Wow. Good episode tonight with Stan Hansen and Jerry Blackwell and Hennig beating Don Fargo. Better wrestling than the UWF but not as memorable for it's badness.

What?!! AWA is on?! Nice. How long do they plan to show it?

Hard to say. A couple of months at least. They they have the footage to run it for years.

I was shocked at the Blackwell/Hansen match. Hansen made that fat piece of shit look like gold.

Jerry Blackwell may have been a fat piece of shit, but that fat POS had one helluva drop-kick. Amazing as in "I can't believe he just got his feet up to kick that guy in the face!" HOLY SHIT kind of moment, and he did it ALL THE TIME. Blackwell was an amazing heel.

Yeah, from what I remember of Blackwell, he was surprisingly agile. But he was a SHORT fat guy... built more like a Jake Milliman than a One Man Gang.

Blackwell was actually pretty good in his prime. He was just way past it by the time that match happened.

Caught it for the first time since its ESPN Classics relaunch, last night. The thing that always bugs me about the AWA is how they try to make the jobbers appear competent, working armbars and other crappy offense. Each match lasts twice as long as it should. But that was just Verne's style and the way he wanted to make it look authentic.

Last night's episode was from October 12, 1986. Have they been airing them in order, or just at random? I thought WWE 24/7 had bought up all of the AWA tapes. But they seemed to have a falling out with the Gagnes, last summer, when AWA shows stopped appearing on 24/7. Whether this is WWE property or not, it's good news, since we'll see more AWA this way than we ever would on 24/7.

Another cool thing: the original music is left intact. So the Midnight Rockers came out to Judas Priest's "Livin' After Midnight" (yes!) instead of some dubbed-over generic tune.

They dusted off UWF and now AWA.... hmm, can I tease myself and hope that they'll dust off the awesome "Legends of World Class Championship Wrestling" episodes? That'd be sweet...because while I love the World Class episodes on 24/7, I know that pretty soon we'll be getting dubbed-over entrances that wipe out Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" (Kevin Von Erich), Rush's "Tom Sawyer" (Kerry) and Skynyrd's "Freebird" (duh). So if they pop up on ESPN, while the episodes would have cheesy introductions from Marc Lowrance, they would have better arena segments.

Well I don't think we'll be seeing the old World Class shows. Apparently ESPN retained the rights for the AWA show due to contracts signed years ago. Apparently the stuff that ESPN is showing couldn't be sold to the WWE by the Gagne's. I think that even though the World Class stuff was on ESPN that Kevin retained the rights to everything considering they produced and made the show. ESPN had no hand in it I believe except showing it on TV. Therefore Kevin Von Erich had the rights and turned them over to the WWE. I could be wrong but I believe this is the situation.

I had always assumed that all World Class footage was owned by Kevin, then sold to WWE a few years ago.

But, where it gets cloudy is that the 24/7 episodes are the original broadcasts of World Class...as they were aired from Dallas. ESPN didn't start showing World Class until 1988, when they re-packaged all the old stuff in the "Legends" format. So a good portion of it was stuff added by ESPN. New theme music, graphics, plus intros and outros by Marc Lowrance that were never in the original broadcasts. I'm pretty sure these were produced exclusively for ESPN.

WWE 24/7 showed some ESPN-branded AWA episodes from 1985, last summer. It was almost identical to the stuff on ESPN Classic last night...with the ESPN graphics and bumpers.

In both cases (AWA and WCCW), I've been under the assumption that all footage was owned by WWE. But now with this AWA stuff popping up, I'm curious.

Hmmm.....you might be right then about the WCCW stuff. I'm wondering if there was enough of it to start airing it on a regular basis? I remember it being on, but how many eps would they have?

Perhaps I don't get it, but why exactly can these shows (and the UWF shows) have all of this original music still intact, without issues.

I guess I don't understand why it is fine here, but the WWE freaks the fuck out and edits EVERYTHING.

They had tons of old WCCW stuff. They pretty much had every weekly show from late 1982 all the way up to 1987. Even the big Cotton Bowl and Texas Stadium shows were included. Do the math and it's a bunch. They aired every weekday from 1988 to 1989...and aside from a few scheduling goof-ups, you rarely saw a repeat. So you could definitely air the "Legends" package on a daily basis. Despite the name, they weren't clip shows or compilations. Just the old shows with new wrappers.

I remember them having a gap from about mid 1985 to mid 1986. I was watching stuff from 1985 with Chris Adams and One Man Gang...then the next day (episode), they began airing awful stuff from 1986 with Buzz Sawyer and the Dingo Warrior. It was sad, because you could see how the place went downhill so quickly. They had decent crowds in 1985, but suddenly in 1986 they had about 50 people in the audience.

Hmm...more speculation: does ESPN still have their old GWF stuff?! They also produced exclusive shows for Ken Mantel's "Wild West Wrestling", plus some other current (in 1989) shows during the whole WCCW/USWA transition. Let's keep our eyes open.


Oh, one more weird observation about last night's AWA: Scott Hall, a guy from Tampa, wrestled in cowboy boots? Thought that was weird. Tampa is a little redneck-y, but enough for cowboy boots? Cowboy boots are usually the universal wrestling indicator that the wrestler's from Texas (or at least in kayfabe terms).

I didn't mean to no-sell and bump over your post, Geist.

