AWA Wrestling back on the air

[cabbageboy 0]

I gotta say after that 1985 show I already miss the goofy 1990 stuff. That stuff is at least consistently hilarious. The 1985 show was just boring as hell, with Jannetty getting worked over for about 10+ mins. by Kiniski, then a tedious and overlong midget match. Hansen/Martel could have made up for it but it was a weak DQ finish.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Well, the 1990 show is back already. A Survivor Series style match going on now where being thrown out of the ring in any way also will eliminate a wrestler.

[cabbageboy 0]

Yes, I want the crappy 1990 stuff! Car wreck proto Russo era AWA is at least fascinating and fun. I dare say I might take that over 15 min. long snoozers with midgets.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Line of the night came when Curtis Hughes survived the elimination tag . . .

 

Verne Gagne: What team is he on again?

[cabbageboy 0]

I quite enjoyed that match even if the teams were baffling. The storyline of Jonnie Stewart being the spoiled rich kid who could care less about winning a share of 1 million dollars was amusing enough. Hopefully they just stay with this 1990 stuff until the end of the promotion, then go back to 1989 or whenever.

[JHawk 0]

I quite enjoyed that match even if the teams were baffling. The storyline of Jonnie Stewart being the spoiled rich kid who could care less about winning a share of 1 million dollars was amusing enough. Hopefully they just stay with this 1990 stuff until the end of the promotion, then go back to 1989 or whenever.

That would be tonight's episode, so enjoy.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

I mellowed out on the last few eps ever since they actually let faces that the people were into win some gold (Trooper/Peterson) w/ no shitty Dusty finish or anything like that. And I was also thankful that Ralph Strangis got canned. I hated that guy.

 

Nevertheless, that team Royal Rumble was awful. There must have been a couple rules they didn't clue the fans on:

- No more than three in the ring at once

- The only way to be eliminated is to hold your opponent for your partner to hit only for your opponent to move and end up catching a blow from your partner

 

Gotta feel sorry for Enos over the last year . . . Hold on Mike, I'll handle this!

[cabbageboy 0]

I guess that if Enos just got TOO riled up he might do something drastic, so Bloom had to be there to calm him down. That act is pretty amusing for the first few times you see it, but then after a point it gets old and you wish Enos would assert himself a bit.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

I'm not watching this w/ the most critical of eyes, but is The Cobra really Todd Becker pulling double duty?

 

And who did Larry Z lose the title to after the TCS? Or are they replaying matches from earlier in the year and dubbing over "current" commentary?

[JHawk 0]

And who did Larry Z lose the title to after the TCS? Or are they replaying matches from earlier in the year and dubbing over "current" commentary?

It would be the latter. It should be noted though that Monday night's main event, while taped during Mr. Saito's title reign, was billed the entire hour as for the AWA World Title...and Zbyszko magically had the title belt for his postmatch interview.

 

Even when they weren't running shows they couldn't keep things straight.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

They went back to 1986 last night thankfully.

 

Brody runnin wild on Vader was great. As was him gimmicking out to the ringsiders while they just stood and cheered him. There was also a pretty slick Bockwinkle/DeBeers match. Fell asleep during it though. More just me being really tired than the match sucking.

[cabbageboy 0]

Yeah I think that was the best DeBeers match I've seen actually. He could do some decent stuff out there if he had a real opponent, rather than the squash matches I've mostly seen.

[blue2 0]

Saw the 9-1-08 edition. good 2/3 falls match, but I would have had Nikita gone over on the 1st fall.

[The Tino Standard 0]

It's amazing how much more coherent Larry Nelson seems in these shows from the spring of 86, compared with the stuff from late 87 that they were showing a month or so ago.

 

Just watched last night's show where they aired the footage from the Civic Center in St. Paul where King Kong Brody and the Sheik do a number on Greg Gagne and Brad Rheingans before freakin' VERNE Gagne comes out and lays down the law. That crowd was going NUTS.

[RedJed 0]

It's amazing how much more coherent Larry Nelson seems in these shows from the spring of 86, compared with the stuff from late 87 that they were showing a month or so ago.

 

Just watched last night's show where they aired the footage from the Civic Center in St. Paul where King Kong Brody and the Sheik do a number on Greg Gagne and Brad Rheingans before freakin' VERNE Gagne comes out and lays down the law. That crowd was going NUTS.

 

Yeah, that was good.

 

Are these shows now repeats from months back though? I swear I've seen some of this 86 stuff just recently.....that Leon White/Stan Hansen match seemed familiar, as did the Verne Gagne run-in on Rheingans/Masked Man match.

