Pro Wrestling

I've been watching the PPVs from 1996 of late (pre-Bash at the Beach), and the thing that has really struck me is how sadistic and downright EVIL Flair is in that feud with Savage. I mean he doesn't just want to bring Savage low, he wants to humiliate him and take his life away. It's quite a dark storyline -- going back all the way to Slamboree 95 when he beats on Angelo Poffo, then slowly takes away his wife, his title, and his money. The pure dickery of Flair in this period is something to behold. He is particularly cowardly in hiding behind Arn like a little girl quite a lot during this run as well (see promo on McMichael and Kevin Greene at Slamboree '96, which I watc…

This is spawned by watching some SMW fancams last night and hearing some funny lines from fans. "At least he doesn't throw punches like a girl like Lex Luger" "Lawler has been wrestling Dundee lately, he should be fine taking a few punches" I also recall the obnoxious Rob Feinstein smark talk during Liger/Pillman (and apparently some other Meadowlands handhelds). Anyone have others to add?

I'm terrible with this. It just took me 10 minutes, a Google search, looking through Rev Ray's book of moves and an IM conversation to figure out that a sitout powerbomb is a dynamic bomb. And until Bix explained it to me, I couldn't see how the niagara driver was any different. In the age of You Tube, I think it would be a worthwhile project for someone to transfer/update the book of moves and add some things to it. If something like this already exists, please point me to it.

I was originally planning a series of these threads, but thought instead I'd do an all-in-one type deal here given the recent explosion of "Best Worker" threads for fear of burn out and overkill. I'm picking out only the 10 most prestigious titles historically here: NWA World Champion (take WCW champ after 1991) WWF World Champion Intercontinential Champion US Champion NWA/ WCW World Tag Champs WWF World Tag Champs NWA/ WCW World TV Champion AJPW Triple Crown (take NWA International title before 1989) IWGP Heavyweight Championship AWA World Title I don't think the answers to most of these are entirely clear cut. For the purposes of t…

With CMLL heavyweight champion Hector Garza leaving CMLL for Perro Aguayo Jr.'s promotion PERROS DEL MAL, I was thinking of who are some other champions that left a promotion with a title to go to another promotion? The only ones I can think of are Mike Awesome as ECW champ to WCW and Madusa as WWF women's champ to WCW. What are some other examples?

Corrections, additions, subtractions welcome ... =========================================== ***** 1990's***** =========================================== *** Singles Matches *** 1. The Natural v. EZ Ryder == WFWA == 9/20/1990 (75 Minutes) 2. Bret Hart v. Ric Flair == WWE == 1/9/1993 3. Ricky Steamboat v. Ric Flair == WCW == 5/28/1994 4. Bret Hart v. Owen Hart == WWE == 7/8/1994 5. Bret Hart v. Owen Hart == WWE == 7/9/1994 (68 Minutes) 6. Bret Hart v. Owen Hart == WWE == 7/29/1994 7. Bret Hart v. Owen Hart == WWE == 8/6/1994 8. Toshiaki Kawada v. Kenta Kobashi == AJPW == 1/19/1995 9. Manami Toyota v. Kyoko Inoue == AJW == 5/7/1995 10. Bret Hart v. S…

Could be a fun thread. What are your favorite heel/wrestling fan exchanges?

I've been thinking a bit about 80s New Japan lately, and with the news of Vince's most recent blowup backstage, I thought it might be fun to compare arguably the two most successful wrestling promoters of all time. On the one hand, Vince never bought an island from Fidel Castro or made plans to promote an event in North Korea to commemorate the 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung. On the other hand, Inoki actually managed to win an election.

So, the Muppets on RAW was fucking awesome.

