent of Bill Mazeroski as a no-brainer in baseball. People argued for Mazeroski for years and either way, it's borderline at best. They weren't the Mickey Mantle or Hank Aaron's of their profession.

 

Buddy Rose is someone that nobody would call a Hall of Famer. Buddy was the No. 1 guy in his territory for something like 8 years, headlined in WWF, and was one hell of a talented worker. He drew very well, and consistently topped $50,000 per year in earnings in the Oregon territory. It was an easy traveling territory and he never had to leave. In the state of Oregon, I'll bet everyone who grew up during the late 70s, even those who aren't fans, would recognize his name. He helped book and had a great wrestling mind. He was the No. 1 man in his territory for years. Ole was never the No. 1 man in his territory, or if he was, it was very briefly. Rose went to New York and main evented. He went to San Francisco and main evented, and was a consistent 8,000 per show draw at the Cow Palace until the whole place fell apart. Are Rose's credentials strong enough to be in the Hall of Fame ahead of Dick Murdoch, Bill Miller, Wilbur Snyder, Undertaker, Bob Backlund and Masahiro Chono?

I don't know what attendance figures were for every city on the circuit when the Andersons were on top, but citing 12,000 in Greensboro and 9,000 in Charlotte as regular figures is ridiculous.

 

Charlotte Coliseum held around 10,000 legit although they worked the number like they did everywhere else and said 11,000. On December 25, 1978, for a show headlined by Ric Flair vs. Blackjack Mulligan and Paul Jones vs. Ricky Steamboat, they sold the building out for wrestling. It was the first time Charlotte sold out for wrestling since 1963 during the heyday of the Bolos. The Andersons in all those years never sold it out once.

 

The most successful consistent period for Greensboro from 1976-78. During that period, they usually did 7,000 every few weeks, and that's excellent, and even topped 11,000 once (on Thanksgiving). The main draw was Flair, although the Andersons vs. Flair & Valentine was a hot feud and I think topped 9,000 in Greensboro two or three times.

 

Except for the Starrcades, there were very few sellouts of the Greensboro Coliseum for wrestling, and I don't think Charlotte after 1978 sold out again until Dusty was booking and had the big hot run around 1985. In Greensboro, There was the Steamboat & Youngblood vs. Slaughter & Kernodle match in 1983, there was the U.S. title tournament when Johnny Valentine went down, and there were a few during the Flair-Rhodes heyday and a Flair-Windham sellout that shocked everyone because it came out of nowhere.

 

There is no way the Anderson's name recognition in the Carolinas is close to Lawler or Fargo. Fargo was the wrestling superstar in Tennessee, Kentucky and the whole Gulas territory which went into Alabama, for 15 years. Lawler was his successor. Everyone watched wrestling on television in the community during Fargo and Lawler's heyday. There is no city in the country that touched the ratings not only in Memphis, but Louisville, Lexington and Nashville in the early 70s, which were doing 10-13 ratings and Memphis topped 20's. Charlotte during the Flair heyday was doing 7's, and that was considered great. I've seen Lawler live in Memphis, and seen Ole live in Greensboro. Ole was a big star to be sure, but he's not even in the same league in his home area as far as recognition and legendary status as Lawler. Ask 100 people in Memphis who the biggest local wrestling star in history was, and you'll get 90 answers of Lawler or Fargo. Ask 100 people in Charlotte, and I'll bet you'll get 90 Ric Flair's and if you're lucky, one or two Anderson Brothers.

 

All the super Bowl stories this week about the biggest sports star in Charlotte from now and 20 years ago say Flair. I doubt Ole would be in the top five as draws, as based on what I've been told, Valentine, Wahoo and Mulligan were way ahead of Ole and when Flair vs. Steamboat was at its peak, they were doing very well.

 

The gate for the Hogan & Tenryu vs. Road Warriors match on the SWS show was $2.1 million, which is roughly equivalent to seven months of business of the Georgia territory during its hottest time period.

 

As for Terry Funk, aside from Calgary, Toronto, WWF (his feud with JYD drew, and his match with Hogan on NBC set what was then an all-time record TV rating), Georgia (big houses as champion), Florida (feud with Rhodes is among the most famous ever in that territory), Memphis (feud with Lawler was one of Lawler's best), Texas, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Houston, WCW (Flair vs. Funk was the company's best drawing feud from 1989 until 1996), All Japan, FMW (41,000 for Onita in what was barely a major league office) and maybe IWA (he was the biggest star on a stadium show that drew more than 28,000), I don't know anywhere off the top of my head that Terry Funk ever drew a dime in.

1) The [1997 WWF] schedule was a complete coincidence. The schedule in those days was done about a year out, long before Bret came up with the idea they all thought was nuts (including Owen & Pillman) of being a face in Canada & Europe and a heel in the U.S.

 

2) The only reason I brought up the Tokyo Dome SWS show is because it was written that the Andersons drew more money than the Road Warriors, and there is no way that was possible.

 

3) Japanese TV ratings in the 70s and into the mid-80s, because the shows aired network prime time, were higher than those for any U.S. promotion other than Memphis. In the 70s, a lot of the Southeastern groups (Florida, Georgia, Mid-Atlantic) did fantastic ratings for UHF stations or for non prime-time programming, but New Japan was doing 20+ ratings every Saturday night in the early 80s, and still 15-20's through about 1985, when things started falling. But even when New Japan was moved to Saturday afternoons, they did 6-7 ratings every week. All Japan circa 1990 was setting all-time national records for its time slot.

 

I think Mid Atlantic had better per capita attendance, but again, that's very different. Mid Atlantic was charging $5 for ringside and kids got in for $1 at the Greensboro Coliseum in the mid-70s. By the late 70s that was $6 and $2.50 for kids. In Japan, wrestling was presented as more of a high class activity. when I started going in 1984, a spot show ticket would be 3,000 yen to 7,000 yen, which in those days was $15 to $35, and no kids prices. After the dollar went down, it was $30 to $70. Big show ringside was 10,000 yen in those days (a little above or below $100) and now it's 30,000 (which today is $280) and Pride is getting 100,000 (about $940) yen for ringside.

I hope nobody denies Ole Anderson was a great heel and a great talker. But is he a stronger candidate than: Mark Lewin, Curtis Iaukea, Dick Murdoch, Bill Miller, Barry Windham, Sgt. Slaughter, Sting (for better or worse, was one of the 5-10 biggest stars in North America for most of a 14 year period even though his company sucked for all but a few of those years), Masahiro Chono, Undertaker (on the biggest non-WM PPV events in main events, all-time cable audience record holder), Bob Backlund (40+ MSG sellouts), Pedro Morales (Top star in WWWF, California, Florida, Puerto Rico and just about everywhere he went except Carolinas where he was buried), Pat Patterson (who most consider an all-time great worker and was the biggest star in his territory for 7 years and drew well the entire time, but I don't think if he didn't have his stint as WWF booker that he'd even be in), Wilbur Snyder, Killer Karl Kox, Gorilla Monsoon, Ivan Koloff (who during the Ole & Ivan days, Ivan was clearly the worker of the team), Dick Slater (a contemporary of Ole's, considered for NWA title which Ole never was considered for), Johnny Powers, Jimmy Snuka, Archie Gouldie, Blackjack Mulligan, Blackjack Lanza, Bill Eadie, Chavo Guerrero Sr., Jim Hellwig, Rick Martel, Kerry Von Erich, Terry Gordy, Michael Hayes, Davey Boy Smith, Rick Rude, Jake Roberts, Steve Williams, Owen Hart, Curt Hennig, Adrian Adonis, Jesse Ventura, Scott Hall, Yokozuna (main evented a couple of Wrestlemanias), Ken Shamrock, Masa Saito, Tim Woods, Paul Jones, Bearcat Wright, John Tolos, Dutch Savage, Rocky Johnson, Peter Maivia, Johnny Walker, Paul Orndorff, Ken Patera, Don Muraco, Jerry Blackwell, Badnews Allen, JYD, Carlos Colon, Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, Hard Boiled Haggerty, the Sharpe Brothers, Red Bastien, Lonnie Mayne, Dick Hutton, Leo Nomellini, Haystacks Calhoun, Hans Schmidt, Bob Ellis, Ilio DiPaolo, Bull Curry, Charlie Moto, Kinji Shibuya, Mario Milano, Sputnik Monroe, Duke Keomuka, Sam Steamboat, Buddy Colt, Pepper Gomez, Bobby Managoff, Spyros Arion, Gordman & Goliath, Miguel Perez Sr., Johnny Weaver, John Boyd, Bull Ramos, Ron Fuller, The Fabs, Jerry Graham, Thunderbolt Patterson, Blackie Guzman, Rito Romero, and Pak Song all drew money somewhere at some point in their careers or someone at some point considered them great wrestlers. A few drew record money that held up for years.

 

Many were big stars and a few (Mayne comes to mind) are absolute legends in their territories. You can make a good case for a lot of these guys, and a very weak case for many of them. Point being, none are in, and in all but a few cases if they were, it would be watering down the ranks. There is no perfect system in any subject for this, just a defining line of who is better and who is worse than this imaginary line.

 

To me, Ole is pretty close to that line. But there are many people on the aforementioned list just as close, and many who are probably closer. I think anyone would have to admit at least 30 names on that list would be comparable in credentials to Ole.

 

And on the Boesch deal about tag teams, Boesch regularly brought in Stevens & Bockwinkel from the AWA, who were contemporaries of the Andersons. If he thought the Andersons were the best team in the country at the time, they'd have been the ones who got the call. He also brought in Gordman & Goliath from California for main events during the same period of time.

And except for Chono, I didn't even think about Japanese or Mexicans who worked primarily in their native country (Guzman was a Texas guy who was a strong draw, Saito worked most of his career in the U.S. but was a big star in both countries).

Later in that thread, from Mopey, not Dave, but I found it hilarious since it's Tito Santana:

Tito Santana said in a recent interview that Ole Anderson was, "the only wrestler that I met in my career that I have nothing good to say about."

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So I can't actually find the Ole HOF thread but...

hope nobody denies Ole Anderson was a great heel and a great talker. But is he a stronger candidate than: Mark Lewin, Curtis Iaukea, Dick Murdoch, Bill Miller, Barry Windham, Sgt. Slaughter, Sting (for better or worse, was one of the 5-10 biggest stars in North America for most of a 14 year period even though his company sucked for all but a few of those years), Masahiro Chono, Undertaker (on the biggest non-WM PPV events in main events, all-time cable audience record holder), Bob Backlund (40+ MSG sellouts), Pedro Morales (Top star in WWWF, California, Florida, Puerto Rico and just about everywhere he went except Carolinas where he was buried), Pat Patterson (who most consider an all-time great worker and was the biggest star in his territory for 7 years and drew well the entire time, but I don't think if he didn't have his stint as WWF booker that he'd even be in), Wilbur Snyder, Killer Karl Kox, Gorilla Monsoon, Ivan Koloff (who during the Ole & Ivan days, Ivan was clearly the worker of the team), Dick Slater (a contemporary of Ole's, considered for NWA title which Ole never was considered for), Johnny Powers, Jimmy Snuka, Archie Gouldie, Blackjack Mulligan, Blackjack Lanza, Bill Eadie, Chavo Guerrero Sr., Jim Hellwig, Rick Martel, Kerry Von Erich, Terry Gordy, Michael Hayes, Davey Boy Smith, Rick Rude, Jake Roberts, Steve Williams, Owen Hart, Curt Hennig, Adrian Adonis, Jesse Ventura, Scott Hall, Yokozuna (main evented a couple of Wrestlemanias), Ken Shamrock, Masa Saito, Tim Woods, Paul Jones, Bearcat Wright, John Tolos, Dutch Savage, Rocky Johnson, Peter Maivia, Johnny Walker, Paul Orndorff, Ken Patera, Don Muraco, Jerry Blackwell, Badnews Allen, JYD, Carlos Colon, Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, Hard Boiled Haggerty, the Sharpe Brothers, Red Bastien, Lonnie Mayne, Dick Hutton, Leo Nomellini, Haystacks Calhoun, Hans Schmidt, Bob Ellis, Ilio DiPaolo, Bull Curry, Charlie Moto, Kinji Shibuya, Mario Milano, Sputnik Monroe, Duke Keomuka, Sam Steamboat, Buddy Colt, Pepper Gomez, Bobby Managoff, Spyros Arion, Gordman & Goliath, Miguel Perez Sr., Johnny Weaver, John Boyd, Bull Ramos, Ron Fuller, The Fabs, Jerry Graham, Thunderbolt Patterson, Blackie Guzman, Rito Romero, and Pak Song all drew money somewhere at some point in their careers or someone at some point considered them great wrestlers.

OK of those guys guys now in the HOF who Meltzer at one point thought were comparable to Ole (some of whom he was strong advocate for inclusion):

 

 

Bob Backlund

Masahiro Chono

Undertaker

Michael Hayes/ Terry Gordy

Is Ken Shamrock in?

I thought Pat Patterson was in the original class.

Who am I missing?

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Re: the 11/2/73 show at the Olympic Auditorium:

I was at that show in question. Mr. Wrestling was Gordon Nelson. I think Dr. Death was Hans Mortier. Yamamoto was Kantaro Hoshino. It was a bad show.

 

Tolos-Monsoon was awful. Both guys by that point were good talkers but neither was much in the ring. Tolos won with an ultra-weak chair shot after Monsoon sold almost nothing.

 

Valentine had an issue with LeBelle. He did one TV ten days or so earlier and destroyed Bengali. The next week he wasn't there at TV but they pretended he was. It was pitiful. Jeff Walton called him out for an interview and nobody came out. Walton started going, "Rocky (he was called Cowboy Rocky Valentine, not Johnny Valentine), don't be shy, the people want to see you." On the TV the Wednesday before, Walton said how Monsoon beat Cowboy Rocky Valentine in a match so badly that Valentine will never wrestle again. Said he broke his back, and how now Monsoon is coming in to get Tolos.

WCW '91:

Windham in 1991 was NEVER supposed to get the title. Luger was.

 

Windham's name only came up because Jim Herd knew Flair was going to be fired before the Bash, when he was to drop it to Luger, because he wasn't going to give in to Flair's demands for two more years at $350,000 per year to drop it clean.

 

Then, out of nowhere, Herd realizes it's screwed and Flair isn't using to Luger. Only then, Windham's name comes up for a TV taping just a few days later. Windham was only in the spot because they knew Flair liked him so much that Ric wouldn't dare deny Windham his shot, even though it was a fake shot as Barry was going to lose to Lex two weeks later since that's who they wanted as champ. Flair wasn't that much of a mark to agree without his extension. Flair and Herd argued and Herd fired Flair. The truth is, nobody knows if Flair would have come and put Windham over. I talked with him and Herd both as this was going on and Herd just didn't understand the business. Flair said he, in the end, since he was leaving, would have put Barry over but was fired first. But I'm not sure that's what would have happened, or wouldn't have. Vince wanted the belt for the angle.

 

Either way, Barry Windham was a pawn and at the time was never going to be long-term champion. His feeling Flair screwed him showed he was badly manipulated by people wanting to bury Flair on the way out as opposed to seeing what the situation was.

 

The funniest part of the deal was the minute Heenan showed up on TV holding the belt, Herd called Flair and offered him two more years at $700,000 per year to come back. And all he needed was to offer him $350,000 per a month earlier and none of that would have happened.

Biggest star in wrestling history:

El Santo, Inoki and Rikidozan are tons bigger in their culture than Hogan is in our culture.

 

Hogan is probably the biggest star worldwide but a lot of people who live in this country can't truly conceive of how big Rikidozan was in his heyday, or Santo is even today 23 years after his death. Hogan is considered a well known "B" celebrity in our culture. Rikidozan is considered one of the most important figures in history in Japan. He's in history books that they teach in school. Santo is one of the three or four most popular figures in Mexican culture. He's bigger than any president Mexico ever had as far as popularity goes. Having been around both Hogan and Inoki in public places, there is no comparison the reaction. The only person I've personally witnessed getting the "Red Sea parted" treatment at the level of Inoki was Ali.

 

 

I'm pretty sure 40 years from now that Rikidozan and Santo will be far better remembered than Hogan.

 

Still, because our culture goes more worldwide, I'd be tempted to vote for Hogan over Santo, but that could be wrong. So much of the world in places like South America where nobody knows Hogan, they know Santo. Rikidozan is unknown outside of Japan and Korea.

The giant North Korean shows in '95:

did you see the show?

 

If you did and watched how the entire crowd had trained to be part of the show, you'd know that almost all were there as fans in the same way the cheerleaders and marching bands are there at college football games.

 

Forced at gunpoint, no. Part of their civic duty to attend. Absolutely.

 

But largest two crowds ever by a huge margin.

Did Buddy Rogers really have a heart attack right before the Bruno match?

Buddy was adamant he was pulled out of a hospital bed to drop the title and that's why it only went 48 seconds. I'm not saying he was telling the truth, only that is his side of the story.

 

Fact that Buddy, after being the biggest draw in wrestling, didn't wrestle much except one minute spurts in tag matches from that point on for a long time seems to indicate something was wrong.

 

Whether it was a heart attack, I have no idea. But there was clearly a heart issue during that time frame.

