jdw

I'm not sure if "what wrestling should be like", "benchmarks" and "expectations" are quite the right fit for me. Along those lines, perhaps different shades. I got into pro wrestling at the age of 20 in 1986 thinking it was entertaining. Never saw it as more than that, and it was pretty good stoner fun. I was entertained by three things: 1. Good matches 2. Good mic work (Flair and Cornette) 3. Good angles / storyline Was there an expectation that wrestling needed to have those things for me to enjoy it, or an expectation? Not really. When I got into puoresu in 1989, it was just matches. There wasn't mic work, and storylines/angles weren't exactly akin to Baby Doll turning on Dusty. Was there any expectation / benchmark on what made for good matches? That's hard to say. It's not like I expected all tag matches to be worked like MX vs R'nR and be Southern Tag format... as if I even know what the hell that was at the time (or if people within the business even gave a shit at the time about that term). MX tag matches were just "good", Road Warrior tag matches were "less good", and the stuff I watched later in the 80s was "different good". It's not like I had an expectation that singles matches should be worked Flair-style. Specifics of "good"? Perhaps some. I like a match that had good action, that moved things along... if I could go back I'd probably recognize that I like matches that if they were going long balance working up and down rather than just laying around for 10 minutes to kill time. Since the guys who almost always had good matches that I likes were heels like Flair and the MX, I got to appreciate the aspect of heels making faces look good... and in turn liked the faces who would make the heels look good such a Barry rather than the faces who gobbled up heels like the Road Warriors. But did it give me an expectation of liking wrestling only when heels screwed over faces? Not really. I actually at the time wished that Flair could win a few more matches since that Hogan champ guy in the other fed won all the time. On things like mic spots... Flair and Corny were good, while Paul Jones sucked and Boggie Woogie bored the shit out of me. Did that make me like heel talkers? Not really. Rich playboys? No. Pampered rich children like Corny? No. Heels talking shit that faces would payback against? No. They just were terrific talkers, either funny or serious, doing a good job of talking up the feuds / matches, and really competent in doing their spots. Since then, I've liked guys who are good on the mic (Austin, Rock, Foley). Doesn't really matter if they're face or heel. Even with them, there were a ton of times over the years where I thought Mic wasn't entertaining and didn't care for some of his shit. Hell, I hated Flair on the mic after he turned into Hyper Ric. So it's not a style or method... it's just "good". Akin to what I'd like out of acting in movies or TV, regardless of genre: play the role well, if I give a shit about the role. So it's more general: I like pro wrestling, what I like most in pro wrestling are matches, I also mic work, and I like angles/storyline. I tend to like what I find entertaining/good. In the end it revolves around matches because that's what I want to watch most: given me a match that I'll enjoy. Does it have to fit into a type or benchmark? Not really. Hokuto-Kandori isn't Flair-Barry, and MX vs R'n'R isn't Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue. Other than... They were all "good" to me. Sure. If I never watch another 80s Ric Flair match in my life, I'd be perfectly fine. That doesn't mean I won't ever watch another Flair match. I'll have to run across his stuff when watching every AJPW match I can get my hands on from 1972 through the split. He'll pop up when I watch stuff with Yohe and Hoback. But... I don't find Ric's stuff fun or entertaining anymore. I don't think they're horrid, or bad, or fail to see them as quality matches. It's not a revisionist thing. They just don't entertain me at all like they did in the 80s. On the other hand, I still love the MX & Corny when I come across it. Even if we expand this to "Ric's style of wrestling"... bumping stooging heels... they aren't a benchmark for what I look for in wrestling, and never have been. I don't hate them, and can appreciate Patera's selling and bumping in 1980 reflecting what looks like a good bag of things learned from his time in Mid Atlantic. But I don't seek out Flair type of workers. I pretty much have shat all over Hennig's work in the WWF as boring the crap out of me. I never liked heel HBK as a worker as much as most hardcores do. Ironically, I prefer watching 80s Hogan match now to 80s Flair matches... and I HATED Hogan in the 80s, and there's no benchmark or expectation from watching Flair matches that I'm applying to liking Hogan matches. So... yeah... odd. It's actually similar to the original question of the thread. There's an attempt to put a label on us / ourselves. I kept coming back to the simple: I'm a wrestling fan / big wrestling fan. We went around in circles on it, with some feeling the same way, and some feeling the need for something more. On this one, I'm entertained by good wrestling. My origin story is that I found what hit me as good entertaining wrestling. It shaped me in the sense that I found it, and then over the years have found more of it, a ton of it that isn't very similar to what originally sucked me in... other than I found it to be good and entertaining to me.

