That's amazing. Those Reunion Arena Star Wars shows during that era were on fire. Just a perfectly booked scenario. The brought the Freebirds in a couple of months earlier as babyfaces and the match where David helps them win the six man tag titles had just happened earlier on the show so it hammered home how close the two teams were at the time which made the finish of this match even bigger. Crazy to think that when the Freebirds vs Von Erich's feud started 5 of the 6 wrestlers were under 25.
Flair and Kerry had had a match two or three months earlier that was 2 out of 3 falls and was excellent, but ended in a double DQ setting up the cage match.
Hayes was first. He made his debut on Monday night at Will Rogers for airing on channel 11 Saturday night. Again I was there. Tickets for the upper were like 3 bucks. A lot of us had seen the Freebirds on TBS and the girls loved Hayes. Gordy arrived and they messed around with H&H's stable and Akbar in the lead up to Star Wars. And aside from Music rights, could they get away with using that title these days?
Oh and Hayes opponent that first night? The Samoan. A young man we will know better in a few years. Samu. Sam Fatu. His wiki is wrong he did wrestle before he was Tonga Kid. He was in World Class for a couple of months at least, and the fans liked him.
Last night's Danielson vs Jericho match had this great moment in it. Danielson doing a different version of the "hulk up" where he was being beaten down by Jericho then tensed up when the World title got in his line of sight motivating him to come back. https://twitter.com/DrainBamager/status/1570230256354889730
Not particularly a fan at all, when I was a kid growing up in the 60’s I used to watch a lot. I have a cool story and a great memory from sometime in the early 80’s. I was living in Pgh, PA at the time. A few friends and I were out partying one weekend downtown in some real dive bars.. We had been to some shaky strip joints and were really going crazy. We left one place and crossed the street and went to another. There he was.. larger than life- Andre The Giant! I couldn’t believe my eyes, he obviously was friends with the bartender and people were all around him. We had a few drinks and got right next to him. Never forget it. He was sitting on two bar stools, one for each cheek- incredible but true. He was loud and seemed pretty hammered. I got very close and watching his hand hold the glass was just bizarre. We were so drunk I truly don’t remember if I spoke to him or not. Absolutely a true story and I never saw anything like him in my life. HUGE does not even come close to explain seeing the man up close.
I caught the end of the match on YT and it looks like Jericho has mostly trimmed down. He was downright fat at the start of AEW, but he seems to have lost much of that, and while not as trim as he was in his prime, he's closer to that now than he was two years ago. Anyway, great end of the match. Bryan and Jericho could wrestle for an hour and it would be compelling.
Wonder if he has also gone back to eating those pre-made meals from Nutrition Solutions too. A few years ago when he was arguably in the best shape (appearance wise) he was religiously promoting these meals and doing tons of yoga.
I see Mr. Kittle was on RAW last night. MoFo wasn't there for Jimmy on Sunday but he was there last night.
His story is incredible. Olympian for Iran at the Mexico City olympics...doesn't get on the plane to go back to Iran and defects to the US.
Watched the Danielson/Moxley match with my dad. We both expected a great match, and we both were a bit let down. It was okay, but it didn't have the feel of a big match by any means. The TV production of it was awful as well, with 139 shots of MJF and another 193 wide shots of the arena. Yeah, let's keep panning away from the title match to show a guy watching who has nothing to do with the actual match. Whoever decided to do that should be kicked in the head.
Thought the match was great, but I also agree they cut to MJF faaaaaaar too much. Cut to him at the start and maybe for a second when both are down. The match was quite good, but that was distracting. They also did three straight ref being out of position finishes to start the show. Very questionable booking especially when all 3 of those matches were good. Super glad The Acclaimed won the tag titles.
We only saw the last hour, and maybe I am just the old wrestling fan yelling at the clouds, but that Orange Cassidy guy was terrible. That whole match looked like a choreographed comedy skit.
I get it as he is super divisive, but terrible is a bit strong. He's not Zeus or Van Hammer. Wrestling has always had comedy as a change of pace. I think Cassidy is really good and his actual work is great but his gimmick will cause some to groan. I get it. If you pay attention his gimmick is lulling his opponent into a false sense of security and the turning it on. The pocket thing either gets him murdered or he gets the opponent off their game. Much like the out dated effeminate gimmicks of the past who use the gimmick to get the upper hand, that's his gimmick it's just updated for modern times as a slacker. Plus if Cornette gets upset about it, even better. I hated the dumb ref finishes and the botch that likely broke Britt Baker's nose far more.
When Athena had her up on her back in a fireman's carry while holding Deeb for a slam, she slammed Deeb and fell back like a Samoan Drop on Baker and landed right on her face. It was to show Athena's strength, but it did a horrible job of protecting Baker.