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He's not saying that list of wrestlers is equal to Ole, he's saying they are better candidates, some clearly and some marginal.

 

I didn't say equal to.

 

At least based on what Bix has pasted he's making a distinction between "no brainers" and guys levels below that. guys who's candidacy he thinks offers interesting comparisons with Ole. some bettercandidates, some lesser candidates, some equivalent.

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Self-explanatory:

The product today is written and marketed for what amuses Vince McMahon, not what anyone believes will draw the maximum amount of money.

 

Believe me. Talk with anyone who has written TV there and there are no discussions about angles drawing money, it is writing things to get Vince McMahon's approval. They know the 11-year-old sense of toilet humor is job security, so that's what they write for.

Hogan claims he tore his lat slamming Andre at WM3:

I don't know when Hogan tore his lat, but he did tear it.

 

He first showed the tear when doing an AWA angle in the early 80s with Patera & Ventura. Angle was they tore his lat and he had the damage, either from an earlier or perhaps more recent tear.

 

Not saying he didn't tear it again in 1987, although nobody seemed to have ever heard that story until ten years later including Vince McMahon. Just that the indentation and the fact he absolutely had a tear predated the match.

Highest rated wrestling TV shows:

Memphis. Nobody else was ever even close.

 

Mid South, Dallas, Columbus, GA (70s during the Wrestling II era), Carolinas all did very well in the early and mid 80s, but Memphis was a world ahead of everyone.

Greg Oliver replies:

Where does the Hawaii promotion fit in? I've had guys tell me that at its peak, the Ed Francis-promoted show had 50% of the audience on the Islands on Saturday afternoons from 4:30 pm to 6 pm.

Dave:

A 50 share is pretty high. then again, in the 60s in Hawaii if this was the case, there may have only been 3-4 TV stations. It's like Puerto Rico, where they still do 30 shares and sometimes 40 shares and occasionally hit 10 ratings but there aren't a lot of stations.

 

Memphis consistently hit 70 shares at its peak and ratings over a 20.

Hogan and the AWA title:

Verne never "screwed up" by not offering Hogan the title.

 

Hogan was offered the title and turned it down. There were political issues at the time. The AWA championship was part of a deal with Gagne and All Japan Pro Wrestling. Hogan had his own deal with New Japan Pro Wrestling. Gagne could have switched sides (and apparently it was talked about) and allowed Hogan to go to New Japan as AWA champ, but Hogan turned down switching to All Japan (which was the less popular company at the time, although that changed a year plus later).

 

Gagne wanted his booking fee and Hogan, who was making top dollar from New Japan, didn't want Gagne getting a cut.

 

In the end, Hogan turned down the title. It was best for all concerned. When Vince came calling, no way Hogan would have done a job on the way out. Whether Hogan would have wanted to be professional is speculative, but Vince wanted the top guys to walk out without doing jobs (some guys, like Steamboat, refused to do it) on the way out so there would be no tape to show of Hogan losing. If Hogan was AWA champ, he was not staying when Vince made the call.

 

Either way Verne was screwed, but had he made Hogan AWA champ, he'd have been screwed more. Plus, he still had his money from Baba.

Dave's take on Brody vs Luger:

I think I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again.

 

That match was the second of two matches they had. There may have been a few others scheduled that week but Luger left the territory a few days earlier then planned. I don't recall if Brody was staying past the two days.

 

Luger was leaving for the Crockett territory at the end of the week. Brody was just starting out in the territory. The promotion wanted Brody to go over strong in both matches because that's how business was done. Luger said since he was going to Crockett, he couldn't do it. I don't recall what the finish was the first night, but do recall it wasn't the finish the office wanted, with Matsuda telling Brody that Luger wouldn't put him over.

 

Luger and Brody had breakfast the morning of the match in question. This is not meant as a defense of Brody's actions, just his reasoning. Luger was telling Brody he signed a $350,000 per year contract and couldn't put him over. That was Brody's motivation.

 

Afterwards, when Luger climbed out and left the building, Matsuda was going crazy in a positive way telling Ron Simmons and Dewey Forte, who were just breaking in, "That's what happens to a football player who thinks he's above the sport." Matsuda didn't tell Brody what to do, but he was 100% behind him for doing it. Doesn't make it right. And he didn't have any razor blades.

 

His words the next day were he was going to stand there until Luger blew up throwing punches, saying it wouldn't be long, because "that guy is so filled with steroids he's gassing out in two minutes," and then he won't know what to do.

 

Crockett then called up Matsuda and was screaming at him for putting the next Hulk Hogan in a position where he could have gotten hurt.

 

For sure, because Brody was a babyface in Texas at the time had nothing to do with it because he never said anything like that at the time it happened. Luger's attitude is what pissed Brody and the office off.

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Re: The Hogan/lat story. It seems conceivable to me that the injury COULD have occurred during an early Hogan/Andre match in 1980/81. Hogan did slam Andre in early bouts, so Hogan would only have the date wrong in his story.

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Race or Gagne?

As far as being a legitimate draw, Verne was a $100,000 per year guy by the early 50s at a time when maybe four guys in wrestling were at that level, so he'd have to have been a huge draw. He was still a big draw in 1981, so you're talking 30 years.

 

Harley Race was a regional star but no kind of a draw until 1973. I'd say he ceased to be a draw in 1984. When he went to WWF, he was no draw at all, as he drew below average houses with Hogan in both KC and St. Louis, his best cities, and less everywhere else but New York (where he also drew below what Hogan was doing with everyone else). After the Hogan program didn't do well, he was quickly moved to the middle of the card.

 

Gagne was always a headliner until his retirement match, and even for the coming out of retirement shows until the territory was dead. The only time after 1981 he didn't draw was the last comeback, which was 1987, when he was 61.

WON & Sumo:

No Japanese wrestling publications that I've seen have covered sumo tournaments. No sumo wrestler or sumo match has been covered in any Japanese pro wrestling awards. If they were, I'd have to cover it. I'm not a fan of garbage wrestling or the current AAA product, but if they draw, I've got to pay attention to what they're doing. When talking with people in Japan about wrestling, sumo only comes up when a sumo guy makes noises about going into pro wrestling or currently when the brother of a pro wrestler is the biggest sumo star in the country. Even so, none of the wrestling magazines nor the wrestling news TV shows cover his daily sumo matches.

A Michaels/Takada thread leads to this:

Considering Shawn has always come a few votes shy of consideration, and more than that many people have come on Wrestling Observer Live and specifically said professionalism was the reason they didn't vote for Shawn (and of those in the profession who didn't vote for him, I'd guess that would be close to 100% of those I've talked with), that is the reason he's not in. You can argue that there are other reasons he's not good enough, but that is the reason he's not in.

 

Arguing that Pride isn't pro wrestling in 2003 would be like arguing WWE isn't pro wrestling in 2003. Neither are close to what pro wrestling was in 1970. Whether you like it or not, when you get Japanese wrestling magazines or watch wrestling TV news shows, a Pride big show gets more coverage than anything. Until recently in the DirecTV listing of what Pride was when you buy the show, it read "professional wrestling." It only changed because the people in charge of Pride in the U.S. think pro wrestling is a dirty word in this country and they've actually done a 180. So now all references to pro wrestling are banned on the English telecast (which is funny when Inoki and Goldberg are on the show). In Japan, Pride management doesn't feel pro wrestling is a dirty word and know that without being part of pro wrestling and really the next step of evolution of the product, they would be like shooto drawing 5,000 people instead of 50,000 for their big shows. You could say Pride isn't pro wrestling in the U.S, but it is in Japan if you want. Since a discussion of Takada's career has nothing to do with the U.S., Saying a choke isn't pro wrestling in 2003 or that non-predetermined endings aren't pro wrestling would be as silly as denying that putting someone through a table in 2003 isn't pro wrestling. Is next week's New Japan show not a pro wrestling event? Will the pro wrestling media at the show ignore half the card or cover the entire card? Will the wrestling fans ignore the matches that are shoots (well, they may if they aren't good, but that would be the case if they were worked matches that aren't any good)? It is clearly just another form of offshoot, and the test of time will determine how important in the long-run historically it is.

 

This business is constantly changing. What constitutes successful pro wrestling is what a promoter can successfully sell to wrestling fans. Torrie Wilson vs. Dawn Marie in a bikini posedown has absolutely nothing to do with pro wrestling in a lot of people's standards of pro wrestling, but to deny it is pro wrestling is to deny what pro wrestling really is.

The new company in the U.S. that did the recent tapings called itself pro wrestling. It is real wrestling matches where the competitors are paid--professional wrestling. Their motto is that finally the U.S. has real pro wrestling. If they can make money, are they not pro wrestling even though they are professionals who wrestle?

 

When the fans in Japan's biggest polls, forget about the media, the biggest fan voting is the Nikkan Sports poll which is a mainstream newspaper, and voted Sapp Wrestler of the Year, Takayama second and Takayama got it mainly for a match with Don Frye and Sapp for his matches in Pride, and matches like Sapp vs. Nogueira beat out every worked match as the fans vote for Best Pro Wrestling match of the year, I think you guys are missing that pro wrestling has changed greatly in the eyes of the public in that country. When Kondo was pretty much universally recognized in Japan as the pro wrestling rookie of the year without participating in one worked match, and that's eight years ago, then he must be a pro wrestler in the fans and media's eyes. The pro wrestling news shows all cover Pride that I've seen. The biggest complaints I get from Japan is that I don't cover Pancrase deeply enough. New Japan's own TV show pushed Ishizawa's Pride matches as a bigger deal than his title matches within their company. The 5/2 Tokyo Dome contains trained wrestlers, who are getting paid to wrestle, on a promotion called New Japan Pro Wrestling. But it is not pro wrestling because it's not fake? Pancrase in 1993 was the change. It was pro wrestling, the participants called themselves pro wrestlers and were pro wrestlers. Last year when their business started rebounding, it was a pro wrestling feud on their shows based on the guys who claim to be pro wrestlers against those who claim not to be. I'm really surprised at you on this one John because when AAA came to this country and did business, you know that so many people wanted to ignore it on the guise it was not pro wrestling. In fact, most everyone in U.S. wrestling did ignore it because they didn't want to take the time to learn something new, except the younger wrestlers who watched tapes and copied it and that style became a significant part of the style we now see. Just like what in Japan? Based on their definition, Lucha spots were not pro wrestling and we spoke many times on the ignorance of such people to fail to see the obvious. Or jumping off buidings through tables isn't pro wrestling. It don't think it's usually a positive part of pro wrestling, but if wrestling fans are buying it, then that's what it is.

 

Being worked is not in any inherent definition of pro wrestling I know of. It is just a major component of almost all of it historically until the past ten years. You can use the term it's not traditional pro wrestling and I'm fine with that, but if you want to learn about the wrestling world as it is in 2003, Pride was the No. 2 promotion last year.

Shoots and the WON (full thread here for context):

Sumo is not called sumo wrestling, except in the U.S. It is just called sumo.

 

I've never seen a sumo tournament covered in a Japanese wrestling magazine or sumos nominated for Japanese wrestling awards, or voted on by wrestling fans as awards, or crowds listed among the biggest pro wrestling crowds of all-time (the latest worked magazine list of biggest wrestling crowds in history in Japanese mags list the worked figures for WWE matches, New Japan matches, K-1 matches and Pride matches).

 

As we've been through before, both magazine awards and fan awards for the past few years have not only had shootfighters and non-worked matches listed, but the last two winners of Wrestler of the Year in the Nikkan Sports fans voting (biggest in Japan) and for pro wrestling MVP in Tokyo Sports reporters voting (most widely discussed in Japan) were Sakuraba and Sapp, neither of whom were picked for doing worked matches. If the fans consider it part of pro wrestling, it is covered as pro wrestling in the pro wrestling mags and the pro wrestling TV news shows, you're burying your head in the sand when you say it isn't.

 

If Asashoryu is voted Wrestler of the Year this year in Japan, I'll have to change that definition.

I never said MMA was pro wrestling. Pride in Japan is both MMA and pro wrestling. Pancrase always has been pro wrestling and now it's also MMA (a term that didn't even exist when Pancrase started in 1993). Shooto isn't pro wrestling and runs like hell from any connection, and thus isn't covered in wrestling magazines. Deep so obviously is, particularly when its main program on sevearl shows was Luchadores vs. Pancrase, as was GAME (a shoot pro wrestling group in California years ago that only used pro wrestlers). UFC you can make a case for in the early days (it's owner, Bob Meyrowitz, and producer Campbell McLaren, considered themselves part of the pro wrestling industry and at their events in their glory days always talked about their progress as compared with WWF and WCW, and not boxing, and WWF and WCW in those days were very concerned about UFC). Current owner Lorenzo Fertitta has run like hell from any pro wrestling connotation and wants to be boxing. It's not a matter of rules as much as what it is marketed as, covered as, and what the buying public consists of and considers it as at the time it takes place. Fake boxing matches on a pro wrestling show (that have been held in numerous pro wrestling promotions and were a staple in places like Amarillo and Florida as one of many types of gimmick matches) are pro wrestling, as are fake martial arts matches on a pro wrestling show, which are very similar to fake martial arts matches on a martial arts show that wouldn't be considered. I've been to kickboxing shows and have seen worked matches almost identical to UWF style that were great, including matches that have torn the house down. But they are not pro wrestling matches. The same match on a UWF show would have to be a pro wrestling match. Fake boxing matches on a boxing or faked martial arts exhibitions on a martial arts show are not pro wrestling. Real gloved matches on a wrestling show (a staple of the All Japan womens promotion for more than a decade and in recent years womens wrestling promotions have continued to feature shoot matches but using the Vale Tudo rules instead of standing fighting with gloves) are pro wrestling. It's the marketing term being on an event listed as pro wrestling that is the key. The early Pride shows in the U.S. were specifically categorized on PPV as "pro wrestling," and only recently have changed because of the belief that pro wrestling for U.S. marketing has a negative stigma and now it's almost hilarious. The last Pride Tokyo Dome main event was Takada vs. Tamura and built on the theme of the final ending of UWFI. In the U.S., they edited the main event off television and instructed the announcers to never use the word pro wrestling on the broadcast (even to the point that when Bill Goldberg was announcing, he was referred to as a former college and NFL football player and the announcers were told not to use the words pro wrestler in reference to Goldberg or Antonio Inoki).

 

As the Observer Hall of Fame goes, since I guess there is where it started, if it's the Observer Hall of Fame, then what promotion was named Promotion of the Year by Observer readers last year? Ken Shamrock received a decent amount of votes years ago in his first year eligible, but ultimately, he didn't get enough votes to stay on. Funaki didn't stay on the ballot (and I've gotten more negative response from Japan about how little American voters understand Japanese wrestling from Funaki than negative response to any candidate not making it except Shawn Michaels). I've gotten a half dozen e-mails in the last week alone from Japan citing Funaki as the example of why Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote for Japanese candidates. The truth was, that Funaki didn't get enough votes from Japan or he'd still be on, but it is a viewpoint shared by many newer Japanese fans. Don Frye will be a test this year. Sakuraba will be voted on next year. If they get enough votes, they're in.

If that analogy is correct, then why weren't Rock's fights in the movie up for match of the year in U.S. polls? One of the most important things in modern history was Vince's trial in 1994, by should Sean O'Shea or Jerry McDevitt have been up for Best on Interviews, because they blew away most interviews I saw on wrestling that year. Of course not.

 

You can say you don't want things to be like this. But this cow left the barn in 1993 when Shamrock vs. Funaki, two famous at the time Japanese pro wrestlers, did a straight match and sold out NK Hall. This is the same argument Jim Cornette is making that hardcore garbage wrestling isn't pro wrestling, it's a freak show. Or the argument that people who were threatened by AAA in 1993 when it started drawing big in the U.S. by claiming it shouldn't count because it's not pro wrestling. Or the argument Stan Hansen made in 1984 when the Crush Gals hit it big that how can 135 pound women be pro wrestling, which in the world he was in, consisted of very big guys simulating powerful fighting (and many Japanese fans even bought it at the time, just as many people no doubt will buy Cornette's reasoning and bought anti-Lucha reasoning or that how can pro wrestling not be predetermined). The point is, the masses of fans have already accepted it as this, as proven by fan balloting awards in Japan dating back to Funaki-Suzuki and Rutten-Funaki in Pancrase for Match of the Year, both of which were not worked matches, and Sakuraba and Sapp cleaning up in similar awards, not to mention Pride and K-1 matches voted by fans in the biggest fan balloting in Japan as Match of the Year last year (Frye vs. Takayama, Sapp vs. Nogueira and Sapp vs. Hoost). The biggest pro wrestling events in Japan these days are the Pride shows, and there is more hype toward the Grand Prix in all wrestling media there than anything this year.

