Hamhock

Just for the hell of it; as many of Ole's turns that I could find (or promos thereafter, anyway): Sort of already a face, and vowing revenge in Mid-Atlantic, 1977: Face turn, Georgia, 1979: Aforementioned heel turn, Georgia, 1980: Face turn, Georgia, 1983: Heel turn, Georgia, 1985: Face turn, Georgia (Crockett) 1987: Heel turn, WCW, 1990:

Sincerest apologies - I use an adblocker and didn’t see that.

It's-a-me who said that. The entire card is on the Network as a Hidden Gem (also has a very good Valentine vs. Slater cage match on it), but I found the Flair/Steamboat match here.

Just my two cents, but I feel that the best of all recorded Flair vs. Steamboat matches is the one from Boogie Jam ‘84.

I forgot that Sting would do the koppu kick occasionally.

Would you rather fight ten Liger-sized Lugers, or one Luger-sized Liger?

Punk said that back in the day on a podcast: "I think WWE should remake Cannonball Run. Seriously. Get Yoshi Tatsu, put him in a car with Funaki. Put JBL in there with Cena. Get me in there. Have all the WWE guys, put them in cars, and have them drive cross country. If the goal for WWE Films is to make WWE fans buy DVDs, having a movie with all the WWE guys in it will sell like crazy, especially if it's Cannonball Run."

This is a Nike template and fabric spec that Fanatics is producing, so I’d divide the scorn into equal heaps.

To me, Ventura’s heel commentary gradually mellowed over the years; he went from “heel-aligned but willing to grudgingly respect a babyface” to “long-retired; analysis and understanding from a heel perspective”. Heenan was a heel comedian, and I was a big fan of that. Lawler I could never stand at all.

I think a portion of Rock's success is perpetually sustained by the perception of his success; he gets the benefit of the doubt to try again when something falls short. He promotes/markets himself 24/7 and endlessly pivots around (production company! moar movies! ownz a football league!) to keep the appearance that it's all a raving success; and to be fair, enough of it succeeds to keep him in the press and his net worth growing.

Anything to cleanse the memory that Austin's last-delivered stunners were to Theory, Vince and McAfee.

In old-timey Super Bowl news; if any of you live in the NYC vicinity - on Saturday, the Paley Center for Media is doing a one-time screening of the only existing copy of the Super Bowl I telecast (not the NFL Films/radio combo thing that was aired a few years back; the actual telecast).

They should have Priest get laid out backstage at the beginning of Wrestlemania Night 1, and his MITB briefcase gets stolen, though we don't see by who. Then: A half-unconscious Drew beats Seth at the end of Night 1 to win the title. Sami immediately appears with the briefcase, cashes in and wins the title. Drew chases him for a few months before obliterating Sami at some future Premium Live Event of Doom.

After looking at more footage, it appears that they’re using multiple fonts (both serif and sans-serif), so it’s a hodgepodge. I guess someone really liked using the chyron and wanted to see what it could do.

It looks like Helvetica to me.

This was great, and everything after the top rope/turnbuckle breaking was superb; that DiBiase/Magnum could do the Tennessee Tiptoe into a Hotshot using only the middle rope was something else.

Baron Von Raschke should be flown in just to give someone the claw.

I’d honestly consider delaying the surgery, doing little but cardio until WM, taping/bracing the arm, work the match and put over Rollins, and retire the next night.

It looks like he’s been solely focusing on increasing his size/mass so as to not look too small in comparison to the roster.

I need to rewatch past Rumbles to see when they descended into a mandatory “new person enters and everyone rushes them one after another like a kung-fu movie fight scene and gets dropped; repeat same sequence for every entrant” cliche. So so many headscissors.

There was a certain point late in both Rumbles where the crowd noticeably perked up in their mood, and their hive-mind did a “who’s left in the ring - oh good, any of these people winning would be acceptable!” calculation. No Corbin/Nia/Kane-Big Show-Batista horseshit deliberately antagonizing anyone.

“I haven’t read the lawsuit” is a variation of when a Senator/House Rep. wants to duck giving their opinion on what was said/done/written/etc. by [not naming who]…”I haven’t watched the video”, “I haven’t read the interview”, “I haven’t seen the speech”. It’s bullshit then, and it was bullshit now. It happens often enough that just *one time* I’d like to see the reporter anticipate this avoidance strategy by immediately following up with, “no problem - here you go!” and handing them a printed copy of the lawsuit. “Summary is only a couple of pages - we’ll give you a few minutes for your thoughts on it.”

Yeah, a roster-related protest would have to involve everyone to be effective/avoid retaliation. For example (and this would never happen), the women's Rumble contestants all go to the ring at their appointed time slots, only no one gets eliminated when they were supposed to, and once all 30 are in the ring they all simultaneously exit over the top rope and the match ends with an empty ring.

There’s also Backlund vs. Bockwinkel in 1979 in Toronto; no footage of that either, to my knowledge. I must be the only person who likes the Backlund vs. Race match in MSG (and Cagematch says they also did title vs. title twice in 1978 and once more in 1980), though I think their match in 1976 from St. Louis for the Missouri title is much better (though maybe because it’s in clipped/highlight form):

When someone earlier on suggested he come in in place of Bad News Brown’s slot, I interpreted it instead as taking the gimmick. “Good-ish News Brody” equivocating on the mic before calling the audience a bunch of beer-bellied sharecroppers would have been GOLD.