Pro Wrestling

I love these "What If" threads, and I think this is a good one. According to lore, John Cena was almost fired before he impressed Stephanie McMahon by doing freestyle rapping on a bus. Whether bullshit or not, everything about WWE changes if that happens. Who becomes the "face that runs the place" instead of Cena? Can anyone match Cena's longevity, merchandise sales, years of great matches, etc.? Does Cena end up as "just another face in the crowd" in TNA, where he makes no difference at all? Between the trainwreck management and the fact that Cena wasn't yet a main eventer and "Super Cena," he's unlikely to get the WWE nostalgia act World Title push most othe…

This is something I pondered posting in the fantasy booking area multiple times but for whatever reason didn't. But after seeing the What If thread that popped up getting awesome responses, I decided to go ahead and give it a whirl. Pontiac Silverdome. 93,173 fans watch as The Hulkster motions that he is going to slam Andre the Giant! The place goes wild as Hogan reaches down, scoops up Andre and lifts him high into the air. But then something goes wrong..... Something in Hogan's back gives way. He collapses under the weight and crashes to the mat with The Giant on top of him. The referee has no choice but to count the pinfall, and Andre The Giant becomes the WWF …

I see a lot of insistence on there being one correct way of limb selling, while simultaneously a huge number of fans seem to not care about whether or not limb selling is presented in that way or not. The response they most often give is "you're right, but I still enjoyed the match". With all the progress we've made in creating a community where you can see people who are more open to appreaciating the many aspects of pro wrestling that would basically make them expelled from the conventional wrestling discussion circles, I am surprised this idea still perserveres to this day. I really couldn't give a damn about consistent limb selling, and the idea "it used to be sold" a…

In the Reigns thread the term "Ruthless Aggression Era" was used. It seems to define the time from 2005-2011, the initial Cena run on top, and before the current, and controversially named "Reality Era". I'm a history guy, and am particularly interested in cultural change in Western society, essentially looking at different eras and seeing how one differed from the next and why. The post in the Reigns thread got me thinking about wrestling eras. I don't think I had ever seen "Ruthless Agression Era" used before. I would like to see what other posters think about WWE eras, and wrestling eras in general, and how they define them. There is the "Attitude Era" of course, but …

Surely this was the absolute drizzling shits, you had little Kevin running around forests in no pants, somehow John Tenta turned into a shark, Andres long lost son burst out of a rock, a bloated Ed Leslie became the Zodiac why? because Cocaine Nobody will forget the YETTAY! attempting to gently rape the Hulkster or how about Loch Ness! who by the time he arrived at WCW had the agilty of a giant statue and teeth like decaying tombstones They set out to destroy Hulkmania and as irony had it his feud with them killed his face run dead in its tracks. Remember the faux heel turn when they shaved Hogans mustache and he started wearing black and waving around swords? wtf was t…

I watched a MSG match between Haku and Davey Boy Smith from October 1990. It might have been Davey Boy's first match back since leaving a few years before, and just after the bell rings Haku reaches over and they shake hands. It's not really noticed by Gorilla Monsoon and Alfred Hayes, but it certainly sticks out as being uncharacteristic during this time. I also heard about a match from around this time between Roddy Piper and Curt Hennig that was for a TV taping, where at the end Roddy stuck out his hand and they shook. Are there any other times where this has happened?

In Marvel I really love What If? comics as it's fun to explore if things were different. I thought it would be fun to play that with wrestling. What if... Vince chose Bret over Shawn? In September 1997 Vince approaches Bret and tells him he can't afford his contract anymore, was going to breach it, and Bret can either take a huge pay cut or try to get the WCW deal before the WWE goes under. What if he approaches Shawn instead? Shawn just signed a huge contract as well and asking Shawn to go instead would accomplish the same thing. It wasn't all money, but Shawn/Bret obviously weren't going to work together going forward. What changes? Bret holds the ti…

We're coming up on ten years of TNA and if one were to hypothetically make a comp, what would be on it? Did the company produce ANYTHING worth seeing in its PPV days? Should it just be 4 discs of Scott Steiner? Any truly memorable angles that don't involve midgets jerking off in trash cans? I'm genuinely interested in knowing just how much (or little) is worth seeing.

This was a really great time. On Thursday I visited the museum which is such a joy to walk through. George Napalitano was there at the same time I was and was giving background on his pictures that are being used. Thursday evening they had a show with Len Denton telling stories and a q&a with Tiger Conway Jr, Eddie Mansfield, Susan Green, and Ross Hart. This was a total blast . All the wrestlers there were great at taking pictures, and interacting with people. It was announced that they were going to start working on the 3rd floor called the dungeon with it being dedicated to the Hart Family. Friday the outdoor show had to be moved indoors because of weather…

Cubsfan story link here . Basically Brazo de Oro was the head of the CMLL wrestler's union and the family felt the position should go to one of them when he died. According to SuperLuchas, Ultimo Guerrero either was or will be given the job instead, so the family (including Psycho Clown who's scheduled to main event TripleMania for AAA) went nuts and destroyed UG's car in the Arena Mexico parking lot. La Mascara was involved as was Maximo, and both are off shows for the foreseeable future. Normally something like this would be the kick off to some big angle, but not only is CMLL way too conservative to ever do something like that, masked guys were shown withou…