 

The pro wrestling I grew up with didn't involve mouse traps or light tubes, or guys dressed up as chickens, or people legitimately trying to win real fights, women in bikini contests and getting stripped to their underwear, or for that matter, television shows put together by script writers, or even something as new as entrance music (which the old-time fans totally rejected when it was brought in). After being told that every new evolution "isn't pro wrestling" because it wasn't what pro wrestling was five years earlier, it's kind of hard to bury my head in the sand on this issue. Maybe in 1995 you could say it's a passing fad, but right now, when it's becoming the predominant style in Japan and it's ten year later, I can't even see an argument. You can argue that any or all of these changes haven't been for the better of the industry. Some for sure haven't been and the popularity of shoot matches have greatly hurt worked matches in Japan, and in 1995 I had very high ups in both WWF and WCW think it would happen in the U.S., and as it turned out, it didn't. But you can't say they all aren't something from a blip on the wrestling radar screen, to a very significant part of the industry today.

If only worked matches constitute pro wrestling, why is there a pro wrestling term called "shooting match."

 

If only worked matches constitute pro wrestling, then why was the most famous womens wrestling match in the U.S. before 1984 (Mildred Burke vs June Byers 1954 in Atlanta) in no way, shape or form a worked match. But it was not only a pro wrestling match, but the world title changed hands, and it was considered the end of an era in many circles at the time. But now should we erase it from history because we are coming up with a new definition for pro wrestling.

 

If only worked matches constitute pro wrestling, then how are the two most famous historical pro matches in the first half of the century, Gotch-Hackenschmidt I & II, pro wrestling matches? I don't want to get into arguments about double-crosses and all these things that all of us can only speculate went on behind the scenes, but what is clear is that neither of those matches were worked.

 

Not only that, but from a world wide perspective, the most famous pro wrestling match before the 80s (and still to this day in many circles in Japan), the 1976 Ali vs. Inoki match, would also not be considered a pro wrestling match. Granted, it was supposed to be worked, but it wasn't. Did that eliminate it from wrestling history? I believe it was recently voted the most famous pro wrestling match ever in Japan.

 

If pro wrestling was always all worked (and it always and to this day predominately has been, but was not exclusively so at certain points in history and hasn't been exclusively so actually for two decades if you actually look), then why did they bother using shooters as world champions to protect the belts?

 

If worked is the definition of pro wrestling, then were the boxing championship and for that matter the boxing matches that were worked, now pro wrestling matches? If I'm to believe recent books, is suddenly Clay vs. Liston the most famous pro wrestling match of the 60s? That's a hard definition for me to buy.

 

Pride has done worked matches and shoot matches, on the same show. As has RINGS. On occasion, the competitors are so good that nobody even knows for sure what is what. I used to get all worked up on what was what, and for my coverage, since I'm supposed to deal with reality, it was important. But when you learn about Japan, it's not even a big issue there. It is just pro wrestling and if it draws, it worked and if it doesn't, it's a failed idea. Pancrase's biggest drawing feud of the past year was pro wrestling vs. anti-pro wrestling, and all matches in this feud were shoots. Yuki Kondo and Ikuhisa Minowa talk of themselves as pro wrestlers, and neither has ever done a worked match. Kazushi Sakuraba placed seventh in the Nikkan Sports listing of the best pro wrestler of the 20th century. Did he do it for his work in worked matches in UWFI where he mainly worked openers? Or maybe it was for his opening match at the 1995 New Japan Tokyo Dome. Or perhaps it was because of his shoot wins over Royce, Royler, Ryan and Renzo Gracie.

 

Virtually every All Japan women's show in the 80s at Korakuen Hall and big shows contained one shoot match. It was part of the presentation. They even had a WWWA Martial Arts belt that was up only in shoot matches. I believe there were four shoot matches on the biggest womens show in history, all under different rules. There were five shoot matches on the biggest New Japan show of this year. Personally I don't like the ideas of works and shoots on the same show, but the New Japan show almost sold out the Tokyo Dome during a period when pro wrestling is very weak. New Japan's TV show has (too often and stupidly) featured matches that were not worked over the past year.

 

To argue something is not pro wrestling because it's not worked requires better evidence than "I grew up with something different" because people with that attitude have always lost touch with an ever changing business within a few years. To argue something is not pro wrestling because god damn, I say so, is an even less valid argument. to say worked and shoot matches shouldn't be lumped together is very valid, and they shouldn't, but nor should you judge Lucha style by WWE style, or New Japan style by Toryumon style, or even early Pancrase style by UFC style.

Regading context of North America vs. Japan and what is pro wrestling, if the Hall of Fame was strictly for North American wrestling, I wouldn't include Pride.

 

The argument that because it is part of the pro wrestling umbrella in Japan doesn't matter, would also mean that virtually everyone who made their name in Japan, Inoki, Hansen, Baba, Muto, Takada, etc. should be out of the Hall of Fame because none were big enough stars in the U.S. to warrant inclusion. Along with everyone from Mexico with the exception of Mil Mascaras.

 

If the Hall of Fame is to include Japan, and it has since day one, that means you have to look at the Japanese industry how it is, not how it was, and not you wish it to be.

 

A point people are missing is that back in the 80s, virtually every All Japan womens show at Korakuen Hall and the bigger shows contained at least one shoot match. This was an accepted part of the presentation, just like there would be one midget match. They even had a belt within the promotion for those shoot matches. The first L-1 show in the 90s was an interpromotional womens tournament where wrestlers from different promotions competed and they did shoot matches.

 

The original UWF had rare undercard shoot matches. As did UWFI, which usually had one on most shows. RINGS had one or two per show on its early cards, less a few years later, and by the end, had nothing but shoot matches its last year or two. Pride started as almost half works (I believe the first show even had a Koji Kitao vs. Nathan Jones match), and the percentage of works decreased to where I don't believe there has been a worked match in nearly three years, although I could easily be wrong on that, but they are very rare if they have occurred since that time. It is an evolutionary stage of the product to where the last New Japan show at the Tokyo Dome, and this is the second largest traditional style pro wrestling company in the world with a 30-year history, had five shoot matches in an 11-match program and drew nearly 50,000 fans. I personally don't like mixing shoots and works on the same show, but this is not about personal feelings.

 

While shoot matches were extremely rare in the U.S. as time went on, there are many extremely important historical matches that were not worked. And it was not all that rare in the 60s, and even well into the 70s, for some companies to have wrestlers do take on all comers deals as part of the wrestling program and they were not worked in the least, at least in most cases, although I'm sure they were used at times to build up angles and newcomers when the real shooter who had been beating marks legit would then lose to a fan out of the stands, who was a plant, and that "fan" would become an instant star. And that angle stemmed from the carnival roots of wrestling, where many of the matches were shoots and some were works. That gimmick was popular in particular in the Amarillo territory.

 

But even if none of that was the case, do we eliminate music videos from music awards shows because in the 1950s they didn't exist?

 

I don't know if it's progress, but I can't be so stubborn to tell you that one of the biggest changes in pro wrestling over the past ten years, in fact, I'd say the biggest change in some ways, either doesn't count or hasn't happened.

What your grandfather has the same relevance as to what a Japanese grandfather may believe, whether true or not, that Rikidozan vs. Lou Thesz and Inoki vs. Wilhelm Ruska matches were real, and that what Sakuraba is doing is a modern version of the same thing. My parents believed all pro wrestlers were stupid and that none could ever have a college degree. When Tim Woods came to our territory, was he not a pro wrestler because he didn't fit into their preconceived notion? My friends thought all pro wrestlers were unathletic fat slobs who couldn't compete in real sports. Again, when Tim Woods came to our territory, was he not a pro wrestler because he didn't fit into their preconceived notion about what constituted a pro wrestler?

 

If fake is the definition of pro wrestling, as mentioned before, if Terry Funk and Gene LeBelle were on the TV show Wildside doing a fake fight using pro wrestling moves, is that a pro wrestling match? No, it's a fight scene on a television show. Fake fight, even with wrestlers, using wrestling moves, does not constitute a pro wrestling match unless it is being marketed as pro wrestling.

 

Pro wrestling's main lure, from the start, was never real or fake. It was making money however possible. It was how promoters can con money out of suckers or fans. Whether that be with real and fake matches combined at a carnival to make people gamble on sucker bets, or real or fake matches at an arena to get people to pay money to buy tickets and keep coming back because there was a new match they wanted to see. Eventually, the fake version, if you want to use that term, gained more popularity because you could do it more frequently and control the outcomes better and build feuds easier, and also, make it more entertaining. The real entity largely, but not completely, disappeared. As mentioned, it has been a part of Japanese womens wrestling, a small part, but as much a part as midget matches would be in U.S. wrestling, for as long as I've followed Japanese womens wrestling. You can't arbitrarily say it doesn't count. The whole point you made about Brawl for All not being an example that WWF is an MMA company is the perfect analogy. It is not. But why wasn't it? Because the marquee and categorization that it was selling to the public was that of a pro wrestling show. It was part of pro wrestling. Other companies have done the same thing for the same reason, an attempt to do something different to garner paying customers of television viewers, and have either suceeded or failed at it. Just as the modern companies today doing whatever style they are promoting, will either succeed or fail. The successes will determine what pro wrestling is ten years from now, and ultimately, the failures theoretically will be gone (that isn't the case in real life, but theoretically it is).

 

If this weekend, the WWE execs had a bikini contest at a house show with Torrie Wilson and Sable, and they just said, we're not going to gimmick it, and whomever gets the more cheers, we'll raise your hand and that's that. It would be a shoot. It would be no more or less pro wrestling than the next night when they decide who wins ahead of time. It wouldn't be MMA because the competition would be real, nor would it be a sanctioned fitness competition bikini contest even if both could compete as fitness competitors. It would still be a bikini contest as part of pro wrestling.

 

If it was not part of pro wrestling, these things have to be erased from history. Gotch-Hackenschmidt and a percentage, however small, of the matches from that era. Every double-cross, because those would not fall into the modern adaptation of pro wrestling as a mutually cooperative work. So many title changes in the 20s and 30s should be erased from history. Certainly Burke-Byers, the most famous womens match of its era can't be pro wrestling. Yet, the world title changed hands in that match. Rikidozan-Kimura, Maeda-Andre, Ali-Inoki and many of the most famous matches of all-time are now no longer pro wrestling matches. I'm not trying to say they are the same, as double-crosses are definitely not shoot matches, but double-crosses are also not, by definition, matches with predetermined worked finishes. Realistically the Hart-Michaels finish by the definition that pro wrestling is a cooperative work would by definition no longer be a famous pro wrestling match, Sure, it started as one, but ended as something outside the realm by the predetermined worked equals pro wrestling definition. But it is. Maybe a sleazy part, but a part.

 

However, I'm guessing many of Butterbean and almost all of Mark Gastineau's boxing matches by that definition also would be pro wrestling matches. That's why the definition is flawed, because they are fixed boxing matches, and having nothing to do with pro wrestling. So fake and fixed fight does not equal the definition of pro wrestling. However, if Rocky Johnson did a fake boxing match against Sonny King in Miami Beach in the 70s, which I saw, that was a pro wrestling match. What was the difference? Well, one may look more realistic than the other, but if looking realistic means something isn't pro wrestling, then we have to throw a lot of people out of the Hall of Fame. The difference is what venue they were under and who came to see them.

I think it's the other way around. The first promotion of what we would today call MMA was Pancrase in September 1993, which was a group of pro wrestlers who had broken off the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi group doing matches without predetermined finishes. This was because three of the top stars of that group, Ken Shamrock, Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki were tired of not getting pushed at the level they felt was deserved because Yoshiaki Fujiwara, who was past his prime, was keeping himself as the main event star. It was their way for people to earn their spots rather than have someone pick their spots for them, and also because they were creatures of the UWF movement and wanted to take that movement all the way.

 

The term MMA didn't even exist until many years later. I believe it was coined by Jeff Blatnick and Joe Silva at UFC because Blatnick was the commissioner of UFC and wanted it to be its separate sport, and thought the term pro wrestling, which is the category SEG, the owners of the group and the PPV companies had lumped them into at the time, had too negative a connotation.

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HHH as a draw:

Because of how PPV has totally changed the economic structure of the business, yes, HHH has drawn more money than Rikidozan, Misawa, Takada, Hashimoto, Rogers, Gagne, Santo, Rocca and Bruno.

 

If you added up the money on all the PPV shows he has main evented, and all the house shows, it would blow away just about everyone in. I'd guess the only ones it wouldn't would be Rock, Austin, Hogan and possibly Inoki (and I'm not even sure of Inoki), and possibly Flair. Maybe a few others would be there because their careers were so long, but it's unlikely to be more than a handful. HHH will be around long enough to make up the difference with all but three or four, because the company isn't going out of business for several years and unless he is incapacitated or divorced, he's a lock for main events as long as he can get in the ring. Even adjusting for inflation I'd believe that to be the case. The $20,000 houses Caddock did a very few times wouldn't be more today than the $1 million houses HHH headlined at his few SummerSlam and Mania main events, not even throwing in he was the champ in the four-way at Mania in 2000 that did about $34 million. If Thesz as NWA champ was pulling down 8% (and he was supposed to be getting 10%), and was doing about $200,000 during his peak years, that means for the year he was doing $2.5 million in total gates. You can see the difference pretty clearly, and Thesz as champ was pretty much tops in his era as a money earner. Bruno was getting 6% everywhere and 5% in MSG and it came out to about $200,000 during the 70s, which were his peak money years, so you're talking maybe $4 million per year in total grosses. Even if Bruno had 20 years just like it, an $80 million total, and he didn't even come close to that, HHH has already topped that figure with less than five years as a consistent headliner. They did a table and the $87,000 Gotch & Hack did would have been maybe $1.25 to $1.5 million inflation adjusted, so $20,000 would be a $300,000 house, which HHH is the big star on every Monday they play a good-sized market.

 

Even today, the guy will probably headline 100 house shows that will average $100,000 per, and that's not including being the main star on most episodes of Raw, which, with injuries, he'll probably headline 30 to 35 per year at $250,000 average even today. During the peak period, his main events averaged $350,000 per night.

 

I'm not saying he was a bigger draw than any of these people, but someone in WWF in 2000 when they grossed $440 million and main evented almost every PPV show and a large percentage of house shows would almost inherently outdo anyone historically. And he was on top during the most profitable period, by far, for any wrestling company in the history of the industry. And don't mention Austin, because Austin wasn't even around that year. Yes, he had Rock in 2000 who was probably a bigger draw, but HHH worked plenty of house shows that Rock wasn't on, that drew sellouts, and if you look at PPVs where Rock was in the semi, it's not like HHH bombed on top. During the late 1999-early 2001 peak period of the industry historically from a monetary standpoint, he headlined 16 of 21 PPV shows (and was second from the top on most of the others), and has more 1.0 buy rates (a figure far harder to achieve today with the larger universe) than anyone but Hogan, Flair, Austin and Rock.

 

I haven't really thought about his candidacy but if you think that drawing money is the be all and end all, you're going to have to scramble a lot with logic on this one. I guess the idea with him will become it doesn't matter because the company was so strong, or because Austin and Rock were bigger (so he was only the No. 3 draw in the entire world at his peak) he blew out his quad and sucked in the ring (which he didn't, but he wasn't one of the best any longer). If the big crux against Michaels was that he never drew, well, HHH had a period he drew better than any Hall of Famer except Hogan, Austin and Rock. And even today, when things are so down, his numbers still stack up better than almost any of the biggest draws in their primes.

Let's try again. In the single greatest period for business in the history of the industry, the lead heel was HHH. I'm not arguing for or against him, but to dismiss him without thought is a complete joke.

 

Throw out the PPVs. Let's look at house shows. Let's go from 1999-2003. Not one year but five years. Find me one guy over a five year period who drew more people, forget about money because when it comes to money, you aren't going to find anyone for sure (which accounts for inflation to a degree) in main events only on house shows in history who is not in the Hall of Fame. (if Rock comes up, it doesn't count, because he's going in). Without manipulating numbers, that's total attendance of shows he was in the main event on over those five years. He's got a disadvantage in that he never switched territories and that house shows were secondary to PPV as opposed to primary for 95% of those in, but an advantage because he had a great marketing machine. But this takes out all of his big shows because we are throwing out PPV, because that puts him too far ahead of the pack.

 

When you find me that person, then we'll have a starting point to say he wasn't a big enough draw to qualify. Until you do, you're judging him by a different standard than everyone else in has been judged on.

HOF voters (as of '03)

Scott Keith has never voted.

Jim Ross has never voted.

Bob Armstrong for the HOF?

Why don't you look at who is in and their credentials rather than take the Ole Anderson viewpoint of "I didn't have to travel I was such a big star," if they just think for a second, already knows is **** .

 

The Hall of Fame stars, Jack Brisco, The Funks, Race, Valentine, Ernie Ladd, Sheik, etc. of that era worked all over the world because they were in demand in many places at the same time. Valentine was working St. Louis, Texas, Carolinas, Montreal and Buffalo all at the same time at one point. Was it because Valentine was so bad he couldn't make a living in once place? Did the fact Terry Funk went from territory to territory prove that unlike Bob Armstrong, he wasn't good enough to stay in a territory. Granted, Sheik killed his territory by staying there, but he had a decade of huge business in Detroit and Toronto, plus was in demand everywhere. That's a Hall of Fame star. Fact is, Bob went from territory to territory, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Carolinas and back. He was a very big star in Alabama, not so big in Florida (I was there when he was given the mega push as North American champion with Buddy Colt and the gimmick of winning his matches in 30 seconds but he didn't get over despite the huge push) a popular local mid-carder or high mid-carder in Georgia and not much of anything in the Carolinas.

