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8/10/1998

 

Droz vs. Savio Vega: Eh. This isn't really bad enough to shit on, but it's not good enough to say much about. It feels like guys really are trying to take this more seriously. Savio is once again dressed to mow his lawn, and Droz wears the green plaid shorts from the first fight. Droz has pretty serious reach advantage here, but Vega strikes me as a guy who doesn't easily back down from a fight. Not a ton to say, except that Droz looks legitimately excited to move on. 

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I do not remember Scorp being in the tourney at all. Was he going as 2 Cold or was he Flash Funk? 

This was also the period where Scorp was smoking crack so that makes that dark match even more of a Bumfight. White Power Asshole vs. Black Crackhead with Giant Dick! 

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8/17/1998

Godfather vs. Bart Gunn. 

Godfather is with ho's this evening. Out in workout gear. Bart Gunn out here looking liked jacked-up Josh Brolin. Godfather with a pre-match promo, knowing that's the one aspect of this confrontation he's in no danger of losing. Round 1 is slow, but there's some tension. I'm legitimately impressed with Gunn's head movement. Dodging punches without taking his eyes off the opposing fighter is a learned skill, and he has a nice mastery of it. Godfather looks like he's expecting the big punch that never comes, and is tentative. Round 2 is actually one of the more entertaining rounds of the entire tournament. Both guys land big shots, and Godfather lands a series of body blows in the corner. With around 20 seconds left, Gunn just throws repeated left hooks, landing most of them. Godfather actually goes down, but time runs out at the same time. It looked like these two giants just got tired of dancing. About fifteen seconds into round 3, Gunn lands a right hook that puts Godfather to sleep. Just absolutely de-cleats him. This fight is what WWE officials had in mind when they green-lit this suitcase full of dog turds. 

 

Our other semi-final is Droz Vs. Justin Bradshaw. Round 1 is... interesting. There are some violent punches thrown (and landed) but the technique Gunn and Godfather had at least a rudimentary understanding of is completely nonexistent here. Bradshaw has a nice, long jab, but any cornerman worth a damn would've told Droz to wait for Bradshaw to throw it and then counter with a right, because Bradshaw drops his left almost all the way to his waist after throwing that jab. Pretty even round. Droz gets a ncie takedown at the end of round 2, but this fight is lacking compared to the last one. Round 3 is more of the same, with Droz clearly getting frustrated at Bradshaw tying him up and laying on him in the corner. Bradshaw wins a decision, but this wasn't nearly the fight the first bout was. Also on this Raw episode, DX takes on the Nation in a street fight, so it's worth checking out. 

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On 3/23/2020 at 10:35 AM, HumanChessgame said:

If you want to listen to Jim Cornette shit on the idea, it's actually one of his more reasonable rants

 

Good lord. Not only does he refer to Russo by name rather than "shit stain" he actually excuses him and passes the blame on to McMahon, wich is perfectly reasonable but Cornette discussing anything Russo

 

On 3/23/2020 at 10:35 AM, HumanChessgame said:

If you want to listen to Jim Cornette shit on the idea, it's actually one of his more reasonable rants

 

 

I like how he excuses Russo and places the blame on McMahon because he was working with Russo at TNA at the time, then in another video that was recommended by YouTube shits all over Russo for it.

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I don't think Jim actually started hating Russo on a personal basis until Russo allegedly went behind Cornette's back to bring in Ed Ferrara and get Cornette fired because of the time Jim went off on Ed over the Oklahoma thing.

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On 3/22/2020 at 6:58 PM, Brian Fowler said:

Janetty was really fun during his brief WCW stint. Seemed like it breathed a little life back into him that teaming with Al Snow had sapped away.

I was just re-reading Mick Foley's first book and your comment reminded me of what Foely  said this about Jannetty in WWF

His only joy in life, it seemed, was tormenting poor Al.  He would ride Al at any opportunity. When Al was in a public toilet, Marty would wad up wet paper towels and throw them at him.  When he was in the shower, Marty would throw cold water on him.  He would put pitchers of water on top of doors, and tilt garbage cans in front of them.

Also, this is the part in the book where Foley talked about how Jannetty would do a "dead-on" impression of Verne Gagne but replace the word 'wrestle' with 'fuck, which always gets a legit LOL out of me:

Jesus Christ, kid, where'd you lean how to fuck?  Not in this territory, because in this territory, fucking comes first  Back in my day, kid, we knew how to fuck.  After all, that's what the name on the marquee says - Fucking.

