And then later, on a Friday, he got knocked the F out. Lol

Audible lol induced here

During the Eddie Guerrero tribute show in the direct aftermath of his death, HHH built on his "he was never a piece of trash" lore from the Owen tribute show by saying about Eddie, "And now, I'm sure he's up in heaven, and he's lying to someone...and he's cheating someone...and...he's stolen all of our hearts."

He needs to recuse from any dead-wrestler tribute shows in the future. I'm sure the poor guy was genuinely hurting as he blurted out these absurd attempts, but he clearly just isn't up to that particular task.

After once surviving head trauma from a vicious attack by Hulk Hogan, Richard Belzer has now died.

Had a show from MSG in 1979 on last night.

The Fabulous Hulk Hogan makes his garden debut, managed by Classie Freddie Blassie.

Hogan gets some height on that leg drop. A pretty nimble guy in that era. I can see how doing that every night for years could take it's toll.

A young babyface named Ted DiBiase kicks out of the leg drop. Who knew then that they'd be the hottest feud in the industry less than a decade later?

Hogan is his Thunderlips character from Rocky III at this point.

Also on the card is The Great Hossein Arab, soon to be known as the Iron Shiek.

He goes on his familiar anti-American wrestler rant even though he's facing Antonio Inoki.

On the same card, Harley Race defends the NWA title against Dusty Rhodes. Also, less than a decade later, Vince would slap a crown on one and polka dots on the other.

Maybe his body fell in the same river The Giant's did and was revived.

Probably in the minority here but the Brutus Cuttin' and Struttin' theme is my favorite wrestler theme. I just love that old school synth sound and it's a theme that isn't nearly as played as other more classic ones. Shame about the wrestler that accompanied the theme.

I love that theme as well, though I won't nearly go so far as to call it my favorite. But I was a big Brutus fan as a kid first watching, and a lot of that just had to be owing to the theme song.

That said, even within that Golden Era I'm taking Hogan, Savage, Demolition, and Warrior over it. It's close with the likes of the themes of Mr. Perfect and Rick Rude though. I'd probably take it over DiBiase's.

Just watched the Zbyszko promo that led to the heel turn (or at least the first match) on Bruno. Considering how painful babyface promos were to watch at the time, this was brilliant.

Went to the old google machine to read a bit more about the turn. Popular theory seems to be that Backlund wasn't drawing, so they wanted to get Bruno back in the ring. He and Larry cooked this up for his return, but the McMahon's didn't really trust Larry to carry a major feud as a heel because...he was too small.

Does fit with their thinking of the time period as almost all the heels featured on the show are bigger guys, though very few look like they've ever hit a weight room.

But they needed Bruno back badly enough that they let him book the entire feud.

Really hoping the Shea Stadium show is somewhere on the network. It's being built well enough with this match and the first Hogan/Andre that I really want to see it at this point.

It is crazy just how seldom it was for a babyface to actually be entertaining on the mic during the WWF/WWE Golden Era. Savage's remained great after he turned face. Jake was always great on the mic in either role. I would say Hogan as well. Warrior? Well...his worked. I don't want to call them good, but I do think they were some sort of weird value-add to his whole presentation.

After that, it gets dark. I'm left to conclude that Duggan's promos were effective, since he was always very over and he had neither a good look nor a good/over finishing move. I would have otherwise put his promos on a Demolition level, but I assumed that they were primarily over because of their look, their music, and their charisma, with the mic work being a negligible contributor.

And the whole world can miss me entirely with any notion that Roddy Piper's babyface promos were anything but incredibly obnoxious, but I guess I'm forced to acknowledge that many people liked them.

Piper was always like the Robin Williams of the WWF to me. Sometimes he'd come up with a gem, but a lot of it seemed incoherent and went right past me. People loved it though.

Also, Bruno, never one to entirely ditch kayfabe in any interview, insisted there was still ill will towards Larry for the rest of his life for blasting him too hard with a chair shot.

Every week of All-Star Wrestling late 79/early 80 included an interview with the new tag champs (Ivan Putski and Tito Santana) in which Putski talked about his workout routine and Tito talked about how hard they try and continually thanks Putski for teaching him how to work out. Tito wasn't even giving the "Arriba!" yet.

Speaking of Tito, on Jericho's podcast a few months back, Jesse Ventura told a story that Tito had no clue why people were always calling him Chico because there was no On Demand or DVRs in those days where it was easy for wrestlers to watch the shows back.

Robin Williams had more than one gear. And the alternative gear was awesome. As overrated as Good Will Hunting is, Williams was the one thing about it that deserves all the hype.

I mean, I liked manic comedian Robin Williams a lot of the time too, certainly better than babyface Roddy Piper, but he left no question as to his dramatic chops as his career evolved. Piper just kept playing the one note.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/08/wwe-...h-results.html

At WrestleMania V, in the Twin Towers vs. Rockers match, Shawn Michaels takes a hot tag and gets in offense on both the Boss Man and Akeem until it's abruptly stopped when Akeem takes his head off with a clothesline, Michaels taking the inside-out bump on it. Jesse deadpans: "I believe he irritated Akeem."

