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Just finished watching El Hijo Del Santo/Octagon/Rey Mysterio Jr. v. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Psicosis AAA 3/16/95 and El Hijo Del Santo/Negro Casas/Mistico v. Atlantis/Black Warrior/Ultimo Guerrerro CMLL 8/4/06 from this topic: http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/topic/6...acket-4-v-13/ on DVDVR. I have watched no more than 15 lucha matches in my life, but I want to get into it so I plan on trying to keep up with this whole project. That said, I really enjoyed both matches and recommend you guys watch them and vote.

This kind of hits upon my feelings. If there's a 30 minute match where 20 of it is kind of a boring "feeling out process" of unfocused matwork and it doesn't really "get into the next gear" until the final 10 minutes, why should I automatically hold it in higher regard than a great 10 minute match that is all out action? I realize that guys can't go all out for 30 minutes, but some matches are legitimately interesting and engaging for 15+ minutes while others pretty much only have the final stretch. So if I am judging that kind of match against a shorter match that's interesting the whole time, I'm not going to punish the short match. More likely I'd punish the long one for boring me for 20 minutes before giving me an awesome 10 minute match.

This is how I feel about it. The Bundy/Lawler match felt the perfect length. On one hand, I felt like Hansen/Hennig could have been longer but I also know that's my desire to see the payoff finish of Hennig winning the title. That was never going to happen so I have to think that the match they had was the best they were going to have with the circumstances being what they were. I also agree with what Pete said about some matches needing an editor. That Buck/Regal match needed to be chopped in half.

I ask this question after thinking about the Stan Hansen vs. Curt Hennig (5/31/86) match from the AWA set. The match is only a 10 minute time limit and I'm wondering if this would almost automatically disqualify it in some people's minds from being a "top 10" match over something going 15-20 minutes long. For the sake of argument let's say we are only rating matches on the bell to bell match time even though that's not the case for me with the Hansen/Hennig match because it has an awesome pre-match brawl. It WAS the case for me during the Memphis set however, when I ranked this match the Jerry Lawler vs. King Kong Bundy "$10,000 challenge" match #1. It's about a 7 and a half minute match but I thought the use of the "$1,000 of Jimmy Hart's money for every minute" gimmick was worked great with Lawler just eating up time, and everyone's reaction to the announcement of another minute passed. Plus you have Lawler doing a great cat and mouse game with the giant Bundy and then ultimately getting caught. Lawler does one of his awesome comebacks but gets distracted by Rick Rude and then Bundy KOs him with a chain and splashes him for the FIVE count. I'm sure some people think it's crazy that I would rank that match over any of the Lawler/Dundee matches (and I still loved all of them) but on the first watch that Bundy/Lawler match was one of my favorite matches ever.

Not that this sort of cynicism is unwarranted, but it wouldn't shock me if Backlund was on the planned list this year all along. Maybe Backlund finally gave up the idea that he had one more run still in him. I recall reading that he has "refused" induction previously for that reason. I remember J.R. talking about having a meeting with Backlund at the end of his time as Head of Talent Relations where Backlund came in to his office and told him everything he does to stay in shape every day and told him he wanted to have another run. J.R. made it sound like he believed Backlund was in shape enough to still do it but that it wasn't something he wanted to push further up the chain.

I don't think they ever intended for Ryback to win a title at Mania. More likely they will still have him face Big Show, or maybe a returning Mark Henry. But it will be someone big where they hope he can do better than the Tensai matches and pick a huge guy up for the Shell Shock and march him around the ring.

If you're talking about Pro Wrestling This Week, an almost complete set of shows from 1987 made it's way onto Classics a few months ago. I'll see if I can find the discs and check the early 87 episodes to see if I find that angle. Found the discs but not the angle. Sorry.

Interesting to see how little LA drew without Hogan on the card, especially the show with Adonis/Piper on top.

If you're talking about Pro Wrestling This Week, an almost complete set of shows from 1987 made it's way onto Classics a few months ago. I'll see if I can find the discs and check the early 87 episodes to see if I find that angle.

Goldberg was probably the easiest guy to book in the "guy no one wants to have to wrestle" role, even if he was champ. Someone stepping up to challenge Goldberg while he was champ should have been a big deal. Not something for the likes of Bryan Adams, Al Greene and Scott Putski regardless if it was non-title.

Oh ok, I thought Dundee had just a one year run but I guess it was longer than that. Thanks for the quick response.

Can someone tell me who booked Mid-South after Bill Dundee? I know Dundee booked most of 84, and then I believe Slater was the booker when he came in towards the end of 85, but who booked in between that?

Bumping this thread to ask Dylan if he has any good post-WWE Masters stuff to recommend? I've only really seen him work heel since leaving which I find disappointing because I think he's SO good as a babyface.

I was so disappointed when they just dropped the Balls/Kelly thing. That was one of the more fun things that ever happened on the show but then it was like they just decided to forget it ever happened.

Needs plenty of Colin Delaney.

Incredible. This was it for me too. At this point in time, everything was comparative for me. And when they turned Hogan face and Flair heel, all i could think of was that the WWF would never do that with Austin and McMahon. That along with stuff like WCW referencing WWF (Juvy, Russo, Dustin Rhodes, "Old Age Outlaws") and wrestlers using WWF finishers (Disco, Booker, Rey) really turned me off. I think that Flair/Hogan double turn turned off a lot of people. Uncensored 99 is the last really good PPV number they ever did. It's a match people clearly wanted to see comparing it to other buyrates at the time, but I don't think it had a finish that left too many people happy.

Just finishing watching the Kevin Sullivan comp, and I have to say the turning of Bob Roop was a pretty good angle. Roop is supposed to be retired and Sullivan goes to recruit him. Roop blows him off and says he's retired and he's going to enjoy his retirement with Dark Angel! Roop thinks he's stolen her from Sullivan but it's really just a ruse because the next time we see Roop he's Maya Singh with Dark Angel having been the one to turn him. And Roop does a great job selling the transformation the first time we see him with the half shaved head.

My praise of WWECW really has nothing to do with comparing it to the original. It's simply a defense of something a lot of people seemed to completely write off and were happy to see die. A lot of my favorite things over the past few years in current wrestling are gone. There's no more WWECW, there's no Ring Ka King, there's no more Chris Masters matches on Superstars and the Don West heel announcer experiment ended long ago. I'd at least like to keep people from pissing on the graves.

Yea i agree. To say a show was better than a promotion that revolutionized wrestling and helped turn WWE into the most profitable wrestling promotion in the US is a little far fetched. ECW had a lot of faults but it was also very ground breaking. To reach national exposure from where they started says a whole lot as to how popular ECW became. WWECW had good wrestling on it from time to time but also had very shitty wrestling. A better comparison would be WCW Worldwide to WWECW or something of that nature. I remember a lot of people shitting on WWECW at the time and now everyone loves it, gotta love the internet. There were a lot of people shitting on WWECW at the time but there was also a small minority of people who were banging the drum that ECW was the best hour of wrestling on TV. I certainlty remember saying it and seeing a few other people, probably some of them in this thread, saying the same. It's not our fault people were too busy shitting on it for not "being important." Most of the criticisms of ECW at the time could be boiled down to "it's not Raw" which were the same criticisms Smackdown would get during the times it was consistently the better show. I DON'T CARE if WWE made it clear it was the "C-show" if it meant they didn't fuck it up and just gave good wrestlers time to wrestle. The criticism wasn't about the wrestling and if it was, it was wrong. The good to bad wrestling ratio on ECW weighed heavily to the good.