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Schultz was still popping up on U.S. indies before he focused on bounty hunting. First wrestling show I saw live was in December 1986 in Sussex County,. New Jersey -- group called "Eastern Wrestling Alliance." One of the top matches was Schultz against Johnny Rodz. 15-minute match, of which at least 10 minutes was devoted to Schultz stalling, walking around the ring, yelling at people, etc. Before the match, Schultz cut promos on John Stossel and Hulk Hogan, prompting a Hogan lookalike (!) to come out and exchange words with him. I lost the program from that show, but from what I remember ... -- Schultz was second from the top. Main event was Ivan Putski vs. The Hangman. -- Rocco Rock, under a mask as "Cheetah Kid," won his match with a moonsault. First time I ever saw a moonsault in a match. -- There was another wrestler named Jim Mannion, whose gimmick was that he "recently won the lottery," and wanted to "share his money with the fans." He did no such thing -- and he was the BABYFACE. -- I was 11 at the time, and my dad took me to the show as an early Christmas gift. On the drive home, he mentioned how much he enjoyed seeing Putski and Cheetah Kid, but hated the fact there were no tag team bouts and that the program consisted primarily of photos of wrestlers who weren't there (Memory is hazy, but I recall Sgt. Slaughter, Abby, The Wild Samoans, Misty Blue Simms and Wendi Richter featured in the program. None of them were there, although none were promoted ahead of time to begin with.)

I've never seen the full episode of 20/20 that featured the Schultz slap but, given the thirst for ratings and the like, I could definitely see ABC opting to air this first on the episode in question. Stossel was arguably the most well-known reporter on the show at the time given his gimmick as the "consumer advocate." CBS and NBC would not have done anything since, well, both would have WWF programming on its airwaves within the year of the 20/20 episode. I don't have a doubt WWF tried negotiating with CBS, NBC and ABC (as well as MTV and other cable channels) around this time in their push for national exposure. ABC was likely the first major network to be knocked out of the race, so they responded with what was essentially a hit piece for morons.

Never knew this happened in 89. Great line from JR: "Steiner needs to focus on Muta and ignore Gary Hart, just like the women have." Very strange weapon Rick found under the ring. It's the equivalent of the IRS agent throwing his case at Krusty's head.

Famed TV voiceover artist Jerry Bishop has died at 84. Most people may remember him as the unseen voice of "Judge Judy" ...

Leon Spinks in FMW. Hand-held vid.

This was from Justin Roberts a few years back (around 2014), explaining who Scott Dunlap was and how he got the chance to work as an announcer for WCW. To be honest, I presumed he was the son of a Turner Broadcasting employee or something similar. Meet Scott. He has spastic cerebral palsy in all four limbs. He LOVES professional wrestling. He has since he was a child. He told me that “people with disabilities look at their heroes get beat down and love to see them come back up” and how motivating that is. He loves to see the wrestlers fight through their personal issues as well. He didn’t have a social life in high school, but found happiness in professional wrestling. These days, he turns to professional wrestling for an escape. Scott had wanted to be a wrestling announcer. Through a counselor in high school and then the Starlight Foundation, Scott received the opportunity from Eric Bischoff and the now defunct World Championship Wrestling to be an announcer on two shows interviewing Davey Boy Smith and Ric Flair. Scott was thrilled when that happened and just as thrilled recently when they reunited a couple of weeks ago in Dallas.

I do recall him popping up on ESPN as "Axis the Demolisher" and worked the North American title tournament. Cagematch lists at least four GWF matches as Axis in 1991, including a combined show with "Georgia All-Star Wrestling" in Marietta in 1991 where he faced Terry Gordy. I also seem to recall when Bad News Brown popped up in Global, the announcers were very, shall we say, delicate in how to refer to him for legal reasons. He was referred to an on-air as simply "Bad News" but you can clearly hear the ring announcer say "Bad News Brown" more than once.

45 minutes of clips from a Dory Funk Jr.-promoted show from Belleview, FL, back on February 29th. I thought about taking my eight-year-old to this. We're about 20 miles away from the location, she's asked about wrestling before, and it would have been cool to meet the Steiners (My daughter used to attend school in the district where Rick's a school board member, so we could bring that up to them, as well as Scott's restaurant). But then I saw the main event of the show ... A six-man tag featuring the Steiners (who were 58 and 57 at the time of the show) teaming up with Dory Funk Jr., who is 79. Someone really needs to sit with Funk and beg him to stop getting in the ring. I feared the worst every time he moved.

Meltzer mentioned in his daily update last night about a "weird name scheduled for multiple segments on Raw." That didn't happen, albeit someone physically, but I do have to wonder if there are people in the back pushing for Sarah Logan's return. Of that original list of those let go from Raw and Smackdown, she was the probably the only one who didn't fit the definition of "demanding to leave" or "how is s/he still on the roster after all these years."