I think you Can compare matches / wrestlers / work across time / promotions. I don't think you Must. Can one compare Tito vs Savage from 1986 with what was going on in All Japan, New Japan, JCP, Memphis or PR? Sure. Must you? Not really. I don't know if it matters whether the best Tito-Macho is better than the best Choshu & Yatsu vs Jumbo & Tenryu... or the best of the NJPW vs UWF match of that year... or better than R'n'R vs MX from that year. Or if it's better than Austin vs Bret. Or whether Savage and Tito are better workers than those other guys. It certainly can be fun if one wants to go in for it, or enlightening if there's a good conversation about it. Is it needed? No. Don't know if that makes sense. An example: When I'm pimping WWF 80s matches, am I pimping them in a way that they're comparable to Misawa-Kawada? Not really. I think I had Rude-Warrior as my #1 WWF match in the old SmacksChoice poll. Was I thinking Jumbo-Tenryu when watching it, or typing up my thoughts, or pimping it? No. That other match wasn't relevant. I was just thinking about WWF matches, or WWF 80s matches... and I really didn't give a crap about what Flair would have done in the match rather than Rude, or what Luger did against Flair compared to Warrior. When I say it's a great WWF match, do I mean that's comperable to a great JCP match or great NJPW match? It really doesn't matter, and not the point I would want to get across at the time. It's a bit like the recommendations in the Hogan thread. We're looking at Hogan Matches. Jumbo-Kerry doesn't really matter when looking at Hogan's matches in 1984. I know that's not exactly your point, Loss. There are any number of ways to look at a match / wrestlers / work.

Bruno vs Patera from Bruno's second reign: http://www.wwe.com/videos/madison-square-g...171977-25058984 Date is wrong on it. It's January 17, 1977. So if one is interested in how Patera worked as a heel before his peak year in 1980, this is an example. There's a decent amount of Bruno out there to use as a comp.

I never post my ballot. Heck, I don't think I ever talk to even Steve about everyone I vote for. A quirk. :/ Not trying to be a dick... just the way I've done it for more than a decade.

Great post, Sek.

Keith: where the old quote Dave dropped on my head over on classics?

Was there a paper ballot? I never got a paper ballot. Seriously. It's been e-mail forever. But he started doing "ballots" in 1998, and there was no ballot sent out. There just was the list in the middle of an issue of the WON. I have no idea how others did it, but I either typed up who I was voting for an faxed it to him... or just went through who I was voting for the next time we talked on the phone.

I've never found a compelling "Jarret was a great promoter" argument that can be separated from "Lawler was a massive star locally who had a special connection with the local fans and Jarrett happened to be the guy he got in bed with when it was time to deservedly fuck over Gulas." I mean... maybe there's an argument. But one tend to think that if one of the follow two things happened in say 1978: * Lawler dropped dead * Jarrett dropped dead The the first would have killed the territory dead in about a month or two. The second one would have... well... hard to tell. Lawler effectively would have either been the promoter or selected who he wanted to do business with. It might screw everything up, or might now. Who knows. That doesn't mean Jarrett was a shitty promoter. Or wasn't a good one. But I'm not entirely sure that Jarrett being the promoter Lawler chose to do business with is a HOF thing. :/ Style? I don't give a shit. When we got to Onita's picture when doing the Initial Class, I pushed hard on Onita's. Suspect Dave would have put him in if I wasn't involved, but I pushed hard for Onita and his style wasn't a negative even if I don't care for it.

There should be, but there's an easy way around that. If you don't think someone should be in (let's say Sakaguchi), then you vote for someone else in the category. If you think all are awful them you vote for the person least likely to get in. That's essentially a No vote for Sak. With Japan, I'm not overly enthused about any of them. I tend to vote for Volk because I wouldn't have a problem with him getting in, but I've never been 100% he's worthy. So it's one where I don't think everyone is awful... but think Sak going in would be awful.

Jerome losing his shit over Week 92 is great. God this was a long unending nightmare back in the day.

Hulk Hogan from 1984-88.

Could be. Rings did well on Loss' list in 1997. I'm not sure when Yoshida's strong Arsion run starts... suspect Loss will like that.

Other thing to look towards in 1998: Seems very unlikely that either the 6/98 Kawada-Kobashi or 10/98 Misawa-Kobashi will be #1, regardless of their old ratings. That will close AJPW's run of five straight #1's. What match, wrestlers and promotion will step up to grab #1?

