ES' idea that I'm following through with. Every month, a new topic for each new month of program blocks.

April 2007 is MANAGER MAYHEM.

Hall of Fame Profile is centered around Captain Lou Albano. Also available so far has been The Greatest Managers in Wrestling History and the Stone Cold Truth.

In TV Classics, the Monday Night War continues, as Nitro manages to blow it with a show that featured Benoit/Jericho and Liger/Dragon, and Raw is Crap, outside of Bret bad mouthing Shawn in Shoot comments that aren't supposed to be shoot comments.

The Midnight Rider appears in Championship Wrestling from Florida, and Jake Roberts is a REAL evil Santa.

TNT 10/18/85 sucked.

PrimeTime Wrestling 5/4/87 wasn't much better.

ECW features more stuff.

Boston Garden 8/6/88 was fun.

Armageddon 2006 is probably meh.

Scrooge your style is impeccable.

Don't you mean "impregnable"? ™-Mike Tyson

Not at all actually.

Hey, I liked that Nitro... but I'm biased about those shows.

A good chunk of stuff ends on 4/17, which means I have ALOT of crap to watch and record this weekend.

While typing that, I realized something. "DVD" isn't a good verb, like "tape" is/was. I used to say, "I'll tape that"... now it seems awkward to say "I'll DVD-R it", or "I'll record it". I want a one-syllable verb, dammit!

Good point.

I still have to watch Armageddon. There's only two things from that show I can think of that I might enjoy. A Ladder match and KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE~!

The Greatest manager stuff is ok, outside of some "Todd Pettengil" caliber retardation from Todd Grisham, and their complete memory loss that Paul Bearer managed Kane and Mankind after the Undertaker.

Todd Grisham needs to be fired, or at least forced to watch himself.

I can't stand how they hire people with that little talent. Josh Matthews would be soooo much better in Grisham's role.

Even Steve Romero would... or the new cock-stain hosting the Preview Show. Nick Markakis or whoever.

Watching CWF right now.

Holy crap. The Italian Stallion wins a match and has a cool finisher to boot.

What's his finish?

He did an airplane spin into a samoan drop. One of the guys during the Russians squash did a sick bump to. He did a 450 flip right onto his head. It was brutal looking.

An odd side effect of 24/7 so far. All of the 80s WWF side by side with the NWA really exposes the WWF as being a far inferior style of wrestling at the time.

Au contraire Mr. Dog. I beleive it stands to reason that showing NWA stuff side-by-side with WWF stuff just goes to show you how two companies can get over using to decidedly divergent styles.

Or at least I think that's what Vince wants us to think..... :rolleyes:

Holy shit. Benoit/Jarrett from Mayhem 99 is a fucking great match. The Jarrett haters should watch this.

Is that the U.S. title ladder match, Dog?

This is the semi-final to the World Title tournament. The ladder match was Starcade. I got that PPV for free due to a cable screw up and that was also a fucking great match from them.

Boston Garden show isn't anything special so far but it's been a fun little show.

This Andre/Duggan match is surprisingly decent. Andre must've been really feeling good that night because he wasn't hanging all over the works like he usually did.

Damn, I had forgotten just how cornball ECW Television could be.

Okay, the Capt. Lou Albano vs. Arnold Skaaland match--- Lou has a foreign object and uses it to smack Arnie around. Lou keep hiding it in his trunks and keeping it out of the ref's view. Arnie eventually blocks Lou's punch and grabs the object, right in front of the ref. He busts Lou open, Lou leaves and it's a countout. Meanwhile, Arnie shows the ref the object and GIVES IT TO HIM. But Arnie still wins by countout, not a loss by disqualification. Logic in Wrestling!

I was watching a bit of Monday Nitro last night that's part of the Monday Night Wars.

So I notice that Ultimo is wrestling Liger so I'm starting to get all pumped up. Especially because they both wrested at Starrcade the night before (not each other though, seperate matches). Then Ultimo beats Liger in about 5 mintues. Boo-urns.

It could've been worse...

Liger could've lost a title worth a damn after being hit in the head with a tequila bottle.

Yeah yeah. But that was WCW 99. That's like comparing Crockett Promotions to backyard wrestling.

I know... but WCW is WCW. They made retarded decisions since day 1 (a.k.a the Ted Turner's WCW Years).

So has every other wrestling company in the history of their existence.

WCW made a LOT of them. This is the same company that told Ric Flair to fuck off and tried to push a midcard Barry Windham in his spot at the 2nd biggest PPV of the year.

The same company that made a gimmick out of a movie from 1939.

The same company that wanted to push Hunchbacks.

The same company that had 7,079,405 people dress up as Sting.

The same company who's president's biggest job was running a PIZZA HUT.

The same company that pushed ED LESLIE as the #1 heel into the biggest show of the year in 1994.

So has the fucking WWF, and I might even say that the WWF's are worse.

