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Post by driver1980 on Apr 24, 2024 12:56:58 GMT -5
Sometimes likenesss are bad. I mean, the second Hasbro Ted DiBiase figure looks more like Noel Edmonds:  That's probably how he hurt his neck...trying to counter-balance that massive right arm of his. Does he really come with Million Dollar potatoes? I’m afraid not, but there’s plenty else:  |
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 24, 2024 16:34:03 GMT -5
I believe this is a great photo:
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 24, 2024 19:22:03 GMT -5
I believe this is a great photo: Ack! I've been blinded by the reflection off the belt...... ....and the ugliness!  |
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 24, 2024 23:15:19 GMT -5
Just finished watching the Dark Side episode with Sherri Martel. I always enjoyed Sherri, in the ring and Jim Cornette makes a great point about the women who worked for the AWA. They didn't have many; but they were all highly accomplished and Sherri was that. Heartbreaking episode, though, since he drive for success came at the expense of her family. She was married and had a baby, but walked out to go become a wrestler. She saw her son occasionally, but not for long periods and he was raised by his father and step-mother. On the up side, she was friends with the step-mother and their relationship was good, so he got the love and attention that he needed from her, while his mother was away. He does speak of being with her, though, and rarely seeing her sober, in times on the road. She medicated for pain (especially with her physical style and the bumps she took, even as a manager) and other things, including alcohol.
The hard part is seeing the health of her son. Her best friend says she doesn't know for sure, but believes he has cancer and he lost part of his tongue to cancer. He has to speak slowly and deliberately and you just feel for the guy, with some of his memories of his mother and just what he is going through, physically. However, he shows great love and forgiveness for her, when he has every right to be bitter.
Jim Cornette speaks about managing her, at the start and a bit about different parts of her career (including appearances for Smokey Mountain) and Madusa Miccelli and Rockin' Robin both talk about working with her and Madusa speaks about what it took to succeed, as a woman, in the business. Her ex-husband is featured, as is her son Jared and his step mom, and her best friend. The surprising aspect is Jake Roberts, who dated her when he was refereeing and she was a fan, and they stayed close over the years (to the point that I heard t caused issues with his wife, Cheryl, when Sherri came to the WWF). He adds some nice perspectives to her, as a person and performer.
Bischoff appears and is his usual smarmy, political self, saying the things he thinks the audience wants to hear. He always comes across to me like you can believe a third of what he says, a third are outright lies, and the other third depends on who is in the audience.
They also have clips from a shoot interview she did for (I believe) RF Video, which, thankfully, lacks the inane questions and complete lack of follow up. Luckily, on that occasion, she id on form and speaks well about her career and is honest (as much as a wrestler will be) about things. They get some good clips from it and hers is the last voice you get, in the program.
That was the thing about the women who didn't work through Moolah; they would put on better matches and do more athletic stuff and not the same old Moolah spots. Sherri trained with her (after initial training with an outlaw wrestler); but, got kicked out for partying too much, but it helped her develop beyond that. The AWA was a good showcase for women doing more athletic matches, in that period, with Martel, Madusa, Candi Divine, Lisa Moretti/Tina Ferrari/Ivory. It had that pedigree, with women like Penny Banner , Kay Noble, Vivian Vachon and Betty Niccoli. Really, women's wrestling had a lot of great performers, into the 70s, before Moolah and her troupe became a near-monopoly. Watching match clips in the documentary Lipstick and Dynamite, you get a better appreciation for that generation of women, compared the the later 70s and 80s, under Moolah's control, in the US. Japan was a different story, as was Mexico, and Canada, to a certain extent.
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 25, 2024 4:24:48 GMT -5
I looked up some more Dave Scherer tweets. The guy has an odd idea about tweeting. Again, does he really want to be known for slurs and being like Mark Madden?
He’s insulting fans if they have an opinion. Tweeting slurs about Meltzer. Then he made a ‘joke’ about lube and tissues in relation to someone who was a supporter of Tony Khan. Whether the guy he was referring to is a troll or not, I would t expect a middle-aged wrestling journalist to be like that. His timeline is negative and immature.
