Perfection

Shhhhh, you better not say that or they will say you hate jericho or something. Really though I totally agree. Every segment he has been in has been flat and the crowd has even booed him once. They just don't accept him as a face...he is so much better as a heel. Just look at tonight, when he hit Eric, there was absolutely no positive crowd response. Jericho as a face just doesn't work...especially the way he dresses. This is my favorite. I agree that Jericho has been kinda bland on the stick since coming back, but what is with everyone whining about his clothes? I personally don't give a shit about what some cat is wearing to the ring if he's entertaining. A sparkly vest is gay......as opposed to watching guys rolling around in their underwear with other men all oiled up. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to be flamboyant, he's supposed to be a showman, like an 80s rock star (think David Lee Roth). I think this was a pretty entertaining show though. Sadly, I laughed at Hornswoggle at the end, pretending to talk to Triple H while casually dumping beer on McMahon. On a side note, does anyone have any clue what was up with Hogan referencing Savage? I know their past and Macho's album and all that, but that seemed really random to mention. Well for me personally, I don't really care how he dresses. I'm just throwing out a reason why crowd/fans have not gotten behind him. You have to admit he dresses sort of...odd.

Actually I think she rubbed her tits in his face, or was damn close to doing it. I was dissappointed by the lack of reaction to some of the older guys and the reactions to Lita and Trish. I hate crowds/fans who have no appreciation of anything older than this year.

Shhhhh, you better not say that or they will say you hate jericho or something. Really though I totally agree. Every segment he has been in has been flat and the crowd has even booed him once. They just don't accept him as a face...he is so much better as a heel. Just look at tonight, when he hit Eric, there was absolutely no positive crowd response. Jericho as a face just doesn't work...hell just look at the way he dresses.

Huh? Why? I guess I can dig a JBL return, but why against Jericho? Man you read my mind. If JBL does return, I wouldn't have thought it would be against Jericho.

What's with this line? Why is it hard to believe someone could be in such pain with only being in the business a few years? Most guys start popping pills early in their careers. It goes to show you how little some of the so called experts know. If he got hooked on pain pills, what he was likely talking about was the withdrawal, which is one of the worst things in the world. I should know because I went through it. Every square inch of your body hurts on top of hot chills. Its absolute misery. And many young people suffer from pain much more than normal due to a variety of reasons, so obviously that little smart ass remark shows they don't really have a clue what the fuck they are talking about in this regard. It's easy for someone who has never really hurt or suffered through pain and addiction to make light of others who do.

Nonsense. Anyone making a movie knows the rocks history and i think it would mean absolutely nothing to them if he showed up ONCE for a damn raw special. Personally I look at it like the Rock shunning the business that made him a star to begin with and I honestly don't like it. I don't care anything personally about seeing him come back but obviously a lot of people would love it yet he thinks he is too good for it now apparently. He wouldn't be anywhere without wrestling and/or his fans and one would think that he wouldn't fucking mind to make some fans happy again just once. But nope, he is this big movie star now and who cares about his fans.

He makes some good points IMHO. One of the things that I especially get annoyed with while watching TNA is the super rush feel of the matches, even after the show went to 2 hours. It just looks dumb for everyone to hit all these huge impact moves yet only sell things for just a few seconds before they move on to their next spot. I saw an interview with Ole Anderson saying something along these very same lines and I was thinking at the time I saw it that he was exactly right. Just because you can come off the top rope and do all these gymnastic type moves doesn't make you a good or great in ring wrestler. Selling is ABSOLUTELY what helps make a match good. It adds drama and believability but when you have no selling at all from moves that should keep you down for more than 5 seconds there is no drama. This is what made wrestling so good back in the nwa/80s. It wasn't just about one high spot after another, it was about being more realistic and selling your opponents offense longer than it takes to whipe your ass.

I wonder why they didn't even mention Ric Flair. No signs of him being on the SD spoilers, so I wonder what the hell is going on now.

