Brody and Friends talk about the AWA (Brody has no friends)

[Valeyard]

Why don't you and Jules start a podcast? For real. You've got the deep knowledge, he's got the stories, and there's obviously an audience.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

AWAlmart Breakroom Podcast with Jules & Lutzke, coming soon to Arcadian Vanguard.

 

[snuffbox]

I agree. You should do it.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

"Jules, do you have any memories about working with Steve O?"
"well, kid, I met Steve in sevent--"

Door opens and boss lady yells about January 6th being instigated by the FBI and leftists.

"WE'RE RECORDING!"

 

[BruiserBrody]

"Jules, do you have any memories about working with Steve O?"
"well, kid, I met Steve in sevent--"

Door opens and boss lady yells about January 6th being instigated by the FBI and leftists.

"WE'RE RECORDING!"

I think me and Crazy Boss Lady have a better chance at success.

Listening to a 75 year old telling the same long winded stories every week won't get me that Blue Chew sponsorship I desperately need.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I think me and Crazy Boss Lady have a better chance at success.

Well hey a lot of people are desperately looking of ways to bridge the political divide. This might be crazy enough to work.

To serve as a balm for the horror of the idea of spending more time with BOSS LADY, here's this.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Catching up on the AWA podcast:
- Mick Karch mentions the Team Challenge Series had a fried chicken eating competition, which I have no recollection of seeing or reading about.
- Terry Funk apparently came in as a rookie to do jobs as he earned his stripes. Not sure I ever heard that. Not that it was unusual for guys to be groomed before getting their expected push.

Verne brought in his buddy/business partner in St Louis 55 year old Pat O Connor to work AWA Champ Nick Bockwinkel. I wonder if they teased on TV at all that Verne would defend against O Connor once Verne won the title 2 months later? Pat was the NWA champ credited with ducking Verne and forcing promoters to create the "AWA" and award Verne the title in 1960.

Here's a fun oddity: The debut of "Dizzy" Ed Boulder in the AWA (Beefcake). He uses Kenny Patera's swinging full nelson for a finish.
Hogan is still a heel w/ Johnny V, but the house show they promote has Hogan facing Jesse Ventura in an arm wrestling match. They were pretty clearly starting the face turn.
Hogan works a handicap squash later and the fans pop for his muscle moves.

Schire mentions on the podcast that Hogan's era drew bigger houses in part due to the AWA running places monthly instead of every 2 or 3 weeks. He complains that Hogan brought a rowdier brand of fans to the arena.

TV show also has Andre, Tito and Adonis appearing, so basically WWF 1985. \
Adonis amused me by just staring at the camera like he was in a drug haze for like a full min as Ventura cut a promo on Hogan.

 

[BruiserBrody]