 

But did he work 3-4 territories at once, cherry picking the big dates, like Dusty Rhodes did? When Dusty's base was in Florida, he still worked the Omni because he was the biggest star, and would be brought in for the big shows in Greensboro, etc. He still worked Texas, he was flown in for the Superdome, flown in for MSG, worked on top in Japan even though he couldn't wrestle (which shows how big his name was).

 

If Bob drew like Jerry Lawler in his territory and never had to leave, you'd have a point. But Bob did switch territories and was never in demand, to where Houston, or Japan, or St. Louis, the big money cities, brought him in while he was working another territory. When he was headlining in Pensacola, was he flown in for big shows in Tampa or Greensboro? That's a Hall of Famer in the 70s.

 

And Bob was in Atlanta when the cable hit big. Were promoters like Watts, Crockett, Muchnick, etc. who flew in the big stars that made it off cable flying Bob in for the major shows like they did Wrestling II, Rich, Piper, Bill Eadie, etc.? I'm sure you could point to one place where it happened, such as when Crockett booked Bob vs. Piper off Atlanta TV, and it bombed in the South Carolina cities, but did he work like a Hall of Famer, draw like a Hall of Famer, headline like a Hall of Famer. In his home territory, Georgia, Jim Barnett referred to him as a mid-card guy who only drew once in ten years, and that was his first Omni match with Piper.

 

I've got nothing against Bob, but when Bob is in the Hall of Fame, you need to add another 150 people (the usual suspects) just like him.

 

These are the 70s guys in:

 

Blassie, Bockwinkel, Baba, Bobo, Brisco, Brody, Bruiser, Canek, Crusher, Destroyer, Funks, Gagne, Billy Graham, Heenan, Inoki, Jonathan, Ladd, Lawler, Mascaras, Mendoza, Race, Rhodes, Robinson, Bruno, Sheik, Stevens, Tsuruta, Valentine, Fritz Von Erich, Wahoo and Watts (and his promoting got him in).

 

When you make a case for someone to be in, you have to make a case he is at the same level as these people.

 

Rather than making a sarcastic remark, compare Bob Armstrong's fame, drawing power, ability and influence and how they are respected within the profession with the names existing.

 

Just to point out in six years of doing balloting with more and more wrestlers from that era voting each time, not one wrestler has ever even mentioned putting Bob on the ballot.

The "major league debut" rule for the HOF:

Major league means a real wrestling promotion and not a fly by night deal or being an indy guy who works and likely doesn't get paid more than $25. It's the Harry Smith rule because he started at 9, and if he becomes a big-time superstar, I don't want him on the ballot at 24 by someone citing his debut match was at 9.

 

Major league is a real promotion, either under contract or working full-time. Sabu's first real promotion was FMW,not ECW, not WCW. They were pretty full-time, 5-6 days per week during tours and more than 120 shows per year. Mysterio was 1992 in AAA, full-time work, national TV, big crowds when he dropped out of school and his job was as a pro wrestler. But I don't include when he used to work bar shows in Los Angeles when they snuck him in when he was 15, or even once every month in Tijuana as Colibri as a high school kid who sometimes wrestled. Jericho was a main eventer at Arena Mexico and throughout Mexico years before WCW. He also had been a regular first for FMW and later WAR in Japan.

2005 HOF aftermath:

Among 60s and 70s wrestlers (48 total voting)--

 

Miller got 8% (4 votes)

Snyder got 4% (2 votes)

 

Even if you want to separate them only to people who worked with them and

knew them best, they don't fare well. In fact, if those were the only

people eligible to vote for them, they'd both be off the ballot next

year. Regarding Miller, he was on the ballot orginally, got less than 10%, was off, and nobody ever said a word at the time it happened. In most cases of people being put back on (Sting, Chono, Hennig, Muraco, Orndorff and Sabu come quickly to mind), it is because voters have asked me to because they've told me they would vote for them. In the case of Miller, nobody asked me to put him back on, but that was my decision because I thought he deserved another look. The reason is there are far more wrestlers from his era voting now than when he was getting no support and I wanted to to see how he would fare among them when the list of people voting would be fairer to him.

 

He and Snyder were big stars worthy of consideration. They are not thought of in nearly the terms of Valentine, who if he was

up for election, would I'm betting get 90% of his peers and I'd think

Thesz or Rogers would be damn close to 100%. There are people who call

Valentine one of the best of all-time, a phrase I've never heard anyone

say about Snyder or Miller. All the slam dunks are in, and that era is

more represented than any other era in wrestling history already. The

only person I will say in hindsight was probably unfairly overlooked was Wahoo,

who was always getting ridiculous numbers from his peers. It eventually

helped get him in. Murdoch got 88% this year among retired wrestlers (not the

exact same group, and I didn't go back and figure Murdoch's numbers with voters who were stars from the 60s and 70s, because there are 80s guys who voted that fit into the retired category, but I would bet it isn't far from 88%), and my feedback is most wrestlers saw Valentine as a level above Murdoch. My feeling is, nobody from the 60s should get in that the

wrestlers from the 60s themselves don't even vote for to any significant

degree.

 

The red herring is blaming voters who haven't seen them for unfairly not

voting for guys, when the guys from their own era didn't vote for them in the first place. The fact is, Eddie Guerrero got 18 votes among wrestlers from the 60s and 70s. It's a question of the limitations of choices being ten and 44 candidates, all of whom are viable, having to choose from.

 

If people get great support among the people who worked with them and know them the best, in time, people will notice, or maybe they won't, and in that case,

you could complain.

 

If you want to cry unfair, cry it about Koloff, Snuka or Woods or Wrestling II, who at least guys who

wrestled them voted for in decent numbers, although only Wrestling II from that list besides Murdoch got

60% this year. Red Bastien was an awesome worker, but because he wasn't a

singles big territory main eventer, he doesn't look good in the record

book. But the guys he worked with have a very high opinion of his work. Even so, Bastien only got 15 votes out of the same 48.

 

You want to break down a veterans committee, well, if I did, Murdoch and

Wrestling II get in, nobody else. I have no problem with it, but I don't see the need for it. I saw Johnny Walker without the mask, and plenty of Wrestling II with it. If he's in, fine, but I hardly find it an abomniation he's not. Among pre-1950s guys, perhaps it's a good idea, but realistically, who should be on the committee. Almost all the people working in the business pre-1950 are dead. I'm glad people have uncovered history through looking at old clippings, but in my mind, you can't judge accurately people from any era unless you were part of the era yourself. If I'm not mistaken, the veterans committee in baseball are people who worked daily in the baseball industry during the period the players they are judging played. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I am, I wouldn't be too keen on a veterans committee. Those people don't exist in wrestling. There are probably a few pre-1950s guys, maybe promoters and such, who do belong that aren't in, and hopefully, in time, they will be in. And to me, the veterans committee shouldn't be putting modern people in that failed under the system. If you want a committe to put in Wilbur Snyder, then virtually every name on this year's ballot should be in. As far as 1960s wrestling stars, if somehow someone has been overlooked as far as getting on the ballot and you are a voter and will vote for them, tell me and they'll be on next year. But if their peers don't vote for them, don't blame the system for them not getting in. The system isn't perfect, and if you're arguing Dick Murdoch's case, you have a great argument against the current system. If you're arguing Bill Miller's case, you're arguing for the wrong guy.

 

I can guarantee I spoke with more people than anyone on this

board among wrestlers from that era in the last two months regarding the Hall of Fame, because I considered Miller after Yohe's article (really, even before, although when I look at the ballot, it's hard for me to say he was one of the ten best as there are some awesome workers on the ballot). He sent me it me it probably a month or so before I published it because I wanted to time it as close to when people were getting their ballots.

 

Miller was held in high regard by everyone. Not one person said one bad thing about him personally. However, almost none of those people, as noted by the numbers above, voted for him in the Hall of Fame. The reaction when asked in almost every case is so many of the guys on the list belong, but Miller was not one of the ten best names on the list, including one person who claimed to be one of Miller's best friends when they were together. Snyder was a different story, although I didn't hear anything negative about him personally, but he was not as highly regarded as Miller. My feeling was, if you could vote for as many people as possible, Miller would get many more votes, but not Snyder. Whether it would be enough to get in, I don't know, but I think it's a terrible idea to have unlimited yes's. The feeling on Snyder seemed to be he was he was talented, but his heart wasn't

into it, and he was a guy more into having his beer and playing tennis and other outside activities

than he was into pro wrestling, which he did because it was his living.

The problem is that everyone has a different idea who the ten best on the ballot are, or if even ten guys on the ballot belong.

 

The point is. Nobody undeserving can get in with this system because it's so hard.

 

It's not perfect. It's flawed for Carlos Colon, although I'm not sold on him either because people who went to Puerto Rico and worked with him on top in most (not all) cases also didn't vote for him. Totally flawed for Volk Han and Kiyoshi Tamura, but at the same time, neither is a slam dunk. Maybe on Aja Kong, but Toyota & Hokuto from her era made it with flying colors and with Japanese votes she doesn't get, so maybe not.

 

Every year, I have to argue with myself back and forth about the Midnight Express and Don Owen, and now Eddie Guerrero. I wouldn't vote for Heyman, but he got the votes and I certainly understand why he did.

 

DiMaggio made it on the 4th ballot? Now that's an embarrassment. I know Ted Williams wasn't first ballot either, and how is that possible.

 

Anyone want to start a debate at what a joke the NFL Hall is for inducting Gayle Sayres? By the way, I'm saying that with 100% sarcasm.

The big problem with making a direct comparison with older and newer candidates is the newer candidates on the ballot are the strongest newer candidates.

 

If we started from scratch and there weren't so many of the top guys from the 60s in, your premise may still be correct, but we don't know.

 

I could make the case by citing the numbers from North America from the 60s vs. 90s already in. However, there were more full-time wrestlers in the 60s, so they should have a higher percentage, just as in Japan, you have a reverse in that there were more full-timers in the 90s by far, and more Hall of Famers from Japan in the 90s.

 

There are too many variables, but the people who would have done the best on the ballots historically, like Thesz, Rogers, Rocca, Valentine, etc. were never voted on.

 

Now John, regarding Funaki, the only thing I can tell you is you are really talking about of your ass.

 

Funaki got most of his votes from Japan. If you think wrestling executives, reporters or former wrestlers in Japan can be influenced by me when it comes to Japan itself, you really don't know. It's as ridiculous as thinking what I write affects wrestlers who don't even read the Observer as to who they vote for. We had 17 former names from Japan, most in offices today, voting this year. 16 had Funaki on their ballot. I could be wrong, but most office people who weren't wrestlers did. Most reporters, who live there and know the culture 50 times better than you or I ever will, no matter how many old results we try to memorize, were strong for him. They know the cultural significance of him, his popularity, whatever it is. I believe, after listening to people like that, he is a really strong candidate. Whether he does or doesn't get in, I really don't care. I don't have the attitude that if most Japanese who voted think Funaki is a Hall of Famer, it proves that Japanese don't know anything about Japanese wrestling.

The arrogance of me or you to say they don't know what they are talking about, when they know so much more than you or I ever will, is amazing.

 

Where Funaki doesn't get votes is among Americans who vote for other Japanese candidates. You already know when Funaki fell off the ballot I got more heat than any candidate except every year when Michaels didn't get in.

 

One thing I've learned from the ballots is when people who know the landscape far better than I do strongly vote for someone, it usually means something. Believe me, if Miller's peers voted for him en masse, I'd have learned something from it. It was the opposite. You want to say history forgot him. If today's reporters didn't vote for him, you have a case. The people who knew him best didn't feel he was as strong a candidate as Eddie Guerrero, or for that matter, Red Bastien, Ivan Koloff or Ole Anderson. As it was, when this election was over, I felt among those who really know the business, that Bastien must have been the better worker and had more respect, which I could never read in a record book. Actually, I sort of knew this last year when certain people were just raving about what a great worker he was. But I still wouldn't vote for Bastien because even his own guys didn't vote for him in a high enough percentage.

 

I'm not saying wrestlers are always right, or even necessarily smarter, but those numbers say something.

agesue ehI don't have the attitude that not only do I know more than anyone else, but anyone who disagrees with me is senile, nutty, or whatever. When it comes to Japan, I have as good a knowledge as I can have for someone who isn't working in their business nor living in their country, and who e-mails a dozen people very day and talks to 2-3 people for 30 minutes to an hour every day there. Still, I recognize my limitations. If people in Japan believe a guy is a strong Hall of Fame candidate, like with Wahoo and me changing my mind, there is probably a really good reason.

Jimmy Lennon was a wrestling ring announcer for as long as he was a boxing announcer. He was the ring announcer on the network broadcasts of wrestling dating back to the 40s and continued through around 1980 or so. In the late 60s and through the 70s, he was the ring announcer on the national SIN brodcasts of wrestling on Wednesday night from the Olympic, so he had two national runs. He did far more wrestling ring announcing then boxing--working Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night shows for LeBelle, and also handled interviews on the two different live prime time TV shows during the company's most successful eras. He was a major reason that the Mexican wrestlers in the late 60s and 70s got over to a non-Mexican audience because he had a style that brought both audiences together. He was also credited with the same thing in the local boxing world for his ability to get the Mexican fighters over to non-Mexican fans, which due to cultural differences, was then, and remains today, difficult to pull off. It wasn't just him alone of course, but he is the only ring announcer who was a large part of making a legendary tag team, Gordman & Goliath, simply by the way he said, "Claiming to be from New Mexico....Not Mexico," and the heat that generated and the aura of star power it gave the G boys. That's not to say their ability wasn't the major part of it, but the first thing virtually everyone thinks of when you bring up Gordman & Goliath, was that Jimmy Lennon got them over, and they were not only over in California, but Texas and New York from the Los Angeles TV, and the "Claiming to be from New Mexico" line that was what they were best known for. When Goliath died, everyone from here when I mentioned it, the first thing they brought up, was that line.

 

Both the original JWP and New Japan brought Lennon over to ring announce major matches. It was seen as giving added prestige and aura to the matches because the greatest ring announcer in the world, as he was viewed in Japan in the 60s and 70s, was brought in for them.

 

Granted, the boxing writers who wrote his obit in the L.A. papers didn't mention wrestling, but I know from growing up seeing him do both boxing and wrestling, he was far better known by the masses as the wrestling ring announcer when he did boxing than the other way around.

A "boxing announcer" who did probably five times as many wrestling shows in his career as boxing shows.

You must not pay much attention to politics. The national media to this day is high on Ventura. When he's been on national shows, he's always asked about running for president including Larry King not that long ago, and they aren't laughing at him when he talks politics. The only place Ventura being elected is considered a joke is Minnesota itself. When Ventura taught at Harvard last semester, I think I was the only one who considered it a joke as it got nothing but positive press for him in every story that covered it, and plenty did.

Big Daddy & the HOF & stuff:

If Mike Von Erich had a 15 year career and the promotion hadn't have died, won a bunch of titles, was pushed in main events because his dad owned the company, but sucked balls in the ring, does that make him a Hall of Famer?

He didn't draw more money in the U.K. than any wrestler. I'd bet the guys on tour today draw more in a one week U.K. tour than he may have drawn in his entire career. Even forgetting about inflation and ticket prices, every WWE show today in any city they run greatly outdraws the best crowds Daddy ever did in any of those cities. If Daddy was that big of a draw, how come there are no soccer stadium shows he headlined? The idea he could have drawn 30,000 may be true, but I doubt it, because why didn't his brother book stadiums if he was that level of a draw? Pepper Gomez spent his life saying he and Stevens would have sold out Candlestick Park, but Shire never even tried to book it so I can't give Gomez credit for drawing 50,000 people and breaking Rogers' record because there are people in the city 40 years later with faded memories who now claim he could have.

 

I'm not arguing against Daddy at all. I didn't live in England. I know he was a household name. Did he draw 8,000 fans a week for 45 shows a year in a weekly town that would do 3,000 the other 7 weeks he wasn't there? I don't know. If there are records he consistently did that, that would be a feather in his cap. I know he never drew 28,000 and London has a hell of a lot more people than New Orleans. He didn't have JYD's charisma (had more longevity) but JYD has never been a serious candidate. I know that John Cena beat his records everywhere without even trying. I know he sucked as a wrestler. Crusher sucked but he was a main eventer on merit for 30 years because he laid golden eggs and made a noticeable and substantial difference at the gate on cards for close to 20 of those years. He also got over everywhere he went except maybe Atlanta and St. Louis. Even for Daddy, the U.K. was never a big money territory. There was a whole world out there and he couldn't have gotten over anywhere else.

 

Again, this was a huge debate in the newsletter many years ago, and British fans strongly argued both sides. There was no consensus either way. I've talked with almost every British wrestler who was there for Daddy's heyday that came here including some who vote and the ones who do vote have told me they wouldn't vote for him. And the only U.K. name everyone agreed was a slam dunk was Assirati and another guy whose name escapes me but isn't in (it was a guy from Assirati's era who apparently is considered by wrestlers as legendary and a sure-thing), besides the guys like Robinson and Dynamite who became stars in North America. As far as Nagasaki and McManus, Pallo, etc., I think there is a real good shot they belong but it's not an area I know enough about to say for sure. I've thrown those names out and people were pretty positive about McManus, but moreso about Rollerball Rocco (who I did see and was a real good worker for his time), not so much about Pallo. If British wrestlers said they would try and be booked on shows with Daddy because he made everyone money, that would be a big plus. I don't know if that is or isn't the case.

