clintthecrippler

Its funny in hindsight that with such an incredible leap in video quality from VHS to DVD, that for my friends to take the plunge on buying a DVD player it was initial releases like the Matrix and the Lord of the Rings movies, but for me, the "killer app" that got me to join the DVD generation was the 2002 release of the Hulk Still Rules DVD set.

But if Terry Taylor is to be believed, don't forget the pot of coffee that you drink when you roll into the arena at 6PM still hungover from the night before and have to hit the ring around 9PM to go 45-60 minutes.

Learning that Grim Reefer's full legal name is "Grimmace Reefer" was quite the fun joke. As stated earlier, I dug the Court gimmick overall, though it lost some steam as the show went on, and the "objection" gimmick seemed to do more to grind matches to a halt as an unnecessary complication than adding to the gimmick. I could see that working out great as a 13-episode hourlong gimmick like the Masked Wrestler, but I could see this becoming a drag if they keep it up over multiple 3-hour shows.

The "GCW Court" gimmick they are doing for this show is my exact kind of inspired stupid. Loving that once the "court" began the "trial phase" that wrestlers started coming to the Peoples Court theme, presented arguments and counter arguments before the matches and have Jordan Cassel doing the "on the way out" interviews.

I have such a reverence for Wrestlemania III (primarily for being the perfect age for it - 9 years old - and being a Michigan kid) that it is easily my most watched and rewatched wrestling event of all time for me, and I have joked with multiple friends about how if I am in the hospital and they are going to pull the plug, throw Wrestlemania III on and let me die with that on in the background. Just don't let me die during Billy Jack vs Hercules. I am pretty sure you go to hell if you die during that match. P.S. Holy shit the earlier review of the Harley/JYD match is 100 percent spot-on. Its like Harley took every over-the-top bump he would normally take in a 30-minute NWA World Title match making the local hero a star and jammed them into the 5 minutes allotted because he knew that was the only way to salvage a match against 1987 JYD. And on the topic of Duggan's post Mid-South selfishness, goddamn I want to know what Vince told him to go along with getting absolutely destroyed by Yokozuna the way he did. Vince probably promised Duggan a title program after Yoko got the belt knowing damn well that he had no intention of putting Hacksaw in that position.

Venues i still need to see live wrestling in: Korakuen Hall - for the obvious reasons of its history because I think every important pre-2000's wrestler worked there at some point except for maybe Rock and Hunter. Kyoto KBS Hall - for the obvious reasons of beauty. Center Stage Theater - have gotten to see concerts there but not wrestling yet but even seeing the seating and knowing immediately what every view for watching wrestling in that building was like still gave me chills when I walked in. And the next two are primarily because they tie into the "when did you become a wrestling fan" conversation: Mid-Hudson Civic Center - again, pretty much every major WWF name from 1984 (the year I started watching wrestling as a child) through 1995 wrestled in that building at some point and I love that Northeast Wrestling still runs some of their more loaded shows there. Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium - same as above, but for every major JCP name between 1973 and 1990 and many moments for me watching Worldwide Wrestling in 1985 and 1986, and the acoustics still sound awesome when I watch live streams of modern indie shows there when the crowd is hot. Nashville Fairgrounds - I didn't have the pleasure of getting to watch the Memphis stars as a kid but the classic footage became some of my favorite to seek out when I started tape trading and the fact that its the one classic "CWA/USWA/Championship Wrestling" venue where wrestling still runs fairly regularly is awesome. Venues i have had the pleasure of watching wrestling in: Reseda American Legion - got to attend plenty of shows between 2008 and 2012 and yeah the vibe in that room combined with cheap Legion Hall beer was fucking incredible. I have been to The Globe Theater a couple of times since the move. The shows are still great but the vibe will never match that tiny building in Reseda. ECW Arena/Hammerstein Ballroom - got to cross both of these off during that first ECW One Night Stand weekend and experience arguably the most high-energy of the myriad of ECW reunion shows and FRONT ROW for Samoa Joe vs Necro Butcher holy fucking shit. Madison Square Garden - I finally got to cross this off the list with the NJPW show in 2019, though it would have been much more satisfying to get there when they still had the old center entrance setup, there were still a lot of chills for me walking into that arena. P.S. when I went to Mania weekend 2016 in Dallas, I made sure to take a few minutes to walk around the vacant lot that used to the home to the Dallas Sportatorium and pay my respects. P.P.S. I will also totally shout out the Ukrainian Cultural Center, current home to GCW's Los Angeles events which is as gorgeous of a room as it looks on the live streams and really way too nice of a room for that sort of skullduggery. P.P.P.S. oh yeah, I just remembered I got to cross off some old-school style STUDIO WRESTLING in 2003 when The Sheik's son was running his AWWL shows in Michigan at the ABC affiliate in Lansing. Getting to see Sabu, Jerry Lynn, and Kevin Sullivan tear it up in a traditional studio wrestling environment was a damn fine way to spend a Saturday morning. Wrestling's pretty awesome sometimes, you guys!

