November 2025 Wrestling Discussion

[The Natural]

On 11/11/2025 at 4:16 AM, Eivion said:

 

Video looks to have been taken down. Here:

 

[Curt McGirt]

Three words:

Saudi World Title

[The Natural]

On 11/9/2025 at 4:19 PM, The Natural said:

Thinking about CM Punk as the current WWE World Heavyweight Champion got me thinking about who were older than he is (47). I can only think of Vince McMahon (54) as WWF Champion in September 1999, Goldberg (53) as WWE Universal Champion in February-March 2020 and Fk Hulk Hogan (49) as WWF/E Champion in April-May 2002.

On the subject of oldest WWE world champions, we turn to WWE Intercontinental Champion, John Cena (48). Only Intercontinental Champion I can think of who was older is Ric Flair (56) in September 2005-February 2006.

[Cobra Commander]

They probably don’t have enough good footage to make this work but it would be fun if the Vault did a video showing parts of TV wrestling for some specific date/weekend in the 80s.

Like an unofficial “this week in Wrestling” mix

also, who owns the actual Pro Wrestling This Week show that they did in the 80s? It feels like all things the WWE didn’t buy are either Savoldi or public domain

[odessasteps]

Presumably Bonni Blackstone, since Joe passed away.

[Cobra Commander]

It feels like Joe either has a cache of things he made/taped or that stuff got tossed some random day in the 2000s

so if Roy Lucier ever gets in contact with Bonni Blackstone

[The Natural]

Chavo Guerrero confirms that he re-signed with WWE, expresses excitement over AAA under the WWE umbrella:

“I just re-signed with WWE. So, I'm helping out with their AAA show. I’m back with them.

AAA is awesome, was always awesome. Lucha Libre, you know, that's where my family originated from. So, I have a big love of Lucha Libre and just to see AAA under that WWE umbrella is pretty pretty awesome. Pretty cool.

It's one thing that that we want to keep — the tradition of Lucha Libre and keep what makes Lucha so amazing. And then you do that with the WWE marketing and the WWE styles, I think the sky is the limit.”

(Interview w/ Bill Apter)

---

Welcome back, Chavo Guerrero.

[Hamhock]

2 hours ago, The Natural said:

On the subject of oldest WWE world champions, we turn to WWE Intercontinental Champion, John Cena (48). Only Intercontinental Champion I can think of who was older is Ric Flair (56) in September 2005-February 2006.

Flair is probably(?) the oldest tag team champion as well; he was 57 during his little weeklong run with Piper in late 2006.

[Dragon]

He was of the the old tags WWE retired, the 1971–2010 tag belts. 

There are two different set of tags in current WWE, a set each for Raw and Smackdown for each brand. They kept the ones created on October 3, 2002, (Angle and Benoit first won those) and the later ones created on August 23, 2016 are also still active. Those are the same titles with all the name and designs changes and brand swaps after all these years, and have their own separate history and (ongoing) records for those respective belts.

Edited November 12, 2025 by Doragon

[supremebve]

5 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Two “world” titles is so dumb.  The Super Bowl loser can’t call themselves the winner of the Superior Bowl or whatever.

Hi, my name is boxing, and two world titles is not nearly enough.

[Dragon]

Tony Khan has AEW World, and ROH World. To be fair AEW and ROH are legally separate companies. ROH is not important as AEW though. The ROH World shows up on AEW TV sometimes and is defended sometimes on AEW TV shows.

[Cobra Commander]

3 hours ago, supremebve said:

Hi, my name is boxing, and two world titles is not nearly enough.

somehow wrestling has not stolen the Super-Champ concept from the WBA

[Peck]

7 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

It feels like Joe either has a cache of things he made/taped or that stuff got tossed some random day in the 2000s

so if Roy Lucier ever gets in contact with Bonni Blackstone

Speaking of Joe's and obscure wrestling footage, Joe Dombrowski posted this today: 

[odessasteps]

5 hours ago, supremebve said:

Hi, my name is boxing, and two world titles is not nearly enough.

Do each promotion have multiple champions now or do you just the alphabet soup of wba/wbc/ibf? I'd say the latter is no different than awa nwa and wwf having their own champion. 

[supremebve]

39 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Do each promotion have multiple champions now or do you just the alphabet soup of wba/wbc/ibf? I'd say the latter is no different than awa nwa and wwf having their own champion. 

