No use for a nick

Maybe not as awesome as the short CMLL clip, but quite awesome in its own right.

For all the puroresu/anime/trashmovies aficionados. If you love all three then all the better.

Here you are:

To be fair, I don't think Goldberg falls into the "real people" category, quite the opposite really.

 

Didn't he play the bit of a big tough fucker who used to play in the NFL so well because in truth he was just a big fucker who used to play in the NFL?

Goldberg was pretty much as base as it gets.

 

Unless the point is them looking like a man in the street, but its clearly not as he brought up Sammartino who was a right burly cunt.

Let me clarify, I mean guys you wouldn't notice if they walked into an airport. I reckon you would notice Austin and Goldberg, you wouldn't have noticed Race (maybe the afro, not the size), you wouldn't have noticed Dusty (or maybe you would have for the wrong reasons). I take the point that Bruno was very big, somehow though I believe that if he had been born 30 years later, even increasing his size in proportion, he would have been nowhere near the big one, let alone for many years. He was booked that way because he was booked for a mostly-"italian" crowd, just like Dusty was booked to the top in front of people who could relate to him.

I know many WWF fans who couldn't believe Dusty was a main eventer when he arrived, couldn't believe the hype of Race, can't believe that Sammartino was such a legend with his really basic gig and couldn't even believe that Flair was number 1 in the world when he first arrived in '91.

You may not agree with some of my points, but what I'm saying overall is just that it's sometimes very hard to understand why people in other countries or other eras were so over, many westeners don't get, for another example, the appeal of Inoki or, worse, Baba.

Bret Hart's reigns were a success, but at first many casual viewers couldn't believe he was wearing the same belt that Warrior and Hogan were wearing less than 2 years earlier, all because of what they were used to seeing. That would have never happened in NWA, their belt was "Flair's", they were used to it.

For sure, no worthwhile company would let an active wrestler book unless they were super-over. The reigns would never have been handed over to the likes of Jobber McGee. I just can't picture him as being the most likeable person in a lift, let alone a wrestling organisation. I'm probably on my own but I've never been won over by him on the mic, either. It's like being dressed down by Little Mo from Eastenders.

 

You can count me in the "never quite got the appeal of Dusty" camp.

 

He always seemed like a very likeable (in a strange way) midcard type, but not the headline act in a million years. I know he was, so I'm wrong, but it still doesn't make sense. He just always sounded too camp for the tough-guy fans to like, too jive-talking for the white folk to like and too out of shape and ugly for the ladies. Screw Jeff Hardy, Dusty Rhodes is the true enigma.

 

I don't enjoy his matches either. The ones with Flair bored the shit out of me and were some of the (very few) early NWA/WCW Main Events that I didn't enjoy on a recent re-watching.

Thing is, it's really really difficult for us to judge fairly, in 2012 and most importantly conditioned by years of Mc Mahon-influenced wrestling (and I mean more 80's McMahon rather than today's McMahon). Look at Harley Race, absolute legend, 7 times NWA champ, can you really perceive him as a main eventer? Can you for real or do you say it just because you've been told it's true? Killer promo, ok, looks hard, great, but we are just not conditioned to taking "real people" seriously, and the further back you go the worse it gets in my opinion, I think there's no better example than Bruno Sammartino but you could make a casa for a character such as Fit Finlay, in 70's wrestling he would have been world champ even in his fifites.

Having said all of this, WWF gave Dusty an awful gimmick (or at least awful gear), kept him in the middle of the card yet he was super-over, apparently even in cities that were WWF-country.

Just wanted to add another thanks to the link for the EWA show from '98.

 

I was at that show as well as the earlier "Ultra Kaos" show in '96 which is here

 

I think I bought St Valentine's Massacre from a dvd dealer a few years ago, but I haven't seen the '96 show since I was there for it live, so that's a great find.

 

Same here, shame however that the Ultra Kaos footage is not complete and it ends abruptly doing the "main-event".

That's a shame. I hadn't watched it yet.

 

I skipped right to the end of the video as I wanted to see footage of the infamous "ringside invasion" but unfortunately the video seems to end before that.

I'm really sorry, I didn't realise that there actually IS the end of the show, the match at the end of the video is from another card, so... enjoy the show

Just wanted to add another thanks to the link for the EWA show from '98.

 

I was at that show as well as the earlier "Ultra Kaos" show in '96 which is here

 

I think I bought St Valentine's Massacre from a dvd dealer a few years ago, but I haven't seen the '96 show since I was there for it live, so that's a great find.

 

Same here, shame however that the Ultra Kaos footage is not complete and it ends abruptly doing the "main-event".

That's a shame. I hadn't watched it yet.

I skipped right to the end of the video as I wanted to see footage of the infamous "ringside invasion" but unfortunately the video seems to end before that.

Just wanted to add another thanks to the link for the EWA show from '98.

 

I was at that show as well as the earlier "Ultra Kaos" show in '96 which is here

 

I think I bought St Valentine's Massacre from a dvd dealer a few years ago, but I haven't seen the '96 show since I was there for it live, so that's a great find.

Same here, shame however that the Ultra Kaos footage is not complete and it ends abruptly doing the "main-event".

Regarding the invasion, what about TEMPORAILY turning Austin heel getting him back as Stunning Steve, Jericho as Lioneheart and maybe a couple others, Farooq as Ron Simmons, Big Show as The Giant, etc. evening up the odds and telling a story that made WCW important? Once WCW had been acquired, as a brand, it would have made sense to make it look as important as possible. Obviously you would still have all the real WCW guys, but it would have helped immensely IMO.

 

That's either a satirical masterwork, or you've been at the bath salts.

I'll admit it. Rereading it myself I started seeing how ridicolous part of the scenario would have been, so I tried to remember where it was from and I think I read it on some forum, at the time, and for some reason I thought it was one of the very few shortcuts they could have taken (too much buzz to delay the storyline unfortunately).

Steve Austin would have been an awful idea. True. I can't believe I wrote that.

But I don't see how The Giant is such a step down from Big Show (especially if you are trying to get heat) or even Y2J returning for a while as being Lioneheart and deliberately annoying, well I think I've seen worse in wrestling, it's not exactly like derailing Hulkamania.

Ditto from Farooq to Ron Simmons, how could that be so devastating? Breaking up the popular APA for a while (before a big reunion down the line) with Simmons getting all fussy about his All American Seminole background.

So fuck the Austin turn, that's worse than the Ding Dongs, but involving guys with a real history in WCW could have been tried, I still think that Angle on Team Alliance and Big Show and Jericho on team WWE was a bit strange, even if Jericho had left WCW with such animosity.

Regarding the invasion, what about TEMPORAILY turning Austin heel getting him back as Stunning Steve, Jericho as Lioneheart and maybe a couple others, Farooq as Ron Simmons, Big Show as The Giant, etc. evening up the odds and telling a story that made WCW important? Once WCW had been acquired, as a brand, it would have made sense to make it look as important as possible. Obviously you would still have all the real WCW guys, but it would have helped immensely IMO.

Now all of a sudden the star power is not an issue any longer.

With all the rational arguments in the world, no chance VKM would have ever done it right, hell he never used War Games (despite HHH's insistence), Halloween Havoc and Starrcade!

Blimey, this is a blast from the past. My (lengthy) report from www.wrestlingx.com

I note with embarrassment that at the time, I couldn't spell "Eddie".

 

THE TRUTH DIARIES- SATURDAY FEBRUARY 9th 2002

The story of REVIVAL by Greg 'The Truth' Lambert

Volume One-THE WAIT

 

3.00pm

 

Exhausted by the six-hour journey from Morecambe, feeling