This has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The morton downey Jr show with some wrestlers trying their best to protect the business. Dr D was so funny, I'm shocked he didn't make it bigger than he did. He is like a Steve Austin of the time but even more over the top. (Can't imagine Austin ever acting like this outside of the business). He was fired after slapping the shit out of that reporter twice and one has to wonder if that didn't happen how far he would have gone. Part 3 he goes way over the top and throws water in the face of wilson. He treated wilson like shit and made some rather dumb comments toward thunderbolt/blacks. But its hard to tell if he is just playing his character or what. You certainly get the impression he was a bigot but aside from that My god this man was fucking awesome But watching this brings back some memories of how wrestlers used to protect the business at all costs. Compare that with today where no one pretends its "real". The yelling and screaming by all involved was just fucking hilarious though. Here is part one and of course the other parts are to the right. Pure gold.

I'm going to be very curious as to how the ratings will fair with the Flair angle tonight and in the future. I mean if every match could be his last, it will be fascinating to see how much interest there really is in it. I can't imagine there is a wrestling fan alive today who doesn't want to see Flairs very last match so I expect something good out of it rating wise. I totally agree. I have watched this man for 20 plus years and I was more interested in his stuff tonight than anything I have been interested in, in quite a while. The end of an era is finally upon us and it almost seems surreal. I truly hope mcmahon and the business sends him off the way he should. On top, in the ring crying, holding the belt, and a countless number of fans crying with him that night and the next night when he retires as the champ. Although that would be too good of stuff to give the fans and him so I'm sure he will lose his title match.

LMAO, I thought the exact same thing and as a matter of fact was going to post something about it. They got awfully close there didn't they

Hell he actually got some boos when he said he first said something about taking the title off orton. Pretty lackluster response from the crowd to say the least. Hell Santino beat him in that verbal exchange. Btw, i laughed at jericho talking about orton being stupid with regard to not understanding the "question" but he didn't actually asked a question. He made a statement..he wants a title match. Oops. Don't like Jericho too much do we? I think he's still got it. Where do you get that I don't like him? No I like him but I'm just calling it like I see it. I did like his new finisher

Hell he actually got some boos when he said he first said something about taking the title off orton. Pretty lackluster response from the crowd to say the least. Hell Santino beat him in that verbal exchange. Btw, i laughed at jericho talking about orton being stupid with regard to not understanding the "question" but he didn't actually asked a question. He made a statement..he wants a title match. Oops.

Despite the nay sayers, there is real money still to be made with such an angle with ric flair. The fans want to see him win the title one last time. Who gives a shit if its credible or not with his age (as if anything in wrestling really is) that is what the fans are dying to see. I hope they build up to that and actually give it to him...and not to have him lose in his title match.

No fucking shit dude, that's my point. He does the move about a million times better and safer compared to when he first started using it.

Go back and take a look at when undertaker first came into the wwf and see how awful his tombstones looked then. they were as bad as Kane's, if not worse. In some cases the head would be a foot from the canvas and other times he really screwed up and dropped them.. It's a miracle he didn't kill someone

I can't believe anyone would find this entertaining. I was sitting there watching this thinking how in the fuck can this shit be this damn bad. I don't know whats worse...the IDIOCY of all the angle bullshit or the fact that stupid motherfucking idiot tenay has to give a fucking PLAY BY PLAY of the dinner table and AJ putting on that stupid suit! "Aj slips one leg into the turkey suit...."... Holy fucking shit tna is so bad. how can anyone like this..this makes the mid 90s wwf look like the fucking 80s nwa. Fucking fucker fuckity fuck. Did you say fuck? FUCK. :lol: Sorry...Tenay and West just drive me absolutely crazy. I think Tna would be a lot more bearable to me if it wasn't for those two idiots. They are so bad that even if something is good, they make it horrible. Of course part of this is tna's management fault for making them read from a script and telling them how to call things but jesus christ they are without a doubt the worst team in wrestling history.

I can't believe anyone would find this entertaining. I was sitting there watching this thinking how in the fuck can this shit be this damn bad. I don't know whats worse...the IDIOCY of all the angle bullshit or the fact that stupid motherfucking idiot tenay has to give a fucking PLAY BY PLAY of the dinner table and AJ putting on that stupid suit! "Aj slips one leg into the turkey suit...."... Holy fucking shit tna is so bad. how can anyone like this..this makes the mid 90s wwf look like the fucking 80s nwa.

I agree completely. All the shit he catches about the headlocks and stuff is stupid. Hell I suppose no one here ever enjoyed the old nwa did they? Just about every match had multiple and long "rest" spots/headlock spots. Orton is way better than he is given credit for and I'm not that easy to please.