Your list tells the tale on where AJPW's decline in the ring hits home. From 1990-97 Top 10: 3-3-3-2-3-3-3-1 Top 20: 3-6-4-7-4-8-5-1 Top 40: 7-8-7-14-5-11-13-2 Just the one match in the Top 20, and a second in the Top 40. The decline hit quick after 12/06/96 and 01/20/97. Odd thinking how long the prior stretches lasted at a high end: 5/90 - 10/92: Jumbo & Co vs Misawa & Co 5/93 - 12/95: Four Corners 5/96 - rest of Pre-Split AJPW: Kobashi & Jun Elevate There are highly rated matches still to come, though some of them are like the highly rated matches (at the time) that didn't do so well here: probably not going to look as great now. But... While Jumbo & Co vs Misawa & Co peaked early, the feud still kicked out #7 & #13 in 1992 (with two other AJPW matches finishing Top 20). Four Corners feud matches went #1-2-11-15-16-17-22 in it's last year. Kobashi & Jun elevating in 1996 was one of the highest things you've liked in this run: #1-4-8-14-18-21-25-27-30, another at #37... which is a ton since it was just the last 5 series of the year for the promotion. But it hits the wall in 1997 with #1-27 for the two Misawa-Kobashi Triple Crown matches. The second year of Jun's elevation was flat, and it would get worse in 1998 when "moving away from Misawa" meant being Kobashi's #2 rather than forming his own group. It will really be interesting to see what you think of the rest of the decade. There's the sense that if this was a movie or novel and you could cut an "early ending" that 01/20/97 would be it: * Jun stepped up and showed promise * Kawada & Taue finally overcame 3 years of RWTL failure * Kobashi has finally won the TC, beating Taue, retaining over Hansen, and able to withstand Kawada for an hour * Misawa proves that even while pushed, he's still The Man And close the book. The "writers" weren't able to top that, and instead the novel was increasingly sad and depressing.

Who hell, you're prior "logical form" was so screwed up it would be pointless to spend much time with this. I will give you credit for getting your conclusions numbered correctly.

I aim to please. John

It's more than that: * Vince had NYC * Verne had Chicago * No One had Los Angeles Vince then did this: * kept NYC which * went to war with Verne over Chicago after stealing Verne's #1 babyface * took the open Los Angeles So yes, as we talked a ton about in the Vince & Hogan vs The World Thread, Vince had the perfect territory to go national from: NYC, Boston, Philly, DC, Baltimore, Pitt and other quality New England cities/metros. He also had some good timing of so much key area of the country "open" on one level or another, and Hogan sitting out there because Verne didn't grasp what he had or how to cash in on it. Base To Build From + Perfect Tool + Various Easy Opportunities + Right Plan To Attack Tougher Opportunities Right promoter with the right vision with the right wrestler at the right time. Stars aligned.

That's pretty funny.

