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Little questions thread


JerryvonKramer

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I'm surprised we don't have a thread like this already, but I'd like one that is distinct from comments that don't deserve a thread. This is an all-purpose thread for small questions, chances are someone here will know the answer.

 

Here is my first little question, and it's mainly directed at people here who have some in-ring experience:

 

- When watching matches, if someone does, for example, a sweet-looking suplex, I tend to give the credit to the guy doing the move. But how much of the work is being done by the guy taking the move? How much complicity does the guy taking the move have? And how much credit should be given to the guy taking the move?

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-Whatever happened to Vince Senior's fortune after he died? Vinnie K and his half-sister were Sr's only heirs, iirc. Did Vince Jr get all that money he spent to buy the company right back after his father died?

 

- When watching matches, if someone does, for example, a sweet-looking suplex, I tend to give the credit to the guy doing the move. But how much of the work is being done by the guy taking the move? How much complicity does the guy taking the move have? And how much credit should be given to the guy taking the move?

It depends. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but really, it's complicated. Depends on the move in question, to a great extent. The bump-taker has much more control on some moves than others; with a hurricanrana, for example, the guy taking the move has to fling himself forward and basically controls the move from start to finish while the other guy spins around him and pretends he's actually doing stuff. But if it's a powerbomb, that's almost entirely on the guy doing the move; the guy taking it basically just tucks his chin, pulls in his elbows, jumps up for the move and prays that everything goes safely and that his opponent knows what he's doing.
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Thanks Jingus. What is the deal with your standard suplex or your basic suplex variations? I ask this because I recently saw an Iron Sheik vs. Sting match where Iron Sheik did his standard gutwrench suplex (which is usually really good) but it didn't look it. My default was to blame Sheik, but later it occurred to me that it might have been Sting's fault. Your talk of the powerpomb being all on the guy doing the move immediately made me think of Sid and Brian Pillman.

 

EDIT: As to your question, others will know more, but I'm fairly sure that significant portions of the money Vince Jr paid went to guys like Gorilla Monsoon who had a stake in the old territory, the majority would have gone to his dad, but I don't think Monsoon's stake was small (at least 1/6) and he was one of a number of stakeholders (the others were Arnold Skaaland and Phil Zacko). I remember Cappetta saying that Monsoon was basically responsible for running Philly and New Jersey for WWWF (although Zacko was a Philly guy too, and hated by everyone).

 

RE-EDIT: I've just been having a look round for more info on Zacko. Quite a bit of stuff on him here. Apparently, contra-Cappetta, he was actually responsible for running the Hamberg and Spectrum shows and, among other things, overseeing the construction of cages! I've also found a photo of him:

 

Posted Image

 

Dude looks like a gangster. Most sources seem to suggest he received $100,000 from Vince Jr for his 1/6 of the company, as did Monsoon and Skaaland who also got jobs. It also seems like Vince Sr didn't take payment from Vince Jr, he just gave him the 50% stake when he stepped down. Vince Jr then bought out the other three to get 100% control. Monsoon and Zacko's stakes in the company go all the way back to Toots Mondt -- he sold 50% of his shares to McMahon and then 25% each to Zacko and Moonsoon. I'm not sure how Skaaland got his share.

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Speaking of money:

 

How much did Paul Heyman make from ECW when it was all said and done? By the time it went bankrupt at the end, was he pretty much back to where he started financially, or was he able to get rich off the profits made when it was going well?

 

For the matter, what kind of money were ECW wrestlers making around its peak? for that matter, how much would a guy like Danielson have made in, say, 2005 working on the indies?

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-Whatever happened to Vince Senior's fortune after he died? Vinnie K and his half-sister were Sr's only heirs, iirc. Did Vince Jr get all that money he spent to buy the company right back after his father died?

 

- When watching matches, if someone does, for example, a sweet-looking suplex, I tend to give the credit to the guy doing the move. But how much of the work is being done by the guy taking the move? How much complicity does the guy taking the move have? And how much credit should be given to the guy taking the move?

It depends. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but really, it's complicated. Depends on the move in question, to a great extent. The bump-taker has much more control on some moves than others; with a hurricanrana, for example, the guy taking the move has to fling himself forward and basically controls the move from start to finish while the other guy spins around him and pretends he's actually doing stuff. But if it's a powerbomb, that's almost entirely on the guy doing the move; the guy taking it basically just tucks his chin, pulls in his elbows, jumps up for the move and prays that everything goes safely and that his opponent knows what he's doing.

