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garfieldsnose

AWA Wrestling back on the air

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What are you talking about WCCW wasn't fun in the later years? Was it as good as the glory days? No but it was fun. Especially the Embry/Akbar feud. You had Embry, Cactus Jack, Jeff Jarrett before he sucked, Chris Adams, Gary Young and Phil Hickerson as a Japanesse guy with the awesome Tojo Yammamoto.

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Timmy, see to me that stuff is a blur between late era WCCW and when it became the USWA when Jarrett bought the company. By late era WCCW seeming depressing I refer more stuff like the Fritz heart attack angle and other things mentioned on the World Class DVD.

 

You know what's truly funny (yet sad) about these 1990 AWA shows? They seem so gleefully oblivious to how bad the promotion is tanking. Bischoff is Mr. Happy, the announcers pimp things like there's no tomorrow, everyone is giving you basically whatever they've got. It's a total opposite of late era WCW where guys buried the company in radio interviews, buried the company on the air, and announcers basically admitted that the show sucked.

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I'd love for them to show either the old Legends of World Class Championship Wrestling broadcasts or some GWF. I've already got a ton of World Class footage at my disposal at home, so I'd be more into the GWF. Between seeing some of the stars of today back then, there's also great WTF stuff like the first (and only, IIRC) bungee cord match, which was between Steven Dane and Chaz.

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My one memory of GWF from back in the day was that their studio show freely talked about what was happening in other promotions. I remember watching the show on the day of Survivor Series 91, and the announcer said Randy Savage had been reinstated and was expected to be involved with the PPV that night to confront Jake Roberts (we all know how THAT ended up turning out).

 

I didn't read dirt sheets and this was before the Internet, so while it seemed pretty obvious that Savage was gonna wrestle again, to learn about it on another promotion's show the day of the PPV was stunning.

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Oh lord, Chaz. There's a name I haven't heard in about 15 years. I remember an angle in Global where someone had their cheesy pinto type car vandalized, anyone have any idea who was involved? I'm hazy on it.

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I skimmed through this week's AWA eps. Not pretty. They tried their hand at a team Royal Rumble. Not a sterling effort but at least it was a tad entertaining.

 

DJ Peterson was unsuccessful at winning the AWA Title . . . yeah, I'm surprised too.

 

Magnificent Mimi was looking delicious for her match w/ Candi Devine . . . who at least is prettier than Donna Gagne, but not by much.

 

Tonight's show had the Tokyo Bullets (w/ dark hair coming out of the masks this time) defeat the Texas Hangmen in a 2 out of 3 fall match. Bad enough to give a person a cramp.

 

I can't believe I remembered that much other than the plethora of WT Jones jobs.

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Here's what I don't get about that women's title match....why not just put the belt on Mimi? She was obviously more over with the crowd, the company was tanking and about to go under, so why not throw the fans that are left a bone? What makes that match even more bizarre is that Mimi was teaming with Col. DeBeers on a previous episode and Devine worked face. Did they ever explain this double turn?

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But yeah, Lee Marshall was really on a roll on some of these shows.....and people think Schiavonie was a shill on Nitro?!! Shit, Lee Marshall oversold damn near everything on these shows like he was having a gun stuck in his back the whole time, especially the "excitement" of the Team Challenge Series updates, which the recap on this show was great.....Koloff v. random jobber in a TCS match, apparently this guy (Mike George) was Baron Von Raschke's team "timekeeper." You know its getting bad when the actual jobbers are put over on TV as special!!

 

Grasping a bit but Mike Geogre was a late 80's Midwestern territorial headliner.

he was a big star in the central states area in the 70's and when he appeared in the AWA he was in the midwestern based WWA that had a talent swaping agreement with the AWA.

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You know this might sound crazy but I actually dug the Texas Hangmen vs. Tokyo Bullets 2/3 falls match. It was all the more hilarious since the Bullets actually went over in a bizarre finish.

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I loved that black dude who debuted on last night's show (The Butcher I think his name was) who said he came to AWA for the money. I LOLed. I read on another board that last night's show was from the last AWA TV taping.

 

 

And I'm not sure what happened to Johnnie Stewart. He worked for Dale Gagner's AWA and was a main event player there for a bit in the late '90s.

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Oh yes Larry "The butcher" Cameron. He use to wrestle in Stampede a lot.

 

And Jonnie Stewart came out of the woodworks last year during the Benoit stuff. He was on Fox News a lot.

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Larry Cameron was hyped quite a bit back in the late 80's/early 90's, but wound up dying of a heart attack in like '93. I had always thought he'd have made it to the WWE as at least a mid-upper mid level guy when I was a kid.

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He definitely had a jive. I assumed his match prior was so bad they didn't want to air it.

 

I think it was kind of humorous how Harley Race still sported a crown (although a smaller one) on his ass for his match w/ Larry Z. I smirked when Zbyzko shouted "Maybe if you eat more, you'll get fatter!" to a fan during a headlock. I mean really, what a dopey thing to say.

