Cobra Commander

although there's probably no shortage of guys in major promotions who one could say similar things about, and usually the legacy hires sort themselves out in time

Mid-South loses a little bit of something on the Network because no incarnation of local promos is included. But I knew awhile ago that uploading local promos wasn't gonna trigger the copyright monster on YouTube compared to matches and Mid-South had several versions depending on where it was airing. There was a video of Michael Hayes doing local promos for like 20 minutes that's not on YouTube anymore and it was just an amazing display. A few days ago, I was looking at TV listings on Newspapers.com from 1983 and there was quite a bit of Wrestling (mostly under the usual generic names) because stuff like WOR was on cable systems far from the Northeast. So a place like Poplar Bluff Missouri would have this lineup of wrestling on a Saturday in November 1983 9am: All Star Wrestling (WOR) 11am: Wrestling (WMC from Memphis) 11am: Championship Wrestling (KBSI from Cape Girardeau) 4pm: Championship Wrestling (WOR) 5:15pm: World Championship Wrestling (WTBS) 10pm: World Class Championship Wrestling (KDNL from St. Louis) More wrestling than a place like St. George, Utah (SW Corner of Utah) which had "Wrestling" at 2pm local (KDL in St. George), World Championship Wrestling at 4:15 local (WTBS Atlanta), All Star Wrestling at 9pm (KSTU in Salt Lake City) and Wrestling again at 10 (KDL in St. George). I'd guess there's no shortage of AWA TV around this part of the country. But I'd guess that local promotions were getting the notice to step it up way before 1984. Although the Funks are noted for their ability to figure out that if WTBS is on TV in their area, they better cash out and that was late 1970s.

Hubbard was actually bounced out in 1992 but he unsuccessfully ran for office a few more times in the 2000s after his prison sentence wrapped up. It feels like some solid FBI humor that Hubbard was codenamed "Elmer Fudd" for his time as an FBI Informant. But yeah, stuff like starting wars over balloons and getting perilously close to murdering Richard Nixon is the sort of stuff that inspires pop songs about nuclear war.

among other events, I was able to see Havoc 97 a few weeks later at my cousin's apartment. He was from the generation of people who were into it in the 80s and then came back because he was hot again when they were in their 20s. Also the existence of video rental stores helps a lot (Blockbuster, MovieGallery) and the internet

If Austin Theory was a 50 of 100 (play along), where would Pillman Jr land compared to Theory?

depending on who/what you believe, the whole KAL-007 shootdown could have been even more momentous Gotta love the Post getting a shoutout next to TASS. I'm pretty confident that Bill Watts mentioned his Estonian-born wife (who ended up getting the tape library in the divorce) several times in regards to those Russians and how evil they are. The Volkoff thing really built towards turning Darsow into a Russian sympathizer which was also pretty clever booking compared to all the other Minnesotans that they just turned into Russians without much of a build.

well, what I understand happened is that..

It's possible that advances in tape editing techniques from the mid-80s until now also meant that Mid-South couldn't just air matches out of order like how any other company that taped TV in bulk could a few years later MLW in 2019 was actually sorta absurdly magical for finding a way to air an entire card on TV over 4 weeks without airing matches in order and having to find ways to work around the inevitable continuity errors

Pillman Jr is whatever he is as an actual performer, but can you imagine how much unsorted Brian Pillman footage the WWE has in random parts of their tape library. I doubt they're gonna add tons of early 90s WCW because they have Pillman Jr around because don't let TKO look at what doesn't get watched on the WWE Network.. but this is the promotion that can go deep into showing you how much Pillman Jr looks like his dad (hopefully without making people expect him to be as good a worker as his dad)

Looking at Google and potentially wrecking my recommended ads on here but I found a 100lb bag of wheat selling for $26.99. Not sure what the price was in 1983 but that's probably pretty good value for a wrestling foreign object. Sadly this whole thing does not appear to have led to Dusty/Nikolai in a bullrope match where a bag of grain was on the rope.

