davertfnewman

I saw the title and thought the guy who does the shit reviews on Scott Keith's site on Wednesday had invaded UKFF.

14 hours ago, Chili said:

Sometimes the old WWF TNT show had a bit of gold and here's an example when Jake Roberts went on. It's basically he and Mean Gene cracking up each other with nob gags yet Jake still comes across like a killer. Adore the audience too, who are clearly all super marks and lovely to observe (look out for the Rosatti Sisters, who brought crowd signs to a WWF talk show, bless them).

 

I'm pretty sure it was the last show, so they probably went out there and did whatever the fuck they wanted to without major fear of repercussion.

I remember seeing Moondog Rex in the programmes, but instead of the torn-up jeans he was just wearing black trunks and knee pads alongside the heavy boots, still had the bone, though. More of a wrestler look for him, but still with the gimmick.

Maybe not fans, but certainly making an appearance, it's bizarre to see the WWF show at the Wembley Arena in 1989 having the like of Screaming Lord Such and the cast of Hi-de-Hi there. Su Pollard dancing to Honky's music in front of an amused Jeffrey Holland.

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Another 1993 poster.  Featuring Kamala for no reason than he had posed for a photo with Mongolian Mauler (American-born Peter Flowers) although Kamala did of course wrestle over here a decade earlier as the Mongolian Mauler.

I'm pretty sure I had a Cannock version of that for the Prince of Wales Theatre show. Certainly remember it for Linda Lusardi. Isn't the Kamala there Ben Peacock?

21 hours ago, Carbomb said:

...that Neil Gaiman's father was the head of the British branch of the Church of Scientology.

The person who mentioned it said there's a clip on YouTube of a young Neil being interviewed where he basically evangelised for the cult.

The dad appears in a clip Bob Mills played on this episode of In Bed With Medinner: 

56 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

When he was in his 30s he was seeing 16 year old Pixie Geldof. And she wasn’t the only one. He likes them young. 
 

 

I thought he actually liked them male - he was out as gay by the time she'd be that old, surely?

3 hours ago, Cutting Edge of Bluntness said:

Where did this fit in exactly? Clearly not a tribute show but very much influenced by WWF at the time.

Johnny "Muscles" England, at that point well into middle age, recruited a bunch of bodybuilders from a gym in Staffordshire/the West Midlands and trained them up for quite a bizarre show with the world's biggest ring, some obvious ripoff gimmicks (the Taxman) and a comedian and his mate on commentary.

My gripe with his ratings has always been that it's only based on match quality. What if it was based on interview quality or angle quality? Then you would find that some people who never got highly rated for matches and had a smattering of "good matches" but consistently kill it on the mic might start overtaking people who always had good matches because those guys can't talk or aren't believable outside of an action setting.

59 minutes ago, Dai said:

Ah that makes sense then. That said, the ECW run, where he still looks like a tank (which suggests he was training, and his neck was fixed), suggests he was ready to go then, and that was mid 98 wasn't it? Still another year in the wilderness when you think WCW would have been throwing money at him to join.

Sid pretty much played it safe, with no bumps, from 1996 onwards. Then he climbed the ropes for that flying legdrop and look what happened.

I don't think Foley's work was ever in doubt, he was a fantastic, different worker from start to end of the nineties. It's actually pretty interesting to watch his face turn in '93 against Paul Orndorff and Harley Race, which gains him the ire of Vader. He went instantly and believably from the warped bounty hunter/underling (who still was floating around the main event in any case for a year and half) to a tough and courageous babyface for pretty much the rest of his career. Whoever realised it was time to make that change and took the chance on it, Dusty Rhodes or whoever, was a genius.

5 hours ago, Accident Prone said:

Whenever I go to the post office with a handful of packages to send, I ALWAYS get a huff and a puff from the clerk. One or two, it's fine, but if you have to take up more than 5 minutes of their time then they look at you with scorn. I took in eight parcels yesterday, all super simple DVD-sized packages, and you'd think I'd barged into the clerk's house on Easter Sunday and shat in her chocolate eggs.

I don't do those "big" deliveries often, maybe once a year at most, but I still dread going there because it means I get the daggers and the long, drawn-out breath and the same old speech about getting an account so I can dump them in a bag and get charged later (which would ultimately cost me MORE). I've never known customer service like it.

The Post Office near me is like that. I had to go into my local one one time to drop some parcels off for my dad. A guy walked in off the street and asked whoever was closest (me) if they knew where there was a cash machine. I pointed up the street and off the bloke headed. Seconds later, the manager is telling me off because THEY have cash machine in their post office (hidden around a corner) and I was responsible for them losing a customer. If it were my own parcels, I would've walked out and told them they'd just lost two in one minute.

