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jaedmc

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A bit behind: the June 28 episode of Big West TV looks at a rematch of sorts: after Tony Cage & Zarif Metovic got the better of Amir Jordan & Leon Grayson on April 15, the two teams met again on May 20...but this time, in Six-Man Tag action, as Shotgun Stevens and Black Dragon joined into the mix!

 

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On 6/20/2016 at 1:05 AM, Oyaji said:

Both versions in WCW.

I agree. I like the first version better than the second.  I always wanted the WCW CD when it came out but no stores near me carried it. My aunt whom lived in DC at the time lied and told me she ordered it for me.  25 yrs later and I have not forgiven or forgot

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Some California Championship Wrestling from '86 popped up on my YouTube feed this evening. Knowing nothing at all about it, I've settled in to give it a watch. There's an interview with a guy named "Junior Maivia." 

Based on look alone, I can't imagine that he's even met Peter Maivia, then yet is actually related to him. 

This show has had such luminaries as Steel Gladiator, Beartrap Smith, and Magic. Only names I've been familiar with are Rocky Johnson and Jimmy Snuka. 

There's a match featuring someone named Eva Savage (billed as Ripper Savage's sister). I'm not sure I've ever seen someone looking less trained on television. She can barely run the ropes and takes a snapmare bump pretty much face first...

Edit: Can't figure out why the formatting on this is all jacked up. Weird. 

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  • 6 months later...

Watching Guilty As Charged 2000

RVD vs Sabu is what you would expect from those guys in ECW. But I noticed at least 2 spots where Sabu goes top rope to hard floor - landing on his feet. 

How do his knees not explode into a puff of dust? Later in the match, he does wrap one of his knees and limps around. I think he legit hurt himself. 

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On 4/20/2016 at 6:59 PM, StarChief EagleDemon said:

Tossed in a random videotape to kill some time yesterday and it was FMW from 1998. Anyone know why Kanemura's hockey sweater of choice for a little while was the Peoria Rivermen?

I had no idea what it was before, but recognized it after I've been living in central Illinois for the past couple of years.

Think it matched his usual color scheme- ISTR he rocked some combo of blue/yellow/red more often than not. As a Bradley man, I lost my shit the first time I saw him wearing it.

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On 9/8/2016 at 8:42 PM, Shane said:

Some California Championship Wrestling from '86 popped up on my YouTube feed this evening. Knowing nothing at all about it, I've settled in to give it a watch. There's an interview with a guy named "Junior Maivia." 

Based on look alone, I can't imagine that he's even met Peter Maivia, then yet is actually related to him. 

This show has had such luminaries as Steel Gladiator, Beartrap Smith, and Magic. Only names I've been familiar with are Rocky Johnson and Jimmy Snuka. 

There's a match featuring someone named Eva Savage (billed as Ripper Savage's sister). I'm not sure I've ever seen someone looking less trained on television. She can barely run the ropes and takes a snapmare bump pretty much face first...

Edit: Can't figure out why the formatting on this is all jacked up. Weird. 

Lol, you stumbled on some prime wrestlecrap.  '86 was the year California Championship Wrestling was named Worst Wrestling Show by the Observer.  The promotion ran for three years.  How it didn't win the award the other two years is beyond me.  If you can even call what they had "TV".  From what I can recall, it mostly (only?) ran on weak UHF stations during the overnight weekend hours.  In the LA market, it ran on a station hardly anyone picked up and was probably seen by a few dozen people.  The station dumped it after only a couple episodes.

Seriously terrible wrestling.  Had a fair number of recognizable names pass through - usually for short stints - but mostly subjected viewers to barely trained local guys who were beyond awful.  The name wrestlers were usually wayyyyy past their prime or made their name jobbing in the opening match on bigger cards.  Booking was weird and the in-ring stuff was turrible, so bad it doesn't even deserve the second "e" to spell 'terrible' correctly,  The local guys were generally terrible and mostly never to be seen again (They pushed Jack Armstrong fairly hard; never time I saw him was putting up a cage as part of the WWF's ring crew).

Oh, god, I just remembered Ripper Savage's color commentary.  He seemed to be trying to channel Jesse Ventura's heel commentator character, but was so, so awful.  

And then there was just the weird stuff, like the shout-outs to WWF,  Vague allusions to wrestlers having wrested for the big time "out east", name-dropping guys like Piper and Rocky Johnson, Ripper Savage biting the head off a Hulk Hogan doll on the air.  Lol.  The low-water mark might have been the bizarre interview with Muhammad Ali.  Toru Tanaka and Victor Rivera - both so far past their primes they shouldn't have been on the top of the card - went to find Ali for... reasons I don't remember.  Ali by this time is a shell of himself and had been retired for four or five years.  He probably wasn't in any condition to be on tv.  Together the three of then cut a promo that is mostly unintelligible (the other two had heavy accents) and nonsensical when you can understand them.  My lasting memory of that deal is Ali - who slurred his way through every word and generally looked pitiful.  If you didn't know who Ali was, you'd probably wonder why they tricked that mentally handicapped man into being part of their tv show.

California Champ is seriously awful.  People who bitch about three-hour RAWs and TNA don't know how good they have it.

 

Edit: Keep remembering stuff.

-- Junior Maivia was supposedly Peter Maivia's brother-in-law.  ????

-- The Hulk Hogan doll incident was hilarious because it took Savage about 60 seconds to gnaw through it.  Much less impressive than it sounds.