No wonder us fans get a bad rap when those in the public eye of wrestling journalism act like that.
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 25, 2024 4:29:23 GMT -5
Just finished watching the Dark Side episode with Sherri Martel. I always enjoyed Sherri, in the ring and Jim Cornette makes a great point about the women who worked for the AWA. They didn't have many; but they were all highly accomplished and Sherri was that. Heartbreaking episode, though, since he drive for success came at the expense of her family. She was married and had a baby, but walked out to go become a wrestler. She saw her son occasionally, but not for long periods and he was raised by his father and step-mother. On the up side, she was friends with the step-mother and their relationship was good, so he got the love and attention that he needed from her, while his mother was away. He does speak of being with her, though, and rarely seeing her sober, in times on the road. She medicated for pain (especially with her physical style and the bumps she took, even as a manager) and other things, including alcohol. The hard part is seeing the health of her son. Her best friend says she doesn't know for sure, but believes he has cancer and he lost part of his tongue to cancer. He has to speak slowly and deliberately and you just feel for the guy, with some of his memories of his mother and just what he is going through, physically. However, he shows great love and forgiveness for her, when he has every right to be bitter. Jim Cornette speaks about managing her, at the start and a bit about different parts of her career (including appearances for Smokey Mountain) and Madusa Miccelli and Rockin' Robin both talk about working with her and Madusa speaks about what it took to succeed, as a woman, in the business. Her ex-husband is featured, as is her son Jared and his step mom, and her best friend. The surprising aspect is Jake Roberts, who dated her when he was refereeing and she was a fan, and they stayed close over the years (to the point that I heard t caused issues with his wife, Cheryl, when Sherri came to the WWF). He adds some nice perspectives to her, as a person and performer. Bischoff appears and is his usual smarmy, political self, saying the things he thinks the audience wants to hear. He always comes across to me like you can believe a third of what he says, a third are outright lies, and the other third depends on who is in the audience. They also have clips from a shoot interview she did for (I believe) RF Video, which, thankfully, lacks the inane questions and complete lack of follow up. Luckily, on that occasion, she id on form and speaks well about her career and is honest (as much as a wrestler will be) about things. They get some good clips from it and hers is the last voice you get, in the program. That was the thing about the women who didn't work through Moolah; they would put on better matches and do more athletic stuff and not the same old Moolah spots. Sherri trained with her (after initial training with an outlaw wrestler); but, got kicked out for partying too much, but it helped her develop beyond that. The AWA was a good showcase for women doing more athletic matches, in that period, with Martel, Madusa, Candi Divine, Lisa Moretti/Tina Ferrari/Ivory. It had that pedigree, with women like Penny Banner , Kay Noble, Vivian Vachon and Betty Niccoli. Really, women's wrestling had a lot of great performers, into the 70s, before Moolah and her troupe became a near-monopoly. Watching match clips in the documentary Lipstick and Dynamite, you get a better appreciation for that generation of women, compared the the later 70s and 80s, under Moolah's control, in the US. Japan was a different story, as was Mexico, and Canada, to a certain extent. Thanks for posting this. I’ll watch this eventually. RF Video were often bad at follow ups. Sean Oliver is the MVP of shoot interviewers, if you ask me. Another one I felt just asked a list of questions, and didn’t follow up, was Mike Johnson of PWInsider. Are you please able to provide any further details on what Bischoff said? |
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 25, 2024 6:21:51 GMT -5
On this day 35 years ago today, the 21st episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event aired on NBC. Among other matches, Hulk Hogan defended the WWF World Heavyweight Championship against the Big Boss Man in a steel cage match.
The superplex in that match had to be seen to be believed.
Prior to the bout, Zeus had attacked Hogan.
