goc

Yea I'm not sure why you're re-quoting that at me considering I'm specifically saying I think Harry Smith is a terrible partner for him.

I think it would be a much better option than teaming him with another dude who has absolutely no charisma like Harry Smith. A Harry Smith/Adrian Neville team doesn't get off Superstars. Smith/Kidd couldn't get anywhere and I think Kidd is better and also has more personality.

And this thought process is exactly why wrestling fucking sucks now. A competent promoter or writer would try to get the most out of every talent. Are all of them going to be main eventers? No, of course not. But handicapping and cutting someone off at the knees from the get-go isn't the solution either. Try to use everyone in the best way possible and let the chips fall where they're naturally going to. That makes for a much more compelling product. For all of the criticisms of the Attitude era, every character mattered. Hell, every character had a character. That's not the case today, and it makes the show a slog to get through. Does that mean D-Lo Brown was as important as Stone Cold Steve Austin? Obviously not, but at least D-Lo got to be the best version of himself. That hasn't been the case in the WWE for a long time now. Some crappy "Mighty Mouse" type of gimmick for Neville would not allow him to be at his personal best, whatever that ends up being. If the guy is naturally just not that exciting or interesting (and coming from even the most hardcore NXT fans, he's kind of just NOT) then why wouldn't giving him some more color be a good thing? I just don't see how Adrian Neville plucked straight from NXT and dropped onto the main roster without any changes is going to give him a better opportunity than a gimmick that would appeal to kids. Kamala had a lot longer career than Big Jim Harris would have, and the Santino character had a hell of a lot longer lifespan than Boris Alexiev would have.

I really don't think it's realistic to look at every single call up from NXT as a "potential main eventer." I really don't see how in a million years Adrian Neville becomes a WWE main eventer unless there's a big plane crash on the way back from an overseas tour. I think as far as his longevity goes he could do a lot worse than being a lower card comedy gimmick that can stick around for years (Santino) than being a guy who gets called up as someone with a push and then quickly loses favor (Eric Escobar, Drew McIntyre, etc)

Watching El Dandy on the 80s set (haven't seen anything from the 90s yet) he is absolutely just as at fault for those frustrating "ref stops Dandy from throwing a punch moments" as the ref, if not more. In the Emilio Charles vs. El Dandy (7/28/89) match the whole first fall El Dandy stays totally focused on the referee and not Emilio Charles every time he starts to go on offense. I think the ref grabbed his arm once but every single time Dandy threw a punch he had to stop and argue with the referee. To me it wasn't because the ref was being over bearing it was because that was Dandy's go to transition to the rudo going on offense and he didn't want to do anything else even if the ref actually wasn't screwing with him.

I had no idea that Dink the Clown was a ripoff of a ripoff

I really wish they would have put Lawler over The Miz and then did the Michael Cole turn the next night. I feel like Miz cheating Lawler out of the belt after a big feel good moment would have given him more heat going into Mania than putting him over guys clean with the Skull Crushing Finale on the weeks leading up to the show.

I've seen people say they should just bring Neville up as Evan Bourne 2.0 but I don't think he has anywhere near the natural babyface charisma and selling ability that Bourne had so I don't see that working. He'd be much more Justin Gabriel than Evan Bourne if they called him up as just regular ol' Adrian Neville.

I'm guilty of skimming over a lot of the Japan stuff but I didn't see anything else about it in the issues before or after and it was just a complete throwaway line after a long paragraph about Fujiwara and PWFG stuff.

Too bad he didn't go all the way with that, I would have liked to see Nick Patrick in the Roadie role. He was a pretty good promo whenever he had a reason to cut one.

Edge is one of my least favorite top guys of all time. His last run on Smackdown that had him feuding with Kane and kidnapping Paul Bearer took me from an actively interested Smackdown fan into someone who stopped watching for months. My WWE fandom has never really recovered but I can't blame the brand split ending on him so that's not exactly his fault.

This is the most random thing I've seen reading old Observers from 92-93.

That seems highly over priced. I have no idea how anyone makes money on those conventions but what do I know.

This just popped up in the general thread on DVDVR and I happened to watch it. DAMN this was an awesome brawl! One of the best tag team street fights I can remember seeing. Dragon Master was not afraid to completely kill a dude with a chair and I couldn't help but wonder if the fan ever got their jacket back that was tied to the chair he was beating Onita with at the start of the match. This was like the perfect length without trying to stretch the drama with a lot of falls. I also especially loved Dragon Master not giving a fuck about Onita & Goto covering each other up and just continuing to beat the shit out of them with the chair. I thought Onita & FMW was all about crazy gimmicks like barbed wire and exploding rings but THIS was good stuff.

Oh that's where I'll have it for sure.

If I was going to put together a list, I would probably put Bret on it. I've heard too many people with first hand accounts of him kind of dogging it on house shows for me to consider putting him real high though. Meltzer was pretty much fully behind the Bret Hart WWF Champion experiment in late 92 but even he wrote this about a Flair/Bret house show match on 12/11/92 at the Cow Palace Knowing how Dave felt about Nikita, this feels about as harsh a criticism as Dave would throw at a guy he generally liked.

Dave was super negative on Bill Watts WCW reading back the 92 Observers including this little blurb about the hiring of Greg Gagne:

According to the WON this was right after he'd been to Japan having super stiff matches with Tenryu where neither of them wanted to sell anything and apparently he didn't really change that style up when he went to Mexico.

To add to that story, Meltzer had also written about him a few weeks earlier that lots of guys had asked not to work with Haku because of how stiff he was, which Meltzer said he'd never even heard of guys doing before in Mexico. Canek didn't wrestle for EMLL though so he wouldn't have known and was just in working a show for EMLL to run opposition to AAA. I'm sure the other guys in the match were watching with anticipation when they saw that about to go down.

This is completely off the main topic here but this IS kind of annoying. I kind of wish people would just stick to using the forum usernames regardless of how well they know each other if just for the sake of the rest of the posters.

You're so far away from explaining that Jerry Estrada/Javier Cruz Hair match to me

Now I know a lot of people are coming down off the "Michaels is the GOAT" ledge but can we recognize that he's much better than The Miz? The Miz just isn't good enough to be booked as anything other than a fluky Honky Tonk Man type champion. I thought his title reign failed because they didn't go far ENOUGH in making him a weak looking fluke champion and tried to make him seem like a threat ending a lot of matches with the Skull Crushing Finale.

Adding another story in the "Haku/Meng is a badass" collection