Wrestling Pre 1985 Has Barely Ever Been Acknowledged by WWE

[tafkaga]

I have a decent collection of MSG shows from the 70's and short of drugs, there's NOTHING that puts me to sleep faster. I have those DVD's standing by when I'm really struggling to fall asleep.

[wildojinx]

Yeah, the only way I can get through some of that early 80s WWF stuff is when the OVP podcast riffs them. Really though, the tv didnt get REAL good until 86-87 (I just finished the buildup to WM3 and it was really interesting stuff, even the squash matches were worth watching). That said, there actually is lots of good 70s wrestling out there, even outside the WWWF, check out some of the Detroit stuff in particular.

[Jaws the Shark]

Jan 4, 2023 1:07:19 GMT -5 booty2shoes said:

My opinion is they have given an appropriate amount of attention to the pre-1985 era. They're in the business of producing a current product. Which, until a few months ago, was run by the guy who took it global. So obviously, during when he was in charge, and it came time to "talk about the past," he wanted the focus to be on the time period in which he ran the company. His vision.

However, he didn't totally abandon the past, or wrestling history in general. He just took the spotlight off of the era before he was in charge.

I didn't start watching wrestling until the early 90s, but I learned about and saw matches from the WWWF era on their own home video releases, be it documentaries or DVD sets or old Coliseum Video tapes. I remember renting tapes from Blockbuster that were released by the WWF, and that's how I saw Bruno, Koloff, Morales, Graham, Backlund, etc. They released those tapes on VHS, and they also released "History Of" the various championships DVD sets in the 2000s which I also have. Plus a ton of documentaries have covered the past.

And they do have the Hall of Fame. Yeah, some people in it are laughable, but they also did honor a lot of deserving people over the years, and highlighted wrestling's past.

Beyond releasing the video footage that they do have, doing documentaries that talk about the past, and having a Hall of Fame for decades now..... what more should they be doing? I think it has been adequate.

This is actually something that bothers me a bit, pre-1985 is basically reduced to what WWE has done a documentary about, which is basically Crockett by way of WCW, World Class, and the AWA, and from what I recall even they focus quite heavily on the mid/late eighties. Other than that it's just whatever has popped up in other things, so Georgia for example is now probably mostly known as the territory that had Black Saturday, even Crockett has sort of been reduced to where Flair was the top star. The territories that are paid attention to are the ones that have a "story", and where a large part of that story is their eventual collapse, and the others feel a bit forgotten.

Now, I'm not necessarily placing the blame for that solely on WWE and its revisionist history, because to a large extent what they acknowledge has to depend on what tapes they own, and how much of those tapes has actually survived well enough to be broadcast or put onto DVD sets or online or whatever. But it's still a bit of a shame.

[eJm]

I think what I found interesting about wrestling history I found out was both how much wrestling was pushed into the mainstream with the invention of cable and PPV but also how much it isolated the massive audiences watching already.

Like, it wasn't like it didn't sell out venues after WWF and WCW took advantage of television but hearing stories about people like Jim Londos and how much of a star he was back in the day is fascinating.

[Milkman Norm]

Jan 2, 2023 23:14:25 GMT -5 @uppitynerd said:

Wrestling started to most general audiences when Hulk Hogan beat the Iron Sheik.

There was stuff that happened before that or in other companies, but it feels like some black and white silent film before movies went went to color. That’s what Hogan and Vince McMahon did.

Wrestling is as its current form is only like 40 years old.

Which is why the Monday night wars were huge because it was stuff that was never done before, it went from 66 Batman to Michael Keaton or Christian Bale like less ten years. Both are huge hits for their own reasons but seeing the changes in real time was amazing.

That’s why the last twenty years have felt stale, redundant, or like Degressi: The Next Generation at times.

Is that the case because it by itself was transformative or because it happened after cable exploded? Because wrestling had been both popular and lucrative in many places for years prior, it just wasn't a nationalized promotion doing it.