Ricky Jackson

I need to watch that one again. I've only seen it once, about 10 years ago. I rewatched the April Philly match recently and really liked it. I've also often wondered why there was such a gap between the first match and the Alley Fight in Philly (3 1/2 months). The Backlund main events on the May and June shows were nothing major (Mosca, Steele) and drew poorly, so it's not like they had a hot title program that couldn't wait and were intentionally saving the Alley Fight for later

Ha, I've always said Earth 1 Hogan starts when he goes exclusively to yellow trunks. The last non-yellow trunks Hogan on tape I'm aware of was vs Race @ MSG, June of 87. Maybe the first Survivor Series is the beginning of Earth 1 WWF? Then you could explain the nonsensical teammate issues (Steamer w. Savage and Roberts, Hogan w. Orndorff) as not mattering because they only feuded on Earth 2

Scan of hard to find and expensive Gary Hart bio from Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/my-life-in-wrestling-by-gary-hart-2009/mode/1up

Awesome. While I love the 80s, the 70s is probably my favorite wrestling decade as far as pure enjoyment goes, and has always been criminally under-discussed. Looking forward to your reviews

Colt ep was good and very informative. Feels like they barely scratched the surface though. Someone needs to write a biography on him someday

This is going to be the first ep I watch in a very long time. Colt's life story is as fascinating as any wrestler ever, but he's totally unknown because he mostly stuck to the fringes over the years

Oh yes. I just meant that the chase formula worked for many territories, not as week-to-week booking of course, but for multiple big shows per year (the # varried from territory to territory)

I think "the money is in the chase" was a successful 60s-80s NWA territory hero challenging the champ formula, but obviously not the be-all-and-end-all, because the WWWF and AWA had big business with a dominant face champ at the same time (although both had success with heel champs too). It really comes down to the wrestlers and how over they are. When a wrestler is hugely over, you can draw with either a chase or a dominant run formula

Admittedly I'm an Eagles fan, but looking at most metrics, it's really him and 2 or 3 other guys in the top tier, with not a ton separating them

It's almost like Vince was detrimental to the booking of the product for the last several years of his reign

I may even try to watch some of this stuff

Go back even further to the early 70s and almost all the major territories were drawing huge. Many were doing stadium shows. Places like LA, SF, Detroit and Montreal that dropped off considerably in the late 70s were on fire. No doubt this was a hotter period than peak Hogan WWF for ticket sales (on average) and probably TV ratings too, but then the amount of true drawing cards was much greater and ignorance was bliss in many territories as far as not being outclassed by a more major league presentation on TV, like with cable in the 80s

Yeah, you probably need to find the whole 6/79 MSG card to get the DeNucci match Man, that Strongbow Philly match is so special. I remember showing it to some friends who otherwise never watched any wrestling so old, and after not paying close attention at first, they slowly became riveted and by the end couldn't take their eyes off the screen

Ronda Rousey with a lot of no-fucks-given comments about WWE and Vince during her rounds promoting her book https://www.f4wonline.com/news/wwe/ronda-rousey-wwe-is-an-absolute-sh-tshow-i-dont-intend-on-going-back-to

I need to see that match. As a fellow pre-expansion WWF/Valentine enthusiast, I'll put forth my own sneaky good Valentine match: vs Dom DeNucci at MSG from June of 1979