goc

I'm not so sure. I think Barrett was over hyped for so long that people might not have noticed that he's actually gotten as good, if not better, than what people kept trying to project on him during the Nexus days.

To me this thread only has 2 names:GMC & The Fink. It's a shame WWE doesn't even use the best wrestling announcer voice ever. GMC is better overall because he has such a great cadence that as soon as I hear him I just get great memories of wrestling but Fink has the best VOICE for sure.

Herb Kunze is a great mention for this discussion. When I first got online the only thing I did wrestling related was look for rumors (who is coming in/leaving) and do e-feds. This was like 1995-1996. But I do remember reading Kunze fairly early into my internet days and the only wrestling I'd seen outside of WWF & WCW was Tim Noel's Wrestling Power show on cable access. I remember reading his stuff and thinking "Damn does this guy like anything!?" but still binge reading. Reading that back, I think that kind of highlights that there is a natural split in wrestling viewers that is only influenced by the internet and not created by it. Case in point, I'm sure there are plenty of other people who could watch the same shows I've recapped in my Continental thread and shit all over it for having wonky finishes, short matches, and bad production values. There are some people who are watching for the promos, the angles, the whole overall picture and some who really only want to see fast, athletic matches with all clean finishes. I like that stuff sometimes but it gets boring to me to watch it all the time so I'll take my fun angles, goofy gimmicks and good promos and suffer through the bullshit finishes.

Sometimes if I'm watching old wrestling and they just sit in a hold forever I like to imagine Big John McCarthy in there yelling "gotta work...come on gotta work" maybe break in there and stand them up.

Smark kind of evolved as a term. Scott Keith used to use it to pump himself up "THE SMART MARK!" but then it kind of spurred a whole bunch of clones using it and also doing overly negative snarky reviews so then the term smark developed a second meaning of "overly critical/know it all"

Dylan just can't resist a chance to bash The Man Called Sting.

I'd guess the amount of times Dave has read terrible posts on his own boards filled with the terms.

This is another good point. Back when access was much more limited, star ratings were a much bigger deal because you couldn't check out something on youtube first to see if you liked it. If someone else raved about it being a 5 star match then that made it more likely you'd seek it out the next time you're buying tapes. Now with the ability to watch so much between youtube, torrents and DVD comps and the proliferation of people writing reviews and doing ratings it means a lot less.

I was going to say Brody as well. I think it helped him be able to fuck over every promoter but still be in demand. He just looked good in bloody photos and they liked to put him on the cover because I'm guessing he sold magazines.

I didn't know about the 3rd Headhunter in the cage angle before I just watched it. That was pretty awesome stuff and I'll have to check out what you guys thought about it on the show. Kevin Sullivan is really fun on commentary for it too.