So, what are some of the dumbest babyface moments you can remember? I'm not talking about angles or gimmicks you think were dumb, but stuff that happened "kayfabe". Cause I just re-watched the bit from Mid South where The Rock N Roll Express were in the ring with Jim Ross to show him the stip they came up with to keep Cornette from interfering in the rematch with the Midnights. It was a straightjacket that Cornette would have to wear and they proceeded to DEMONSTRATE the jacket by having Gibson put it on while Morton cinched it up real tight. Of course, as soon as it was tied the Midnights hit the ring and destroyed the both of them. So, what other moments of…

NWA-TNA 2004: “So you don’t have to sit-throughâ€� Review [Jan. 1 up to Victory Road] EDIT: FIXED THE LINKS! NWA-TNA 2002 Review is HERE NWA-TNA 2003 Review, Part 1 (January-June) is HERE NWA-TNA 2003 Review, Part 2 (July-December) is HERE Quick Facts • 36 Shows in 2004 (1/7/04[75] to 9/8/04[110]) [Only counting Weeklies] • 4 of those were taped (Shows 80, 84, 88, and 95) • Show 97 (6/9/04) debuts the six-sided ring on PPV • All shows held at Fairgrounds in Nashville, TN ===MAIN EVENT/NWA World Title=== The main angle to start 2004 was the dueling authority figures of Eric Watts, Directory of authority for NWA and Don Callis, …

The time period of 77-84 came up recently. Could this be considered the hottest period for U.S. wrestling ever? It seems like pretty much every territory was drawing well during this time frame. I know we have the 80's sets, but a yearbook-style comp of 77-84 would kick ass.

From the local newspaper article about how Travis Tomko posted bond yesterday in his robbery case and is going to WWE-sponsored rehab: Umm. Holy shit. I've emailed the reporter to ask if he got that figure from WWE (if he didn't, then I have no idea who the source would be, but why would they give it out?) and have my fingers crossed that he will reply, but... Holy shit. The sample covers everyone who has ever had a WWE booking contract (waiting to hear back from Meltzer about if that covers developmental wrestlers who never got called up but I would guess it does) or referee agreement. They started signing most wrestlers to contracts in '83-'84 and have …

Was thinking about this randomly earlier. Face vs. Face has produced some of the best ever matches. But the dynamic of heel vs. heel makes no sense at all from the crowd's perspective. There's no one to cheer, just two guys you're meant to hate. So what does it come down to? Who do you hate more? Have there ever been any good heel vs. heel matches? It goes against all logic, so in theory we should be drawing a blank here. There are very few examples at all that I can think of. Ric Martel vs. Shawn Michaels in 92. What else? Bret Hart vs. Bad News Brown in 88. I remember Money Inc vs The Beverly Brothers in '93, Jake vs. Machoman on SNME. ummmm Vader v…

Ok, so as I mentioned before and as you can see from my sig, I've been embarking on a little project for the past 18 months or so to watch every single WCW PPV from Wrestlewar '91 onwards. Kind of an arbitrary starting date, but I think 91 was generally when WCW really branded itself as a distinct entity from NWA, even if Turner had owned it since 88. My basic motivation for doing this (see here) was, in short, to fill in the massive gaps in what I'd seen from WCW. Being from the UK, we got Worldwide here, but never got the PPVs. Very frustrating, I'd have to wait till PWI or another of the mags hit my little town, and the programming was usually about 7-8 months behind w…

My Bleacher Report debut features interviews with both Morton and Nash as they (possibly inadvertently) borrow from the headlines for a wrestling angle this weekend. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/890895-...e-class-warfare

As I'm editing in thoughts for my top ten list for the nineties, I'm noticing that the usual suspects are popping up. I will definitely finish it, but I'm thinking the consensus here will be within tolerance. Hence, my curiosity to expand this unto a different decade - 2000-2010. I was contemplating Japan in the nineties, but I think that'd be too easy, and I haven't really followed puro since the split of All Japan, and the eighties are covered by DVDVR. So from January 1st, 2000 to December 31st, 2009, who are the best US workers?