Jeez, PN News was a portly fella but remarking that he is so fat he makes up 3/4 of tag team match is just mean.

These shows were very educational. For example, I learned that Joey Maggs (excuse me..."Magnificent Magliano") defeated Negro Casas at the Cow Palace and Akira Nogami at "The Budokan" in the qualifying rounds if the U.S. Junior Heavyweight Championship Tournament - source: "Magnificent Magliano" These ended up being some damn fun background noise viewing. Junkyard Dog and Iron Sheik seem shockingly motivated, almost as if they were treated this as a potential gateway to that "one last big run" that every wrestler thinks they have, even if their bodies aren't cooperating anymore (especially so in the case of the Iron Sheik). And if you like jobbers getting destroyed, there are some incredible beatings administered by Steve Doll and Rex King (the future Well Dunn), which makes the casting of aspersions by babyfaces in promos about the two of them being "a little funny" even more dissonant on top of simply "being from another time". It's wild watching Steve Armstrong and Wendell Cooley talk about Doll and King being partners "outside the ring" as an insult after Doll and King just committed attempted manslaughter on their opponents. Also, did you know that Austin Idol was in a horrific car accident in 1991? If not, you sure will after it gets referenced five times per episode in some television formatting that would make Dusty Rhodes say "dial it down a little bit, Austin". And you have ring announcing duties being handled by Mike Jackson! Come for the above selling points, keep returning for every time the Iron Sheik shouts "camera man, ZOOM!" at the ringside camera man directly in front of him but the director maintains the hard-cam wideshot instead. An entertaining run of studio wrestling television despite the bummer of knowing in hindsight that the big "Battle at Boutwell" supercard that all of this was building to was canceled due to a freak once-per-century snow storm that dumped 13 inches of snow on Alabama that weekend, and the promotion aired one last TV and went out of business from there ☹

Conrad's just living the dream. What man hasn't fantasized about facilitating the death of an in-law? Conrad has that figured out AND he is going to profit off of it, to boot.

Advisory to anyone scrolling too fast, the show date listed is "July 69" and listed as taking place in "nopeland, OR". Its one of the fake flyers from the Tom's Custom Twitter account whose gimmick is creating fake match flyers that are really well-done if you're not looking at the text that closely.

WCW/TBS did a random switcheroo of WCW Main Event and WCW Pro's time slots in Summer 1996 and that was how it remained until both programs ended in 1998, so any memories of either show being a Saturday morning or Sunday evening program are BOTH correct.

LMFAO at Zona 23 being a reference point for a "WCW, everybody!" joke. Reminds me of when WWE debuted RAW Underground and now terrible and badly produced that looked, and then a week later ICW No Holds Barred ended up having to move a scheduled outdoor show into a barn with no ring because of a rainstorm and that came off as a billion times more edgier and sleazier than WWE's effort that had about 500 times the budget. I couldn't find Meltzer's exact review of the match, but I did find the following on a BitChute posting of the match, this seems to be maybe from a recap of his Eyada show that night or the day after? "Then, the Junkyard Battle Royal. Which was apparently for the newly created WCW Hardcore title, which you wouldn't have known before because WCW never even bothered to announce that they were creating a hardcore title until the match began. Filmed at a junkyard, outside in the dark, with no professional lighting. Had to climb the fence and escape the junkyard to win, which should have led to a bunch of dramatic near escapes (you know, like a cage match) but didn't because that would have made too much sense. There was a helicopter filming from above and you couldn't even make out half the people in the match. Silver King ended up cutting his shoulder badly and needed 60 stitches to close it. Hak was hospitalized after with a separated shoulder and neck injury. Hugh Morrus needed stitches in his hand. Mikey Whipwreck got a concussion. Dave says it might as well have been Brawl-For-All given the risk/reward ratio of the match. Dave doesn't even want to rate the match, saying it's not fair to the guys who worked hard but it was filmed so poorly that it was just unwatchable."