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Even beyond the business exposing nature of the tournament with real fights, this should have been the moment that WWE realized the benefits pro wrestling will have over MMA: MMA may be real and pro wrestling may be "fake", but on the other side, that's a good thing.

The Williams knockout by Gunn just goes to show MMA's biggest weakness- you can hype someone up as the baddest man in the sport, you can hype someone up as the best fighter on the planet, put all your advertising to make this person the star of your company...and it can all end in an instant if a tomato can gets one lucky punch in. Bart Gunn KO'ing Steve Williams would be the equivalent of- say, Seth Petruzelli pulling off the upset on Kimbo Slice and mortally wounding Strikeforce in the process.

At least with pro wrestling booking- if you're trying to hype someone up as the best in the company and making this person the star of the show, you can simply decide "okay, you are going to win, and keep winning until you're a big star".

 

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9 hours ago, SorceressKnight said:

Even beyond the business exposing nature of the tournament with real fights, this should have been the moment that WWE realized the benefits pro wrestling will have over MMA: MMA may be real and pro wrestling may be "fake", but on the other side, that's a good thing.

The Williams knockout by Gunn just goes to show MMA's biggest weakness- you can hype someone up as the baddest man in the sport, you can hype someone up as the best fighter on the planet, put all your advertising to make this person the star of your company...and it can all end in an instant if a tomato can gets one lucky punch in. Bart Gunn KO'ing Steve Williams would be the equivalent of- say, Seth Petruzelli pulling off the upset on Kimbo Slice and mortally wounding Strikeforce in the process.

At least with pro wrestling booking- if you're trying to hype someone up as the best in the company and making this person the star of the show, you can simply decide "okay, you are going to win, and keep winning until you're a big star".

 

I dunno if I would use Kimbo vs. Petruzelli as an 1:1 example because even if Ken Shamrock (Kimbo's original opponent that night) and Kimbo won, EliteXC was more than likely on its way out. They were losing a ton of money and Showtime decided not to buy controlling interest of the company. People thought being on CBS was a game changer (the same would be thought about Strikeforce soon thereafter) and having decent to good ratings was an indicator they were competing with the UFC. I doubt they were receiving an substantial money from their TV deals if they were receiving any money at all. The business model was too flawed to survive.

As for the fight itself, replacing Shamrock with Seth Petruzelli on short notice showed the lack of forethought. I mean Kimbo afterwards would go on show a modicum of skill later on after he got on TUF despite his age and not having the prerequisite attributes to be a successful MMA fighter. However, when he was training with Bas Rutten and Randy Khatami (mind you, both were probably more celebrity trainers than training actual fighters for MMA competition), it was an experiment that was kinda successful. He was good enough to beat guys who had bad chins (James Thompson), guys who were several years removed from being decent (Tank Abbott), and were looking for a way out as soon as they got touched (Bo Cantrell). He would later on go on to beat Ken Shamrock, but Ken Shamrock was done as a fighter in 2008. There was a reason he was booked to fight Kimbo. When Ken was removed from that fight, they put in Seth Petruzelli who was never even a good fighter but was competent enough to beat Kimbo who had never been against someone who was even semi-competent. The people running EliteXC (Gary Shaw, Jeremy Lappen, etc.) got desperate to have a main event because they were on CBS in primetime and put in the first person they could find who was licensed to fight. I mean there was a bluff that Frank Shamrock would step in, but that was a mere bluff because Frank at that time was barely mobile and wasn't even licensed to fight most likely. In most cases, in boxing or MMA, promoters put in no hopers if someone drops out the day of or the day before an event happens. Usually, the skill level doesn't automatically go up like Shamrock -> Petruzelli. So how I would connect it to Brawl for All is instead of saying a tomato can possibly brings it all down, knowing the chances of what could take place helps out tremendously. I mean the UFC has had huge upsets, but they have a track record of being able to pivot off of that. However, if you go out there and put a Steve Williams or a Mike Hegstrand who don't actually fight for a living into real fights no matter how loosely those fights are contested or regulated, you're begging for something really bad to take place.

