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5 hours ago, BurningBeard said:

Rewatching 91 WCW and Bobby Eaton's singles push is confusing the hell out of me.

He comes out in his old MX gear, crowd chants are piped in over the PA (to convince people to cheer him) and yet when the bell rings he just slots straight back into working as a heel. Perplexing that such a great mechanic doesn't seem to get it.

Bobby had a match with Abdullah The Butcher in late September on WCW which kind of cemented him as a fiery, plucky babyface to me...and a few weeks later he was a member of the Dangerous Alliance.

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I clearly remember Bobby over as a face big time, down to the commentary JR did when he was walking the aisle at Superbrawl. He talked about how he’s the 1 man with no manager, no partner, no stable etc coming to fight. This came after weeks of TV where he was basically the temporary Tommy Rich who had became Thomas Rich. What I mean by that is that he was the good guy in the B TV main events lol! And it was extra fun because he actually won matches. I also remember him winning that Superbrawl match being a mark out moment but that might have been because that was the first time I’d ever seen Arn lose that belt, after all the times I’d seen him cheat to keep it. I’ll also confess to that match not being very good upon rewatching but that really doesn’t matter.

I clearly remember all of that like I clearly remember everything else I watched as a youngun. The problem I have recalling things is different - I only had broadcast TV. No WCWSN or COTC except for tapes my Uncle sometimes made. That Superbrawl was actually my first ppv that my father arranged for me to watch at our friend’s house. 

I also remember him losing the belt to Steve Austin on regular TV and being VERY upset, so there had to be atleast a window of time between the belt and the turn. But I can’t say that I remember it.

So anyway I don’t remember the face turn or the heel turn. I just assumed they both happened somewhere just as Ricky Morton’s did when his tag team abruptly ended similarly.

 

Edited by BloodyChamp
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I remember a sheet I read at the time, maybe Steve Beverly's, fantasy booking and/or suggesting that Eaton should win the world title.  His idea was to book him as an everyman who wasn't the biggest or best, but as a blue collar type who could always find a way to win.  It's a cool idea but maybe not for Eaton.

Edited by Technico Support
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14 hours ago, BloodyChamp said:

 

I also remember him losing the belt to Steve Austin on regular TV and being VERY upset, so there had to be atleast a window of time between the belt and the turn. But I can’t say that I remember it.

So anyway I don’t remember the face turn or the heel turn. I just assumed they both happened somewhere just as Ricky Morton’s did when his tag team abruptly ended similarly.

 

Bobby lost the TV title to Austin on World Wide in June iirc

This was Bobby's heel turn

 

I think he joined the Dangerous Alliance the same weekend.

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I remember a sheet I read at the time, maybe Steve Beverly's, fantasy booking and/or suggesting that Eaton should win the world title.  His idea was to book him as an everyman who wasn't the biggest or best, but as a blue collar type who could always find a way to win.  It's a cool idea but maybe not for Eaton.

Bobby's one and only problem was that he wasn't a great talker, pair him with Cornette and he's golden. Leave him by himself to cut a promo and it's bloody awful.

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So I've spent a lot of time the last couple months taking in various wrestling media about the territory era, and there's something I'm really not clear on. What exactly... happened in California? Like, you hear the odd vague story that Crippler Ray Stevens was a huge star there at one point. But by the era where we're talking about Mid-South, Memphis, Mid-Atlantic, WCCW, the AWA, the late WWWF etc etc it seems like California wresting has sort of flown right off a cliff. I never hear any stories of there being a major territory there, just the odd NWA show now and again for the most part. When did California come apart, what's the story here, really anything people have on it I'd like to know because it generally seems like this big void in most talk of this time frame. It seems inconceivable that you couldn't have made a territory out of a city as large as Los Angeles and the surrounding markets. 

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5 hours ago, OSJ said:

Bobby's one and only problem was that he wasn't a great talker, pair him with Cornette and he's golden. Leave him by himself to cut a promo and it's bloody awful.

Bobby wasn't that bad a promo in his early days:

I think he just never got any better due to his being managed by Jimmy Hart, then Cornette, then Heyman.

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3 hours ago, Death From Above said:

So I've spent a lot of time the last couple months taking in various wrestling media about the territory era, and there's something I'm really not clear on. What exactly... happened in California? Like, you hear the odd vague story that Crippler Ray Stevens was a huge star there at one point. But by the era where we're talking about Mid-South, Memphis, Mid-Atlantic, WCCW, the AWA, the late WWWF etc etc it seems like California wresting has sort of flown right off a cliff. I never hear any stories of there being a major territory there, just the odd NWA show now and again for the most part. When did California come apart, what's the story here, really anything people have on it I'd like to know because it generally seems like this big void in most talk of this time frame. It seems inconceivable that you couldn't have made a territory out of a city as large as Los Angeles and the surrounding markets. 

Both LA (Labelle) and SF (Shire) probably had their peak in the 60s and 70s.

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5 minutes ago, Happ Hazzard said:

Bobby wasn't that bad a promo in his early days:

I think he just never got any better due to his being managed by Jimmy Hart, then Cornette, then Heyman.