-- Savage used to imply that he was Randy's cousin - without actually mentioning Randy or the Poffo family or the WWF by name.

-- Oh, shit, i almost forgot the racism.  Savage hosted a low-rent Piper's Pit knock-off called "Ripper's inferno" or something like that, and he would spew terrible racist insults against the guests.  IIRC, he told Jay Strongbow (Jr.) to stand outside a drug store like a cigar store indian.  He called a black wrestler a porch monkey.  I vaguely remember Rocky Lee talking about playing the piano and Savage said something like "I thought all your people knew how to tap dance" then spent the rest of the segment making minstrel references.  Horribly tasteless racist stuff that would have been a bad idea 15 years earlier.

-  They had a running gimmick of promising big-name guests who never appeared.  Bruiser Brody, Abdullah, Hansen, Terry Funk, there was a promo promising wrestlers from WCCW (never happened), Superstar Billy Graham got hyped heavily but never appeared, etc. Tully Blanchard was going to be brought in (Ha!), as were the Fantastics.  Savage frequently implied his "cousin" might show up with some of the other WWF wrestlers, but of course that never happened.  Terry Funk was promised more than once.

-- so many knock-off gimmicks.  A Haystacks Calhoun rip-off, a Sgt. Slaughter rip-off, a low-rent Wild Samoan.  They even had a fake (?) Powerteam USA.  Yep.  You're out of ideas when you're booking Powerteam USA impersonators. 

-- Eva Savage was supposedly a very young Luna Vachon.  That's almost certainly untrue.  I was more interested in the woman they billed as Killer Tomato.  She actually wasn't bad, but she'd invariably end up wrestling better name wrestlers like Sherri Martel where her inexperience would show and she'd botch stuff.

-- Lords of Pain were the most aptly named tag team ever.  Barely trained, they tended to injure the jobbers they faced at a rate the Steiners and Roadies would have envied.  Didn't last long because.. you guessed it... they nearly murdered a local jobber and injured the guy seriously, after which one or both of them was fired.

-- Steve Strong came in as The California Terminator. He had a gimmick where he'd pull out his "air laser gun" (think: air guitar) and shoot the crowd.  The gimmick died a painful death with the live audience but entertained me way more than it should have.  

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On 8/13/2016 at 4:15 AM, The Green Meanie said:

 

He's a dog eating angel. 

 

Quote

Based on look alone, I can't imagine that he's even met Peter Maivia, then yet is actually related to him. 

Looking it up and I am certain he is Maivia's son. I thought he might be Nia Jax father, but seems Maivia was her step grandfather.

I am watching early 1995 SMW.

Chris Candido is NWA Champion but you would not know it from how he is booked. He is in a very entertaining  midcard feud with Boo "Balls Mahoney" Bradley. They did this angle where he killed Boo's cat, which would be a turn off if Candido did not play it comically. 

He forced Boo to eat dog food after a match and remarked it was better than the brand he usually eats. Which was the exact same joke I made a minute before. 

But still this is not a feud the NWA Champion should have been in, especially right after Shane Douglas rejected it. Looking it up last night, it appears the NWA has rented the title to an old guy on Craigslist. 

Buddy Landell is enjoying the last hot run he would ever have. He is in a feud with Tony Anthony with Jerry Lawler looming. Lawler is treated like a huge deal, a bit like how Bockwinkel was treated in Memphis. 

Eddie Gilbert started his brief run and introduced a young Kane. I don't know how you look at that guy and think evil Dentist, but I guess thinking outside the box has its good and its bad. 

Finally you have the Gangstas who are top heels in the promotion. It is a bit more nuanced than I expected. Fans were actually cheering them for attacking Cornette and Cornette did try to defuse the racial elements. But the problem is the Gangstas are the only three black wrestlers in the promotion. They might be the only three black wrestlers who worked in SMW ever. But I have not seen a lot, since I like to skip around like a jerk. 

The thing I would compare it to is the Snowman vs Lawler feud in Memphis. Which was offset by Memphis having black wrestlers on the roster for years and King Cobra as the only real face in the feud. Lawler was still a heel at this point. 

New Jack, Cornette and Bob Armstrong's interviews all around are great and it is nice to see a promotion embrace its history. Instead of forgetting anything that happened a month before. 

Cornette for a guy who was only a manager is great at bumping. I do find it funny watching Jack and Mustafa no sell most stuff Cornette does, only to see D'Lo fly across the ring. He knew where his bread was buttered. 

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I'm watching Kerry Von Erich vs Terry Gordy Lumberjack Match from 7/1/83 I think. And I'm thinking about how much coke was in the locker room that night after Terry Gordy comes walking to the ring looking stoned out of his gourd as they announce that Michael Hayes, who was originally scheduled to face Kerry, couldn't make due to "car trouble ". Which in my mind meant that he was probably more fucked up than Gordy. Then I look at who the lumberjacks are: Jake Roberts. Chris Adams, Buck Zumhoff, the Irwins, Skip Young. That's a fucking muderers row of sleazes and drug addicts. 

Someone should really develop a HBO-style series about World Class. 

*EDIT: forgot to post the match. 

 

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I think I may enjoy old WWF Spectrum shows even more than MSG stuff at this point, mostly because Kal Rudman interviewing Don Muraco is one of my absolute favorite things in pro wrestling. 

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