I stumbled upon this last night and it might have already been posted many times before but it was so good, I wanted to share it with those who haven't seen it. Its pretty long but definitely worth the read. I remember reading before about the hospital staff worrying that Wahoo Mcdaniel was going to attack flair in the hospital when he came to see him. But reading it again still cracks me up. And just think...we were that close to losing the greatest in ring performer to ever lace a pair of boots. Just hard to imagine wrestling without all those great nature boy moments or no four horsemen. I hope you all enjoy this article, I know I did. http://slam.canoe.ca/SlamWrestlingFlair/planecrash-can.html READER ALERT: For all the latest wrestling happenings, check out our News & Rumours section. The plane crash that changed wrestling It's been 25 years since Valentine, Flair, Woods, Crockett went down By JOHN F. MOLINARO -- SLAM! Wrestling Tim Woods hits Johnny Valentine. -- photo courtesy Tim Woods It was supposed to be a routine flight. On October 4, 1975, a twin-engine Cessna 310 plane carrying a promoter and four wrestlers took off from Charlotte for Wilmington, North Carolina. En route to an evening show at the outdoor Legion Stadium, the passengers were counting on a restful flight. It turned out to be something quite different. As they approached the Wilmington Airport runway the plane ran out of gas, cutting across several treetops and a utility pole before crashing to the ground. And with that the lives of promoter David Crockett and wrestlers Tim Woods, Bobby Bruggers, then-U.S. Heavyweight champion Johnny Valentine and a 24-year-old upstart named Ric Flair were inextricably changed forever. It is remembered as one of the most historic plane crashes in wrestling lore. It was the talk of the industry for years. The landscape of Mid-Atlantic Championship wrestling, the cornerstone of the National Wrestling Alliance (N.W.A.) was forever changed. Two careers were ended as a result of the crash, and another one, that of Ric Flair's, was almost stricken down before it ever really got started. Twenty-five years later, Crockett, vice president of production for WCW, remembers the terror and fear that overcame him as the plane started to nose dive. "At the time I was scared to death," Crockett recently told SLAM! Wrestling from his office at WCW headquarters in Atlanta. "I just remember as we started going across Cape Fear River, the engine started to fail. I remember leaning over trying to control my breathing. My wife had had our first child two weeks before, so I was trying to do Lamaze so I wouldn't get the wind knocked out of me and pass out, because I knew if I passed out I'd be deader than a doornail. I remember thinking I've got all these wrestlers in front of me, if we crash in this water, I'll never get past them and get out. There'd be no way." Tim Woods, who wrestled under a mask at the time as the original Mr. Wrestling, remembered a conversation he had with Austin Idol, a plane crash survivor himself from a few years earlier. "Austin Idol did not have his shoes on in the plane," recalled Woods from his Charlotte home. "And it tore the bottoms of his feet down to the bone and he nearly never wrestled again. When Austin Idol told me about that that was the first thing that went through my mind. I didn't have my shoes on either ... The pilot had a big briefcase with some airplane manuals in it. I grabbed that and put it under my feet because I didn't have time to get my shoes on." "I knew we were going down, there was no question of that," continued Woods. "We just dropped like a rock. The controls levelled the plane out and that was about it. I knew that I wasn't going to die but I figured we'd all get hurt, it was just a matter of how badly." Even though he knew they were going to crash, Johnny Valentine believed he would come out unscathed. "All the time when they were going down, he said he knew he wasn't going to be hurt," said Valentine's wife Sharon. "He said he felt like he was indestructible. He said they were in trouble but that he was going to be all right. He kept telling them that." The crash came about as a result of human error. The pilot, Vietnam veteran Joseph Michael Farkas, had trouble getting the plane off the ground in Charlotte because of the bulk of the wrestlers. He did not distribute the weight of the passengers in the plane properly and decided to dump fuel from the gas tank to lighten the load. Valentine was the first to notice that the plane had run out of gas. "John got to looking over at the gauge and said 'Gee, we're out of gas'. And the pilot said 'don't worry about that, my wing tanks are full,'" explained Sharon Valentine. "When they started sputtering and spinning the pilot panicked and started screaming. John reached over and slapped him to try and bring him to. Had the guy not panicked, they could have landed safely." Ric Flair as NWA World Champion in 1981. -- CANOE files "It was a beautiful day. There weren't any headwinds or rough air... he dumped fuel," recounted Crockett. "(The plane) was overweight. Luckily for me, because I probably would not be here today, is that I should have been sitting where John Valentine was sitting because of the weight factor. The weight was distributed wrong and the pilot had to dump fuel to take off. None of us knew he had dumped fuel (before taking off)." As the plane began to drop, several thoughts raced through Crockett's mind. "I kept on wondering why were we trying to get to Wilmington, why couldn't we land in some place like Fayetteville (N.C.) or Florence (S.C.) instead of still trying to go all the way to Wilmington. There was this luggage compartment behind me and I sort of remembered that the plane had this plastic bubble back there. I was scared enough and thought that if I survive hitting the water I'll bust through