- It melts my heart to see old ladies marking out watching the guys wrestle.
- I'm torn on if having flabby Ray Stevens is the best look for the casual audience to see what AWA stars look like compared to the WWF steroid monsters of the same era. Stevens was a legend, so the casuals may have enjoyed it regardless, or dismissed it as an old man still flopping around.
- Kelly and Kiniski had a good look and I'm always surprised the WWF or JCP didn't swoop them up to use in 1987/88. Both got WWF tryouts for sure. They were gone from the AWA by some point in mid 88 at least, and I'm not sure what either did until Kelly showed up as Nailz in 1992.
- The crowd openly laughs at Kelly claiming to have played in the NFL for 2 years. They also laugh at Curt Hennig claiming he could have excelled at several pro sports.
- The wrestling is fake topic is covered. The guys tried to keep kayfabe as well as possible. Right before that segment the show aired a clip of DJ Pederson having a hot sequence vs. Kelly on ESPN TV. Kelly sells a drop kick a little awkwardly and dives out of the ring in a moment that one could say shows theatrics.
- The heels and faces wind up in a verbal confrontation that to me feels realistic as the Q and A becomes more heated. (The word poopy is not used. FUCK you modern WWE).
- JT Southern doing a Halloween Store Michael Hayes gimmick makes me
- Verne says Mad Dog Vachon has a cooking show on Montreal TV. Dear lord somebody upload ALL of that to youtube!!!!!
- The fans and Madusa spar over Sherri Martel, current WWF World champion, about to appear on WWF PPV a few weeks from now.
- I couldn't hear the fan, but I think someone said something lewd to Madusa off mic based on the host and her response.
- Verne explains why babyfaces and heels don't wrestle other heels and faces.
- A fan calls out the ref for sucking at his job when the heel cheats.
- LOL now an old man in a LOUD suit smells blood and demands answers from the ref on their shitty job keeping the dang gum heels in line in tag matches. I love me some kayfabe.
- Kiniski calls a teen girl asking questions fat. LOLOLOLOLOLOL Canceled! I'm offended. Safe spaces!!
- Verne talks about Donald Trump being a wrasslin' fan.
- Ernest Worrell commercial! Now I want a "Ernest goes to the AWA" movie.
- Madusa gets a chance to cut a promo and is being a quality cunt. I'm enjoying this show way too much.
- Verne uses the term "Independent contractors".
- The host talks about how so many modern guys have good bodies and dumps on Wahoo and Ray Stevens being old and fat.
- DJ Pederson is asked about this stuff being fake and has to bust out "Sports Entertainment" as Verne probably busts a vein 5 feet off camera.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Fun note from this week's AWA Unleashed Pod:

Verne had new tag belts made for The Road Warriors in 1984. The famous belt maker Reggie Parks put "American Wrestling Alliance" across them. According to Verne, the AWA was never called "Alliance", but the historians/super fans Mick Karch and George Schire believe the change from Alliance to Association came down around 1970, after 10 years of promoting under "Alliance".
Even in the 90s at conventions Verne was still insisting "Alliance" was never part of the name.

Nonetheless, Parks was wrong in 1984, but hadn't been updated from his days working the area many years before.

--
Another story I enjoyed was Marty O Neil breaking kayfabe on TV while drawing names for random matches to be held at a future house show. He pulled Chris Taylor's name and then announced he would face Andre the Giant....before actually pulling Andre's name.

I am intrigued as I don't think Taylor ever worked heel.

Iowa State’s Chris Taylor versus Andre the Giant | Kagavi

www.kagavi.com

Three On Two Handicap: Andre The Giant & Dutch Savage defeat Buddy Rose, Chris Taylor & Jesse Ventura by DQ
PNW - Event @ Center Arena in Seattle, Washington, USA

 

[snuffbox]

I wonder if that German guy that suplexed Taylor could've done that to Andre.

 

[BruiserBrody]

I wonder if that German guy that suplexed Taylor could've done that to Andre.

Myths aside, any heavyweight shooter would smash Andre.

The Taylor suplex was more momentum and timing rather than pure brute strength anyway.

 

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1490577909878247425

I don't think any of that late 84 AWA TV ever hit youtube. I'd be intrigued to hear Bundy's promos as a face. (He had turned face against the Road Warriors in Georgia so I assume they got him this gig so Bundy and the Warriors could headline in another territory.

Something must have happened as Bundy and Blackwell got put over in a bunch of these battle royals and then Bundy left.

Wrestlingdata shows him working Memphis and the AWA at the same time for a few weeks. He was a heel in Memphis and face in the AWA. Then he turned face in Memphis. He was gone from the AWA roughly a month after he started.

 

[AA484]

CWM and I were talking in chat the other day about which of the major territories relied the most on their in-ring work and came to the conclusion that AWA probably did the most, with Memphis being the least. Mid-South and Texas being somewhere in between, with Mid-South leaning more towards in-ring and Texas more out-ring. By "out-ring," I mean angles, promos, videos, etc. Crockett and WWF typically had a good mix, particularly as they became more national.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Verne certainly pushed wrestling as a form hard, but at the end of the day his long LONG term top guy was Da Crusher, and his peak top guy was Hogan (According to George Schire). Jerry Blackwell and the Road Warriors moved fans into the arena in 84 where as Rick Martel did not.
Guys like Mad Dog Vachon and the Baron were legit, but they cut classic promos and brawled to draw the money.