Alright... let's see where we were... Alright... let's take a look at this... That's why The Destroyer wrestled a Bear in the 60s. Because bears took the field NFL games, played outfield in Major League Baseball, played for Matt Busby in the 60s, etc. Right... As far as characters and stories, that went back before Vince even promoted the business. Wrestling was entertainment back to the 20s. Don't be stupid and think otherwise. Pathetic attempt at a knockdown strawman argument that misses the fundamental through line of my argument. For a guy who is so clever, you seem to have tunnel vision when reading what other people say. I'll pull out the through line for you. Okay... We're talking about innovation relative to the rest of pro wrestling, so let's think about this for a moment. A. Apples & Oranges The first one is a House Show match, not TV. Backlund and Valentine never had a TV match while Backlund was champ, certainly not one with a 10 minute headlock. The second one is an angle to draw fans to shows. B. Not Innovative You may come back and try to say that the innovation is using an "entertainer" in angles. That wasn't innovative in 1984. We know this because of: Which was kind of famous. It also was hardly the first time people cross over from non-wrestling into wrestling angles / storylines. C. It wasn't successful The Lauper vs Albano angle bombed. Badly. The advance at MSG for it was so bad that they had to add Hogan to the card very late to try to get the crowd up, and even that didn't work because there wasn't enough time to sell it. 01/23/84 (26,292): Hogan vs Shiek 02/20/84 (26,092): Hogan vs Orndorff 03/25/84 (26,092): Backlund vs Valentine / Piper & Schultz vs Andre & Snuka 04/23/84 (22,091): Backlund vs Valentine / Sheik vs Slaughter 05/21/84 (25,000): Hogan vs Schultz / Slaughter vs Sheik 06/16/84 (26,092): Slaughter vs Sheik 07/23/84 (15,000): Richter (w/ Lauper) vs Moolah (w/ Lou Albano) / late added Hogan vs Valentine Those higher number include overflow over into the Felt Forum. Vince didn't innovate here. He wasn't even terribly successful with this one. Wrestling's fan base had rarely been "just men" or "sports fans". Go on a board where fans started watching pro wrestling in the 70s or earlier and ask them when they became a fan. The majority will say they started when they were kids. Watch old tapes in the 70s and early 80s and you'll see kids there and also women. Frankly the sport never drew massive amounts of women, even acts like the R'n'R Express or the Von Erichs. They drew more women that some acts, but it's never been a case that 50% or even 33% of the crowd are women... unless we talk about All Japan Womens. Vince didn't innovate here. He simply tried to get *more* kids in. It would be like saying Vince Sr was innovative by making Pedro champ to draw PR fans. No, that wasn't innovative: promoters had long been working to draw ethnic fans. In turn, promoters always had been working to draw kids. Watch the Von Erich vs Freebirds feud in 1983. You'll see kids and women in the crowd. ? Gorilla was a former pro wrestler who became an announcer. This isn't innovative. In fact, there really was nothing innovative about Gorilla's pbp work. He was, for better or worse, just another pro wrestling announcer. You liked him. People in Memphis liked Lance Russell. The Masked Marvel was over before he set foot in the ring. That was 1915. Getting guys over before they set foot in a territory was pretty common back in the olden days. New guys would be scheduled to come into town. They'd get a lot of run in the local papers. Sometimes they would get shot straight to the main events. Sometimes they would get booked against the local "pass through" guy, which at could be a semifinal on the card and actually drawing on a level if the guy got a push. On the other hand... Very few people in the WWF came in and got pushes without working squashes. In fact... none. Other than Hogan, but he'd been in the WWF before and... Wait, check that... even Hogan worked TV before getting his Title Shot: WWF @ Allentown, PA - Agricultural Hall - January 3, 1984 Championship Wrestling taping: 1/7/84 - included the announcement that Hulk Hogan & Bob Backlund would face Mr. Fuji & Tiger Chung Lee the following week: Bob Backlund (w/ Hulk Hogan) defeated Samula (w/ Afa, Sika, & Capt. Lou Albano) via disqualification at 4:34 when the Samoans and Albano attacked Backlund as he applied the Crossface Chicken Wing to his opponent; the bout was to have been Backlund and his mystery partner against the Samoans but Albano refused to the match, instead making it a one-on-one encounter; early in the match, the Samoans tried double teaming Backlund, with Backlund then going backstage and returning with Hogan; after the contest, Hogan and Backlund cleared the ring of the four other men; moments later, Gene Okerlund conducted an interview with Backlund & Hogan in which Backlund said Hogan had changed his ways, with Hogan then thanking Backlund and the fans for bringing him back to the WWF (Hulk Still Rules) 1/14/84: Hulk Hogan & Bob Backlund defeated Mr. Fuji & Tiger Chung Lee at 4:12 when Hogan pinned Lee with the legdrop Which was before this: WWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - January 23, 1984 (26,292 which included 4,000 at Felt Forum) Hulk Hogan (sub. for Bob Backlund) pinned WWF World Champion the Iron Sheik (w/ Freddie Blassie) at 5:40 with the legdrop to win the title after ramming the champion back-first against the turnbuckle to escape the Camel Clutch So even Hogan was on TV doing squashes. Did Vince use vignettes like the Million Dollar Man stuff? Sure. But prior to Vince people would use out of town video, or taped interviews by the Champ sent in to pimp up a match that was coming into town to defend the title. Simple fact is that wrestlers were gotten over in a variety of ways before wrestling. Nothing terribly innovative from Vince here. He just did it very well. Wrestling was mainstream after the war... and in the 20s... and in the 10s. But the word "credibility"? Wrestling had no more credibility under Vince that