I have been in love with that Jesse line forever. I always want to be able to reference it, but am stopped by the knowledge that essentially zero people on the planet will have any idea I'm referencing it.

The way I see it, making those references are for me…if someone gets it, then that’s just a bonus.

I imagine a giant pancake block or stiff arm during a football game would be a decent opportunity to deploy the line. Or if you get cold feet yell out “That’s gotta hurt!”

I once had a co-worker who told jokes constantly, and almost none of them were funny. Just an astoundingly low batting average. And I would inform him regularly that his jokes were terrible. And he would intermittently respond with, "Well, I crack myself up at least."

I liked that guy apart from his jokes, but ****. He did leave me with a dim view of that approach.

MSG show 3/80

- 20 yr old Kerry Von Erich makes his Garden debut. Hearing Vince talk about the Von Erich dynasty in Texas is jarring.

- Bruno vs Zbyzsko has less brawling than most the Bruno matches I've seen. Bruno used to do this Hulk up type thing that he would keep stomping towards you no matter how many times you hit him. The fans went nuts for this, but always made me laugh. Ended in DQ when Bruno wouldn't stop choking Larry. The most useless manager in the history of managers, Arnold Skoland, had to help pull him off. The entire thing just came off more comedic than violent to me in 2023.

- Seems like half the wrestlers on the card resided in Pittsburgh at the time. Wonder why that was such a popular destination.

- Both Wild Samoans had singles matches here. While both Afa and Sika are announced by Finkel using their actual names, Vince insists on calling them Samoan #1 and Samoan #2. What kind or reaction would Vince get today for saying Uso #1 and Uso #2?

As interesting as the Bruno/Zbyszko stuff was, the rest of this WWF Championship Wrestling just seems like another rendition of the All Star Wrestling that they have posted, where they do enhancement matches with no real storylines behind almost any of them. Backlund is WWF Champ and doesn't seem to show up on these. They were lagging way behind the other NWA territories in terms of a weekly TV product.

Yeah, I don't really know what was going on besides that feud in this time period. It doesn't seem like they build towards any big Backlund defenses. Was really hoping the Shea Stadium event would be on the Network, but it doesn''t appear to be. Really wanted to see some Andre/Hogan stuff where Hogan was the heel. It is otherwise pretty bland though.

Watching a lot of this also makes me realize there weren't really any finishers yet. Matchers were ended with a variety of simple moves from suplexes to standing splashes. When I first started watching in the mid-80s, just before Hogan won the belt, everyone seemed to have finishers. When did individual finishers first become a thing?

So this guy named Tor Kamata shows up in early 1980. Never heard of him before, but they bill him as Japanese, though he doesn't look Japanese. His big thing is a big splash off the top rope, but he's built kinda like Abdullah the Butcher, so they sell this as some completely devastating, under-handed move. Vince and Bruno talk about how people are signing up to wrestle him, they don't sign up for 300+ pounds coming off the top rope. Every one of his opponents has been stretchered out after this move. And if you haven't seen the old WWE "stretcher" it's hilarious. There are no medics, it's not a bed on wheels. It's an old school stretcher and just whoever happens to be there rolls the guy onto the stretcher and carries him to the back.

I guess, at that time, they'd just bring in guys for a few months, build them up and throw them to Backlund, then they'd leave.

Like LKJ said, none of this is exciting in terms of TV or angles or anything, but it's fascinating to watch how much differently they did things then and how completely different guys like Hulk Hogan and others were when they were first starting out.

I've been intermittently watching 1989 WWF. I've arrived at a part that I haven't seen before, where Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan have their kayfabe bad blood escalate to the point that Heenan rage-quits Prime Time Wrestling and gets spun off into The Bobby Heenan Show.

The first installment of The Bobby Heenan Show (from the 7/17/89 Prime Time) is one of the most painfully unfunny things ever. It's awful to watch Heenan floundering like that.

During this period where Heenan has quit Prime Time, they replaced him with Roddy Piper. Piper immediately sets to work at being the massive annoyance that I grew up seeing him as. At this point, my exposure to 1989 Piper is that historically awful segment with Brother Love and Morton Downey Jr. at WM V, and now this. Can't imagine why I didn't cotton to him.

Ironically, I was just listening to Conrad and Bruce talk about this on a podcast this week. Bruce, of course, claimed that the Bobby Heenan show intentionally horrible and that the network just didn't get that. He claimed it was ahead of it's time and would have killed if it aired 10 years later.

They also talked about Piper being terrible on commentary and doing absolutely nothing for the wrestlers in the ring.

I will say that I did not hate Piper on commentary in 1991. Thought he was very solid on the SummerSlam '91 show. Also thought he did good weekly work in putting over the Savage slow burn toward being reinstated as a babyface active wrestler in the later part of the year; this was a credit to both Piper and Savage, as they played the roles well of two guys who didn't get along and slowly became friends over the weeks and months.

Also, without Piper, the Virgil face turn doesn't work nearly as well.