I think it's fair to say wrestling territories as a whole had the art of grappling as a base, but the promos and brawlers ended up drawing larger overall.
Florida loved having Jack Brisco vs The Funk Bros go an hour, but Big Dust could swoop in with his promos and brawl for 5 mins to pop the house.
JCP had Patera, Wahoo, Mulligan, Johnny Valentine etc brawling on top
Brody, Patera, the Von Erichs, Dick the Bruiser moved lots of tickets in St Louis, the mecca.
The multiple Texas areas were very much blood and guts.
Georgia had lots of heavy heat angles, and was very promo driven.
Watts liked his hosses and stud athletes, but loved having guys like Bob Roop.
Etc etc

Overall, if Verne's attempt to push wrestling above all had worked than Brad Rheingans and Laurent Soucie would have dominated the 80s on top.

* Verne had courted Roop, but Roop looked at the Minnesota weather in winter and said FUCK THAT I will stay in GA and FL.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Looking forward to the AWA Jobbers podcast, which I will be watching on youtube after UFC so maybe I'll end up bumping this thread in the middle of the night. I would be shocked if my ol' buddy Jules wasn't spoken of since he was a notable cannon fodder for years and broke in after being trained by other AWA jobbers in Milwaukee.
--
Listening to an old Between the Sheets has me thinking about Tommy Rich's run here in 1987. Rich follows his hottest angle in years (the Lawler haircut feud) by coming to the AWA as a chubby babyface. CONTEXT is KING.. Rich coming in as a heel makes sense on paper since the AWA fans would only know of him from the Apter mags (Not counting his Pro Wrestling USA appearances I guess). Rich as a scarred up asshole seems to work better than trying to recapture a "fiarrrred up" babyface to an audience who didn't see any of his late 70s/early 80s stuff when he was a God in the south.
However the AWA babyfaces in 87 would have been:
200 year old Baron VR (who had just been a JCP low end heel) and did a blink and you'll miss it WWF run in August in some AWA towns. (I assume that was a tryout/substitution thing. I do love how a Crusher/Baron VR vs the Hart Foundation match could have taken place in theory.
200 year old Wahoo
200 year old Ray Stevens
Groovy Greg
Then DJ Pederson, "Jammin" Mitch Snow and Alan West.
Leon "Beefy Trucker" White came and went from time to time (Com'n Verne VADER!!!)
Jerry Blackwell showed up once and a while when not running his own shows in GA.
Snuka when the cocaine money ran out every 120 days
Slaughter even less frequently

Meanwhile the Heels had
Henning
Randy Rose/Condrey w/ Paul E
Dick Slater
Kelly Kiniski and Mr Magnificent Kevin Kelly
Adrian Adonis

Buddy Rose and Col Debeers had been fired for working a indy show in Verne's territory.

So yup, a babyface was badly needed.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Jules' trainer Herman Schefter made the cut but no Frankie Hill

--
The best takeaway for me was hearing that Thunderbolt Patterson worked as a jobber vs Ole Anderson a bunch of times. I'm curious if that played a role in Bolt's pushes down south under Ole a few years later.

 

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1493535666679992323

WWA is effectively the AWA's 2nd cousin so I'm putting this here.

