On Episode 61 of The Wrestling Culture Podcast, Dylan and myself talk the 2014 Class of the Wrestling Observer Hall Of Fame, how the voting went down and the HOF in general

 

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=112658&cmd=tc

I'm about halfway through this. Really good show so far. I was excited to hear both of you speak so positively about Sputnik Monroe. I actually emailed Meltzer asking if he would consider him for the ballot a few months ago highlighting the "positive influence on the business" metric. I started gathering his results from the territories and 70s Memphis. Unfortunately there aren't Memphis results from the 60's online that I can find. Just based on the anecdotes, he seems like a no-brainer candidate.

 

Also agreed 100% about Dave's "controversial" MMA comments.

Only half way through this chaps, enjoyable listen. Dave's "ridiculous" during Dylan's Patera ranting was quite funny, although I'm 100% with Dylan and as I said in the other thread have got to the point where I think the voting block is a joke. There are too many people who don't care enough or who don't know enough voting.

 

I just wanted to pop in to say that I'm not sure about the "Bob Backlund was a regional star" line, well sure, but the region has the same population as the UK or Germany! I argued with Will about this before but you can't treat headlining in Watts country the same as headlining in Vince Sr's WWF. That promotion was already a "super promotion" about 5 or 6 times bigger than any other in the country at that point. New York alone is a massive area, they ran Meadowlands, Boston, Philly, Pittsburgh and Washington. So WWF at that time is akin to a national promoter by European standards -- but with bigger houses than anything World of Sport or Otto Wanz would ever do.

 

I'm just saying that I think it's easy to diminish WWF at that time as "just another territory" when in actual fact it was a monster.

On the flip side of that, doesn't it make it EASIER to be a big draw when you have a much larger population base to fill a 20,000 seat arena from?

I dunno, it's swings and roundabouts. Running in New York you are competing againt literally hundreds if not thousands of different things to do from Broadway to sports teams and all the other things you can do there. What's there to do in Tulsa on an average week night? You could argue that the population advantage is off-set by the increased level of competition for the entertainment dollar.

 

 

All that said, Vince Sr and Bruno had done such an effective job of drawing in the North East that I do think that you could have replaced Backlund with virtually *any* competent babyface and seen no discernable impact on the numbers. Backlund might as well be a puppet on a piece of string and I give him basically no credit at all for the numbers he drew.

I'm part way through this so far. Both of you guys have interesting takes on the candidates. My question is Dylan you said none of your research meant squat for Patera. Later in the show you credited to research on Volk Han a possible bump because of the article. Why do you feel one article helped one candidate, but not the other one?

Han had an existing base of support and people on the fence already. Patera is someone who is still thought of as a joke by a shit load of people. it's impossible to save someone from that reputation through research and it's not worth the trouble to try. I won't do it again.

Hold up... Dylan, after doing your research on Patera, did it ever get posted on the main site or in the Observer? It's all well and good that we read it here or at Classics but the overwhelming amount of people who actually read the research probably weren't voters anyway.

Dylan - were the articles published at F4W or in the newsletter?

 

edit: whoops, Will beat me to it - didn't refresh the thread before submitting.

It's a huge difference on where it gets posted.

Both Dave and you put Meltzer over for putting research on the front page. So I assumed Patera was on the front page of the Observer. Kinda of sad if Patera didn't get that treatment because the research was good.

I'm still shocked people need Patera research to validate him as a candidate. His prime pre dates my fandom, but it's not hard to find video evidence he was a big deal, and not a horrible wrestler for being a power lifter. Damn good talker too.

No good way to format Patera research for Observer front page. It's my own fault because I didn't have the time to put something together that I would have liked. Having said that I really don't think it would have mattered at all.

I thought the JYD talk was good I think he should be in or close to it. The Mistico comparison was an interesting one. The new rule change does seem like a stacking of the deck. With Hamada off the ballot and since you didn't vote for Taue. Does that mean you'll never vote for Taue?

On the fence on voting Taue