goc

That was a very enjoyable show, felt like it went by quickly and did not overstay it's welcome at about 2 hours and 15 minutes and length. Best match of the night for me was Barbaro Cavernario vs. Rey Cometa but I pretty much liked all of the matches and was especially impressed by how Marco Corleone still looks like a super athlete at 39 years old.

Yea go back and read the reactions after the first week of the brand split. It was all doom and gloom for Smackdown, with people saying they got totally fucked in the draft and the whole brand split experiment would be short lived because of it. Smackdown love didn't really start until after they had their first PPV, which everyone expected to be not very good.

Just a reminder that this card is tonight and starts at 9:30 PM EST (so pretty much in 2 hours) I will try and watch this if I do not fall asleep. http://www.clarosports.com/en-vivo02/

It's not the best, but if you watch Talking Smack too the scripting feels really toned down there and adds dramatically to the overall package. I'm off the opinion that territory era fans who don't like SD/Talking Smack or CWF have probably just seen wrestling pass them by completely because you aren't going to get anything closer in this era. Definitely agree with this. Smackdown + Talking Smack is like the best possible melding of an 80s territory and a modern WWE TV product.

Seems like you should actually watch it and decide for yourself considering pretty much all the talk about Smackdown these days is positive and the only real complaint is they could use a few more top guys. I have seen a lot of that 80s stuff and I think post-split Smackdown absolutely belongs in the same conversation. I'm the biggest Southeastern/Continental drum beater on this board (or maybe just the loudest if you factor in KrisZ and his awesome Exile series on Continental) and one of the reasons I think Smackdown is so good right now is that it shares a lot of the same traits that made Alabama rasslin so good. I'm not going to say it's THE BEST but it's very good especially when you factor in Talking Smack as part of the overall package.

I would agree that Raw has also improved lately but it's never going to get any credit for it until it injects some life into the main event scene. The Reigns/Rollins/Jericho/Owens stuff is all very played out and they desperately need to just pull the trigger on the Jericho/Owens split already. And even then I'm not sure what else they can do to freshen up the main events other than going all the way with Braun. I don't see Finn Balor as doing much to help out because while he's not a stale character he's also not an interesting one and is going to look very bad in the usual Raw formula of 20 minute in ring promos. If it was me, I'd strap a rocket to Big E as he's charismatic, a good promo and still fresh as a singles act.

As far as I know Scott is just an agent who helps put the matches together. But that's not exactly an unimportant position especially when we've seen some really well laid out matches on SD recently like the Four Way Tag where American Alpha won the tag titles & the Corbin/Ziggler/AJ triple threat.

I was planning to follow along with the lucha parts of the PWO2k thing but then I couldn't find a lot of that stuff on the tubes so I guess I won't be doing that. I want to start watching more lucha as I do generally enjoy it even though I really only watched the lucha 80s set and then a bunch of stuff around GWE to figure out which lucha guys I'd definitely have on my ballot. I don't know if I'll try to follow along with the modern product although it seems like CMLL is fairly easy to follow along with and I've seen some praise for their weekly Friday shows.

Meltzer said in the Observer that Brian James (Road Dogg) is one of the lead writers on Smackdown along with Ryan Ward so I didn't just make it up. The parallels to old Alabama/Tennessee style rasslin are there, especially in how the feuds on Smackdown feel way more personal and character driven than on Raw where everything still seems to be caught up in chasing titles. I mean Nikki Bella vs. Natalya is a lot lower on the SD totem pole than the Reigns/Rollins/Owens/Jericho stuff on Raw but it feels way more heated and interesting because the promos have been really personal and nasty instead of doing jokes & just talking about belts.

Yea, I'm really not interested in watching wrestling solely to see the best matches in a vacuum. I'm just not that interested in watching "Best Ofs" unless it's a promotion or wrestler I'm already familiar with and seen a lot of previously. The only times I've really broken with that has been with the DVDVR 80s sets and that was because it was the easiest way to get into watching territory footage which I'd never done before the Mid-South set came out. Those also at least had the extras discs that let you watch the big promos & angles that built up the matches.

