clintthecrippler

I dont think I have ever heard the story of how he came to be Paul Bearer in the WWF to begin with. We he already on his way to come in as Percy and Vince heard about the funeral home background and pivoted him to being Paul? Or did someone in the office (maybe Bruce?) tell Vince about his background and he was specifically brought in to be Paul Bearer from there?

On the topic of Striker commentary, I am reminded at how audibly annoyed Jim Ross was getting at Striker when they called the one Wrestle Kingdom traditional PPV some years back, most notably when Striker noted someone as "swerving" their opponent, a former stable mate, and JR just goes "I dont know anything about a 'swerve'...what you are saying is that he is a LIAR!" I look forward to your reviews and recaps on this watch project.

I saw Incredibly Strange Wrestling at Warped Tour 2001. If I recall correct, the band Less Than Jake worked an angle with...Uncle NAMBLA. During the wrestling portion Less Than Jake saved Uncle NAMBLA's opponent from a post-match attack where Uncle NAMBLA was attempting to do..."Uncle NAMBLA-type things", and then Uncle NAMBLA came out during Less Than Jake's set and failed to get his revenge and got beat down one more time by the band. And may that never be a sentence that I type anywhere ever again. P.S. also, if I recall correctly, this was how Incredibly Strange Wrestling would subsequently claim attendances of 10,000 people or more for a time, they would just fail to mention that they had been a side attraction at Warped Tour.

I rewatched Dr. Strangelove over the weekend for the first time in about 15 years and boy oh boy, does a movie where the global population is destroyed in a nuclear catastrophe all because of one mentally ill person that is drunk with power, suffering from sexual inadequacy, and babbling about flouride poisioning hit a lot harder in 2025 than any other time in my life since I first saw it during my teenage years thirty years ago. It was also a bit of a mindfuck watching Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning the next day and seeing parallels in the way the topic of "acceptable death" came up during discussions of preemptive nuclear strike in both movies. Between that and Ethan's journey inside the Entity Mask/Coffin having some "eye closeup" shots that reminded me of Dave dealing with HAL's meltdowns in 2001: A Space Odyssey, I wonder if Cruise and McQuarrie went on a Kubrick kick while in pre-production of the final M:I flick. I also did a second watch of Friendship over the weekend. A woman sitting in the row behind us kept going "Oh God" or "Oh No" every ten minutes like she was watching a horror movie, and that was absolutely the best cinematic viewing experience for a second watch of that movie. Also, A24 announced the Blu-Ray release this week, and one of the special features is:

I had a similar experience with my first time viewing of Tetsuo The Iron Man. First time I think I was prepared for something that might be "fucked up" but still a traditional movie, if that makes sense. Second time, I approached it with the mindset that I am basically watching a 70-minute long music video, and it absolutely clicked and washed over me from there. And agreed with whoever recommended Tokyo Fist earlier, that might be my second favorite Tsukamoto work next to the first Tetsuo flick.

I was in the crowd for Wrestlemania 2023 and the remainder of my life will be a little empty because I will never again experience the simultaneous emotions of feeling bad that someone just got hurt while also knowing that I just saw the funniest shit I will ever see in my entire life. Thank you, Shane McMahon, for giving me that moment.

Okay that makes sense a little bit to me. It still seems like two redundant titles since the Evolve program is 90 percent ID wrestlers, though I guess having a separate Evolve Championship opens that up to whoever they decide to send down from main NXT/Orlando here and there like Nikita Lyons. Its just very 1986 JCP to me where there was that lengthy period where the United States, National, Television, and Mid-Atlantic championships all existed at the same time. Losing two of those belts by the end of 1986 was very much needed.

Watching the all-time classic 7/4/1983 match between the Von Erichs and the Freebirds and it really isn't talked about enough how the Freebirds were so over as heels those rat bastards got thousands of fans in TEXAS booing at the sound of WILLIE NELSON's voice. https://youtu.be/zZiY92IVdrs?si=hrdmaIhfPJKz2bce

Poked my head into the WWE Evolve show on Tubi for the first time. Why the fuck is there both a WWE EVOLVE Championship AND a WWE ID Championship?

