Scott Norton was at the Mariners game last night.

Double lol.

I actually saw that Glacier clip on Reddit recently, sooooo bad. Just look at the crowd.

Chris Jericho interjecting himself as ring announcer for the cruiserweight battle royal at Slamboree '98 is fantastic.

"Damian. Can't afford a mask, so he's going with paint."
"This guy is Silver King. If he wins 12 more matches, he'll be upgraded to Golden King."

There's an nWo Sting and he's going to be on the opposite side of a tag match from Sting. Larry Z explains, "No, we call the real Sting 'Sting,' and we call that fake one 'Stink.' Very simple." Tony refers to the nWo Sting later, and Larry interjects, "No, STINK!"

FFS, am I witnessing the birth of the latest rendition of the New World ODOR? Larry ****ing sucked.

Yah Larry was insufferable

I hate how I can hear his voice so perfectly in my head. Zbyszko blows. I think it was the Scott Hall doc where someone was talking Larry up as this amazing commentator and I thought, "wtf?"

His little bow/salute thing is pretty sweet though.

ECW Heatwave '98, holy ****. What a card.

After a very slow start getting the content on the Network over to Peacock, they've picked up the pace and most of it is now there, so it seems like they'll make good on having all of the content transferred over by SummerSlam. The only thing I can see being missing is the full catalog of Clash of the Champions episodes.

This is less specific to Peacock and more of a WWE Network issue in general, but I just wish they would fill in more of the chronological gaps from the Golden Era. I picked up previously with WCCW, World Championship Wrestling, and WWF Wrestling Challenge from 1986, and enjoyed it a fair bit, but I'd really like to be able to take in all of the territory stuff on a chronological watch from something like 1983 (first Starrcade) so that I could backfill a bunch of my missing NWA/JCP knowledge as well as a bunch of other knowledge of significant territories at the time.

Unfortunately they seem to confine themselves now to dropping eight episodes per month of one series. At that rate, the full chronological watch option just won't exist for many more years. I can continue watching forward from 1998, and have been enjoying reliving that stuff, but I'd probably drop it in favor of watching more of the 1980s stuff if they had it filled in.

This is the stuff I'm looking for too. Stuff I read about in wrestling magazines, but was never able to see and maybe even before then when guys like the Road Warriors, Piper, Jake, etc...were becoming stars. I'd love to see some early pre-WWE Savage stuff.

Unfortunately, the Cock is now available on Amazon Fire products, so I was going to wait till SS to re-subscribe, as I really haven't been missing anything. But if they're not even going to have this stuff maybe I'll skip it. NXT Takeovers are really the only thing I want to see that I can't right now and those only occur a few times per year.

Had to google this because I didn't immediately remember what was on this show (still don't remember whether I'd ever seen it or not even after googling) and came up with this tidbit from Wikipedia:

They have 70s All Star Wrestling up until 1980, but I feel like that's earlier than would keep my interest.

What I would have in mind would probably be a chronological watch starting in 1983 since that's when the first Starrcade was, carrying into the WrestleMania era starting in 1985.

I guess what they do have looks like:
1983-84: Mid-South, Mid-Atlantic, WCCW, but no weekly WWF or GCW
1985: Same territories, add World Championship Wrestling late in the year, still no weekly WWF
1986: Territories continue, add WWF Prime Time Wrestling mid-year

I don't know...as I write it out, it's probably a better selection than I've given it credit for. But I just wish we could get the entire catalog of WWF weekly shows from the time that they started doing them, and also the entirety of WCW. There's also an unfortunate weekly WCW gap from its rebranding as WCW in 1989 until 1992, and also no weekly WWF from 1990 until Raw starts in 1993.

Regarding your specific wants: you could see plenty of early Piper in Mid-Atlantic and early Jake in Mid-South. Savage material is tougher because he didn't compete in any of the bigger territories for any length of time before he went WWF. Road Warriors' initial rise should be more accessible, but unfortunately WWE has been slow to upload any AWA from the time they're there, so the earliest long-term Road Warriors activity on weekly TV currently available would be their 1986 World Championship Wrestling stuff.

Specifically, I'd love to see the Savage/Lawler stuff, but I guess Lawler still owns that footage, not WWE?

I've seen bits and pieces of early Mid-Atlantic. Piper, Ole Anderson, Slaughter, Briscos were main pieces if I remember. Windham, Jake were just starting. I think Flair was champ too. Think a lot of people wrongfully think that Starrcade '83 was his first title win.

Those were just the guys off the top of my head, but I'm always fascinated by seeing guys work before they hit WWE. Remember Orndorff/Dugan/Butch Reed/JYD/DiBiase/Shiek were really hot in Mid-South too prior to coming north. There's probably just so much good stuff from even before 83, back to 80-81 in those regions I'd like to see.

Yeah, maybe I'll go back and look in on some of that stuff that they do have. I agree that watching the Lawler-Savage program would be interesting.

Been a bit since I last watched the first Starrcade, but I seem to remember it very much being a show about Flair recapturing the gold, so I'm surprised that people would think that was his first run.

I thought it was all about Harley passing the torch to Ric. I remember thinking for a long time that it was his initial title win. Until I started watching some WCCW stuff back when they would have older shows on ESPN and Flair went there as the champ to have that cage match against Kerry where the Freebirds turned to start their feud.

