khawk20

Was wanz-Bock on that list?

Wow. RIP to an absolute staple of the expansion of my wrestling interests outside of the AWA. They don't build 'em like Dusty anymore, and sadly never will again.

Yeah but for me I already knew how good Bret the singles wrestler could be from the Steamboat match so I never looked at that one quite the same way.

The announcers in the AWA always sold the piledriver as an exceptionally dangerous move that should be banned whenever someone whipped it out (talking pre-1984 here).

Bret Hart losing to Rick Steamboat at the Boston Garden, early in 1986 IIRC. I first saw that match on Prime Time Wrestling and thought Steamboat would squash him. By the end, I was half-convinced Hart could actually pull the giant upset. It's still one of my favourite matches and it really introduced me to Bret Hart outside of his at-the-time realm of tag team wrestling with the Hart Foundation.

For AWA material in the form of classic matches and angles, DotDotkins has a channel that is pretty good. Nothing new or extraordinary, but a lot of the standard good matches and angles from the 70's and 80's are there.

I give that tandem full credit for being the ultimate small-weasel-want-to-see-them-get-hammered tag team.

Garvin and Regal vs. The Road Warriors sprung to mind, but I don't know if the two matches I've seen between the two teams would qualify as great matches. The LOD's title loss to them was interesting for the shock value.

Yelling, screaming, pain...you know, fun.

Yeah, but that's half the fun, no?

Nick Bockwinkel becomes NWA Heavyweight Champion in 1975 and holds it off and on until Flair wins it in 1981. Book Bockwinkel's 6 years on top of the NWA and...what of Harley Race? Book his next six years too, with the caveat that Verne gave the AWA title to Ray Stevens so Harley taking the AWA title isn't an option.

Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell. They were either chasing the AWA Tag straps or holding them from my earliest memories, and their feuds with Blackwell and Kaissie, Adonis and Ventura, Patera and Duncum, Patera and Blackwell and the rest of Sheik's Army were long-running battles filled with dramatic matches.

Watched the Duggan 1988 WWF Timeline last night. It was nothing earth-shattering but it was better than I thought it would be. I also watched a mixed disc that started off with a Bruiser Brody vs. Ox Baker match from Portland, Maine in 1986, seemingly pro-shot from a single ringside camera. Weird pairing and one I wish had happend when Ox was at least a little bit mobile.

Dino Bravo vs. SD II, Fall 1979, AWA TV. Bravo pulls the huge upset as he was a newcomer to the AWA at the time. SD II was a real monster heel at that point which made the result very significant. Greg Gagne vs. Nick Bockwinkel, Spring 1979, non title match. Gagne pulls off a huge upset and wins with the sleeper. No video out there of that one right now but it was awesome.

Wanz's AWA title win over Bockwinkel: Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgn2FDrRAw Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64cz57SWbQ One of the most surprising match results, well, ever. As an aside, I found someone uploaded my Bockwinkel-Zbyszko feud comp I made about ten years ago looking for this. Cool to see it up there.

Great footage. I'm assuming it's explained why the ending is from a badly dubbed copy as opposed to the rest of the footage which is very clean?

I believe without watching it right now that this is the same Verne vs. Great Togo match that I saw at least a decade ago that I absolutely loved. Worth a look if it's the same one.

Bob Orton Jr. did this pretty well, too. How would one classify Adrian Adonis' flipping over the ropes and ending up with his arms tied into them, exposing him to whatever his opponent wanted to do? The spot itself is athletic, but the result almost always had Adrian stooging with his face, begging the opponent not to attack him. Adonis did this in the majority of his matches from (at least) his AWA days onward. Kind of a combo deal there, I suppose.

I had this sent to me on another site. It's pretty cool. http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Manitoba/ID/2665751163/ Courtesy of Clawmaster's Archives, here is the card the footage came from: 12/6/79 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada @ Arena Canadian Heavyweight Title Match, AWA Title not on the line Canadian Champion Dino Bravo beat AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel via pin after an airplane spin AWA Tag Team Champions Verne Gagne & Mad Dog Vachon beat Super Destroyer Mark II & Super Destroyer Mark III Referee Joe Fiorino Adrian Adonis & Jesse Ventura beat Steve Olsonoski & Angelo Mosca dq when Mosca hit referee Fiorino Greg Gagne beat Bob Brown Jr with a sleeper hold in 13:00 Ricky Hunter beat Ron Ritchie Peter Sandor Szabo drew Buck Zumhofe 20:00

Neither do I, really, but the name makes sense on a base level.

Where would Eddie Graham rank in this debate? I brought the idea of this thread up in a Verne thread on another board, and Eddie was mentioned as being a possible candidate.