the luggage door somehow. "At some point when I was leaning forward, praying hard, I thought I saw a light and heard a buzzer going off," continued Crockett. "This crash was after the Eastern Airlines crash here in Charlotte where they just flew the plane right into the ground and the F.A.A. were talking about installing devices on planes that they were flying too close to the ground and let (the pilot) know. I was thinking maybe (that buzzer) was it. That's the last thing I remember." After levelling off at 4,000 feet, the plane began to sink. It was a close call and Crockett said the pilot almost landed the plane safely. "We crashed about 100 yards short of the runway. We just missed a water tower from the prison camp which is there at the end of the runway. (The pilot) stalled it and hit a tree and luckily we didn't flip and turn upside down. We hit another tree and bounced off and nosed dived into a railroad embankment. If we had gotten past the trees we would have made the clearing right before the runway." "When we finally hit the ground, (the pilot) stalled the plane," recalled Woods. "By doing that, he got our speed down as low as possible. We were still between 85 and 100 miles when we hit the ground but we didn't slide that far. That was a real jolt. We kind of came down and it spanked us. That's where we had the back injuries and it threw everybody forward." To this day, Crockett's memories of the crash are foggy. He has relied on the recollections of his wife Wendy and the other passengers to fill in the gaps in his memory. "From talking to Valentine, he was conscious the whole time, he said 'David, be glad that you don't remember.' All the seats except mine broke loose and went forward." Contrary to media reports at the time, none of the six passengers were thrown from the plane. Woods says all six passengers were pinned inside, struggling to survive. "I think I was the only guy who didn't get knocked out. I was sitting right behind the pilot. All the seats broke loose. What happened was our forward motion took all the seats up in such a way that they were cascading one on top of the other. David was immediately behind me. It wasn't long. The rescue squad was there and took everybody out through the back baggage compartment door out the back of the plane." All six were admitted to New Hanover County Hospital in Wilmington. All of them suffered a litany of serious injuries. After two months of fighting for his life, the pilot died in the hospital. He was 28. Crockett, who felt the effects of the crash for six months after it happened, suffered trauma to his head and sustained other injuries. "They stitched me up in my mouth, and I didn't realize that I had dislocated my shoulder. They tried to give me crutches to walk out of the hospital but my right arm wasn't working so they checked that and found out I had a dislocated shoulder. I was always complaining that whenever they put water or anything in my mouth I would scream bloody murder. When my wife got me back to Charlotte I was still complaining about it. I didn't want to eat or drink anything because it was hurting. She took me to our dentist, and he ... looked inside and he said, 'Well, I can understand that, he's shattered two teeth and the nerves are just sitting there exposed.'" Ironically, David wasn't even supposed to be on the plane. "I wasn't supposed to be flying that day, my brother Jimmy was. He called up and said he was feeling really bad with the flu. This was a Sunday event in Wilmington so I said I'd go because it was only a 45-minute plane ride." Although Crockett has no problem getting on a plane today, he's still a little leery of flying. "I'm still today very aware of what goes on in an airplane. I sleep on planes now, but if there's a smell or sound or motion I shoot straight up. I'm very aware." Both Bruggers and Valentine sustained broken backs. After spending ten days in the Wilmington hospital, they were flown by chartered plane to a hospital in Houston where they underwent back surgery. A steel rod was later inserted into Bruggers's spinal column and he was released from the hospital three weeks later. Although he could have continued on in his career, he never wrestled again. Crockett's head crashed through the seat in front of him, cracking and bruising Tim Woods' ribs. He also suffered a concussion and a slight compression fracture in his back and was the first to be released from the hospital the next day. "I wanted to get out of there just as quickly as I could," commented Woods on his quick exit. "My wife was going crazy, we had two small children at home and she didn't know what to think. I was insistent on getting up and keeping moving. I got up and literally I had to have a person under each arm to get me to a commercial airline plane out of Wilmington to fly back to Charlotte. So I got in the plane and the plane landed in Charlotte... don't you know the brakes failed when we were on the end of the runway. This is the next day and I'm thinking 'Holy Cow! What's going to happen next?'" (laughs) It was Johnny Valentine who suffered the worst fate. Having broken his back in the crash, a bone fracture wedged itself into his spinal column, forcing his back to be re-attached with a clamp. Valentine was paralysed for life. His career came to a tragic end and he never wrestled again. David Crockett, April 1997. -- John Molinaro, CANOE Valentine was the U.S. Heavyweight champion and top star for Jim Crockett Promotions and was scheduled to face then-N.W.A. World Heavyweight champion Dory Funk Jr. the following week at the Greensboro Coliseum. Considered one of the best workers in the country at the time, Valentine's injury and forced retirement was a devastating loss to the wrestling community. "I was a big fan of Johnny Valentine when I was growing up, watching wrestling in the '60s," said Bill Apter, editor of