Episode 134 - Yippy-Yo Yippy-Yeah

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Michael Hayes blinds the Junkyard Dog with the Freebird Hair Cream in 1981.

It’s WON Hall of Fame season and this is the first of our shows examining this year’s candidates. We’re happy to welcome back Greg Klein (@jydbook) to discuss his advocacy of two people in particular, the Junkyard Dog and Houston promoter Morris Sigel. We go over both candidates in detail, including JYD’s drawing power in Mid-South and New Orleans in particular, his time as a main eventer versus his later career, the cultural implications of JYD’s push and his feuds, comparing him candicacy to Paul Orndorff, Sigel promoting Houston for 40+ years, the scope of the Texas wrestling office and how that compares to Roy Welch in the Southeast, wrestlers who got their break in Houston, the Texas Wrestling War and more.

We also go over the rest of the ballot discussing things like “should tag team longevity count in dog years,” lack of footage for pre-territory wrestlers, voting for still-active competitors on the ballot and comparing candidates to their baseball equivalents.

Be sure to check out Greg on some other wrestling podcasts this HOF season. The more discussions on worthy candidate, the better.

Episode 120 - May Day

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My second favorite wrestling angle of all time. Eddie Gilbert buries Bill Watts.

Amazingly, it’s taken almost eight years of the podcast to discuss officially discuss the Russian Flag Burial angle. It’s my second favorite angle of all-time and I once named a blog after it.

I had to get a fellow Mid-South/UWF fan on the show, so I’m happy to welcome back Greg Klein (@jydbook) to discuss it. There’s a preamble before we get to the angle, discussing Watts’ use of Russian heels in Mid-South (Volkoff, the sympathizer Khrusher Khrushchev, etc), Gilbert’s place in Mid-South before he starts managing Kortisa Korchenko and the evolution of Mid-South Wrestling into the UWF. Right before we discuss the angle, we play the clip (it’s around five minutes long) and then discuss it (from memory, we were not watching it in real time): the set-up, the commentary, the blocking, the props and the immediate aftermath. Then we talk about the Watts vs Hot Stuff feud, how it was booked, the insertion of Dusty and some JCP talent on the shows in Houston and New Orleans and how abruptly the angle segues into Watts’ feud with the Freebirds.

There’s also random wrestling talk later in the show, including Nick Bockwinkel as a touring World Champion (as Greg discussed on his podcast), gimmick matches in Houston, going to house shows in Baltimore and some other chit-chat, including Mid-Atlantic beaches and tax-free shopping in Delaware. Greg also mentions his books, including a new one hopefully out at the end of the year.

This pod was done on the spur of the moment and I appreciate Greg squeezing in the time to do it with a few hours’ notice.

Episode 115 - The Grandaddy

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An original 1985 Starrcade VHS tape clam shell. Bought from the pages of PWI.

I’m always happy to welcome back Beau James (@kingofkingsport) back to the show. Just in time for Thanksgiving, we’re going to talk about the Grandaddy of them all, Starrcade. Well, the shows that were held on Thanksgiving by Jim Crockett Promotions, from 1983-1987.

We’re going to go over the cards on all five shows, spotlighting some underrated matches, as well as the ones everyone remembers: Flare for the Gold, The I Quit Match, the scaffold matches and more. We discuss some of the controversies on those shows, be it odd match selections, questionable booking and which show managed to kill two towns and a promotion in one night.

We also talk about the show Beau is running on Thanksgiving weekend in Kingsport and how people can help donate for folks in need this holiday season. If you can’t make it there live, you can donate on their website at https://donations.hungerfirst.org.

Happy holidays to those celebrating. Watch out for that tryptophan.

Episode 110 - Million Dollar Bash

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The Great American Bash issue from Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

We’re happy to welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) for another marathon pod. The main focus of the episode is the first Great American Bash in July 1985. We go over the show match-by-match, what was going on for each person at the time going into the show and where things were going after the show on the road to Starrcade 1985. We also talk about the other JCP show that night in Columbus, Georgia. There’s also discussion of both the magazine coverage of the show and the video tape, put out in conjunction with Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

From there, it’s a free for all, as we talk about tape trading, not only in wrestling but also hockey fights and old television shows, running shows in high school gyms and armories, which led to a discussion of the 1993 film Blue Chips, hockey road trips, the usual discussion of 1980s wrestling TV in the Baltimore/Washington area and much more.

As with most people these days, you can’t talk this long without some coughing fits. We tried to edit them out, but may have missed some, so please accept our apologies.

Also, our new podcast The Plot, done with When It Was Cool, now has two episodes:. The first is about the Mission Impossible TV show and the second is about the heist comedy The Lavender Hill Mob. You can find it in this podcast feed or over at the When It Was Cool Website. .

Thanks for listening.

Episode Eighty-Nine - The Force of July

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The 1986 Great American Bash

The 1986 Great American Bash program cover

We look back at a special wrestling event that took place 36 years ago as we write this, the first date on the 1986 Great American Bash tour, held on July 1, 1986 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Winter Palace host was at the shot and has a couple guests to look back at the show.

First up is one of the hardest working man in the podcast business, Kris Zellner (@kriszellner), co host of Between the Sheets (@BTSheetspod) , Exile on Badstreet, Cover 2 Cover and more. We go over the card, match-by-match and talk about some of the infamous stories that happened backstage. We also talk about the 1986 Bash tour as a whole, where it was successful and where it was not. We also talk about a bunch of other subjects including the logistics of watching wrestling in the 1980s, the days of tape trading, how Kris managed to find the time to do all those shows and some recommendations of classic matches to watch online.

(52:18) Also on the show is Mark’s high school friend Jim, who, to protect his real identity, we will call Jim K. Fabe. Jim and Mark were impressionable 16-year old wrestling fans who attended that Bash show in Philadelphia. We talk about what we remember about the show live, other wrestling shows we attended back in the 1980s, favorites then vs favorites and more. We also talk about the current problem in popular culture of separating the art from the artist, centering about Jim’s teenage fandom for Jimmy Snuka and reconciling that with what we know about the death of Nancy Argentino. That branches out into the same problems effecting creators in film and tv, sports, comics and more. It was Jim’s first podcast appearance and we think he did a bang up job talking a trip down memory lane.

Check the show notes below for The Final Best of 7 match between Magnum TA and Nikita Koloff for the Unites States Title from JCP TV and Jim Cornette’s podcast where he discusses the Great American Basn tours.