Hello all, another question for some the members here who've seen a ton of wrestling footage. I was watching the Weekly Pro Dome show from 1995 and reading about it online and came across this card which was a similar co promotion event. I know that the main event of Baba/Inoki vs Abdullah/Singh is easily found online but did the whole card ever air? Card, https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=47154&page=2

Surprised there's not a thread on this already. So, Rip Rogers on Twitter posted this: Now a bunch of "controversy" has spread on Twitter (and other wrestling related websites). Randy Orton has gotten involved & started trolling people, The Young Bucks, Ricochet, several wrestlers have said shit. We've sort of talked about similar things around PWO for awhile but I thought this deserved it's own thread. From what I gather it's turning into a conversation about how less is more & the bar is being pushed too high.

One thing I've been trying to put together for years now is a definitive list of who the main WCW booker was and when. Here's as far as I've got, help me out here: Executive VP pre-88: Jim Crockett 1988-92: Jim Herd Early-1992: Kip Allen Frey Mid-1992-3: Bill Watts 1993: Bill Shaw 1993-1999: Eric Bischoff Late 1999: Bill Busch (Time Warner man) 2000-1: Brad Siegel (Time Warner man) Head booker: 85-8: Dusty Rhodes 1988: Jim Crockett Jr. (Dec only) 1989: George Scott 1989-90: Booking comittee (Ric Flair, Jim Cornette, Jim Ross, Kevin Sullivan and Eddie Gilbert) 1990: Ole Anderson 1991-4: Dusty Rhodes (& Ole…

Who do you think this pretty boy is? Clue: Not in WWE HOF

So pleased to hear this is official now. http://www.wrestlingdvdnetwork.com/latest-news-wwe-unreleased-dvd-great-balls-of-fire/135063/ Now we know we are getting a 3 disc set of classic matches never seen before from the years 1986 - 1995 what do you reckon we will get? Im presuming Taker/Savage will be one of them given we saw a clip of this a while ago on WWE's official channel. Could have a lot of interesting matches that took place from the Superstars/Challenge TV Tapings.

Died today at 65. one of the feuds that hooked me as a wrestling fan was Rose and Somers v Shawn and Marty in 86/87. Just great stuff and an epic title chase. RIP

Hello all, I was watching some of the WCW PPV broadcast of the show today and remembered that it was a amalgamation of the 2 shows so I was wondering, Did the full card of both nights ever air or get released? and some follow up questions of if so has anyone seen it? and is it worth seeking out? Thanks in advance for any info or help. Here are the cards, Night 1, https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=8951 Night 2, https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=8232

Something I've noticed at basically any message board you can find, there are two topics that weirdos are obsessed with. One is Roman Reigns and how EVERYTHING is about him, even on shows he's not on. You go on most boards and they aren't even happy Roman lost, because he was hurt and Strowman "barely" won, and it doesn't matter anyway since Roman will eventually go over at WM anyway. Somehow, everything is a company wide conspiracy to make Roman look strong. The other thing I see frequently is dudes being angry that almost all of the women have colored hair or extensions. For some reason, they think it's super sexist/creepy/or just flat out annoying, and seem to thin…

Has any other top star had such a lackluster career like Orton? He's been at the top for 13-14 years now and I would easily put his career below every single one of his immediate peers. As I started thinking more, the only other guy I could come up with who was on top like for him for so long and did so little was Lex Luger, but I found Luger to be a bit more entertaining. It's almost an amazing accomplishment in a way.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/wrestling/impact-wrestling-teams-itv-bring-10089027 I'm pleased about this and will be showing my support by watching. Cautiously optimistic about the possibilities.

So many good options. Who you got?

I was watching some Mid South tv on the network & a match popped up between a young Buddy Landell & Ted Dibiase & I thought how awesome that match would have been in 86 as opposed to 82. Which in turn made me think of some other matches that just happened at the wrong time in each other's career. Savage vs Austin happening in 95 when Austin was an afterthought & Savage was on auto pilot kinda stinks. Bret vs Misawa happening four years later would have been grand.

Gran Apache has passed from cancer at the age of 58.

I started a new feature on Segunda Caida where I am reviewing Unicorn Gimmick Matches, fun gimmick matches which only got run once. I opened it up with the nutso Cellblock match from Wildside between Shank and Timber the Lumberjack. http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/04/unicorn-gimmick-matches-cell-block-match.html Any other suggestions?

I was re-reading some of the obituaries and retrospectives from the Observer yesterday and after reading Misawa's I was wondering about if such a split like with Noah happened in today's age of online reddit/twitter/FB etc. what fan reaction would've been. So in thinking that I was wondering as most on here were tape traders and followed the Japanese wrestling scene back then,what was the opinions you saw online and you yourselves had of the split when it happened? I've read the Observer and some old threads on WrestlingClassics from around that time but there isn't a ton around regarding it. So I thought since the folks on here are more knowledgeable and have been ar…