it did before him. It was fake entertainment before, and fake entertainment after. You were wrong on every point you made. That was the case when you originally posted it, and I thought it a waste of time to respond to because half the people would think I was simply kicking you in the balls again while the other half would be wondering how you could be wrong yet again on Every Theory You Come Up With. What we were talking about that you dragged this over here to question was my comment that Vince "innovation" was Going National. So what you've dragged over are a bunch of things that are either not innovative or simply wrong. Vince used Hulk Hogan to popularize pro wrestling. That wasn't innovative. Vince used Television to popularize pro wrestling. That wasn't innovative. Vince used the media to popularize pro wrestling. That wasn't innovative. Seriously... I know you're going to try to think it was, but I've got a slew of New York Times and Chicago Tribune articles at home from the days before there was Radio and Television that show promoters were *always* trying to use the mainstream media to popularize pro wrestling. It went out of fashion as the 30s went on, and then after WWII is came back into fashion with television, then it went out of fashion, then it came back. Vince using the mainstream media to popularize pro wrestling is as innovative as one piece swim suits coming back. No... you've failed to bring Innovation to a discussion about Innovation. No... it's classic Jerry to not have a clue about what the comment was about and try to drift it over onto something else... and on top of it being wrong about everything. Either of them would be pretty funny, but doing the double time and again is rip roaring funny. If you were a teacher marking posts and grading in this fashion, I'd have little problem getting your thrown off the faculty for being a shitty teacher. I didn't change the goalposts, Jerry. You did. I made a statement in this post: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...21042&st=26 You went batshit over it in the next post: Which I responded to, and then again when you followed up with more nonsense further down the thread. You question the WWF altering the way "wrestling was made" and that it's one major innovation was going national. You then tossed out a prior post of yours that gave no evidence of Vince changing how pro wrestling was made nor any innovations. Your examples, at their very best, were what I said they were: "did it better" than others. I've been consistent through the whole discussion on the WWF's innovations in the 80s. You're the one who has gone off into la-la-land. And you seem incapable of seeing my comment "did it better" and taking existing tech, etc. You do it so often that I use to think it was willfull ignorance, but now just chalk it up to ignorance period. No shit. But Jerry... you're not even offering up any examples of Novel Ideas of Vince. So he had Lauper. Big fucking deal. Jerry Lawler did Kaufman before that, including getting it onto a national TV show that broadcast out of Vince's backyard. He used it to draw a pretty damn good amount of money, working a feud that he was still able to go back to years later. Vince worked Lauper. It bombed. He then tried to work the Freebirds into it. That bombed as the Birds got run out of town. He went back to it with his top heel in the company as the only way to get heat on it: Piper. That was of little impact to the point that Piper slid over to Hogan for Mania while Lauper slid back down to the Womens Title. Vince didn't even do Lauper better than Lawler relative to the market size (i.e. the National WWF vs the Local Memphis). I could pick apart every one of your "innovation" examples like that. Good lord, you dragged Monsoon over here and there wasn't a thing innovative about him. The problem is that you know very little about pro wrestling, despite your claim that you've gotten several degrees in it. So when you see something that New To Jerry, you start thinking it's New To Pro Wrestling. And you end up being terribly wrong. Vince made it big by getting Hogan and going National. He went National in two key ways: going into open territories (like California) and attacking the second largest promotion in the country, the AWA. The key thing in attacking the AWA? Stealing their #1 babyface and making him the WWF's champion. The innovation in all that is Going National. Even the going to war with the AWA isn't super innovative: any number of people stole territories from others, like Jarrett & Lawler taking Memphis, and Watts over times cutting out McGuirk. Vince did it better, but even then his key methods weren't terribly unique (stealing talent, running house shows, and running his TV in the market). So... heh. It's actually about more than creativity. JKR was "creative" when she wrote the early Harry Potter books. She wasn't very innovative in them. They were wildly successful. Wild success doesn't mean someone is innovative. What is this meant to be? It's rather self evident. Okay... and let's see if they have anything at all to do with My Point that you went batshit over. No... My claim was: Setting aside all your other goofiness, When does "one major" become "only"? You don't read so well, do you? My response to you one of your batshit points was here, which you see to have forgotten: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...t&p=5563783 Sam presented his wrestling his way. Which I might add, I don't think any of us have watch a heck of a lot of the week-to-week television and promoting he did when he ran St Louis. I'm not sure I'd hold it up as an example. Wrestling was always Entertainment: "I am merely a purveyor of entertainment." The bland inscrutable Curley replies when someone asks him if his dodge is on the square. In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never heard him say his pitch was a phoney, nor have I heard him claim it was the Mc Coy. And I’ve never bothered to inquire, since I know what the response would be. It is like asking someone, "Do you still beat your mother-in-law? Answer "yes" or "no". Probably half the folk who attend the Curley carnivals are hep to the hooligans who entertain them. The other 50 per cent of the spectators - the foreign born, the confirmed rassling addicts and such - are equally certain they are witnessing the genuine article. That has been the secret of Curley’s success. He satisfies the scoffers and the believers too. He has made rassling a state of mind. It is everyone to his own opinion and nobody gets hurt - including the athletes. THE DETROIT FREE PRESS, April 27, 1936 by Jack Miley That's one of the greatest promoters of all time making that naked admission. Hell, that's not only before Vince was born, but before my Mother was even born... and she's 77 later this year. As far as wrestling getting "more entertainment" after Vince, I posted the Lawler-Kaufman thingy above. You're going to call that isolated. How about this one: http://www.wwe.com/videos/jimmy-garvin-and...1-1983-26059348 There's a whole lotta Garvin vs David stuff involving Sunshine before that, just in case you think that Savage & Elizabeth innovated anything. Because you have no grasp of pro wrestling's long history of being Entertainment. Again, this guy says hello: He did: he went National. Perhaps you can offer us some actual Facts like you said you would, and we can look them over to see if they carry as much weight as the "Facts" that you've offered up so far which turned out to be not very factual. I credit Vince with a lot. I'm the one who said he's the greatest pro wrestling promoter in US history. I could list two dozen things that I'd give him credit for without breaking a sweat. I just don't think there are many things that would be "innovative" other than Going National. Oh of course a "change in direction" was directly linked. Stealing Hogan from Verne to replace Backlund was a change in direction that was one of the two most important things to success. The other was expanding beyond his large, profitable and safe territory and going National to target primarily (i) open territories, (ii) Verne's large territory, and then (iii) other key markets was a very important change in direction. Of course merch is related to more people going to the WWF's National Shows than their Regional Shows, and the company being Successful. Kind of hard to sell merch if your product isn't successful. How much Pacific Rim merch was sold this year relative to Iron Man stuff? It's not that Iron Man was innovative this year: it was just really successful. Wrestling was family friendly before Vince. Bruno vs Larry set record business in 1980. Flair vs Race did massive business up and down the coast at Starcade 1983. Flair vs Kerry did huge business in the first half of 1984. Wrestlemania 3 drew 90K because Hogan vs Andre was built up as the biggest match in history in a match put on by the then most successful promotion in history featuring the greatest draw in pro wrestling history at his peak. Family shit? Eh. It was a pro wrestling match that drew a ton of people. You're still batting about .000 here. Perhaps that's a sports analogy that goes over your head. It's a Clean Sheet, Jerry... and you're on the short end. Some you're admitting that I'm giving Vince credit. Good... Good, glad we can agree on that. Other than the imagination thing. Okay. I believe I talked about the key marketing and packaging elements in a prior post. And pointed to George. Vince's key marketing and character things weren't innovative. They just worked on existing things in pro wrestling. He just did them well. Wrestling has always had a turnover in fan base. It's always losing people, retaining people, and adding new. There isn't anything different here. My barber can talk about Blasie and Tolos and Mascaras. He then faded out of wrestling. He then can talk about Hogan and Macho. He then faded out of wrestling. He can talk about Stone Cold and the Rock. He then faded out of wrestling. He can now talk about Cena. You act as if every WWF fan of the 80s started watching the WWF in January 1984 or some point after that. Not the case. Talk to older fans whose fandom goes back to being kids. They'll tell you they talked about pro wrestling before Vince took over. They did it with their local territories. This is nothing more than your imagination running wild. It's kind of hard to go to a show without watching a show since it's Television that tells you when it's on. There are always people going to their first show. Has been the case since pro wrestling was invented. And promoters have used newspapers, radio, tv, personal appearances, advertising and local promotion to get people to come out. Vince left the competition dead for a lot of reasons. The biggest was having Hogan (for whom there was no competition), taking open territories (where there was no competition), and attacking Verne with Verne's old #1 (who Verne was too stupid to make his champ). *laugh* Given how shitty your methodology has been in various threads, that's a good thing. I question whether I used Funk-Brisco as an example. On the other hand, there is a rather obvious similarity on how they were built: Dory had the belt, and Jack wanted it. Hogan had the belt, and Andre wanted it. That was the very specific angle, and why Heenan's talk worked for Andre: why hadn't he gotten a title shot, and why not just ask for one? The build to Wrestlemania 3 for the match that sold is was very simple, and really little more than old school wrestling that an Entertainment Angle. California was a dead region where two territories recently died. The WWF didn't promote in California. Then the WWF promoted in California. 