I'm still going to give the credit for Smackdown's quality to these two men who grew up watching the best rasslin ever

Will echo the love for the AJ/Cena contract signing. I think that's gotta be AJ's best mic work in WWE and one of Cena's best as well. At this point it's kind of embarrassing how much better AJ Styles is than Kevin Owens when comparing Champions as AJ has been putting out better matches all year but now seems to have surpassed Owens on the mic and in the ability to generate real heel heat.

I think a lot of the disconnect comes down to a lot of old school fans wanting wrestling to actually seem like a struggle between two guys trying to win a contest. Not saying ALL modern wrestling is this way, but a lot of it now feels just like two guys working together to put on a performance to entertain fans. While that approach may lead to "better matches" in a star rating sense it ends up making them transient as it rarely leads to an emotional connection to the performers involved and the only real emotion is "oh man that was a cool spot!" which rapidly dissipates after the next match with cool spots happens. Even if EVOLVE may have a "better average match quality" than Houston wrestling a lot more of what you watch on NWAOnDemand is going to stick with you because it creates an emotional response.

People care about wins and loses but in a different way. It's mostly about "this guy should win because he's not being pushed enough" and "this guy should lose because he's pushed too much/already had his chance with the title" One of my least favorite things about modern fandom is the idea that the World Title is some kind of award for good service where if you've worked for the company for X number of years and had Y number of good matches you're automatically supposed to get a run with the belt whether or not you have any hope of being able to draw with it.

Part of it is definitely a backlash to the excessive pushes the former ROH dudes like Rollins & Owens have gotten.Their inability to actually deliver great main event matches despite being lauded as some of the best wrestlers in the world has definitely not done them any favors. But despite that, what is not to like about Braun? He's very good in his role as the monster of Raw, he's been booked really well and he's clearly improved by working house shows since he debuted a year ago. He's got potential to wind up being what Big Show SHOULD have been in WWE since they've pretty much gotten Braun's booking right while they screwed up Big Show right from the start.

So WWE produced a show where Heyman told people to stop spending money on the product? Got it. I support it 100%. It's not going to matter because that's the whole point of what he said: People love to complain about WWE but when it comes down to it they're not going to stop giving them their money and that's the only effective means of protesting WWE.

So he can have a new reason to go on a rampage next week. I'm hoping they book some cruiserweight 8 man tag and Braun comes out and tosses all 8 of them over the top rope. Braun sold more for Sami in the LMS match than he did for that double spear. He didn't even dead sell it, he was down on one knee outside the ring afterwards not just totally laid out. Seemed like the idea was plant the seeds of a Roman/Braun title match & hint at Braun facing off against Goldberg in the Rumble match.

Saw some people VERY upset on twitter about Heyman saying that until fans boycott, complaining means nothing. They were just complaining and not boycotting however, proving him right.

The Braun Strowman/Sami Zayn Last Man Standing match was awesome. I'm glad they put it on at 9 because it was the only part of the show I wanted to see and now I can turn off Raw.

Can't believe no one has mentioned this yet, myself included: Al Snow vs. Big Boss Man - Kennel From Hell Match 9/26/99

For all the bitching there was around the internet about how Goldberg ruined Brock by squashing him at Survivor Series, nothing could make Brock look more ridiculous than having a competitive match with Shane McMahon. Brock/Shane would have to be even shorter than Brock/Goldberg was for it not to be dumb as hell. So I guess I'll have to be a huge fan of Golberg's return by default no matter how his Rumble appearance and Mania match go.

Hell yea it was. If we're gonna turn this into a fantasy booking thread can we at least fantasy book Baron Corbin someone who is employed by WWE and is a huge star waiting to happen? Seems more interesting than fantasy booking someone who may never even work in WWE

I just watched this a couple days ago. I can't tell if you actually enjoyed it or not but I sure as hell did, thought it was REALLY fun. Here is the match if anyone wants to check it out for themselves:

I think people would have been less upset by this if they hadn't made it the main event. And really there was no good reason for this to be the main event over the title match.

Not sure if Jerry Estrada vs. Javier Cruz 10/22/89 counts for this but it was probably the biggest example of a guy (Estrada) being obviously fucked up yet still having a match (and a LONG match at that) before the Jeff Hardy/Sting debacle.