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Thread: Old-school Pro Wrestling

  1. #1
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    Old-school Pro Wrestling

    I started a wrestling thread back when the site re-launched in 2011 that's quite popular, and more geared towards the current landscape. I watch mostly old matches on YouTube and the WWE Network now. Rather than try and hijack that conversation I thought I'd start one anew here, about well, how it used to be. I'm a 90's kid so I was of the last generation before the internet, when wrestling on TV was vastly different. Then the Monday Night Wars changed everything. That was really an amazing time to be a fan, both shows head to head like that every week.

    I don't mean to sound so old about it but I can't follow the new stuff with any interest much. Watching WWE after the downfall and purchase of WCW was met with diminishing returns as far as interest or investment eventually. I figure I stopped watching Raw weekly by the time I went full into streaming in 2014, when watching live networks wasn't as possible as it is now. I find that I really don't miss it much, except when watching old stuff. It's been exciting in and of itself though, discovering classics like this.



    I realize this may seem strange to find here, but I want to make the case for this as a TV genre of it's own and maybe worthy of being in Le Cinema as a result.

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    I loved the New Generation era, Bret Hart was (and still is) my favorite!

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    highly recommend OSW video reviews. thorough and funny. they just did Wrestlemania X

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    Quote Originally Posted by SM Rollinger View Post
    I loved the New Generation era, Bret Hart was (and still is) my favorite!
    My brother primarily was a Bret fan, even from the time he started me into watching it.

    I wasn't a big fan of that era of WWF living through it and looking back I like some it more than I did but some of it really doesn't hold up. Mostly on the production side, less on the in-ring action.

    During the Monday Night Wars I was WCW all the way. For most of 1995 I was kind of phased out and not watching at all, and all of a sudden I picked up the Pro Wrestling Illustrated year-in-review edition and learned about how much had changed, particularly Lex Luger debuting on WCW's new show airing on against Raw.


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    Quote Originally Posted by SM Rollinger View Post
    I loved the New Generation era, Bret Hart was (and still is) my favorite!
    I was on the same flight as Bret just a couple months ago! He was sitting in first class, and as I walked passed him he caught me realizing who he was. I nodded hello, he nodded back, it was awesome.

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    I never liked the look/production of WCW... it always seemed cheap to me (and not in the "we're trying out best with what we got..." just cheap and potentially dangerous, as Davey Boy Smith found out)... and I grew up watching Stampede Wrestling, so it's not like I was totally used to the slickness of the WWE. Perhaps it's because Ed Whalen did such a great job on commentary to help cover over the other aspects of the show.

    Always a Bret Hart fan (and even more so after his stroke and recovery story...), but I liked Perfect and lot of the other technical wrestlers.

    Even when they were in WCW though, I couldn't be bothered to watch them there.

    That Stone Cold/Bret Hart match is still a classic.

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    I never thought WCW looked cheap, but I would say they were a little too tethered to the South to have become equal to the WWF. Even during the Nitro days I'd say half if not 2/3rds of the show were in the southeast US. They really screwed up not utilizing Bret more in Canada to draw and become as competitive as they were with the Vince in the states.

    Quote Originally Posted by Callahan View Post
    I was on the same flight as Bret just a couple months ago! He was sitting in first class, and as I walked passed him he caught me realizing who he was. I nodded hello, he nodded back, it was awesome.
    My brother met him in Vegas before AEW's Double Or Nothing earlier this year. He's met a lot of legends going to conventions and stuff but I could tell that was special for him.

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    Bret's awesome. back in the 90's, he was in my hometown of Bayonne, NJ, a small little town, to do an autograph signing. my friend's father owned the store where Bret was doing the autographs. after the signing, instead of leaving right away, Bret stayed and played Wrestlemania the arcade game with my friend. This pic was posted by my friend and has made the rounds on the internet. https://twitter.com/nbajambook/statu...39882710732801

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    He really was the right guy at the right time for the WWF, but it seemed like everyone knew this but Vince. First they take the title off him to pacify Hogan coming back, then the Luger experiment, then for awhile it seemed like they knew what they were doing again making him the champ in the middle of that hot angle with Owen, then they put it on Diesel and try and actively make him a top babyface but that didn't work, and finally he's just a transitional champ in his last two reigns just to put it on Shawn Michaels who had promise as a tippy-top guy but his drug addictions and other problems meant he stumbled a lot during that time, which is a shame since he had a lot of great matches before the injuries caught up to him.

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    GOAT, no kidding. There are probably a million better videos of him around, which speaks a lot to his legacy. It was during the Nitro days when I started to get why people said he was the greatest, watching his live promos and work every week was a better distillation of it than seeing the canned stuff WCW did previous to that.
    Last edited by onthewall2983; 06-07-2020 at 03:06 PM.

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    Since the 90's, "shoot" interviews have been a big craze amongst the hardcore fans, and have gained a good bit of notoriety online. I've seen a ton of them, and thankfully there are tons of clips on YouTube. One guy out of Canada who goes by the name Hannibal has actually done some really good ones despite having a shaky reputation. I don't know much about that, but he's done some good interviews and knows his stuff. He's not the sharpest tool in the drawer but knows enough about the business to keep up with some of the legends he has talked to.