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I guess maybe Ronda losing those two fights and subsequently quitting would be an example of it. The women's division is way better now (just saw the Zhang/Joanna fight last night now that it's on regular ESPN+ and goddamn) but they certainly don't have another woman who is nearly the draw she was.

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35 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

I guess maybe Ronda losing those two fights as subsequently quitting would be an example of it. The women's division is way better now (just saw the Zhang/Joanna fight last night now that it's on regular ESPN+ and goddamn) but they certainly don't have another woman who is nearly the draw she was.

Even though Gina Carano was a decent TV draw, Ronda was the first one out of the blocks. The UFC had the resources to build Ronda up that EliteXC (and subsequently Strikeforce for one fight) didn't have for Gina Carano. And prior to that, boxing wasn't willing to do that for most women. The closest was Laila Ali, but she was a 165-175 pound woman fighting women who were naturally 130-140 pounds. That was an issue. Then, IIRC, she tried becoming her own promoter and she found herself fighting for investors/backers who didn't have all the money they said they were going to pay her. She didn't want to fight Ann Wolfe, who people actually wanted to see her fight and was closer to her size than all her previous opponents, so she retired. Whoever broke through that door with all the right characteristics (looks, charisma, etc.) was going to be a giant draw.

And yeah, I would probably use Rousey vs. Holm as an example, but there are certain caveats. Even though Edmond Tarverdyan has found renewed success with Edmen Shahbazyan since then, he was not really a known MMA coach before he got Ronda Rousey. He was more a boxing coach who trained a whole host of Armenian boxers and kickboxers in the Glendale, CA area. He trained Manny Gamburyan and few other Glendale based Armenian MMA fighters, but he didn't hit it big until Ronda. Then, he started training people who weren't Ronda after having success with Ronda (Travis Browne, the Four Horsewomen, etc.), and they got all their asses soundly kicked. There have been coaches who trained champions in boxing and MMA who never had any other famous charges, but Ronda singlehandlely raised this guy's profile to the point where people got sick of hearing about him. So IMO it got into Ronda's head that she had to show loyalty to Edmond even though Ronda was making enough money and famous enough to train anywhere she wanted and get the best coaches possible. Compare that to Holly Holm, who I admit was stylistically very tricky for Ronda going into that fight, who being at Jackson/Wink had an all star team in her corner compared to Ronda. The same goes Amanda Nunes with Nunes being at American Top Team. That specialized, personalized training that you see in boxing that Ronda was doing only worked because Ronda had an absolutely straightforward path to victory and super athletic enough to pull it off. The thing is you have to get there for it to work (see: Wilder, Deontay). Moreover, going back to her judo days, her attitude wasn't exactly the best to deal with things not going her way. Being notoriously stubborn was a bad trait she had. In addition, she would have her good and bad days with the media. Everything was there for her to have an epic downfall. The UFC could have booked around SOME of that and tried to protect her, but that house of cards was coming down eventually. 

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Those problems are true as well @Elsalvajeloco, but I think the better example from Rousey isn't that, but rather an example of "UFC pivoting" vs. "tomato can with a lucky punch ends it all": 

With that case, it was: Rousey was sold as a big star and someone UFC could build around. Rousey loses to Holm, and UFC tried to pivot to "look how badass Holly Holm is! She's the woman who beat Ronda Rousey, she's a huge badass!"

Then Holm loses to Miesha Tate, and it was ended: Rousey's aura is gone because she finally lost. Holm looked like her win was a fluke and she was basically the female Buster Douglas. And Tate had lost to Rousey so much it was "yeah, you won, but you didn't go through Rousey to do it", so she didn't gain anything. 

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1 hour ago, SorceressKnight said:

Those problems are true as well @Elsalvajeloco, but I think the better example from Rousey isn't that, but rather an example of "UFC pivoting" vs. "tomato can with a lucky punch ends it all": 

With that case, it was: Rousey was sold as a big star and someone UFC could build around. Rousey loses to Holm, and UFC tried to pivot to "look how badass Holly Holm is! She's the woman who beat Ronda Rousey, she's a huge badass!"

Then Holm loses to Miesha Tate, and it was ended: Rousey's aura is gone because she finally lost. Holm looked like her win was a fluke and she was basically the female Buster Douglas. And Tate had lost to Rousey so much it was "yeah, you won, but you didn't go through Rousey to do it", so she didn't gain anything. 

