Pro Wrestling

Let's say that Sheiky, out of loyalty to Verne, went ahead and broke Hogan's leg and took the WWF title to Minnesota? Is the WWF's expansion dead in the water, or does Vince forge on using Snuka, JYD, Steamboat, Backlund, or someone else and everythings turns out AOK?

I decided to make a separate thread for this, as needs might get lost easily in the original thread. I'm looking through WCW commercials to get their PPV prices, and I can't help but notice that WCW didn't tend to announce their PPV prices for some odd reason. I have the numbers for the 1992 and 1993 Starrcade events. How much did WCW charge to view either event on PPV? In general, finding out PPV price for each wrestling PPV will be the most difficult task, as it's easy to find Meltzer's gross revenue if you have access to those issues. It's not so easy to find the PPV prices. More questions on the way whenever they are needed. This thread will be for that…

Pre-Show: Rhodes Scholars vs. Brodus Clay & Tensai Kaitlyn vs. Tamina Snuka Antonio Cesaro vs. The Miz Alberto Del Rio vs. The Big Show The SHIELD vs. Cena, Sheamus & Ryback SD! Elimination Chamber Rock vs. Punk II - I normally wait for the show to begin before I post the PPV threads but I think this is a pretty intriguing line-up. I have no idea who is going to win the Chamber match. I am 99% sure that Rock is winning but then what is Punk set to do at Mania? Del Rio should win but does Ziggler come out to cash in? Do they continue to push the SHEILD or is their run over? I am actually going into this with no idea what the final results wil…

So with just over a day left until WWE's number 2 event, I still have no idea how things will turn out. The most predictable outcome is that The Rock wins the WWE Championship and John Cena wins the Royal Rumble, to set up a match between the two at Wrestlemania. Whilst this match will surely draw an astronomical figure, it would also mean WWE going back on themselves by billing last year's match as a "once in a lifetime encounter", and also putting on the same main event match two years running - something which they've never done before. No issues with a rematch, but it's still very likely that Triple H/Brock Lesnar II will also be on the card as a main event attraction…

I thought this might make for an interesting topic. I'm looking through New Japan footage for the year to find matches to include for the 1997 Yearbook. The multi-man tags are excellent (when you can actually find one complete) and while I'm not a big fan of Kendo Ka Shin, I do think Takaiwa had potential. They were building a strong division around a core group of guys and dividing them into two camps -- Liger and company, and Otani and company. I know Dave rated juniors matches pretty highly through the end of the decade. But I've noticed on things like jdw's top New Japan matches of the 90s, he doesn't really have anything listed after 1997. Was there something th…

So I stumbled upon this 102 disc Florida set covering 1966-1988 and thought it'd be appropriate to start a Florida discussion thread. Personally, I've seen very little, but there are a few things that are intriguing to me.. Kevin Sullivan devil worshipping gimmick, Karl Kox mentoring Jimmy Garvin, Ladd turning on Dusty, Roop/Keirn feud, Oliver Humperdink, JJ Dillon, Harley Race defending the title, Von Erichs attempting to help Flair, Jimmy Garvin/Mr. Wrestling II feud, and Robe vs. Hat. Any memorable matches/feuds/wrestlers you liked? I'd like to hear your opinions

Is there any interest in doing an ELO rating for wrestlers? Something similar to this MMA site. http://www.mma-elo.com/me_events.php?id=12482 http://www.mma-elo.com/ http://www.mma-elo.com/ranks.php Basically, each wrestler starts at 1500 and their score goes up and down based on whether they lost or win. It is explained here. http://www.mma-elo.com/about_system.php To make this a very simple case lets assume this is the first fight for both fighter A and fighter B. Due to it being their first fight, both fighters start off with a 1500 rating. If fighter A wins they will gain 16 points and fighter B, with the loss, will lose 16 points. This means fighter A's …

