Jingus

Ditto. I'm not sure exactly how to describe what he did to change his style, other than working in more catchmoves (not catch-wrestling, but like the movez equivalent to catchphrases that are hit the same way every week; is there even a designated term for that concept?). And he tended to spend a bit more time down selling. But it's one of those deals where "simplifying" and "toning down" what he does actually made him into an overall better storyteller. I think Rey was better at working David-vs-Goliath matches than Liger was; all too often when Liger's wrestling a heavyweight, he just hits a few of his signature moves as hope spots and then lets himself get squashed.

Even though I might like my favorite Hansen matches more than my favorite Funk matches, I voted for Terry. Much longer career, worked many more places, did many more things. Infinitely better as a talker and doing other non-bell-to-bell stuff. He would completely change his gimmick and his character from place to place, evolving to suit the needs of whichever territory he was working for. Hansen didn't change nearly so much over time, except for just getting stiffer as he got older.

To an outsider who's never participated, but has read many attempts by others to explain how the voting process works: I have no fucking idea how this voting process works. It seems really, really needlessly overcomplicated.

Is it really that shocking for a family to support their kin during a trial? You see that shit all the time in court and on the news, with the family members giving tearful testimonies about how great a person this accused murderer is.

And the AJPW/NOAH guys use their hands, forearms, and shoulders to brace themselves when they're taking those spine-crunching deathplexes, but we still call them "head drops". Tenryu's face was, at best, a couple inches away from the wire; close enough for me.

(I must admit for the record that I fucking hate Heathers and personally find it to be an obnoxious, smug, nihilistic film without an ounce of real humor or human warmth within its entire running time.)

What? Skip to 23:40 in the following video, pleez: And Kawada did occasionally flirt with other styles for the briefest of first-base makeout sessions. Tenryu was practically a polygamist, marrying a different style every year.

I'd say wrestling at its worst is a whole lot like Heathers. Homophobia, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, bad jokes, people being judged in a shallow manner on their perceived popularity rather than any serious weighing of their individual merit, and especially the general atmosphere which implies that everyone absolutely hates everyone else and that a fistfight is the inevitable result of saying "hello" to one of your peers. And oh yeah, tons of people dying way too young.

What would you suggest they do in cases like Mania 18? The crowd's interest peaked for Rock/Hogan, they mostly didn't give a shit about the world title match. That's happened a few times now.

Tenryu did comedy, for one thing. That's a big difference, ol' stodgy Kawada was too serious for that kind of stuff. Tenryu used blood; he'd gig his face, arm, chest, wherever. Tenryu would do hardcore brawls and use weapons. "You want me to fling myself FACE-FIRST into exploding barbed wire? I like the way you think, boss!" He was comfortable in any environment; whether he was doing a worked-shoot match with a UWFI invader or throwing Undertaker into a casket, he never looked out of place. He was willing to do goofy shit like being a Fake Hayabusa, and grim shit like punching a guy in the face until the poor schmuck was bleeding all over the ring. Okay, Kawada would totally do that last one too; but he certainly never even tried to do all the other stuff.

He repeatedly implied that he thought Mero was a terrible worker, though he never came out and explicitly said it. (Then in his second book he said that there was a wrestler whom he repeatedly raked over the coals in the first book for just being terrible, but his editors or legal team or someone made him take that stuff out.) The money was part of it, but he was insinuating that Marc didn't deserve to be making that much because he sucked. I don't think Foley would've had asked to be left off his first Wrestlemania over merely being grumpy about income inequality. Not saying this is all true-to-life gospel, I've got no horse in the race; I always found Badd/Mero to be competent-but-utterly-boring and found his gimmicks to be nails-on-chalkboard aggravating, thus I haven't watched any of his matches in long years and have no real opinion on the subject. I just think it's always interesting to examine what wrestlers' coworkers thought about their abilities.

Ross isn't alone, there seems to be a lot of distaste for Mero's work among many of his coworkers. Mick Foley roasted him pretty hard in the first autobiography, right down to saying he'd rather not work on Wrestlemania at all than be stuck in a match with Mero on that show.

Tenryu is Cherry Dr Pepper. Perhaps not the most popular, and rather pruny; but heavily preferred by the connoisseur. And he's who I voted for. Nothing against Kawada, but I kinda saw this as comparing Terry Funk to Vader. The latter is arguably better at doing his relatively narrow style than the former is at doing anything; but the former can do so many different things and does them plenty well enough that I think it's worth it to go with the guy who shows lots more variety.

Regal. Smoother chain wrestler, more charismatic seller. Wider variety of movez. And he's so much better at outside-the-ring talking, acting, and general shenanigans than Fit that it's not even close. Finlay is better at delivering a particularly brutal beatdown, but that's the only thing I'd put in his favor.