The date on this show is 1/10/87. Don't worry, we aren't missing anything, it just seems like there was no TV due to the holidays. Gordon starts the show letting us know there have been some changes by the "board of directors" (boy that trope has only gotten better with age hasn't it?) and says that anyone who attacks a referee will be fined $5000 and stealing a title belt will now be cause for a 30 day suspension. Gordon lets us know that Kris Von Colt has been fined $14,000 and now the Alabama Title has been returned to Wendell Cooley. Poor Kris Colt, losing half his year's pay just to have that shitty Alabama belt for a couple weeks. Our first match is Rip Rogers defending the Southeastern Title vs Rip Rogers. I believe Linda & Miss Brenda have been the victims of cost cutting because they haven't been seen for about 2 months and they really aren't even mentioning Rogers' attack on Linda any more. Adrian Street starts the match by kicking Rip Rogers' ass. Big time. Street does the most ridiculous, hilarious move that I will not even attempt to describe and instead just let the gif do the talking. Rogers turns things around when Adrian Street has him on the outside and is about to ram his head into the steel post in the bulldog position but Rogers shoves him off into the post. Street ends up catching Rogers in a sleeper and then Rogers shoves the ref out of the ring which Gordon tries to cover by claiming the ref was "caught up in the action." My earlier statements about Miss Brenda are proven false as she runs out to the ring and sprays something in the eyes of Adrian Street. Then she takes off one of her heels and nails him in the back of the head with it. And now Miss Linda is back too! She comes in and sprays Miss Brenda in the eyes with the whatever it is and then BLASTS Rogers in the back of the head with the shoe. Linda puts Adrian Street on top for the pin and then revives the ref. Rogers is out and Adrian Street is the new Southeastern Champion. After commercial Gordon is at the podium with Adrian and Miss Linda and Adrian lets us know he feels just like Cinderella. Rip Rogers is fantastic with is in ring rebuttal "Somebody hit me! Where's my belt!?" Our next match features the formidable Dr. X from Parts Unknown facing a newcomer to the area Larry Hamilton. Trying to decide if this is the same Hamilton that frequently appears as a one name only jobber in 1983 Georgia. Perhaps so as Gordon informs us Hamilton has bulked up a lot since the last time he saw him. Hamilton looks pretty good but it's almost like he's too excited to finally be on the opposite side of the squash match because he does a few too many moves in the build to the finish. He wins with a belly to belly suplex. Now we go to a promo from Kevin Sullivan in Hawaii. He's with Mark Lewin and I feel like this is the second time he's had a video promo with Lewin who I'm pretty sure never comes in. Sullivan says he is about to win the war, his army is coming from all corners of the earth to destroy the Fuller & Armstrong families. He ends with his usual line to Ron Fuller of "To be a king you have to kill a king." We come back from commercial to Gordon at the podium with Larry Hamilton on one side and Tom Pritchard on the other. Hamilton says that he wants to challenge for the U.S. Junior Title and it slowly dawns on me that Pritchard is still here and thus THE KING OF FUCKING RASSLIN Roy Lee Welch lost the loser leaves town match. This segment is dead to me. Scott Armstrong announces that the next match is for the Tag Team Titles and then the music of the Dirty White Boy hits and he and Stubbs come out sans the Tag Team Titles. The Nightmares come out to The Cars - Hello Again (which I quite like as entrance music) with the Continental Tag Team Titles. So I guess we know who won the big match at the Lavender Coliseum. The Nightmares get attacked before they can get in the ring and it's on! This eventually settles down into a normal tag and The Nightmares are such a great lost team. No one ever talks about them and they look good enough to me that you could make an argument for them being in discussion of best tag teams of the 80s if you had the footage. Pretty good match that ends with a pretty neat finish. The Nightmares have Jerry Stubbs set up for the Tombstone/Top Rope Leg Drop combo. Stubbs gets hit with the Tombstone but as the other Nightmare comes off the top rope, Tony Anthony catches him and slams him down. DWB covers one of the Nightmares while the other Nightmare covers Jerry Stubbs and the ref counts 3. But on who!? The ref counted Jerry Stubbs down and The Nightmares win! DWB attacks them after the match and then takes off to display his graciousness in defeat. After commercial we come back to Stubbs & The Dirty White Boy at the podium (with Kris Von Colt so unfortunately we have to listen to him) and Scott Armstrong is in the ring with The Nightmares and Wendell Cooley (see above note on Colt) Also, Stubbs has one of the belts. Cooley says that Kolt's dad threw rocks at the stork for a month after he was born. The crowd likes that line. Cooley wants a Texas Death Match because they keep getting disqualified. Ken Wayne talks Stubbs stealing one of their belts but they still aren't champions. Kris Von Colt "I have a girlfriend that I know could whip you Cooley, and I know because I Whip her every day" Scott Armstrong is moonlighting as The Flash because he manages to get from the ring to the back to get a letter for Stubbs & White Boy "from the promotion" and then goes to the podium and gives the letter to Gordon Solie. He reminds them of the rule about stealing belts and he says that Jerry Stubbs is suspended for 30 days! Guess it's time for Jerry to do a Japan tour Ohhh boy the next match is a Cage Match and I hear The Headhunters music so this is getting me excited. The New Guinea Headhunters vs. The Stud & Robert Fuller in the confines of a steel cage! Wrestling never found a song it loved so much as Springsteen's "Born In The USA" and that's what The Stud & Fuller come out to. This cage has a lot of give to it. Like "boy I sure hope that side doesn't fall down" give to it. Kevin Sullivan is practically giddy doing guest commentary on the match going over and over with Gordon how no one can get in or out of the cage. He calls the cage a spider's web, a beautiful trap designed to lure in Robert Fuller & The Stud. After about 5 minutes The Headhunters get control of the match and then pull a Nexus and start pulling up the mats and the boards on the ring. And there is another Headhunter under there! We now have 3 Headhunters and The Stud gets hit with one of the boards they pulled up from the ring. Then he gets piledriven on it. Sullivan was up for days planning this. It's neat to see the ring with a huge hole in it from the missing boards. And then The Stud falls down into it. After a long beatdown one of The Headhunters pin Robert Fuller. The Stud has his mask pulled off but disappears down into the hole in the ring so you can't see who he is. It's not Ron Fuller I tell ya! They get the camera work right this time and you never see Fuller's head at all. Sullivan wants to know if this is the greatest plan Solie has ever seen but Solie won't give him the satisfaction. I hate on Gordon but I do like how he plays off the heels. We end the show with Sullivan gloating at the podium with the THREE New Guinea Headhunters. Gordon says he has some per-recorded comments from The Stud and then we go to an unmasked Ron Fuller with his brother Robert. Ron says he is "speaking on behalf" of the Tennessee Stud. I don't like that. If you're going to do the goofy masked guy who everyone knows gimmick, keep the mask on. Bob Armstrong does a video of him in his house wearing The Bullet mask wih his kids and comes out in those goofy ass sheets to do his "civilian" interviews. I actually like Robert Fuller cutting patriotic promos because it's not different than any rah rah USA redneck stuff you've heard in real life. Gordon signs off letting us know that next week we'll see the Texas Death Match between Wendell Cooley and Kris Von Colt. This was a good show and I have the next one that I'll do before putting this on hold. And then HOPEFULLY I will have some more footage. Smack2k and I have some leads on more footage that I am cautiously optimistic about.