Awesome, Monsoon Classic to the rescue! Thanks!

Well damn, whatever YouTube account posted a 4 minute supercut of Finkel announcing Jose LUIS Rivera after his death got taken down ☹

Sabu was my favorite wrestler for a solid two years before I even got to witness a match of his thanks to magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated running pictures of him putting his opponents through tables and other chaotic scenarios every month in the mid-90s before I was on the Internet, before the WWF flipped to "The Attitude Era", before WCW got "invaded" by the nWo, and before tables became commonplace on TV wrestling. So far today I have seen him noted as wrestling's analog to how mythical The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was for horror movies and how Slayer was for heavy metal, and both are absolutely accurate. This one hurts.

Great Muta, NWA in 1989, was my ground-zero for cheering for a heel. I was 11 years old. The mist, the face paint, and the moonsault. How could I NOT think "this dude is fucking awesome, I dont care that he's a 'bad guy'?"

Only if the movie starts with him reffing Minour Suzuki vs Butterbean and does the record scratch/"you may be wondering how I got here" gimmick.

I think there is something to be said for the argument that WWE is mirroring how society moves these days. I am not the biggest fan of WWE product these days and certainly shook my head at the decisions made with the Wrestlemania main event (for me, it was the Travis Scott thing combined with Cody looking like a weenie when he hesitated hitting Cena with the belt), but most of modern social media culture, entertainment culture, and even legit sports culture to some degree is dedicated to capturing a "MOMENT." It ties back into what has always come off as hollow to me whenever a Cornette type starts ranting that the way to "fix" modern wrestling is to go entirely back to the old ways. I grew up on Hulkamania WWF and Crockett-era NWA, and 1983 is one of the most incredible years in American wrestling history across the board. But the only way that "do what worked in 1983 and ONLY what worked in 1983" would be successful would be if EVERYTHING in the world was exactly like it was in 1983. Fuck, "do what we did in 1983" wouldnt have worked in 1995 for any entertainment or sports related industry, let alone 2025.

I sometimes like to pretend that the movie in this sketch is also part of Zach Creggars' real life directorial canon. C

In which Roddy Piper, Bob Orton, King Tonga, and Siva "Superfly" Afi get off a plane in Kuwait in 1986, get to the soccer stadium to see there are only 300 people in attendance, and say "let's put these empty chairs to use" and brawl all over the field, fling chairs at each other, and otherwise commit to putting on way too crazy of a match to make sure those few hundred people had the time of their lives.

I went to an all-day "MULLETS AND BULLETS" marathon on Saturday, put on by a programming group called "Secret Sixteen," called that because the movies all screen on 16mm prints and are secret until they start playing on the big screen: 1. BLIND FURY (1990) - Rutger Hauer as a blind Vietnam vet that has become an expert swordsman after his debilitation, taking on a Reno crime syndicate. Just nonstop awesome and some fun one liners throughout. I had seen before but was pure joy to see again with an audience. 2. SLAYGROUND (1983) - a first time view for me. British/American co-production, more of a revenge thriller/drama. A hockey coach's daughter accidentally dies in a heist gone wrong, so he hires a mysterious assassin to take out the gang that that staged the heist. Very slow paced but very fascinating in that its ultimately shot and blocked like a horror movie, with set pieces that would be at home in an early 80s slasher. Its basically a "boogeyman" horror movie but this time the boogeyman has a gun. 3. THE INSTRUCTOR (1983) - a first time watch for me and almost everyone else in the room. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. The peak of the day. This is basically a MIAMI CONNECTION situation but in the 70s. A martial arts instructor in Ohio started making a movie in the mid-70s, didn't finish it until the early 80s, joined the footage together as if it were one narrative, and put out to the world one of the greatest blends of incompetence and ambition I have ever seen. The lead is a short, pudgy gentleman that is cast as a world beating ass kicker in some wonderfully hilarious fight scenes, there are car chases shot without proper permits or blocking that absolutely endangered the lives of local Ohio townsfolk, a final fight scene that is almost equally audacious, and one of the most wildly hilarious ending resolutions I have ever seen. 4. RENEGADES (1989) - first time watch for me. Keifer Sutherland is an undercover cop caught up in a heist gone wrong of his own, and crosses paths with Lou Diamond Phillips as a Native American displaying a family artifact at a local museum that also gets on the radar of the group behind the original heist. Some very cringe "80s humor" regarding Native American relations aside, a fun boilerplate "buddy" actioner. Not blowing away the world but probably was perfectly fine to watch on USA or TBS on a Sunday afternoon in the 90s. 5. VIGILANTE (1982) - my favorite William Lustig flick. Still dirty and grimy after all these years. A fun bit in the theater at the beginning as everyone began clapping along with the awesome opening synth-and-guitar title score as a final moment of levity before grim darkness followed throughout the movie. Still a pretty powerful movie 40 years later. 6. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985) - an all time classic to end the night with a crowd pleaser.

