garynysmon

During his WWF run, I just remember thinking of Benoit as a poor man's Kurt Angle really.

I wouldn't rate Benoit as a better wrestler than Angle, but neither did he have the charisma and ability to entertain.

To be fair, I was never a big fan of the Eddy Guerrero world title run either (me being the product of a "this is a big man's territorry brother" mentality I suppose), but at least I could acknowledge he was a better overall package.

Tatanka was my favourite wrestler in 1993. I'd go.

You could call it a coincidence, but WWE have announced an Indian tour for January 2016 just 2-3 weeks after TNA revealed something similar. 

I'm amongst like-minded people, so I can finally confess;

 

This was the first album I ever bought. I loved it. I played the hell out of it.

 

You're not alone my friend.

Ahmed Johnson giving a member of the Nation of Domination (D'lo maybe?) a Pearl River Plunge through the French announce table is the one that springs to mind. But yeah, Diesel and Bret obviously came before that.

I think the product became more popular again when Raw started going out in the 10pm slot on Friday nights. People seemed to be taking notice of it again. On Sky between 93-96 it was all just hightlight shows on at teatime.

 

I remember being mindblown by the new Raw set in March 1997 and expanding to two hours.

Haha, I've lost count over the number of threads along the lines of "All my mates stopped watching in 1993 and I had no-one at school to swap tapes with".

I was so gutted having finally got Sky at home in Spring of that year, that by the Survivor Series I was the only sad git who was still talking about the WWF.

Adam Bomb should have been up there with Razor and Diesal in that era. Him and Bam Bam Bigelow are the two biggest misses from the WWF.

The UWF from the early 90s on Daily Motion are great!

 

I'd put Crush ahead of Adam Bomb but know where you're coming from.

Crush was going places until he was turned heel in late '93, daft move.

Surprised to see Lawler back in the ring after having that heart attack the other year.

 

He's wrestled quite a few matches since then.

Where was the actual site of wrestlemania 9? I've just got back from Vegas and was trying to work it out. I know it was on the grounds of Caesars palace hotel. There was a bit of a make shift arena at the front beside the strip which had 2 tiered sections on either side of it but not sure if it looked big enough (although tv can be deceiving),

 

Ha, I did exactly the same the first time I went to Vegas three years ago. I think they built the arena where Rod Stewart, Celine Dion etc play now, on top of part of the car park.

Has wrestling ever been this unpopular? (In the states at least)

I notice that Raw this week got a 2.21 rating. Those are the kind of numbers Nitro was getting in late 2000 (being opposed by Raw at the time of course).

I wonder if the ring and video screen will have "TNA One Night Only" etc. That will be an interesting one to explain.

 

Stolen from Football365 mailbox. Found it amusing.

 

Chelsea – Hulk Hogan, big name in the business, but his reputation is in tatters.

 

 

I'm not having that. Chelsea were nowhere near being a big club until the late 90's when Ken Bates started splashing the cash on foreigers and Abramovich took it to another level.

I just want Eric to be part of the family. Watching the old roundtables, I'm always upset he went to TNA when he did. Always a worthy contributor as a talking head. Lots of their productions would have been better with Eric's input. But then, I want everyone to come home. Kurt, for instance.

 

See, I'm the exact opposite. First thing I thought afterwards was how I'd love to see him join Global Force or something and stick it to Vince again (like that will ever happen I know).

Jeff Jarrett's 1997 theme was solid fucking GOLD!

 

Fucking right!

Apparently Josh Matthews is getting married to Madison Rayne too.

 Jammy git.

 That's brilliant, thanks! I remembered Rap is Crap from 1999 but had forgotten everything about Good 'ol Boys, even though it sounds exactly like Jeff Jarrett's WCW theme overlaid with the lyrics.

I've just been listening to Rap is Crap and Good 'ol Boys on repeat!

I don't expect anyone here to agree with me on this one,but for a while now I've been trying to figure out why I can't be arsed at all with NXT (which everyone raves about) yet watch TNA on Challenge most weeks (which everyone takes the piss out of).

I've tried watching NXT, and can appreciate that's its truer to the traditional old-school formula than anything you'll see on Raw or Smackdown these days, but I still can't take an interest in it.

The more I think about it, (and as laughable as this may be with me being a paying WWE Network subscriber and all) my only logical conclusion is that I'm so pissed off with a lack of a genuine number 2 in the wrestling market, that WWE encroaching upon the indy fanbase is just fanning the flames.

Totally irrational I know.

I'm amazed you even have to ask that answer Ian. Cheex of course.

 

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for a topic, they discussed tna's next big star. Tna is dying you fools!

 

Heard that for years though. Seems a sensible enough topic to be fair, seeing as they're short on name talent.

Plus seeing as it immediately follows Impact, you'd have to assume a large percentage of the audience watches TNA. Hell, those watching on Freeview may not even be familiar with some of the WWE's wrestlers.

My favourite is when I tried recording Bash at the Beach 95 on DSF which was on late on a Saturday night (as they all were from what I can remember).

I started watching it the next morning and was in the middle of the Savage v Flair lumberjack match. It was all going ok until the moment on the recording where my Dad had come home from the pub and started flicking through all the softcore German porn on VOX (christ, I miss the German channels so much).

You wouldn't get that with Sky+ would you?

I recently finished (slowly) working my way through all of the 1996 Raw episodes on the network, and have started with the same year's Nitros.

I've always considered myself a Hulk Hogan fan, but in honesty and hindsight, he was the biggest single detriment to the WCW product by then after the initial boom he brought them.

I can't remember viewing it that way as a 12 year old child, but looking back, its painfully clear why they had to turn him heel by the summer and freshen up his act.

 

 

Big WCW fan back in the day and yet literally never knew of the existence of these events until today - http://lostmedia.wikia.com/wiki/WCW_Internet-only_Special_Events_and_PPVs_(Lost_1997-1998_Audio_Streams)

 

It seems some of the footage from the actual events have been uploaded to youtube, worth a watch for nostalgia alone.

 

https://youtu.be/pBiJSKOzAwU

 

Bearing in mind how WCW got trounced in the end, it may sound odd to say this, but WCW often came across as the more innovative of the "big two".

I'll fondly remember WCW as being more willing to take a risk and try new things, whether they worked or not. As a kid, the WCW pay per view sets and settings were almost always more interesting and colourful (i.e wrestling on an actual beach, spring break, Halloween Havoc sets etc). I suppose they benefitted from a Kevin Dunn type who'se vision has been fully allowed to manifest by now that everything must look as perfect and glossy as possible.

 

Anyway, before I go too far on a tangent, here's a shite Kevin Nash promo

 

In fairness, they were the only good tag team throughout their run. They had to put up with the likes of the Smoking Guns, the Godwinns, Rick Bogner and Kane and the relics that were the LOD. The matches generally depended on who their opponents were.

 

I didn't find the Gunns too bad really (okay, I'm biased as I loved their Sidewinder finisher so much). Its just that they were on so bloody much that it got to overkill by the end.