Jose Chung's From Outer Space became my favourite episode of the main run of the show, mainly because it was so weird that you had to watch it again and the second watch helped you get the joke.

The episode Home was quite controversial, as I recall, because of the subject nature, but also I believe one of the actors playing one of the brothers went out for a little while with Gillian Anderson and was found to have a not exactly wholesome criminal record behind him.

8 hours ago, Thunderplex said:

I saw him a few times in solo matches at Stockport Town Hall in the early 90’s.  Physically quite a small slight guy, but just had this air of fucking nasty psycho bastard who would bite your face off for a bag of chips.  Very intense and is still one of the most convincing heels I’ve ever seen.

Absolutely! I saw him a few times on Brian Dixon cards in Cannock at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Kinda the Bret Hart to Ricky Knight's Jim Neidhart. Small, covered in tattoos, snarling and scowling, has the bad two-tone haircut and gawdy tights, but looked hard, could fly all over. He wrestled Adam Kilby in a captain's match and was doing one of the best heel moves from a pinfall position where he was facing South with Kilby's head North. When Kilby would lift his shoulder he would hit him in the balls, so the ref would rush round to question him on it and he'd put his hand behind him to choke Kilby while begging off, which he kept going for a good minute or so.

At the end of the night it was him with Buffalo Brehney against both Alan and Adam Kilby, and again it made for a good father and son versus sneaky little shit and big hard bastard tag match too.

It didn't hurt that there was a story in the nineties that he'd come back to his room at one of the holiday camps after a match and found a bloke screwing his missus, so he beat the ever-loving shit out of him. Got arrested for it, but reminded you he was not to be messed with.

4 hours ago, Chili said:

 

The new Wrestle Me vid about Spiros Arion causing a riot in Leicester on World of Sport is fantastic work.

There are two heels I wish had been seen by a wider audience. One is Gentleman Jimmy Ocean and the other is Spiros Arion. He was legitimately scary. Looked it, sounded it. His wrestling was a bit OTT and his mannerisms could be clownish, but he probably needed to be to offset the genuine intimidation factor. Would've loved to have seen him come back '85 for a run against Hulk Hogan with Bobby Heenan as his manager. Can imagine him doing the job to the legdrop and then doing the "Pull me back" deal after the match where he'd be looking like he was trying to rush the ring again for more before walking off.

9 hours ago, garynysmon said:

 

The only reason that the El Diablo angle doesn't get brought up more is because it culminated in the cobra angle, but it's excellent. A part of me wonders if Jake Roberts was throwing his best stuff out there as part of an audition to take Pat Patterson's job.

Five pops and the crowd gets out "NEW!" before the Fink does in probably his greatest call.

Wanted Bret, got Neidhart.

Kinda would've wanted to have seen that team in the States. As I said before, Suzuki might've sucked, but he at least looked like something. But then this is the same company that had Rene Dupree as big as a house as his partner and sticking boot polish through his hair and over his eyes and under his nose.

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Kenzo Suzuki tapes a loss to Booker T which turns out to be his last in the company - he misses a ton of ring time with a collapsed lung and despite him and Hiroko being drafted to Raw, before he’s back in the ring they’re both released in another big cost cutting cull in July. He continues wrestling, in 2010 he’ll show up as KENSO in All Japan and join the Voodoo Murders, reconnecting funnily enough with Rene Dupree. He’s still going today as a freelancer, and it warms my heart to tell you that despite earning something of a cult following, as he wrestler he’s never really been better than “the drizzling shits.”

Regardless of the quality of his wrestling, because I think he already had a stinker in TNA with Perry Saturn or someone like that, I always wonder who saw this big, jacked guy in cool gear and decided to put him in some grandad pyjamas with a goofy gimmick. I can imagine the initials V... K... M.

4 hours ago, air_raid said:

DEPARTURE 

At the completion of his one year, Ryan Sakoda does a TV job to Funaki then is let go. Kyo Dai had become aimless after being separated from Tajiri anyway, though they’ll try again with Jimmy Yang/Akio. Sakoda ends up part of the class action lawsuit regarding brain trauma and passed away in 2021 aged just 48 though damned if I can find a cause of death online.

He had a problem with painkiller addiction at one point and talked about it, and enabling Mike Bell, in one of Mark Bell's documentaries, so don't know if it was a result of that.