goc

I made a topic saying pretty much exactly that at the end of September when I heard they were bringing back a cruiserweight division. When you've got a guy as big as Luke Harper regularly doing dives and stuff the cruiserweights would have to go SO beyond what WWE would want it's wrestlers do that a cruiserweight division will never work.

It was a Rumble surprise pop in front of the 2nd most hardcore audience WWE has all year (only behind Mania.) The pop was just as much "holy shit this is unexpected" as it was for AJ Styles himself. You can't read too much into it although god knows it doesn't stop people from saying "Look Kevin Nash/Boogeyman/DDP is more over than 90% of the roster!" whenever there is a surprise Rumble entrant. He's not LESS over than he was on his debut because now he's known by the entire WWE audience which I think you'd have to REALLY stretch things to say was true at the Royal Rumble. He's definitely more over now than he was on the next few weeks of WWE TV following the Rumble.

I don't really know what this means. He debuted in the company at the end of January and now he's THE top guy on Smackdown and has been pretty much since the brand split. If people were expecting him to suddenly become a Rock or Austin I don't know what to tell them because that was really never in the cards. He's not that good of a promo or that charismatic. It's also a bit silly to compare the pops he was getting earlier in the year to his reactions now because he's a heel now and he was a babyface then.

Big Show HAS been on the road this year. It's not been a 100% full time schedule but you don't lose all that weight just because you weren't on the road in August or October. He's only really been on the foreign tours since July but he's still had 75 matches in 2016.

Have The Fabulous Ones ever been on the ballot? With Arn/Tully going on next year it made me think about them. I know that Stan Lane is already in as part of the MX but The Fabs have a MUCH better argument when it comes to influence than Arn/Tully, are pretty close when it comes to good matches & probably better draws.

I wonder if a lot of the people who think Sting should be in also think Big Daddy should be in. If you were on twitter you wouldn't be asking that. Pretty sure that's a big NO. I'm not really sure why you picked Big Daddy as a comparison though, Big Daddy transcended wrestling and was a STAR in a way Sting never was.

I think it was his propensity for getting very hostile and personal when people disagreed with him like in the NXT Takeover thread and the Tommy End/Chris Hero match review.

It's definitely a work. If it was a shoot why would it have gotten played on TV, much less released on a WWC home video with English commentary? Why wouldn't the ref do more to stop Manny once Invader 3 starting spewing blood all over the place?

It's not new. I saw it on youtube a long time ago. There was a video of that incident that got uploaded on youtube way back in 2006 that still shows up when doing a Bing video search (although it seems to have been removed from youtube now) It was definitely a work. I remember reading somewhere that to pull it off Invader 3 drank a bunch of pig's blood before the match so it'd look good when he did the "internal injury" blood spitting deal. Gif of incident is in the spoiler (it's pretty gross)

Anderson is fine it's just that Gallows moves like his back or his hips are just totally shot. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I need to make some gifs of what I'm talking about.

I'm not sure if people missed it because this board can be not very good at showing links as actual links but this IS a link to where Tanahashi talked about why New Japan needed to move away from Strong Style and I thought it was really interesting.

Ok sure play a semantics game because I said American indie when you made this topic about a match that happened in the UK. The same point stands for ANY indie wrestling promoter.

Bingo. It's a marketing term. Especially when used by an American indie wrestling promoter. In that scenario it pretty much means "Hey let me call this tournament/match/wrestler Strong Style so the Japanophiles will get hype about it." It's the new version of calling someone a "technical" wrestler (even if they do not wrestle a technical style ala Ted DiBiase) as a code word for "good workrate"

I didn't attack them as performers, I mocked the use of the term "strong style" which is basically just a marketing buzzword that when used by American indie wrestling promoters essentially means "hey let's call this strong style so the Japanophile wrestling fans will get excited about it" If pointing out that they slap their thighs on kicks is "mocking" them then I don't know what to tell you except that they shouldn't do it if they don't want people to see that they do it.

I've never seen an MMA fight where guys used chops or where they slapped their thighs on a kick to make it sound good.

Please ask a mod to change your user name, if you were therealheel you would be far less sensitive & also have better comebacks.

I don't understand the people who act like The Club has been some big huge wasted opportunity by WWE. Like even the most hardened "OMG EVERYTHING IN NEW JAPAN IS THE BEST THING EVER!" fanboys weren't pimping Gallows & Anderson tag matches as anything special. I'm also completely baffled as to how Gallows is so bad now. He looks COMPLETELY broken down physically and I just don't get it. He was good, sometimes REALLY good, in his first WWE run. He's only 32! Did 3 years in Japan really break his body down that bad or what? I don't understand it.

Hey there was a 3 hour Raw last night and I'm sure some of you probably actually even watched it. I'd even guess that at least one of you goofs came to write about that episode of Raw and said "oh man there's no topic for this week, whatever will I do???" instead of completing the very arduous task of clicking the "Start New Topic" button.

This is a good point and sort of something they are failing to see. They are giving out a tremendous value to fans of WWN but they have yet to diversify. While PBTV won't have a single promotion that rivals EVOLVE but their eggs aren't all in one basket. I mean, they aren't going to compete with FloSlam at the end of the day but by adding up all these fanbases of smaller indies that haven't been able to purchase their favorite promotions events online and the lucha niche, they have more flexibility. I don't know. Powerbomb.tv has Papa Hales on their service and he's about as big a draw as anyone else on the indies.

Following the Observer for news seems like pretty much the WORST reason to follow as anything actually newsworthy is going to hit the usual copy and paste sites an hour after the Observer goes up. The only reason I would sub is for obituaries and the historical pieces that he does for HOF inductees. I can't imagine subscribing for the podcasts. Oh boy let me listen as Dave & Alvarez shit on how bad Raw is as if there aren't 100 other podcasts that do the exact same thing.

Hey look! It's one of the dumbest spots ever in one of the most over rated matches of all time!

I definitely have not heard of it. That seems even more obscure than Californoa Championship Wrestling from 1986. Put it on youtube!

All episodes of USA Championship Wrestling from 1988 can now be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8FXHmaF-0raVT8OAZCQ4fEeqzcfRZOe I would encourage anyone who is a fan of Continental and/or Smoky Mountain Wrestling to watch this. Really good little crew of guys with Gordon Solie on commentary along with Ron Fuller. Ron Wright is the heel manager here with The Mongolian Stomper and The Dog (Larry Latham) as his guys. Buddy Landell is here and while he's a bit out of shape during this run he's on top of his game as a promo and a character. Very nice old school tag feud between the Rock N Roll RMPS (Mike Davis & Tommy Lane) and The Party Boys, Johnny and Davey Rich who are the most unlikely heart throb tag team you'll ever see in wrestling but the crowd totally went for it. You've also got my man The Bullet here along with NOT his son Scott Armstrong, Hector Guerrero, "Superstar" Bill Dundee (also the booker), Terry Gordy and Austin Idol making some sporadic appearances and other guys who pop up along the way. You also get one of the best jobbers ever JD Wolfe doing some really entertaining stuff here. (I REALLY REALLY want that shirt The Bullet has there that says The Bullet above his picture and Bad To The Bone under it)