Imagine a young Cornette engineering a 10ft antennae on his mom's roof, lmfao."FUCKIN' GIMMICK AIN'T GETTIN' OVER!" Buying himself a VCR, etc. Legendary gold.
I paid $400 for my first VCR in 1985. Two years later, I saw the first dual-deck VCR with a list price of $1300, which I didn't have the money for at the time.
Anyone who thinks Satoru Sayama wasn't great has no business commenting on professional wresting. His matches with Dynamite Kid in the early 80's were like watching a mid 90's Japanese match years before anyone else in the world worked like that
There's a 1982 match out there of Tiger Mask Vs Kuniaki Kobayashi that ends on a count-out, with the Ref actually using the microphone to count as both wrestlers were trying to make it back to the ring on time...It was just marvellous, I recommend it, my favourite Sayama match ever :-)
In 1989, hating what wrestling was becoming (in the midst of the Jim Herd reign over WCW as well as how cartoonish WWF was), one day at a local video rental store, I found and rented a videotape called "World Pro Wrestling from Japan, Volume 1" hosted by Gordon Solie. He did voiceover play-by-play for matches that came from New Japan Pro Wrestling, and I loved it. From that point on, I looked everywhere I could to find more footage of Japanese wrestling, and that for me was my starting point in tape trading.
When I came into tape trading, Cornette was already working full-time in the business, so most folks weren't necessarily dealing with him. Norm Dooley was dealing with a lot of folks and seemed to have access to a lot of Cornette's stuff. From what I remember, two people stood out. There was a guy in Pennsylvania named Joe Shedlock who obtained originals from a wide variety of territories starting in 1980. He made compilations from those tapes and offered copies of those compilations. Dave Meltzer had a tape trading list for a short while until he became very busy with the Observer and the original foundation of his collection was Shedlock's stuff. There was also a guy in St. Louis named Steve Munari who obtained originals of full episodes from everywhere he could and offered copies of those tapes. In his case, when Brody was murdered, he pretty much lost interest in the business and fell off the radar, and I've never heard of what happened to those tapes. There was also a guy somewhere in New England named John McAdam, who collected everything he could and offered copies, but he came along many years after those two. He also disappeared suddenly without explanation; as he widely advertised on the net, it was speculated that the feds nabbed him for profiting off of the copyrights of others.
I can imagine Cornette cutting a heel promo on that kid’s mom because she wouldn’t let them take apart the telephone to invent the internet in order to watch other regional wrestling programming.
MaxxCoyote Many of the territories didn’t save tapes of their shows. They’d film over tapes that already had shows on it. There may be matches and shows in Jim’s collections that WWE doesn’t even know exists. They would own the rights to stream and make money off of it, but it’s in Jim’s possession, and they’d probably have to pay him a pretty penny to have it.
Tiger Mask (Satoru Sayama) was outstanding in the ring. His stuff with Dynamite Kid and Rollerball Rocco was sick (Mark Rocco was another guy I think is slept on hard by a lot of fans). The only point I agree with is that Sayama's "top guy" run was pretty short because Inoki screwed him (like Cornette mentioned). He did have that short run with Akira Maeda in the original Japan version of the UWF, but that couldn't compare with his run in NJPW under the Tiger Mask gimmick. His run as the ace of the junior heavyweight division in New Japan Pro Wrestling was short.....but damn if it wasn't great.
To respond to the observer hall of fame bit, its by smarks for smarks and those geeks could get in a screaming match in an empty room. Weapons grade contrarians who shouldn't have any say with any hall of fame.
A small correction. The reason the porn industry went with VHS was because Sony, which made Betamax recorders and tapes, didn't want to be associated with pornography and wouldn't allow porn films to be taped in that format.
You may rethink that when you realize how expensive and time consuming it was. Much harder to find what you want as well. And if you're impatient, it was hellish.
@MemphoWrasslin1 Why who is that? I've listened for a while but I only know when Brian questions Jim or the lady before Brian. Who is this kid? Too be honest I thought same thing
I started tape trading around 1997. Mostly ECW, FMW, Big Japan, and later Toryumon. Plus all the early UFC's during the dark ages when they were not on PPV, and not being released on VHS anymore. Plus, all the other MMA going on at the time. I stopped in early 2000's after I got a DVD recorder/VCR combo and converted all my tapes to DVD.
Today’s smart fans of WWE, NJPW, and ROH need to shut the fuck up about eras that they weren’t around for. I consider my generations wrestling is the 80’s and 90’s and we loved our wrestling but even though we didn’t grow up on pro wrestling from the 60’s and 70’s we didn’t talk shit about it! We respected them because we were smart enough to know it was a different time, we weren’t there, and would be stupid of us to try and compare it. Not only that but we were Smart enough to know that without the wrestlers that came before we wouldn’t have what we love during our day. Today’s fans make me sick.
when you talk the wrestling observer hall of fame.... i'm 64 yrs old... and still wonder why ...Wilbur Snyder , is not in the hall of fame..... look at everything he did...he is more then hall of fame worthy
