Fando

I wrote into Dave asking him to consider not giving it rating as I'm sure others had to have as well, but he still basically did give it one. And one suspect's what kept it from being five stars was that the apron german was botched, not for the fact that at several other points in the match they were basically trying to hurt each other. Not really surprised since Okada-Shibata is his favorite match of all time, but only Bryan really took a hard stand there and said flat-out you cannot call it a good match. Another funny in-the-bubble moment this week is when he referred to the Avengers as "superstars"

Would really love if they could do a deal where DC costs Brock the title before the fight instead, just for the massive intrigue it would generate along with wails from the post-Shamrock/Ortiz/Liddell era fans who think they follow a "pure" sport.

https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/hulk-hogan-advertised-wwe-crown-jewel-269141

Honestly, I shouldn't be surprised after she took responsibility for the Reid promo with Paige and everything, but..

The women collectively have more leverage now than any time in company history while they're in the spotlight amidst this PR campaign. They could organize with the support of other top stars who were very vocal today and put their foot down and decide no, we're NOT going to recite this awful promo written by a majority male writing staff, where Carmella is telling Charlotte and Becky she's better because she has a better body than them and doing the twirl on Smackdown. But this is apparently not the hill that either the women or men in the company want to die on.

Not good enough

Putting aside what he said for a second and that he was was not talking about her needing to lose weight, this is as good a view of how talent today is taught to think of Meltzer/WON as we're likely to get. Calling him a "parasite," "Sheep" (Nia Jax), "disgusting" (Beth Phoenix), "a piece of hot garbage' (Renee Young), meanwhile of course there's not and will not ever be one retweet of him sticking up for talent, especially the women on the roster after the disgraceful Saudi show, his criticism of the age-shaming and body-shaming angles over the last year, a wrestler's union...they don't actually read him or hear whatever second hand, and then shit like this is used to bash him as a journalist. Completely in bad faith on Bischoff's part. It's all fucking gross.

He's a journalist that covers one of the most shallow, looks-based businesses in the world. It was weird that he answered the question about her attractiveness instead of leaving it at "that's neither here nor there." It shouldn't be that weird that he pointed out her massive implants which were, if you go by history, likely done at the company's pleasure in order to advance her career, have made the team look more generic.

The pile-on by WWE personnel to show what good drones they are was amazing to watch just now, particularly Finlay calling Dave a "parasite" (Nothing problematic there, no!) and Bischoff retweeting for the lulz. And not one would publicly criticize anything done by the company, even as recently as the Nia Jax and Mickie James bullshit, and definitely not the Saudi contract which gave them their Evolution PPV while women activists are being jailed.

From today's WOR, on the G1: "My favorite match, my personal favorite match, which is not even close to the highest rated match that I have, but my favorite match was the Okada and Tanahashi match on Friday. I just thought that that was wonderful...perfect pacing, great story, I never worried about anyone for one second, all I kept thinking is these guys are so freakin great, they're at a different level of...anyone...you can count on one hand the number of people that are on the level of these guys."

I'm old enough to remember the ridiculous praise the Sasha-Charlotte HIAC botchfest with no heat got on this forum.

All those things are basically reasons he gave for upping stars for the last Omega-Okada match though.

lol

Having the green mist blown onto your hand will give you the power of generations of shogun and ninja warriors

The ratings shift kind of makes a little more sense when you look at his argument for overall match quality. Like, there was a question on WOR recently about minus star matches and Dave had trouble coming up many after a certain year because you're not seeing workers that just come in out of the gym because they're big anymore and everyone is much better trained in the fundamentals. But his criteria doesn't seem consistent. Dave moving the goal posts when it's convenient is way more annoying than trolling twitter morons. He'll gripe about a Rollins match because of the psychology but then tell his audience that Vader-Mutoh wasn't a blow away match on rewatch because it had "basic moves." But the "best match of all time" was pretty much all basic moves in it's final 3rd. I was happy Alvarez brought this up on a show recently with Dave's favorite example: HBK-Razor ladder match and pointing out how the match was still great because of the layout and logical spots, because I feel the same way and when I watch that match again every year or so, it's always entertaining, but it was kind of like *whoosh*

So...why are you confused that people think that's insulting or inappropriate? You can have that meeting any day of the week and Hogan doesn't need to be there. Having him there co-signs on his bullshit that what he said "doesn't count" because it was private (no shit, he wouldn't ever say that in public). The message they're putting out is be careful you are not caught outing yourself as a racist accidentally because, in Ellsworth's paraphrasing, "social media is judge, jury, and executioner" and not to remind everyone this is a different era, the most diverse roster in the company history, and it doesn't have a place in the company, privately or publicly.

This never really happened and he's been mentioned on their TV going back to late 2016 now.

The emphasis on not knowing he was being taped as an excuse is the "non-apology" part. Read Titus's statement again.

Wonderful. Fuck this company.

Oh boy, am extremely interested to know how much Hogan went over what he planned to say to the roster in this meeting and what was approved beforehand, the whole point being to smooth things over with talent ahead of the reinstatement announcement. What he said about not knowing he was being recorded, as if that makes him look good, is not substantially different from how he's been trying to justify himself for 3 years, so did he ad lib it or were there sympathetic ears and people who've been "caught on tape" before, that actually agreed with and okay'd that bit?

Dave saying Brian Pillman told him Vader-Mutoh was the best match he'd ever seen probably added to the buzz too, but he did talk about it, and in the same way, earlier this year and I only saw a small thread on Wreddit about it, so more people were obviously paying attention this time after his death.

Lee and Dijak are legit Monster big though, so that really was a spectacle of freaks. In Jackson's case, he wouldn't really have that kind of wow factor keeping his offense the same unless he was at least Scorpio or Kronus size, and they were still both sloppy. I guess best case Jackson could end up looking more like Rollins or RVD if he was really gassed, but open himself up to more injuries, too.

They brought him back early according to Cornette. Good cast with Bix in the beginning and Cornette goes over his WWF run in the last segment. The Vince-Mastodon impression is killer. http://605pod.com/2018/06/21/vader-special/

This is an interesting point. Because even though it's true the last fall was as minimalistic (sp?) as a New Japan main event has been in the last 7 years or so, the first two falls, and specially the first one, had a TON of excess of moves and kickouts. The match probably isn't seen as the best ever without that initial dose of "tons of moves and nearfalls" that lasted longer than the simple finishing stretch it had. I guess it could be seen as the best of both worlds? I tuned out for most of the first two falls because it isn't what I like but I can totally understand were people are coming from with the praise the match got. Might be risking going off topic now, but I can't agree with this 100%. There were tons of moves but comparatively few pin attempts during the first two falls, mostly because they were selling the damage it took executing them on each other. On a quick rewatch I counted maybe 13 pin attempts with maybe half being what I'd call actual dramatic nearfalls, and that didn't seem too excessive in the context of trying to score the all important first fall. In the second fall I counted 3(!) pin attempts included the OWA for the fall. A lot more time was spent out of the ring, in the cobra clutch, both guys down etc.So it really built in a logically way where they were so almost too worn down to capitalize until one guy was completely dead.