YOUR ALL-NEW WRESTLING BOOK THREAD

[Hamhock]

10 hours ago, odessasteps said:

If Hansen had his bull rope and Brody has his chain, what would Hogan’s weapon of choice have been? 

45-lb. barbell plate? Giant novelty syringe? Loaded foam finger?

[odessasteps]

I said loaded feather boa. Matt said the Hulk Helmet. 

[Curt McGirt]

16 hours ago, AxB said:

His body broke down pretty badly from working the WWF touring schedule (where most of his matches would be going under 5 minutes). Trying to work AJPW 90s style in his 40s, he'd have died a lot younger than he did.

Yeah, but Hogan wasn't a Baba guy, he was an Inoki guy. Way easier. Choshu lasted forever with a lariat and a Sharpshooter. 

[Curt McGirt]

FWIW, I can't see an alternate reality where Hogan didn't go to WWF. Vince would have sacrificed Steph and Shane on an altar to get Hogan as his head guy. The talk of Steamboat being the second choice just doesn't fly, he couldn't talk, and Vince saw what happened with having Backlund already. Hogan probably never wanted to be too far away from Florida either. Those plane rides are a bitch. 

Edited August 14, 2025 by Curt McGirt

[The Green Meanie]

6 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I said loaded feather boa. Matt said the Hulk Helmet. 

Don't forget the gas tank.

[Pete]

17 hours ago, AxB said:

His body broke down pretty badly from working the WWF touring schedule (where most of his matches would be going under 5 minutes). Trying to work AJPW 90s style in his 40s, he'd have died a lot younger than he did.

TBF, the Japanese touring schedule offered tons of downtime between tours. I could see Hogan making a go of it as long as he had the whole "three weeks on, 2-3 weeks off" thing going... he wouldn't even need to work in the US between tours if Baba/Inoki's money was good enough.

[AxB]

I know the What If thread is long since locked, but... if 80s Hogan jumps to AJPW (when the Bulldogs do, maybe), does that mean that when Vince decides he needs a big loud guy as his Ace, he therefore goes for Bruiser Brody?

[Log]

23 minutes ago, AxB said:

I know the What If thread is long since locked, but... if 80s Hogan jumps to AJPW (when the Bulldogs do, maybe), does that mean that when Vince decides he needs a big loud guy as his Ace, he therefore goes for Bruiser Brody?

Not to totally turn this into a "what if" thread, but another intriguing thought experiment is what if Hogan, for some reason (goes into acting full-time, forced retirement due to injury, etc.), leaves WWF in say 1987, post WM3? He's now been firmly implanted as the face of the company. Who do they go with on top? Savage earlier? Warrior's not there yet. My far-out pick is Jake. 

[Boydy]

3 hours ago, Log said:

Not to totally turn this into a "what if" thread, but another intriguing thought experiment is what if Hogan, for some reason (goes into acting full-time, forced retirement due to injury, etc.), leaves WWF in say 1987, post WM3? He's now been firmly implanted as the face of the company. Who do they go with on top? Savage earlier? Warrior's not there yet. My far-out pick is Jake. 

Bam Bam Bigelow. He would have a star making performance vs Andre if Andre could still go.

Beefcake, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Paul Orndorf, Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper stand out from looking at the roster in 1987. 

I would say Hacksaw personally. He was so over with the crowd and was very patriotic like Hogan was.

 

[odessasteps]

I can’t imagine control freak Viince and agent of chaos/malcontent Brody co-existing. 

[Curt McGirt]

From hints in the Wrestling at the Chase book, I think Brody might have been looking at Vince for one last big payday but that's the only way I can see them doing it, as jobbing to Hogan. Him buying PR was probably his retirement plan. 

[clintthecrippler]

On 8/12/2025 at 8:38 AM, twiztor said:

i was watching or listening to something the other day, and i got to wondering about Greg Gagne post-AWA. so he never wrestles again due to injuries. and he also had behind the scenes roles with both WCW and WWF, but neither lasted very long. But it made me curious if he had done a shoot interview. He did, and it's on YouTube. 

i watched some of it, and he is just so completely full of shit. Between him and Mike Graham, they should have started their own wrestling business because they both came up with every single good idea that's ever happened.

 

Eh, I'll take Greg Gagne's bullshit over Mike Graham's bullshit. For the most part all Greg would do was lie, Mike would also lie while also mean-spiritedly burying other talent and promoters.

Black Bart's bullshit in his shoot interview is still the all-time king though for "favorite" bullshit. Did you know that he found David Von Erich's body in Japan after it had been rotting for DAYS, he created the Undertaker gimmick while in WWF only to have "the office" assign it to Mark Callaway, AND had a deal with FOX for a Desperadoes-themed prime-time sitcom but Dusty Rhodes got jealous and killed the gimmick and the FOX deal?

[odessasteps]

Shocking the Hogan funeral became a sideshow 

[zendragon]

37 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Shocking the Hogan funeral became a sideshow 

Hulk Hogan was the florida man's florida man

[driver]

Which was so Florida Man that Bubba The Love Sponge became so jealous that he whined about being the most Florida Man thing about Florida EVAR(despite being from Warsaw, Indiana)(but, then again, how many Florida Men were actually born there?))

