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Post by bossrock on Oct 19, 2019 16:53:36 GMT -5
I randomly saw Chris Jericho took a shot at Walter for having a bad wrestling name. This is from a guy who landed on "Chris?" This got me to thinking about the BEST wrestler names. Here's my top 10 in particular order apart from 1 and 2. 1. Ricky Steamboat 2. Randy Savage 3. Terry Funk (extra points for that being his shoot name) 4. Stone Cold Steve Austin 5. The Rock 6. Hulk Hogan 7. Diamond Dallas Page 8. The Undertaker 9. Mike Awesome 10. Big Boss Man
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Post by elliott on Oct 19, 2019 17:06:06 GMT -5
This might be worth a topic?
The first three I thought of that you didn't name (Randy Savage is the GOAT name): Ravishing Rick Rude Andre the Giant Ric Flair
"Dusty Rhodes" is also a fucking phenomenal name.
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Post by bossrock on Oct 19, 2019 18:26:13 GMT -5
This might be worth a topic? The first three I thought of that you didn't name (Randy Savage is the GOAT name): Ravishing Rick Rude Andre the Giant Ric Flair "Dusty Rhodes" is also a fucking phenomenal name. Dammit, Dusty was totally on my list but somehow slipped my mind.
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Post by KB8 on Oct 19, 2019 18:40:51 GMT -5
Savage, Dusty, Rude and Flair are the ones that come to mind first for me. Like, Ravishing Rick Rude is perfect and basically any time those three words are uttered in isolation I think of Rick Rude the wrestler. I'm not even kidding.
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Post by microstatistics on Oct 20, 2019 2:40:56 GMT -5
Come on you guys can do better than that:
El Satanico, The Destroyer, The Spirit, The Undertaker, Necro Butcher, Invader, Mankind, Cactus Jack, El Santo, Virus, Villano, Vader, Trauma
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Post by Cap on Oct 23, 2019 13:43:02 GMT -5
I only realized recently that Dusty Rhodes was a reference to like actual dusty roads. I felt real dumb.
I was thinking recently that wrestling feels really fresh right now. I think - for me - its the combination of AEW having weekly TV and NWA Power putting out something completely different. I am watching those two things weekly and sprinkling in some NXT and NJPW here and there and I am really enjoying week to week wrestling. I'll cherry pick WWE stuff from time to time, but right now I just can't be bothered. There is a lot of other stuff out there too (Uncharted Territory, Impact, etc). Such a strange and cool time for not just wrestling as a whole, but weekly products.
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Post by bossrock on Oct 23, 2019 17:12:52 GMT -5
AEW has been really big for me when it comes to weekly programming. I'm probably well over a year from no longer watching NXT week-to-week and even longer when it comes to the MR. And even when it comes to NJPW, I really don't watch a ton of the Road To shows and skip the undercard for ppv's. There are other Japanese promotions I like but pretty much only watch the matches of folks I like. So having something to watch weekly has been pretty fun.
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Post by Cap on Oct 23, 2019 18:07:34 GMT -5
Yeah... I skip a lot in NJPW and increasingly so on NXT. I really became disenchanted with the NXT week to week a year or so ago. I think NXT produces some great matches on Takeovers, but I find their story-lines and feud building to be sort of repetitive. Its completely understandable given what NXT is in the grander scheme of WWE, but I have also felt for a while that I can more or less cherrypick nxt.
AWE and NWA have made me excited for week-to-week wrestling, so I am with you bossrock.
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Post by Cap on Nov 19, 2019 11:54:19 GMT -5
For those who like shoot, you should check out the UWFi rules tourny that Paradigm pro wrestling just put on. it should be up on IWTV eventually. I went and it was a ton of fun and filled with really solid shoot wrestling. The guys in the tournament may not get a lot of opportunity to do this type of thing, but you could tell they were all in on it. Plus it had a UWFi rules superfight between Stephan Bonnar and Matthew Justice, which is a 2019 wrestlin fever dream come to life. Bonnar looked good. I think he is going to really emerge in pro wrestling in 2020.