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I loved that black dude who debuted on last night's show (The Butcher I think his name was) who said he came to AWA for the money. I LOLed. I read on another board that last night's show was from the last AWA TV taping.

 

 

And I'm not sure what happened to Johnnie Stewart. He worked for Dale Gagner's AWA and was a main event player there for a bit in the late '90s.

 

Actually Stewart and Gagner brought back the AWA together. Not sure of what capacity, if any he has there these days.

 

Last I heard he was a motivstional speaker, and made headlines a few years back when I believe a college brought him in to tbe the speaker at graduation thinking it was Comedy Centrals Jon Stewart.

 

His site: http://www.jonalanstewart.com/

 

edit: dang it looks like I should look at the link I provided:

 

"Jon is currently is in the process of writing a book based on all of his travels and experiences with politics, wrestling and his other life experiences. He is also part owner of an automobile dealership in Chicago and has interests involved with real estate. In 2005, he will participate in the national college lecture tour discussing his historic Congressional campaign in 2000.

 

Looks outdated.

 

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How sad is it then that Harley Race actually was in a title match at the last AWA taping before then went under? That match wasn't really too bad, yet again with the lame countout finish. The promotion was going under for crying out loud, give us a finish.

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In a big surprise, on Monday night's ep, DJ Peterson and The Trooper won the tag titles. So Gagne throws the warriors that actually sat/sit through this a bone afterall. I should have known the titles would change when that idiot Lee Marshall predicted the Destruction Crew would retain the titles. For as brutal as Gagne is on commentary, at least he isn't the annoying prick Marshall is. I swear he gets worse w/ every ep.

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Gagne is truly bizarre on commentary. Half the time he doesn't even know the rules of his own promotion, like these various bizarre top rope rules. Or he ranted about Trooper going into tag wrestling when he would have preferred to see him focus on the AWA world title. I was like "Man, you're the promoter...if you want the guy in the singles title scene, book him in it!"

 

That was a fairly fun tag match though. Even when the AWA was at its lamest in 1990 they did usually have something resembling comepetent pro wrestling on it. That and countless WT Jones jobs.

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I have yet to see the last week or so of shows (Im on vacation out of state currently) but that tag title change "highlighted" (and I use that term loosely) the last actual live AWA taping in Rochester and in its' history. One would assume tonight or perhaps in the next few days, we'll see the exact last shows of the AWA. If I recall, they go back to the empty pink room for their last shows, although I may be wrong about that. Whatever the case, the TCS stuff should wrap up soon too with Jake Milliman winning the TCS for (I think) Larry Z's team.

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The big question we all have to ponder is this: What will ESPN show after those last few episodes? Will they go back in time to 1989 and exhaust the entire AWA library? Or will they start showing old WCCW, USWA, Global?

 

There's usually something on each of these AWA shows that is deliriously entertaining. I would have watched them more at the time if they had been on in a better time slot. A weekend slot at 4:00 on ESPN would have been better than Monday at 4:00 (that was it, right?). At that point I was in elementary school and then went to after school daycare, so I didn't even get home until after 5.

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Yup the ESPN wrestling timeslot was always at 4pm ET on weekdays, although I think the AWA ended up just doing one show a week near its end here, the last year at least, on Mondays. I can't remember if they just re-aired the same show the rest of the week then or what, or maybe had old WCCW or something the rest of the week.

 

I know when they did have World Class, that seemed to be on every weekday, same with GWF.

 

UWF, if I recall, was on weekends on ESPN 2.

 

Chances are we will rewind to 89 AWA after this run is over, or even go back further to 85 or parts of 88 too.

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I have much more vivid recollection of Global stuff since by that point I was in middle school and thus got home by that 4:00 time. I have zero recollection at all of the UWF on ESPN 2 but then we didn't get that channel around here until Aug. 1995.

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The UWF reruns come on sporadically on Sat and/or Sun mornings at 8am EST. The episodes from what looks to be a convention center lobby are fun w/ the businessmen in the front row and Cactus Jack marks as far as the eye can see, but the other eps are pure garbage.

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The biggest problem I have with the UWF is that it's just 30 mins. long and I have no time to settle in as a viewer, particularly when they make little attempt to get stuff over. Early Cactus stuff is pretty good on it though...he actually had a fun match with David Sammartino.

 

And call me crazy, but I did like Jimmy Valiant's ranting promo on some jobber manager named Col. Red. I have no idea who that guy even is but once Valiant got through I wanted him to kick Red's ass.

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I'd like to see the beginning days of the AWA on ESPN. I want to see the days of the Road Warriors, Rick Martel, Stan Hansen, the Long Riders, Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin, etc.

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Matches from St. Paul (12/25/1985) tonight including the world's longest midget match. A mild shame as I wanted to see Jake Milliman's battle royal win in the TCS.

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