clintthecrippler

Not that I needed more reasons - as if main eventing against Hogan and Flair, making Mick Foley's career with their series of legendary matches, calling Dusty Rhodes an egg sucking dog, putting ECW and Sabu on the wrestling map, and brawling with Steve Austin after calling Jim Ross an "Okie ASSHOLE!" wasn't enough - but Terry Funk fully cemented my fandom of his forever one Sunday 23 years ago in Northern Michigan. I shared this story a few years back in a thread about my favorite live wrestling experiences. Thank you Terry for making the town that night even though you were also needed somewhere more important. ----- R.A.W. COMES TO TOWN!" (R.A.W. = "Renegades Alliance of Wrestling") and Terry Funk makes an indie date on the same night as a WCW PPV booking two hours later and 700 miles away. I went to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a small city called Marquette, home to Northern Michigan University. The local celebrity was Mike Shaw (Bastion Booger/Norman The Lunatic), who was a native to the region and retired there to raise his family once his WWF days were over. He would work at a local copper mine during the summer, and while school was in session, he would work nights/weekends as a doorman/bouncer at one of the more popular college bars in town. About once a year, a money mark would try to promote a wrestling show in the area using Shaw as a draw, but would never be more than a one-off. I recall there was one with a local casino that brought in Brooklyn Brawler to work Shaw, and there was another one at one of the area hockey arenas that had a fake Doink and a fake La Parka but somehow had real Meng while he was still under WCW contract. But the most notorious of these one-offs was when "R.A.W." came to town. And when I say "R.A.W.", I mean the Renegades Alliance of Wrestling. The main event was Typhoon vs Tatanka, the semi-main was a tag team match of Sabu/Bruce Hart vs. Brutus Beefcake/Greg Valentine. The promoters rented a frigging BOXING ring from a local gym, which would have been bad enough if it just meant guys bumping on a hard boxing canvas, but they used the boxing ROPES as well, so damn near anything involving running the ropes or climbing the ropes looked like shit, though god bless him that didn't stop Sabu from making three attempts at a springboard bodypress to the outside onto Beefcake, who didn't make any effort to protect Sabu when the rope sagged forward and he went splat on the floor. But this was also the night that Terry Funk endeared himself in my heart forever. The week after flyers/radio commercials for the show started floating around the area and he was advertised as one of the wrestlers appearing, Terry Funk started showing up on WCW TV again. An angle ran that lead to Terry Funk being booked against Kevin Nash at WCW Souled Out 2000...on the same night as the "R.A.W." show. So naturally, my friends and I assumed that Funk would not be appearing on our show. Before doors open, we ran into Eric Ingles working for the local TV station who was there in the afternoon recording pre-show interviews for the 6PM news broadcast that would air a couple of hours before bell time for last-minute promo. He told us Funk was there (side note: the same promoter ran another town three hours away the night before, and one of the undercard wrestlers has since told me that Funk worked the night before in a falls-count-anywhere hardcore match against Shaw and got Muta-level juice when a trash can spot went wrong, which of course is now a holy grail match for me if anyone recorded it that night), and the plan was that Funk would go out to open the show and then immediately hop on a plane to the WCW PPV, which was in Ohio that night so a quick flight was doable provided weather panned out. The show opened with one of Shaw's trainees - "The Irish Luchador" Billy McNeill who ended up working St. Louis indies for a while and running in the same circles as folks like Matt Sydal and Delirious prior to their ROH days - receiving the "R.A.W. Rookie of the Year" award, and then Terry Funk comes storming out of the locker room and assaulting McNeill and issuing an open challenge to anyone in the locker room, which summons Bruce Hart. Bruce Hart and Terry Funk then do a wild five-minute brawl all over the gymnasium before they end up tumbling through a door to outside the gym, where I assume a car was waiting for Funk. Bruce Hart of course being Bruce Hart, comes back to the ring, and on a show that was in a high school and had been promoted as "family-friendly" immediately starts calling Funk a "chicken shit" on the mic. It may not have been a proper match, but Terry Funk cemented my fandom forever that night by still showing up on the same night as a WCW PPV booking, when everyone would have understood if he canceled off the show. And yes, the promoters really did say "R.A.W. Comes to Marquette!" on the flyers/posters promoting the show. In January 2000. When WWE RAW was red-hot.

EDIT: damn double post.

My first thought when I saw that trailer was "God I hope my friends and family that know I am a wrestling fan don't see this on Netflix and start asking 'have you seen this?'" and start asking for my opinion like I am actively watching and saying shit like "oh, you're a wrestling fan, you'll like this show on Netflix!"

LOL the whole "when is PWG going to start streaming" debates are happening again and I am sitting here thinking "you know what. PWG should just go the opposite direction. Don't videotape the shows at all. No live streams. No iPPV on tape delay. No Blu Rays or DVD. Strictly enforce the 'no video recording' request. No video at all ever because FUCK IT ALL AND NO REGRETS." EDIT: Fuck it. Go further. Lock the cell phones. No photos or live tweeting during the show. No one outside finds out what happened until after the show is over. The only photo evidence is an official PWG black and white zine that gets distributed at the next show 13-26 weeks later

"Death Rider In The House of Vampires" - I swear it had a few horror festival screenings a while back but still no official distro since either on physical or digital media. I havent heard a peep on that either in a while. Congrats on not dying from alcohol poisoning during your viewing of Verotika.