W.O.W. wrestling magazine. "And this was a very sad end to one of the most magnificent careers in the business. Especially being based in New York when I was growing up, he was either in the semi-final or the final match at Madison Square Gardens for so many years. For me, the worst thing that came out of that whole plane crash was the end of Johnny Valentine. I remember him the most from that." To this day, it's Valentine's toughness that his colleagues remember the most. "Valentine was known to be as tough a human being as probably there was around," opined Tim Woods. "He'd beat your brains out. He was tough, physically tough. I won't say he had the finesse of some of these other wrestlers, but I mean when it came to physical ability, my God that guy was tough. We went back and forth with the U.S. heavyweight title for some time. We wrestled each other all over the place. I always enjoyed wrestling him because it always seemed like I learned something. John was a master. Never been another like him, I doubt that there ever will be." Ironically, had it not been for a simple twist of fate, it could have been Flair's career that ended, not Valentine's. "I talked to Johnny Valentine about the crash and Johnny was next to the pilot, he was up front in the plane," informed Mike Mooneyham. A reporter and columnist with the Charleston (S.C) Post and Courier since 1979, Mooneyham is among the top wrestling historians in the U.S. "Flair was supposed to have been in (Valentine's) seat. He (originally was) in that seat next to the pilot but Johnny said he was kind of scared to be up there. He said Flair kept whining until Johnny said 'You get in the back, I'll sit up here in the front.' So really it could have changed the future of wrestling." Looking back at this cruel twist of fate, Valentine's wife insists that Johnny bears no grudge against Ric for changing seats with him. "It's okay that it happened. That's fate. Neither John nor I feel bad about the fact that had Ric still been sitting there, he'd be in this shape. John's never shown any animosity or anything about that." Although he saved his money during his career, the cost of medical care drained Valentine's savings completely leaving him completely broke. Since the crash, he has had to live largely on the assistance of Social Security. Still, Sharon Valentine insists that the crash didn't make her husband a bitter man. "John never got angry. The only time I ever heard him get angry was when people say something derogatory against the business. He said there's no respect left amongst each other in those in the business. That angers him. No one has any respect for protecting the business or for each other. He said it used to be a brotherhood of respect among all and it's no longer there." If there's any hard feelings about the crash, they're harboured by Sharon. "John never heard from the Crocketts. He made them millions and millions of dollars. He blew (the territory) wide open. He never got nothing from them. Not talking about money, we're just talkin' about coming to see how their star is, and the guy who's doing the booking and taking care of things. Nothing." That's not the way David Crockett saw it, and he said that he did get to see Valentine. "I saw John later, when I went to Houston," Crockett said. "As a matter of fact, he was managing some wrestler in crutches and braces. I don't remember who it was. They were trying to make him another Johnny Valentine, which you couldn't do." Sharon also categorizes Flair's actions and attitude towards Valentine as "callous" and "cold", claiming her husband never heard from Flair after the crash. "For Ric to hardly talk to him and ignore him, that's hard for me to swallow." Valentine stayed involved in the sport, helping to train wrestlers from the backyard in his home. Last year, he and Sharon were invited up to New York where WCW held a special banquet and affair for the ailing star. "They did a three day honorary thing for John up there, big dinner and party and stuff," described Sharon. "One of the WCW wrestlers came up to John and said 'Mr. Valentine, I heard years ago when you hit somebody you could hear it back in the parking lot. How'd you do that?' And before he could open his mouth John reached up and grabbed him by the hair of the head, jerked him face forward and put that big arm of his across his back and just drilled him to he floor. He really showed him how he did it. And then John looked at him and said 'There's no room in this business for wussies, boy.'" Fate was kind to Ric Flair as had he not been in that front seat, it's possible that it would have been his career and not Valentine's that came to an end. Nevertheless, Flair suffered a broken back as a result of the crash and received a devastating prognosis from the doctors. "They originally told him he probably wouldn't wrestle again because he had broken his back in three places," said Mooneyham. "And then they said the recovery time was probably going to be a year at the minimum, but he beat the odds and is still going today. He was remarkably resilient. He bounced right back, doctors were fairly negative in the beginning. He always knew he was going to be back. It was just another injury to overcome." Prior to the crash, Flair was being groomed by the Crocketts to be the promotion's top star. He also had long term aspirations of becoming the N.W.A. World champion and knew that a prolonged stay on the sidelines would hurt his career. "He wanted to get back because he was really making some big inroads at the time," offered Mooneyham. "He didn't want to lose any time because he had some pretty hot feuds going on. He wanted to get back in and start his feud with Wahoo." In a sign of just how much wrestling has changed in 25 years, Mooneyham recalled how the hospital staff was legitimately worried when McDaniel showed up at the hospital. Wahoo