Episode 135 - History Repeating

Gorilla Monsoon squares off against Muhammad Ali in 1976, prior to the Ali vs Inoki fight.

It’s our second WON HOF show of the week. We’re happy to have back on the show author and podcaster Brian R Solomon (@brianrsolomon) for another round of discussions about this year’s ballot. We cover a lot of the same topics as we did with Greg on the last show, including measuring tag teams in dog years, not voting for active competitors, judging someone’s entire career regardless of the category in which they are placed and comparisons to both Cooperstown and the Rock and Roll HOF.

We also to talk to Brian about his upcoming book next year on the legendary Gorilla Moonson and what surprised him most while researching the man, in his career, billed from both Manchuria and Cherry Hill, NJ. And since it’s almost Halloween, we also threw out a couple of film recommendations for the season, including Gothic, The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The Black Cat.

Be sure to check out Brian’s podcast Shut Up and Wrestle, especially if you love hearing about the Weston/Apter wrestling magazines, as well as Brian’s great ability to get wrestlers’ children on as guests, as they always have fascinating stories to tell.

Episode 115 - The Grandaddy

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

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-Four - Splendid Isolation Number Three

They Buried The Cowboy Under the Russian Flag!

We’re back with an extra-special edition of the new Splendid Isolation podcast series, as we welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) from Wrestling Observer Live and the Mid Atlantic Championship Podcast (@midatlanticpod).

We kick if off with a long chat about Bill Watts and the UWF, discussing how hot the promotion began after the name change from Mid-South Wrestling and its expansion outside its home region into places like Baltimore, where young Mike and slightly older Mark watched it in the spring of 1986. We reminisce about the initial title switches, promoting the Jim Crockett Sr Memorial Cup and one of the greatest angles of all-time, one so good we named a spin-off magazine after it: Eddie Gilbert and the Russians burying Watts under the USSR flag. We bracket that with the UWF TV show after the promotion was bought by JCP and just how quickly the show changed.

One of the other big topics covered is Mike’s new Mid-Atlantic Championshop Podcast, which he co-hosts with Roman Gomez. We talk about how the show started, why they chose 1982 as a starting point, some of the main players in the territory at the time and plenty of other JCP topics, including the Final Conflict show in 1983 and play WHAT IF? with various wrestlers (What if Gino had come in 1986? What if Buddy Landell had shown up for that TV taping?).

There’s plenty of other chat for the rest of the podcast, not limited to: the state of the territories by the mid 1980s, the hidden gem that was Southeastern Wrestling, the greatness of Ron Fuller’s Studcast podcast, classic 1980s TV and a brief chat at the end about sports uniforms.

Mike is always a great guest, so big thanks for him for giving so much of his time. We have more shows planned for the future, branching out in topics, so keep an eye out for them. Thanks for listening.

Episode Sixty-Three - Es Un Asunto de Familia

Puma King with his copy of issue six at Break the Barrier 2017.

If you missed the news a couple weeks ago, issue six of the magazine is now out. It debuted at the Break the Barrier show in Old Forge PA, where Puma and his dad Felino wrestled Guerrero Maya Jr and Skayde. That match was the basis for our cover (by Kcidis) and cover story bios by The Cubs Fan (@luchablog).

To talk about his article in the magazine, we were joined on the pod by Dr. Lucha Steve Sims. We discussed his article on the Alvarado Family (Los Brazos, Maximo, La Mascara), their history and how that related to what happened to Ultimo Guerrero's car, the guys who were and were not fired over the incident and all the things that connect to the incident. We also discuss some of the other big families in lucha right now: The Munoz Family (Rush, Dragon Lee, Mistico and Pierroth), the Ibarra Family (LA Park, Volador Jr, Super Parka), the Panthers (Blue Panther Sr and Jr, The Panther) and of course, the Casas Family (Negro Casas, Felino, Puma, TIger, Dallys, Canelo), There's also other lucha talk, including why hasn't there been any legal action over the vandalism, the usual head scratching involving CMLL booking and talk about the next project coming to the website, a look back at what Rob Viper called CMLL's best tournament ever, the 2014 En Busca De Un Idolo tournament, which involved people like Hechicero, Barbaro Cavernario, Dragon Lee, Cachorro/The Panther and Sobernao Jr.  

After that, we talk about Matt's article on Gino Hernandez's time working in Houston for Pail Boesch. We talk about his matches there, both as a single and a tag team with Tully Blanchard. Unfortunately, Matt was unable to be on the podcast to discuss his article. But if you want to see many of the matches he wrote about and we discussed, you can see them on the NWA Streaming Service (at least as of this writing). 

Then there is a whole mish-mash of subjects, from what wrestling we could watch in the mid-1980s to watching wrestling in college (Steve in Chapel Hill in the 70s, me in Bloomington in the 80s) to a bunch of other stuff. 

For more information on the magazine, check out its page here on the website.