It's the same company that told Hulk Hogan to fuck off and pushed LEX LUGER in his place.

It's the same company that made gimmicks out of Garbage men, plumbers, and a fucking ROOSTER.

It's the same company that featured NECROPHELIA in an angle.

It's the same company that had 7,079,405 dress up as DOINK.

It's the same company that's president inherited the company from DADDY.

It's the same company that made Ed Leslie a star in the first fucking place.



See what I'm saying?

Touche.

But WCW never made money, save for about 18 months thanks to the nWo. (note: I refer to the WCW once Ted Turner bought the company).

I know what you mean. Vince was just smarter with marketing.

Also, the only WCW was Turner's version. It was never WCW when he wasn't there.

I know, but some might be confused that I meant WCW including the days when it was still the NWA dating back into the 50's. He was also owner for the last few years they were recognized as that.

That's a bit debateable and confusing. It's not as clear as you might think. Jim Crockett Promotions (or as most fans called it, "the NWA") was billed as "World Championship Wrestling" or "WCW" well before Turner took over. This was in the days when names like "All-Star Wrestling" and "Big Time Wrestling" were used frequently. In fact, for most of the 80's-- up until late 1987 when Crockett took over the UWF--, the Apter mags would list "WCW" as a territory. Using those initials and abbreviating it as such. It would've seemed a bit cheesy to call it "JCP", when just about every other promotion had a "W", plus a "League", "Federation" or "Association" in it.

But the differentiating fact is that none of the belts were called "WCW". They were always "national champ", "NWA champ", etc. So in that regards, "WCW" didn't have branded champs until 1991.

Vince and others would like you to believe that Ted Turner bought up JCP in 1988 and re-branded it with a completely new name of "WCW". In fact, the name and initials had been tied to JCP for awhile. It's like if someone had bought the WWF in 1988 and marketted it as "Superstars of Wrestling". It would, technically, be a new company name, but not a name unfamiliar to the territory. They did some research when re-branding it.

The 5/4/87 Prime Time was weird. They ran a Jim Brunzell/Jim Nedihart match from albout a year earlier. In fact, the commentators were talking about the WrestleMania 2 battle royal with the NFL guys.

Plus a match from just before WM3, with Butch Reed vs. Dick Slater. People always say "Slater had a brief run in the WWF".. but he was there for almost a full year. Guess he wasn't on TV much. Commentator Ken Resnick also goes into Butch Reed's alledged career with the KC Chefs. I don't think there's ever been any documented proof that he played for them. I think he was just another training camp invitee who never made the roster, like Jim Duggan, Jim Neidhart, etc.

The main event/"Feature match" was a tag team battle royal from October 1986. Inlcuded the Machines, Jay Strongbow and Big John Studd-- buncha' guys who, at the time, hadn't been seen on TV in months. (well, the Machines were being seen on TV as Ax and Blackjack Mulligan, but you know what I mean).

"Highlight" would probably be the Bobby Heenan/Ken Patera debate. It's a good angle, but it's odd that the entire thing was sold by Heenan and Gene Okerlund. Patera's promos were kinda' wooden, but Okerlund and Heenan made it work. Example: before Patera has stepped foot into the ring or said one word, the fans were already on his side. Basically, those two cut all the good promos for the angle. Patera would repeat: "I paid my debt to society and I love the USA, where we're given a second chance" endlessly.

The show's also weird because Lord Alfred Hayes is sitting in for Heenan in the studio. Alfred's like that silent friend who always comes to your parties. You've known him for a long time and while he's never been the life of the party or has had any good jokes, he's never given you a reason to hate him. Like a "comfort friend", if that makes sense. Vince and Gorilla seemed to like him and kept him hanging around.

See, now that's weird shit right there. I know that the only thing that was really World Championship Wrestling, which was the TV show. I don't remember them doing that in the Apter mags so I can't really comment on it.

To make a long story short (too late): The whole NWA/WCW thing is confusing.


The 5/4/87 PTW seems rather meh. As ES pointed out, they mixed really old matches with current stuff, and nothing really notable other than the Patera/Heenan incident from SuperStars went down.

Yeah, it is hella confusing.

But moving on, I thought that the PTW was really shitty too. But I'll be damned if they didn't work wonders for Patera......the guy sounded like a total retard and it still worked.

Plus, I've come to realize how shitty PTW can be without Heenan.

Updates for the week...

11/84 MSG
11/1/85 TNT
1/6/97 Monday Night Wars
Lou Albano crap

Uh...

I'm sure I forgot something.

Onto TNT, is it me, or are they usually about a month behind in storylines? Like the Andre/Bundy thing... that happend in august, but they were hyping it in OCTOBER. Weird. And the Steamboat/Muraco stuff too, same time frame gap.

They also updated a few more shows in Big Ones. but I'm at work and I forget what they were off hand.