Al

I suspect that Bobby Heenan is one of the all time overlooked workers. There's very little prime footage of him but what I've seen is very good. But that aspect is completely dwarfed by memories of his managing/announcing career.

Nice to see RF Video taking the high road. Geez.

Sorry I wasn't able to be a part of this since I suggested it. Extremely hectic weekend. -Some interesting stuff on the undercard. Rick Harris became Black Bart a couple years later. Private Nelson evolved into Boris Zhukov. Johnny Weaver was the long time workhorse of the Mid-Atlantic promotion. Gene Anderson by accounts suffered a brain injury in 1981. He's obviously a shell of himself here. And Piper/Slater is a fun match. -I once saw a blonde wrestler on the old black & white ESPN wrestling broadcasts named Gary Hart. That would've been early '60s. It fits the time frame of Hart's early career, but I can't find pictures to confirm. It would make sense for Hart's alias to have to do with his early look though. -The big thing out of this card was how huge a financial success it was. Crockett had an overflow sellout for the card. It was their success here that prompted the promotion to think they could do it again with Starrcade. And they did for all intents.

I'm guessing someone saw Foley without his shirt and common sense prevailed.

Three of the first four mentioned were gone by Wrestlemania IX though (Savage was around, but not actively wrestling).

Let me recommend doing an episode on Final Conflict, the show which featured the Steamboat/Youngblood vs Slaughter/Kernodle tag match. At the time, it was the biggest card JCP produced. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCSA42WfOLI

UHF is a terrible movie, and a movie I love. Objectively, it's filled with bad camerawork, bad acting, continuity errors, etc. But it's really just campy fun.

How about Nick Bockwinkel?

Did the crowd know about the bribery? I wouldn't have thought the promos were miked into the arenas yet.

The Clash DVD has a match with Heenan/Solie commentating. THAT'S a jarring combination.

He also had a good rep in WWF history. He was actually around most of the 1970s, first as Chuck O'Connor (worked the first Shea show) and then as part of the Masked Executioners. And he had a rep as a nice guy. I don't have an issue with it, because if there's one match to put a big guy who can't work well over it's a battle royal.

I should watch the second Shawn/Razor ladder match again. At the time, I really soured on it because the build-up was so terrible. Essentially, it was "here's a rematch out of nowhere since the card is so terrible." No heat at all going in.

NESN carried all of the Boston Gardens shows in 1986. PRISM had 11 of the 13 Philly Spectrum shows. Sorry, didn't see them listed above.

That's not too far from what you'd see out of a typical boxing match of that era. The quality of live sports wasn't tremendously good for a long time. (Though I wish they would use less camera cuts nowadays.)

Or a name for that matter.

I think Mae Young wrestled more legitimate matches on the indies at least a decade ago. I'd have no problem saying she had a 50+ year career. She started in 1940 or so, so she would only have needed a match around 1990 to count. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Hell, they put a 15 year old Kiniski interview in a documentary.

Shawn's put on the best match of the card on several stadium shows. Wrestlemanias 23-26, maybe Wrestlemania 19. Probably the '97 Rumble. That certainly stands out. And I think it's worth noting the environment of those Wrestlemanias. It's one thing to put on a good match. I think every worker would tell you though that to do it at a stadium is especially challenging. You have to over-exagerrate your movements to get over with the upper deck as well as the television audience. It's one thing to do that with a fixed cam, but with HD programming you're really performing for two audiences at once.

Indeed. Wrestling a chess match and he trapped the other person. Or vice versa.

Agree with the others about Bret. Against Owen at Wrestlemania, against Bulldog at Summerslam. They're great finishes because the object is ultimately to pin the opponent. It was eternally frustrating to me to watch a match like HHH/Undertaker at Wrestlemania and scream, "why don't you try a damn rollup."

I decided to do it for the Big Gold Belt. 1. Mysterio 2. Michaels 3. Bryan 4. Cena 5. Punk 6. Hardy 7. Benoit 8. Undertaker 9. Angle 10. Jericho 11. Edge 12. Ziggler 13. Christian 14. Booker 15. Sheamus 16. Batista 17. Goldberg 18. Big Show 19. Henry 20. Kane 21. Triple H 22. Orton 23. Swagger 24. Khali I haven't been an avid watcher of wrestling the last couple years and I haven't seen much of Mark Henry's resurgence. I'm trying to be fair to him but I may have underrated him.

Vince definitely has his chops as a performer. But he couldn't work that style in the ring more than a couple times a year. He couldn't work a regular match. And the standard of this list is very high. It's not until the late 30s that you get guys with very little to offer as performers.

When you're broadcasting nationally, do you really need a large population base? Ice Road Truckers is very popular and they film in the frozen hinterlands. You just need a location that looks good and if it's a viable product, you can travel and draw.

Flair/Sting vs Rude/Vader and I think Rhodes/Regal as well has Bobby Heenan on commentary with new commish Nick Bockwinkel nearby. The banter between the two is nearly non-existent, and that's a disappointment.

Bingo. I just forgot to put Flair on the list. And it is a subjective ranking. Just overall in-ring ranking of anyone who ever held the belt. So when you compare Sammartino and Andre say, it doesn't matter that one held the belt for ten years and one for two minutes. It's simply a matter of who was better, Sammartino or Andre.