25M potential new fans. I could do that for every new state that the WWF went to. *Everyone* was a potential New Fan to the WWF. That number of New Fans blows away the potential of New Fans that Vince could have gotten out of his Existing Territory, pretending for a moment that Vince was trading in 100% Old Fans for 100% New Fans in his Existing Territory. Really, Jerry... an massive amount of it was demographics. Which is little different that turning fans onto Pedro who didn't watch Bruno. Turning people onto Bruno who didn't watch Rocca or Rogers. Or Rocca turning out fans in New York when the area had been dead since the 30s. Or Gorgeous George and Leone turning people onto going to wrestling when they hadn't gone to see the others. Lawler and Fargo were huge in Memphis. It doesn't mean that Memphis was always huge. They turned out fans who hadn't been going or watching. This has happened time and again in pro wrestling. Hell, we saw it in WCW when their ratings and house show business went through the roof after sucking for close to a decade. Vince and the WWF were hardly the only folks to do this. The flaw in your thinking is that you can't see beyond the Shinny that has your attention. You see Vince and the 80s, and can't comprehend Gorgeous George and the post war wrestling boom. That's one example, but that is the case with every "fact" you bring up: you can't seen beyond that Shinny to see if there are other similar examples. That's why you keep saying stupid things. Okay... Main stream what? Fans? Local wrestling did being ratings in places like Memphis. Wrestling drew all over the place around the country before 1984. You're basically saying all of those fans are non-mainstream people? I think you'd get some disagreements from people who were fans of those earlies eras. Papers? Media? You can find results in local newspapers all around the country prior to 1984, along with pimping of coming shows. Mid-Atlantic Gateway has a lot of those clippings up from the 70s: it's how we know results. In New York? Well, the Times had them through the 30s. Then they dropped them. The Times didn't carry results for each MSG cards in the 80s after Vince took over. In every era, people who didn't watch pro wrestling turned onto watching pro wrestling. Example? I turned onto watching JCP in the 80s before watching the WWF. That's despite being in a "WWF Region" (California). Conclusion 1: Jerry's Premise 1 & 2 are faulty as usual. 25M California 3M Arizona 3M Colorado 11M Florida 11M Illinois 5M Indiana 3M Iowa 2M Kansas 9M Michigan 4M Minnesota 5M Missouri 1M Nevada 1M New Mexico 10M Ohio 2M Oregon 2M Utah 4M Washington 5M Wisconsin That's 106M people who were potentially "new fans" who didn't go to WWF shows before 1984 because the WWF didn't promote regularly (or at all) in their states. The US population in 1984 was around 235M people. 45% of the country. About half the rest of the country are places that Vince had issues with: JCP's territory (eventually including Georgia), Von Erich Land (Texas), Wattsville and Jarrett-LawlerLand. Above 60M of the remaining 129M. Then there are some states like the Dakotas, Nebraska, Alaska, etc that either the WWF didn't eventually go into, are small, or don't have much of a pot to piss in. Without going back to look at the calculations in the Vince & Hogan vs the World Thread where I took the time to break down what part of NVA that Vince had before expansion, let's say that Vince had a base of 60M in his Existing Territory. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. So you're hanging your hat on Vince finding New Fans in his Existing Territory of 60M as being more important than the 106M All New Fans in the territories he added? Let's get this formula down pat... Existing Fans in 60M - Existing Fans Leaving in 60M = Existing Fans in 60M who Stayed Existing Fans in 60M who Stayed + New Fans in same 60M > 106M Potential New Fans in New Territories Yep... that makes logic... Here's reality: The overwhelming majority of New WWF Fans came from the Added Territories/Regions rather than out of the Original WWF Territory. We know this isn't true because Vince tried to package other people to draw like Hogan and wasn't able to until Stone Cold took off in 1998. Warrior was simply product. He bombed. Savage was simply product. He drew well as Champ. He didn't draw close to Hogan prior to and after that on even a remotely consistent basis. There are lots of other examples. It's a waste of time to list them. The reality is that Vince Packaging & Presentation = Everyone Draws in the 80s has long been show to be false. Chris posted some recent data on what we all knew. Conclusion 2: Jerry's premises continue to be factually wrong. Argument 2: Jerry's command of facts and reality are wrong. This would help if any of your finer details were correct. When they are all wrong, then it's you who can't get a handle on anything. We actually looked at more than numbers, but since you couldn't even get the basic stuff in there right, what the heck. Conclusion 2: Jerry can't count that this is actually Conclusion 3. I mean... that captures the whole discussion right there. Let alone that the two Premise are again wrong. You've yet to give a single factual example of Vince's innovation. In turn, I have given an example of his Major Innovation: He went fucking National. Conclusion 2: this is actually Conclusion 4 In addition, we have agreed repeatedly prior to this "Conclusion 2.3" that JDW thinks Vince was an Innovator. So it took is this far into the discussion when you drop down to Lying Jerry mode to misrepresent what I said. I had a bet with myself on this... So setting aside the Lie, what really is the case is that we disagree on the Innovation: jdw: " The one major innovation of the WWF was going National" Jerry: Vince innovated left and right... but my examples aren't really innovative... well... most of my examples aren't really pointing to anything anyway." Conclusion 3: this is really Conclusion 5 The discussion wasn't about Vince impact on wrestling in the 80s: it was about what I thought was his one major innovation. If you'd like to have a discussion on Vince's impact on wrestling in the 80s, you can run with this: Vince had two major impacts in the 80s: (i) he created a strong national wrestling promotion which in turn (ii) had a contributory effect of every other major promoter at the start of Expansion either being out of the business or with a decayed promotion/territory. He had other impacts, but in terms of the wrestling business, those were the two major ones.

