The Green Meanie

Watched the 10/13/85 WWF house show from Maple Leaf Gardens today, they used the full-blown NWA ring, and man can you hear those cables in action every time the wrestlers bounce off of them. I can't remember the ropes ever being so audible before.

Re: Bliss I admit before the draft, I had never heard of her, knew nothing of her character. Since she's been on Smackdown though she's consistently been the best women's wrestler on the show and dare I say the whole company, which is pleasantly surprising. As for Ellsworth, I'm really happy they are continuing to go with this. Since he got a his own theme music and Titantron does this mean he'll get a contract? Who would have thought months ago when he first went against Strowman that he'd have the following he does know? It harkens back to the days of the 1-2-3 Kid appearing on Raw several times then finally getting that one win over Razor and getting a spot on the main roster.

This. If it opened the archives somewhat, I'd be down for the 19.99.

I was actually just trying to find video footage of him being masked - how long did this last?

To be fair, a wrestler's gut instinct is to tuck their chin in.

I believe he's already mentioned both of these, Skandar I can remember at least twice before. Not complaining, just think it's amusing when he does it. I'll never tire of Texas references from him. Another gem from the other week was the Swagger/Oklahoma joke he made when he said Swagger was the valedictorian of his high school because he knew how to read.

So, JBL lost a point for making a pun at the wrong Danny Davis, but he gained that point back with the mention of BRONKO LUBICH.

Does this mean Ellsworth got a contract? I hope so.

That's also not the original design for the Six Man Tag, that's version two:

To be honest, I'm all for the $14.99 tier without the other company footage coming in. I can afford that much and I think it's worth the price every month. I'm happy with in-house stuff but I'd like more old house shows and vintage 60's-70's-80's stuff. If that's coming I don't know, but I can hope!

Yeah, that's not even the correct word. NY Times best selling author, hmm?

So is anyone buying into the story that's been going around that Dolph loses this weekend and gets repackaged?

Surely Nattie could just do what Andy on Mission Hill did and use a styrofoam cup until her insurance kicks in.

Wasn't that pretty much the same match from when the last time Sasha won the belt on Raw? Jobber Watch: both the singles and tag teams were bland this week, and no woman for Nia. Smackdown's only hope to save this week is if Ellsworth gets another payday.

Also, this:

This was a sad point in the Dudley's career as they sprung for lowly Figures, Inc. replicas instead of the real things.

The question now is: who did the better version? Sherri or Kurt?

Yup! Boston Gardens always had the all-yellow floor with the yellow ring steps with black handrail and black wooden crowd barriers. Toronto had that elevated walkway a la NWA/WCW of the 80's. The funny thing is when you're a kid you don't notice stuff like this till later on, one of my favorite matches of all time was when Valentine beat Santana for the IC title in Toronto in a full blown NWA ring. First time I saw it I knew the ring looked weird but had no idea why.

So as a kid the WCW rings fascinated me due to the fact that they had smooth ropes that had a lot less give (which I learned later were cables) and the turnbuckle pads were different looking compared to the WWF's, more of the Japanese style turnbuckles. The NWA/WCW would come up with so many different color combinations using blue/white/yellow/black with sometimes a splash of color thrown in for the aprons, compared to a lack of variety for the WWF rings. The only time you'd get something different was when the ring crew (I would assume) accidentally put the blue rope on top instead of the usual red rope. One way you could tell which arena or city the show was in was to look at the ring itself. Certain towns had their own certain quirks as far as what the ring looked like. The Spectrum in Philaedlphia stands out as they usually had an all-red color scheme with red turnbuckle pads/posts/aprons and the Spectrum logo, then moved to a standard color set but retained the Spectrum logo: One case that I always found interesting was that of the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. It was an NWA territory before the Tunneys sold out to the WWF. For the first few years on WWF shows they pretty much used an NWA ring for WWF matches! It had dark blue canvas, black thin ropes, and blue/yellow turnbuckles. Then they switched to a version with the standard red/white/blue ropes but still used the NWA turnbuckle pads: Some shows had them use a hybrid of NWA and WWF pads before they went fully WWF.

So the recent belt topic reminded me of another aesthetic that I love about professional wrestling and something completely required, and tends to be overlooked; the rings and the varying color combinations, configurations, etc. As a child of the 80's I'd be remiss if I didn't start this list off with the classic blue WWF ring, specifically from after 86, when they started putting the logo on the turnbuckles: Second on the list is one that I discovered as a child watching older Coliseum Video tapes, the WWWF/WWF blue and silver ring from the 70's to early 80's. Simple design, but clean and unique with steel posts and matching duct tape ropes and blue velvet turnbuckles and mat/aprons: One that I didn't know about until I got into import gaming is the classic AJPW split color ring. The all-blue mat is nice as well, but not as good at this one: Dishonorable Mentions I always hated the look of the AWA ring, specifically how the turnbuckle pads always looked like they never fully put them on the turnbuckles since they were only on the top: The ring from the WWF's 1985 Wrestling Classic was just terrible, saggy mat, very thin ropes, no turnbuckle pads but instead the turnbuckles covered with the rope tape: What are some of your favorite rings? There's always a discussion to be had regarding the use of ropes versus cables, rope texture versus smooth cable texture (WCW rings), 3 pad turn buckles versus post turnbuckle (NJPW ring) etc.

Again, SDL wins this week! Another quality episode with compelling stories, wrestlers playing their characters well, etc. Surprisingly, a lot of people were missing this week but the show pulled it off well and didn't need them. Two important things that haven't been pointed out yet: 1) NO Shane or D-BRY AT ALL (Yay!) 2) David Otunga FINALLY told the story of what Rikishi told him on the set of the Adam Sandler movie, and apparently he was in "Bad Man" Rikishi mode.

Agent?

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Greg "Bad News" Allen.