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Post by Cap on Dec 3, 2019 11:13:36 GMT -5
I know it is the dominant narrative in WWE's version of wrestling history, but was the WWE really the place virtually everyone wanted to be? I am sure there are people who have spoken about this, but I don't normally listen to shoot interviews and I haven't read a wrestler's book/bio in ages.
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Post by bossrock on Dec 3, 2019 22:46:35 GMT -5
From what I understand New York was always the most lucrative territory due to having MSG so that would probably be where the most money was. Then again I really don't know much about the territory days so I could be way off.
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Post by elliott on Dec 3, 2019 23:47:25 GMT -5
Everyone is different of course, but during the 60s, 70s and for much of the 80s the most coveted contracts were with JWA and then AJPW & NJPW. The pay and treatment was better than anywhere else in wrestling. I believe Australia was similarly desired in the 60s.
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Post by elliott on Dec 5, 2019 21:57:04 GMT -5
Been thinking more about WWE being "the place everyone wanted to be." I guess you have to ask when this time period is supposed to have started. National Expansion with Hogan? Or before that? Some things to think about...Meltzer has often said more people attended live wrestling shows in the US in the 1970s than in any other decade before or after. New York was hot, but so was everywhere else. Did people want to go there and work with Bruno? Yes of course. But people made good money in territories all over the country. As I said above everyone is different and for every good example there's a counter example. So I won't get too bogged down in individual wrestlers. But there are a few folks that are interesting to consider: Buddy Rose for example. Of course he ended up going there for a tour in Summer of 1982, but he had gotten offers to go their and other territories prior to that. But Buddy was making enough money working on top in a smaller loop that allowed him to be home almost every day that he never wanted to leave. Obviously take someone like Piper who left and went on to become one of the most famous wrestlers ever. Of course these are two different people with two different sets of motivations. But the point is Buddy was financially successful enough in the late 70s/early 80s to feel comfortable turning down "more lucrative" territories because wrestling was hot everywhere. Even in a small tiny outpost like PNW. Take another example from the pre expansion era. The Destroyer was one of the biggest stars in the history of wrestling and a legit worldwide draw. He's unquestionably one of the biggest stars of the 50s-70s. I don't think he ever had a run in the Bruno era WWE territory. If he did it certainly was not a long one. Could he have if he wanted to? Well considering he worked and drew in literally every place on Earth that had pro-wrestling, I'm gonna say yes. But he wanted to go elsewhere. And an example from the Hogan era...the Road Warriors. If in 1987 the Road Warriors called up Vince and said "Hey we wanna come to New York" he would have said no? Nah. The Road Warriors could make comparable money elsewhere. Eventually did they go to New York? Sure. After their prime when the money was better. Same thing with Lex Luger or Sting. Vince doesn't grab them up in a second if they call him in 1988 or 89? Again of course Luger eventually went there and finally Sting did too but that leads me to another point to consider.... Wrestlers moving around to different territories is how wrestling has always worked. Even before the McMahon's ever promoted a show, that's how wrestling worked. So you can point to all these guys throughout history and say "they worked for WWE because WWE is the place every wrestler wants to be" but you could do that for every promotion or territory. "Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, the Road Warriors, Sgt Slaughter, Stan Hansen, etc worked in the AWA because the AWA is the place everyone wanted to be!" Pick any territory and you can do that. "Roddy Piper, Mr Perfect, Dynamite Kid, Ric Flair, Rick Martel Harley Race all came to Portland because Portland is the place to be in wrestling!" Some other things to think about. Is there some truth to "WWE was the place everyone wanted to be?" Actually probably yes. But there are still some things to think about. Was there wrestling in New York (and the WWWF territory) before the WWE and McMahons? Yes. Was it successful? Yes. New York has been the biggest city in America for wrestling since before Jess McMahon was born. Boston, Philly, and New York were always major wrestling cities. So there was always money to be made in those major cities before WWWF let alone WWE. And of course, people want to go