Cobra Commander

I can guess how Travis Kelce spent his Monday Nights in the late 90s

kinda remarkable that this gimmick has gotten various news stories over multiple years

The only difference between Chicago/Landover the 2 nights before MLG and Maple Leaf Gardens was that Hogan/Dibiase main evented in Chicago/Landover with Haku wrestling Koko B. Ware. Then in Toronto, Hogan/Haku main evented with Dibiase facing Koko. They had been running Hogan/Dibiase at shows a bit before this show. I don't think it's a thing that they switched it up because Hogan/Dibiase was on a Boston Garden/NESN show a week before unless NESN somehow got into Canada. Then the next loop Hogan worked had him with Big Bossman.

he has mentioned a bunch of times about how corporate suits ruin wrestling companies, so clearly he wasn't gonna do any of thaaaat also gotta imagine the percentage of male employees/talent in Smoky or OVW was quite a bit higher than the percentage of male employees/talent in the recent WWE, so if the only women working around the company are either Tammy Sytch, Tony Anthony's wife occasionally, Jackie Moore for a few minutes, or Pam in the office.

Howard Finkel did a pretty good Howard Cosell impersonation on this video of Mean Gene interview outtakes. So he probably would have been a better commentator than quite a few people used by the WWF, but obviously he already had a stable job.

It's enough to make one wonder what Bobby Blaze's new gimmick name would have been if he went to the WWF after Smoky. Surely the WWF could find some awful name for someone whose real last name is Smedley. I guess the alternate universe scenario where Cornette doesn't try getting his SMW guys some WWF jobs involves Tony Anthony and Tracy Smothers working matches on Worldwide in 1996/1997. As for Uncle Cletus.. Henry broke his neck, and then came back, before they brought a 3rd guy into the act months later, and they gave the 3rd guy a name that sorta gives me the impression that Dutch Mantel wasn't returning their phone calls and they had to pivot from bringing back Uncle Zebekiah to using a guy who was sorta knocking off Uncle Zebekiah, and then they dumped him after like a month.

watched this last night, still amused at Mustafa using a spinning toe hold in essentially a streetfight and thanks to various Public Enemy 1999 drama, they did return 3 years later, but technically didn't have a match in ECW Arena again until 2001, with MECW.

The first time (1999), he won 12%, got over 19000 votes, and finished 3rd. Which really isn't an awful showing for somebody making their first run without really much established political power behind them. Lawler received more votes than 3 candidates who had held elective office and he only finished behind the incumbent Mayor and a member of the city's most prominent political family (The Ford family, which used their Funeral home business to build social ties that got lots and lots of family members into office, including two Congressmen, Harold Ford Sr and Harold Ford Jr). Memphis Mayoral elections don't have a majority requirement so it wouldn't have been impossible to win with much less than 50% but voters coalesce into the top camps of either liking the incumbent or wanting him out, or liking the Fords or not being too high on them. I forget if Lawler put it in his book or just said it in print, but they were thinking he would do better in some heavily Black precincts based off of wrestling fandom, which isn't exactly how these things go with how racially polarized voting can be in the South. Now, Lawler's second mayoral candidacy in 2009, on the other hand, wasn't near as popular. That time he won 4%, which was worth 4049 votes and finished 5th. That election was a bit of a blowout as the incumbent County Mayor (County Executive, the same job Kane has in Knoxville) ran for Mayor of Memphis and won with nearly 60%. So the second place finisher was closer to Lawler than to first place. Although if one wants to be generous to Lawler's 2009 showing... 4049 would have a great attendance for any Mid-South show after the late 1980s. Running in 1999, with the Ventura win still fresh and wrestling being hot, made some sense. Running in 2009, didn't really make much sense.

LA Park vs Fatu was certainly a spectacle of a match (if you didn't see it yet, it's on Episode 90, the end of year review show). The spear through the table didn't really make sense (well, not yet) and while I recognize the logistics.. it really wasn't a visually impressive table spot.

also it always seems like a good portion of the crowd are tourists, who they'd probably doubly prefer not wandering around Mexico City at midnight if they could help it. (Looking at the map, spotted 2 subway stations within walking distance). Then there's Arena Puebla where the shows kick off at 9 and there's a bus stop next to it. Which i'm sure is lots of fun.

the two shows named for having breezy shows also get their stuff taped in some of the longer tapings going these days (MLW slices up one card into 4/5 weeks of somewhat coherent TV, Powerrr tapes a bunch of episodes over 2/3 nights). And there's no shortage of old time breezy watchable TV from the 80s WWF that was made from marathon tapings where the crowd had to endure. Even a place like CMLL takes 2 hours mas o menos (more or less) to get from the first match to the end of the card while having 3 falls in most of the matches. So if you're airing a show, or streaming it, and there's not another show going on against it, the goal is... try to keep eyeballs on the show without having the heat die? That goal might require mixing things up on occasion or going to more of a SNME flow for some shows (Raw) than trying to sustain heat for 3 hours every week. I'll try to not go on the overkill route for a post on this.

Not really an answer to the Q, but have you seen KC on the Mat?

I guess you gotta give them credit for not accidentally exposing anything that would get their video pulled from YouTube during the Priscilla Kelly beatdown Also, Tom Lawler did something, and King Mo's Stinger Splash was neat.

in retrospect, downsides exist to trying to tape 10 weeks of TV at the same time.. even your WCW Worldwides just taped the commentary in studio instead of trying to do it all right there.

i'm sure this has been explained somewhere, but here's the TV markets for the Mid South area Shreveport/Monroe/Alexandra/Lake Charles/Lafayette/Baton Rouge/New Orleans Oklahoma City/Tulsa (also maybe Lawton OK/Wichita Falls TX or Ada OK/Sherman TX, but those stations could be getting World Class) Little Rock/Fort Smith Jackson/Biloxi/Hattiesburg so IIRC, the loop ends with Little Rock getting TV like a few weeks after it aired originally, but what was the sequence for the rest of that? In retrospect, TV Guide's listing every wrestling show (especially territorial ones) as just "Wrestling" was not helpful for future research purposes.