LP Steve

Vic Faulkner and Bert Royal, who teamed as "The Royals." Real brothers, I think.

Oops. Curt beat me to it. What I get for not reading to the end of the thread.

And kids feeling up the ring girls.

"Exclusive video," as if TMZ won a frenzied bidding war to bring us this story.

Anyone else think it odd that Bischoff repeatedly referred to his wife of 30-plus years as "my current wife"?

Jesus. So The Shield shouldn't even get beaten down ever? They should.. Just not by the 40 year olds they kicked the shit out of last night that need to just go the fuck away already. Who seriously wants Evolution hanging around outside of people loving the latest nostaliga trip. Can we go back further and have Shield vs. nWo next? I'm sure there's a couple old members who can still go without breaking a hip or tearing a quad. This. By now, Triple H in WWE is equivalent to the Noble Sheik in Detroit circa 1980. You can hear the crowd deflate when his depressing ass hits the ring. They know he's going over and it just makes them sad. Nobody cares about him or Battista or Orton. You just want them to go away and let the young guys go at it.

My memory is hazy because I was only six, but I'm pretty sure most of the crowd was with Matsuda and Keomuka. The abiding hatred of Gentleman Saul overcame most everything else.

It's Florida, Pete. Dusty and Blackjack didn't invent it.

Pretty soft lariat on Mr. Baba at about the 2:30 mark...

... which brings Forrest Gump to mind...

Here's the back of that program...

Actually, the promoter had run a "lucky number" lottery that the local constabulary shut down. The note was to make sure the more thick-headed fans got the message.

Sorry this came out so big. I need a sizing tutorial, obviously. Anyway, this was probably the biggest show in Jax history. They put almost 11,100 people in a stadium that (legally) held 10,300 for wrestling. Held the Coliseum record for any event until they squeezed even more in for a Led Zeppelin concert some years later.

Magnum TK! The fact that he had a favorite hold is pretty amusing. The Figure Four is also my favorite hold and, like Trent Knight, I have never actually applied it to anyone.

*That's* Hansen? Wow ... Any guesses as to what year that was? He looks like he's barely out of high school. Looks like Amarillo, so it would have to be around 1973.

When I was about 14, I was sitting ringside in Jacksonville with a couple of friends. One of the prelim matches featured Professor Tanaka. Must have been one of his first appearances in Jax, because he was matched with a job guy and did a prolonged squash, just tortured the poor bastard. The beating dragged on to the point where some of the older ringside smartasses started razzing the job guy, really ripping him for what an incompetent piece of crap he was. When the job guy was beaten into an inert mass and the razzing hit its peak, one of my friends jumps up and starts yelling, "Come on, Dad! You can do it! You can beat this guy! Please, Dad, get up!" He was practically in tears. The entire ringside got very quiet... until our group lost it and started laughing.

Why is Andrew Sullivan on a WWE program?

In my mind, there were two main eras: Eddie Graham as lead babyface from '62 to about '68, then Jack Brisco as lead babyface from '69 until he won the title. Of course, there were tons of other top babies: Les Welch, Jose Lothario, Nick Kozak, Red Bastein, Don Curtis, Joe Scarpa. My personal favorite was young Wahoo, when the Dolphins picked him up and he started wrestling in Florida, about 1966. Imagine the Wahoo you've seen on '80s video, but in football condition, mobile as hell but still stiff as shit. Great feuds with Boris Malenko and Johnny Valentine, but the best may have been a short, incredibly violent feud with a Japanese guy named Taki Yamaguchi. "Florida in the '60s and '70s" is way too big a topic to cover in one post. I may start a thread where I upload some old Jacksonville programs I have and engage in fuzzy reminiscences, if there's any interest. Taki Yamaguchi = Great Kusatsu. And by all means, start that thread. I posted some old Jax posters awhile back... That's him, in a match against the Destroyer on YouTube! More filled out than he was in Florida in 1967, but definitely the same guy. I wondered what happened to him, because he was obviously a well-trained worker but seemed to vanish after the Wahoo feud. They brought him in as a young, out of control protege of Hiro Matsuda. Yamaguchi would throw deadly, illegal "karate chops" to the throat right in front of the referee without regard to the automatic disqualification that ensued. (The wily Matsuda would sneak in his karate chops, then smilingly bow to the ref while the opponent spasmed on the mat-- no racial stereotyping in rasslin!) The running theme in the feud was Wahoo's efforts to thwart the karate chops. He eventually came up with the "karate collar," a thick leather dog collar with metal studs, that magically protected his throat and hurt Yamaguchi's fingers. Of course, if the collar came off, end of magic.

I'm new here. Is Old Florida some particular fetish of Matt's? Because I've got bottles of genuine Fountain of Youth water, autographed by Ponce de Leon himself, that I could let go for the right price...

In my mind, there were two main eras: Eddie Graham as lead babyface from '62 to about '68, then Jack Brisco as lead babyface from '69 until he won the title. Of course, there were tons of other top babies: Les Welch, Jose Lothario, Nick Kozak, Red Bastein, Don Curtis, Joe Scarpa. My personal favorite was young Wahoo, when the Dolphins picked him up and he started wrestling in Florida, about 1966. Imagine the Wahoo you've seen on '80s video, but in football condition, mobile as hell but still stiff as shit. Great feuds with Boris Malenko and Johnny Valentine, but the best may have been a short, incredibly violent feud with a Japanese guy named Taki Yamaguchi. "Florida in the '60s and '70s" is way too big a topic to cover in one post. I may start a thread where I upload some old Jacksonville programs I have and engage in fuzzy reminiscences, if there's any interest.

Blackwell and Cyclone Negro is an amazing combination. It's really too bad there isn't more Negro footage out there, because he ruled hard, as a face or a heel. And was there ever a lamer top babyface than Johnny Weaver? Weaver was a perfectly fine whitebread babyface for the time. Personal preference, I guess, probably from growing up in Florida in the 60s and 70s. Guys like Weaver, Dominic Denucci, and Cowboy Bob Ellis worked way too light for my taste. I could never buy them as convincing in-ring babyfaces, whatever their merits in the other phases of the business.

Blackwell and Cyclone Negro is an amazing combination. It's really too bad there isn't more Negro footage out there, because he ruled hard, as a face or a heel. And was there ever a lamer top babyface than Johnny Weaver?

I was pushing 30 in the mid-80s, and Markie was A-OK with me.

I like the slight pause where Harley struggles to remember the name of the title he so fervently wants.