Fuck me, Rowdy Roddy Piper. Duh.

Apr 29, 2022 20:58:29 GMT 🤯 said:

RRP?

Rowdy Roddy Piper

My thoughts on Terry Taylor are EVEN as a cocky heel, he could have been decent to a pretty strong mid-card champion. HOWEVER, in most cases, the roster of said promotions would have had to either lack creativity or, be depleted to such a degree that Taylor would have had a prove it run as the #1 or 2 man. The only thing Taylor ever did worth anything was in UWF. That run was steller. The guy is a more talented incarnation of Greg Gagne.

RRP was the early concept for *RTC Rude.

Responsible Rick Prude

Apr 30, 2022 23:35:56 GMT @ness said:

RRP was the early concept for ROTC Rude.

Responsible Rick Prude

I'd like all the ladies in the crowd to... dress with class. Your parents may be watching. I adore every single one of you as unique individuals, not objects.

Drafting Ax reminded me of an embarrassing self own. The 1996 PWI Almanac had a list of all previous PWI 500 rankings. It was an invaluable resource I frequently consulted to come up with characters for our wrestling figure leagues. An Axis The Demolisher was listed a few times. "LOL what a ripoff!" I thought/said every time I came across this hack name. Some time later I discovered Axis The Demolisher and Demolition Ax were one and the same. Whoops. You can't rip off yourself, dummy!

And it happened again when the wrestler soon to be known as Edge signed with WWF but hadn't debuted yet. A bunch of smarks in the AOL Wrestling chat room were talking up a new signee named Adam Copeland. Not wanting to be thought of as a rube, I quickly blurted out "I hear that Sexton Hardcastle is really good too!" Of course Sexton Hardcastle and Adam Copeland were also one and the same. D'oh. Exposed again.

More draft related thoughts...I love how WOW just went out there acting like the Attitude Era never happened. It was a throwback in its own time...a New Generation WWF show (with admittedly worse wrestling) in 2000-01. No wonder I was such a big fan.

It's a shame George Plimpton never became a wrestling manager. We as fans missed out. He wrote about his desire to do so a time or two. Studied up on the managers of the day. Put over Jimmy Hart, Jim Cornette, Paul E. Dangerously, and their weapons of choice. Even had some ideas of his own. Plimpton's ideal client? An effeminate, overweight wrestler known as The Grecian Urn. Plimpton's managerial weapon of choice? A lyre.

@ness recently made a post where he mentioned Vince hating managers. I've also see lots of posts on various message boards over the past 15+ years about Vince hating tag teams. Yet WWF was all about managers and tag teams when I first became a fan during the late 80s.

When did Vince change and why? I have my theories, but I want to see what you guys think before I put them out there.  

I think Vince really became star driven. Especially during the attitude eras where manager turned into valets and the biggest stars were guys who could do it all. It shapes the product to this day.

Instead of booking wrestling he wants stars. For better or worse.

Weird it didn’t change with Hogan.

The tag team breakup obsession started with The Rockers. Yeah, he split up The Hart Foundation because he expected Neidhart to be the big singles buy, but once Shawn took off majorly out of an actual breakup feud, that was when Vince decided "Well, fuck it, let's see how many Shawns Michaels I can make!"

I think Vince just loves the turn, which is understandable (My theory about the nWo getting bloated was simply people loving to get booked in a turn, addicted to the turn, that singluar OHHHHHHHHHHHH pop after it happens). A tag team gets over, Vince doesn't see money in the team, but in the feud after the turn which will catapult at least one new singles guy. In that sense, The Mega Powers exploding is the ultimate Vince feud, put together just for the turn, there could never be a long term Mega Powers, it's just to get to the turn. Maybe Hogan was the catalyst for Vince's love for this, in general, as this was basically every classic Hulkamania feud, then Vince just wanted to do smaller scale versions of that with conventional tag teams.

May 4, 2022 1:46:54 GMT KITN said:

The tag team breakup obsession started with The Rockers. Yeah, he split up The Hart Foundation because he expected Neidhart to be the big singles buy, but once Shawn took off majorly out of an actual breakup feud, that was when Vince decided "Well, fuck it, let's see how many Shawns Michaels I can make!"

Shawn also grew tired of Marty being unreliable.

My theory for Vince souring on tag teams is he saw Bret & Shawn both become The Guy after leaving their respective teams so he spent the next quarter century trying to make magic strike thrice. No longer did he view tag teams as a long term thing in and of themselves. Now it was just a matter of finding the next Bret or Shawn to push. Whether or not he ever succeeded again is another debate. Other theories I've heard include...