I would argue that had UFC 200 not been marred by the Jones drug test the Wednesday before the fight as well as the weirdness of Brock being shoehorned onto that card, they could've built towards another fight with Miesha and Ronda. However, going into the cage, Miesha looked she would be rather be anywhere but in a cage fighting Amanda Nunes. 

Still, they did big business with Nunes vs. Rousey. Hilariously enough though, the new UFC owners had no idea who Amanda was and probably thought Ronda was going to run through her.

With that said, the UFC has done a decent job with Amanda given she wouldn't be their first option to be champion. She's not going to be same draw as Ronda, but who would given that Ronda drew people that likely wouldn't be typical UFC fans? Moreover, given all their money for PPVs is guaranteed now, they don't exactly need to have gigantic draws anymore. 

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8/24/98

 

Finals: Bart Gunn vs. Bradshaw. Well, we made it. Prior to the fight they show highlights, which could've been titled "Bart Gunn naps fools, version 1.0". Bradshaw enters looking determined not to get embarrassed. Fat lot of good it did him. Bart Gunn enters and looks hopeful. That poor sap walks to the ring with a look on his face like "maybe something will come of this." Well, for tonight, Bart is king of the mountain. The bell rings and Bradshaw comes out fighting, trying to use that long jab to keep Bart away. Well, the problem is that he's still dropping his left to his waist briefly on his jab rebound. Bart abandons his traditional "one two" approach and starts throwing hooks from both hands, exposing Bradshaw's technical flaw. Bradshaw goes down after a series of hard hooks, and most boxing referees would've stopped the fight there. However, Bradshaw takes the standing eight count and the ref lets them go. And that's all she wrote for Bradshaw. Bart hits him with two more hard shots and Bradshaw is out. Like out out. And that's it. The last fight in the tourney is also the shortest and most satisfying.  Bradshaw gets hit so hard he wakes up a member of the APA. I imagine that even then there were folks in the locker room that enjoyed seeing Bradshaw get a canvas facial, and Bart seems likeable, so there's that. I still can't decide how much heat there was on Bart for winning. He's always maintained in interviews that if they'd told him to take a dive against Williams, or even if he'd known the office really wanted Williams to win, he'd have happily obliged them, so it wasn't super common knowledge. What doesn't make sense to me is the apparent goal of shoehorning Williams into a top spot. He looked bad in both appearances in this tournament. Out of shape and used up. And was this before or after his brief appearance attacking someone dressed in traditional Japanese getup? Does anyone else remember that or was it just me?

 

Anyway, this re-watch has got me thinking how much better something like this would be now. Even if you disqualified the guys with a super high level of MMA training, you'd have Nakamura, Chad Gable, Ziggler, Baron Corbin, Jack Gallagher, Apollo Crews, Otis, and others. All guys with a high degree of amateur wrestling or shoot fighting backgrounds. Might come off a little better this time. Not that I think it's a good idea.

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28 minutes ago, just drew said:

8/24/98

 

Finals: Bart Gunn vs. Bradshaw. Well, we made it. Prior to the fight they show highlights, which could've been titled "Bart Gunn naps fools, version 1.0". Bradshaw enters looking determined not to get embarrassed. Fat lot of good it did him. Bart Gunn enters and looks hopeful. That poor sap walks to the ring with a look on his face like "maybe something will come of this." Well, for tonight, Bart is king of the mountain. The bell rings and Bradshaw comes out fighting, trying to use that long jab to keep Bart away. Well, the problem is that he's still dropping his left to his waist briefly on his jab rebound. Bart abandons his traditional "one two" approach and starts throwing hooks from both hands, exposing Bradshaw's technical flaw. Bradshaw goes down after a series of hard hooks, and most boxing referees would've stopped the fight there. However, Bradshaw takes the standing eight count and the ref lets them go. And that's all she wrote for Bradshaw. Bart hits him with two more hard shots and Bradshaw is out. Like out out. And that's it. The last fight in the tourney is also the shortest and most satisfying.  Bradshaw gets hit so hard he wakes up a member of the APA. I imagine that even then there were folks in the locker room that enjoyed seeing Bradshaw get a canvas facial, and Bart seems likeable, so there's that. I still can't decide how much heat there was on Bart for winning. He's always maintained in interviews that if they'd told him to take a dive against Williams, or even if he'd known the office really wanted Williams to win, he'd have happily obliged them, so it wasn't super common knowledge. What doesn't make sense to me is the apparent goal of shoehorning Williams into a top spot. He looked bad in both appearances in this tournament. Out of shape and used up. And was this before or after his brief appearance attacking someone dressed in traditional Japanese getup? Does anyone else remember that or was it just me?