As someone who saw that movie (VEROTIKA) at the Los Angeles premiere, I can confirm that is 100 percent a pure unfiltered "vision" perpetrated on the audience by Glenn Danzig. If anyone did try to give notes or suggestions, they were very much NOT listened to. One of the greatest movie going experiences of my life. The laughter within the theater started 2 minutes into the movie and was pretty consistent throughout the whole movie. Made even more hilarious by the fact that Glenn was there in person for a Q&A and it was his birthday too. Happy Birthday Glenn Danzig! Your present this year is everyone in the room laughing at your movie. EDIT: I also would be stunned if this was a union production.

But it did give us the "Jake pretends to relapse before his one-on-one match against Lawler, stumbles and staggers into the ring where multiple officials are out to the ring expressing concern, only to hit the quick snap DDT when the bell rings" angle which was some awesome pro wrestling bullshit. Of course it would have been better if Jake didn't relapse again and then do that while shoot drunk on the indies for the next decade.

The last sentence is pretty much true but I love that during the wrestling-centric part of the movie there is still the dynamic of "gritty REAL wrestling" vs. "SHOWBIZ wrestling" just proving once again that the arguments today of "modern wrestling vs. how it USED to be" are literally as old as the professional wrestling industry itself.

The Brad Armstrong reign is still weird to me. I loved the upset victory (with an incredible finish), but then they did NOTHING on the week-to-week TV with him. No hint of a program or feud. They just occasionally trotted him out to remind everyone he was the North American Champion until he loses to Dibiase in the spring and disappears almost like it never happened.

For me his run in 1984 and first half of 1985 works simply because in Mid-South they do such a great job presenting him as a "fighting from underneath scrapper" IN ADDITION to being the heartthrob babyface. He's not flashy and his promos don't exactly have fire, but the booking is masterful and from bell-to-bell he fits the part for me during that time frame. The fans being on-board for that ride do a lot of heavy lifting for me too. Though I'll be a happy man if I NEVER see that goddamn "Freeze Frame" video ever again.

@Cobra Commander as someone who's very deep into my own Mid-South Wrestling watch project at this point, for me 1984 was very watchable from start-to-finish, other mileage may very most depending on how much you can tolerate plucky underdog babyface Terry Taylor, who I don't seem to mind as much as @SirSmUgly did (warning for you now as you continue your watch @SirSmUgly his push goes much harder the first half of 85). Second half of 83 was a bit of a slog here and there for me, but once the Midnight Express arrive towards the end of the year and the Magnum/Mr. Wrestling II protege angle begins, it's off to the races. Mid-South for me doesn't really start to show signs of sputtering until summer 85, with the Rock N Roll Express departing for JCP, The Snowman being the nadir of Bill Watt's efforts to "replace" the Junkyard Dog, Ted Dibiase starting to be gone more due to increasing Japan bookings, The Nightmare as North American Champion and the Al Perez/Wendell Cooley tag team push, but even then the rising cult favorite status of Jake The Snake Roberts and The Barbarian with the McNeill Boys Club audience, Butch Reed's push as an NWA World Title contender, the Hacksaw Duggan "blinding" angle, and a very awesome feud between The Fantastics and Bill Dundee/Dutch Mantel (if Watts was so keen on getting the tag belts quickly to a "good looking guys" team it should have been to The Fantastics instead of Perez/Cooley because that feud was damn fun) keep things engaging enough even as other misfires are happening throughout the rest of the card. And in October 1985, things pick back up and all hell begins breaking loose with Dick Slater and Buzz Sawyer coming to Mid-South, the former with Dark Journey to feud with Butch Reed and the latter with a HEAVY heat angle to jumpstart a feud with Hacksaw Duggan that leads to some WILD house show matches, Lord Humongous becomes a stand-in for an injured/departed Barbarian to feud with Jake Roberts that has some fun twists, and Eddie Gilbert truly begins to find his way as an obnoxious shithead in the "Hot Stuff" persona after a rocky start as "The General" and a weird Tweener period where he flirted with being a heartthrob babyface. Oh, and on the most recent episode of Mid-South Wrestling that I watched earlier this week, a man with the nickname of "Captain Redneck" turns the below screencap into a prime candidate for one of those "Images That Precede Something Horrific" social media threads: I am bummed that the run of Mid-South episodes on Peacock is ending soon after this, but thankfully the remaining January/February 1986 episodes of Mid-South after they move out of Irish McNeill's seem to be on Youtube, and the full run of the main weekly UWF TV episodes seems to be on Youtube as well, so I'm planning to keep this running through that transition as well.