A little bit of both.  The alphabet soup all have their individual belts.  Some of those belts have multiple interim champions; there is something called a Super Champion (at least one weight class has a Super Champion, a regular champion, and an interim champion).  You can be the undisputed champion with 4 of the 5 most recognized belts as long as The Ring belt is the one you don't have.  

[odessasteps]

Gotcha. I turn the radio off whenever the UK sports shows talk boxing. 

[Technico Support]

2 hours ago, Peck said:

Speaking of Joe's and obscure wrestling footage, Joe Dombrowski posted this today: 

He bought the pee tape, featuring a WWE hall of famer?

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

Bold of them to book Je'Von in this a week after his certain death at Gunther's hands.

[Elsalvajeloco]

3 hours ago, supremebve said:

A little bit of both.  The alphabet soup all have their individual belts.  Some of those belts have multiple interim champions; there is something called a Super Champion (at least one weight class has a Super Champion, a regular champion, and an interim champion).  You can be the undisputed champion with 4 of the 5 most recognized belts as long as The Ring belt is the one you don't have.  

Well it's kinda changed over the years.

So the 4 biggies are the WBA (black/red belt, the Super champion's belt though looks like the Ring magazine belt), the WBC (the green belt), the IBF (the red and gold belt), and the newer one that was recognized as late as the late 90s/early 2000s, the WBO (burgundy and gold belt). So all those belts came into existence basically due to politics. The WBA/WBC belts became the two major ones after it became apparent you couldn't trust the commissions and news publications to recognize their own champions. Problem is, obviously, those companies became under the thumb of the promoters instead of arena operators, the mob, TV companies, and matchmakers having the commissions/newspapers under their thumb. The WBA is based in Panama while the WBC is based in Mexico. Forever and a day, the late José Sulaimán up until his death had an inherent bias towards Mexican fighters. So most of the Mexican fighters preferred fighting for the WBC title for decades.

The WBA, for decades, was accused of being bought and paid for by Don King. So Don King post Tyson's loss to Buster Douglas and then going to prison, his stable was basically Julio Cesar Chavez (who held the WBC super lightweight title for a long time as an icon), prominent junior middleweights and middleweights like Julian Jackson, Terry Norris (until Norris left for Top Rank later in his career) & also Gerald McClellan up until his near fatal brain injury in the Benn fight in 95, another iconic Mexican fighter in the lower weight classes who held WBC titles usually Ricardo "Finito" Lopez, another legend in Azumah Nelson, and then basically a bunch of decent to good but virtually unknown fighters up and down the weight classes who held some form of a WBA title (either interim or the real belt). So what Don use to do in the 80s and then more prominently once his relationship with HBO rapidly disintegrated in the wake of Tyson-Douglas in the early 90s is have cards once or sometimes twice a month on regular Showtime or SET PPV (Showtime's PPV arm) with 6 or 7 title fights and then a whole bunch of undercard fights. If you know anything about boxing, the average card basically only has 5-7 maybe 8 fights. The UFC sometimes stacks cards if they're feeling frisky and people become available, but not even to that level due to time constraints. So doing that then was insane, but what Don King did was throw 1 or 2 of his top fighters like Chavez (or Tyson post prison) in there at the top as the headliner/main attraction, maybe one other top fighter like ones listed above, and then pad out the remaining title fights with some random WBA champion. Maybe you would get a Ricardo Lopez or later on a 4, 6, or 8 round Christy Martin showcase fight on the undercard, but that was generally how he did it with a few of those titles fights not even being televised. If they were, it was the international feed called Kingvision. Because so many people fell out with Don or were in some type of political/contractual feud with Don or the promoter they left to fight for Don, that's when you started to see a whole bunch of guys who were barely ranked or random people fighting for interim or regular WBA titles. And to be fair, the WBC was no better because we were deprived of seeing Riddick Bowe vs Lennox Lewis and other fights and then they eventually got crazy with stripping people and interim titles. Not to the level of the WBA, but still very shameful. 

The IBF (the only major org based in the USA) came into play when Larry Holmes who held the WBC heavyweight title for a long time eventually gave it up cause he didn't want to fight Greg Page. Holmes had an on and off again relationship with Don King too throughout the years with some of his fights being promoted by Don and others just being promoted by random people and entities. So the IBF recognized Holmes as champ and then Holmes (the linear champion after beating Ali in 1980) lost it to Michael Spinks and then failed to win it back in the rematch. Spinks eventually lost it to Tyson when they finally met up. So having the true linear champion and then the most popular fighter in the world empowered and legitimized the IBF even though most of the early champs were in Europe and Asia. They had an easier time with being recognized as one of the majors cause the political nonsense throughout the 80s and 90s.