Oh... Jerry is back with more nonsense. I can see from his first silly spot of comparing a Backlund-Valentine house show match that didn't air on the syndicated tv with an Angle that aired on the syndicated television that it's going to take a long post to sift through all the delusional nonsense. It's 9, time to go home and eat... be back sometime over the weekend. Give you some time to maybe thing through some of that, Jerry. John "When I was playing the character." -Tugg Speedman

I get that. But I never doubt the idea that a wrestling promoter would be so cut throat as to hold up his own son to a deal. And I didn't get that story from some interview with Vince, it was from some other bullshit. Edit: Oh, and arguing against Vince's bullshit with stuff from other people in wrestling's bullshit is just a bullshit parade. Sorry... I must have missed when I was arguing Vince's bullshit with someone else in wrestling's bullshit? Where was that?

Internationally, does he have any competition for that #1 spot as a global promoter? My instinct is to say no, but I've got more than a few blind spots. I don't know. Tough to compare. Kind of why I stuck to US.

I'd disagree. I thought the T-Mac piece was terrific. I may not view T-Mac exactly like he does, but he did terrific job of walking through his career, and unlike his former days now has access to (and is willing to dial them up) some people who were there who can add to what's he's thinking/writing. In turn, the piece today look like a throw-away piece on something that a lot of football fans were pondering: the Trent Richardson deal. Much like a lot of us were trying to come at it from different angles to try to figure it out, he does... and from several additional ones that we may not have run across yet or popped into our heads. It's breezy, funny, extremely readable (if his style of writing doesn't annoy you), completely topical... but it's also hitting deeper football themes than, "The Browns are idiots!" and "The Browns got ripped off!" The content is actually solid stuff. Bill doesn't "write" a whole helluva lot anymore, at least not relative to the SportsGuy era where writing was his stock trade. A chunk of it falls into tropes like "NFL Picks" and "NBA Trade Value" and the Power Polls and the Mailbags. On to those he'll append throw away stuff like the Breaking Bad vs NFL Sunday Night piece, which is a throwaway harking back to massive digressions out of Mailbag questions... and aren't terribly interesting. Hell, the Eagles and Midnight Run pieces were similar, though he did those in the SportsGuy Era as well. But when he actually sits down to write something that he gives a shit about more than just having fun, like the T-Mac piece (or the How We'd Fix The Lakers or the Tim Duncan Career Arc), he still has the content to go along with having some fun with the pieces. In turn, there are sleeper things like the Richardson piece that pop up, often buried in something else, that while largely having some fun do bring the content if ones follows along. Do I think Bill has it in him to write something like the Basketball Book now? Probably not something that focused... which is somewhat odd to say since it bounced all over the place in dealing with various basketball topics. I think the podcast and ESPN/ABC NBA gig (along with family) eat up his time and focus, and also allow him to get out a lot of what in the past he would have needed to write down to have a chance of people reading (in the place if now hearing) it. Bill never was 100% off the charts in content. He never consistently in the old days brought the content like say Lowe does now on Grantland. That never was what made Bill readable to a mass of folks, or popular. It was largely fan boy stuff spouting off mixed with other shit that interested him (porn, gambling, movies, etc)... and on occasion he bring some content that was strong analysis. That's the difference: MM couldn't do a quality T-Mac piece, and if he tried to do a piece like the Duncan one, folks like us at PWO would point out so many errors in it that it would be laughable. I'd be surprised if MM could even pull off a throwaway like the Richardson piece that delivers content in such a breezy way. Just to be clear: I'm far from a Simmons mark, despite enjoying the hell out of his Baseball Book. His Red Sox book annoyed the shit out of me. I could only take the ESPN Page 2 stuff in stretches, kind of pacing myself by wandering off for a half year here and there before wandering back and catching up selectively in the archives. It's far easier to pace yourself at Grantland: there aren't that many pieces, and I generally hate listening to anyone's podcasts, so those are easy to skip. I just think that MM is horrid, while Simmons as a writer is someone who has passed his prime but can occasionally reach back for the heater for a game here and there and toss a shutout, or scatter 8 hits to win a 2-1 game.

Cool

FWIW, I don't recall MKJ ever ripping off other people's work... not that I paid a great deal of attention to his writing back in the day. But someone else over there was quite legendary at dropping dimes on hotlines (or even better: using backdoor codes) and lifting info from others. John