Awesome find brought to light by Rob Viper on Twitter this morning: Rookie year JOHN CENA working second-from-the-top underneath a lucha minis main event at WPW Anaheim Marketplace parking lot lucha show in 2000, coming down with his tag team partner to Inner Circle's "Bad Boys", taking lucha armdrag spots and doing a "fake an injury" heel spot. Link here timestamped to the match.

That 6-man main event was incredible, one of the closest vibes to a classic glory days Michinoku Pro/Toryumon 6-man from back in the day that a modern indie match has pulled off in a long time.

I am at the stage of my Mid-South Wrestling watch project where I hit this episode, and Ric Flair vs Ted Dibiase can never be posted enough for the few on here that have somehow never seen this.

Sadly no free link yet for the full match, it was two "NJPW Strong" branded shows that aired as PPV's through the NJPW World service (no idea why these shows were extra cash), but below is a highlight reel https://youtu.be/r4bm8dwNX6Y though looking back on this, the tag match the night before that was Desperado/Jun Kasai vs Jon Moxley/Homicide may have been wilder, no highlight reel for that floating around though.

Wow, thats on me for reading too fast. I did not catch that your link was for the 2022 match, and NOT the Korakuen Hall rematch from last week, which was also frigging bonkers.

And a hot sold out Korakuen Hall crowd to witness it!

I normally can't stand the modern trend these days on the indies of having an emphatic "fighting spirit" kickout-at-1 spot, but this may have been one of the best versions of that spot ever, as I can buy an adrenaline rush hitting of "he really hit MY finish on ME? THAT MOTHERFUCKER!" I have loved that both of these matches have been way more HATE-fueled than I was expecting. And last night we somehow got dangerous AJPW 90s-era head-droppy stuff AND Sgt Slaughter/Iron Sheik spots with the Canadian flag standing in for the American flag in the same match! Aside from the "Don Callis just waltzes back to the ring with impunity" shenanigans - which ultimately I wasn't as angry about by the end of the match since ultimately Will still had to EARN the victory after that went down - this honestly was one of the most perfect wrestling matches for me ever.

Looks like they were on opposite sides of a bunch of tag team matches while both were in Dallas 1989 during the World Class to USWA transition.

I may be misremembering, but I have in my head that a large part of the UWF purchase being such a financial disaster was that the vaunted "UWF syndication network" that was so attractive turned out to consist mostly of zero-income time barters and in a significant numbers of markets, full-on time buys? And that JCP didn't find out about that aspect of the syndication network until after the sale? As far as Magnum TA is concerned, one alternative timeline scenario I never thought of until now. Let's say Magnum stays healthy and conquers Nikita in I QUIT II at Starrcade 86, and then they have him beat Flair for the NWA World Title in December in Greensboro or Atlanta, but it ends up being a quickie change (as most Flair title losses resulted in back then), is the UWF purchase potentially salvaged by having Magnum be the one that beats One Man Gang for the UWF Championship instead of Bubba, and you build to Magnum vs Flair rematch at Starrcade 87 to unify the belts with Magnum being victorious?

An incredible promo where backstage interviewer Kal Rudman attempts to humanize The Iron Sheik and practically begs wrestling fans to not murder him after he won the WWF Championship, and Sheiky Baby responds with a subdued but really good "serious World Champion" promo ahead of the evening's championship defense against challenger, Tito Santana.

I am at the stage in my Mid-South watch project where Bob Sweeten is back in 1985 to replace Ted DiBiase in the Mid-South Tag Team Championship team with Dr. Death Steve Williams. I stumbled across a Jim Ross podcast clip where he discusses Sweetan's Mid-South runs and matter-of-factly describes Sweetan as a "piece of shit" (his exact words) but then talks about how he was brought in by Grizzly Smith, and I honestly shudder about how there is no way they did not know about the other's proclivities and God forbid shared that interest while being in the territory at the same time. There is also the incredibly unfortunate tag team on one of the 82/83 episodes of Bob Sweetan...and Ken Wayne.

I am in September 1985 and Duggan has been off TV for a month and his absence feels even more pronounced then. It's still a great week-to-week watch but the wheels are getting a little rickety and the engine is sputtering a little bit, most notably with the tag team scene.

That's why I can't get into Lapsed Fan. I listened to their Black Saturday series which was genuinely incredible and they did fantastic work as far as research and putting the events that happened in the context of the era, and ultimately the final thesis of "Ole Anderson was already a dinosaur running the territory into the ground BEFORE Vince stepped into the picture" was well-backed up. But goddamn was it a chore to endure multiple 2-3 minute long "comedy bits" where the gist of the joke is "Jim Barnett was GAY!" And it reminded me why I immediately checked out every other time I had checked out Lapsed Fan before that. Cut the bad comedy out and those Black Saturday podcasts are the absolute greatest "wrestling history" podcast episodes ever.

The entire match is fantastic fun and was one of my favorite "2020 stuck in the house" viewing finds. The overall match structure is super-minimalist, just two dudes trading strongman moves like full-nelsons and forearm smashes (Superstar gets Putski in a full-nelson, Putski reverses into his own full-nelson, and so on) and the crowd eats it all up on every reversal from Putski until finally THAT pop.