clintthecrippler

Was it confirmed that it was indeed the shoulder? I was worried that it was due to him getting his head split WIDE open from the unprotected chair shot the week after the Tremont defense when they ran the angle with Brandon Kirk.

Hogan wearing the red and yellow at what was presumably a ridiculously overpaid corporate gig in 1997 while deep into his nWo Hollywood Hogan run, with Ed Leslie reprising his Brutus Beefcake gimmick for one night. Goddamn the 90s corporate world was full of absolutely wasteful spending.

I havent seen much of his Japan work from that era but I did a 70s WWWF watch a while back and literally every one of his MSG matches before, during, and after his title reign during that first New York stint is damn fun to watch and everything just feels "big time".

This match was legit one of my favorite discoveries of my "pandemic-induced" wrestling viewing. Match structure is super-minimalist as fuck, simply two strongmen trading strikes and 70s strongman holds like the full-nelson with each other to see which dude is stronger until it finally builds to the big Polish Hammer and the roof explodes off the place.

While I dont think this is what is going to happen, I will enjoy that for now, the absolute funniest outcome of Ohio State winning the National Championship without potentially having to play Michigan again is currently on the table. I can imagine the massive meltdowns that would occur in Ann Arbor if that happens, and also the massive disappointment in the NCAA and ESPN offices if we end up with Ohio State vs TCU as the championship game.

1982 JYD and Kamala were absolute revelations to me when I started my Mid-South watch last year, and I strongly recommend checking out their highlights from this year to anyone. 1982 JYD was an incredible force of charisma and still very athletic at this stage of his career, to the point where I firmly believe the 1982 version of JYD would be a huge star in 2022 without much tweaking at all. 1982 Kamala is incredible to watch too and the combination of speed and size here is some of the absolute scariest shit on the planet. I think you're being a bit harsh on Duggan and Boyd Pierce, but I agree that Paul Ellering during this time frame is some absolute cringe wrestling television and I have no idea why anyone thought he should be a babyface. Fast-forwarding to where I am at in my current watch point of 1985, if anyone out there is looking for a highly entertaining stand-alone episode of wrestling television, the February 14th, 1985 episode of Mid-South Wrestling may be a new all-time favorite for me. In the span of 45 minutes you get: -the first of the Hacksaw Duggan/Ted DiBiase "Best Dressed Man" contests leading into the Tuxedo Cage blowoffs. -Butch Reed vs Kamala in a hard-hitting battle that ends in one of the wildest multi-man brawls in a territory known for them while tying together multiple feud threads seamlessly. -a helluva sprint between Jake Roberts and Brad Armstrong with a particularly venomous pre-match promo from Jake. -damn great tag team wrestling between the Rock N Roll Express and The Guerrero (Hector and Chavo) in a feud that honestly deserves to be much better remembered than it is. And you also get the debut of The Dirty White Boys against baby Shawn Michaels teaming with Tim Horner.

That new Andre suit jacket figure is awesome, though I admit the original Twitter cropping did get my hopes up that they pulled the trigger on a "Rock N Wrestling" cartoon Andre variant.

My tournament: First round: The Assassin (Jody Hamilton) vs. The Assassin (David Sierra) Tito Santana (WWF) vs. Tito Santana (AAA) Doink The Clown (Matt Borne) vs Doink The Clown (Steve Keirn) - Special Guest Referee Doink The Clown (Ray Apollo) Dangerous Doug Gilbert vs. Gashouse Doug Gilbert Second Round: Doink The Clown (Matt Borne) vs. Dangerous Doug Gilbert (Doink goes over here after a switcheroo with Keirn Doink) Tito Santana (WWF) vs. The Assassin (Jody Hamilton) Finals: Tito Santana (WWF) vs Doink The Clown (Borne) vs. Doink The Clown (Keirn) in a 3-way hastily thrown together after the shenanigans of the previous round. WWF Tito goes over.

I am at this exact moment in my viewing of the weekly TV and...