-Tag teams were too costly. This line of thought goes Vince wasn't crazy about paying four guys for a match when he could be paying two.
-The schedule no longer required it. Unless you're a 2000 WWF Guy, which is a perfectly fine thing to be, WWF tag team wrestling reached its zenith during the 80s boom. WWF was often running three shows a day at the time. You needed talent to fill out those three cards. Hence all the tag teams.
===========
Managers started getting phased out in 96-97. It's no coincidence WWF was in a cost cutting mode at the time. For a while they did go with female valets in lieu of male managers after Sunny, Sable, and Chyna got hot. Seemed like every wrestler had a female companion once business picked up again during the Attitude Era. But the old school male manager would never again be a fixture up and down the card the way they had been during the formative years of my fandom.

So I'm going with a cost cutting measure that just morphed into a long term thing.

I love the entire history of the falling out being cost cutting. Just downsizing.

Consider this. What if Vince let his indifference to tag team wrestling makes him get rid of it before Raw began? would there be anything close to 7 hours of WWE programing every week?

I may have found the worst YouTube wrestling channel. I was looking for some second opinions on the '98 Royal Rumble when I came across a cinema sins like channels. I got about a minute in and after dinging the WWF on not having Goldust dress up like Darth Vader in his match against Vader and dinging JR for mentioning Austin arriving at the arena I skipped ahead.

411 complaints!

I ain't got time for that shit.

Are there any good wrestling review channels? And not just guys who have OSW esque takes?

You can always trust Wrestling With Wregret.

Zane is OK. I enjoyed his videos enough when he was one of the first WrestleTubers. However the That Guy With The Glasses style format and milquetoast observations didn't do a lot for me.

I'm largely after more under the radar picks. Unfortunately I think it's largely just shock jocks or extremely non-controversial low effort career wrestletubers.

Maybe it's time to bring back the pasty white dude rambling into their webcam genre?

Watching a Norman Smiley match yesterday reminded me of my one cool Norman Smiley story. Always think about this and chuckle whenever I watch a Smiley match, or come across his name. Think I only told this story once in passing on the old PW...

The Time: No earlier than the summer of 1998 and more likely to be 1999, or even 2000.
The Place: A graffiti-covered wall on the side of a road a few miles from where I resided and only a few blocks from where I attended middle school.

The beauty of this graffiti-covered wall? It was covered in WCW graffiti! Our local tagger was clearly a hardcore WCW enthusiast. Even I, the self-proclaimed world's biggest WWF fan, couldn't help but pop when I saw it because it meant the wrestling business was booming. (See also: Andre The Giant Has A Posse stickers, which were big in my cousin's neighborhood down in the city)

I assume the Jimmy Graffiti of Parkville, MD started with the NWO, got away with it, and just kept going from there. The way I remember it*, and keep in mind this was a wall I drove by maybe half a dozen times over 20 years ago before some jerk (or hardcore WWF fan?) cleaned it up, all the big WCW acts, their catchphrases, and/or nicknames were represented on this wall- NWO: Too Sweet, 4 Life, Goldberg: Who's Next, IV Horsemen, Ric Flair: WOOOO, DDP: Feel The Bang, Sting, maybe Scott Steiner: Big Poppa Pump, and Lex Luger: The Total Package, etc. Oh, and NORMAN SMILEY: BIG WIGGLE!

That was what bumped this up from an interesting local curiosity to a legendary work of art in my eyes. Norman Smiley! Randomly out there hobnobbing with the big boys. It was like that time on the old PW when Kilgore mentioned meeting a lapsed fan who was reminiscing about all the stars of yesteryear and proceeded to unironically namedrop Disco Inferno right alongside Austin, Goldberg, NWO, DX, Foley, Taker, Sting, etc. 

Judging by the time, place, and wrestling connection, I've always had a sneaking suspicion our mystery tagger was either known to me personally, or more likely a friend of a friend since this hardcore WWF fanboy wasn't one for palling around with WCW-loving scum. We're talking real Montagues and Capulets level heat, baby!

Friday & Sunday are out because I have other things going on, but I'm going to try finding the wall if I have time on Saturday.   It's either on the side of a fairly well-traveled road, or right off the road I'm thinking of. Will post pics right here on PW and may even do some low tech forensic work if I manage to find it.  You never know. The Red Robin incident proved that. But that's a (non-wrestling related) story for another day...

*The only things I could swear to under oath with 100% certainty are the wall being covered in pro-WCW graffiti and Norman Smiley being among the names listed. The rest is a mix of half-remembered stuff and educated guessing.

Take down confederate statutes and put up wrestling. Am I saying recarve mt rushmoore into Hogan slamming Andre? Yes.

May 20, 2022 0:17:50 GMT @ness said:

Am I saying recarve mt rushmoore into Hogan slamming Andre? Yes.