I wasn't alive in 1983 but a few late 1983 events of note: The US had a grain embargo on the Soviet Union in 1980 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That wasn't actually in effect in 1983 as Reagan rolled it back since while he doesn't like communists, all the American farmers who would make money exporting grain would prefer exporting grain. The Soviet Union shot down KAL-007 in September 1983, which killed hundreds including a siting US Congressman (who was also the chairman of the far-right John Birch Society). There might have been talk about another wheat/grain embargo in response to that. I don't know when they decided to bring Nikolai aboard but he was on Mid-South TV in September 1983 so they either brought him in because Russia was fresh in the news or it was amazing timing on their part. Anyways, the non-exploiting deaths storyline reason for Nikolai doing things was about the upcoming Olympics where there was a rumored Soviet boycott and Nikolai would wear a "1980 Moscow Olympics" shirt around. Also. The US invaded Grenada at the end of October 1983. The Day After aired on ABC in the middle of November 1983. I don't know if the commentary was in the can when it was first taped or if they taped anything to acknowledge events that happened between the taping and the airing. So I doubt Bill Watts riffed on The Day After on some random December 1983 episode of Mid-South. So since it would be unwieldy to hit Dusty with a model of KAL-007. They probably said "hey, we need something for our Russian heel to hit someone with" and they loaded up at a feed store in Louisiana or something. That bag did not hold up as soon as it hit Dusty and I don't know if they had to gimmick it or if that bag was just naturally about to fall apart at any moment Although for all the joking about the whole "hitting him with a bag of wheat" thing, knowing what we know about concussions, it's probably a legit risk to hit someone high with a heavy object. Or to drop him to a concrete floor. Bill Watts, while looking and talking like a meathead jock, had the sort of attention to detail that I'd hope for from the obsessively overdetailed dorks that get way into wrestling. Mid-South TV was some of my favorite stuff that I saw for the first time when JustinTV launched and people started streaming old wrestling on there.

I got in just before it really started to heat up on the WWF side. Pretty confident the first Monday night wrestling I saw was the RAW the night after Badd Blood in October 1997. Which was also in my area so a person or two I know was actually there. But i'm pretty sure I saw some WWF segments before that because they put Superstars or some other show on WGN in 1997 so I remember the Hart Foundation formation angle. Also one of my good friends was a big wrestling fan for much longer than I had been. Around the same time, I had gotten into following boxing too. So two sports where the biggest stuff could be viewed by watching a scrambled channel 99.

Countless Mid-South weekly TV episodes where they have the format of "our main match goes first/early and we have standby matches" makes me wonder about the format for wrestling TV shows in these days when the shows aren't airing head to head with other wrestling shows. I think the preferred pacing of the show is to start hot with something, to have the midway point involve something hot, and then have a main event and end hot. So you get kind of a business-exposing consistent format of main events starting 15-20 minutes before the end of the show. If it's actually possible to expose the business much these days. As opposed to having your stated main event go on around the 5/8ths point in a show (1:15 into a 2 hour show or 25 minutes into a 60 minute show) and then some sort of chaos followed by a comedown match and something to end the show or whatever. Advertising a card and having it all go up in smoke and get changed due to angles/etc would be an interesting sort of chaos to break out on occasion. Some people might be miffed at false advertisement. But I think some of the show formatting is still very captive to how shows were formatted in 1998 when you really needed to win that quarterhour to keep up appearances. Then again, i'm someone who when I first got into watching wrestling (late 1997), I thought it was hard to suspend disbelief over pretaped shows that were presented as live. So, who knows.

how long until some fanbases start calling into sports talk radio asking about hiring Terry Francona despite him pretty clearly being retired for good?