Let's just blame it on George Gulas. 

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1 hour ago, Infinit said:

What was the World Championship Wrestling "Sunday Edition" show on TBS? Did it run first run matches and angles or was it a recap show?

My memory is that it - along with the Saturday morning show simply titled "Championship Wrestling" was mostly original content with maybe some recap of main show angles, but literally every match was a jobber squash. I know the few times I have checked out some episodes, the promos were more interesting in terms of the true under-the-radar gems instead of any matches themselves.

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6 hours ago, Death From Above said:

So I've spent a lot of time the last couple months taking in various wrestling media about the territory era, and there's something I'm really not clear on. What exactly... happened in California? Like, you hear the odd vague story that Crippler Ray Stevens was a huge star there at one point. But by the era where we're talking about Mid-South, Memphis, Mid-Atlantic, WCCW, the AWA, the late WWWF etc etc it seems like California wresting has sort of flown right off a cliff. I never hear any stories of there being a major territory there, just the odd NWA show now and again for the most part. When did California come apart, what's the story here, really anything people have on it I'd like to know because it generally seems like this big void in most talk of this time frame. It seems inconceivable that you couldn't have made a territory out of a city as large as Los Angeles and the surrounding markets. 

I can't speak for what happened in SF, but from what I have read about LA is that there was a chain reaction of things outside of the promotion's control that occurred throughout the second half of the '70s, and then complacency kind of set in to do the rest of the job.

The biggest issue that affected LA from what I've read was a chain of events that resulted in the loss of their English-language television affiliate in the city. My understanding - and someone can correct me if I am wrong - is that the FCC had gotten a complaint from someone that didn't like the wrestling show. The complaint had presented the idea that technically the weekly televised wrestling show was just a one-hour commercial for arena shows, and somehow the FCC advised the station of the complaint and gave a warning, so the station told the promotion that they could remain on their station, but they could not plug or promote other live events during the show. I believe I read that the wrestling promotion would given commercial time during other programs to keep promoting their live shows in some way to that station's audience, but during a post-match promo one of the wrestlers slipped up and said something along the lines of how he couldn't wait to get one more shot at the Americas Championship "this Friday night", and the station booted them off after that incident.

The Los Angeles promotion still had Spanish-language television (in fact, it was syndicated nationally through the Spanish International Network, including NYC), but the loss of the higher-profile broadcasting spot resulted in an attendance drop that they never recovered from. I've also read that as the decade changed over to the 1980s, the LeBell family simply lost interest in aggressively promoting and began pinching pennies to the point where the pay days just weren't there for guys that had other options, and by the time it finally closed up shop in 1982, the roster primarily consisted of Lucha imports like Mil Mascaras and El Canek, aging homesteaders that were winding down their careers like Black Gordman and Victor Rivera, and rookies breaking into the business like Tom Prichard and Chris Adams. The WWF then swooped in fairly quickly and made the city one of their first priorities in their national expansion, running their first show in the city in March 1983.

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I agree that Bobby was pretty good on the mic. I read somewhere that the Midnight Express of course had Jim had their talker, but for no bad reason. Managers just did the talking. Then they did a classic manager is talking and wrestler snatches the mic from him mad heel promo somewhere and he messed it up, so he never talked again. I don’t know how true that is and I haven’t found the promo either.

Jim Cornette managing a champion wow how great would that have been. He’s 1 of my favorites as I’ve said many times. I know he managed Yoko but that wasn’t the same.

So does anybody have the Bobby Eaton face turn or am I mistaken and they just piped in chants? They did that back then? Lol!

As for the heel turn that match jogged my memory. I don’t remember seeing the whole match but I remember seeing Dustin mad at getting tagged, getting beat up then the shoulder breaker now. I’m guessing I saw clips in the following weeks or on whatever else was on that weekend. Maybe that Worldwide was preempted by baseball or something.

 

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i know this is a question more suited for the puro folder, but i don't check there, so i'm asking here. 
According to cagematch, Nobuhiko Takada and Masahiro Chono only squared off twice in singles matches. Did either of these make tape? I'm not familiar enough with NJPW's televised output to tell.

 

26.11.1986    New Japan Pro Wrestling    Nobuhiko Takada defeats Masahiro Chono (10:00)
NJPW Japan Cup Tag Team League 1986 - Tag 11 - Event @ Civic Gymnasium in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan

29.05.1987    New Japan Pro Wrestling    Nobuhiko Takada defeats Masahiro Chono (9:21)
NJPW IWGP Champion Series 1987 - Tag 14 - Event @ City Gymnasium in Kanoya, Kagoshima, Japan

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Don't think so. I don't think they really started producing commercial tapes until the early '90s and the TV was only an hour long and usually featured two top star matches. I checked the sets Dan Ginnetty released covering '86 and '87 and that's a no go. Chono isn't featured at all in '86 and only twice in '87:  the final of the Young Lion's Cup against Hashimoto and in a random tag with Kengo vs. Kerry Von Erich and Tony St. Clair. 