 

I still got about the last two weeks of the 1990 shit on my DVR begging to be watched, just need to find the time. I know I scanned through the opening of each of these last AWA shows they did from 1990, and, my god, was Lee Marshall overselling everything TCS related in the beginning of these shows, with a confused looking Verne Gagne (like he was forced to take over helping out with "hosting" these shows). Quite the surreal moments there.

[cabbageboy 0]

Oddly enough I almost prefer the TCS era AWA stuff to the 1986 shows. Of course the earlier shows have better matches, but the overall shows are so dull and have no sizzle.

 

The single best episode they have shown remains the hilarious 1987 New Year's show with Nelson being trashed and trying to host the show, with the Midnight Rockers picking up whatever skanks they could find at the bar.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Yeah, that's the one AWA ep I saved on my DVR. Even Nelson was about to get some ass too.

 

As for the 1990 eps, Verne just seemed so out of touch WITH HIS OWN PRODUCT. He couldn't rememember who was on whom's team. He wasn't sure about the top rope rules. And on a personal note, I don't ever want to see another Texas Hangmen squash in my life . . . well, maybe except the one they lost to the Tokyo Bullets.

 

I finally caught up on the 1986 AWA eps from this week. A few observations:

- Lord James Blears is terrible as an announcer

- The Verne run-in had to have sealed the casket on his career. He was stumbling and bumbling around in there. Although a series of matches against Gen Adnan probably would have drawn a bit and been entertaining.

- Playboy Buddy Rose is fuckin awesome! He took the fall backwards out of the ring and land on back of the head on the concrete bump for a jobber. When all the jobber was originally going to do was irish whip him.

- The Scott Hall/Col Debeers feud is looking interesting w/ Hall being carried off on a stretcher . . . or about to be as they went to break. I'm hoping they'll air DeBeers's 'steroid' promo in the coming eps.

- I had no idea how beloved Milliman was as a jobber until I've seen these AWA eps.

- I could watch Nick Bockwinkle promos all day.

- Vader/Hansen was disappointingly boring.

- Had no idea Mike Rotundo stopped off at the AWA between his US Express stints. And I actually listened to his shoot interview several months ago.

- Surreal that the face announcers acknowledge Sherri as being beautiful.

[cabbageboy 0]

Bear in mind this was a green Leon White and not Vader, so I wasn't really expecting anything all that great. Watching old AWA leads me to think Bockwinkel is wildly underrated. I wonder if it is due to the negative feelings people have over Hogan never quite beating him for the belt? But just think about it, the guy was out there having a 60 minute classic with Curt Hennig when he was like 50 years old. Can anyone imagine Flair doing a 60 minute classic circa 1999 WCW?

[MillenniumMan831 0]

I was under the impression that a green Leon White paired up w/ Stan Hansen would be a recipe for some good hearty downhome stiffin'. Not working a headlock for 10 minutes.

[RedJed 0]

Last night's show had Scott LeDoux (announced as the "head master of fun at Jukebox Saturday Night" which is that bar they had that New Years show from) v. Zbysko and I still am trying to figure out why they gave these guys almost 25 minutes. Match was pretty bad, although the fans were big into it. Lame duck finish of Larry putting the ref in front of him to take a Ledoux punch, but the promo Larry cut after the match was really good stuff.

 

Sadly, this is one of very few memorable moments from the 86 shows so far.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Ep after ep, it seems my favorite segment is the one they pull from the syndicated show. I definitely had to FF the LeDoux match. Rockers vs Nord/Zhukov could be fun if they indeed show that tonight.

 

Hoping for more Hall/DeBeers chaos.

 

Looks like Larry Nelson was quite sauced last night. Hopefully, he keeps that up throughout 86.

[haws bah gawd 0]

I dunno about the rest of you, but I thoroughly enjoyed Zybyzsko vs Ledoux last night. It'd definitely one of my biggest guilty pleasures of the AWA replays. Ledoux isn't the best wrestler by any means, but he and Larry had the crowd eating out of their hands. Ledoux eventually won by DQ after Zybyzsko pulled the Ref in front of a punch, but it's a really fun match IMO.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

I started watching it near 2am. My standards are a lot more harsh at that time and I just wanted to get through the ep and go to bed.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Bear in mind this was a green Leon White and not Vader, so I wasn't really expecting anything all that great. Watching old AWA leads me to think Bockwinkel is wildly underrated. I wonder if it is due to the negative feelings people have over Hogan never quite beating him for the belt? But just think about it, the guy was out there having a 60 minute classic with Curt Hennig when he was like 50 years old. Can anyone imagine Flair doing a 60 minute classic circa 1999 WCW?