we're gonna tap into an underutilized Pacific Islander stereotype gimmick, folks

Let's go back to almost 40 years ago.. Mid-South Wrestling (11/5/1983) Let's start off by going back to last week when Butch Reed defended the title against the Junkyard Dog with Dusty Rhodes as the guest referee. We cut from the intro directly to the closing moments. Yeah, Watts kept pronouncing "Neidhart" as "Need-heart" multiple times. Everybody else got it right but Bill has to say it however he damn well pleases. Let's start off with Hacksaw Butch Reed and Jim Neidhart defending the Mid-South Tag Team Titles against Dusty Rhodes and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. We got *five* standby matches today folks. Title matches have precedence over everything because we're using logic for this show layout folks. Casual bragging by Cowboy about how the fans like this show more than Atlanta or New York. Impressive facial expressions by Neidhart to sell Dusty's offense. Lots of meat in this match with 3 different guys who they claimed played in the NFL. Butch Reed also wants to paint a yellow stripe down JYD's back. Dusty with a height on a crossbody block. Butch Reed pulls Dusty out of the ring leaving him wide open to be hit in the head by a 100 pound bag of wheat. Dusty lays motionless due to the sheer amount of wheat as the heels beat down Duggan, only for Magnum TA to make the save and then JYD. Lots of brawling in the ring as Dusty desperately clings to life. Now on to.. Bobby Duncum vs JYD. During the commercial break, the helpers helped sweep up the wheat so that no more people could be hurt by it. Dusty was hauled to the back. That 100 pound bag of wheat is so immense that only a man like Nikolai Volkoff can hit someone in the head with it. It also split open due to the G-Force of the impact. Meanwhile Bill Watts is ranting about how actually he can't hire Dusty Rhodes to be a full-time referee to help deal with the heels more effectively. The officials aren't here to prevent these things. So sorta like cops. JYD hitting Duncum with less than impressive looking clotheslines before winning with a big slam Next up... Nicoli Volkoff vs King Cobra. King Cobra is 100% American says Boyd. Dusty Rhodes is on his feet and is badly stunned. Nikolai called the Russian Embassy to get some more Mid-South TV time. Maybe Miro shoulda called the Bulgarian embassy to get more AEW TV time. Watts says that Russia controls 60% of the world. Also there's Russian advisors in Grenada. Also the Russian athletes are the best or else they don't get out of the country. Nikolai with an impressive looking press into a backbreaker and then he wins with a butterfly suplex. During the commercial break, an unusual incident happened. Butch Reed came out to beat up on a downed King Cobra. Butch Reed paints a yellow strip down King Cobra's back and JYD emerges to make a save. Nice of them to ask JYD to make multiple saves in the same hour. He's getting steps in today. Back to the ring.. Tom Stanton vs Leaping Lanny Poffo. Both of these guys certainly have distinctive looks. Lanny wins with a moonsault off the top (hey waitaminute) that isn't commented on for the moment. Let's go to the ring where Nicolai Volkoff is standing with Reeser Bowden to complain that he was stripped of the North American title. Dusty Rhodes emerges from his deathbed to beat up on Nikolai. Dusty gets some words in to remind us that he's an American who loves America. Our next match: Max The Missing Link vs Iceman King Parsons. We have a Mid-South name for the Butt-Butt, which is not the Butt-Butt but the Rumper-Stumper? Missing Link takes an atomic drop like he's unfamiliar with the concept. Iceman hits Link with the Butt-Butt outta nowhere to end a match that was certainly a way to spend time. There was one standby match that we didn't get to see. So that's unfortunate.

also Raw wasn't live every week until August 1999 so for at least half of the Raws, there wasn't a Nitro doing on during a Tuesday night Raw taping

SULLIVAN MY SON, THE RARE WHITE BENGAL TIGAH IS STILL LOOKING TO SCORE A TOUCHDOWN

time to rebook Survivor Series 1994 to have 4 on 4 matches instead of 5 on 5 opening elimination match: Kid, Razor, Bulldog, Aldo vs Diesel, Michaels, Neidhart, Owen second elimination match: Lawler, Jarrett, Prichard, Del Ray vs Doink, Fatu, Sione, Adam Bomb third elimination match: Bigelow, Bundy, Tatanka, IRS vs Bart Gunn, Billy Gunn, Lex Luger, Mabel Lots of Southerness in a 4 man team of Jerry Lawler, Jeff Jarrett, Tom Prichard, and Jimmy Del Ray

The Roadie and the Roadie’s Roadies

For some reason I just thought of Brad Armstrong being Jeff Jarrett’s Roadie in 1995 instead of Brian. That probably would have pissed off internet people but it might have opened the door to a Bret Hart/Brad Armstrong match which would have been a good 5 minutes of WWF TV In fact there weren’t any Bret Hart matchups against any members of the Armstrong family

So the NFL put one of their best games of 2023 on the earliest possible time slot in Germany (Chiefs/Dolphins in Germany)

gonna have to figure out something to do with my Monday afternoon after completing the 3hr/29min Between the Sheets sometime before going to sleep tonight edit: oh yes, day baseball (D-Backs/Yankees) as a makeup game for the storm avoidance postponement on Saturday

one part of Broncos/Dolphins was that both teams had a former Broncos head coach as their defensive coordinator (Fangio for the Dolphins and Vance Joseph for the Broncos). Only 3 of the 7 post-Shanahan Broncos coaches were working that game.

the Raiders were hilariously unprepared to make the most of any possibility that they could win that game