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2024 6:39:23 GMT -5
I looked up some more Dave Scherer tweets. The guy has an odd idea about tweeting. Again, does he really want to be known for slurs and being like Mark Madden? He’s insulting fans if they have an opinion. Tweeting slurs about Meltzer. Then he made a ‘joke’ about lube and tissues in relation to someone who was a supporter of Tony Khan. Whether the guy he was referring to is a troll or not, I would t expect a middle-aged wrestling journalist to be like that. His timeline is negative and immature. No wonder us fans get a bad rap when those in the public eye of wrestling journalism act like that. I had forgotten about Scherer until you mentioned him. It's amazing that the dude is still making a living. |
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 25, 2024 6:40:13 GMT -5
I looked up some more Dave Scherer tweets. The guy has an odd idea about tweeting. Again, does he really want to be known for slurs and being like Mark Madden? He’s insulting fans if they have an opinion. Tweeting slurs about Meltzer. Then he made a ‘joke’ about lube and tissues in relation to someone who was a supporter of Tony Khan. Whether the guy he was referring to is a troll or not, I would t expect a middle-aged wrestling journalist to be like that. His timeline is negative and immature. No wonder us fans get a bad rap when those in the public eye of wrestling journalism act like that. I had forgotten about Scherer until you mentioned him. It's amazing that the dude is still making a living. Tell me more, please. I didn’t think it’d be possible to have a more negative feed than Mark Madden. |
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 25, 2024 8:05:46 GMT -5
On this day 25 years ago, Backlash aired on PPV, taking place at the Providence Civic Center in Rhode Island:  Here’s what was on the card: The Brood vs. The Ministry of Darkness Hardcore Holly vs. Al Snow Intercontinental Champion The Godfather vs. Goldust The New Age Outlaws vs. Owen Hart & Jeff Jarrett Mankind vs. Big Show in a Boiler Room Brawl X-Pac vs. Triple H The Undertaker vs. Ken Shamrock WWF World Heavyweight Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Rock (No Holds Barred Match with Shane McMahon as special guest referee) I don’t really think there’s anything that memorable about this card. In my opinion, 1999-2001 was usually strong main events with weak undercards (mostly). Wasn’t this the last PPV to use the In Your House branding (until it was used again by NXT)? |
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Post by driver1980 on Apr 25, 2024 10:55:21 GMT -5
Looks like the “List of Hulk Hogan Lies” needs updating:
So, we’re expected to believe Hogan was watching rival territories and scouting talent?
He truly has no shame. He must think us fans are stupid, and that the worldwide web does not exist.
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Post by Ricky Jackson on Apr 25, 2024 14:13:59 GMT -5
"You know something, brother, because of my ability to live 400 days in a year, I accidentally traveled back in time coming home from Japan and discovered Abe Lincoln. I said, dude, you need to wrestle and then become president and then free the slaves. So, you know, I actually invented pro wrestling and gave that Lincoln dude some great ideas, so I can't be racist, brother"
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2024 15:33:55 GMT -5
I had forgotten about Scherer until you mentioned him. It's amazing that the dude is still making a living. Tell me more, please. I didn’t think it’d be possible to have a more negative feed than Mark Madden. Scherer's been around since the dawn of time. He was a fan first, then started his own newsletter. With Bob Ryder, he created 1Wrestling, which was one of the first big wrestling news sites. This was before Meltzer came online. If you didn't have a subscription to the Observer at the time, all of the news from the Observer was filtered through sites like 1Wrestling. Then Dave came online and suddenly you don't need to go to news sites anymore. Whether that plays any part in Scherer's animosity towards Dave, I don't know. Scherer was on the ECW payroll for a while and a shill for them on the internet. Then he started his own site with Mike Johnson. I don't really follow the news and gossip these days, but Twitter makes everything worse so I'm not surprised if Scherer's turned into a grumpy asshole. Meltzer spends far too much time arguing with trolls on Twitter but appears to enjoy it. Scherer's been online since the late 80s, which has probably had a negative effect as well. |
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Post by commond on Apr 25, 2024 15:37:37 GMT -5
On this day 25 years ago, Backlash aired on PPV, taking place at the Providence Civic Center in Rhode Island: Here’s what was on the card: The Brood vs. The Ministry of Darkness Hardcore Holly vs. Al Snow Intercontinental Champion The Godfather vs. Goldust The New Age Outlaws vs. Owen Hart & Jeff Jarrett Mankind vs. Big Show in a Boiler Room Brawl X-Pac vs. Triple H The Undertaker vs. Ken Shamrock WWF World Heavyweight Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Rock (No Holds Barred Match with Shane McMahon as special guest referee) I don’t really think there’s anything that memorable about this card. In my opinion, 1999-2001 was usually strong main events with weak undercards (mostly). Wasn’t this the last PPV to use the In Your House branding (until it was used again by NXT)? I was so desperate for good matches at this stage that this PPV was a welcome relief in that it actually featured some decent bouts. That Undertaker/Shamrock match was strangely intriguing as Undertaker was getting heavily into MMA in real life and tried to do MMA holds against Shamrock. |
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Post by dbutler69 on Apr 25, 2024 16:02:21 GMT -5
I finished watching WCW Slamboree 1994.