 

From what I've been told when asking British guys from the era, they said he was more famous in England than Hogan in the U.S., but did not make everyone money like Hogan did, sell tickets like Hogan, have anything clsoe to the live crowd charisma of Hogan. I was told not even close. I again offer no opinion other than a belief he is far from a slam dunk and that's he's a very legit candidate to discuss and his fame is a strong feather in his cap.

 

To me, if a guy sucks in the ring, he had better be able to draw noticeably based on his own merits.

 

If Mike Von Erich, or George Gulas, had their dads stay in the business to give them 20 years on top in their territories and made them local household names (and Mike was, but had no longevity or any real drawing power), that doesn't make them Hall of Famers. Kerry on the other hand had real talent and had the ability to be a star anywhere no matter who his father was, but he flamed out young. He wouldn't have gotten the breaks early of course, but when he went places, nobody laughed that he was making a joke of wrestling by being on top. They did with Mike and did with Daddy. I have seen a number of Daddy's matches and the crowd reaction didn't say Hall of Famer and work sucked bad, like worse than anyone today. If he was a legitimate major draw for a long peroid of time, there's something there.

 

I don't know enough to give a conclusion, but enough people who do are not saying slam dunk on him.

 

As for comparisons to McShain, Fargo, Lawler, it's apples and oranges. None of them sucked in the ring. Crusher is the closest and even Crusher beat the hell out of Daddy as a worker.

Ventura was a serious candidate regardless of whether he was a Governor.

 

He's on the list of non-wrestlers, which means it is his announcing that his primarily what is being judged. He does incredibly well among people in the industry, particularly his contemporaries, including many who personally hate him. That's how well respected his influence for popularizing the role of color commentator is.

 

Any arguments about his wrestling ability (the ***** ), drawing power (some, but not Hall of Fame level) or even interview ability (excellent) aren't even germane. It would be helpful if people writing about this subject read the last awards issue because breakdowns of how people are voted on and who voted for the recent candidates explains a lot.

 

Graham's percentage of MSG main event sellouts (more than 90%) is the highest in the history of the business. As far as the best drawing heels of the 70s, he probably was No. 2 behind only The Sheik.

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DiMaggio made it on the 4th ballot? Now that's an embarrassment. I know Ted Williams wasn't first ballot either, and how is that possible.

Let me clarify something on this. Dimaggio made on on the third ballot actually. He started receiving votes his first offseason after retirement. Of the players on the 1953 ballot (Dimaggio's first), 40 of them eventually reached the Hall of Fame. It wasn't that voters considered Dimaggio unworthy. It was that the ballot was too crowded. It's a small point, irrelevant really, but it's often used.

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US-Japan Wrestling Summit:

The punch line to the story is the guy who riled Gordy up and told him he shouldn't job to Hogan because Japan was his territory and it wasn't Hogan's territory, was Stan Hansen.

 

Stan got over as a big babyface for it. The all Japan fans credited Stan with "saving the card" for doing what he shouldn't, because in their eyes Stan was a bigger star than Hogan (in Japan he was bigger overall in 1990) and it was his territory, so he did something he "shouldn't have" to soothe egos. Sounded crazy, but I was in Japan very shortly after this show and everyone was talking about how Stan kept the show from falling apart, not realizing he was the guy who manipulated the entire situation.

Funny Warrior-DiBiase story.

 

WWF's only real insistence in the booking is that Hogan & Warrior would both win. It should be noted that when Hogan-Gordy was announced, it was to be for the WWF title. Baba was never told Warrior was going to win, and Baba was really the promoter of the show. He was furious. Baba understood that his guy had to job for their world champion, but after they pulled that on him, I don't think Baba really pressured Gordy to do any different. And if Baba wanted the job, he'd have gotten it, no questions, I saw that first hand.

 

Anyway, in those days, if a match really stunk on an All Japan card, like the comedy matches Baba was in, fans would entertain themselves by going "ooooo, Baba, ooo Fuchi" for every move. They were making fun of how bad it was, but the guys in the ring understood their limitations because it was Baba. When younger guys would get excited about being made fun of, you'd hear the catcalls where they'd say the equivalent to, "Easy on Baba, he's an old man." Really, pre-ECW type stuff.

 

Warrior-DiBiase wasn't any good, so the fans were doing the "oooo, Warrior, oooo DiBiase." And they respected Ted but thought Warrior stunk. So the WWF people, not understanding, came back and were telling me about how "Everyone thought Warrior wouldn't get over in Japan, but they were chanting his name." I'd already seen the tape and was just cracking up.

Grr.

That reminds me of Flair vs. Murdoch.

 

They had a 60:00 draw, and I don't know the city but Joel Watts called me up and said it was the best match he had ever seen and had just taped it (most of those arena footage tapes were done by him). Flair was Flair and as much as he'd seen Murdoch, he never realized how Murdoch could be that good, going 60:00 and pacing perfectly and never blowing up. There was also an excellent DiBiase vs Taylor match on that show. As many know, it was a brutally hot summer day and he left the masters in the car, and well, that's the end of the story.

Andre stuff:

In Montreal, when he worked a territory for a while, he drew very well for a while, but business got pretty bad with him in the same towns every week.

 

Vince Sr.'s theory was to keep him on the move as an attraction. Sr. thought if he worked the same builing more than a few times in a row, he'd start hurting business because he'd kill off the main event heels.

 

By the way, he did hold a few tag titles for brief periods of time.

 

The last time Andre was measured, which was 1970, so he was 24 at the time, he was 6-9 3/4. He was never more than that, but wore lifts in his boots when against someone like Ladd who was maybe 1/2 inch shorter. If you look at photos of him in 1971 in Japan against Robinson and Gotch, he looked plenty big, but hardly like a 7 footer would next to them. This was when he was just Monster Roussimoff, and long before the 7-4 thing came along. One wrestler told me that he was with Ladd & Andre out of the ring and Ladd looked taller to him. Whenever I saw Andre out of the ring, he always wore platform shoes. Once, in Oakland, I was with a friend who was a 6-8 basketball player and Andre didn't look taller. But this was 1982, so Andre would have been 35 and was already hunching. In the photo with Wilt taken when both were in Mexico, where Wilt (7-1, although by 1983, when that photo was taken, Wilt may have shrunk by then as well) looked 2-3 inches taller, Andre was wearing very thick shoes and Wilt was in flip flops, so probably 3-4 inches in height. Vince Sr. was furious about that photo and told Andre to never pose with an NBA player. Once Manute Bol came backstage and they actually panicked and rushed Andre out of there after Andre first refused to meet him. Bol wanted his photo with Andre and you can imagine how bad that would have looked. Also heard a story about a 6-7 player on the Bengals going back and a camera being there and Andre was very nasty about getting out.

iwarrior:

I just got the new WO today, and I came across a blurb about how 16 years ago, at Flair's 41st b-day party, Wahoo tackled Brian Pillman. What's the story behind this?

Dave:

I was sitting in a chair. Brian Pillman walked in half loaded. Wahoo was there, 2/3 loaded. Wahoo tackled Brian. End of story.

Andre as a guaranteed sellout?

Nobody, ever, was a guaranteed sellout.

 

there was a period of New Japan in the early 80s where they sold out 70% of their shows.

 

WWE in the Austin/Rock heyday did close to that.

 

Aside from MSG, I can't think of any 15,000+ seat arena that even regularly sold out. Sure, every city has legendary big shows, but week after week, month after month, nobody was doing that.

 

One of the greatest draws in a single market ever was Sheik in the 70s in Toronto, and there were actually very few sellouts, but consistent 10,000 to 15,000.

 

Andre in his touring heyday was a big attraction, but whenever you here stories of we sold out every night, it's clouded memories.

 

Hogan was a huge draw and Northern California was one of his best markets. True sellouts were probably maybe three in the 80s in total in SF/Oakland/San Jose combined. In the 98 hot period, WCW and WWE did lots of sellouts, but they were also running markets infrequently.

Stevens drew a lot of big crowds in SF, but only a few sellouts. The Gomez match and the first Shire card at the Cow Palace (and some say Bill Melby vs. Mitsu Arakawa and not Stevens was the biggest draw that night) are the most famous.

 

I wouldn't say people ever got tired of Stevens. He was still doing 6,000 to 10,000 every time out until he left and he always meant something when brought back.

 

In the 70s, the Battle Royal either sold out or came close until the territory just got so bad. No non-Battle Royal card ever sold out. A few Texas death matches (promoted as the ultimate stip match) did better than 10,000. Bob Roop and Kevin Sullivan, which was the first major feud booked using non-traditional angles (Shire let Roop book) drew some great houses. Roop vs. Sullivan's biggest house outdrew any non-Battle Royal show I ever saw in the building until Hogan & Kamala sold it out (may have been Oakland Coliseum, but I do remember them selling out). Hogan & Flair in Oakland the first time came very close to a sellout, but wasn't totally sold out. Then in the late 90s, both companies did sellouts whenever they came in for a big show.

Steroids in wrestling before the '70s:

Wrestlers were using steroids by the early 60s. Perhaps a few by the late 50s.

 

The wrestlers were a lot closer to the weightlifting community in those days, and the weighlifters started I think after the 1956 Olympics when the Russians kicked our ass because they had developed steroids first.

 

I started going to matches in 1971 and even our jobber wrestlers in San Francisco were using it, albiet maybe one cycle a year and in much lower doses than the guys today. It wasn't talked about as if it was something new. But even what Billy Graham was doing in those days was completely primitive by today's standads.

[Dick the] Bruiser was an admitted steroid user by the early 60s.

Bockwinkel compared to Flair:

I know Heenan considers Bockwinkel the 5th best guy he ever managed:

 

Top tier are Hennig, Flair and Stevens, maybe even Edge to Stevens

Next tier is Patterson

Third tier is Bockwinkel

 

If you want to discuss it further, he will let you know he saw all of them up close at ringside, knew what they did and were supposed to do, than anyone alive.

 

I don't know where Bockwinkel would rate himself compared to Flair, but do know where he'd rate himself next to Stevens. On his best day, and if Ray stayed out all night and got to the buiding with a bad hangover, once the bell sounded, on that night I was "close to him."

Flair is nothing like Valentine, other then he hits hard to the chest.

 

Flair told me when he got to the Carolinas they told him to copy Valentine and Buddy Rogers, and he said he didn't and just copied Stevens.

 

He was a big fan of Stevens and knew all his spots. He once paid to see a show and Stevens didn't do one of those spots and he said, as a fan, he was disappointed. That's why he made sure to always do his trademark spots in every match, because he didn't want that fan who paid to see him be disappointed.

If Vince believed he could make money on a Bockwinkel DVD, he'd do one. He doesn't do these DVD's to honor anyone.

 

Hall of Fame is the same thing. You get in two ways:

1) He likes you personally

2) He can make money honoring you through DVD sales and you are a big enough star to be an "A" member.

3) One of your friends has Vince's ear and talks him into making you a "B" Member (such as Bob Orton because of Randy). Nick could get in as a "B" member if a friend (Patterson) pitches him hard enough but Vince only knows what he knows. You have to realize he has virtually no knowledge of any other territory except his and his father's, so Nick Bockwinkel doesn't mean much to him personally.

Ole stealing money?

Ole had a deal where he was making $125,000 base salary plus points in some of the cities. That was the deal Barnett brought him back with because other bookers were killing the territory and Barnett felt he needed a real booker back, and the only one available was Ole who had retired to run his saw mill. So when Barnett was gone, business was down, and he was paying himself on his existing deal. It appeared he was the only one making money. From the outside, there are many different ways you can look at it.

Talent that got over only because of the fans?

Mysterio in WWE.

 

Was supposed to get the cruiserweight push in WWE, and started selling merchandise so they kept letting him move up the card.

 

If you will recall, when WCW folded, it was a year or so before he was brought in, and Vince had to be strongly convinced to even sign up for $75,000 or $60,000 or some ridiculously low amount because Vince didn't want some guy fans would think Gene Okerlund could beat up.

Hogan and Austin:

Hogan walked out the first time the week before one of the company's biggest shows in its history in Melbourne, Australia. True, he was not contractually obligated, nor was Austin contractually obligated on the last run. But Hogan also wasn't asked to job for an announcer and in storyline cost his best friend his job that the friend was never getting back. Survivor Series was scheduled as Hogan vs. Brock, and right before the first TV to announce it, Hogan wouldn't come back unless he won the title. Vince was so mad he told everyone in the company he would never use Hogan again, which cracked me up because everyone knew he would. It was not even over a job necessarily, but an insistance upon a title win. At some point that wouldn't have been a bad idea, but where Lesnar was at that time, it was the wrong time for business for Hogan to beat Lesnar.

 

On the next year deal, it wasn't as if Hogan gave notice and put Show over. Hogan had a blow-up after being asked to lose clean in MSG, partially over his Mania payoff. Granted, WWE booked him stupidly in that run and I don't blame him for leaving, but it wasn't like he gave two weeks notice and put guys over. He wasn't under contract. He did the job in a six-man because Show was his friend and he was fed up anyway.

 

Hogan himself told me Vince wanted two matches with Michaels. He even told me he wanted the second match on Raw the day after last year's SummerSlam, which Hogan thought was nuts and bad business, and he was correct, to give it away on free TV the next day. Hogan wanted it at Rumble or Mania. Didn't matter, because Michaels wasn't going to lose a second time and that was the only possible finish. And once Vince okayed the interview Michaels wanted to give the next day, Hogan wasn't going to continue that program.

 

Austin refused to put Scott hall over with interference at Mania one year. His argument was Hall wouldn't be with the company for another month, so why should he? As it turned out, he was right.

 

The Austin-Lesnar match was Austin making a business call which he was right in. There was huge money in Austin-Lesnar on PPV after Lesnar was made. It was insane putting it on free TV and having Austin the first guy Lesnar beat. Moreover, the reason this was done was pure spite, as Austin ripped on the writing team a week earlier in a public forum, and thier revenge was to have Lesnar beat him. It wasn't business. Maybe he could have handled it differently, but that still doesn't change the reasons behind why he was asked to lose that match.

 

Both guys were out there protecting themselves. I don't blame them. The business doesn't look out for you, you have to look out for yourself.

 

However, defending Hogan over the second Flair match in 1994 and especially the Tenryu match in Japan is significantly harder.

On the SWS show, I can tell you that nobody was happy how that went down. The promotion also went out of business. I'm not saying if Tenryu had beaten Hogan they'd have survived, but in a shaky company where Tenryu was the big draw and Hogan was the American superstar who AGREED to job and then refused the day of the show, thus the company's top draw had to lose and never led toa rematch, the only one is benefitted was Hogan. That gate Hogan drew was hardly enough to keep them in business.

SWS went out of business if that's your question.

 

It was going to go out of busiess at some point anyway, although had Tenryu beaten Hogan at that point, it would have probably lasted longer.

He got there and said there was a change in plans. Nothing more.

Not internet rumors, Steve Austin. Austin's response at the Hall of Fame was a receipt for what Hogan said on 10/3 without telling him he was doing so, and for what he peceived, right or wrong, happened at the Hall of Fame.

Regarding Pillman in the handicap match and the Hogan-Tenryu situation, you're just wrong. Also, Tenryu beating Savage was not on an SWS show, it was on the All Japan/WWF Tokyo Dome show. WWF at the show insisted that Hogan and Warrior had to win, and Warrior couldn't work with a Japanese guy because they were afraid he'd get shown up. Anyone else, including Savage, could job because they insisted on their two stars going over. It was a deal with Baba before SWS was even formed.

 

Also, the Duggan-Austin finish was insisted upon by Hogan. Flair had zip to do with it. Hogan made sure early in in WCW that all of his friends were taken care of. Austin was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he never forgot it.

 

Pillman and I were talking daily when the deal went down. Pillman came out at a Nitro and got a gigantic reaction in the crowd while he was doing the work of not being with the company. Sullivan called him the next day and said Hogan insisted he be in the main event. Pillman knew it was death to his character and scheduled a throat operation (which he did need, but could have put off if necessary) to avoid being in what he expected would be the worst main event in pro wrestling history. Sullivan & Bischoff were calling him trying to get him until a day or two before the show (after he had gotten the surgery and really couldn't have possibly done it, but they didn't even care about that), even after the last TV had been shot, beacuse that was the orders from the guy calling the shots, as he was told, which meant Hogan, not bischoff, nor Sullivan. He was happy when it was over, because as bad as he thought that match would be, he thought when it was over, it was far worse.

Okay, so there were two Tenryu-Savage matches, but the Dome was the famous one.

 

Not that any of that has a thing to do with Tenryu vs. Hogan.

Dusty's San Francisco run:

Shire & Eddie Graham cut a deal, but wrestling was so dead here the shows didn't draw. Plus, with Verne Gagne coming in with Stevens & Patterson & Andre, Shire called the NWA to complain. When the NWA couldn't get Gagne to pull out, Shire decided that rather than lose money, he'd retire with the millions he'd made.