Not every US band, some of them had it changed to "South Canada" as well.

During his Talk Is Jericho podcast appearing after signing with AEW, Moxley referenced a line that WWE creative wanted him to include in a promo during his heel Ambrose run after Roman had returned from his initial leukemia treatments: This promo also had a line regarding my actual friend who's going through actual Leukemia that Vince wanted me to say, and he tried to talk me into saying. This is where I absolutely drew the line. I was like, 'Absolutely not' and he actually tried to talk me into it a little bit but I was like, 'Absolutely not' and he was like, 'If you feel uncomfortable that's fine.' Like no, that's when I finally had to put my foot down, and it's the worst line." Moxley recalled. "I'm not going to say it on air. I'll tell you after we're done, but I'm not even gonna say it on air. That's how bad it was. It would've been like a thing where somebody would've had to get fired, maybe me. They might've lost sponsors, like the Susan G. Komen and all that and I don't know who wrote it, I don't know if it was Vince himself or if it was a writer -- if you're listening right now, you should be ashamed of yourself. You wouldn't believe it. But if I just said it, if I would've just been, 'Ok' and just read the script, I can't imagine but it would've been on me, not on Vince.

I started a World Class watch project recently, and while Mercer is definitely not a "call every move or even name every move correctly" play by play man, his background coming from the news and pro sports industry shines immensely on the 82/83 WCCW I have watched so far. He is a fantastic interviewer as we and has that Lance Russell quality of being able to lead someone back on track when they get lost a little bit (a VERY important trait when you are out there with the Von Erichs). I would also say that given that World Class TV was the first to really go heavy into the outside the ring "personality profile" type vignettes (at the pool hall with the Freebirds, at the H&H offices with Gary Hart, at the hair salon with Jimmy Garvin), Mercer's presence keeps these type of segments from coming off like the corny comedy of later WWF takes on these types of segments, and grounds them with a presentation that keeps them more along the lines of "human interest" TV news pieces, almost as if Charles Kuralt became a wrestling announcer. A helluva life and career, dude told Lee Harvey Oswald he was charged with assassinating the President AND got pushed down a waterslide by Bugsy McGraw!

I genuinely love the overdub theme they do for Jimmy on these old Crockett shows, that upbeat piano blues track really does fit almost perfectly. If you can't license "Boy From New York City", that really is a "second best" song you can have for the Boogie Woogie Man. The overdub they use for JYD in Mid South is also damn great too.

So...what do we know about this alternate Big Van Vader WCW entrance theme (with LYRICS!) that also got uncovered with today's WWE Vault posting? Perhaps a deleted track from the WCW Slam Jam sessions? https://x.com/IANdrewDiceClay/status/1903473549316165748?t=VUoBpRR-7frNXCM-qjOesA&s=19

I am 46 years old and my thought process on that is if I slip, will it actually be a WORSE outcome if I land on my feet instead of my body.

I got slapped in the face by the realization of how aged i am in 2025 because my first thought upon seeing the Mox spot was "Goddamn how many sixth-generation dubbed VHS tapes of that spot would Dave's Wrestling Emporium have sold back in the day?" and then realizing that it has been at least 25 years since I last thought of that website.