DR Ackermann

Thats not a bad thing, though. If Kane is at the top of the card and Stardust is a midcarder at best, then Kane should look better than him.

Oh well. They will probably get that sorted out sooner or later. I'm excited to check this stuff out. The picture quality is awesome.

Is this the only episode that is off?

I guess the episodes are a year off cause Anderson is TV champ, which he doesn't hold until January 86. I wonder if everything else is off...

So what is going on with these WCW episodes? The 2-8-85 episode, earliest uploaded has Tully talking about losing the I Quit match that doesn't happen until the end of the year.

He wasn't running a wrestling school. Everyone comes from somewhere.

I don't understand that argument. He didn't find and develop new talent because he wasn't the first place they worked? You pointed out that Duggan was a jobber before Watts turned him into a star as if that is someone a knock on Watts that he didn't find him training at a wrestling school. You can say that about pretty much every wrestling star ever. Hogan, the Rock, Austin, Undertaker, Mankind, Kurt Angle, Ultimate Warrior. None of them became stars where they began. I guess that's a knock on Vince as promoter. He didn't start out with any of those guys.

He's my number 2 at this point.

He became one of my all-time favorites in recent years. As great a heel as he was, he seemed to be an even greater person and class act in real life and came across as genuinely thoughtful and caring, and just an all around awesome person. RIP

The first time I saw him wrestle he was tagging with Stand Lane against Lawler and Brian Hildebrand and his entire performance was like that for me. I thought he and Hildebrand were easily the best guys in the match.

He really does throw a beautiful punch.

As far as grasping what it took to put together a match and stepping right into it and performing at a relatively high level, yes. He did a lot with very little actual in-ring experience in contrast to someone like Warrior who wrestled hundreds of matches and was a full-time wrestler for years. Don't worry, Cornette isn't going to be on my list.

#INEBRIATED

All around trash segment. Bulldog always seems like a complete muscle head moron stereotype when he talks which is supposedly not far from the truth. Was he already doing crack cocaine with Neidhart at this point? I dont remember the timeline on that.

I give credit to Cornette for never having actually been a full time wrestler, whereas Heenan had that background. Not a knock against Heenan of course.

I nominated Cornette partly in response to people's comments about the Ultimate Warrior and partly because he was so great at playing the role of a non-wrestler who has to wrestle. If people believe Warrior is a suitable candidate, that's fine, everyone has their own opinion, but Cornette could work circles around the guy. Better bumper, better seller, he even had better looking offense.

I thought this was a little long. They started getting a bit repetitive and I think the crowd would agree as they went dead until Smothers and Lee FINALLY went for the finish. I liked the action and smothers can braw but I'm mixed on him at this point. He seems to run out of ideas when the match goes more than 10 to 15 minutes and really telegraphs his spots.

I nominate Jim Cornette via the yearbook threads.

If you are unable to call a 10 minute match and come up with something good in your prime then you don't belong anywhere near this list. Does anyone think Warrior was capable of that?

It's strange how people will view a match and a wrestler in a way that fits a narrative even if what is actually being seen is counter to that narrative. The narrative being the one that Fujinami was washed up after returning from his back injury in the 90s. Fujinami was indeed a shadow of a shadow the worker he used to be. It's hard to fathom that he dropped off as hard as he did while still being able to wrestle for the next two decades. However, this is the best he's looked in a singles match on a yearbook since returning. He's actually pretty good here and this is a very good match. Fujinami had a great transition when he suddenly had an opening and viciously kicked out Hase's injured leg from underneath him. It was loud and strong enough as a transition with the two pausing to react afterward, that anyone in the building would have understood exactly what was happening. If there's any criticism I would make of Fujinami, it's that he did not sell the back as well as he should have. Hase did a great job working it over, assaulting Fujinami with Uranages on floor, and that deserved more from Fujinami's intermittent selling. The matwork between the two was good, though, and they both did a good job on offense. I loved the opening barrage from Fujinami and then the backing off, a mistake that Hase wouldn't make later on. I loved Hase's trifecta of suplexes in the stretch run, hitting his uranage, hitting Fujinami's own dragon suplex and then hitting a Saito suplex, touching on each decade in New Japan. This should have been Hase's coming out party, but the wrong guy won, and Hase will always be a notch below the true headliners, (like Fujinami and Masa Saito).