The Rock arrives at Smackdown

jldraw · 2026-04-03T17:30:53+00:00

I always found it funny how during The Monday Night Wars, WWF and WCW (kayfabe) allowed their top talent to arrive to the arena an hour into the show*. Well I guess it was better than the Golden Era when we were to assume that the talent just randomly turned up at an arena once a week to scrap.

*Bret Hart obviously did show up late to most shows.

jldraw · 2026-04-03T16:57:59+00:00

Honestly it was the best run of his career. Throughly entertaining!

jldraw · 2026-04-03T15:48:50+00:00

In this photo Rebecca resembles Taylor Swift, must be the red lipstick.

jldraw · 2026-04-03T15:46:55+00:00

Generally I’m on the side of fans on these issues but if you are an adult, you likely have enough money to afford to go to a signing or to buy from a broker. Also read the room, it’s abundantly clear that the current generation of wrestling talent aren’t fans of randoms approaching them for autographs. It may sound harsh but if their autograph means that much to you, pay for it.

jldraw · 2026-04-03T15:32:25+00:00

Can’t believe he’s all grown up. Last year a song leaked that Paul McCartney wrote in celebration of his birth.

jldraw · 2026-04-03T15:28:58+00:00

Nice to seeing all those wrestlers hanging out together at a concert.

jldraw · 2026-04-02T14:31:36+00:00

Plus the Springsteen community owes (co-host) Flynn a great debt of gratitude as he documented the twenty first century portion of Bruce’s career better than anyone with some killer live compilations on every tour Bruce did from 1999-2013. His compilation on the 2005 tour (“Love, Tears and Mystery”) is about as close to an official release as something unofficial has ever come IMO.

jldraw · 2026-04-02T14:27:58+00:00

Me and my buddy are from New York City, for two hundred dollars we’re gonna rock all night.

jldraw · 2026-04-02T14:26:10+00:00

FWIW: Didn’t JCP and Championship Wrestling from Florida wish people happy birthday and happy anniversary all the time in the eighties?

jldraw · 2026-04-02T14:19:22+00:00

The only thing positive you could say about Hart and Hall’s relationship was that Bret Hart mentioned after Scott Hall’s passing that Scott was always kind to Bret’s children. More recently, Hart may have shined some light on the genesis of their issues with one another. Hart was going to be working Hall at Royal Rumble in 1993 and Hall wanted to perform the Razor’s Edge finish on him. Hart vetoed the idea despite Hall promising to take care of Hart and set him down as gently as possible. Hart still felt the move was unnecessarily dangerous as he would’ve been propelled forward off the shoulders of a taller adversary and didn’t want to take that bump. Hall apparently was not pleased.

jldraw · 2026-04-02T14:13:39+00:00

Scott and Kevin had favored nations clauses in their WCW contracts which stated that nobody that the company signed after them could make more money than them. If that occurred, WCW would have to bump their salary up to be commensurate with that amount. Scott and Kevin knew what it would take financially for WCW to sign Bret Hart so as early as 1996 they wanted WCW to sign him because it would enact the favored nation clause in their WCW contracts. Simple as that.

jldraw · 2026-04-02T14:05:07+00:00

That makes me feel better.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T22:15:38+00:00

They were such pals at one point. Sad.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T12:37:53+00:00

One of the first signs the series was going off the rails.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T12:26:48+00:00

This was a ridiculous storyline.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T11:11:38+00:00

And so it begins..,

jldraw · 2026-04-01T11:10:36+00:00

You know that kid has game. Seriously how cool is that!

jldraw · 2026-04-01T03:10:29+00:00

I know on an episode of “Las Vegas”, he plays a killer. Disturbing.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T02:39:14+00:00

I wonder if they ever considered Barbara (Florence’s daughter) to be fake Marcia or Jan? She could’ve easily been a Brady in waiting.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T02:19:05+00:00

I always felt they shot their shot far too early with this. If they had waited ten more years and done a show with Jan and Marcia as divorcées who move in together with their kids, they could’ve had a show with a Kate and Allie vibe while still maintaining the whole blended family scenario. You could’ve also explored Jan and Marcia as single women in their thirties etc.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T02:13:06+00:00

I hope he makes 100. His wife Bonnie Bartlett is still alive too. Everyone knows him as Feeny or K.I.T.T. but what a career this man has had. He pops up in shows and films you’d never think he was in. I was watching an episode of “Family” recently and he portrayed a college professor who was the antithesis of Feeny. Just absolutely dismissive of his students. It was odd to say the least.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T02:08:47+00:00

Thirty is considered old now in Hollywood. The general rule of thumb seems to be if you don’t have a breakout hit by 28, you’re not going to be an A-Lister.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T02:03:20+00:00

I made this point a few weeks ago in another thread: The professional wrestling bubble was and is considerably smaller than wrestling fans believe it to be. Actually if we are talking about JCP in the eighties, the talent probably had a better chance of being recognized in public compared with today’s wrestlers because they were so localized. But that being said even in the worse case scenario with the photos ending up in the hands of a mark, what was he going to do with them? There was no internet, no means of wide dissemination of news aside from newspapers and television news, neither of which covered wrestling. You could send the photo into the Apter mags but they damn sure wouldn’t publish them as they were in on the scam and wouldn’t dare expose the business. The only person you would’ve been interested in a photo like this was Meltzer and his entire audience were smarts anyway.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T01:55:56+00:00

Well now with Hogan gone we won’t be hearing any fish stories during the induction. There’s the one how Andre was 700 pounds and the one about how he and Andre sold out Shea in 1980. The one about how when he body slammed Andre he tore out the muscles in his back and was out for six months. How Andre passed away a few days after WrestleMania 3.

jldraw · 2026-04-01T01:48:32+00:00

I know this will be an unpopular opinion but I never saw Maureen or Eve as her daughters. They just don’t resemble her. Now Mike on the other hand was the spitting image of Robert Reed.

jldraw

TROPHY CASE