Let's Talk About... The Apter Mags

[Zack Malibu]

I believe the whole "WWF blocked a Rumble slot" angle could have been confused with when they did that to OVW in 2003. IIRC it was to be The Damaja (Danny Basham), but when plans changed Cornette turned it into a storyline.

 

I had tons of Apter mags, WOW mags, WWF/E mags...collected them as a kid, and then used to get them for free when working for the wrestling company, since we'd advertise in there. I just got rid of a ton of them...I was going to put them on Ebay but they don't go for much, so they went out with the spring cleaning. I kept a ton though, just mostly those focusing mainly on guys I liked, or issues like the PWI 500.

[EVIL~! alkeiper]

I think Al is wrong about the status of WWF title. I don't have the magazines in front of me, but I am almost positive that the WWF lost world title status from the late 70s until Hogan's run.

 

PWI claims '85 ended a two year run. I would think promoters would have lobbied PWI to retain the WWWF title's status at the time. "Unification" matches were a big attraction for a few years.

[BruiserKC]

I loved the rulebreaking colums with Eddie Ellner and later Brandi Mankiewicz. Also when they would do the roundtable kayfabe interviews. I remember one they did in 1988 with Bruno Sammartino, Ivan Koloff, and Jerry "The King" Lawler at the time he was the AWA World champ.

 

Although, my favorites (I think they were in The Wrestler mags) were the What-Ifs columns. They would show what if two wrestlers met that normally couldn't, such as the one where Lex Luger wrestled Hulk Hogan and beat him.

 

[Dobbs 3K]

I remember one year they ran a "computer simulated" wrestler tournament, sort of like that. It was sort of a "best of the best" type thing, featuring the likes of Sabu, Diesel, Hogan, Razor Ramon, etc. I believe the final had HBK beating Hogan. They even had a photo shopped poster in there of Michaels delivering a flying elbow drop to a bloody Hulk Hogan. This was in '96, IIRC.

[Danville_Wrestling]

I remember one year they ran a "computer simulated" wrestler tournament, sort of like that. It was sort of a "best of the best" type thing, featuring the likes of Sabu, Diesel, Hogan, Razor Ramon, etc. I believe the final had HBK beating Hogan. They even had a photo shopped poster in there of Michaels delivering a flying elbow drop to a bloody Hulk Hogan. This was in '96, IIRC.

 

Yea, I remember this issue. I remember that the matches were a "best of 7" and in the semi-finals Hogan beat Ahmed Johnson like 4 to 3 and I think even had to beat Raven to get to the finals. I remember that photoshopped poster was pretty cool.

 

I never bought that issue, just looked through it at the local video store, but I wish I had it. They did the computer simulated tournament two other times I believe in '94 and '95.

 

[Dobbs 3K]

I know in the couple years before, they said Rick Rude had one the first one, and Vader the second one. They noted that both guys were well out of any title picture by the end of each of those years. They probably went with Michaels as the winner to rectify that, since he was in line to soon win the WWF Title and was clearly being poised to be the new #1 in the WWF.

[BruteSquad_BRODY]

Eddie Ellner gave me great satisfaction in 1993 by conducting an interview (Yeah fake I know) with Missy Hyatt and repeatively finding excuses for Missy to bend over in what he wrote was a ultra low top.

 

It didn't take much to excite me as a 12 year old.

 

 

[pochorenella]

I know in the couple years before, they said Rick Rude had one the first one, and Vader the second one. They noted that both guys were well out of any title picture by the end of each of those years. They probably went with Michaels as the winner to rectify that, since he was in line to soon win the WWF Title and was clearly being poised to be the new #1 in the WWF.

Vader won his versus Diesel IIRC. And I also seem to remember that Michaels was finalist at least three times, one the aforementioned Hogan showdown and one of the others against Kevin Nash.

[daveatl]

I know in the couple years before, they said Rick Rude had one the first one, and Vader the second one. They noted that both guys were well out of any title picture by the end of each of those years. They probably went with Michaels as the winner to rectify that, since he was in line to soon win the WWF Title and was clearly being poised to be the new #1 in the WWF.

Vader won his versus Diesel IIRC. And I also seem to remember that Michaels was finalist at least three times, one the aforementioned Hogan showdown and one of the others against Kevin Nash.

 

I loved the apter mags. Still have a lot of them. read them from time to time.