Is there a history lesson online someone could point me to that would help me make sense of everything with New Japan and PRIDE during this time? I'm referring to Sakuraba's ascension as the biggest pro wrestling star in the country (despite doing shoots), worked fights on early PRIDE shows, New Japan guys who were sacrificed, the impact on the style (Is this how Takayama became a star in 2002?) and so on. It's a topic I've never really paid much attention to, and it suddenly intrigues me. Or if someone ambitious wanted to provide a (really detailed) summary here, that would be great. Identifying the key moments from that time period that are key in telling the …

I've always heard that during it's heyday the Saturday Morning Wrestling show in Memphis would draw millions of viewers and something like a 60+% share of the viewing audience. Yet as far as I know, the Mid-South Coliseum, which sat 10,000 people, was never a constant sell out arena. I've seen people criticize WWE for not converting more of it's millions of TV viewers into PPV buyers, but even that seems like a far better conversion rate than what Memphis was doing. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? I realize economics surely plays a part in this but tickets were always really cheap in Memphis.

Sek69 posted this in the "big thread": And I mentioned Anyone else have any memories of certain fans who you remember fondly? I know the ECW guys will be brought up, and the obvious "fans getting themselves over" complaint that I think is a little silly and paints a wide brush over fans in general. Sure, your indy "aren't we smart" chants are annoying, but stuff like "Where's My Pizza?" at the FBI was funny. As stated above, I always got a kick out of the Horsemen guys and the Cornette guys. I also LOVED "The Black Nature Boy", (not Scoot Andrews), who was at all the Philly Civic Center shows. He was this brother who wore a robe and just wandered around th…

Every so often in the big two companies, you'd get these autonomous little C-team units that you got the impression that no one really had their eye on. One example is Jimmy Hart running WCW Saturday Night. Another is some of Gorilla Monsoon's C-show appearances in the mid-90s when he's calling matches with Michael Hayes. Another is basically any time you get guys re-dubbing shows for local markets, Scott Hudson and Larry Zbyszko on Worldwide for the UK standing out in my mind. However, unsurprisingly, my all-time favourite C-team consists of Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes either buried down on Wrestling Challenge or on countless Coliseum Home Video releases. I alw…

All the recent Bret Hart talk has me thinking about exactly *when* various workers entered their primes. Like I said in the Bret thread, I thought that Will giving Bret all four years of '94-97 was generous of him, especially with his extended absence in '96. But the more I think about it, between the classic he had with Austin, and his tweaking the UT formula to suit his needs and produce a grossly under appreciated match, I can see making a case for including that year for him. So here's a few other workers that I'm curious about when exactly their primes would be considered. Sergeant Slaughter Jun Akiyama (I would guess the consensus is '96, but it's ab…

http://www.memegeneokerlund.com Not sure why I wasn't aware of it, but that is a brilliant domain name and a fun site. BOOM.

1. LOU THESZ/RIC FLAIR AWARD - I might send Meltzer a "column" for the site where I argue for None of the Above in this category. I honestly don't think there is anyone who has enough major positives to really feel like a "wrestler of the year" type guy. It's possible I'll vote for someone in this category, but I really don't feel strongly about it and there are any number of ways I could go because I don't think there is anyone close to being a transcendent star. Cena is the default pick because of the success of the show with The Rock, Punk will have his supporters because of the year long title run that spans the entire voting period, Tanahashi will likely win becau…

I listened to Meltzer call the recent NJ PPV one of the best shows of all time. Then soup reviewed the show and said No Fucking Way!!! So, I think it has been awhile (and there have been tons of shows since) than we can do another Best Shows of All Time thread. So, soup, as a comparison... what do you consider one of the best shows of all time? Top to Bottom Mother Fuckers!!!