    This is one of the most famous backstage stories, of all these videos and all the more you can find online I'd recommend this one as one of the very best.


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    The first season of this show was really good, giving the mainstream a view of what are commonly known tragedies among the wrestling community as a whole.

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    Sabu vs Terry Funk 1994:


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    Last edited by onthewall2983; 08-27-2020 at 09:30 AM.

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    I may need some help. I'm watching and I think to myself... "Yeah, a comedy TV series called 'My name is Earl... Hebner' could work. Almost the same premise as the Jason Lee show but everyone is WWE talent. Except Crabman. He's Crabman.

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    Watching that makes me do "What If..." 's with matches... A full DiBasie / Bulldog match could be quite good, for example (and I don't recall ever watching one of those... I might be wrong)
    Last edited by MrLobster; 01-27-2021 at 04:30 PM.

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    This is pretty close, I would think they must have had the odd house match together during DBS' 90-92 singles run


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    Quote Originally Posted by onthewall2983 View Post
    This is pretty close, I would think they must have had the odd house match together during DBS' 90-92 singles run
    It's odd, I'm not finding much of them interacting at all... like, maybe a handful of times as part of teams or that Royal Rumble. They quirks of working different territories I suppose...

    Also, Dynamite is so quick in that match (I know, a characteristic of his, but still)...
    Last edited by MrLobster; 01-27-2021 at 04:38 PM.

  22. #22
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    The real matchup out of those four I'd want to see was Dibiase with Dynamite Kid. Such a shame it isn't 10 or 20 minutes longer.

    Turns out they did match up several times in 1987 and again in the early 90's, including one TV taping
    Last edited by onthewall2983; 01-27-2021 at 06:22 PM.

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    The 1992 Royal Rumble is my absolute favorite. Bobby Heenan was absolutely amazing and something they'd never let a commentator do again. And that Flair promo at the end was fantastic!

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    Quote Originally Posted by versusreality View Post
    highly recommend OSW video reviews. thorough and funny. they just did Wrestlemania X
    OSW is excellent, can of Coke for you!


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    Quote Originally Posted by henryeatscereal View Post
    OSW is excellent, can of Coke for you!


    happy days are here again!

    what barrrrr?

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    Proof Dennis Stamp was indeed, booked.

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    Quote Originally Posted by onthewall2983 View Post
    This was SO enjoyable to watch. Grinning from ear to ear almost the whole time, legit lol'ing to the Brain and certain guys as the countdown ended and they came out. Such an amazing piece of nostalgia for someone who was obsessed with wrestling as a kid but dropped it hard and never looked back.
    Last edited by bobbie solo; 02-12-2021 at 03:14 AM.

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    Good god, I loved wrestling, starting with some of my first conscious memories. Like a lot of you guys, I was raised on Hulk Hogan and Iron Sheik and Jake the Snake and Randy Savage.
    I saw a wwf show in Amarillo in like 87, with Ricky the Dragon Steamboat. I mean, it's amarillo: you take what you can get.

    And Bret Hart was my favorite, too. It's pretty dope that I'm not the only one.
    I loved the days of Razor Ramon, Undertaker, Yokozuna, Tatanka, The Rockers...all that early nineties stuff.

    Edit: I'm not 100% certain on the exact dates/order of this stuff below; it was all between like 28-31 years ago.

    I think it was like 91, when I was eleven, when I realized that wrestling was fake, but I still thought there had to be some modicum of reality to it, and I still loved Bret Hart.
    So, I saw a show in dallas, in 92 or 93, wherein Hart vs Ric Flair was the main event. It was fucking epic. Bob Backlund was there, too.
    BUT, I sat next to a superfan who had all this inside knowledge of what storylines were going to.be happening next, and that fucked it up worse for me.
    The thing, I think, that utterly killed it for me was the Yokozuna body slam contest. THAT was when, if I remember correctly, Lex Luger turned from a heel to a face, just because he "body slammed" Yokozuna. It didn't make any sense.
    I guess that was the first.time I really, REALLY caught on to how all that shit worked, and I just couldn't anymore.

    NOW, at 42, I'm SOMEWHAT into wrestling for what it is. I can dig the documentaries, and Dark Side of the Ring is amazing.
    And there's a half ass little promotion in Amarillo now, that's $10, every Saturday night: I'm looking forward to going and checking THAT shit out.
    And as far as "shoot" interviews, I get a big ass kick out of that shit, too: understanding what was REALLY going on in the golden years. Jim Cornette has a whole.damn YouTube channel that's full of crazy stories and shit talk. It gets REALLY funny, with his propensity to say "fuck" and whatnot.

    Even though I just CAN NOT, as far as keeping up with today's storylines, (NO offense to people who do), I will always cherish the memories of the old days.

    I sure wish I could find that Dallas show: any record of it. I'm kind of stunned that there isn't any video!

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