Probably personal aversion to Jim Cornette making people not want to do the things he was suggesting. And then after he's gone someone can suggest the same thing and it's a new idea.

I don't think Nick Dinsmore could have done anything that would have gotten as over as Eugene. That was more a victim of bad booking than a bad character. It was over as shit until they had him get his ass kicked by HHH.

I think it's time to go ahead and try to build Cena's replacement while he's still healthy enough to cover for a failed project. Kind of like what they just did with giving him back the belt when Bryan got hurt. If it works out and they find their guy, then they can finally pull the trigger on a Cena heel turn and make big money with Cena vs the new ace.

So weird, I just watched that match between RNR Express & MXE from Mid-South today. I had the disc on while I was cleaning up today. Jim Ross loved talking about Jim Cornette finally coming out of the closet in his dress.

Snowman feud drew money, so did McMahon in the Mid-South Coliseum. Lawler invading ECW was definitely a hot angle, not sure if it mattered to business though.

Quick bullet points that I will come back to and someone with earlier 80s and some 70s knowledge can add on to my case: -Lawler pretending to be a drunk after losing to Bill Dundee and then the whole Hawaiian Flash mask deal to get his match with Bill Dundee -Tommy Rich hiding under the ring during the big cage match blow off with Austin Idol leading to Lawler having his hair cut -Tupelo Concession brawl was big for business and something everyone points to as the "birthplace" of hardcore wrestling (even if it's not) -Bill Dundee goes nuts in the studio and goes from Lawler's partner at the beginning of the show to his worst enemy and the guy who stole the belt from him by the end of it -Giving Andy Kaufman a piledriver and having him get stretchered out of the arena. -Slapping Kaufman on the Letterman show -Can I count the Empty Arena "match" as an angle? Then there are the ones that I'm not sure I can say really did anything for business but were great angles: -Austin Idol pretending to be visiting Mexican wrestler to give Jerry Lawler an award only to attack him -The whole dream match scenario the ended up with Jimmy Hart winning the Southern Title

Keith definitely had his biases that affected his reviews. Most notably HHH, Shawn & Taker.

Or Lawler.

This is really the only value of them. They aren't the gospel where you're just wrong if you don't like a match the almighty Dave Meltzer has given a 5 star rating to. It's just a guy who has watched and rated a lot of wrestling over the years, from a lot of different places and they are relatively easy to access. Even Scott Keith's stuff has SOME value for that. Ratings give a guide to someone who hasn't seen anything and is looking for a good place to start. It takes more than 1 guy's rating to create a consensus on whether a match is generally well liked, no matter how "influential" the person rating it.

I wonder how much of that is actually true. I DO know that Shelton Benjamin used to bring I think it was a PS2 into the locker room play video games all the time until they banned them from being able to. He was well known as the gamer, didn't he always win the tournament for whatever the new game was at WM Axess every year?

He could be a tag team guy, but he definitely doesn't have it to be a singles guy. There's just really nothing interesting about him, he needs a strong personality like Ryback to play off.