Now you've got me playing that show back to get some insight. Race won the belt off Flair earlier in the year and this was a return match, but of course that doesn't mean that was clear on the show.

Incidentally: giving this show the tagline of "A Flair for the Gold" seems absurd. I'm supposed to tune in to a show hyping itself like that and believe that Harley might win?

Angelo Mosca gave an interview where he was asked about the main event, and it did give off the impression that this would be Flair's first title win. "He has the attitude and the aptitude to be world champion."

I'm curious if they do ever mention his previous reign on that show and remember it mostly the way you're describing, like the whole show was about him becoming the man.

I also don't ever recall reading or seeing Flair's face turn for this run. It was confusing back then because the champ could go into some territories as a heel and others as a face, depending on who their top guy was and since it wasn't something that was never nationally broadcast, they could get away with it.

Like whenever he went into Texas, he was a heel because it was Von Erich country, but I also remember him tagging with Steamboat at points around the same time too in the Carolinas. I'm wondering if there was a clear face turn and how long before Starrcade was it?

I think Flair was a babyface in the mid-Atlantic territory going back to at least 1981. That includes his first NWA title run from September 1981 to June 1983. He was a heel champion everywhere else.

If Flair was doing any heelish stuff as champion in mid-Atlantic, then a definitive face change would have come in 1983 when Race paid a $25,000 bounty to Cowboy Bob Orton and Dick Slater in injure Flair and end his career.

I actually watched Starrcade '83 a couple months ago to tryout Peacock. Nobody who watched Starrcade live (or bought/rented the videotape) needed to be told Flair was a former champion and was trying to regain the title.

Any strange comments by announcers can be chalked up to stupid announcers. It was Crockett Promotions first big closed circuit broadcast (~PPV) and they were doing this type of thing for the first time ever.

I'm sure it was called "A Flair for the Gold" to convince potential CCTV buyers that Flair had a real shot at winning the title. Title changes were rare and people would be willing to pay to see it live since even a videotape of a title change was not something easily obtained in 1983.

Just finished off my watch of Starrcade '83. Given how it was portrayed, I can see how a person watching it back in a vacuum would see it as him reaching the mountaintop for the first time. Though I think the way it gets framed is just as easily explained away by the underlying angle that he was (kayfabe) seriously injured and worked his way back to overcome the champion anyway. In its own way, that's as great of a triumph as winning for the first time.

Gordon Solie does say late in the broadcast that this was Flair's third world title win.

Solie's comments were confusing to me.

Gordon Solie was the broadcaster for the Florida territory. So, he may have been counting when Flair lost to the Midnight Rider (Dusty Rhodes under a mask) in February of 1982. However, the Rider wouldn't unmask after winning (an NWA championship rule). So, the title was handed back to Flair.

Flair also lost the title three more times to Jack Venerno, Carlos Colon, and Victor Jovica during his first reign only have the title returned to him. According to shoot interviews, these losses were because Flair feared riots would occur (in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad) if the local hero didn't win the title.

I went on Peacock to see if there was an old territory fully uploaded I could get into. I was happy to see Mid-South was there from December 1981 through 1986.

Mid-South is usually considered one of the better TV shows from the early '80s and I've never watched it week-to-week (just YouTube stuff). So, I gave the first episode a shot.

There were a few interesting highlights of what seemed to be a typical episode.

1. The main event was a babyface North American champion Ted Dibiase (who had never been a heel to this point) in a non-title match vs. Paul Orndorff.

I'm glad the show starts before Dibiase's first heel run. That's something worth looking forward to.


2. The second best match was Edward Wiskoski (better known later as Colonel DeBeers in the AWA) vs. a somewhat bland babyface Jimmy Garvin.

Garvin would become a heel and "Gorgeous" in 1982 but he'll do it in Florida. I don't think his Mid-South run offered much.

3. The Junkyard Dog was in a tag team match and he looked GREAT. I've never seen JYD in a match where he was so slim and cut. I could immediately see why Mid-South was able to sell him as the ultimate badass.

4. The Iron Shiek had a match and gave the early '80s version of a suplex match. Back then it was more about the variety of suplexes instead of sheer quantity.

I actually went back myself this morning and watched the first couple of episodes of Mid-Atlantic on Peacock; that runs from September 1981. As long as I stay interested, I'll watch through chronologically and add Mid-South to the mix when I get to December '81.

I did enjoy the initial episodes of Mid-Atlantic. Pretty interesting top-line angle where a heel alliance of Roddy Piper, Abdullah the Butcher, and Ole Anderson just got done mutilating Wahoo McDaniel right before this first available Peacock episode aired. They also seem to be setting up to have a go at Jake Roberts.

The couple I watched on the network in the past from around '81, I think you get a couple of Marty Lunde jobber matches too.

I can't imagine Abdullah associating with that group. Of course, my only exposure to Abby's work was back in the early 90's when he teamed with Cactus Jack, but I always thought his character was this uncontrollable, violent maniac sort of in the mold of Kamala or heel George the Animal Steele.

That was pretty much how Abdullah came across. He was wailing away with a weapon like a violent psychopath and Piper was prodding him to keep going from ringside. Piper was also out for an Abdullah jobber squash, and he did coach him into picking the guy up on a two-count so that he could hit another running elbow drop.

I don't have great context for knowing Kamala's earlier work. I only really encountered him when he came back to WWF in the early 90s, and it's my understanding that he was far better in his earlier work. That '93-'94 stuff was not great.