Pro Wrestling

Here's this year's ballot courtesy of Steve Yohe: PERFORMERS LIST Gene & Ole Anderson The Assassins (Tom Renesto & Jody Hamilton) Atlantis Red Bastien Carlos Colon Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) Edge George Gordienko Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero Gran Hamada Volk Han Owen Hart Curt Hennig Chris Jericho Rocky Johnson Ivan Koloff Konnan Karloff Lagarde Mark Lewin Jose Lothario Midnight Express (Dennis Condrey & Bobby Eaton & Stan Lane) Mick McManus Bill Miller Fabulous Moolah Pedro Morales Dick Murdoch Rey Mysterio Kendo Nagasaki Jackie Pallo Blue Panther Rollerball Mark Rocco Rock …

http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/869043 "In accordance with WWE's Wellness Program, effective Wednesday, September 2, Oscar Gutierrez (Rey Mysterio) is suspended for 30 days for a violation of the company’s policy." I guess they're going to be putting the rocket on Dolph Ziggler a bit sooner than they had anticipated.

http://thepilot.com/stories/20090911/news/...1jeffhardy.html From Powell's site: This part got me: That's a really oversimplified way to look at it. I doubt WWE's reaction to this is "breathing a sigh of relief". I'm not implying they have done anything wrong here, but people still consider him a WWE star, and any publicity from this will likely link Jeff Hardy and WWE.

Harley Race v. Jerry Lawler 12/10/77 You don't hear this match mentioned along the classics of American wrestling, but I think this maybe as good as any long Flair title defense, and is the best Harley Race match I have ever seen. Race is great here but this is a Jerry Lawler match, he looks on another level here, like he should be the guy touring with the belt. The opening part of the match was built around Lawler grounding Race with a headlock, you don't really think of either guy as a matworker, but they ran through some spectacular reversals and counters. Lawler really controls large sections of this match and it actually exposes a bit of a flaw in what Ra…

12/13/1982 The Funk Brothers vs. Stan Hansen & Bruiser Brody 1982 Real World Tag League Finals I have been searching for this match online for about two years, and every link I find, is down. I bit the bullet and bought the full Brody set from Bob. WHAT WORKED: * This match was violent, and I am a mark for violent pro wrestling matches. * Seeing what I believe to be a very young Akira Taue. * The big match feel, something I have always enjoyed from All Japan. * Young and athletic Stan Hansen. Good lord was he fantastic in this match. The initial tie up was violent and Stan wasted no time laying in the hard shots. Plus, his running drop kick was a re…

Picked Volume 1 of this up a couple of weeks back to restart my interest in Pro Wres as well as the PWO comp which I'm nearly through. My random thoughts on soome of the matches here... Low-Ki v Hotstuff Hernandez (Disc 1) (22/04/07 IWA-MS) Bald ugly big guy against bald ugly little guy. I much prefer Low Ki when he's heeling it up and spitting at his opponents, rather than here when he plays the pseudo-martial-arts character who's pretty stiff but makes BJ Whitmer look charismatic. One view of the crowd leads me to suspect it's chock full of life's losers, and my suspicions are confirmed as they sneak in both a 'Kobashi' and a 'This is awesome' chant before this …

I no longer have time to do write-ups for every issue I read in chronological order, but I'll try and post summaries of certain issues when I have the chance. Since my last summary, Dave has ended the Observer.....sort of. Due to time constraints and waning interest in wrestling, the April issue was going to be the last. He said that since many people were only two issues into a four-issue subscription, he would do two more smaller issues to close things out. After that, he might continue doing some sort of small newsletter, but only for correspondants. I believe Dave stated he had about 900 subscribers and a 97 percent renewal rate. The legal print size with pictures…

If memory serves, there are only two rehashings of matches here (Hogan-Flair and Flair-Steamer Chi-Town). Wasn't surprised that Ted Turner and Bill Shaw turned down being interviewed, but was a little surprised that Bischoff turned things down, but Goldberg apparently got interviewed. Gotta figure the "Lost in Cleveland" footage is intended as a rib on Foley. http://www.silvervision.co.uk/products/The...VD-3-Discs.html

I mean, legitimately. Off-hand, I can think of the stories from Saturn and his (eventual?) dislike of Kronus. And we all know Sheik and Volkoff have a very up-and-down relationship ;-) Are there any other good examples of teams with members who weren't best of friends? Especially long-running ones?

http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/9995/ This does sound like something Vince Russo would love. I am still trying to figure out if Kurt Angle-controlled TNA would be better or worse than Jeff Jarrett-controlled TNA if it comes to that.

Over at DVDVR there's a thread about who did the most good/ bad in wrestling and Tom mentioned Sputnik Monroe as doing the most good. It reminded me of the wonderful NPR story about him that I heard when they reran it after he passed on a few years back. I posted it there, but I figured folks here would be interested as well. http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/featur...22.sputnik.html

Hey, I've got an interview lined up with Les Thatcher for Ring Psychology, and was wondering if anyone had any questions for the man. If so, post 'em.

Remember the Hardcore Heaven '94 commercial? What was the song they used as background music for that? (Starts with a guitar riff, then builds up to a part with the "Oooooooooh's" of the singers) I can still hear Joey Styles' voiceover: "Jurassic Park 2, 911 and the Roughneck Mr. Hughes!"