Again, Bobby Heenan and Tony Schiovane are the announcers with Ventura doing interviews and Okerlund doing features from the interview platform. This was held in Philadelphia.
Rick Rude was supposed to defend his international title against Vader here, but suffered a career ending injury in Japan, so Commissioner Bockwinkle rules the recent Rude-Sting bout a no-contest and awards the international title to Sting, but Sting comes out and says he refuses to win a title in the board room, but he will wrestle Vader for the title. Good man! Still, it might have helped their buy rate if they had announced this match beforehand instead of during the event.
Sensational Sherri (now Sensual Sherri due to WWF rights issues) is in the audience! 2 Cold Scorpio was fired for failing a drug test, unfortunately. Ric Flair is going to wrestle a large mystery masked opponent (who attacked him on an episode of WCW Saturday Night and is in Col. Parker’s stable) for the WCW title.
First match is a U.S. Title Match: Stunning Steve Austin (c) (w/ Col. Parker) vs. Johnny B. Badd.
This was a pretty good match, mostly mat based, with a botched ending. I don’t know what they were going for, or how to describe it, but basically they were both laying on the mat and Austin rolled on top of Bad for the pin and retains his belt.
Next match is a Legends match, Tully Blanchard v. Terry Funk. Gordon Solie joins Heenan on commentary for this one. This is ECW territory, so Funk got an especially nice pop from the crowd. This was a wild brawl. I’d have thought it was a no DQ (with all the weapons that Funk used) and no countout match, but I guess the ref was just being very permissive. At one point, Funk puts a chair in the ring and tries to piledrive (I guess) Blanchard off the middle rope onto the chair but either it was botched or Blanchard just blocked it. Anyway, this thing ended about the only way it could have, with a double DQ. Good match. Also, I read that Blanchard was promised a larger payoff than he got, and thus refused to do the job as a result. The fans were chanting “bullsh*t” after this match.
Next match is Larry Zbyszko vs. Lord Steven Regal (w/ Sir William). Regal is the TV champ but this is a nontitle match. Zbyszko has come out of retirement to feud with Regal, who has been saying bad things about the good ol’ US of A. This match was very slow and had a lot of stalling. Some good technical stuff here, but could have been better, in my opinion. Zbyszko pulls off the upset when he counters Regal’s butterfly suplex attempt with a backdrop, and stays on top of him for the pin.
A wonderfully insane Terry Funk interview follows.
Next match is a Bull-Rope Match: Dustin Rhodes vs. Bunkhouse Buck (w/ Col. Parker). A rematch from their Bunkhouse match at the last PPV, Spring Stampede. The rules are that the two guys are tied together with an 8 ft. bull rope which has a large cowbell attached, which either wrestler can use as a weapon. Effectively a no DQ match. The crowd chants “we want blood” repeatedly and loudly. Philly fans are so nice! They didn’t get their blood until after the match was over though, when Terry Funk came out and attacked the victorious Rhodes with his branding iron, I guess because he doesn’t like Dustin’s daddy.
