flyonthewall2983

Halfway through the BTFBB episode, pretty good stuff. Didn't realize he wrote a book, Conrad uses it for a few stories here and he highly recommends it. I'm at where they're talking about the accident, brutal stuff.

I'd like to see them finish out Prime Time Wrestling.

I'm kind of getting back into the show now. Interested to hear both the 83 Weeks episode on him and his rebuttal to Conrad. Not a wrestler, but I'd really like to hear him interview Mike Portnoy one on one. He's been on a few times before but in different contexts, but a straight-up conversation between the two would be great. I've not really enjoyed the times Chris talked to musicians but he's friends with Portnoy and I think it could break through some of the problems he had before with people he probably just met before interviewing them.

Was it filmed?

What's the big drop for July?

If you're talking about the ones in the "Beyond The Ring" category, a lot of them are pretty good. Off the top of my head the ones on the Road Warriors, Dusty Rhodes, and Superstar Billy Graham are ones I've watched more than once. I was actually watching The Rise and Fall of WCW yesterday, which is quite good and surprisingly even-handed. Vince is interviewed but really doesn't have a whole lot of things of substance to say. These docs are, to a degree, sanitized by the company but worth seeking out on their own merits. The WWE 24 series is okay. Again, they're sanitized but few punches are pulled in some of this stuff. The one on Kurt Angle opened my eyes as to just how much he'd fallen, same with the Hardys one that is getting so much attention now.

Jim had a funny line about the heat between Bruce and Jerry Jarrett, suggesting that when he came to WWF Jerry treated Bruce like someone far below his paygrade.

I really would have liked to have seen Jake feud with Arn Anderson over the DDT.

For me, Mero wasn't very convincing as a character when not hiding behind the Johnny B. Badd gimmick.

The discussion touched on the allegations made against Pat Patterson, and how it was believed by a lot of guys in the business because of the train of thought that most gay men were pedophiles (that unfortunately still persists to a degree). It's mentioned that Pat is a friend of the show, and that the charges against him never materialized in any meaningful way ultimately. Bit of a side-track here, but I watched Jim Ross' Hall of Fame speech last week and his comments on Patterson were a little enlightening for me. He didn't just come out and say it, but I get the impression that Pat was the first gay man Jim had any dealings with that made him reconsider his perhaps less-than-enlightened view of homosexuality. It has made me wonder if people like Bruce had that same thing happen over the course of his friendship and time with the company.

I thought the "Wildman" gimmick was stupid and it went downhill for him from there. Makes a lot of sense that Vince wanted the Johnny B. Badd character, but couldn't make anything stick with him that could be as indelible. Without Sable, he probably would have not lasted to see the end of 1996, at least in any decent placement on the card. One of the funniest moments on the show was during the "Beware of Dog" episode, where Bruce takes issue (to put it lightly) with Meltzer's review of the Wildman/HHH match, which Dave actually liked, and Bruce hated.

Bruce took a similar stance in the KOTR 1993 episode, when talking about scandals involving improper treatment of ring boys, taking a generally disgusted tone about homophobia in the business, same with the "boys will be boys" stuff wrestlers had about co-workers having dalliances with underage girls.

He appeared in WCW shortly after, at the first Slamboree in a 6-man tag "legends match"

From what I gathered reading thehistoryofwwe.com is that Ron Garvin was in the WWF until about November of 1990, and by the end was doing job matches like this

"urban narrative". Maybe I'm showing a bit too much sensitivity or white liberal guilt but that was my first instinct.

I'm just a few minutes into the Sable episode, but I find it funny that this could possibly be the de facto Marc Mero episode, since he wound up becoming the footnote in her career that nobody else saw coming.

That sounds a teensy bit racist if just considering the phrase on it's own

http://www.tmz.com/2018/06/24/vader-sting-jesse-white-comfort-final-days/ That's genuinely touching. I'm not Christian but I'm not made of stone either, I'm glad that someone who he shared so many professional highs with had that deep a personal connection with just before the light dimmed out.

Though Jesse and Tony were never as combative as a lot of teams were during this time, you can feel Jesse rolling his eyes a little as Tony's going through that history. What I liked about the WCW approach to commentary is that it wasn't as combative and head-biting-off you'd feel sometimes from Gorilla and Bobby or Vince and Jesse. Even when they had more pronounced heel color guys like Jim Cornette or Heyman, they didn't get as colorful as they would be if they were doing promos. I liked the little moment of Jesse letting Flair get his chair to bash Vader and just letting it happen. It's an understated tweener moment, because he's letting the babyface get the upper hand...but also letting him be the dirtiest player in the game too. I watched this match again today, and as I said before you can really see in those opening moments the emotional rush Ric is getting from that crowd. Before watching it I watched a clip of Vader talking about it, and it's a great performance by him too. Whether you rate the match high or not, it's clear to me at least that they gave their all that night.

To me the real draw of All In is that it's in Chicago, and that the midwest has been due a big wrestling show, be it WWE or independent, for a long time. I feel like ROH could benefit a little from doing huge shows where WWE has been maybe neglectful of doing some of their bigger events.

I wonder if McMahon had a better relationship with Inoki, if he could have been used more during the late 80's/early 90's, when they really knew how to use big guys. Put him in the Earthquake spot, and he could have fared well I imagine. The two best announcers who put over his awesomeness I think were Jim Ross and Bobby Heenan. Ross could put over a glorified ring boy and make it sound believable, so putting across how dangerous this guy was was easy I'm sure. And though Heenan was hit-or-miss in WCW, without saying it he gave you the impression that if he were still a manager he'd give up everything short of the clothes on his back to manage him.

It was cool, in as far that Gorilla in his heyday in the ring could be seen as a 60's-70's version of Vader. A big guy but technically sound. This may not be a popular opinion, especially now, but I think what happened to him in the WWF was as much his own doing as it was theirs. He was getting older, and their repeated requests to him to lose weight weren't without merit. That said, they could have done a better job of protecting him and using him better in some instances. Overall, it's just really weird that he was there in the first place. He couldn't have lost as much face in Japan for doing jobs to Hogan and the Orndorff incident, then he might have when he signed with WCW's competition.

Him and John Tenta don't get enough credit for being good promos. They weren't erudite by any means, but could put over who they were and what their agenda straight enough and still come across as intimidating.