Gorman

I appreciate Bryan letting me borrow his watch to time the Joe-Punk match at World Title Classic.

I still want Kairi Sane to come out on the pirate boat.

Yes. FTR is about doing tag team wrestling by the book.

Yes, I hope he avoids legal trouble for many years to come.

If anyone questioned him, he could say "Who are you to doubt The Dandy Highwayman?"

Coolest names for wrestling holds ... to announce! When I started in the 90s --- DDT! Golden age of the Indies/ROH --- Shining Wizard! Current "home run" call ---- RRRRAINNNNNMAKAAAAAAHHHH!!!

In Fight Underground, we have a Fight Council of about a dozen Pittsburgh wrestling vets that run the show.

Thoughts on Starrcade 86 Nelson Royal had a good night, winning a tag team match with Tim Horner and donning his cowboy hat to explain the Bunkhouse Stampede to everyone around the campfire. Brad Armstrong vs. Jimmy Garvin was the quintessential 80s NWA mid-card match. Fittingly, it ended in a draw. Baron von Raschke was a babyface, and the fans went crazy for him as he and Hector Guerrero beat Barbarian and Shaska Whatley. Two years later, Baron would be absolutely useless managing the Powers of Pain in the WWF. Rick Rude dragged Wahoo McDaniel around the ring with one arm! However, he couldn't beat the master of the Indian strap match. Bill Dundee tried to cheat after a ref bump, but the ref was Scrappy McGowan! He popped right back up and disqualified the Superstar in his match against Sam Houston. They don't call him Scrappy for nothing! Jimmy Valiant finally succeeded in making Paul Jones a "bald-headed geek." Jimmy's own hair wasn't even on the line (Big Mama's was), so he had nothing to lose. Big Bubba beat Ron Garvin in a street fight, but he failed to catch Jim Cornette as he fell off the scaffold. It wasn't Bubba's fault. He was right under Cornette, who swung out before dropping. JJ Dillon is the MVP for his Herculean effort to help Tully Blanchard win Dusty Rhodes' TV title in a first blood match. Dusty busted JJ open with a bionic elbow at the start of the match. Dusty also made Tully bleed, but JJ cleaned up the blood, applied Vaseline to the cut, AND gave Tully a roll of coins to bust open Dusty to win the title. Strange for the main event of Starrcade to end in double-DQ between Flair and Nikita. The touching tribute video for Magnum TA showed that he was probably slated for the title shot.

Let's not forget Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place, as well as Phoenix being a city full of serial killers on Medium.

Does SCU need to win the Casino Tag Team Battle Royale to stay intact as a team?

I want Cameron Grimes to find his own Virgil, and it's actually Virgil.

Shane Taylor is getting an ROH title shot at Rush soon. Hopefully, he will bring another World title to Cleveland like The Miz.

Bret Hart won the US title in WCW and when he returned to WWE in 2010 and won it from The Miz.

Also, Brock took a loss shortly after his debut on the UK PPV when Stasiak tagged himself in and lost to the Hardys.

Thoughts on Great American Bash 86 (Greensboro tour stop) Being Mid-Atlantic heavyweight champion didn't mean much. Black Bart teamed with the Barbarian against Italian Stallion and Denny Brown, whose Junior Heavyweight title didn't exactly rocket him up the card, either. Manny Fernandez was the unsung hero of this era. He always seemed to be in a bloody brawl, and he usually came out on top. Here, he beat Baron Von Raschke in a loaded-glove-on-a-pole match. So the Ragin' Bull was ahead of his time, and could have fit in with ECW or Vince Russo-era WCW. Jimmy Garvin had another Indian strap match with Wahoo McDaniel, and he actually learned Wahoo's dragging technique! It wasn't enough to win, though. Tully Blanchard did win his rematch, beating Ronnie Garvin in a taped fist match. Tully got punched a lot (again), but he used a foreign object to knock Garvin out. Jimmy Valiant said Paul Jones would be next to get a haircut, but not so fast! Bald Shaska Whatley returned the favor by attacking Valiant and giving Paul Jones another win over the Boogie Woogie Man. It was strange to see a babyface lose a haircut match and have the heels pointing and laughing at him. Nikita Koloff tried to grab the ropes, but referee Tommy Young kicked his hands away and then counted Magnum TA's pin. A teenage girl at ringside put both of her hands on Magnum's bloody face and then excitedly showed her friends. Dusty Rhodes won the NWA World title again! He beat RIc Flair with a small package in a bloody cage match. I like how the other babyfaces (and David Allen Coe) rushed the ring to congratulate Dusty. They seemed genuinely happy for him. The American Dream gets the MVP award for winning the big one again.

