garynysmon

I always feel sad seeing some of these X-Division guys working their arses off and pulling off some fantastic moves, just for the dead Impact Zone crowd just to sit there with their arms folded. I think its even more pronounced after the hot crowds in India.

They have to get out of there, they even sat there like gormless bastards when Scott Steiner walked out.

As expected, the difference in production values in just 5 weeks from Wrestlemania 1 to the first Saturday Night's Main Event, is pretty staggering tbh. You've gone from a dimly lit MSG, to something we more closely resemble the WWE/F with.

It does make you wonder how much the company has Dick Ebersol/NBC to thank. Pretty funny seeing Kevin Dunn's name on TNT's credits as the assistant director too.

48 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

No one is forcing you to listen to them. Choice is always good. I have one regular and one I'll listen to of the guest is interesting. Don't have that time or inclination for any more. Tried a few, didn't love them.

Exactly.

I've migrated recently from my staples of Austin, JR, etc to the Lapsed Fan and the Place 2be Nation's reviews of older shows, which I'm enjoying at the moment (as far back as 1984).. I have a 50 minute each-way journey to work most days, so I have quite a lot of time during the week. 

Other than Bruce Prichard and Schiavone's, which I listen to most weeks, I only really bother with the others if there's a really interesting guest on. There's more than enough podcasts out there to suit everyone's tastes.

A little surprising the WWE, or even GFW, hasn't jumped on the bandwagon.

There's something about it all that leaves a sour taste in the mouth though. especially seeing how Alberto has almost been goading the WWE to release her so she can join him on Impact. 

Hmm, even with a film about her in the works?

I know this would be her third strike, but its not like they're not capable of finding a way of swerving it.

41 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Theyve definately got some WCW Thunder footage, it's been used on DVDs over the years and there were matches from in the Goldberg collection that's on the network. Whether they've got it as a complete run or not is another question because, as has been said, some of the library was in a right state when they bought it. If they can source it from somewhere else and then cleanup the footage as best they can it could maybe get added, but it depends against how much they already have available vs how much they may need to acquire and if they feel that it is worth the time, effort and money to do so.

Id like for it to be added for completely sake, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was to never appear

Strange though, as Thunder only ran from 1997-2001 whereas they've managed to get all the Nitros up.

15 hours ago, WeeAl said:

I don't think Thunder is ever likely to get added. Something to do with the tapes being a complete mess, mixed up, incorrectly labelled/dated. I'm not sure if this is the case for the other WCW shows not currently on the Network, so Saturday Night etc may still be Ok. I'm expecting they'll add Heat and Shotgun eventually as well. 

I'd rather they start adding WWF Superstars (the proper one, not the C-show rehash a few years ago). Easy watching, 40-45 minute episodes with plenty of squash matches and historic angles.

I've been working my way through the 1984 TNT episodes and into 1985, the idea being as I was born a week before the first episode, see how many years (choosing one episode a 'week') of WWF weekly TV I can get through.

What's interesting, obviously not watching at the time, is how modern the product actually was back then compared to my earlier perception.

I'm not sure how everyone else feels, but having only seen Wrestlemania 1 as a standalone show until now, it felt almost stone age in its production with a dimly lit MSG and very little in the way of build-up videos etc.

But the weeks leading up to The War to Settle the Score and then Wrestlemania, are tremendous. Loads of hype videos with Hulk training Mr T (and Mean Gene) and the Andre v Big John Studd feud.

Its given me a whole new perception of the Rock and Wrestling period, whereas the production/coverage of the actual wrestling itself is way behind the studio stuff and other segments. By Wrestlemania 2, the coverage of the matches themselves  seemed to have advanced light years (influence of NBC with Saturday Night's Main Event?).

I highly recommend giving TNT a whirl, specifically Jan to March 1985 if you don't fancy the whole hog (but don't miss the last episode of December and the wedding episode).

16 hours ago, Adam Turner said:

Conrad is brilliant. The hate he gets makes me roll my eyes more often than not.

On the whole, I think he adds more than he detracts. But he can be an annoying fucker at times. The mark also seems to fund the show through his mortgage business.

45 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

God, that Conrad on Something to Wrestle is still an insufferable cunt.
Just listening to the Canadian Stampede podcast and he asks Bruce about when 'the boyz' attitude towards JBL changed.
Bruce was a bit long winded but he said 'when JBL went on his own' more than once and Conrad went apoplectic and got a right strop on.

Are they supposed to be friends?

 

Yeah, Conrad was being ridiculous there. He often gets flustered and accuses Bruce of being evasive, but I don't think he was being difficult at all on that occasion.

I'm starting to think its all an act. 

I love Roddy Piper, but I always felt that routine where he started punching like a boxer looked so phoney as he was nowhere near connecting with any of them.

Bret obviously had a great working punch, so did Jake the Snake in fairness.

Scott Hall usually gets a lot of praise for his, but I always thought it looked more like an open hand slap.

Apparently, on David Penzer's latest podcast, Jarrett confirmed they'll be taping some One Night Only shows in Vegas.

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I mean rightly ignored simply from a business perspective - it does WWE no favours to mention them, so why do it? If you mention them you run the risk of either confusing/alienating your audience, or making them think "TNA, eh? What's that?" and going off and watching it. At the very least, by acknowledging them WWE are lending them credibility.