Brody "What ifs..."

1) Vince was a mark for using guys that were considered trouble

2) Vince was a mark for big guys

3) Hogan given his 80s mentality would have loved to have pinned Brody

4) Brody knew how to get himself over more than any Hogan opponent.

 

Done correctly, the program should have made more money. Hogan didn't sellout nightly and you can always increase the buy rate. If you look at Hogan's opponents of that era, only Andre and maybe Piper had a level of outside success on the level of Brody. Flair didn't come till 1991 and the Sid program was 1992, and Sid never had the career success of getting over everywhere that Brody had either.

 

How many **** matches, double-cross promos, and refusing to put people over do you think Nash did in WCW? Vince took him back and paid him $700,000 per year guaranteed when he was washed up and he spent almost the entire period under contract on the DL. Why? Refer to point one and two.

It's a two way street on Brody and his no-shows.

 

For example, in the AWA, Brody had a deal with Verne where he'd only work weekend dates. Verne had no problem advertising Brody on every single show he promoted. Many of his no-shows, in fact, most all of them, were dates he had never agreed to. Later, when Brody and Verne had the blow-up, Verne still advertised him for six weeks worth of house show knowing full well he wasn't coming, just like he did with Hogan. Using those grounds, Hogan also no-showed him with no care he was hurting Verne. My argument would be neither no-showed Verne, and the problems with the cities was because Verne had no problem advertising people he knew full well weren't going to be there because they thought it would sell him extra tickets that night.

 

Another example. On the Flair-Brody Checkerdome house, Brody was shortchanged something like $1700 on his payoff, and knew it. A few weeks later, he no-showed Geigel, who handled the payoff for that show, in Des Moines or Kansas City. I remember the story in advance of the no-show. Not saying he was right, but that's how he did business.

 

There are examples where his reasons may not have been as good, and no question there were incidents where he was unprofessional. But the point is, a lot of AWA wrestlers heard Verne's complaints but didn't know in the case of Verne, he false advertised Brody dozens of times without regard to the town, and Brody probably no-showed him 2-3 dates at the end of each run when they blew up.

 

As far as wrestlers go, if you talk with Flair, Funks, Road Warriors and the All Japan crew, he was respected and somewhat revered. The AWA crew he was blamed for a lot of things he deserved to be blamed for (he did not cooperate on certain occasions and change things on his own on others), but many others the blame should go with the guy who false advertised him so many times.

 

I would suggest he was burned by promoters many times before he started burning promoters back, once he had the power and leverage from his stardom to do so.

 

Hogan never behaved unprofessionally as far as a match goes other than refusing to job at times when he had that contractual right (and a few times when he didn't), but he's walked out on dates and programs every single WWE run over the past four years, as well as his last run in 1993, his New Japan last run and all the verbal agreements he made with TNA. And as best as I can tell, his reputation is that he's one of the smartest businessmen in the history of the game.

Bockwinkel was not an All Japan full-timer, although he has more bad than good to say about Brody. He does say Brody was one of the best workers ever when he wanted to be, but personally didn't like his business nor working with him in Japan because it was closer to a fight than a give-and-take match like in the U.S.

 

Beyer was only working one tour per year when Brody was a star in Japan.

 

The guys who were the regulars in that era for the most part thought differently.

 

As far as his respect among wrestlers, in 2000, when they polled almost every wrestler in the business in Japan on who the best foreign star of all-time was, Brody got more votes than anyone else. I'd say that tells you more than anything the respect he had among wrestlers in that country.

He never had a problem with Sam Muchnick.

 

However, Baba treated him like gold and he did quite the walk out, stiffing Baba's new drawing card (Choshu) in a surprise last appearance and taking a much bigger money Inoki deal. It was the right move for his business in Japan, but it took Baba years to forgive him. The only reason he got back in was because Crockett pulled Flair and Baba needed an equivalent name for some big shows. Brody then canceled for David Manning in Israel. He felt horrible about it, but it was his only way back to All Japan.

 

Hard to say how well physically he'd have held up as big guys break down earlier and he was having hip and elbow problems. Had he held up, he'd have been everywhere in the 90s, WCW, WWF and ECW (Heyman would have loved him and he'd have been perfect for that group, maybe even another Terry Funk). Pretty sure he'd have been okay through 1993-94, whether he would have lasted through 1997 when the huge money started coming in, touch and go.

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This is actually the first time I've read Dave's full blown explanation for the "PRIDE = Pro Wrestling" poisition which has always been torn to shreds on most forums that I've seen. I'm not saying I agree with his final stance, but I will say that makes more sense than it ever has anywhere else I've heard it discussed (and none of those other discussions included Dave defending himself).

 

Probably a very minor point to most poeple, but I'd love to hear more about Tenryu's SWS. Meltzer mentions the Road Warriors vs. Tenryu/Hogan match doing a $2.1 million gate. I don't know a lot about SWS other than it didn't last very long, and has a reputation of being a massive flop and I was always under the impression it lost a lot of money. A $2.1 million gate suggests you would think it must have been making some money, at least at one point. But if there's anyone with knowledge to share on that company I'd love to read it.

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Thesz-Carpentier:

I spoke to Barnett about this at length years ago. He said there was a meeting and he told me everyone in the room (maybe seven people, Muchnick, Thesz, Carpentier, Quinn, Kohler, him, maybe Whipper Watson or Tunney) and pretty well recited what happened.

 

It was supposed to be a short-term title change always. Lou was always going to get it back. It was booked to be controversial. The original idea was a count out of the ring, and I believe he said Lou hated the idea and the finish they did was Lou's idea.

 

Where it fell apart he said is Quinn wouldn't allow the NWA members dates on Carpentier like he had promised, so they had to use Lou as champion anyway. Quinn wanted Carpentier in Quebec four days per week, so after the match, that's probably why Lou was still defending and they tried to pretend it didn't happen pretty quickly.

Fun with Samoans:

Neff Maiava came long before Pita Fanene Anderson.

 

Since I wrote about this entire deal when Steamboat passed away (Steamboat & Neff were a long-time tag team), here goes.

 

Neff Maiava, real name, was a Samoan who became a big star in many parts of the U.S, but primarily Hawaii.

 

Pita Fanene Anderson started wrestling in the 60s and worked New Zealand, Japan (where the incident with Billy Robinson happened) and England before anyone in the mainland had ever heard or seen him. When he went to England, the promoter there felt Peter Anderson, the name he came in as, hardly sounded like a Samoan. He gave him the name Peter Maivia. At the time, Pita Anderson had no idea there was a such person as Neff Maiava.

 

Around 1968, although I could be off on the year, the now Peter Maivia went to Hawaii, and met Neff Maiava. To this day, Peter doesn't know if the U.K. promoter had heard of Neff and he was specifically given the name, but that was what he believed. Peter & Neff, unrelated, became blood brothers, best friends, looked alike, and according to family, were so similar it was as if they were twins, but Neff was much older than Pita. Neff's son, who plays football at UCLA I think (or USC) right now, considers himself first cousin to Dwayne.

 

Very similar to Afa & Sika. Afa & Sika were wrestling fans in San Francisco who began attending Peter Maivia's matches at the Cow Palace. I don't think Peter came to the mainland until 1969, but again, could be off by a year. Afa & Sika were so huge and beat up security trying to get to the heels that Roy Shire, just as a safety measure, had Jerry Monti befriend them, teach them to wrestle, and got them out of his arenas to Vancouver to start their career. That's the true story of how they got into wrestling, because Roy was afraid, as were the heels, of these big marks beating them up. Peter also befriended them. Again, no actual blood relation although it is claimed, but all of Afa & Sika's children like Rikishi consider Dwayne Johnson a first cousin and Peter an uncle.

San Francisco history:

Roy Shire was set up as promoter in San Francisco by Jim Barnett, so whatever AWA was recognized in Indiana was the same AWA as Shire. However, they never brought in an AWA world champion. The story with Shire is that Barnett knew a man named Jim Wesson, a local car dealer, who wanted to start local wrestling on a new TV station. He wanted Barnett, but Barnett was doing well in Indianapolis and Detroit at the time with Johnny Doyle, so he and Doyle made the deal and sent Shire in as promoter. The TV station (KTVU) got huge and the two hour live prime time wrestling show put SF wrestling on fire. Shire picked Ray Stevens, his tag partner, to be the top star and booked his talent at first through Indianapolis before he got his own circuit going.

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Flair told me when he got to the Carolinas they told him to copy Valentine and Buddy Rogers, and he said he didn't and just copied Stevens.

 

He was a big fan of Stevens and knew all his spots. He once paid to see a show and Stevens didn't do one of those spots and he said, as a fan, he was disappointed. That's why he made sure to always do his trademark spots in every match, because he didn't want that fan who paid to see him be disappointed.

Well that explains a lot.

 

I've never heard half this stuff before, good dope.

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Monetary worth of the territories (Lou Dondero was Pat Patterson's partner):

Lou Dondero made a $2 million cash offer from backers in the gay community to buy out Roy Shire in the early/mid 70s and was turned down flat.

 

On the Stu Hart deal, Vince reneged on paying Stu after a year on his deal. His loophole was Bruce was involved in some indie shows in the area, violating the non-compete. When he stopped paying Stu on their 10-year-deal after one year (this may sound familiar) he told Stu he could open up again. Vince bought Stampede for $1 million, but then didn't pay $1 million in the end, so Stu reopened.

 

Crockett bought out Watts for $4 million, but only paid him $1.2 million before going out of business himself.

When was the Rock last on Raw as of this thread?

I think it was the Divas segment.

 

Hilarious story.

 

The Diva Search was bombing. They brought Rock in and he was out there forever. I don't know how long, could have been 20-25 minutes straight just doing his thing. Of course, ratings went through the roof.

 

I got a call two days later. Basically saying you know how you've been writing that the Diva Search isn't doing ratings, well, we turned the corner this week. Cited the huge increase in audience throughout the segment. Yep, people wanted to see those women humiliate themselves and ratings were way up. That movie star who dropped by had nothing to do with it.

From a thread about the best bookers of all time:

Ole had a reputation in the Carolinas as being a terrible booker by the early 80s. Ask most people in the territory at the time.

 

By 1985, he was considered a joke as a booker by most in the industry. His own partners sold to Vince McMahon behind his back, which tells you the confidence the people who saw the books at the time had in him. Ask anyone following closely in the mid-80s about Ole as a booker and it won't be positive, let alone anyone around in his 90s WCW run when things had really passed him by.

 

There is no doubt he did a great job for many years in Georgia, nor that he screwed it up bad at the end.

 

No different from a lot of people.

 

Trying to say one radio interview in 2004 changed his reputation from great to bad is a joke.

 

Most bookers who had good runs had things pass them by at the end, Watts, Eddie Graham, Ole, Roy Shire (who was far better at detail work in his heyday then he gets credit for), George Scott, Sam Menacker, Choshu, Shinma. Times change and they all repeat their past successes in the same area and they usually don't work as well the second, third and fourth times. Vince Kennedy McMahon was a brilliant booker when he was younger, and look at him now. The only ones, not traditional bookers, but the guys who were running things, who for whatever reason stood major tests of time were Vince Sr. and Muchnick. they were successful until their last shows and they booked the same patterned way forever. But they also didn't rely on a lot of cheap hot shotting and were mostly conservative in their angles (Muchnick more than Sr.), but they did business for decades.

Hogan and his political manuvering:

On the Funk-Hogan thing, it was a huge deal in Japan in the early 80s. when I went there the first time in 1984, every reporter talked about it as one of the biggest "behind the scenes" stories, and I think it happened more than a year before I went. The only difference in Funk's version and the version I heard over and over is that Hogan was in the room and refused to open the door. Can't say which version is correct, but Funk went there with the reporters with the idea of creating a scene because Hogan claimed to have beaten him in Africa. It was a big deal because to the "boys" and press there, while Hogan was probably the smart and mature one to avoid the confrontation, in their world, it was Hogan backing down, and it did restore Funk's luster underground from the report of the job. It's not some story that just surfaced in the last few years. Everything involving New Japan vs. All Japan in the early 80s when they were warring was a big deal, and Funk, as one of Baba's top foreigners vs. Hogan, one of Inoki's top foreigners, in those days meant, no matter where this match takes place, neither man can do the job. Sounds silly today, but it was a completely different world in those days and those were the rules. That's why Hogan wouldn't do a job for harley for even one fall in their St. Louis NWA title match and it had to be made into a one fall match with a DQ finish. New Japan top stars were not supposed to job under any circumstances to All Japan top stars, and vice versa.

 

On the Hogan/Sting and screwed up count, while there is no proof, virtually everyone believes Nick patrick didn't do the scripted fast count on orders from Hogan.

 

Regarding Hogan putting over Michaels, one of the reasons there were so many problems in the end is because Hogan made it clear he's putting nobody over. His idea was to work with Austin at Mania (which at this point is unlikely to happen, but at that point was what the company was hoping for), and thus he was not putting anyone over until he got there. I agree with his thinking. You can't have the "ultimate match" of the year watered down to have some parity in a "B" feud, and compared to Hogan-Austin, Hogan-Michaels is the warm-up program, not the big match. In fact, the plan was to do two matches, the SummerSlam match and a cage match rematch. When Hogan made it clear to Michaels, since Hogan signed with creative control, that he was winning both matches, Michaels pulled out of doing the second match and then cried on TV the day after the first match. It should be noted that Vince approved of Michaels doing so, after being the one who told Michaels that Hogan's finish goes before the match.

Monetary figures:

Dave Meltzer never posted Hogan made $20 million in his best year.

 

Hogan, by his own estimation about five years ago, was worth $20 million.

 

Hogan's best year in WWF was $6 million. that's directly from people in WWF who have access to such records. His beat year in WCW was probably $8 million. If you want to do the WCW math, you can figure it out:

 

$25,000 per TV or house show

$600,000 minimum on PPV or 25% of the company gross

 

He had a big cut of his merchandise, although his merchandise actually didn't sell nearly as well as Sting and Goldberg's at the time.

 

1998 would be the best year in WCW.

 

The biggest payoff for any WWF wrestler for any show before 2001 was $750,000 that Hogan got for the Andre match. Hogan topped $1 million on a few of the biggest WCW events.

Are steroids as harmful as we think?

To say nobody has ever sold their body or robbed anyone to obtain steroids would be false. There was an entire underground culture of rich homosexual doctors providing steroids to bodybuilders based on that premise. I just read an article two days ago about a guy convicted of larceny trying to get money for steroids.

 

Their dangers are both overblown by the media but also underplayed by their proponents even worse.

 

I've known far more people who smoked than used steroids, but I've also known far more steroid users that have died from heart related ailments than people who have died from lung cancer.

 

They are not the world's most dangerous drug by any means, but they are not benign, even to those who research them. Many so-called steroid experts have had plenty of side effects. I know a kid here who researched them like crazy and still ended up needing surgery for gyno and he did everything you were supposed to do to avoid it. I have a friend who is a doctor who is the local expert on the subject and who still uses them at 50 who admits to having had health problems from them and that he's told me from his own personal experience that the studies that debunk roid rage are a crock, because he's a very low key guy, who when on roids, can't even handle being in a traffic jam.

One thing important about bar fighting and bouncing is this.

 

In most cases, it is more important to stop trouble and avoid trouble to look intimidating. If you're 275 pounds and muscular you can stop a lot more trouble than if you're 180 pounds and a cross-trained MMA fighter or pro boxer who may actually be able to clean the big guy's clock.

Verne Gagne and racism:

When Tony Atlas, in the days he was still sort of a star, was brought to Minneapolis, he came out for his debut and got a giant pop.

 

Verne went to (I won't say the person's name, let's just say an AWA lifer) and saw it and said, "See, I told you blacks don't get over in our territory."

The lack of success of Flair's 1st WWF run:

Flair headlined from September 91 through April 92 and business was generally very strong. Much better than pre-September 91 when it was in the toilet. The Hogan-Flair dynamic was strong, not as strong as it should have been but I don't have the time to go through why but it was so obvious from day one why it would be. Short form, he was promoted as a pretender and not on the level of Hogan, and the dream match aspect was totally downplayed. Hogan in his promos even went so far as to say that some people think this match is a big deal, but it's not. That's how you promote a house show main event? Still, the early matches did very well, but it petered out because it was overdone, and because nobody did jobs in any of the matches. What killed it was Flair become just another WWF wrestler, and the Survivor Sreies, with Flair being on a WWF team instead of being an outsider sealed the fate. Hogan vs. NWA champion Flair would have drawn and did draw in September. They almost sold out the Oakland Coliseum Arena, which Hogan sold out very few times, in fact I can't off the top of my head remember once although he may have with Kamala r someone when he was really hot. But it's the biggest crowd I remember in the building until a Thunder taping in the boom period. It had no legs because Vince never believed in it and egos didn't want to do it right. I remember talking to Pat Patterson about two weeks before the first scheduled match in Oakland, and Patterson himself told me it wouldn't draw well because "our fans don't know Flair." That was their attitude, but in fact, it drew great.