Interesting to see Spike went to Memphis for a cup of coffee before jumping to the WWF.
Apparently Jerry Jarrett wasn't worried about pissing off Dick the Bruiser at this point. Not that the WWA had any stroke to speak of anymore anyway as the crowds had been down most of the 80s as Bruiser was pushing really old talent and no names by at least 1979 and the fans stayed home.
Back to 1984: Spike actually works Memphis and the WWF at the same time for a bit.
In May Spike and Brody work an indy as headliners vs the Kelly Twins, then the next night Spike teams with Brian Blair in St Louis for the WWF TV taping and works the Kelly Twins in a ten minute match! I didn't recall the Kellys getting any sort of WWF work.
Spike works St Louis w/ Blair the following month again, this time vs the Moondogs. Spike only works 2 other matches, which is odd given the insane amount of shows the WWF is running at this point.
This culminates in July w/ Blair and Spike losing to the WWF tag champs Adonis and Murdoch in St Louis.

Wrestlingdata has no further matches for Spike anywhere until 1987 when he pops up in WCCW.
Spike makes a one off for the WWF in late 87, teaming with SD Jones in Chicago vs The Shadows.
He has one match listed for 88 - this time in JCP in a filler match with his old WWA pal Steve Regal.
Spike works Memphis again in 89 and has a final run there in 1994.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

AWA Unleashed! Ep. 7- Crusher and Dick The Bruiser - AWA Unleashed

Do the Crusher! This week we talk about two of the most well known names in the AWA, The Crusher and Dick The Bruiser. From being hated heels to beloved babyfaces, they're two of the most recognizable names ever. How did the pairing come together, and wh...

pca.st

It’s strange we live in a time where podcasts are directly targeted towards Brody.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

He’s probably upset we don’t get separate Brody and Crusher episodes.

 

[BruiserBrody]

He’s probably upset we don’t get separate Brody and Crusher episodes.

AWA Unleashed! Ep. 7- Crusher and Dick The Bruiser - AWA Unleashed

Do the Crusher! This week we talk about two of the most well known names in the AWA, The Crusher and Dick The Bruiser. From being hated heels to beloved babyfaces, they're two of the most recognizable names ever. How did the pairing come together, and wh...

pca.st

It’s strange we live in a time where podcasts are directly targeted towards Brody.

I do wonder if I am the youngest AWA fan out there. I can't imagine too many people are thinking of their childhood and fondly remembering 1989/90 AWA angles.

--
I don't know if the guys did a deep DD on topic choices, but it would be hard to do a solo Bruiser AWA episode without it basically being a rehash of anything they would cover with Da Crusher.
Bruiser was in his own universe (WWA) from 1964 onward, and the prior 12-14 years he was a star around the midwest and WWWF but the AWA had just formed around 1960. He and Verne had worked in the 50s as top regional superstars.
He did win the AWA World title in the mid 60s for a mighty one week reign (Verne flipped the belt around a ton before going the total opposite direction and giving himself a 7 year reign, and then Bock a 5 year reign.
Dick also won the Omaha version of the AWA world title, which was basically a brand split thing. Nothing says big time like OMAHA.
Peyton Manning frowns.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

 

[BruiserBrody]

View attachment 1088

Of note from that is the lack of a listing for Chicago, which would have aired Bob Luce's wrestling, which did have AWA and WWA stars on the cards.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Dick also won the Omaha version of the AWA world title, which was basically a brand split thing. Nothing says big time like OMAHA.
Peyton Manning frowns.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1493951300484149248

 

[snuffbox]

Also not listed (on that program or, still, in online match databases) are dozens, maybe hundreds, of spot show locations. The AWA hit those big cities regularly but in between would set up in small town high schools, lost little armories, etc. There's a lot of matches and cards that only exist in old stories from long ago ("Hulk Hogan was at your school in like 1982!") and, maybe, newspaper microfiche somewhere stashed in local libraries.

 

[BruiserBrody]

AWA Unleashed! Ep. 7- Crusher and Dick The Bruiser - AWA Unleashed

Do the Crusher! This week we talk about two of the most well known names in the AWA, The Crusher and Dick The Bruiser. From being hated heels to beloved babyfaces, they're two of the most recognizable names ever. How did the pairing come together, and wh...

pca.st

It’s strange we live in a time where podcasts are directly targeted towards Brody.

