Darth Pipes

Speaking of Santana and Savage, their first MSG match is going to air on 24/7 next month.

It's interesting but Taker did quite a few jobs that year. He lost matches to Vader leading up to WM13, that match, and benefitted from interference in others.

Years before the Big Show was the WWE's first mid-card champion, Ron Simmons was it for WCW.

You know, it's funny...JR recently told a story on his blog that when he used to do broadcasts with Gorilla for Superstars or the short-lived Radio WWF, Gorilla would really go off on the wrestlers and the state of the wrestling industry. They would often have to stop and redo their commentary. Gorilla was pretty old school. I'd love to see the old Superstars again. Thing is, the WWF doesn't own the trademark for Superstars of Wrestling. The title anyway.

What I find funny is the idea of Flair having any chance at winning a judges decision. A typical Flair match had him being dominated for almost the entire time and the Sting match was no exception. No way in hell could anyone look at that match and say that Sting didn't win easily if judging it on points. I agree with whoever said Savage and Tito should have been at Wrestlemania. That made a lot more sense (so did having Tito wrestle Valentine at the first WM) and it would have been a great match. I remember reading in a review of the Bret Hart DVD that they considered going with Bret and Ricky Steamboat at WMII but they went with Hercules because they thought he had a bigger upside. Given Vince's fetish for big men and the idiotic booking mentality of the 80s, it's probably true. But still, imagine a WM 2 where Savage and Tito wrestled for the IC title and Bret Hart took on Ricky Steamboat? Would have been like an NWA show. Speaking of the Savge/Tito matches, one thing that annoyed me on that video was the MSG re-match where it was clearly announced that the match had no disqualification. Yet Gorilla Monsoon, Lord Alfred Hayes, and Ernie Ladd (who was a terrible announcter) are all screaming that Savage should have been DQ'd for punching the ref. 80's WWF wrestling for you. I have to say that I'm enjoying the build for WMII during all these old Tuesday Night Titan segments. The Piper stuff showed me how much he buried Mr. T during that feud.

I'll further agree on the Santana comments. The footage of their MSG matches was amazing and the crowd was old school red-hot. They had a big house show feud...even read about a tag match where Tito got Savage to submit to the figure-four. I've been really impressed with pre-jobber Tito. I saw two matches he had with Greg Valentine, a curfew draw in November 1984 and an LA house show in December 88 that were both amazing. It's a shame how he was totally jobbed out at the end but Tito, ever the pro, did that well. I think a Tito/Flair program would have been a damn good one. The Savage video was really good. Not only do you get the great action (and epic Savage bloodbaths) but his interviews were a riot because they were so bizarre. One funny thing, during the video they show a "couple" that wanted to meet Savage and for a few moments, I thought the woman was the actress who played Marcy Darcy on Married with Children.

The NWA shows do show footage from house shows featuring big-time matches like Flair/Nikita and Magnum/Tully. Flair breaking Dusty's leg and Dusty breaking Ole's were from house shows.

You know who did pretty good commentary? Slick. On Primetime, him and Hayes did commentary for some of the Boston Garden matches and he wasn't half bad. Actually somewhat unbias at times. Watching that Prime Time again, two things came to mind. One, Beefcake was absolutely atricious on the mic. His interview with Mean Gene was awful and he seemed incapable of saying anything coherent. Didn't notice his mic skills as much when I was a kid but he was terrible. Also, I don't think that Bruno and Bret hooked up during that elimination match. It would have been cool to see two of the WWE's legendary champions wrestling each other. They had a large series of matches during this time and from what I understand, all very good.

I don't think it was the first Prime Time I ever saw but the August 31st, 1987 Primetime is the first one I can really remember watching. End of the summer and I remember it because Bruno was in the main event. Nice to see some of these Primetime Wrestling shows again. Heenan is sorely missed but Monsoon does a good job on his own. WMVIII had two great matches in Piper/Hart and Savage/Flair. Along with the Warrior's return, it was far from a crappy card. Taped St. Valentine's Day Massacre when it originally aired. Still one of my favorite PPVs. It was big moment in the Austin/McMahon feud, finally getting them into the ring. Not to mention the super bump that Vince takes. He's said that if he had hit another inch lower, he would have been paralyzed from the waist down. WMII has not aged well. Though I didn't know that when I was a kid. I remember another summer day when I watched it almost three times in a row. Sad but true.

Actually, I always thought the WCW World Championship started losing its luster when Hogan first one. Hogan would rarely ever defend the title and would go entire PPVs without defending it. He really rendered that title meaningless during his stints as World Champion.