 

[Curt McGirt]

So what happened

[zendragon]

Apparently Beefcakes wife got into it with Linda Hogan and they had to be separated and/or escorted out by security. At a funeral

[Curt McGirt]

That reminds me of catching the end of Marty Jannetty's Dark Side the other day and Beefcake's wife saying she was gonna flash Marty but he wasn't there or something.

...

[Johnny Sorrow]

On 8/15/2025 at 2:09 PM, clintthecrippler said:

Eh, I'll take Greg Gagne's bullshit over Mike Graham's bullshit. For the most part all Greg would do was lie, Mike would also lie while also mean-spiritedly burying other talent and promoters.

Black Bart's bullshit in his shoot interview is still the all-time king though for "favorite" bullshit. Did you know that he found David Von Erich's body in Japan after it had been rotting for DAYS, he created the Undertaker gimmick while in WWF only to have "the office" assign it to Mark Callaway, AND had a deal with FOX for a Desperadoes-themed prime-time sitcom but Dusty Rhodes got jealous and killed the gimmick and the FOX deal?

Black Bart leaning into the shoot video gimmick of just making up ridiculous shit for fun is great stuff. 

[Technico Support]

Still reading the Greenberg book.  My nitpicker gene is getting triggered by him writing twice that Crockett hired Ray Traylor away from Watts.  Traylor was JCP born and raised, and only worked UWF after the sale.
 

On another topic, how reliable is David Crockett?  Because Dusty does not look good at all in David’s JCP stories.  Things Dusty is blamed for:

-Bad expansion moves in general, especially running cards in places like LA

-Hiring David Allan Coe, a huge waste of money, just because Dusty was a country music fan

-Squashing the UWF wrestlers post-purchase

-Retaining the Watts office in Dallas because Dusty had just remarried and wanted to live there

So is David protecting Jimmy or was Dusty an over spender, more concerned with the appearance of superstardom than with the company’s well being?

Also, Watts and JR conning Crockett into buying that albatross of a promotion was scummy even by wrestling standards.

Edited August 17, 2025 by Technico Support

[odessasteps]

He’s right on most of those points.

[zendragon]

"I took wrestling from the smoke filled rooms to brightly lit arenas" VKM's famous line of bullshit.

The thing is we don't really have TV to push back on that line for the most part, because the first big boom period was in the 20 and 30s where huge crowds would fill arenas and baseball stadiums. Now when people say "I wish we had more territory footage of this guy or that guy, or more 70's footage of dusty or flair" the one guy who takes that cake would be wrestling biggest star Jim Londos

JIM LONDOS: THE GOLDEN GREEK OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING by Steven Johnson, forward by JBL (yes that JBL) 197 pgs.

Jim Londos set the attendance record for MSG in 1931, put 100,000 into a stadium in Greece, and attracted 10 of thousands of people to baseball stadiums. He was arguably a bigger star than Babe Ruth and was the highest paid athlete in the world  (makes you wonder what a top star could be worth today if we didn't have a 20 year monopoly with no collective bargaining), but this mainly happened before TV so he's forgotten to all but most historians (He remains an omission to the WWE HOF even after they started the Legacy wing, but was in the initial class of of WON HOF). 

The book takes your from his early feuds against Joe Stecker and ed "Strangler" Lewis to his final days working Gorgeous George, showing you the full breath of his career as the business changed. You hear about double crosses (and wonder what was shoot and what was work),  screwy finishes to build hype for rematches, and despite the protests that "Vince killed kayfabe with 'sports entertainment' labeling of wrestling", actually a lot of people knew something was up  with wrestling legitimacy as soon as they started working the bouts. Much of this will be familiar to you read the Ballyhoo book, lots of Familiar characters from that book pop up hear Lou Thesz, Jack Pfefer, Jack Curley and Ray Fabiani (I wonder if Ray Fabe, morphed into Kayfabe over the years)

One weak point of the book is that it seemingly slips in and out of kayfabe similar to the Buddy Rogers books likely due to being heavily sourced from kayfabed interviews and Newspaper reports of the time (which where often kayfabed at the time). Ultimately a really American story of an immigrant who came to this country with nothing but the shirt on his back and made a fortune and a name for himself. 

[Technico Support]

On 9/19/2025 at 1:49 PM, SirSmUgly said:

Between Stephie fixing sexism and Cody fixing racism, current-day WWE are actually the real progressives, that's what the people are saying. The blacks and the females come up to Paul Levesque, tears in their eyes, saying, "Thank you sir, you and Stephanie and Cody made sports entertainment great again." 

Looool this is tremendous.  Chef’s kiss for using “females” as a noun.

 

This week’s “wrestling references that invade real life:” we bought a pack of big cookies at the store and when I counted, there were five.  It took a lot to not yell “THERE WERE FIVE OF EM!  JEEEEZUUSS!!!”

Edited September 20, 2025 by Technico Support

[Curt McGirt]

They covered a bunch of the Londos-era stuff in the Kayfabe book too. That one's worth reading for 1. that material, and 2. the Japan material.

[odessasteps]

The Monsoon book is out. It’s on Hoopla if you want to sample it.