Jingus

Depends on what kind of stuff you like, because few promotions matched IWA for sheer variety of incredibly different stuff over the years. Samoa Joe/Necro Butcher is one easy place to start, it unites the puro-wannabe crowd and stiffness marks and deathmatch vampires and lovers of snarky commentary into one big "holy shit, I can't believe I just SAW that" collected hegemony.

That's because he was really hitting the other guy as hard as he possibly could. Goldberg was always stiff and sometimes reckless, and his spear looked so unique because he was essentially tackling his opponent the same way he used to hit guys in the NFL. What? DX doing bi-baiting jokes is forgettable filler at worst. The whole Big Nasty Bastard feud was downright offensive on multiple levels, stretched on forever, and helped give us one of the worst heavyweight title feuds in the modern era. Double what? I never ever want to watch HBK/HHH's never-ending Cell match ever again, but the only possible way the Kennel was better is if you're giving that one a huge "so bad it's good" handicap. Having a bunch of animals pissing and shitting all over the ringside area is a fairly automatic ticket to worst-match-ever land. Triple what? If I was looking for a term to describe the in-ring work of Brakkus, "the world's worst version of Triple H" would be a pretty good one. I've known guys like that; hell, I've taken karate classes from at least two or three of them. (In the same dojo where Jarrett beat up all those little kids on Impact a while back, if you remember that.) But was that really Flynn's intentional gimmick? It's a fun interpretation, but I never saw anything that suggested he was anything but one of those jobbers who is inexplicably given a tough-guy gimmick despite never winning.

I just don't like guys who move around in the ring so slowly that it makes them look like they don't care. Muta on some of his laziest days is bad about that too. I expect modern wrestling to go a bit faster than that, plain and simple. When even Kevin Nash is outrunning you in the ring, that's not a good sign. But clearly there's not much he can do to change that, since it seems to be his natural instinct to move that slow. Of course Khali's a lot more lumbering, but Henry has his sloppy moments too. I still remember one time he gave Matt Hardy a big boot, stumbled, and stepped right on the poor bastard's face while trying to catch himself.

Khali's been in several movies. Mostly Bollywood stuff, but he had a fairly substantial role in Get Smart and was also in The Longest Yard iirc.

Huh? Maybe I'm not remembering it right... (goes to Youtube, watches match) The spots with the midgets at the beginning are just sad. Gang looks like he's playing with them and cooperating, not actually trying to snatch up the little bastards. Gang takes a few nice bumps, but his idea of "selling" seems to be "just walk/stand around with an angry expression and no body language indicating any sort of pain". Two minutes into the match, he already looks blown up, sucking wind pretty hard. Okay, now he's finally selling, by making the exact same "OHHHH!" exclamation every time Gigante hits him. He almost loses his balance setting up for a clothesline off the middle turnbuckle, although he does hit the move nicely; trickier than it sounds, considering that Gigante remained standing and Gang sort of had to fly off to the side after making contact. Funny moment where Kevin Sullivan is trying to grab Gigante from the outside but the big guy either doesn't understand or disagrees, and Ross and Schiavone on commentary do a surprisingly decent job of both mocking and covering it. Aaaaand now it's work-the-leg time, and both Gigante and the match lay down and die for a little while. (Watching Gigante sell, he's actually not horrible at it. He's certainly trying, with facial expressions and body language and vocalizations. And he was actually more coordinated and less clumsy than, say, Great Khali is; when Gigante walks around, it looks more like the movements of a normal guy and less like a disproportionate freak of nature. Too bad he never had any instinct for wrestling, and especially too bad that he never had a really good company in charge of him; I can imagine plenty of ways they could've smoke-&-mirrors'd this guy into some halfway watchable matches.) Back to the match in question: OMG has completely abandoned the work-the-leg strategy. Uh. Why? It was working, and Gigante was completely unable to mount a counterattack while Gang was destroying his leg. Why just stop doing that, and change to random punches and stomps to the head & torso instead? I know the real reason is "we gotta get this big doofus back on his feet for the finish", but c'mon, provide a reason why Gang would stop using a method of attack which is succeeding so well. On a spot where Gigante kicks out so hard that it knocks Gang out of the ring, OMG reaches up to grab the rope while the ref is still counting and the whole thing looks rather awkward. He's still blown up, btw, moving around sluggishly. Oof, bad moment where Gang goes up top and Gigante forgets for a moment that he's supposed to toss the guy off. (Really, you're doing a patented Flair spot on this show?) After they finally do the move Gang doesn't even sell getting slammed off the top, he stands right back up. Heh, cute bit where Gigante is walking near Sullivan on the ramp and makes him flinch just for the hell of it. Gigante goes for a double-noggin-knocker on the heels, but Sullivan's hands are so far up that you can hear JR cringe as he calls "their heads... cracked together...". Weird finish where Gang pulls out a massive handful of powder right in front of the ref, but Gigante kicks it into his face and gets the pin. What was so great about Akeem's performance here? His bumps were nice and snappy, and that one flying clothesline was pretty cool, but everything else he did was fairly tepid "brawling" with questionable psychology while gasping for air.