The NWA, and particularly Magnum, were always good with pull-apart brawls. The Tuesday Night Titans episode was pretty good. Savage was the standout though and now that I'm older, I can truly see how bizarre and funny his promos were. He had the whole audience laughing. I also noticed that his legs were ungodly skinny. How he was able to stand on them I'll never know.

When the WWE was trying to get Bruno Sammartino to work with the company again in 2004, Bruno made reference to a disabled kid who used to hang around in the locker rooms and said he hoped they didn't base the character on him.

I hear Schultz is a bounty hunter now. Just watched a little of the first Royal Rumble. Haven't seen it since the premeire. Found something funny during the Hogan/Andre contract signing. During the Bret/Yoko contract signing leading up to WM9, Yoko attacked Bret and Tunney quickly left the ring. He does the same thing during this one. Hogan lunges for Dibease, Andre bounces Hogan's head onto the table and flips it over. Meanwhile, Tunney is quickly bolting from the ring. Found it funny that during an era where no one (save for Bad News Brown) put their hands on the WWF president, Tunney would do nothing when a brawl broke out in front of him.

Just watched the first episode of Nitro and it was pretty damn good. Thought that Sting/Flair was terrific and the Mall of America was a pretty cool place for a wrestling so. Of course, I'm sure WCW wasn't charging for attendence. Although they created great setting, Bischoff had a very stupid tendancy to have PPVs in places where they couldn't charge for tickets like Sturgis and the beach. He cost WCW a lot of money that way.

I'm all for breaking them up too. At this point, all I want to check out from the MNW is Raw. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was a damn good card. I noticed too that Heenan appeared to be giving the camera the finger. Just watching the Heenan/Monsoon interaction is gold. Liked the bit with Heenan enthusitically agreeing that Orndorff was a Benedict Arnold and you could actually see the spit flying from his mouth when he was ranting about him. Also an interesting bit is the match where Dibease payed a jobber $5,000 to wrestle for him and the jobber lost.

I don't think the Savage/Stephanie rumor is true. Even if it was, I think Vince is such a sick individual that he would forgive Savage and work with him again. Vince McMahon is a bizarre human being, one I don't think could survive in normal society. I mean, he is the guy who proposed being the father of Stephanie's baby on WWE television. He's not well. Savage had a good run in WCW. As pointed out, he did actually draw money for Vince (unlike Shawn Michaels when he was champion). But in the WWF and WCW, he was the personal bitch of Hulk Hogan. It was a great feud but in all the years they wrestled each other, Hogan NEVER jobbed to Savage. I don't think Savage has one pinfall victory over him and Hogan has humuilated him in the ring constantly.

I found Roundtable on the second page of the Legends section. Finally got a chance to watch it and thought it was really good. Got to see all kinds of cool clips from the various territories. Patterson was excellent here and Michael Hayes was good, although I found his constant interruptions to be annoying. Foley and Taz, when they actually spoke, provided a good counterpoint for the guys who really missed out on the territories but they probably should have been replaced by guys who really lived the territory days like Rhodes, Graham, and Lawler.

The Roundtable is pretty good, although doing a show about wrestling territories and not having Jerry Lawler on the panel is kind of ridiculous. As much as I like Taz, he brings very little to discussions like these. Patterson does the most talking, though, and Hayes has a pretty funny story about the night Tommy Rich beat Harley Race for the NWA Title. Dusty Rhodes and Mike Graham would have been perfect for this topic too. They should have replaced Foley and Taz here. David Schultz sounds exactly like Larry the Cable Guy. Find his weird promos to be pretty damn funny. Anyone ever see that one where he talks about Hulk Hogan and San Francisco?

I was trying to remember who Jack Reynolds was. Thankfully, he wasn't around the WWF long. Tony Garea did some annoucing out the Black Saturday show and it was awful.

Finally got a chance to watch the Black Saturday show. I can see why it wasn't a success. I'll give the WWE credit for admitting that during the opener. Still, a very rare and interesting show to have seen. Plus, you get Brian Blair and Iron Shiek on the same show! One thing though...who the hell was the "Russian" Alexis Smiroff? That guy had the worse fake Russian accent I ever heard.

I always liked the studio shows. Just something about it that I dug...

Making Starrcade 91 and 92 nothing more than an insignifcant battle royal was a stupid idea by Dusty. Sting had a six-day reign as WCW World Champion from March 11 to March 17. This was during a tour of Europe.

Sounds like January will be an awesome, awesome month.

Unfortuneately it looks like they're not going to show that special 2/7/86 NWA show they were hyping with all the Championship Challenge Series matches.

I will say one thing...Kane ended up working out great for them. I figured he would be gone once Taker beat him at WM14 but he's proved his durability, despite the stupid storylines the WWE has put him in.