Von Erichs vs Freebirds six-man match from 1984 David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions.

It’s a same day turnaround for this holiday treat, as Justin Jones (@xPrimusPilusx) returns to the podcast to discuss The Iron Claw, the new movie about the Von Erich family, which we saw earlier today.

There are plenty of spoilers (for a docudrama), so if you haven’t seen it yet, save it for after you watch it. Short answer: it’s a good movie, in and of itself, but not great, and pretty good for a wrestling movie. We discuss the whole film, which actors we thought did the best jobs in the main cast, as well as looking at all the actual wrestlers in the movie. (The one everyone is making fun of on social media isn’t that bad.)

There’s also a lot of general wrestling chat: territorial history, foreign menaces as world champion, attendances now and then and how to judge them, the careers of Ross and Marshall Von Erich and more. We also tease which new biopic will probably be the subject of an upcoming pod and will be praised nearly as much as this picture.

Note: we recorded this in the movie theater parking lot, while sitting in the car, and so the quality is not as good as usual. We apologize for the inconvenience.

We look back at a special wrestling event that took place 36 years ago as we write this, the first date on the 1986 Great American Bash tour, held on July 1, 1986 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Winter Palace host was at the shot and has a couple guests to look back at the show.

First up is one of the hardest working man in the podcast business, Kris Zellner (@kriszellner), co host of Between the Sheets (@BTSheetspod) , Exile on Badstreet, Cover 2 Cover and more. We go over the card, match-by-match and talk about some of the infamous stories that happened backstage. We also talk about the 1986 Bash tour as a whole, where it was successful and where it was not. We also talk about a bunch of other subjects including the logistics of watching wrestling in the 1980s, the days of tape trading, how Kris managed to find the time to do all those shows and some recommendations of classic matches to watch online.

(52:18) Also on the show is Mark’s high school friend Jim, who, to protect his real identity, we will call Jim K. Fabe. Jim and Mark were impressionable 16-year old wrestling fans who attended that Bash show in Philadelphia. We talk about what we remember about the show live, other wrestling shows we attended back in the 1980s, favorites then vs favorites and more. We also talk about the current problem in popular culture of separating the art from the artist, centering about Jim’s teenage fandom for Jimmy Snuka and reconciling that with what we know about the death of Nancy Argentino. That branches out into the same problems effecting creators in film and tv, sports, comics and more. It was Jim’s first podcast appearance and we think he did a bang up job talking a trip down memory lane.

Check the show notes below for The Final Best of 7 match between Magnum TA and Nikita Koloff for the Unites States Title from JCP TV and Jim Cornette’s podcast where he discusses the Great American Basn tours.

Episode 127 - Yellow Rose of Texas

Episode Eighty-Nine - The Force of July