McDaniel "Wahoo was one of the first guys to visit him in the hospital and of course the hospital attendants were startled when (they saw Wahoo). They tried to restrain him. They believed it was a real feud and that Wahoo was trying to break into the hospital to get at Ric because Wahoo was barging right through the (security) in his style and they thought they might have to call the police on him." Despite the prognostications of doctors, Flair returned to the ring in February 1976, and started his legendary feud with McDaniel. On May 24 in Charlotte, Flair defeated Wahoo in a hair vs. title match to win the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight championship. Flair was back in the game and everybody knew that nothing could stop him this time. "He was pretty much destined for stardom," opined Mooneyham. "Everybody in the office was very high on him and everybody I remember talking to at the time knew that he was going to be World champion, it was just a matter of when. He was really itching to get back and that was an era where unless you really bent in half, you didn't miss any ring time. You knew you didn't miss time unless you absolutely had to." Prior to Flair's return, things did not look good for the Crocketts. With their two top stars sidelined, Mooneyham says business took a turn for the worse. "It was almost catastrophic because Valentine was 'The Man' back then. What it effectively did was take the two biggest stars in that promotion out of the loop and paralysed the promotion for several months." News of the crash was covered by major newspapers and media outlets throughout the Southeast, including a front-page story the next day in the Charlotte Observer. "We based our (reportage on) Associated Press wire service reports that came into the office," remembered Roger Mikeal, the reporter who covered the story for the Observer. "That (crash) happened out of eastern Carolina and we covered it out of Charlotte. I never went down there to the site (of the crash)." This was 1975. Wrestling was still a 'closed' business. The Internet was decades away. Fans back then were not as 'wise' to the business as they are today. It's easy to assume that the Crocketts went to great lengths to 'kayfabe' people so as not to have it come out that Tim Woods, a babyface, was riding in a plane with Johnny Valentine, a hated heel and his scheduled opponent that evening in Wilmington. Crockett insisted there was no 'cover-up'. "That didn't really come into play because of the severity of the accident. No one really brought that up. People were more concerned with the accident and the people being hurt." Mooneyham remembered it differently. "They sweated that one because it was so kayfabe back then and they didn't want anybody to know that heels and babyfaces were on the plane together flying to a show. In fact the newspaper reports had Tim Woods's real name on there because the promoters didn't want the people to know that Tim Woods was on a plane with Ric Flair and Johnny Valentine who he feuded with. (The Charlotte Observer and the Greensboro Daily News) reports came out with a guy named George Burrell Woodin (Woods's real name), a promoter... I think they listed him on the police reports as a promoter. (The Crocketts) gave them that information. They were very protective of any kind of fraternization between bad guys and good guys." Tim Woods's confirms Mooneyham's version of the events, stating he went to great lengths in helping the Crocketts to kayfabe their audience. "I was wrestling under the mask at the time and George Woodin is my real name. When we went down they started taking information at the hospital. I gave them my real name. They didn't recognize my real name. We told them I was a promoter... You always hear stories today about wrestlers riding together and everything else, which just didn't happen back then. In this case, we were coming in from different places and Valentine was my foe that evening. That's why we (gave them the name) George Woodin (so) that nobody would recognize." As word began to leak that the masked Mr. Wrestling was on the same plane with Johnny Valentine, Woods appeared on TV and at house shows days after being released from the hospital so as to give the impression that everything was normal and that he was not involved in the crash. "This was important because I was under the mask... I made appearances. I went to the towns. I never missed a beat. The first match I wrestled was maybe two weeks later against Superstar Billy Graham in Richmond, VA. The pain was just excruciating." As for that evening's show, the Crocketts were left scrambling for an explanation to offer the live audience. "The show started on time and the ring announcer came into the ring," remembered Mooneyham. "He announced to the crowd that there was an airplane crash and that Valentine and Flair were injured and he told the fans that Tim Woods was lost and he couldn't make it on time. (laughs) They were still trying to kayfabe people. They didn't want people to know Tim Woods was on the plane with those guys." A horrific crash like this puts things in their proper perspective. It underlines what's truly important in this life: Family and friends. If any good came of this crash, it's that it helped to strengthen the bonds of friendship and reinforced the value of life itself. "I remember that I would not shut up until they put me in the same room as Ric at the hospital," said Crockett. "I had a head injury and Ric had a back injury so they put us on different floors. I raised holy hell saying I wasn't going to go anywhere and I wanted to be in the same room as my friend. I think (the crash) brought us closer together. We're still close. We don't see each other as much because I'm management and he's all around. But occasionally we get together socially and remember the good old days."