 

From experience, the powerbomb is much more on the guy receiving the move than you're giving credit to. Or, rather, it can be. The guy taking the move posts off the legs, throws himself with the momentum of the lift, sits up as high as he can going round, etc... we ended up doing some throw-away alley-oop (?) spot one time when he was expecting to do most of the work lifting me for the crucifix... it can be done moreorless dead-weight, but it wouldn't look very good. The tiger driver, on the other hand, is a lot more on the guy delivering the move. Provided the grip is tight in the underhook you can delay it (they do delayed butterflies in Joshi but I've never seen a tiger driver stalled), and the guy taking it needs only make sure his feet go straight up (a la a delayed suplex), the guy hitting the move can arch back just enough to balance him, and then with a combination of his hands behind the back and his stomach, pops the guy up and out into the powerbomb portion. You'd think the moves would be the opposite way around, right? (I certainly did only to have the guy taking the tiger driver land with his lower back right on my groin).

 

Delayed suplex is all about the guy taking the move making himself as light as possible, but it's still predominently on the guy hitting it. Posts, kicks his legs straight up, the more vertical his body is the easier the move is, and you can stall it for a lot longer than most guys do. On the actual delivery, though, it's on the deliverer. I'm surprised more people haven't nicked Kobashi's trick of taking a bump as he hits the move, the impact is so much stronger visually/aurally as a result.

 

Incidentally, body slams always freaked me out the most. The angle of the movement for one (because you're generally not lifted right around the horizontal in the air), and the bump itself (breaking your fall) was always that bit harder to gauge than on a lot of other, apparently harder, spots. At least, for me.

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From experience, the powerbomb is much more on the guy receiving the move than you're giving credit to. Or, rather, it can be. The guy taking the move posts off the legs, throws himself with the momentum of the lift, sits up as high as he can going round, etc

Yeah this, i've seen guys at training who can bench like 400+ not be able to get dudes up all the way who weigh under 200 for a powerbomb because the guy taking it didn't post right.

 

Incidentally, body slams always freaked me out the most. The angle of the movement for one (because you're generally not lifted right around the horizontal in the air), and the bump itself (breaking your fall) was always that bit harder to gauge than on a lot of other, apparently harder, spots. At least, for me.

I've always found taking them really easy. Took me forever to learn how do give one correctly though. That's another one that can be helped greatly by a guy springing & posting corectly. I remember early on trying to lift up short tiny dudes and it feeling like a sack of bricks because they sandbagged and then doing it with a much bigger vetran guy who went up for me and it feeling like lifting a feather.

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On the WWF, Vince Sr and Vince Jr...

 

Sr got control of the company into Jr's hands before he died. How? We'll never get the full truth on that because VKM & Family will never tell it. They prefer to use the "Vince stretched himself thin to make this work" myth.

 

It's highly unlikely that Sr "held up" Jr in giving him the company: Sr had been making money hand over fist for decades, was 70, and had groomed his son to take over. Not only that, we almost certainly well aware of the expansion plans, which would need to have the coffers of Capitol / Titan in good shape to support... not sucked dry in buying our himself.

 

Sr had a second wife. I doubt he left 100% of his estate to her. Again, he'd brought Jr into the promotion, groomed him for the top spot, and effectively given him the promotion. Sons that you think that highly of, you carve out a chunk for in the will... and it's highly unlikely a person like Sr dies without a will.

 

So...

 

My general thoughts on this have always been:

 

* Jr got the promotion from Sr for little real $$$ relative to the promotion's worth

* Jr's "buyout" of Skaaland, Gorilla and Zacko was cheap relative to the promotion's worth

* the buyouts of Skaaland & Gorilla, at least, were shaped in a fashion that quickly favored Vince

* Sr left Jr a good chunk of change / and or assets that were very valuable in funding the Expansion

 

And all the "near bankrupt" stuff is a myth to make Jr. look like a self made entrepreneur rather than someone who took a strong family business + Dad's Money and turned it into a stronger family business. It's kind of common for folks like Jr to not be satisfied telling what already is a complimentary story of being a Visionary to grow the strong family business, but instead having to fluff it by talking about all the hard times and that he really wasn't as well staked as he obviously was.

 

As far as the specific details... it's really a waste to go too deeply on it. We will never find out as Vince & Family will just want to myth-make, and no one in the "know" has or will ever say anything to contradict it.

 

John

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jdw, your reading there is exactly the idea that formed in my mind putting together the info.

