I’ll start out by apologizing for not writing anything last weekend. It has been a busy few days, but that is no excuse. I know that both of my fans were upset, so Mom and Dad I’m sorry!
Before I get down to business, I want to thank certain parties for the free publicity as of late. I think those of you who read the website religiously know what I am referring to. I’m not going to go into details on the matter. As one person posted on the message board, “opinions are like...,” well you know the rest.
I think we all get so caught up on “what’s wrong with wrestling,” that we often lose sight of what is good these days. So this week, I’ll hit a couple of topics that I thought were good in recent weeks.
First, the WWE has drawn a couple of good houses in our general region since the start of the year. The first show saw approximately 4,000 fans attend a SmackDown!/ECW house show at the Arkansas State University Convocation Center in Jonesboro, AR on Jan. 12. The second show featured approximately 6,500 fans at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau, MO on Feb. 29.
Why is this good for this area? Simple. If wrestling draws better at that level, there is usually a trickle down effect. When wrestling was hot in the late 1990’s, smaller promotions were doing much better.
I remember attending an American Wrestling Federation (AWF) show in Bell City, MO sometime in 1999. They had a Doink the Clown on the card and that was it as far as any workers with a “name.” The rest was filled with local talent and I’ll use the term “talent” VERY loosely. Anyway, to get away from being negative again, this show drew 250 – 300 fans. Trust me, that was more than it deserved, but at the time WWF, WCW and ECW were all on fire and it trickled down to even small feds based in Southeast Missouri.
I truly hope another boom period is on the horizon. Some of what we see on WWE and TNA TV doesn’t really wet my wrestling appetite, but at least there are two major places (and three if you count ROH) to work in 2008. That beats the window of time between the end of WCW and ECW and the beginning of TNA and ROH, when there was only WWE.
My second focus this week is wrestling “re-runs.” For those of you who don’t know, you can now see old episodes of Verne Gagne’s AWA Wrestling on ESPN Classic. The shows air several times during the week, usually around midnight. Of course, I don’t stay up that late due to my day-to-day job, so I’ve been taping some of the shows. Thus far, it’s mostly been events from 1986 featuring familiar names such as Curt Hennig, Bruiser Brody, Larry Zbyszko, Scott Hall, Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels. It’s a lot of fun stuff if you’ve never seen it or a trip down memory lane for some who saw it originally. Wrestling sure has changed in 20 years that is for sure!
Also, I’ve actually enjoyed some of the re-runs of Memphis Wrestling. Seems like we always pick on MW and that can get old, as Gene Jackson recently pointed out. So let’s actually give credit where credit is due. The Terry Funk stuff from 2004 was fun. I don’t care whether you are smart or in the business, watching those promos makes you think Funk is crazy.
Last night, I enjoyed seeing Lance Russell in his guest appearance from back then. The way he talked about having wrestling matches in the ring instead of B.S. at the desk made me feel like it was a “shoot” for sure.
Well, that’s all for this edition of the “Thompson Perspective.” Until next time, take care all.
(Brian Thompson may be reached at bptbookings@yahoo.com.)