The old adage in advertising was that Subway will tell you why they're better than McDonalds, McDonalds don't need to tell you why they're better than Subway.

You make some good points. But they seem to acknowledge Ring of Honor and New Japan, which is my biggest bone of contention.  Granted, ROH etc played a part in the story of Daniel Bryan, but no more than TNA did with AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and arguably to a lesser degree, Sting.

Probably a conspiracy theory, but is Vince McMahon's grudge against Jeff Jarrett a factor in why they showcased Dixie all of a sudden?

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Several wrestlers - Kevin Nash, Rob Van Dam and Christian all come to mind - have said that, while wrestling on TV every week for TNA, people would ask them, "why don't you wrestle any more?". The vast majority of the audience don't know what TNA is, and even fewer will know who Dixie Carter is, and fewer still will care. Throw in that she's a dreadful performer, and it would all but force them to acknowledge a promotion they have been rightly ignoring for over a decade, and where would they benefit?

I've never understood that. Because if you were curious in the slightest at what they were upto, in this day and age, how long does it take to look someone up on Wikipedia? FFS, I spend hours of my working week looking up what obscure TV characters from my childhood are upto these days.

I'm not sure how you can say they've been "rightly ignored either." Because either TNA is/was so shit that you can reference them and take the piss as much as you want on TV, or they are regarded as something of a competition and you don't acknowledge them. Surely you don't purposely ignore something that you perceive to be laughably bad? 

The biggest offence is definitely the DVD documentary releases which pretend they sat on their arse at home the whole time they were working for Dixie and co.

Not sure if this is a famous music video and that I'm just slow to the party, but there are a LOT of wrestlers in this!

The only comment I have to make really is that this relationship sounds toxic as can be.  

4 hours ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

Was it these two, and was this the packaging by any chance?

I definitely had that 'Hogan' one. It served as my Hulk figure until I finally got this real Hasbro. 

Captain Lou at his Rock 'n 'Wrestling best.

11 hours ago, Louch said:

 russo who's wwf run ended in 99 too recent, but stampede in 97 a return to the norm..... Not sure how that works haha

Blimey, you're right! 

Probably speaks volumes on how much of a watershed the Attitude era really was, making events pre-Attitude feel further back than they actually were. I bloody love 1997 though.

I didn't want to resurrect the Tuesday Night Titans thread from 2011, but have watched a few 1984 episodes tonight and its hard to fathom this is even the same company as 2017 WWE.

Granted, we're talking 30 years difference, but its certainly remarkable if not comedic to see McMahon have no problem at all in calling the product wrestling and openly acknowledging wrestlers from other promotions, if only in a nod and a wink kind of way.

But what strikes me most of all is the production. Again, its almost silly to compare something 30 years apart. But yeah, TNT is a bit haphazard at best, and certainly not something you'd call glossy even by mid 80's standards. Mad to contrast that with the massively over-produced product (in my view), the WWE now presents. Kerwin Silfies is still there though! 

I always harp on about this, but wrestling was never meant to be a mainstream Hollywood-esque production.

19 minutes ago, L_E_T_H_A_L said:

To be fair, there's usually always an old-school WWF topic or two to choose, and it's the viewers that have chosen episodes on Punk and Cena.

Anyway, if it's classic WWF you want, you'll enjoy Friday's episode with a tag teams theme. It's Demolition ('87-'91), Hart Foundation ('87-'91), The Rockers ('88-'92) or The Brainbusters ('88-'92). I've voted for The Rockers.

Aye, all good topics tbh. Would opt for the Harts or Demolition personally.

Was glad that Something to Wrestle went back on course with an episode on Canadian Stampede last week. In all honesty, was starting to worry they  were concentrating on topics which are far too recent for my tastes, with Cena, Punk and Vince Russo.

11 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

I was disappointed from the off, if I'm really honest. It looked pants. Like every other show. Just no effort whatsoever went into the setting.

Not sure why our version had the pre-show match on it. It's on the pre show for a reason.

I'm not sure you can make that Impact Zone that holds, what, a thousand people, look any good tbh. I do wish they would have moved this somwhere else, PPV's don't feel that special if taped in the same building as weekly TV. 

I wonder if they'd consider bringing Bound for Glory to the UK?

Double J continues his quest to get the band back together. 

"Reports from this weeks IMPACT Wrestling TV Tapings are revealing that Steve Small has returned to the company.

"Steve was the companies Senior Director of Production from 2007-2015, he left for a new career at Teach America. He was replaced by Ron and Don Harris. His departure came as a shock at the time with a lot of people being disappointed. He played a huge role and his departure was noticed by staff and indeed with the finished TV product at the time. Steve also served as the Production Manager for WCW from 1996-2001."

2 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

When The Rock appears on a show I feel like he downplays the importance of other guys. The Undertaker has not been great for years and I think I stopped liking him when he went through the Kid Rock/ motorbike stage and Lesnar's style really doesn't interest me. I am not interested in seeing his match with Joe.

This is violently off topic, but isn't that the WWE's fault for losing the ability to get someone over like they once could? Surely it can't be the talent's fault alone that not a single wrestler has reached anywhere near the heights of Triple H or John Cena for well over a decade now, let alone Rock/Stone Cold status.