Bockwinkel isn't quite underrated, maybe underwatched. I've never really heard much anti-Bockwinkel sentiment at all. Everyone familiar with his era appreciated his work.

[haws bah gawd 0]

Bear in mind this was a green Leon White and not Vader, so I wasn't really expecting anything all that great. Watching old AWA leads me to think Bockwinkel is wildly underrated. I wonder if it is due to the negative feelings people have over Hogan never quite beating him for the belt? But just think about it, the guy was out there having a 60 minute classic with Curt Hennig when he was like 50 years old. Can anyone imagine Flair doing a 60 minute classic circa 1999 WCW?

Bockwinkel isn't quite underrated, maybe underwatched. I've never really heard much anti-Bockwinkel sentiment at all. Everyone familiar with his era appreciated his work.

 

I'm still kind of undecided about Bockwinkle. Theres no denying he's decent in the ring, but I can't get past his look. The plain white tights and knee pads, and a bullwhip for unknown reasons are just a little on the unusual side. The guy is definitely a true old school wrestler, and the crowds seem to love him though.

[BruteSquad_BRODY 0]

The bullwhip was only a brief bit for an angle

[haws bah gawd 0]

I watched a show the other night and I believe Larry Nelson was trying to interview Bockwinkle after he squashed a jobber. Bockwinkle wouldn't stop cracking his whip long enough for Nelson to talk to him. It was to the point where it was even getting on my nerves. Kind of like yes, Mr. Bockwinkle, we know you have a whip.

[RedJed 0]

Last night's show was at least so bad and cheesy in some parts it was entertaining, akin to the 1990 shows. Some examples....

 

The arena/gymnasium in Omaha they were taping out of, with the double doors right in front of the ring they were coming out of.

 

That awful ring announcer in Omaha who didn't really seem to know truly who everyone was, he absolutely murdered the Sheiks name

 

Jake Milliman v. some guy with the Sheik, Ali Khan, who I think we never saw (or will see) again after this, pretty bad match

 

Larry Nelson up to his usual antics, more than likely sauced at the arena

 

Scott Hall cutting this uber pissed off babyface promo at the end of the show on Debeers (since Debeers ran out and interfered, causing Hall/Hennig to lose by countout to Somers/Rose) and then Hennig just tells Hall, "Why don't you just ignore him when he comes out?" and Hall pretty much doesn't know what to say for a second, a little dumbfounded by the Hennig comment, and then goes back into uber fired up babyface mode.

 

It's about time these 86 shows delivered something! I don't know if there is even an order here that they are doing these, but they were mentioning it was about August 86 here, so IF there is any order, we probably will be ending 86 pretty soon and going to ????, since I think they did already air alot of 86 shows prior (moreless at the start of when the AWA shows began on ESPNC) and now they are just filling the gaps with ones they missed.

 

On a side note, I actually taped UWF from over the weekend, and there was a hell of a wild segment they did involving Orndorff and Steve Williams, which I had never seen before. Actually it wouldn't have been very memorable if it wasn't for the fact that Williams and the ref were shooting on each other during this pull apart brawl of Dr Death and Orndorff. I still don't get what was happening, but I think the ref got initially upset that Williams threw a hard punch at him when they were doing the angle, and then the ref started getting in his face. From there, he was met with some seriously stiff chairshots, repeatedly, and half of them the ref wouldn't even take, kept putting his hands up and trying to grab the chair from Williams. This continued on for a good minute until the ref pretty much just gave up trying to fight, and took a powder, but got a seriously stiff kick in the face right before he bailed from the ring. Great stuff there.

[Ed Wood Caulfield 0]

The single best episode they have shown remains the hilarious 1987 New Year's show with Nelson being trashed and trying to host the show, with the Midnight Rockers picking up whatever skanks they could find at the bar.

 

I must see this show.

[RedJed 0]

The single best episode they have shown remains the hilarious 1987 New Year's show with Nelson being trashed and trying to host the show, with the Midnight Rockers picking up whatever skanks they could find at the bar.

 

I must see this show.

 

We all talked about that great one a few pages back in this thread, it was something else. Highlight of the show for me was an incoherant Wahoo McDaniel interview inside the bar (while Jerry Saggs is in the background trying go get his face on TV), he was definately good and buzzed.

 

Plus if I recall, that was the show when Greg Gagne "won" the TV title in a match with Adrian Adonis that was pretty ridiculous in its' finish.