The debate got me curious, so I just finished watching Punk/Henry. It's a perfectly good TV match, but I don't see how that's possibly a MOTYC. (And don't respond with "name some recent better matches", because I haven't watched the television since school got back into session; and besides, I liked Punk's match against Jericho at Mania better than this one.) It never felt to me like it got out of second gear. Henry's slow, lumbering, casually-strolling-around-the-ring pace just seems out of place in WWE, which is usually such a go-go-go impatient style. And the finish did suck. Not because it was a countout, but because the referee was way too obvious in counting faster than the refs ever count when the finish is not supposed to be a countout.

Which might be relevant if either Punk or Jericho trained at APW. I'm still waiting for you to explain how "APW trainees" have anything to do with this, since neither Punk nor Jericho trained in APW. To my knowledge, nobody on this Wrestlemania card trained in APW. Answer me! How many PPV matches have you worked? If I said "less than one", would I be correct? And if so, under your own theory, how would you know that we don't know anything about it, if you don't have that experience yourself? Which "technical side"? There's not just one. On most big-budget movies, there's literally hundreds of crew members who are necessary to make the whole thing happen. I'm sure a lighting technician wouldn't be any good at a makeup effects artist's job, for example. On little indy films or documentaries sometimes you'll just get two or three people running the whole show; but under those circumstances, yes I'm pretty sure that ol' Ebert would know how to attach a lavaliere microphone, put the camera on a tripod and push the "record" button.

Jamie borrowed a t-shirt from me to wear in the ring one time. It literally felt like a mechanic's oil rag when he handed it back to me.

I'm still waiting for you to explain how "APW trainees" have anything to do with this, since neither Punk nor Jericho trained in APW. To my knowledge, nobody on this Wrestlemania card trained in APW. Actually, Ebert co-wrote at least four scripts. He worked on three Russ Meyer movies, and actually wrote an entire script for a Sex Pistols movie, which was all set to star the actual Sex Pistols, but sadly fell apart after just a tiny bit of preliminary shooting. And I'd argue that, in some ways, guys like Ebert know more about movies in general than guys like Steven Spielberg. Critics spend a hell of a lot more time watching every movie in the universe than directors ever do. Artists and performers spend most of their time in a pretty narrow niche of their industry, focusing on their own projects for months if not years.

Which might be relevant if either Punk or Jericho trained at APW.

Or any of the proposed matches with Brock, for that matter. He had a big feud with Taker, a big match with Rock, and various stuff with Cena. It'd be nice if they could come up with something different to do. Brock/HHH might be interesting; the match would probably suck, but at least it's one they've never done before. Cena/Taker makes sense; and frankly they should probably end the streak there, considering that we have no idea if Taker is physically capable of even continuing to do his one match per year. Austin/Punk makes a lot of sense and would probably be awesome. Rock/Brock I dunno about; why put the two megastars into one match together, instead of spreading their rub around to some other guys? I'd rather see, just to pick a random example, either one of those guys face Orton or Batista or whomever just to get some fresh matchups. EDIT: hey, I just had a weird idea. What about DX vs Rock & Sock? I know it would never happen because of the mutual backstage enmity between the two sides, but it would be a kinda fascinating story. It's the two biggest superteams of the modern era, facing off for the first and last time. And there's plenty of shooty backstage stuff they could put into the promos, since the company is so fond of doing that nowadays. Since it's a "best friends 4ever" tag match, it would both give a good kayfabe excuse for Shawn to have a one-off comeback match, and also let Foley have one last big match in an environment where his weaknesses and health issues could be carefully hidden.