 

The only tiny detail I wonder about is whether Skaaland did actually receive $100,000 or actually less than that. From what I've read his stake was only about 10% compared with the 12.5% each that Zacko and Monsoon had. McMahon Sr had 65% -- his original 50% + the 25% he bought off Mondt minus the 10% he gave or sold to Skaaland.

 

I would wager that if Vince Sr basically gifted the 65% to Vince Jr, he'd have been able to keep Skaaland sweet with the job for life and got that portion for very little, especially if, as seems the case Skaaland got his portion for very little in the first place. By all accounts, Skaaland was basically just a big buddy of Vince Sr's and Vince Jr keeping him on a payroll was a father's last wish kind of deal. That means Vince could have got his 100% stake for as little $200,000.

 

I think the "hard times" narrative really comes from after this time when Vince Jr expanded too fast, too soon, the TBS fuck up and plowing every last cent into Wrestlemania. Vince wasn't a self-made man, it's very clear to see that. He was a gambler and a risk-taker with real business savvy and a large slice of luck / good fortune.

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Did Bruno Sammartino ever face Harley Race at some point in time?

http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/25346.html

 

1973

06/15 St. Louis, MO Bruno Sammartino draw Harley Race(60:00)

 

Doubt there's any handheld 8MM of that.

 

1981

10/08 Utsunomiya, Japan Bruno Sammartino & Giant Baba beat Harley Race & Buck Robley

 

That one exists on the Flair-Funk handheld disc. Dan's listing of it:

 

1762. Raijin Z-B-3

Brusier Brody vs. Bruno Sammartino (10/07/81)

Dory Funk/Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Harley Race/Jimmy Snuka (10/07/81)

Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk (10/07/81)

Mighty Inoue vs. Umanoseke Ueda (10/08/81)

Funks vs. Snuka/Alexis Smirnoff (10/08/81)

Baba/Sammartino vs. Race/Robley (10/08/81)

 

Dates added by me.

 

Which is funny: I've got a copy of that, but never watched it past the Flair match... don't even remember the Dory & Jumbo vs Race & Snuka match. Recall the Terry match as being "this looks like it might be okay, but I wish it were a tv taping to get a better feel for it". The Brody-Bruno match is probably what I would use as Exhibit A "In re: Bruiser Brody Was A Shitty Worker". It essentially turns into a non-match, and a shitty one at that, which makes one wonder why in the hell it was booked, and just how much of an asshole Brody was to not even work a brawl of a match with Bruno...

 

But I digress. Baba & Bruno vs Race & Buck is out there.

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Did Bruno Sammartino ever face Harley Race at some point in time?

 

The prospect of seeing Race bump for Bruno gives me partial wood.

 

Why isn't there very much SF/LaBell promotion footage from the 70's out there? Or am I looking in all the wrong places?

SF and LaBell are not the same thing.

 

Shire ran SF, LaBell ran LA. Distinct territories that used a lot of the same talents, but had totally different angles and feuds.

 

There is SOME LA out there, perhaps more than is in circulation based on some things that popped up on youtube about a year ago. But I think most of that is 80's, with maybe a hair coming from the lates 70's.

 

With SF there is very, very, very little. All I've ever seen is the stuff on Will's Buddy comp which is absolute deaths door SF. My understanding is that there is a little bit more from that rough period but that's all.

 

The short answer as to why? The tapes costs a shit ton of money back then and people would just tape over them over and over. Plus no one saw any money in saving them. There was no video market even on the horizon at that point, let alone a DVD market. Promoters promoted for house shows

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jdw, your reading there is exactly the idea that formed in my mind putting together the info.

 

The only tiny detail I wonder about is whether Skaaland did actually receive $100,000 or actually less than that. From what I've read his stake was only about 10% compared with the 12.5% each that Zacko and Monsoon had. McMahon Sr had 65% -- his original 50% + the 25% he bought off Mondt minus the 10% he gave or sold to Skaaland.

Who knows. Who knows if the "$100,000" that the others received was really $100K.

 

There's little doubt that Gorilla ended up getting way more than $100K since he continued to be employed in a major way for years. Skaaland in turn probably got more than $100K as well since he stuck around as a road agent and office guy. Though I've read in the past that there also was some type of employment deal tied into the buy out as well.

 

Zacko was 75+ when the buyout came, older than Vince Sr, and like Sr probably ready to hang it up. Years of promoting Philly and Baltimore and Landover, one would expect that he had a nice chunk of change.

 

 

I would wager that if Vince Sr basically gifted the 65% to Vince Jr, he'd have been able to keep Skaaland sweet with the job for life and got that portion for very little, especially if, as seems the case Skaaland got his portion for very little in the first place. By all accounts, Skaaland was basically just a big buddy of Vince Sr's and Vince Jr keeping him on a payroll was a father's last wish kind of deal. That means Vince could have got his 100% stake for as little $200,000.