Were guys such as Liger and Kobashi stigmatized when they had cancer?

"HAD to switch"? That's... uh... weird. As for startup bugs, I also noticed that at least one or two of the free podcasts refused to play and insisted I had to be a member to hear them. Hey, Bix, just sayin'... wouldn't it be awful if the new website JUST SO HAPPENED to mysteriously erase Jeff Hamlin's Raw recaps every week?

Stellar analogy. Yeah, I think TNA's like Yogi Berra; when they finally go out of business, people around the IWC will say "huh, I didn't even know they were still around".

He was terrible in the ring. Sloppy execution, nonexistent psychology, ABYSMAL "bumping". He was admittedly charismatic and had the best facepaint in the business (why did it never flake off during the matches like Sting's paint always did?), but that's pretty much all he had going for him.

If he's healthy in time, they could solve both those problems by putting Bryan in a match with Brock on that show, and make it clear that neither man is going to be in the Rumble itself. Of course, probably the last thing Danielson's body needs is to be suplexed twenty times in a row, but it would be nice to get that match someday. It's frustrating how they keep booking Lesnar against the same tiny handful of the same old opponents, over and over again; some new blood would be appreciated. Hey, it's been a while since we've heard anything about DBry's medical clearance, hasn't it? I wonder if they know he's okay or soon will be, but they're keeping everything quiet to give him a big surprise return in the Rumble.

Also showing how weird their choices of NXT talent are, other Sirs Not Appearing In This Film: Samoa Joe, Kendrick, Rhyno, Albertensai, and Dusty are all AWOL. (Regal's there, but he's bizarrely available only in his Lord Steven gimmick from WCW.) Yet when it comes to including old veterans, random-ass choices from Mikey Whipreck to Billy Gunn (without Road Dogg!) to Ultimate Fighting Machine KAMA to General Adnan (?!?!?) are damn sure on the roster. Whoever decided who goes into this game must've decided the non-current-main-roster choices by blindly throwing darts at a wall with pictures of the entire roster going back to 1987.

I wonder if the 2006-2012 run of Rumble winners hurt the overall credibility of the gimmick. Except for Orton in '09, absolutely NONE of them actually had the main event match at that year's Wrestlemania. They were mostly way in the undercard instead; hell, twice they were jerking the curtain. And hey, each time it happened during the brand-split era, it was the Rumble-winner from Smackdown who didn't go on last at Mania! How bout that, what a coincidence. Doing the numbers, a Smackdown guy actually won 6 out of the 9 split-era Rumbles, but only one (Brock in '03) got the main event spot at Mania. That only ever happened to a Raw guy once, when Cena won the Rumble in '08, but they decided to put the Taker/Edge streak-vs-streak match on last at Mania (and even that one was confused with the whole "Cena cashes in his Mania title shot at No Way Out instead" nonsense).

Yep. Tyler Breeze, Enzo/Cass, the Vaudevillians, and even god-damned Baron Corbin all made the cut.

Hardly anyone believed that Vince would actually pull the trigger on his world title push. Especially on Raw in early '04, which had seen two years of HHH's superdominance of the entire roster; I certainly didn't think that they'd have Hunter lose to Benoit.

I do. You're wrong. I'm still annoyed that several of the WWE games won't let you play a Diva (not even a female create-a-wrestler) in the game's main storyline mode. You can't relate to a female character AT ALL? Dude, you're telling us more about yourself than you're telling us about video games. Can you relate to someone who's a different race than you, or different religion, or different nationality, or different political affiliation, or different age, or different social class, or has a different accent? If the answer to any of the above is "yes", then you might wanna rethink having an iron-clad resistance to identifying with anyone who doesn't have a dick.

I disagree, cuz Punk always worked his ass off to put over whomever he was working with. You'd never see him act like he just didn't give a shit about his opponent. Yeah, his rants about Best In The World had some shoot element to them; but they were also pretty similar to his old indy gimmick of "he thinks he's better than you!" (you need to imagine Gabe whining that phrase on commentary for it to have its full nostalgic effect). He'd go for some borderline reality cheapshots when he was cutting a promo on someone, but he'd never try to just cut a guy's nuts off and leave him without any way to retaliate in the way that Nash and Trips would. Another big difference: Punk would actually lay down for whomever he was talking rings around, unlike the Kliq members who were so pinfall-phobic that they didn't even sleep on their backs. And even when they DID do a job, they'd just laugh it off with a "whatever, it doesn't matter, wrestling's fake and I let that guy beat me" wink-and-smirk routine. Punk always acted like he gave damn whether he won or not, and did it openly IN FRONT OF THE CAMERAS rather than doing it sneakily in the back.