where theres money to be made. Now, are there any other advantages that have nothing to do with Pro Wrestling itself that a New York City based promotion (that also ran Boston, DC, Baltimore, Philly, etc) might have over a promotion based in Charlotte, Portland, Amarillo, Kansas City, Memphis, St. Paul etc? Like being the most populous city in the country and the major media capital of world for example. Whoever ran New York was always going to have the advantage of people wanting to go there because it was New York. That has little to do with the McMahon's genius or WWE or however you want to frame it. Yes, people were always going to want to go to New York over Charlotte. So, sure you can say "WWE is the place everyone wanted to be!" but it doesn't really mean anything. I guess technically when it became "WWE" and WCW was dead, Japan had fallen off, worldwide wrestling had fallen off, then yeah, "virtually everyone did want to go to WWE." But I don't think that's what they mean
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Post by nintendologic on Apr 8, 2020 21:03:19 GMT -5
I had looked in this thread to post something else, but I saw the conversation about whether the WWF was really the place to be and thought I'd chime in. It's obviously not the case that literally everybody wanted to work there. But it's also obviously true that the WWF was one of the top handful of territories in terms of pay and prestige. Not only was it the most populous territory, the major wrestling magazines were headquartered in New York and dedicated the bulk of their coverage to the WWF. For most wrestlers, though, it was a place to cycle through rather than make your home base. It's not quite accurate to say that New York was always a strong wrestling town. In fact, the 1930s exposes of the business being a work killed wrestling in the city until Antonino Rocca revived it in the 1950s. It's also not accurate to say that wrestling was on fire everywhere in the 1970s. Most of the territories were doing strong business in the early part of the decade, but many of them were dead or dying in the mid-to-late 70s. And most of the rest had fallen off significantly from their early 70s peaks. Vince actually tried to bring in the Road Warriors in 1986, but they stayed with Crockett because he offered them guaranteed money and Vince didn't. I would imagine that Luger and Sting were under contract as well. In fact, that's basically the CliffsNotes version of why JCP went under. They signed their top guys to guaranteed contracts to prevent the WWF from raiding them and went national in order to draw the revenue necessary to pay for them, but the revenue never materialized. As for the Destroyer, masked wrestlers were banned by the New York state athletic commission. I don't know when exactly the ban was rescinded. I know Mil Mascaras worked MSG at the end of 1972, but I believe the commission made a special exception for him and didn't formally lift the ban until the mid-1970s.
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Post by elliott on Apr 9, 2020 16:27:28 GMT -5
Nintendo a few things: Well, what was it? Haha! To be fair, I don't think Cap was asking about guys in the 30s & 40s. Its not quite accurate to say that NY was killed in the 1930s. Londos vs Ray Steele drew 21,000 to Yankee Stadium in 1931. As late as July 1935, Danno O'Mahoney vs Chief Little Wolf in Yankee Stadium drew 25,000. I suspect the real problem was Jim Londos dropping the world title in 1936 and then doing his world tours? Quoting Steve Yohe, "When they took the title off him in 1936 the sport went into a 'dark age.'" "More people saw wrestling in the 70s than any other decade" is an oft-repeated Meltzer line. SF, LA & Detroit died off for various reasons but many of the territories were yet to have their hottest run by the mid-late 70s. The mid-late 70s saw the ascension of Flair & Steamboat in Crockett, Lawler & Dundee in Memphis, Rose & Piper in Portland, the Dusty babyface turn in Florida was 1974. JYD & Tommy Rich were becoming major stars at the end of the decade in Mid-South & Georgia. The Von Erich kids are right around the corner. I dunno when AWA was at their peak drawing wise, but they certainly weren't dead & dying in the mid-late 70s. Didn't the Midnights & Cornette come in for a TV Taping around that time and say fuck that, or am I imagining that? What a terrible decision by the NY athletic commission. Masked wrestlers are the best. Do you have any idea when it actually started? There's the famous Masked Marvel tournament but that was in the 20s. If there were no masked wrestlers for like 50 years in NY that would be fucking crazy! I've been sort of eyeing Beyer's book during the lockdown as something I might want to reread. I'm sure he had something to say about never working in New York and the mask ban, I just don't remember it.
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