Again: who knows. It's wrestling, and numbers are worked all the time. We don't even know if the "$100K" was really "$100K". In turn, if a large chunk of Gorilla's and Skaaland's "$100K" was a portion of their continuing jobs and paid out over a long time, then the payment at the time of the buyout wasn't even that much, though overtime it adds up paying Gorilla every year.

 

It's also possible that Zacko was cut a $100K check, but paid over time.

 

Again: it's a rabbit who not worth chasing for details. There will be no definitive answer unless you find the actual contracts of sale for the three (and employment contracts for the two). In turn, the payment to Sr... who knows.

 

 

I think the "hard times" narrative really comes from after this time when Vince Jr expanded too fast, too soon, the TBS fuck up and plowing every last cent into Wrestlemania. Vince wasn't a self-made man, it's very clear to see that. He was a gambler and a risk-taker with real business savvy and a large slice of luck / good fortune.

No: Vince takes the hard times all the way to his up bringing. His mom didn't get much in the divorce, and Dad didn't hand Vince an easy path in the company. Of course no one with a brain buys a lot of that, since Vince was a ring announcer by his early 20s shortly after getting out of college, and then the play-by-play man by the time he was 25. Sound like hard times?

 

Expansion wasn't hard times. That's a work, even the Mania stuff. We've had discussions about that where, if Vince hit a tough patch with Mania, he could easily have eased back on Expansion to his prior core and the expansion cities that were doing well. A "failed' Expansion still would have created a national promotion that added California to the WWF, along with Ohio, Illinios, Michigan, and probably still focusing on the war with the AWA which while not over was a place they weren't doing badly. It's just a work that the WWF could have gone bk if Mania failed.

 

John

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You'd think Race would be able to find a better partner knowing he was going up against Bruno and Baba.

It's a non-tv taping, which has matches like this. Buck was in there to job.

 

Bruno's retirement tour with All Japan:

 

1981/10/07 Yokohama - Culture Gym

Brody (DCOR) Sammartino

 

1981/10/08 Utsunomiya

Baba & Sammartino def Race & Robley

 

1981/10/09 Tokyo - Kuramae Kokugikan (13,000)

Baba & Sammartino (11:39 DCOR) Singh & Ueda

 

The retirement match was the big one. If he's in for three matches, don't want to have a minor house show match look bigger. Got a big singles match in Yokohama. The final match was big: Singh & Ueda has just jumped from NJPW after a long run as pretty much the top heel tag team in the promotion. They'd challenge Baba & Jumbo for the tag titles later in the series (dq finish for the 3rd fall), and face than on the Tag League final night (a DCOR). It was a pretty choice pairing for Bruno's send off.

 

John

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There's little doubt that Gorilla ended up getting way more than $100K since he continued to be employed in a major way for years.

I've read, quite a few times, that Gorilla's deal wasn't just $100k + employment, it was that plus the equivalent of an opener's appearance fee and a half for EVERY show WWF promoted. Considering we know they were doing up to 5 shows a day, that's quite a lot of appearance fees if true.

 

Then again, probably peanuts compared to what Gorilla would have made with his 12.5% intact.

 

You'd think Race would be able to find a better partner knowing he was going up against Bruno and Baba.

It's a non-tv taping, which has matches like this. Buck was in there to job.

My comment was kayfabe. I always like to imagine kayfabe thinking on behalf of the wrestlers. Race phoning up all the heels he knows. "Hey, is this Jerry Blackwell? You ever heard of Bruno Sammartino and Giant Baba? Those guys are teaming up tonight and I need a partner" *phone is slammed down*. "Umm, hello? Killer Kahn? Fancy a match against Bruno Sammartino and Gia..." *slam* "Hello, Is this PWI Most Hated Wrestler of the Year for 1980 Larry Zybysko? See, I got this situation, need a tag partner against Giant Baba and Bruno" "What? You think I'm stupid pal?" *receiver drops*

 

And so on.

 

Until he's forced to tag with Robley as the only guy who agreed to it.

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A lot of Gordon Solie's comments at a couple of Starrcades kind of fit:

 

"Harley Race, the last of the rugged individualists in the world in my opinion wanted a handicap match. Harley just doesn't care for the team-type discipline, he's a man of individual discipline. [Figurehead AJPW President] said he would not sanction such a match, and demanded that Harley pick a partner".

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