Elsalvajeloco

If I have, it wasn't much. I have something to seek out now.

I was watching some stuff from a 1981 Memphis Gang Wars comp on Youtube yesterday, and there was a match on there between Jerry Lawler and Nightmare #1 (Danny Davis, the Louisville one for clarity). Boy howdy, it was awesome even though it was short. And mostly, it was because of Danny Davis. This motherfucker starts off the match with some shit you would see Jon Jones do in a UFC title fight or maybe World of Sport. Nightmare #1 and Lawler are standing straight up parallel to each other and Nightmare #1 has his back to the ropes. He hooks his right leg around Lawler's calf and trips him with ease. I've NEVER seen that before. Maybe in MMA, again. Not pro wrestling. The rest of the match is just him trading moves with Lawler and bumping all over the place for Lawler. Everything is done to perfection. So yes, I can see why Danny Davis was asked to play a hand in running a developmental promotion and train people. I am believer.

This is one of those 1 + -1 is zero things. Also, as much as one can love Derrick Lewis, Derrick Lewis conceivably having a third chance at UFC gold is some improbable stuff that should not be taking place in the year of our lord 2025.

It is outright crazy that the Couture story popped up right after the Askren recovery story came out.

Giving the prevalence of blading then, I would think similarly of not every night but still most nights. You don't do a dog collar match and then turn it down a few notches cause you're in a smaller market or arena. At best, they probably just worked the same match but with one or two less over the top violent highspots.

"**something something** auditioning for RuPaul!" Slightly confused crowd:....Yeah? Ok yeah!

Thing is though: (1) Piper would have done all those negatives as a heel and somehow been more offensive cause he had to get heat, which would have him more insufferable and (2) once he turned babyface in WWF, it would have been tough to turn him back just like the fans didn't want heel Flair or Macho Man (btw it didn't help that heel and face Macho Man in the late 90s were the same). Piper, once you get past some of the ranting especially the weirdness during the Halloween Havoc 96 debut, in the Hogan program was good enough where it could draw big. Once you get to him locking himself in Alcatraz and then sailing back and recruiting his own team just for them to be replaced by the Four Horsemen, all bets are off. Just like what happened with Warrior in 98, Bischoff should have done a better job at reeling him in.

Piper as a face was fine. Piper trying to do his open mic comic routine while being overtly homophobic and constantly talking about Viagra....not so much. There are signs during the buildup to his match against Lawler for King of the Ring 1994 that he had lost a bit off the fastball. Those pretapes, which they had to clearly edit down, were horrendous. Then, it's full on cringe as the years pass. In small doses and (more importantly) shorter segments, he was tolerable. You can tell once Nitro is about 3-4 years in, his appearances become less and less special. That crazy pop he could garner in 96 and early 97 eventually becomes a very polite "hey, it's a guy from the glory days" pop. He also loses the crowd A LOT. If you want to build an argument about wrestling needing to be scripted, look no further than that era Roddy Piper.

For that era Sid, that might as well be a 60 minute broadway.

No, I am also somewhat of that mind. However, I have to add in the context that by the time I saw the Boogie Woogie Man, he was pretty much done on that level. At best, I caught him at the very tail end of his run. Then, after that, it was like on TV through appearances in late era Memphis when they were struggling to put a few thousand people into the Mid South Coliseum. By then, I was wondering, "why do they keeping bringing this decrepit Rip Van Winkle looking S.O.B. back?". I had no context of why he was who he was. IMO Jimmy is one of those guys (along with other Starrcade 83 luminaries like Bugsy McGraw and Rufus R. Jones) who became obsolete once you entered a certain era of pro wrestling where even guys who were mostly personality had to display some type of "workrate". It also doesn't help that the enhancement talent once it was just a big two were guys who were insanely over qualified to be that. So even the guys losing regularly on TV would be able to put on amazing matches if you let them. There are no guys around now where their sole responsibility is to liven up the audience to a molten hot level by putting in the least amount of effort required. The closest is Dusty's 1994 mini return in WCW and also his ECW run where guys are just running into his elbow while he just stands there.

And it's probably because Heenan's friendship with Steinbrenner or Munson's death being in the news.

Problem is WWF already had multiple Ivans whether it was someone like Putski or Koloff. In that era, he was giving people "unique" names like Thurman and Waylon. Unless it's Thurman Thomas or Waylon Jennings, I don't recall multiple people having those first names. Anyway, it was based on a Heenan joke so Vince probably that I. Yankem was enough.

So why hasn't anyone pitched the wrestling version of Love Island?

If Garvin had lasted a couple more years in WWF, we would have potentially got Garvin vs. Tenryu on like an SWS show or something.

Why are people surprised at all when a man in Mick Foley whose forever gimmick was he couldn't get women in school cause he was strange and ugly married a goddamn super model? No only that but they got together when he was flat broke and being a human crash test dummie, and she was the breadwinner. Some people aren't entirely shallow, thankfully. Janela is basically lesser Mick Foley anyway, which is hilarious.