THE LAWSUIT Professional wrestling promoter (Vince McMahon) brought action against rival promoter (Eric Bischoff), alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement, tortious interference with contract and violations of Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices, in connection with rival's employment of two wrestlers who portrayed copyrighted characters. THE FACTS AS STATED IN THE COMPLAINT Titan Sports, Inc., etc., ("Plaintiff") is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Connecticut. Plaintiff promotes live, and on cable, syndicated, and pay-per-view television, professional wrestling under its registered service mark "World Wrestling Feder…

I'm not sure if Melina Perez' screams are a shoot, but they are annoying. When I hear her scream and watch the match she does, it seems as though she (and the other Divas who do it[ though not as loud or as often as she does] ) is compensating for a below average match. Its the 4 pound of icing on the lopsided half baked cake. I began thinking about 'screaming' further and thought about all the AJPW classics and some of the other great Japanese wrestling and ROH "AJPW lite" spots over the past few years and think its very effective if used correctly. The 'fighting spirit' spots in matches gets the crowd to their feet and for a moment,though brief as it may be, wrestling i…

Reading how Shane's plans to re-enact Vince's WM 3 opening at this year's show got nixed by Steph got me thinking: When Vince dies/gets too old to run things/retires and Steph takes over, how long before Shane says "fuck this bullshit" and starts his own company? Shane's vision of wrestling seems to run against the Vince/Steph view, how long can he put up with her in charge, especially since she seems to enjoy vetoing any and all ideas he comes up with?

I can't believe this show was 20 years ago, today. That's insane. The build was really awesome, with Ric Flair coming back from his broken neck to face Terry Funk, Steamboat seeking revenge after Luger turned on him at the Clash, Sting and Muta facing each other for the first time, a War Games featuring most of the top tag teams, Cornette and Paul E. in a tuxedo match to blow off their feud, etc. Time flies! Talk about Bash '89 (the buildup and the show) here.

So leading up to the War Games match, Hawk was announced as a partner. Something happened where he was taken out of the match, and replaced by THE SHOCKMASTER! Animal was at ringside for this match, and Hawk didn't appear anywhere else on the card. Can someone tell me what happened to Hawk? I'm working on an article for Ring Psych, and have clicked on the first three pages of Google links while trying to search for the answer and am coming up with nada. Thanks!

As someone who used to hate on Backlund pretty hardcore, I must admit that my opinion has changed of him over the last couple of the years. In part this is because of watching his best stuff for the WWE poll at SC, and even though I still disagree with you on the specifics of certain matches, it's hard to deny that Bob was a strong ring worker. Having said that I've never really been able to nail down your position on Bob as a worker as it relates to other great in ring talents from his era. For whatever reason you've been evasive about this when I've asked before. I'm not really interested in where you would rate him next to someone like Flair who I know you ar…

I'm reading the new WON and he mentions how WWE is using Jeff refusing to go to rehab as a babyface aspect of his character. It's interesting that a company like WWE that can't seem to get out of it's own way in terms of drug issues would make it a positive that someone wouldn't go to rehab. At least it's something to ponder the next time you see someone trying to make the argument that WWE doesn't subtly encourage or discourage certain behaviors.

http://www.silvervision.co.uk/products/All...VD-3-Discs.html Looks like some rare stuff, maybe. Look at that AWA 72 match! Odd that the only Dudleys match is from WWE and not ECW. . .

I was reading the interview with TA up on the WON site, and it struck me how he's probably the most well adjusted former wrestler I've ever heard of despite the fact he's the one guy who would be 100% justified in being a bitter old crank. Now granted, his situation kind of dictated things of course, but it's funny seeing guys who were career mid carders and/or jobbers do interviews full of jealousy or self delusion when TA was at the top of the world only to have it all taken away.

Who is everyone's favorite "Slob" worker, past or present? I'm not exactly sure how to define slob, so I'll leave it open to your own interpretation. In my view, a slob is a fat, out of shape, jiggly, wobbly goof who blows up after two minutes and generally has no business in the ring. However, I've heard some folks refer to workers like Vader or Jerry Blackwell as slobs simply because they're fat. I happen to disagree with that view, but that's why I want to leave the definition open. My all-time favorite slob has to be Kamala (or Kimala if you prefer). His schtick as an African headhunter always cracked me up and his facial expressions seemed to suck me into his ma…

So one of the weird things about watching lots of 80s New Japan is that I'm constantly looking forawrd to Tiger Toguchi matches and really wondering what is available form the seventies and if there is anyhting from WWF worth giving an additional look to.

I'm sure most people here are aware of how Joey Styles is suddenly going around posting extreme (no pun intended) right wing political statements on his Twitter account, most of then bashing Obama with the same kind of stuff you probably found in your inbox leading up to the election. Without getting into a debate on the merits of his views, the mention in the WON about how this has got Joey back in Vince's good graces (Surprise! Vince is apparently a right winger too which should be a shock to approximately no one) made me wonder if this whole Joey Styles: Attack Twitter-er deal isn't a work designed to enhance his job security. I have no way of confirming or denying…