Edit: Not even on NJPW Classics. I do wonder if either Asahi (likelier of the two) or NJPW have master tapes of the entire shows they ran back in those days or if they just kept the TV tapes with the bigger matches. 

Edited by Oyaji
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7 hours ago, BloodyChamp said:

So does anybody have the Bobby Eaton face turn or am I mistaken and they just piped in chants? They did that back then? Lol!

IIRC, Cornette and Lane had gone and the piped chants were a way to turn him without any sort of instigation. As @Infinit said, just as he seemed to be settling into working as a plucky face they turned him and put him with the Dangerous Alliance.

RE: Los Angeles @Death From Above, I remember reading in Lous Thesz's book the LA territory was always awful for pay offs (perhaps for similar reasons to Florida), as a result the cards used cheap workers and the promoter was a bit of a scumbag. I can only assume it never really recovered properly from this. 

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A couple of years back somebody wrote an article/explainer about the Michinoku Pro "spin around and hop" comedy spot that I can't find now.  Does anyone remember this or have a link?

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19 hours ago, Death From Above said:

So I've spent a lot of time the last couple months taking in various wrestling media about the territory era, and there's something I'm really not clear on. What exactly... happened in California? Like, you hear the odd vague story that Crippler Ray Stevens was a huge star there at one point. But by the era where we're talking about Mid-South, Memphis, Mid-Atlantic, WCCW, the AWA, the late WWWF etc etc it seems like California wresting has sort of flown right off a cliff. I never hear any stories of there being a major territory there, just the odd NWA show now and again for the most part. When did California come apart, what's the story here, really anything people have on it I'd like to know because it generally seems like this big void in most talk of this time frame. It seems inconceivable that you couldn't have made a territory out of a city as large as Los Angeles and the surrounding markets. 

ClinttheCrippler gives a pretty good rundown of events. My buddy, Steve Yohe who lived through it pretty much blames it on promotion complacency, the typical "let's see how many of these marks will keep showing up when we do shit on the cheap and quit paying these big names to come in as guest attractions." Even if you have a fairly talented bunch, without an absolute genius booker, fans will quickly tire of seeing the same dozen guys week after week.

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Eaton technically turned face on the January 1991 Meadowlands house show where Flair won the world title vs. Sting.

The match was Eaton/Hayes/Garvin vs. El Gigante/Morton/Rich. Faces won with Gigante pinning Garvin, with Freebirds attacking Eaton afterwards. Eaton would later take control and drive them out of the ring.

This might have aired on the New York-exclusive show that aired on WPIX, but I'm unsure.

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Idk what the first few minutes of this is...

But as for the match, am I on crack or were the fans going OOOOOHHHHH for every punch Larry threw in this match? Fans didn’t do that unless they were all in, like territory guys coming back vs Flair on territorial TV in. Imagine a time when the 2nd most 40 year old history teacherest wrestler in the world was that over in a ring against Paul Heyman and SCSA.

 

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On 6/25/2020 at 8:50 AM, OSJ said:

ClinttheCrippler gives a pretty good rundown of events. My buddy, Steve Yohe who lived through it pretty much blames it on promotion complacency, the typical "let's see how many of these marks will keep showing up when we do shit on the cheap and quit paying these big names to come in as guest attractions." Even if you have a fairly talented bunch, without an absolute genius booker, fans will quickly tire of seeing the same dozen guys week after week.

Weren’t the Labelles’ also one of the first people to sell off to Vince too?

 

As it pertains to SF, I feel like Patterson’s book mentioned that Shire decided to retire and once that happened, the business tanked and the promotion folded nor long after. 

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Just read the name "Butch Masters" in some AJPW results (teaming with Stan Hansen) and decided to look him up, I remember seeing him listed (as Giant Warrior) in the PWI500. How come he never got a chance in any of the major US promotions in the late 90s? WCW especially seemed to be signing just about anyone, and you'd think with his size (listed as 7' tall) WWF would have been interested. 

Very similar look to Kevin Nash, since he wrestled in Britain I'd be amazed if he wasn't used as a "Tribute" version of Nash or Diesel somewhere along the way.American_Professional_Wrestler_%28Jeff_Bearden%29.jpg

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I've watched various 1983/84 episodes of JCP on YouTube.. and I think that the top of the card babyfaces in 1983 JCP are one of the stronger group of superfriends-ish babyfaces i've seen.. Flair, Piper, Wahoo, Steamboat/Youngbloods, Valiant/Charlie Brown... in their wars with Harley Race, Valentine, Orton/Slater, The Briscos, and Gary Hart/etc. (Although sure, Valiant vs Hart was sorta on it's own island.. even if I did see a Roddy Piper/Jimmy Valiant promo in one episode)

Although the one episode(?) story arc of "Pat O'Connor will be the special referee... actually no, he won't be because he has business ties to Harley Race" was sort of a.. okay....

Also there was an episode with babyface Mike Rotundo/a as the special commentator where he was boring as usual.

Heel Briscos on an episodic level is just as good as the various interviews that people took the effort to post online years ago.

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