A bit of a let down as there was too much to unpack and they have a strict 60 min limit for whatever reason. This basically became 95 percent Crusher talk and most of it was surface level.
They do misrepresent Crusher jumping from the AWA to WWF. They make it sound like Vince stole him away like so many other talents.
Verne had stopped booking the old guys about the same time they signed the ESPN deal, so Crusher was not connected at all when he joined Vince at some point months later.
Crusher was talked to by the Gagne's to replace Blackwell at Wrestlerock, but Crusher and Verne couldn't come to terms. Then a broke Jimmy Snuka took the gig.

 

[AA484]

View attachment 1088

Besides Denver, that looks like a list of places that I'd least like to live in America.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

If you can get past them having the most racist police departments since Jim Crow (which is a massive if), Milwaukee and Minneapolis seem pretty cool. Other than that, yeah, that is a who's who of boring sounding Midwestern cities. It's so boring they had to list Minneapolis-St. Paul separately!

 

[BruiserBrody]

Random AWA weirdness. (I'm digging in my notes for Kamala's JCP/WWF question in the other thread and stumbled on this and felt like sharing for the lulz.)

For some inexplicable reason, Greg Gagne stopped being a part of the Winnipeg AWA cards and didn't do the TV tapings, either, around mid-1985. He was still active in the AWA but he stopped coming to Winnipeg. The main version of the Nick Bockwinkel face turn that aired in the United States involved Nick getting involved in a match betwen Greg Gagne and Larry Zbyszko to attempt to take the numbchucks away from Larry, his tag-team partner at the time. So for the Winnipeg tapings, the AWA had to break up Larry and Nick in a way that didn't involve Greg Gagne. And maybe numchucks, too, because I think numbchucks might be illegal in Canada. It's hard to make a comparison for the numchucks, because those became more part of Larry's gimmick as 1986 arrived and went on, and the AWA lost Winnipeg to the WWF in late January 1986. So in Winnipeg, Larry became pissed off that Nick agreed to team with Mad Dog Vachon for a match at the Winnipeg Arena against Russians Boris Zhukov and his manager Chris Markoff. In part 2, you see, as part of the Holy Cross tapings, friction between Larry and Nick when Larry forgets to come out for an interview, Larry's pissed-off interview, Larry attacking Nick in the ring, Nick's asking promoter Wally Karbo for a match against Larry (where Nick has to mention Mad Dog Vachon's name because Larry seemingly forgot - if you want to see Larry talk smack about Mad Dog Vachon, go to my part 1 of this video, it's at the very end of that part 1), and finally, a short clip of the U.S. version of the angle with Greg Gagne. That clip of the U.S. version came from a 1989 "Tribute To Nick Bockwinkel" episode of the ESPN AWA show that TSN in Canada aired every Wednesday. That could have been the first time we Canadians got to see the U.S. version! You see, as us Winnipeggers saw the Norberry/Holy Cross tapings on our local TV show, the viewing public across Canada saw, on TSN, not the ESPN show yet, but an AWA show that was also shot in Winnipeg, but at the arena card at Winnipeg Arena the night before the Norberry/Holy Cross tapings. What TSN aired on that hour-long AWA show was complete matches from the Winnipeg Arena. It would start with a match from the most recent house card at the arena, then there would be some interviews, then they would show a classic match, meaning a match from the Winnipeg Arena in the early '80s joined in progress, then some more interviews and finally one more match from that most recent house card at the Winnipeg Arena. When the AWA lost Winnipeg in late January 1986, that's when TSN started to carry the AWA's ESPN program.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Problematic @BruiserBrody moan.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Exclusive: New retro figure line has Remco ties to Gagne, Rosenthal - Slam Wrestling

The first major line of professional wrestling action figures were the Remco Toys of the American Wrestling Association, featuring the likes of the Road Warriors, Fabulous Freebirds, Ric Flair, and AWA World champion Rick Martel. An out of the blue call has brought the original creators, Steve...

slamwrestling.net

(hoses down @BruiserBrody )