Not disputing how stupid the Junkyard Invitational was (and plenty others got injured enough to warrant its status as a debacle), but Finlay's injury happened on a house show shortly afterwards. I believe the story has always been it was a table spot during a hardcore match with Brian Knobbs where instead of being the pre-fab table that would become the norm in WWE and later elsewhere, it was just a formica table they had grabbed from somewhere in the building that night, and definitely was NOT designed with the idea of having anyone driven through it.

I thought the Disco timeline was that he got asked to put over Jackie, refused, got fired, worked indies for a few months, attempted to squeeze his way into the WWF (no idea how close this was to actually happening but the big RUMORZ from folks like SCOOPS was that he was going to be the protégé brought into WWF by Honky Tonk Man that ended up being Billy Gunn in the "RockaBILLY" gimmick), and then ended up crawling back to WCW who gave him the ultimatum of fulfilling the original request of jobbing to Jackie when he came back.

Yeah, I do give him credit for having one of the most refreshing takes on leaving the business. I think SLAM Wrestling or another old-school wrestling website posted an interview with him a few years back and he straight up said the first week that he worked a non-wrestling job and was home in his bed at a reasonable hour every night and had a weekend to himself he knew he was never going back.

Kelly had the candidate for worst promo ever in Mid-Atlantic that I believe started the "how not to cut a promo" thread which I genuinely can't tell if that makes him worse than Nick because he cut that promo or better than Nick because it was so bad that its more memorable than anything Nick did. And now I am bummed that I can't seem to locate that promo anywhere at the moment.

My favorite variant of this tried-and-true joke was Paul E. in WCW 1991 during a WCW Patriots match: "Mr. and Mrs. Chip had nine months and the best they came up with was FIREBREAKER?"

Didn't TNA have an Eric Young/Orlando Jordan tag team where part of the gimmick was that EY was oblivious to Orlando Jordan's sexual persuasion? TNA threw a lot at the wall during that time frame so I am not ruling out that this was entirely a fever dream that I imagined as well.

No one else from the family must have been in the building because the most shocking part of that is that the Parks went into business for themselves on a Samoan and didn't end up in the hospital themselves.

What made me laugh almost as hard was when the original WWE Hall of Fame package announcing Harlem Heat as inductees aired, they included this in the clips reel but cut if off before THAT part: Booker T: "Hulk Hogan, I'm coming for you..." (IMMEDIATE JUMP CUT to VOICEOVER ANNOUNCER) Voiceover announcer: "Harlem Heat were 10-time WCW Tag Team Champions..."

EDIT: double post

I know many of us have our Holy Grails and other lists of footage they wished existed, arena cards 1970s single-city territories that were basically the pro wrestling version of "All Star Games" on a monthly basis are the peak of my "dammit I am bummed that I will never see these matches/cards. We got a little taste of that from the "pre-Mid South exclusive" Houston footage that got out there through NWA On Demand a few years back, but those post-Sheik Toronto cards, Muchnick's St. Louis cards from the peak of the NWA, and 1970s Hawaii shows that had all tons of American talent stopping over on the way to and from Japan, some of those cards (especially the Hawaii card) are absolutely mind-blowing in terms of stacked talent in interesting matchups that didn't play out on a loop anywhere else.

I do find it curious that after multiple apologies and years of being incident-free and working matches with gay wrestlers, that the Briscoes are apparently blackballed by unnamed executives but the current TNT Champion allegedly had a WWE offer pulled after some similarly cringe tweets during the same time period that were most decidedly NOT gay-friendly. And if all three of them have honestly changed or at the very least, recognize why what they said was hurtful, then good on them.

Thats definitely a fair assessment when you take some of the things CYN is trying to do at face venue. Personally, I think in 2022 if you are trying to be anything more than just another indie, doing ANYTHING to stand out and/or not pull a TNA circa 2010 and become "WWE on a budget" is at least worth trying.

Miz, Tarver, and Daniel Bryan all with proper reactions to someone running down the CYN "rules". Now that I see him in this pic, how has Ryback not gotten wrapped up in the CYN thing yet? At the very least, if they really want to stand out in a "no type suicidas and no Canadian destroyers" way, booking Ryback vs Braun as a big man main event battle seems like a way to do so. Or is - and this is a scary thought - is CYN too galaxy brain even for Ryback? (Or vice versa?) Though also given that Ryback (a) hasn't wrestled since 2018 and (b) seems to have tried a few non-wrestling related business endeavors the last few years, I could also see him viewing photos from that live show they did a few weeks back and rightfully recognizing that this is going to be money-losing waste of everyone's time.