Someone explained it to me once... I want to say that it was due to royalties, licensing and what not (i.e: MONEY)... but I think I'm wrong.

Well shit, I had no idea there was THAT much WCCW on ESPN. I'm assuming that they would probably have a lot of it still but I don't know if they would be allowed to play it.

I'm also thinking they can play the music on ESPN in tact because they owned the rights to the shows in the first place. If someone bought it off of them and aired it I believe the rights of the music becomes an issue. The music was never intended to be used like that at first so it probably wasn't part of the rights package.

This means that we can probably get GWF shows down the road. Woo-hoo.

If they keep this up and I keep 24/7 I might never have to watch current wrestling again!

I kinda want the UWF back. The AWA is bad but it's not charmingly terrible like the UWF shows were. It's more boring bad than anything.

I've been thinking the same thing. Not that the AWA is bad, but they surely aren't playing their best stuff either.

There are some nuggets of good in there. But the roster is really thin and as you can see the booking is horribly outdated for 1986.

Now THAT is the truth. The booking they have going on during the time period that they are airing is atrocious.

Actually the sit down interview segments with Larry Nelson and Larry Zbyszko are really good but I doubt they show those. There's one where Buddy Rose tears a $100 bill in half and throws it on the ground. Nelson during the interview kind of eyes and then slowly moves his foot and covers the bill and then slowly pulls it back towards him. It was hilarious.

But like I said. There are some nuggets of good in there:

Bruiser Brody
Sgt. Slaughter
Midnight Rockers
Curt Hennig
Doug Somers
Buddy Rose
Larry Zbyszko
Sherri Martel
Stan Hansen
Brad Rhengains
Barry Windham
Mike Rotunda
Scott Hall
Nick Bockwinkel

Vader making an appearance as the "Baby Bull" Leon White. The quality is fucking awful on this episode. Actually I think my DVD copy of this episode is in better condition.

Vader whips out a sunset flip to my surprise and retard Greg Gagne calls it a backslide.

Main Event this time around:

Nord the Barbarian, the Mongolian Stomper and Boris Zhukov vs. Sgt. Slaughter, Jerry Blackwell and Curt Hennig

Some potential here and it'll get time. Blackwell and Zhukov are going to drag it down though.

Wow... Blackwell whipped out the word "ass" in his interview. That's pretty rare for the time period.

Ah... nothing like Bruiser Brody murdering some poor jobber to make this episode worthwhile.

Nice! Stan Hansen vs. Curt Hennig is the main event.

It was a pretty decent match too. Although Hansen even remotely cowering to Hall annoys the living fuck outta me.

Didja' catch on RAW this week, where Jim Ross said : "I was watching WWE 24/7 the other night and saw the Midnight Rockers on there..."

Umm... probably wasn't WWE 24/7, rather ESPN. Midnight Rockers and/or AWA haven't been on the 24/7 schedule for awhile. Gasp! But it amuses me up that Ross may have gotten a scolding, afterwards. Someone in the back may not have liked him plugging a non-WWE product.

And bubbly crap, I keep forgetting to watch this stuff! I remember watching some of this stuff "live" and liking Scott Hall, back then. It's also 1986, when Sarge was right in the midst of his Hasbro deal, too. Doesn't he mix in a corny "Yo Joe" in his interviews?

They really had no clue how to use Stan Hansen. Verne just didn't get the concept of a monster heel that backs down to nobody. Gagne and Kent are also a duo of retards on commentary.

This show also showed why the AWA died. They had a moneymaker in Slaughter vs. Hansen but never really went all out with it.

I have this episode on DVD.

Sgt. Slaughter vs. Nord the Barbarian which is a decent main event brawl for this episode.

My gawd.... Sarge says that someone snuck into the Triple T Tank and stole his flags!

Yes, damn those evil bastards!!! I bet it was that dastardly King Kong Brody!

Honestly, they probably should have never used Hansen. He let it be known that his loyalty was Japan and it really fucked them when they put the title on him only to have him leave the company, take it, and when threatened he ran it over with a truck and mailed it back to them.

I disagree. Hansen gave them a huge amount of credibility. They just didn't use him right and Verne fucked himself by backing out of the deal he originally made to get Hansen. If they hadn't tried to force him to lose the belt right before his tour, the one where he was promised to be champion, it would've worked out better. Then have him come back and lose it to Curt Hennig or something like that.

Sure Hansen gave them credibility, but he didn't do anything for the company in the long haul. They couldn't offer him enough money to give up Japan, so they shouldn't have brought him in. Also, there's no doubt in my mind that he wouldn't have dropped the belt either. He was loyal to Japan at the time and there is no way they'd allow him to lose even if it's in the US for another company.

Is there an actual "America's Championship" belt? If so, why hasn't Sarge been wearing it? I remember Zhukov beats him for it, eventually...but I can't recall if they physically had a belt.

Or was it like being the "World Class African Champion"?

Stan Hansen was a bit of a rapscallion to say the least. Didn't have a record of staying in one place for long. Putting the belt on him was like putting the belt on, say, Jeff Hardy.



Oh, and technically you can't break into the Triple T Tank. It had no interior. It was more like a beefy recliner with tank treads and two wimpy little guns. Sarge should've know that, darnit!!

I have tonight's episode on DVD as well.