The WBO, based in Puerto Rico with more of an inherent bias toward Puerto Rican fighters early on in their existence especially in the lower weight classes, had a lot of trouble just cause none of the big names fought for their titles. I generally associate the WBO with the glory days of the middleweight, super middleweight, and light heavyweight scenes in Western Europe in the late 80s and the 90s. You had the absolutely historical clashes and feud between Nigel "The Dark Destroyer" Benn and "Simply the Best" Chris Eubank (Sr.) (and also Eubank/Michael Watson and Benn/Watson), "Irish" Steve Collins, Dariusz Michalczewski, and then later on, Joe Calzaghe. The Benn/Eubank feud became big enough to the point where their offspring who are not even world level are filling stadiums today and about to do it again this Saturday (to their credit, the first fight was an easy fight of the year candidate). Another notable name that held a WBO title, also fighting mainly in Europe, was "Prince" Naseem Hamed. It still had trouble being recognized as one of the majors though even stateside with Tommy Morrison and a very young Oscar De La Hoya (who held the 130 lb and 135 lb WBO belts somehow even though he was a size of a goddamn middleweight) representing them. At some point, guessing just cause people didn't care anymore, it became one of the major orgs unlike other startups like the IBO and WBU. So if you held a WBO world title in the last quarter century, you were/are considered one of the world champions/titlists.

So the Ring magazine and linear title explanation: generally the Ring magazine recognizes the linear champion UNLESS the champion retired or moved up/down a weight class and never returned. If there is no "linear" champion (the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy), they generally go with crowning the Ring mag champ between the #1 ranked guy and either the #2 or #3 ranked guy fighting. However, the fight has to involve the #1 ranked fighter if there is no recognized Ring magazine champion in that weight class. With two more recognized major orgs, it became a little tougher. For example, Nate Campbell (he of getting KO'd in hilarious fashion by Robbie Peden fame back when Campbell was just a journeyman/also ran/fringe contender fighting on Fox Sports Net) upset then unified lightweight champ Juan Diaz and took his titles. Campbell had the WBO, WBA, AND IBF titles. However, he wasn't the linear or Ring magazine champion. That Ring mag champion distinction went to Joel Casamayor, who became the Ring mag champion beating Diego Corrales in 2006 who beat Jose Luis Castillo the prior year in one of the most legendary and movie like fights of all goddamn times. Casamayor eventually lost that to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2008. So Campbell had three world titles and wasn't even the #1 (or #2) guy in his division cause Marquez had been considered a pound for pound fighter since his very first fight with Manny Pacquiao in 2004. At best, he was third best. So technically, you can hold all the titles and not be the guy in your division. Most recently, in between retirements and hiatuses and brief brushes with pro wrestling, Tyson Fury was the LINEAR and also RING magazine champion while Deontay Wilder (WBC champ) and Anthony Joshua (IBF, WBA, and WBO champ) held the sanctioning body titles. It's extremely confusing to follow. BoxingScene had a stellar article last year on the confusing, bizarre, and complex history of the regular and interim WBA heavyweight title in the last 20 or so years. It's fucking insane and still ongoing, unfortunately.

[Cobra Commander]

amused there's at least 3 versions of the poster for McCinsey's Island. One with "Hulk Hogan, Grace Jones, Robert Vaughan", one with just Hulk and Grace Jones, and with just "Hulk Hogan"

just mentioning that since the Vault nWo video today included a promo of Hulk Hogan, Grace Jones, and Robert Vaughan on the movie set

the top IMDB user review of that movie is titled "it sux and i was in it"

[twiztor]

13 hours ago, Peck said:

Speaking of Joe's and obscure wrestling footage, Joe Dombrowski posted this today: 

so what's the speculation?

[The Natural]

2 minutes ago, twiztor said:

so what's the speculation?

I'm hoping it's your signature for your sake, mate.

[twiztor]

2 hours ago, The Natural said:

I'm hoping it's your signature for your sake, mate.

haha, while i appreciate that, i highly doubt that anybody else has Sabu vs. Mike Rapada in their "top five most sought after pieces of lost footage". 

genuinely curious what the most requested missing matches are. 

[odessasteps]

I think for me, it’s the 1987 Nassau Wargames the night before Starrcade, 

[Hamhock]

Maybe it's newsreel/home movies of Bruno beating Rogers? It's not impossible, I suppose.