Ok this is something i was just thinking of bored at work and it is probably a little stupid but could be fun and help myself and others learn of the aces of early 80's wrestling. I was thinking of naming say 16 territories or areas and then naming the top 4 guys in each area and having a little tourney of sorts. Once again i know its stupid and i'm not fully versed on most of this stuff so feel free to fill in blanks or voice an opinion on if any guys or territories dont belong and should be replaced. Just bear with me on this as it may be frustrating to some of you that have more knowledge. The 16 territories i could think of would be: 1. WWWF or New York …

Just because this seems to happen every few months or so. Check this out on WWE.com. Nash is sticking to his talking points like crazy, and is defensive for no apparent reason. http://www.wwe.com/classics/foley-nash-jan-4-1999-26081539

Are there any standard spots that your favourites do that irritate you? For example, I love Arn Anderson but I don't like it whenever he does the cartoony "drunk" punches into thin air. I can understand a guy like Terry Funk having that in his repetoire but with someone who is meant to be as cerebral as Arn, I've never thought it made sense for his character to do that spot. As a side issue, what do people think about the Flair Flip? That move is almost never logical and seldom part of the 'story of a match' but it is so distinctly Flair that sometimes it's almost comforting to see it. Depending on my mood, sometimes I like it, other times it makes me roll my ey…

I ask this question after thinking about the Stan Hansen vs. Curt Hennig (5/31/86) match from the AWA set. The match is only a 10 minute time limit and I'm wondering if this would almost automatically disqualify it in some people's minds from being a "top 10" match over something going 15-20 minutes long. For the sake of argument let's say we are only rating matches on the bell to bell match time even though that's not the case for me with the Hansen/Hennig match because it has an awesome pre-match brawl. It WAS the case for me during the Memphis set however, when I ranked this match the Jerry Lawler vs. King Kong Bundy "$10,000 challenge" match #1. It's abou…

Mods, please feel free to move this to The Microscope Forum if it belongs there... We all talk about guys we consider for the GOAT tag. It's obvious that anyone finishing in your own personal Top 10 is someone you consider exceptional. My question is, where is your bar when considering GOAT candidates, in terms of the lowest number on your personal list? For example, say I have 25 guys that I believe are seriously in the GOAT discussion. Anyone I would rank at 26 and lower I would consider great wrestlers, but not serious GOAT candidates because 25 is my personal bar. Given that we are picking people from a cast of literally thousands, I imagine that s…

We got into this recently talking about The Fantastics. Chad said he'd rank them probably over all of the WWF teams of the era, with the possible exception of The Rockers. Let's say youwere going to make a list of the Top 10 Tag Teams of the 1980s, how would you rank it? Can go 20 if you want, but 10 seems manageable. Here is a list of teams to consider (categories are just as they came to mind, not instructive or exclusive): NWA/ Territories The Midnight Express (Condrey and Eaton) The Midnight Express (Eaton and Lane) The Original Midnight Express (Condrey and Randy Rose) The Fabulous Freebirds (Hayes and Roberts) The Fabulous Freebirds (Haye…

Am I right in thinking that some "well known" members of the pro wrestling business are regular posters on this forum? Sure, I've been posting here for a couple of years, but only recently have I stumbled across a few coy and subtle references. Anybody care to fill me (and anybody else) in?

It feels each promotion has a canon of all-time great matches that feels almost mandatory to see in order for you to truly understand the promotion. WWE has Hart/Austin, Michaels/Foley, Savage/Steamboat etc... NWA/WCW has Flair/Steamboat, Flair/Funk and Sting/Vader etc... All Japan has 6/3/94, 6/9/95, 1/20/97 among others. Throughout the history of TNA, it seems much like their fanbase and booking, their canon of great matches is in flux or ethereal. Some would chock this up to their nascent nature, but even promotions like ROH have developed a canon that fans can readily discover from sort survey of the internet (your Punk/Joe's and such). The reasons TNA doesn't have a …

Even though he has only written about two subjects, Robert Caro is regarded as one of the greatest biographers in history. His first book, The Power Broker, chronicles Robert Moses and his role in shaping 20th century New York City. After The Power Broker was published, Caro has spent the rest of his life, about 40 years, chronicling former president Lyndon Johnson. When he started his work on Johnson, he moved to Johnson's home town to get a better sense of where his subject came from and to dig under every rock he could think of for information. He's published four volumes of his Johnson biography so far, with the fifth and final volume supposedly coming in a year or tw…