It backfires when Col. Parker tries to interfere and Dustin is able to clobber Buck with the cowbell over the head for the win. This wasn’t as good as their Spring Stampede match, but it was still a decent brawl.
Next is the WCW Title Match: Ric Flair (c) vs. Barry Windham (w/ Col. Parker). Odd to have the title match here in the middle of the program, but whatever. Col Parker’s mystery man is finally revealed as Barry Windham, who lost his NWA title (which later became the WCW International title) quite some time ago. Parker had been promising a 6’ 7” 300 lb former world champ to get people to think it would be Hulk Hogan, but we get a curveball here. The fans didn’t seem too thrilled about this. Windham hadn’t been seen in WCW in quite some time and looked out of shape. Tony said that he’s been away for 6 months due to a knee injury
Anyway, Flair wins with a cross body off the tope rope. This was a boring match, for the most part.
Next is Broad Street Bully Match for the Tag Team Titles: Cactus Jack & Kevin Sullivan vs. The Nasty Boys (c)
Former Philadelphia Flyer Dave Schultz was the guest referee. I guess this was supposed to be Kevin Sullivan and his kayfabe brother Dave but Dave (or Evad, in an embarrassing WCW dyslexia storyline) was injured by the Nasties, so Cactus Jack is taking his place.
A Broad Street Bully match means pinfalls count anywhere, no DQ’s, and all four guys are legal at al times. Basically, the exact same rules as with their Chicago Street Fight match at the last PPV. However, for some reason, they only have one referee for this one, trying to watch two pairs of guys fighting oftentimes 50 or more feet from each other. Schultz didn’t seem too interested in getting involved, not that I blame him as he might have gotten hit by a stray chair!
This was another brutal match. It was similar to, but not as good as, the Nasty Boys-Jack/Payne match from Spring Stampede. Again, mostly weapons such as table and chairs being used, most of the match taking place outside the ring, and the two pairs of guys fighting separately. In the end, Jack/Sullivan win when Sags takes Dave Schultz’s hockey stick (which he’d brought to the ring with him) and is about to club Jack with it, but Schultz take it away from him and sets it down. He then punches Sags several times and then pulls his shirt over him, hockey style. Then Jack picks up the hockey stick (and for some reason Schultz doesn’t take the stick away from Jack like he did from Sags) and hits him with it, then covers him for the pin. So Dave Schultz is an even worse referee than The Boss. Jesse (who had stepped in for Heenan on commentary for this one) is rightfully indignant about that ridiculous ending. It did get a big pop in Philly, though, of course. Still, in spite of that, this was a very good and, as I said, brutal match. Also, after that, Jack and Kevin Sullivan continue (with some help from the referee Save Schultz) to attack the Nasties, then Dave Sullivan comes out in crutches and hits Knobs with a crutch, while Maxx Payne comes out (I guess he was not in this match because he was in the doghouse for injuring Sags’ shoulder – and Sags needing shoulder surgery is why they had to drop the titles) and smashes the guitar over Sags’ head, smashing it to pieces. And all is right with the world.
And our final match is the International World Title Match: Sting vs. Big Van Vader (w/ Harley Race)
I guess this was supposed to be Vader-Rude but Rude suffered that career ending injury in Japan vs. Sting so Sting gets this spot instead.
The fans started a “Sting must die!” chant during this match. Philly fans are brutal! It got me to wondering who the worst sports fans in America are.
Anyway, this was an excellent match. I don’t think it was quite as good as some of the Sting-Vader matches from 1992-93, but it was still a very good match. It ends with a Sting victory when Vader misses a moonsault, Harley Race accidentally headbutts his own man (then gets tossed by the ref) and Sting hits a flying splash for the pin. Sting is the new International champ!
All in all, a very good PPV. No bad matches!
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