This probably will come across as overkill to some, but since we have threads for the 90's and 00's and we have several 80's sets released this could at minimum be a good resource/central hub of sorts. I know people will disagree with this, but I actually don't think there is a CLEAR winner here. Top Ten Contenders: Ric Flair Jerry Lawler Bill Dundee Buddy Rose Ricky Steamboat Nick Bockwinkel Curt Hennig Rick Martel Sgt. Slaughter Barry Windham Tully Blanchard Bob Backlund Randy Savage Terry Funk Ricky Morton Bobby Eaton Harley Race Dick Murdoch Arn Anderson Greg Valentine Tito Santana Tommy Rogers Dutch Man…

This is, sort of, a fantasy booking thread, but not really ... At Starrcade '90, WCW held the Pat O'Connor Memorial International Cup Tag Team Tournament featuring two representatives from the eight main wrestling nations: USA Canada Mexico United Kingdom Japan New Zealand Russia South Africa I thought it would be fun to ask the question: let's say it is December 1990 and you have no restrictions on who you can book to represent each country, who would you go for? You can also play around with the date if you want, or do an "all time" one. For the purposes of this: 1. We can assume that all wrestlers who were "Russian" are in fa…

According to Dave Meltzer, WWE sent out a survey for ideas for the WWE Network that included the idea of moving the "big" PPVs (Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, Survivor Series) off of PPV and onto the WWE Network. The B-shows like Night of the Legends, Over The Limit, etc. would remain on PPV. I'm kind of baffled about this, to be honest. I mean, I can understand moving to a system where the B-shows that nobody buys anyway are WWE Network-exclusive and they just run the four big PPVs every year and try to make as much money as possible that way. I can even understand if, instead of running Wrestlemania on PPV, they tried to sell the rights to another network a…

This is just an idea for a thread I had the other day, don't know if it will fly but here goes. The idea is to discuss wrestlers who had reasonably long careers but don't normally get a lot of talk and discuss what their best match was. This isn't for great workers, no Rick Steamboat or Jushin Liger. It isn't really for bad workers (although that's in the eye of the beholder). It's for discussing the Al Perezes and Honky Tonk Mans (Men?) , the working wrestlers who may not have been considered spectacular but to remember the time (or times) they really took their chance to shine. Somebody suggests a name, then people suggest what they thought were their best (or really go…

I've been thinking about this lately with the sad state that Flair is in, and Hogan who's practically crippled about to put on a farce of a match with Sting. Also reading the Observer from last week with Dave's report of the Japan quake benefit show, saying seeing Kobashi out there was "sad" and he was "shaking, with a blank look in his eyes" And then I think about one of my favorite wrestlers of all-time, Terry Funk, who has retired and un-retired several times, and really has no business being in the ring in 2011, yet when I read that he has a match coming up in a couple of weeks I have no problem with it. I mean, Terry Funk is probably in no better shape tha…

Inspired by JVK's recent Best Babyface post, I figured we could dig into what makes a great heel (I apologize if this has been discussed before). There are a lot of different styles of heel, but what are the common qualities that define being a great heel? I've said this before in a thread on DVDVR, but I feel that the official best heel of all time is Arn Anderson. The reason being that he could intimidate as a tough asskicker *and* he could pussy out like a chickenshit coward, all within the same match, and it always had credibility and it always made sense. I believe that a purely tough heel can work, but as Lars Frederiksen pointed out in a Good Will Wrestling po…

These days, what type of discussion interests you the most between these choices? * Behind the scenes talk (Examples: Nash not passing a physical, plans for upcoming shows, Punk angle) * Gossipy/salacious stuff (Examples: Linda McMahon's campaign, Matt Hardy in rehab, Melina is a psycho) * Best/worst stuff (Examples: Jerry Von Kramer threads) * Match reviews and wrestler discussion (Examples: Yearbook threads, HOF discussion) It all has a place, and this isn't to decry anything, but more just to call it as I see it. I personally wish there was a lot less of the first two and a lot more of the last two. If anyone sees it differently, that's fine. I'm not co…

With WWF, it's always been clear that Wrestlemania is "the big one", but with WCW Starrcade never seemed to have that same special night feel to it. Always seemed like just another PPV, especially as for many years they devoted it to experimental tournaments and gimmicks. I was thinking about this and for me I think it's Superbrawl, but what do you think? Superbrawl, for some reason, was almost always had a good card with really good matches on it.