I'm on it. You know what they say: the 25th time is the charm ...

Brace yourself. I think Lacey's winning the title and defending against Charlotte at Mania.

The other one of mine is when someone dives off the top rope and the guy in the ring dropkicks him on the way down (Defensive Dropkick).

I've been trying to get "Phantom Audio Tag" over on commentary as the official name for this.

Thoughts on Great American Bash 86 (Charlotte tour stop) Denny Brown's ring jacket featured an outline of Florida that looked like it was cut out by a fourth grader. The Andersons beat Sam Houston and Nelson Royal (who also dressed like a cowboy). Houston had Arn pinned, but Ole hit him off the top rope and the Andersons won. This happened so often in WCW that we can just call it the Surprise Partner Smash finish. Baron Von Raschke learned that if you take off your belt to whip your opponent (Manny Fernandez), not only could he use your belt against you, but ... your pants will fall down. Wahoo McDaniel showed his experience in the Indian strap match because he had a much better dragging technique than Jimmy Garvin. The key is to wrap the strap around your opponent's wrists a few times. Teenage Dustin Rhodes drove Ronnie Garvin in a golf cart to the taped fist match against Tully Blanchard, who proved to have a very punchable face. Garvin wasn't content to have the advantage with his "Hands of Stone." He also hilariously knocked Tully out before the opening bell and after the first round ended. Baron's wardrobe backfired again when Jimmy Valiant grabbed his loaded glove and knocked out Shaska Whatley to win the hair vs. hair match. Jimmy then told Paul Jones he was next, even though they had already fought in a loser-leaves-town match 18 months earlier. Ric Flair retained the NWA World title in the main event, beating Ricky Morton in a steel cage match. Add his helicopter entrance into the football stadium, as well as taking Morton's protective facemask and putting it on himself, and the Nature Boy is the MVP.

I'm going to keep asking for this finish until I get it. 29 wrestlers in, 29 wrestlers out. Number 30 walks in and wins the Rumble.

Thoughts on Starrcade 85 Starrcade 85 finally started the show with the national anthem, rather than playing it before the main event (83) or the USA vs. Soviet Union match (84). Manny Fernandez outlasted Abdullah the Butcher in a bloody Mexican death match, which sounded much tougher than a Sombrero on a Pole match. The ring announcer simplified it even more by saying "capture the hat." More blood in the next match as Ron Bass and Black Bart blew up their Long Riders team in a Texas bullrope match. If you love cowbell shots to the head, this is the match for you. One year after helping Paul Jones win at Starrcade, JJ Dillon got a "manager wins!" moment himself when Bart returned and gave Bass a piledriver. Buddy Landell had blond hair, wore a fancy robe and called himself "The Nature Boy" in the same promotion as Ric Flair. This would be like the WWF having a blond, muscular mid-carder named Hulk Richardson. In addition to too many Nature Boys, this show had too many tag team championships. Ole & Arn Anderson retained the National tag team belts by beating the U.S. tag team champions, Wahoo McDaniel & Billy Jack Haynes. Why not unify the belts, since they represent the same country? Magnum TA won a brutal war with Tully Blanchard in a steel cage I Quit match to regain the US title. Like the Hardy Boys and Finn Balor, he appealed to all audiences with his looks and toughness. The Midnight Express wore tuxedos to their street fight with Jimmy Valiant & Miss Atlanta Lively. Seems like a big waste of money! Now I want to see this happen in the movies. Despite Magnum's heroics, Dusty Rhodes is the MVP. He challenged the Flair-Race winner at Starrcade 83 and complained about Joe Frazier costing him the title at Starrcade 84. So finding himself in the main event again, Dusty had to win the gold, and he did. After the match, he dedicated the win to all the blue-collar workers. That's so Dusty.