That's honestly why I ended up loving The Last Battle of Atlanta when it finally popped up after so many years of mythologizing based on the magazine coverage of the era and that "no footage exists" was the mantra for so long. There were some that felt let down after building up what the match was in their heads all those years, but I loved that the entire match is Tommy Rich and Buzz Sawyer simply punching and kicking at each other and ramming each other into the cage to draw blood, with the fanciest move of the entire match being a rock-solid piledriver.

I am always happy to see that Bruno/Hansen match get posted. It somehow both redeems WWF/E doing "leave the cage" rules but also exposes why just about every one of them comes off hollow in the years since. Bruno cage matches weren't about a race to be first out of the cage. Bruno cage matches were about Bruno finally getting the heel locked into a situation that they can't get out of, getting his revenge by beating the piss out of them and leaving them bloody, and then casually walking out of the cage once his thirst for revenge is satiated. ELEVENTY BILLION STARS.

Watching this match now and in awe of the fact that Crowbar is 50 years old and still busting out some new twists on moves (here it's a chair-assisted Northern Lights Suplex) and making it look crisp and credible...AND IT GOT THE PIN!

The point about Triple H being a damn fine "TV match" worker is well boosted by the fact that those watching in real time STILL remember the title defense against Taka Michinoku to this day, which I think may be an all-time "modern era guy working like an NWA Champion" match-up. I do also think though that the No Mercy PPV (2007?) that started with Cena vacating the WWE Championship, Hunter beating Orton to claim the title, successfully defending against Umaga, and then losing to Orton in a bloody Last Man Standing match also somehow fell backwards into being "TNA-level overstuffed booking but done damn well and better than TNA ever pulled off". As champion main eventers go, I have to go with Hunter over Jarrett there.

Saturn vs Raven at Fall Brawl 98 still held up when I watched it a couple years ago. It my have benefited in real time from being the only worthwhile match on a mostly worthless show but it energized the crowd and was a helluva blowoff to the months-long build to Raven's Flock imploding.

I have been doing a watchthrough of the weekly Mid-South TV over the last year and this was easily one of my favorite 1982 angles. I am a sucker for angles that are essentially "scumbag heel got usurped by an even bigger scumbag". Don't get too attached to The Assassin though, he pretty much only pops in for a few weeks specifically for this angle. Though if my memory is correct The Samoans and Orndorff aren't too long for Mid-South either and book it for Georgia themselves, which leads to Bill Watts being super-salty and taking pot-shots for about six weeks straight about how "the toughest competition in wrestling is here in Mid-South because we put competitive matches on TV every week unlike the cable wrestling from Atlanta".

These where the 1-800-COLLECT promos where Lee would call in from the town that Nitro is in next week to talk about how excited everyone in that town was that Nitro is coming, and would typically be tagged with a "weasel" joke at Heenan's expense. Poor Lee Marshall, never actually did get to see a live Nitro.

For some reason I have in my head the ghost of Norm Macdonald telling Dan Snyder that "not only do the NFL owners want to wish you well, they want to throw you down one...THEY WANT TO MURDER YOU IN A WELL, DAN"

As someone who is also doing a Mid South 84/85 watch right now, Ernie Ladd showing up for a street fight wearing a polo shirt, khaki pants, and loafers while everyone else in the match is in workout clothes (Butch Reed and Master G) or tank top and blue jeans (Magnum TA) may legit top the tuxedos for me.

I am already assuming that a major development in Season 6 will be Miguel's dad coming for Carmen either as Johnny is in Japan or about to hop on the flight.

Bobby Fish not on that list because he was already 3 years into his first retirement.

Oh jeez, is this the night he got the scars on his chest and stomach? Anyone know what match this was and if its on tape?

Original Spanish audio too, thank God! Hearing that the Mill Creek set released a while ago only had the terrible modern English dubs commissioned for El Rey broke my heart, as did the couple times I tried putting on an El Santo movie on Tubi where the remaster looked gorgeous but also had the shit dubs with no original Spanish option.

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.