Potential project for Elon if they block his Twitter takeover: Build Mount De La Mieux. Whatchu got? I'm going with...

Hogan slams Andre, Hogan turns heel, Foley gets thrown off the Cell, and The Montreal Screwjob.

If you guys get the opportunity, you should check out the Boogeyman-Stevie Richards story from the Paul London edition of the Renee Dupree podcast. There should be a clip on YouTube and London's version of the story is hilarious. It's a pretty good interview as well but it's largely the same ground that's been covered before.

NWA wrestlers played the Charlotte police in a 1988 charity basketball game. Is this Dusty Rhodes or Michael Jordan?



Most of the game. Haven't watched it yet but general consensus is Sting & Luger were the standouts for Team NWA. Barry Windham, Tim Horner, Road Warrior Hawk, Brad Armstrong, and Jim Crockett also played for the NWA squad.

May 20, 2022 0:05:29 GMT Baker said:

Friday & Sunday are out because I have other things going on, but I'm going to try finding the wall if I have time on Saturday.   It's either on the side of a fairly well-traveled road, or right off the road I'm thinking of. 

Investigated Sunday after all. I was driving back from my inaugural trip to the local winery for a function I don't feel like detailing because it's irrelevant to the story upon realizing I wasn't far from where I thought the wall was. I did have an associate in the car with me which lead to this conversation....

Me: Ooh! Mind if I take a little detour?
Her: Not at all. Why?
Me: Well, I think there's this wall around here I'd really like to see again.
Her: A wall? What do you want to see a wall for?
Me: Well, you see, it's not just ANY wall. This wall was covered in really cool wrestling graffiti about 23 years ago! Right around the time you were born!
Her: If you don't want to tell me just say so. *unintelligible grumbling something something wall*

Sigh. Even my closest companions don't really get me.

Anyway, the wall was indeed on the side of that well-traveled road! Doubt it was more than a 5 minute ride from where we had the conversation. And the location checks out. It's underneath a bridge with another road going overtop. The sort of place mythical rather than internet trolls would hang out. There is nowhere nearby to park. Parking is prohibited on Wall Street itself. That explains why I never stopped to thoroughly investigate back in the day. The wall is pretty big. Only about 10% of it is covered in (sadly non-wrestling) graffiti these days. Couldn't stop due to lack of parking and an annoyed passenger who only grew more irritated upon realizing MY WALL WAS REAL (and you just know I rubbed it in). Still want to go back for a more thorough investigation one day.
===============
Bringing it back to wrestling....The Allied Powers should have been a much bigger deal. I'd argue they were the most star-studded, full-time* babyface super team in my 8+ years of WWF fandom up to that point.

*The Mega Powers only had 2 televised matches! 3 if you want to stretch it to a Survivor Series bout where they teamed with two or three other guys. Meanwhile the Allied Powers were out there picking up W's every single week for four months on Superstars, Challenge, Raw, and Action Zone.

More Dusty delving in to real sports. This time it's Big Dust in tiny trunks alongside Jerry Lawler & B. Brian Blair at a charity softball game. Might need a parental advisory warning for this one. Dusty played in that attire according to Meltzer.

May 24, 2022 15:57:42 GMT Baker said:

More Dusty delving in to real sports. This time it's Big Dust in tiny trunks alongside Jerry Lawler & B. Brian Blair at a charity softball game. Might need a parental advisory warning for this one. Dusty played in that attire according to Meltzer.

Seeing this photo gives me a new appreciation for Dusty even more. How was he only NWA champion 3 times?

Inexcusable Vince didn't do an annual Rock and Jock sort of PPV with wrestlers in the 80s/90s. Something about wrestlers jacked as fuck, or athletically obese, doing normal sports is the funniest visual. I know they did some sort of softball game (that gif of Macho Man going yard rocks), but I'm talking more than that. Ultimate Warrior entry pass to Hulk Hogan in the post, Mr. Perfect in the corner for the shortest three pointer or Hogan just puts his shoulder down to punish William The Refrigerator Perry in the paint.

May 24, 2022 16:09:02 GMT Ed said:

Seeing this photo gives me a new appreciation for Dusty even more. How was he only NWA champion 3 times?

You're forgetting Dusty was a contemporary of Ric Flair. Sure, Big Dust wore the tiniest trunks he could find. Big deal. You and I both know Flair would have worn nothing at all.

May 24, 2022 20:08:46 GMT Kilgore said:

Inexcusable Vince didn't do an annual Rock and Jock sort of PPV with wrestlers in the 80s/90s.

Agree. Would have loved this. Many buys.

Anybody else think it's weird that 3 of the classic Big 5 pay per views (Royal Rumble, King of the Ring, Survivor Series) were gimmick shows?