 

By early 92, Hogan-Flair had been programmed all wrong and it had run 4 straight months and it's time was over. Still, Hogan & Piper vs. Sid & Flair drew very well, but I think the Hogan-Sid dynamic and the idea of Hogan & Piper as a team were the reason, and Flair was a strong name partner for Sid. Thinking back, I think it was the Hogan & Piper team idea since I don't think they had done that much at house shows by that point, and Sid was kind of over.

 

Flair lost the title to Savage at Mania which was a booking mistake of major proportions. Flair & Savage did great interviews building that match. You have to remember WWF in early 1992 was rocked with the steroid scandal and the ringboys scandal and Vince was being brutalized everywhere in the media. We all knew there were going to be problems, particularly when the guys started shrinking because they started doing real steroid tests and punshing guys in early 1992. Fans were taught for 8 years that to be a good wrestler you had to be huge and ripped, and suddenly nobody was going to look like that.

 

Additionally, there was no money in heel Flair chasing Savage, only the other way around. I don't know how much it would have helped for Flair to defend vs. Savage that summer, because business and ratings were going to die anyway. Everything had been built around Hogan and he was gone, in a scandal no less and the company had a major black eye and a bunch of smaller guys on top.

 

For the most part, from April 1992 until the rise of Austin and the dropping of steroid testing, nobody drew. Nash drew the worst of all the nobody draws, but Flair, Warrior, Hart, Michaels, Sid, whomever, none drew. I don't think anyone of them had much of an opportunity to draw. When Hart beat Nash, there was a noticeable turnaround and the company was profitable for a short period of time. Even when Hogan came back in 1993, he saw the lay and of the land, and when he wasn't drawing either, he quit to do a TV show.

Mike Goldberg and WWE

As someone very familiar with Mike Goldberg's negotiations and what led to them, he was offered a ridiculous amount of money (to be honest, I'm still surprised he turned it down but also believe for him, he made the right career decision) as soon as WWE got wind of the Oct. 3 live UFC show. He negotiated with them for several weeks, verbally accepted the deal, and had a start date (both Oct. 3, which he wouldn't do but WWE wanted because of it going head-to-head with UFC and wanting to start anew on USA with a new look on the announcing team, and then Oct. 10, which he verbally agreed to), to replace Ross as the lead announcer for Raw. When the angle was shot for Vince to fire someone (Oct. 3), Goldberg was scheduled to debut as the lead voice of Raw on Oct. 10 and the plan was to fire JR on the air, not from the company, but as lead announcer.

 

Goldberg did not inform WWE that he changed his mind and wasn't coming until October 8, after he had negotiated with UFC, Fox and Spike is rumored to have also had input. The script for Raw on Oct. 10 had already been written by that time.

 

Of course everything that happened on TV is a work, and everything on the web site is a scripted work. But the idea they wanted to get rid of Ross as announcer is not a work, or an angle, and the idea it was by Ross' choice is 100% not the case. What will happen from here is anybody's guess. He will be selling the firing, and whether he's brought back depends on if they don't find a replacement from the outside, or are so adamant about replacing him that they don't find a replacement and don't bring him back anyway.

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Cornette was relatively successful with SMW during the worst down period in the modern history of the business. He didn't make a profit, but he built to some big shows that drew more than 5,000 paid. Except for Memphis, which paid nothing, he was probably closer to profitable in that period as anyone promoting wrestling full-time in the U.S. For a period, his small roster of guys were outdrawing WCW.

On the "planned" Flair-Hogan main event for WrestleMania VIII:

The plan was always Hogan-Sid, dating back a year.

 

Business was very different then. House shows were advertised big. You didn't do 2-3 matches in every market on a house show and then the PPV.

 

I knew Hogan-Sid as the main event maybe 10 months out. When they did the TV announcement of Hogan-Flair, it was just an angle as Flair already knew he was facing Savage by then.

 

What people don't realize is that Hogan-Flair started off doing good business, but it had petered out by December, months before Mania. Vince was going to build to Hogan legdropping Flair at the house shows early 1992, but after a terrible house in Florida, Vince felt it had run its course. He changed all the shows to Hogan & Piper vs. Flair & Sid, and it was Hogan-Sid drawing the money. The only Hogan-Flair Mania hint was in September of 91, when they started their house show run, and Flair wanted to do 30:00 matches and Hogan wanted 15:00, he told Flair they needed to save the 30:00 match for Mania. But when crowds for the program dropped, and second time in our market they only did 5400 at the Cow Palace, and our market had it first, there was no Mania in their future. In hindsight people think it would have been a big deal, but it had already run its course months before Mania and WWE promoted the program ass backwards and Flair wasn't considered special by WWF fans.

 

I'm a friend of Flair and have never had any interest in paying to see Sid, but that is how it was then.

Later that same thread:

It was the Mania promise that got Sid to jump in the first place. He went back and forth for several weeks. One week he was about to sign with WWF, next week WCW, next week back kind of thing. Vince promised him the Mania main event after WCW promised him a huge (for the time period) guaranteed contract. WCW has no Mania to promise him and that was when he told Herd he was leaving.

 

Goldberg had incredible charisma. That's all he had. Goldberg was already working longer matches by the end of 1998. I saw him live several times. The average fan was more jakked to see Goldberg than every other wrestler. They had just come off a couple of successful stadium shows that did 30,000 people each, and had topped 30,000 advance for Atlanta. Neither Sammartino nor Andre ever pulled numbers like that in theri lives, and they kept Andre "undefeated" nationally until 1987 in fans' eyes, so that was 14 or so years of national touring.

 

If anything, the fans were telling them it's not time to change the key guy.

 

He should have lost when it was time, to someone that could have a great drawing program with it. The public would have told them when ticket sales slowed. Any other reason for him losing when it was the most successful gimmick in company history would have been stupid.

 

How many great Goldberg vs. Nash PPV buy rates for rematches did they draw? They didn't even book another Goldberg vs. Hogan match. So what did his losing accomplish other than it being the beginning of a rapid business slide?

Gordon's leaving had a lot of facets to it. The Hall of Fame was the last straw.

 

He complained far more about John Studd than angelo Poffo, but both were an issue.

 

Wide World of Sports maybe a week or two before the Hall of Fame had done a deaths in wrestling piece (yes, 14-15 years ago and nothing has changed) and Studd's doctor directly attributed his death to steroids. Solie felt that in his home town, he didn't want to be inducting someone as a Hall of Famer that Wide World of Sports had just fingered as a guy who used so many steroids that it killed him.

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If not Hogan, then who?

Vince would have picked Kerry Von Erich, and he would have self destructed on the road.

"Is Brock Lesnar on steroids?" leads to this:

Did you think for a minute the guys that are doing steroids specifically because they have a family to support?

 

The argument that guys make their own choice, which some of the guys themselves are naive enough to embrace, and others see through like Swiss Cheese, is so transparent.

 

When the choice is $50 a match on the indie scene or a chance to go to WWE where the average salary is more than 200K, and you have the talent but not the body, it's real easy for a guy trying to raise a family to play all high and mighty that I'm not going to touch the stuff because 30 years from now it may do me harm.

 

Whether it's the Olympics, the WWE, or baseball, it is up to the governing bodies to do what they can to either insure that they do all they can to dissuade use, or, by their very nature, they are encouraging use. In WWE, being that it's a work, the encouragement is even greater. In baseball, if a guy has a lousy physique and can hit .300, he's still got a job. The equivalent to a .300 hitter with a lousy physique in wrestling earns $300 on the indie level today.

Takada vs Backlund and shooty stuff:

The first match was great in my mind. However, there was a lot of complaints in UWF about Bob doing too many pro wrestling spots. The match got over with the crowd, but a lot of people didn't even want to bring Backlund back. I remember the reaction when I was talking about how great it was and the feedback I heard was in the company they were very negative on Bob. When they did bring him back, Funaki did a number on him in training and was very stiff with him in the ring as well. Bob looked like he'd been through a war when they were done with him, and they pretty much killed off his shooter rep. I don't think they booked him after that, but I could be wrong.

 

The second match, this was UWFI, was most likely an accidental knockout by Takada. This match took place because the legend of the first match was such with the crowd that Backlund had become a Takada legendary foe. You have to remember in 1988, Backlund was still a former New Japan main eventer and WWF champion and Takada was the guy climbing the ranks to a degree. I mean, he had big wins over Japanese, but I think Backlund would have been the biggest name foreigner that he'd have beaten up to that point so it was considered a huge win for his career. By the time of this match, Takada was now a full fledged top guy and superstar. Third match was because the second match didn't go as expected and they felt they had to make up for it.

Funaki went to the Machado school to learn gi training. He had never rolled with a gi, and the guys using their gi in practice were having their way with him in catching him. I'm not sure what that is relevant to when it comes to a real fight. Funaki was a first generation pro wrestler turned fighter just learning what worked and what didn't work in live combat. Considering who he beat and what those who beat him say about him, he was very good, definitely no world beater, but nobody from 1995 is good by today's standards because fighting has evolved 50 years in the last ten.

 

Did you know that Randy Couture was choked out by one of the WCW Power Plant guys in 1997 (Robbie Rage)? Or that I was at a private training session with Dan Severn where Inoki got him in one submission move after another.

 

When you are trying to learn new techniques in training and you don't put yourself in a position to be humbled, you don't learn.

 

As far as Funaki vs. Backlund in a shoot, Bob came back from that tour and willingly admitted as his face was all messed up when he came back that he got taken apart in practice and that he had never trained in blocking kicks and thus couldn't do it. If he had training in it, perhaps it would be different.

There were a few worked matches in Pancrase (mostly when guys showed up injured so they would work a quick match rather than cancel), and there were matches where Funaki, Suzuki, Shamrock and others carried guys less skilled guys rather than beat them at will, as they could have.

 

The vast majority were shoots. Every Bas Rutten match was a shoot. He was never asked to carry or to lose, as he wasn't from the pro wrestling business or in management. Frank Shamrock was never asked to lose. Fuanki, Suzuki and Shamrock did things because they thought the business needed to be able to survive and they came from a pro wrestling background and were promoting what they called hybrid wrestling to pro wrestling fans. That was their audience. They recognized the need for entertainment.

 

Ken Shamrock was the toughest guy then. He put over Suzuki because they needed the fans to believe a Japanese guy was even with Shamrock one time. The most famous time, in the title match, I knew that finish ahead of time. Shamrock was about to fight Dan Severn, who was NWA champion. In their minds, to protect their world title, they couldn't risk Ken losing to Dan (he ended up winning that match) and having their world champion lose a shoot match to a pro wrestler, so they asked Ken to lose the title to Suzuki. If you understood Japan and pro wrestling and what they were trying to accomplish at the time, there was no other possible decision to make on that match. And it was not a problem because they were all on the same page at the time.

 

In 1995, Shamrock was probably the best competition fighter there was. He blew through Rutten, and would have beaten Gracie had their been judges in the match they had. The technical skill he had then would be considered mediocre today, because the sport has evolved. He was good with leg submissions, which are harder to get today because people know how to defend them, he had very little striking training but had power because he really was incredibly strong for his size at the time, and he was a good wrestler for someone without a high level wrestling background. That was enough then, and obviously today you need a lot more.

 

At the beginning, it was people trying out what pro wrestling/Wigan hooking moves Karl Gotch and Masami Soranaka taught them actually worked in a real fight, and combined it with very limited striking training. Today it's people knowing what works and doesn't and being well rounded in everything.

Why didn't people want to work w/ Backlund in '95?

I know people here don't want to hear it, but almost everyone in the promotion in 1995 thought Backlund was impossible to have a match with.

 

It wasn't fear. Bob was old by then and whatever shooter rep he had was either gone or nobody cared about. Even Hart, who really liked him, knew before their Wrestlemania match that it would stink.

 

Hall said Backlund was impossible to have a match with, and asked for them to put Murdoch at ringside because Murdoch was such a great worker, that they could work off each other.

 

They did a match at a house show in SF or Oakland that I was at during that run, and it was all Hall & Murdoch having fun. Nobody in the building cared about Backlund, and Hall worked almost an entire match avoiding locking up or doing anything with Backlund. The match still was awful, by the way.

What if Hogan wasn't in Rocky III?

Hogan was drawing huge for the AWA before the movie came out. In Minneapolis and SF, there was no difference in Hogan as a draw pre-Rocky III or post-Rocky III. It was obvious when the place went nuts for Hogan when he debuted in the AWA as a heel managed by Johnny Valiant, that he was a babyface, and he never actually even turned, he just was.

 

He had the look and charisma which were perfect for the time. If Studd, or Monsoon, or anyone else had gotten the role, Hogan still would have been the guy Vince went to in 1984 and the end result would have been exactly the same.

 

More non-wrestling fans had a vague idea who he was from the movie, but it made no difference in wrestling history.

Ox Baker claimed he tried out...

Ox is known for embellishing, you know.

 

Stallone went to Terry Funk, who he had been friends with for years, looking for a giant. I believe Funk suggested Studd, Hogan and Monsoon. Understandably, of the three, Stallone liked Hogan's look the best.

A different Flair vs Murdoch post:

I have a sad story regarding that.

 

Joel Watts was a good friend of mine and we traded tapes in those days. He called me after a match, and I don't know the city off hand, but it was a Flair-Murdoch 60:00 draw. He told me it ws the best match he had ever seen, and he'd seen a lot and couldn't wait for me to see it.

 

It was super hot that day and he left the tapes in his car. You know the rest of the story. He was pissed. It would have aired on the Mid South "B" show where they showed arena footage had the tape of the entire show (I think there were a few very good undercard matches, I seen to remember him raving about a destroyed Taylor vs. DiBiase on the same show).

Better all-around: Guerrero or Benoit?

Guerrero has a lot of bad matches. He and Mysterio stunk up the joint at the last San jose house show, and all of the PPV matches in their current feud have been disappointing. I can't even imagine Benoit having a bad match with Mysterio. Guerrero can do more things in the ring but Benoit is far more consistent, rarely has a bad match. As an actor, Guerrero by a mile. Right now he's the best in the company outside the ring. Both are great at their best, but Guerrero as "at his best" maybe 10%, if that, and Benoit is maybe 85% and that's the big difference.

 

A big difference from an athletic condition is Benoit is in so much better cardiovascular condition. A lot of the guys who are in awesome shape in WWE have to slow down for Guerrero. Nobody has to slow down for Benoit. That's in particular the difference between Angle, whose conditioning is probably the best in the company, in having so many classics with Benoit and have "only" very very good matches with Guerrero.

 

You also have to factor in Guerrero was in a horrible car wreck and battles major drug addictions. He can't afford to use the quantity of pain relievers many in the company use for fear of addiction, so he simply can't go all out, and his body is breaking down faster. Benoit has the bad neck, but overall doesn't have the injuries Guerrero battles if he has to do four hard matches in the same week.

tomk:

What you wrote about the house show in the observer wasn't that he "stunk up the joint".

 

In the same Observer where writting about the Eddie vs. Rey match from June 23 Smackdown which was probably the best WWE match thus far this year:

 

"Main was Guerrero vs. Mysterio. They went 27:38 in what was mainly an old school style relatively slow paced match that built well. It came off to me as two guys who are far better doing 15-18 minutes, but changed their game because they were booked to do almost twice as long as that, and proved that they could do it well."

 

You went on to write about the San Diego show "This is one of those matches where you have a veteran, Guerrero, who is in total control. He took the crowd up and down at will. He just didn't will it alot. It's the kind of match that veteran and retired wrestlers would rave about, while all the fans around me were complaining about how boring it was. It was Guerrero largely working the left arm, and I mean he was a pro at it, but when people see Mysterio vs. Guerrero they clearly want to see Lucha Libre, fast moving and high flying, and not what they were giving."

 

In the July 4th Observer the San Diego match was a match that you didn't like because you wanted to see an X- division match and were given an old school veteran vs. underdog match instead. But it was a match that veterans would RAVE about.

 

That doesn't seem to be the same as stinking up a joint.

 

 

A lot of the guys who are in awesome shape in WWE have to slow down for Guerrero. Nobody has to slow down for Benoit. That's in particular the difference between Angle, whose conditioning is probably the best in the company, in having so many classics with Benoit and have "only" very very good matches with Guerrero.

Angle's conditioning is the "best in the company"?

 

This is the same Angle who is so busted up that he has one televised match a month but is so delicate that he has to be protected nost of the time in short "Angle invitationals".

WM3 attendance:

When the pope was at the Silverdome--at the time, the crowd was said to have been 88,000. They were more jammed in. For years, the WWF claimed the all-time attendance record in the building. In fact, the 93,173 figure was decided upon by Basil DeVito ahead of time so it could never be broken. I believe in 2002, some 15 years after the event , the Silverdome web site changed the Pope number from 88,000 to more than 93,000 because it was the legtimate record, and they had been listing Wrestlemania III's worked number all that time.

 

The WWE's own company internal computerized records don't even have the worked figure. In 2001, when I was doing a story on Wrestlemania 17 and WWE was cooperative with my record keeping completely, I got the real attendances and gates for all the big stadium shows in company history, Sky dome, Exhibition Stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium, Wembley. All announced figures at the time were way different from real numbers, all lower, in the case of Mania & the 86 Hogan-Orndorff match, by more than 10,000 people, others by less

Marty Jannetty & Chuck Austin:

Chuck Austin, at least as of a year ago, was not walking again. Jannetty was just full of it.