 

Anyway, this re-watch has got me thinking how much better something like this would be now. Even if you disqualified the guys with a super high level of MMA training, you'd have Nakamura, Chad Gable, Ziggler, Baron Corbin, Jack Gallagher, Apollo Crews, Otis, and others. All guys with a high degree of amateur wrestling or shoot fighting backgrounds. Might come off a little better this time. Not that I think it's a good idea.

Granted it was over fifteen years ago, Nakamura would be disqualified too for being in actual pro MMA fights at a pretty decent level. However, I don't think it would be that much better given you have a bunch of people who explicitly signed up to not get into real fights. Unlike twenty plus years ago, it would be financially viable to go that route if they wanted to prior to them getting into pro wrestling. Plus, I doubt many guys have that bravado to go out and do that. A bunch of guys would sell wolf tickets and then be like, "Nope, the wife said I can't do it....I have kids to think about." etc etc.

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4 hours ago, AxB said:

The Butterbean match at Mania.

He was a tomato can for Bean sure but otherwise he was the best fighter in Brawl For All. Williams may have been a legit tough guy and suffering from injury but he couldn’t box for shit either way. 

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Jeez, don’t remember this at all. Hard to believe the Hardys were still basically enhancement talent here when they’d be one of the hottest acts in the company by the fall. 

Was JR managing Doc when he was doing the separate announce table bit, or am I conflating the two? 

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1 hour ago, just drew said:

Anyway, this re-watch has got me thinking how much better something like this would be now. Even if you disqualified the guys with a super high level of MMA training, you'd have Nakamura, Chad Gable, Ziggler, Baron Corbin, Jack Gallagher, Apollo Crews, Otis, and others. All guys with a high degree of amateur wrestling or shoot fighting backgrounds. Might come off a little better this time. Not that I think it's a good idea.

Gallagher has a 2-0 (2 submissions) amateur MMA record using his real name, Jack Claffey. But if they trued to do it and then said Matt Riddle couldn't do it, it would make the tournament look not legit (even though he's a BJJ guy who wasn't especially well rounded, in his MMA career).

Also, weight classes.

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On 3/22/2020 at 5:30 PM, just drew said:

7/27/1998

 

Our first second round match is Williams/Gunn. This encounter is long cited as the bout that turned this entire thing. Objectively, this first round was the most interesting round of any of the fights yet. Williams comes out on a mission, and dominates early. I really think Williams was shocked that Gunn made it through the first round. I also think Williams understood that his future as a main eventer in WWE depended on what he did in this fight. Round two is much more even. Gunn looks determined and Williams runs out of gas mid round. Towards the end of round two, Gunn manages a takedown on Williams, and I think that moment is when Williams knew he wasn't gonna win that fight. Scorecards be damned. Gunn seems to honestly believe winning this thing could kick-start his career, and Round three reflects that. Down ten points, Bartholomew W. Gunn fights the round of his life, absolutely bulldozing Steve Williams before knocking him out with about ten seconds left in the round. In fairness to both these guys, the crowd legitimately got into this. This bout meant something to both guys, and they fought accordingly. I'm not even gonna shit on this. As bad as both guys' technique was, they showed a lot of guts. This fight has been by far the highlight of this tournament, and is worth an earnest and sincere entry of it's own...
 

I was there live for this, and was rooting for Doc. Bart broke my heart.

 

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On 3/22/2020 at 7:30 PM, HumanChessgame said:

In his book Holly claimed to have competed in amateur toughman fights for several years but that's one of those things that you can't really verify.

Being from near the Mobile area I can tell you that Holly was a regular at all the bar/club tough man contests.In his book Bob claims one time since he had beat everyone they brought in a bear for him to fight. I wish he had said the name of the bar this happened at so I could make some calls and see if he was bullshitting about fighting a bear in some Mobile AL Redneck bar.

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