flyonthewall2983

And Dwayne has been a producer for some years now, which means he has a foothold on the other side of the business too. That said, Dave is making much more interesting choices, working with more creative directors, and seems to have genuinely embraced acting by not taking the obvious route.

The one on the 1997 Royal Rumble is pretty fascinating in terms of the actual business of promoting the event and everything they did to fill the place up.

Flair said on his podcast that he paid people to rip up Hogan merch on camera. That's brilliant as both shoot and kayfabe.

Watching it now, it's clear he was a heel from the moment Finkel introduced him. And I just watched the portion of the Ken Burns documentary where it talked about how the Reds/Sox series of '75 was so heated it made baseball popular again, getting some enormous TV ratings. Kane was a top heel, but this came off okay. If it were anyone above him doing it, it would have sent mixed signals certainly.

Bruce Prichard confirmed on his podcast that Flair was to be a surprise guest for the Brother Love segment on the SummerSlam '88 show. I can kind of see how that works into leading into a main event with Savage on the same show. Build up a mystery opponent for Savage, and have the new heel personality say that it will be revealed by him on the night of the show.

Road Warriors turning on Dusty in '88. Major missed opportunity there. It would have made everything the character did before look more funny if you knew it was a con-man screwing with people.

Maybe they start an hour early?

Ted had to wait 11 years

I think clips from the match are on the last episode of Saturday Night from the batch they put up last month. I wonder how today's good financial news will affect the Network.

Bruce said on his show that there was talk about bringing him back as "Bobby Heenan, Jr." to manage Ric Flair, since Heenan was done managing and only broadcasting by this point. Ultimately Vince didn't like the idea, given his history with not liking "Junior". They could have gotten around that by just calling him Bruce Heenan. He also said just before he left Global to go back to the WWF, WCW threw out an offer to make him Steve Austin's manager.

Yeah, someone put it up on reddit last week. It's the one where he's bleeding so much some commenters made Kool-aid jokes which weren't that far off.

One of the underrated highlights of the Attitude Era for me is when McMahon's group beat up Boss Man and he was thrown out, and the next week he came out during the middle of a Vince interview (I think), to his old music. He ended up begging forgiveness to be brought back in but for however long that music played I was really excited we were getting the old Bossman.

1. Hogan 2. Warrior 3. Jake 4. Brutus 5. Dusty

I think that's what it was, Bill mentioned something about it without spoiling it during his podcast with the director. For some reason I thought the painting was from some old angle Bill remembered watching old WWF. I know people are giving Shoemaker crap for his contributions, and I'm not above some of that either. But the part of the movie I most identified with was when he talked about the childhood discussions of Hogan/Andre and how it was treated by him and his friends as something huge as Ali/Frazier. I came of age a little later, but I had those same discussions when I was a kid too (and I guess we're still having them now, not unfazed by the knowledge predetermination of it all).

On his recent appearance on the Masked Man podcast, Bill Simmons and Shoemaker made a big deal of Pat Patterson's suede painting in the background shown during his interview, a reference I didn't quite get. Can someone explain it's significance to me?

Bret Hart is the subject of next week's show, which should be interesting given Bret's recent comments about Eric.

I like Booker T. He reminds me a lot of Dusty on WCW Saturday Night.

I liked the episode too, and I could tell from previous episodes that both Bruce and Conrad had been wanting to do a show on him for awhile. He was a great performer and underrated as a worker, and overall a value to the company. Looking back, it's kind of sad how WCW didn't know what to do with him after being forced to change his gimmick. They had the same thing with John Tenta. They had these amazing talents that were ultimately squandered. I guarantee you nobody here hates the Attitude Era more than me but even I have to say that despite how much bad taste permeated the Al Snow and Big Show angles, that Boss Man was committed enough in his role as the heel that in retrospect I can't help but be impressed by that alone. I'm surprised they didn't bring this up

Some of these podcasts are pretty long, so I would see the need for it that way. I've actually tried it out on a few apps and it isn't like they sound unintelligible either. You can make out what they are saying but it just goes by pretty fast.

Have to admit I have not watched much of it, but I love that intro for the show from 79 on. Very retro sports-y type feel to it.

What's the general opinion on his account of lightning deflecting off of his umbrella and killing the guy standing next to him? I watched the promo from 2005 when he mentioned this, Googled it and found this more recent account of the event, which he said happened in the 70's, whereas in the promo he specifically said 1981. It's completely trivial but I don't think I've ever heard this tid-bit of his life discussed online.

I love that at one point, Bret and Jim do a double-team and Vince can't help but be a little nostalgic about the original Hart Foundation on commentary. Nice little moment, it's a shame that just the two of them didn't have any matches against anyone during this time.

Looking back it makes a lot of sense that the third man had to already be someone who had been in the company for awhile, and not just another new guy they picked up from the WWF. Having Hall and Nash come in virtually at the same time is what really set the angle in motion, and outside of maybe Bret there was not another bigger name even coming close to them on the fence. And Bischoff said he didn't even talk to Bret until two months after the BATB show (which I believe is corroborated in Bret's book).

This is doing very well on iTunes, nearly topping the overall podcast charts which is unheard of for a wrestling show.

WWE Network News confirmed that the show is coming, one week from today.