 

Let's see. A guy is made a quadriplegic. It's okay for wrestlers to testify for WWE, but not for the guy?

 

One of the keys in the case at the time was just how much more credible Bruno Sammartino came across to the jury than WWE's expert witnesses, Killer Kowalski & Gorilla Monsoon.

 

Since we just had a somewhat similar case ending this week, were the witnesses hired by the Ong family in their wrongful death case also deserving of scorn. Or is it that if someone is badly maimed in an accident in a WWE ring it is their own fault, but if they are badly maimed in an accident in a promotion you don't like, then it's okay to testify against said promotion?

Dave gets trolled by a Hogan fan:

The company [WWF} was a distant second in a wrestling war in 1997 and lost its biggest star to the opposition.

 

Two of the key reasons this changed remarkably fast were Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan.

No Holds Barred lost money. Vince said that himself. He put up the money, lost a decent amount, and it wasn't until now that he tried the movie business again, and only because the DVD market is so good that movies that were formerly big losers can break even. We'll see.

 

Rock's movies do great video business. Both Rundown and Walking Tall were far more successful on video than at the theaters. Look at his movies in production, and you don't even know the number he's turned down. He's a hot name in the industry, and no longer even talked about as a wrestler/actor. Hogan was a joke in the movie industry and never considered anything more than a wrestler who did bad movies.

 

On a profit basis, tickets basis, and surely acting basis, the two aren't even in the same league.

 

Hogan was a big draw for more years than Austin. But Austin's grosses were so huge that his few years were bigger than all of Hogan's put together. The profit margin in Austin's best year was more than the total profit margin, in fact, significantly more, between 1984 and 1992, which was the entire Hogan WWE era.

Just so this isn't misinterpreted. WWF profits from 1984-92 were about $40-45 million total. Best single year was $6 million.

 

Profits were never less than $56 million each year from 98-99 through 00-01. Of course, things went down the minute Austin went heel.

Hogan is fantastic at getting "pops." Once of the best I've ever seen. You know who else was fantastic at that, Jimmy Valiant. Dusty Rhodes was one of the best as well. Hogan will get them until he's 60. Maybe longer.

 

What does it mean? Sometimes a lot. Sometimes nothing.

 

Guys who know how to work a crowd can great pops and it's the great illusion of all. Jim Duggan and Rikishi's stink face drew massive pops. At the same time Rikishi used to tear the house down in WWF, the ratings for his matches would always go down.

 

Hogan was a giant draw from 1984-92. Failed in 93 and left. Big PPV draw from 94-early 99, dying together with Flair in the spring and that was it for the company. Hogan didn't draw that well at house shows in WCW until the entire company itself was on fire, and then they were drawing with him and without him. Hogan was never close to the man when it came to WCW's big period of ratings. Goldberg and Flair moved the audience the most consistently. Hogan was good, but he was second tier with Savage.

 

In WWE, his first 2-3 PPVs and first TV appearances did great for the nostalgic return. Check the ratings that year. They died after a while. I remember the week, there was a Hogan interview shortly after he'd won the title where the audience tuned out in droves. They had to get the belt from him. People wanted him to win the belt, but when he did, they didn't want it anymore. It's a funny deal which is why this is a very difficult business at times. Smackdown ratings were the lowest in history, hitting 2.7 a few times, when they revolved around Hogan. But Hogan's pops were so huge everyone was blinded. As soon as Hogan got mad about not getting to beat Lesnar and walked out, the ratings immediately turned around. The turnaround started the week after Hogan left, due to the ascension of Lesnar .

 

Now today, business wise, maybe one time and out every 18 months is good for him and kept like that, it should always work, although diminishing returns each time out. You can't credit Mania's buy rate this year to him. He was in no advertising for the show. Backlash had an incredible ad budget, biggest of any B show in years, his first match in nearly two years in WWE, and was a big disappointment. HHH vs. Batista hell in a cell with no Hogan greatly outdrew HHH vs. Batista with no cage and all the mainstream advertising around Hogan's first match. Aside from his first unadvertised appearance where most people thought it was going to be Rock and not Hogan as the surprise partner, which did huge, Raw ratings have been slightly below average for his appearances. SummerSlam will do well for a dream match, but that's as much due to Michaels and the match-up. Dream matches first time of legends almost always are easy draws, and Hogan is a legend. Hogan vs. Austin will do very well. If Hogan was facing Batista or JBL, there would be no legend vs. legend deal out of it and it would not do well.

John Laurinaitis makes lots of money thread:

Mark henry's ten year contract was for $250,000 per year, not $1 million. Big Show's ten year contract, which has since been renegotiated, was for right at $1 million per year.

 

Anyone who follows WWE the slightest bit can see John L is in way over his head. However, they have nobody else for the job. It isn't like there is a place where they train VP's in Talent Relations. Ross put in his time and wanted to concentrate on announcing. He groomed John L. As far as what he's making, what do you expect a Vice President in WWE to be earning? James Rothchilds was making $1.1 million and I'll bet most people never even heard of him. Kevin Dunn is making north of $1 million. That's the pay for the job.

 

He's overpaid for plenty, with Big Show and Nash ($700,000 per year for two years that he barely worked) coming to mind. I don't think anyone now is being overpaid, except maybe Hogan.

 

Vince has his hits and misses. He's neither the genius he's made out to be, nor any kind of a dummy. He worked hard. Had a vision in the 80s and Hogan. Lucked out by having Austin show up just as he was about to hit the iceberg and then Rock came, and his competition had no business sense or savvy. He's now owner of basically a monopoly business in an industry with a lot of fans.

UPN's "no more Hassan" decree:

WWE made a bad call. Everyone in the company today realizes such. Sometimes when you screw up, you just have to live with the consequences.

 

The angle didn't play well in the real world. UPN lives in the real world. Every now and then WWE has to live in it as well.

 

I guess in the real world when you mock a beheading, and try to claim after the fact it's all in comedy, people think you have a weird sense of humor.

 

UPN made a major error letting the footage air last week. WWE made a major error thinking they could get away with it because it's the U.S. and that nobody in the U.S. cares about stuff outside its own country. The fact they edited the footage for all overseas markets shows they knew it was a sensitive subject and wouldn't play well elsewhere. They misread the U.S.

 

They should have learned their lesson in 1991. People who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. People who don't learn from their own history, are sometimes double doomed.

Tracy Smothers rips Dave during the JBL-Meanie aftermath and stuff about corrections:

Regarding Hardcore Heroes, one question, do you read the Observer? Obviously, the answer is no. So how can you comment on when I make a mistake I don't correct it.

 

In response to story based on hearsay and not correcting it, please get the facts straight.

 

A few weeks ago, I got something in an e-mail listing a Bret Hart appearance in Windsor, Ontario. Since Hart has been in and out of the country and I wasn't sure if he'd be around when that date was listed , and because there are so many cases where he's falsly advertised before a deal is made, I always contact either him or Marcy Engelstein, his personal assistant, regarding his bookings. Think about this for a second. Why would I need to rely on hearsay when it comes to Bret Hart? He's a friend who wrote the foreword for my last book.

 

Marcy at the time, which was on a Tuesday, the last day before deadline, stated the booking in Windsor and another booking in Valley Forge were legit and confirmed. She said there was another booking, which was your booking, that was probable, but it was not yet confirmed. That is what I wrote.

 

Later, when Marcy told me your date was confirmed, in the next issue of the Observer, it was stated as such.

 

So if hearsay is the person who quite possibly is the same person you negotiated with to get the date, you are correct. As far as being confirmed for months, his people told me he was not confirmed, just probable, just a few weeks ago. Furthermore, in a private e-mail,I told you that very same thing more than a week ago. And never corrected himself, well, if you read the Observer, you'd know better.

 

As for Smothers, again, he has stated yesterday that he has never read one word that I've written. Whether true or not, if I critiqued Smothers' performance as a wrestler and later tried to claim I had never actually watched one of his matches, what would that say?

 

Tracy told me himself in Knoxville one night when we were talking about his sports background, and I did get it wrong, it was Carson Newman College, not Springfield College (he went to high school in Springfield, I think, is what he said in the same conversation), because I knew he was a good high school wrestler, when asking why he didn't wrestle in college, he said, "Because those boys were tough." Carson Newman had a good NAIA wrestling program at the time. Those were his words to me, in a friendly conversation when we were talking about his legit wrestling background. The idea that I would hide out at wrestling matches is ridiculous being that I've met and talked amicably to Smothers at matches all over the world.

 

As far as who is tougher between him and JBL, you can have your opinion. JBL is much bigger, several years younger, and I've seen him fight. He was also for years in a role as an enforcer in WWE. Anyone who knows anything about pro wrestling knows guys who play the enforcer role are people that the promotions think are pretty darn tough, and that most wrestlers don't want to mess with. It was an opinion. It could be right and it could be wrong. I happen to believe Smothers is a tough guy as well.

 

The idea I played a part in getting him fired is ludicrous. If writing for years he was an underrated talent led to him losing his job, well, guilty as charged, but that one has no merit. The Terry Gordy story is not true. I socialized with Terry Gordy on many occasions in many U.S. cities as well as on a few trips to Japan and he knew who I was. Terry Gordy pissed in Japan at Ribera Steak house on a guy named David Katz from Philadelphia, who told me the story about six years after it happened. Regarding the newsletter, when I was in Japan, Terry Gordy & Steve Williams would usually ask if I had any copies of the newsletter and ask what the latest news from the states was.

 

I've got no beef with Smothers and the only issue that brought this on is that I thought people thought JBL would be a pushover in a one-sided fight, and as much of an ******* as JBL was on June 12th, based on his rep, that wouldn't be the case. If he acted like he has for the past few years to many of the wrestlers and was a pushover, somebody likely would have taken him on already.

JBL vis a vis Brody or something in a JBL-Meanie thread:

In 1985 interview with Lou Thesz for a prospective book I was doing, he called Brody the greatest brawling style wrestler of all-time.

 

In a 1983 interview with Sam Muchnick, he listed Brody as the person with the ability to get over the fastest in a territory, whether the company wanted him to or not, of anyone in modern wrestling.

 

Both years before his death.

 

In 2000, they had a poll of every Japanese professional wrestler (something like 450 of them). The person who was named the greatest foreign wrestler of the 20th century was Brody. Granted, that one was after his death.

 

When you get people of similar stature making similar comments about JBL, I guess their abilities can be compared.

 

JBL has had exactly one year as a main event wrestler.

 

Also, let me know of a Brody fight where he came up from behind a guy and threw the first punch to the back of the guys' head.

 

I'm not saying the guy was a saint, but he has nothing to do with any comparisons with JBL.

Does ECW deserve credit for making...? and other stuff [Part of a thread about the goofy ONS '05 buyrate projection]

AAA and New Japan Pro Wrestling. they also worked ECW in between their real jobs. ECW deserves some credit but all those guys were world wide stars before ECW, and ECW had little to do with them getting into WCW.

 

Mysterio got in because Konnan(already there) pushed for him. Ditto Guerrera. Malenko, Guerrero, Benoit all came in thorough New Japan, which WCW had a business relationship with long before ECW ever existed.

 

Jericho got in because I sent Bischoff a tape of a Super J Cup to give him an idea to do it as a TV special, and he saw a Benoit-Jericho match on it. He had no clue who Jericho was, loved the match, asked Benoit & Tenay if he should sign him, both strongly said yes, and he signed him without ever seeing him wrestle live or seeing another tape of a match with him. ECW had nothing to do with jericho in WCW.

WCW earned $55 million profit in 1998

Lost $16 million in 1999

Lost $62 million in 2000 (would have been $80 million but they wouldn't let Russo blow up a Corvette every week on Nitro)

Highest paid wrestlers ever?

Best years ever

 

Austin $13 million

Rock $10 million

Hogan $8 million (in WCW, best in WWF was $6 million)

 

Baba always took in most of his income as a promoter. Most I ever heard a Japanese pro wrestler earning was Ogawa at between $3.5 million and $4 million last year, but a lot of that was from fighting and merchandise. Then again, Austin, Rock & Hogan made a large percentage of their big years in merchandise as well.

Nash no-selling Funk?

The match was bad, but the promo thing was worse.

 

They had scriped back-and-forth stuff they worked out. Funk was the face so Nash in the end was supposed to look bad.

 

Nash went into business for himself, Funk was flustered because Nash wasn't following the script, and then Nash made fun of him on the air, and worse, to the boys how he got the best of Funk and nobody can top him on promos.

 

I remember he used to brag at that time how he wanted to go into WWE because Rock couldn't hang with him on promos. The job of the heel when being confronted by the face in promos is to look bad, but I guess he felt that didn't apply to him.

Did Dusty Rhodes get over in the WWF?

Depends on the definition of "over." In those days, people cheered loudly for anyone with a push. He got a push. He knew how to work a crowd by being a fat guy making those movements. But really over, no way.

 

We always considered "over" based on ticket selling ability. In that case, he wasn't. It was constantly remarked when Dusty was in the main event that they couldn't draw at all, and he was pushed with all the big heels of the time. Now he was over huge in his first run with Graham. If he was over in the least in from a ticket selling perspective, they never would have released him from his contract to work for the opposition. Unlike Flair, there was no promise Vince kept.

 

Was he pushed as one of the top faces most of the time. Yes.

Warrior & LOD on top were disappointments. The plan was to do Warrior vs. Hogan as the main event at the 1991 Mania, for Warrior to be long-term world champ and Hogan to come back in the Bruno spot (during Backlund's reign), but within two months, they brought in Slaughter to do the turn and be Hogan's opponent. Part of it was Warrior had no fresh opponents, as he'd already beaten Hennig & Rude everywhere on house show runs and they were recycled when he was champ. Hogan was more carefully booked. Plus, Hogan's work when he was supposed to put Warrior over was so brilliant that by losing, Hogan got himself over and buried Warrior.

Was Lou Thesz a bad champion?

Everything has to be judged based on the standards of the era.

 

There are a zillion factors at work. Dory was a great draw as champion, but that was the height of junksports. Not everywhere, but in a lot of places, wrestling went down hard in the late 70s for a number of reasons, so Race & Terry not matching Dory's drawing power isn't necessarily how they were booked. But one can argue the way Dory was booked by Muchnick was superior. As a fan, I always thought so.

 

Lots of wrestlers didn't like Thesz' obvious looking down on those who couldn't wrestle. It was definitely an issue in the 50s. Evidently, because Thesz was voted in every year at the meetings to be champion, the feeling of the majority is the pluses he brought to the table exceeded the minuses. He voluntarily gave up the title the first two times. If he was a bad champion by the standards of his era, he'd have been forced out much earlier.

 

But to act like he had no faults or negatives as champion would be fantasy. Funk is hardly the only person with that opinion of Thesz as a negative, but still, even Boesch, who saw first hand the Bull Curry deal, rated Thesz as the greatest champion there ever was.

Paul Orndorff's flip-flop on Hogan?

Orndorff was in a bad mood. He thought he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame, and got there to find out he was prop to work preliminaries in the Hulk Hogan/Roddy Piper show.

Creative control?

Nobody in WCw had creative control written into their contract except Hogan, and his was limited contractually to only the finishes of his own matches. Of course, he had power far beyond his contract, and often was able to get his various buddies out of doing jobs. Bret Hart & Nash didn't even have formal creative control in their contracts. In WCW and WWF, any top guy, or at least really top guy, can say no and the writers grumble but stars have more power in WWE than writers. Austin said no all the time and Russo hated him for it. Austin even refused to job for Rock one month after Vince and Bret had the deal. Michaels refused to job for Owen less than two months after Survivor Series. I remember Brian Adams refusing to job for The giant in WCW because he cried to Hogan and Hogan got them to make it a DQ. That's why I've always considered all the outrage about Bret Hart wanting to wait a week before losing so ludicrous because it shows how little people know about what really goes on in the business.

Part of the Austin-Jarrett thing that made Austin mad was because it was a doublecross on him.

 

He had made it clear he thought Jarrett was a low mid-card level worker and told Russo even though he was his buddy, he's not elevating him.

 

Then they did a TV where Austin stunnered Jeff. Russo then scripted a feud and told Austin since Jeff put him over in the angle, he should in return do a program with him. It was in Cleveland and Austin got everyone together and basically told Russo, what part of not working with Jarrett don't you understand and what kind of double cross **** was this, in front of Vince, JR and everyone?

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DiMaggio made it on the 4th ballot? Now that's an embarrassment. I know Ted Williams wasn't first ballot either, and how is that possible.

Let me clarify something on this. Dimaggio made on on the third ballot actually. He started receiving votes his first offseason after retirement. Of the players on the 1953 ballot (Dimaggio's first), 40 of them eventually reached the Hall of Fame. It wasn't that voters considered Dimaggio unworthy. It was that the ballot was too crowded. It's a small point, irrelevant really, but it's often used.

 

And Ted Williams was first ballot.

 

Dave's knowledge of HOF's other than his own has always been pretty piss poor.

 

 

John

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