I would have loved for him to shit over garbage like that mcmahon/regal/coach/carlito segment. or that stupid mcmahon/finlay segment. My god what a waste of time. I think mcmahon doesn't give a shit if its good or bad or if it hurts the product, just as long as he finds a way to get his stupid ass on tv.

Get rid of that bitch Jillian already. She's so fuckin useless and her gimmick sucks. They cut Ariel and keep this jackass on the roster? I'm glad to see someone else say this. She is absolutely horrible and no its not just her gimmick. I don't understand why the fuck they keep someone like her around when there are a lot of women on the independent circuit who can wrestler rings around her and look better than she does. And why in gods name do they put that fucking maria anywhere near a ring? she is going to end up getting herself or someone else killed too. She is the most uncoordinated woman I think i've ever seen in a wrestling ring and its only a matter of time before she seriously gets fucked up or fucks someone else up.

They have taken a very slow approach/build up to this like they used to do in the old days and its worked great. It is certainly a breath of fresh air compared to the angles/storylines nowadays where everything is rushed with little to no build up.

I have, as I'm sure most everyone else here has, had that move put on me and I don't see how bret was able to sit down so deep with it and not kill the wrestler he had it on. The move is incredibly painful and it doesn't take much pressure at all for it to be unbearable. I second the comments about the chicken wing. I also like the texas cloverleaf (which is also extremely painful when applied) I wish someone would use that as their finisher today.

You have to like the fact though that JBL was upset because he was standing up for the fact that these two made the other 3 look bad. JBL, for all his faults backstage, seems to genially care about putting guys over in the ring. His commentary does more to put the guys over than any commentator in history imo. It's nice to see that he cares enough about putting punk, mvp and hardy over that he would be willing to even take the time to get onto the miz/morrison. I don't have a problem with it at all because in this case he was doing it for the sake of 3 other individuals and not himself, at least it would appear.