flyonthewall2983

Honky Tonk Man's tights pre-WrestleMania III, a blue and purple spandex suspenders and pants combo. You can see him in them in the SNME battle royal just before WM.

It must not have taken long. That long hiatus in 1994 did the company no favors as far as drawing power. And when he came back he was almost more of a featured attraction than he was before.

Bash At the Beach that year was very loaded too from what I remember. Flair/Piper, the end of the Benoit/Sullivan angle, and of course Dennis Rodman's wrestling debut, which probably got the company it's most legitimate press coverage that year.

It's pretty clear that from at least '96 until the end there was one big show in WCW and it wasn't on PPV. I'd like to do a comparison of the PPVs from the first two years that Raw was on the air, to the first year of PPV's when Nitro was on the air, and I bet you the WCW announce crews would name-drop Nitro a lot more.

It probably seems like it was an afterthought because as soon as the match was over Savage was forgotten, as it went right into the Piper feud.

I love reading these, Joe. You're doing an excellent job.

They've started adding Raws from 2000.

And considering that Ali has just slammed Donald Trump in the press, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Definitely a posthumous induction.

Yeah, Bret was screwed by Americans right and left, so said fuck them and only supported non Americans. Very understandable. I guess Ohio and Nevada doesn't count.

Most of them were LP, but I remember a couple of them (mostly compilations) were in EP.

Is the Beefcake turn against him in WCW justified in any way?

That angle with him and Warrior in WCW didn't exactly set the world on fire anyway. And to be fair, bringing up past victories was the least of their problems. Bringing this back to Piper, he had his moments on the mic in WCW but it was pretty clear that without Vince to rein him in his rambling style seemed much more aimless, which is the same old story of how WCW failed without having someone like him running things.

I remember the Bulldog WM7 match somehow added on to the morning announcements at my high school one morning. Like a few seconds after it was over we got like a minute or two of it joined in progress. He had an impressive looking full-nelson. The Super Assassins are at the inaugural World War 3 battle royal. I saw the RF shoot he did with the Barbarian, seemed like a cool guy. I guess he was a security guard for 50 Cent.

Didn't someone say it would be impossible to convert some of those CHVs digitally due to how primitive they were? I remember some of them towards the end being encoded in EP mode.

My god, a Vader/Bam Bam feud in '96 would have been so much better than that abortion we got with Yoko.

They did quite a bit of that on Raw before '95 too. I can remember it more when Heenan was around. It felt a little forced, but not as terrible as other aspects of the broadcasting style they were using at the time.

It's basically inferred in the build-up that Heenan got in his ear about how Hogan never gave him a shot at the title. I always thought that was the germ of the feud.

Tiny Lister was an actor first, but he's had some amazing performances. Mostly bit parts, like the one in The Dark Knight. And Batista was awesome in SPECTRE.

Yea but what is bad about that? I never understood why that was apparently some big no-no, it was one of the most iconic matches in history and it's not like people didn't know Warrior beat him. Hogan's point in the interview was that dredging it up meant it took some of the heat out of the build-up.

Bret Hart in 1997. It's made even more understandable by the fact that he wasn't a heel at all anywhere else other than America. He completely subverted the trope of villainous foreigner, in what was probably one of the most meta angles in wrestling history. I would even argue that he didn't lose as many American fans as the company would have suggested. There were a few of them in the Wrestling With Shadows movie. And I for one didn't like Bret up until then anyway (brother's favorite wrestler, so obviously not one of mine). But I liked how loose he could get on the mic now that he could speak his mind, specifically with regard to how much better Canada (actually) is better than America. It's also made obvious by the fact that the WWF kind of moved on without him during his absence in 1996. His return was much ballyhooed, but seemingly overwhelmed by Austin getting hot. And his (at first kayfabe, but then very real) frustration at Shawn Michaels is obviously justified in retrospect. And above all that, I like that before he left for WCW, he wasn't mincing words about how he felt about the sleazy direction the company was going in.

Warrior pointed out on Nitro that he had a victory over Hogan, they even showed the clip.

Warrior was much worse in this regard, as the Self-Destruction program pointed out

I'd like to see them add way more MSG shows.

They don't play it up in the booth or give it much camera time but you can see him and Jimmy Hart have a conflict too.

On top of the pinfall attempts, it's distracting to me when the ref lays the count on someone to let go of the ropes. I would assume that in a submission match, you can't get disqualified.