PWTW was a godsend for wrestling fans stuck with watching just WWF shows in the 80s. Always a treat to see clips from, say, Portland, Puerto Rico and Memphis on a weekly basis. Aging myself here, but I remember Pedicino dropping by some of the more ancient online wrestling forums in the late 80s/early 90s (such as CompuServe), promoting Global Wrestling Federation, encouraging people to watch and answering questions about the GWF TV shows (he congratulated a friend of mine who put 2+2 together and realized that the GWF's Patriot was the same guy as the AWA's Trooper).

Sabu squash from WCW 1995 Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro Ohtani in WCW 1996 Sting/Luger vs. Regal/Eaton

That's right -- Tom & Jerry was always packaged as a "hodgepodge" of animators/production houses in syndication. The Deitch ones from the 60s always looked like the store-brand version of the classics.

Maria Kanellis released as well.

Are the producers full-time employees or "independent contractors"?

I seem to recall the WWF contemplated doing an Andre/Jake Roberts vs. Natural Disasters match for SummerSlam 91, but Andre was too broken down to work a full match, so the WWF opted to turn Roberts heel and feud with Savage and slotted the Bushwhackers in the tag match (believe Roberts was also pushing to going back to being a heel again). Looking at Cagematch, I know Andre was slotted for Royal Rumble 91 but didn't work it due to injuries, but he did complete in two matches for the WWF in 1991. One a six-man in Northern Ireland where he and the Rockers beat Fuji and the Orient Express (Diamond/Tanaka), the second a battle royal at Nassau Coliseum won by Kerry Von Erich. I'm curious how they booked Andre for that battle royal. Can't imagine him being able to take an over the top rope bump at this point (even if the other wrestlers are trying to be as gentle as possible == such as the 1987 SNME battle royal), so did he even get in the ring? I recall we had a conversation about Andre in the 91 Rumble and how that would have been booked -- I think the general consensus was either he would have won as a farewell match of some kind, or he would have been taken out before entering the ring. I'm presuming the latter happened for the Nassau Coliseum battle royal.

I don't recall the exact reasoning, but I believe Ed Ferrara said that, after the initial SmackDown special for UPN in April 1999, McMahon asked he and Russo to write SD every week once it became a full-time show. Per Ferrara, the two go pushed out because they asked for twice the money as they were writing twice the shows.

I believe Bob Holly mentioned in his book that Tiger Ali Singh had boasted that he would do well in this kind of format, was put in the tournament, then promptly dropped out, opening the door for either Holly (according to Bob himself) or Dan Severn (given the fact he was barred from participating to start, only to get the green light later) to take that spot.

https://deadline.com/2020/04/doogie-howser-series-reboot-doogie-kealoha-md-female-lead-disney-plus-kourtney-kang-1202903651/ Disney+ is doing a "Doogie Howser" reboot.

Just saw that 70s and 80s character actor Timothy Brown recently passed away at age 84. Dementia-related illness. Brown played Tommy Brown in Robert Altman's "Nashville" and performed the above song. He also played Cpl. Judson in Altman's "MASH" and was in the original cast of the TV version as Spearchucker Jones, only to lose his job when producers (allegedly) realized there were no African-American surgeons serving in Korea. CBS made it up to him (somewhat) by placing him in the broadcast booth for NFL games in 1973. (He was an NFL running back from 1959-1968, and is a member of the Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Fame and 75th Anniversary Team).

I don't recall Refrigerator Perry hitting a top-rope move in the battle royal. He entered the ring, I believe, next-to-last (before Andre) by jumping off the top rope, landing on his feet. I don't think he climbed the ropes during the match (only wrestler I recall trying a top-rope move was Bret Hart, when Andre caught him on the turnbuckle and launched him into Neidhart).

There was definitely a "Black Tigers" in Osaka Pro who feuded with Tigers Mask. I believe BT was Jeremy Lopez, an American who popped up in WCW near the end of its run and ROH at the start of its existence. He was a Malenko trainee who was somewhat decent albeit too small at the time to get out of the U.S. indies. Looking at Cagematch, he did some AJPW tours after his Osaka run ended but walked away from wrestling in the mid-2000s after just five years in the ring. (Cagematch also mentions he did get a two-match audition in front of a live crowd by the WWE in 2003. One was against a pre-death match worker Masada. He was also a TV jobber for a tag match against Rosey/Hurricane.)

CMLL has a luchadora named "La Metalica" who has some feline imagery on her mask and ringwear -- she used to be "Felina Metalica" before joining CMLL.

https://variety.com/2020/music/news/adam-schlesinger-coronavirus-dead-dies-1203552130/