Thoughts on Starrcade 84 Denny Brown won the junior heavyweight title from Mike Davis with the "Oops! I pinned myself" back suplex finish. Jesse Barr retained the Florida title with the "feet on the ropes for leverage" finish. Referee Tommy Young missed that one. Why was the Florida title on the line in Greensboro, N.C.? Assassin #1 fully expected to be cheered by the fans for opposing Paul Jones, even though he didn't bother to change his "masked bad guy" appearance or name. When I saw that Jimmy Valiant was competing in a loser-leave-town match against Jones, I thought I knew the finish because he had already done the "Charlie Brown" gimmick. Well, he left town again because JJ Dillon hit him with a weird object that looked like a hairbrush. Dick Slater was doing the same fired-up babyface act that he later did in the WWF as "The Rebel." However, he was so fired up that he knocked down the referee, costing him a chance to win Ron Bass's Mid-Atlantic title. Manny Fernandez and Dusty Rhodes were the World tag team champions, but they both went for singles titles on this night. The aerial camera showed a lot less blood at this point in the night than at Starrcade 83, but Manny and Black Bart changed that in a bloody brawl. Manny won the brass knuckles title, which was so important that it didn't have a belt. Ricky Steamboat is the MVP for valiantly fighting through a rib injury to mount a strong challenge to Tully Blanchard's TV title. He also was smart enough to set up the stipulations that Tully could lose the title by disqualification or by running away. Unfortunately, Steamboat didn't count on Tully using a foreign object right in front of Tommy Young's face and not getting caught. Superstar Billy Graham was WWF champion six years earlier, but here he lost to Wahoo McDaniel's tomahawk chop. Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes battled for the World title and a million dollars. Not trusting Tommy Young in such a big-money match, Jim Crockett Promotions brought in Joe Frazier as referee. Of course, the biggest wrestling match of the year had a boxing finish. Frazier stopped the match due to a huge cut above Dusty's eye. Dusty cried foul and said he wanted a fight with Frazier, whose post-match explanation made perfect sense. Sidestepping the controversy, Flair basically said, "I've got the belt, I've got the check ... see you next year!"

Thoughts on Starrcade 83 The first WrestleMania started with The Executioner, and the first Starrcade begin with a pair of Assassins. They scored a surprisingly clean win over Rufus R. Jones and Bugsy McGraw. Rufus was the Mid-Atlantic heavyweight champion, and here he was jerking the curtain in a tag match. Mark Lewin & Kevin Sullivan also scored a clean win, and I thought "Hmm, they didn't really do anything evil." So Gary Hart threw them a spike and they busted open Scott McGhee's head and Angelo Mosca's arm. Was that bloodbath necessary with Carlos Colon vs. Abdullah the Butcher up next? I showed Abby to my daughter and said, "This is the guy who chased Daddy out of the ring in Cleveland." I explained that I moved faster than I ever have in my life because Abby always busted his opponents with a fork. She asked, "The referee just lets him do that?" She had a point. Even in the "Night of the Butcher" main event I called for ROH, Abby was allowed to mutilate his opponents with impunity. With Abby's win, followed by Bob Orton & Dick Slater beating Wahoo McDaniel & Mark Youngblood, the heels won the first four matches. The babyfaces evened the score by sweeping the final four matches. When they announced that Great Kabuki's TV title was on the line for the first 15 minutes, I thought I knew the finish. But good oi' Charlie Brown surprised me by winning the title. Roddy Piper and Ric Flair are two of the greatest villains of the 80s, but they were the two top babyfaces on this night. Piper gained revenge on Greg Valentine, who was in the same spot as the secondary champion that he was at the first WrestleMania. Flair wins the MVP award, surely the first of many in my next book, "King of Atlanta." Not only did he win the NWA World title in a bloody steel cage match against seven-time champion Harley Race, but every fan who got on the microphone in the Greensboro Coliseum predicted that he would win. Flair didn't let them down.

I wish! I came home to take care of the baby at the end of 2004.