I saw that guy have some watchable-enough matches on the indy circuit, so it's not like he couldn't have been carried by capable workers. TNA just didn't even try. Monty Brown wasn't exactly an experienced ring general.

Has Bryan been doing any of his old shticks like "I've got til FIVE, ref!" or his "whooooooa!" bridging surfboard? If not, he really needs to bring those back. It would perfectly fit his current smarmy, constant-shit-eating-grin character.

It's totally a money thing. WWE has been in a state of quiet desperation for years now; they know they need to build new draws, but it's like they've forgotten how or are afraid to try. With Brock, they're getting the single biggest draw in MMA history and hoping that he'll bring along some new/returning fans. Will it work? Who knows.

You're forgetting, MMA = Pro Wres. His time in UFC counts.

She would've been on the show regardless. Who else would they put on the heel side of the inevitable divas match? The only time Beth hasn't wrestled on Mania since she joined the company (besides when she was injured) was last year when the company was making LayCool the focus of the division. Beth's basically the top female heel in the company, she was going to be on this card whether Menounos was there or not. Not remotely the same. Cena's loss was a case where other wrestlers ran in, beat the shit out of John, and then threw Federline's corpse on top for the pin. That's not Cena "jobbing", it's not even close. Maria Mennuuuunnooozz cleanly pinned Beth Phoenix in the middle of the ring 1-2-3. Not really, because this was a really strange choice for a "celebrity" wrestler. Menounos is not exactly a household name; I'd never even heard of her before this. So the "she's so famous they just HAD to use her" excuse they had with Snooki doesn't apply. She's certainly got zero in the way of athletic credentials or badass aura, so this isn't even close to Lawrence Taylor or Floyd Mayweather or hell, even Mr T. Then there was the way the match was structured. I forget who, but someone else here already pointed out how weirdly it was booked: Menounos took the long heat segment... and then shortly afterward was there waiting for Kelly's hot tag... and then got the finish. Huh? This is a non-athlete with broken ribs. Why the hell was she in there for so long? This should've been like the Snooki match last year, with the celeb guest just doing one or two brief spots and little else. Menounos spent at least a solid three or four minutes in the ring, which was way too long. She certainly couldn't pull off any impressive moves which would've justified her inclusion. And the whole thing sends a general message of "any random actor from any random TV show can totally kick our wrestlers' asses, even if they've got serious injuries before the match!". ...why is all this Mania talk in the 24/7 Roundtable thread? Vic made a post yesterday that looked like he accidentally put it in the wrong thread, and it's been going ever since.

Considering that painful looking suplex-to-the-floor he took flat on his back last night, I wonder how much of that was Punk selling and how much was "motherfuckin' ow, that's still tender..."

It was Diego Corleone, wasn't it? Just try to find this guy on Youtube and see if he's worth mocking or not.

Problem is, he's as immobile as he is immovable. And how can you seriously talk about "credibility" when the majority of his offense was just having the heels bounce themselves off his belly?

Vince would have to put his foot down with himself first. It felt like there was at least a solid hour of filler crap on the show which had nothing to do with wrestling. All the awful rap bullshit was the big example, but there was plenty of time being wasted with self-congratulatory video packages and comedy segments and sponsor shilling and all kinds of junk. Anecdotal experience: HHH/Taker was by far the most over match with the group of guys I watched the show with. They totally bought the nearfalls, winced (in a good way) at the chairshots, and ate up the drama in general. Even a first-time viewer who'd never watched wrestling before was incredibly into that shit.

It wasn't delayed selling, Richards hit him again and then he went down. More of a Fighting Spirit~! spot than a "I'm gonna ignore the fact that you just head-dropped me until after I level you with this clothesline" spot.

I love how Nash is the one guy who didn't bother to wear a tie.

Pretty sure he owned that Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling indy a few years back, but I dunno if he ever had the controlling interest in any actual territories.

Check the cover closer: it's written by RD Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez. Bryan's notoriously weak memory could explain a lot of that.

ROH has been trying this shit for years now; why can't they ever learn to get it right?