2012 Pro Wrestling Thread

CM Punk is too straight edge to hang with Shaggy and partake in some dooby snacks in the Mystery Machine. Everyone else ... well, remember, smoking pot only merits a fine in WWE. It's not technically a Wellness Policy violation.

 

LMAO. They were Scooby Doo snacks, not dooby snacks.

 

Probably so. I remember them as the Sheepherders in the NWA (Crockett), Memphis, UWF and other places in the territory days. They were some rough hombres when they were heels. Them and the Fantastics had some crazy matches (including more than one barbed wire match, as I recall) back in the 80's.

 

They were long done with the WWF days when I interviewed them and they were only doing the occasional indie shows. (That night they were judges - along with Dan Severn - in a Miss Nude Ontario pageant at a strip joint in Guelph, Ontario.)

Indeed they had done very well financially with VKM and were living n some gated community in Florida. They had nothing but good things to say about their WWE days and said the Bushwhacker persona allowed them to expand their fan base and show a lot of their true personalities. They had some great stories to tell about their hell-raising Sheepherders days.

 

I love listening to those kinds of interviews where the guys talk about what it was like back then, both the good and the bad. Makes the stars I grew up watching just a little more human. To me back then, wrestlers were these larger-than-life characters, but now it's cool to read and listen to stories about the territory days and things like that.

 

Just to give you a taste of the Sheepherders, here's a match with them and Jack Victory against Terry Taylor and the Fantastics. Barbed wire cage match from 1986. Gotta love the UWF.....

 

Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention that this might quite possibly be the most rickety and dangerous-looking cage in pro wrestling history and that's saying something.

 

Last post for now, but I wanted to throw this out there for those of you who might not have seen Antonio Cesaro before he came to the WWE. It's a match from Ring of Honor in 2009 where Cesaro (then known as Claudio Castagnoli) takes on Colt Cabana, a wrestler who does a lot of comedy, but can go when he wants to. It's a good match to watch.

 

I did that interview back in '97 and they were saying it was too bad that young guys didn't get a chance to learn the business working territories like they did throughout the Pacific and into Puerto Rico, Quebec and eastern Canada and out to BC and the Pacific Northwest.

 

I read an interview with Arn Anderson where he said one of the biggest problems today is that a lot of wrestlers aren't ready for prime time when they get called up to the WWE.

He said they find these guys, who may have a year or two of working sporadically, send them down to Florida for a year, call them up, then, if they're not great right away, they get sent back down or dumped. He thought the WWE's expectations for these guys was too high, considering their experience level.

He compared that to himself, who had been a three-year veteran of working the territories when he became a Horseman in the NWA. He said he'd had 900 matches by that point, and knew how to work, and (of course), talk.

 

Arn has a great point here. Wrestlers talk today about how rough it is working 100-150 dates a year. Imagine working 250-300 (not sure of the exact amount, but it's more like 5 or 6 nights a week rather than 2 or 3) dates per year. You gain so much more experience and are more prepared when you do get that chance.

 

I think Arn is right, but I'm not sure how you fix it, outside of the WWE making a sort of faux development system. Meaning, simultaneously run four to five territories, with one serving as a low-A league, a high-A league, AA, AAA and finally the WWE. Make the guys work themselves up to the top of the card, either via positive reviews of ringwork or crowd reaction, before promoting them to a new league. If you want to give them an artificial boost, then put it all online or on the WWE Network, whenever that actually does get off the ground.

I don't think we're ever going back to the territory system - There are too many other options for entertainment for it to work. I do think it would ironically help the WWE if TNA could get its act together and become a strong competitor, but last I checked, TNA was closer to getting booted off TV and Spike than being a ratings challenger to the WWE.