Category: Dragon King
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: ECW TV pilot review
Now for something really scary. Oh boy, maybe you were a fan of the counterculture ECW promotion back in the 1990s, I know I was. Well, be glad the original pilot episode never aired. It is very indierific. We have Sandman before he was a hardcore legend and was just a surfer dude, assorted northeast…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: WCW Uncensored 1996 Doomsday Cage match
Now for something really scary! In 1996, Hulk Hogan, running on fumes with the red and yellow Superman gimmick, decided it would be a good idea to just destroy all the heels in one match and even import a few. So, Hogan grabbed partner Randy Savage and a three-story cage gimmick was built. The Dungeon…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Sid Vicious as Lord Humongous
We all know Sid Vicious. He looked like a million bucks, was as champion in both WWF and WCW, and was a major player during the 1990s. However, he began his career as one of the men to play the Lord Humongous character, starting in Memphis then going to the Continental Wrestling Association. On this week’s DragonKingKarl…
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DragonKingKarl Greatest Kayfabe Tournament: AJ Styles vs. Booker T
The votes are in and you have chosen a winner in match 26 of round one of The Greatest Kayfabe Tournament: AJ Styles vs. Booker T in a clash of two modern era wrestlers. Styles started off in the Georgia indies, got a small break in WCW, but really came into his own in TNA.…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: 2020 Observer HOF ballot discussion
It’s time for historically our most popular show of the year. Karl Stern (DragonKingKarl) has been a voter in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame for over a decade and every year discusses the ballot on his podcast. If you’ve ever wondered about the wording, criteria, and structure of the ballot — all is…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Old Tyme Wrestling Hour | 80s angles
On an Old Tyme Wrestling Hour edition of the DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show, I look at the massive decline in WWE’s pop culture popularity and a new documentary that takes a look at the life of former lucha and WCW star Vampiro. Then, Kid Zombie (aka Matt Mann) joins me to discuss some of our…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Minus Five Stars – Hogan vs. Warrior
Our retro wrestling review today continues our look at Wrestling Observer MINUS FIVE STARS rated matches. We travel back in time to WCW Halloween Havoc 1998 on this episode. WCW had been on a hot run in 1998 but cracks were beginning to show and a big chip fell off when Hollywood Hulk Hogan tried to…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Fall of 1980
This is part six of our look at the year 1980 in pro wrestling and we are up to the fall. Austin Idol sort of wins a World title in Memphis. The Freebirds are in Georgia. SECW debuts its classic TV show including all of Alabama and the Florida panhandle with Bob Armstrong as the top…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show special: Rest in peace Bob Armstrong
Southern pro wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer “Bullet” Bob Armstrong has died at the age of 80 following a battle with bone cancer. Bullet Bob is a man I met many, many times, worked around at many shows, and grew up watching. His sons Scott, Steve, Brad, and Brian (Road Dogg) all had…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: From the pages of the Observer – Boris Malenko & Art Barr
Today on the DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Audio Show, host Karl Stern dives back into the pages of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter for Dave Meltzer’s biographies on Boris Malenko (the father of wrestler and future agent Dean Malenko) and Art Barr. The death of Barr was treated as a huge loss for pro wrestling at the…
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DragonKingKarl Greatest Kayfabe Tournament: The Rock vs. Dick the Bruiser
Round one of the GKT: Greatest Kayfabe Tournament continues as we ask the question: if pro wrestling were real (not a shoot but the characters as presented real) who would win? On this episode. The Rock vs. Dick the Bruiser! You have voted and I have the results. The most electrifying man in sports entertainment and mega-movie…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Old Tyme Wrestling Hour
This week, Karl Stern brings you a new Old Tyme Wrestling Hour Podcast. On this episode: the pioneer era of wrestling in Mexico isn’t what I expected. In fact, it appears Asian in origin with links to jiu-jitsu and American frontier wrestling combined into one thing. It gets weird. Also, a man died during a match…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Bruno Sammartino loses title to Ivan Koloff
We continue to celebrate my birthday all week long at When It Was Cool by looking back at the year 1971. Today on the DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show, I look back at a match that is still remembered 49 years later for the reaction it invoked. Bruno Sammartino was the WWWF Champion and had been dominant, dispatching…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Minus Five Stars, pt. 1
This week on the DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show, I begin our first ‘Minus Five Stars’ reviews of the worst matches in pro wrestling history according to our Dave Meltzer. The first comes from AAA TripleMania 23 in 2015 where the Psycho Circus battled Los Villanos, a match leaturing a dude on a unicycle, latex masks, and a…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: UFC Ultimate Ultimate 1996
I had press passes to the UFC Ultimate Ultimate tournament 1996 in Birmingham, Alabama, a show that featured Don Frye, Tank Abbott, Ken Shamrock, Kimo, Gary Goodrich, and others. I met and talked to all of them, as well as Dan Severn who was at the show with one of his trainees and a fellow…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: 1981 – Flair wins his first World title
On today’s show, we pick up our longform history of pro wrestling series in the late summer of 1981 and cover August and September. Bob Backlund’s reign as WWF Champion continues, Nick Bockwinkel has a largely forgettable feud with Sheik Adnan, and Dusty Rhodes as NWA World Champion has a run through Florida until losing the…
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DragonKingKarl Greatest Kayfabe Tournament: Austin vs. Hansen
The battle for Texas rages in the latest installment of the Greatest Kayfabe Tournament, a podcast series at WIWC and Wrestling Observer asking the question: If pro wrestling were real (not a shoot, but the characters as presented were real) who would win? This episode features two of my favorites: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: Old Tyme Wrestling Hour with Kid Zombie
It’s a new Old Time Wrestling Hour podcast. We have the difficult task of trying to keep things positive on this show and I try my best! I am joined by Matt “Kid Zombie” Mann of Alternative Wrestling Radio and we talk tape trading in the old days, San Francisco wrestling, why he is done…
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DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: WCW WrestleWar 1992
We have a retro PPV review of WCW WrestleWar 1992 on this week’s edition of the DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show. I recently reviewed the go-home show for this PPV and it was pretty terrible. Well, WCW over delivered with a PPV that was pretty decent from top to bottom with a home run WarGames main event…