Jingus

Which, in itself, is kinda sexist. Such an attitude implies that women are incapable of defending themselves. That may be true of your average battered housewife, but female wrestlers are portraying characters who are supposed to be badass warriors. Is it too difficult to believe that, say, Cyborg couldn't knock the shit out of plenty of male MMA fighters in her weight class? As usual, wrestling is far behind the times. Look at modern action movies. It's very common to see female characters who are kicking the fuck out of male characters. It's a commonly accepted part of today's pop culture, and has been for years. But since wrestling still has this bizarre desire to be seen as more "real" than other fictional performance arts, it clings to the old sports traditions even when there's no longer any reason to do so. We're long decades past the point when wrestling became regarded as a cartoonish joke in our society; trying to go back to the industry's carny roots is something which shouldn't even be discussed as a serious possibility.

Says who? Women have won men's belts in almost every major company in the past dozen years. There's no rules saying it can't happen. It's not even remotely comparable, but not because of different genders. It's because Cena's is sadly as close to a real world belt as we have in these modern times, and Moolah's was a vanity belt that she personally owned and controlled.

I'd be interested in hearing exactly why Will doesn't like to watch women wrestle. I can understand sometimes just rejecting an entire category of stuff; I usually don't want to watch midget matches, for example. Yes, even including the talented lucha minis. I just find the whole freak-show aspect of such matches to be terribly off-putting. (Although I did eventually get used to Hornswoggle.) But since women comprise a helluva lot bigger percentage of the general population than little people do, it's not an even comparison. Is this a bad time to mention that my dream "if I ever happen to run into a rich money-mark who will happily bankroll whatever I want" promotion would be a company in which men and women freely and commonly wrestle each other, competing for the same belts, and are generally portrayed as equals?

Ticket price inflation is also a factor. How much did it cost to attend those shows in the depressed eras you mentioned? I bet it's a hell of a lot less in today's dollars than the prices they're charging for PPVs. Plus, there wasn't nearly as much competition on the entertainment front. Drawing great houses or ratings is easier to do when there are only three or four TV stations on the air.

It would actually be kinda interesting to hear Russo's specific philosophy on some of this stuff, IF he could resist the temptation to turn it into yet another rant about how brilliant he is and how all his critics are big ol' meanies. But some of these are just laughable. Aside from "co-host a local radio show which bashes the WWE so badly that Vince eventually bribes you into betraying your partner and turning it into a sock puppet for the company", what exactly does Vinnie Roo have to offer here? Well, if he's a legit genius on anything, it's this part. I'm amazed he has the balls to claim this, considering that his writing has been a mathematically proven anti-draw for most of his career. Nothing says "pay this brilliant writer to teach you how to write!" like a glaring grammatical error in their tagline.

Andre/Snuka vs Piper/Schultz is a lot of fun too.

Douglas was arguably doing the best stuff in his whole career at that point, in terms of matches and promos. If they just wanted him to go away, I'm not sure why they would've wanted that. Yeah, there were several fan run-ins during his early heel reign. However, I'm not sure "the fans tried to attack him" is the best barometer, since that varies wildly from territory to territory. In some places it almost never happened, in others it was a nightly occurance.

I've seen a bunch of Rockers/Brainbusters matches, and for me they all blur together. Good stuff, but awfully repetitive from match to match.

Actually, I wonder about what effect that'll have on this generation of young fans. They don't have anything to compare it to, and are unaware that having a lead announcer who completely shits all over the entire show and buries all the wrestlers and storylines is not how it's usually done. I know it's off topic, but, serious question: why has the WWE continued with Heel Cole for so goddamned long? Usually when they try something like this, they do it for a few weeks and then drop it. This shit has been going on for two years straight! Clearly it's not working, since the numbers have dropped and dropped ever since they started it. Why are they so stubborn in clinging to their brilliant plan of having the commentary for every show being so hideous that nobody could possibly want to listen to it? In fact, the whole company seems oddly heel-dominated in recent times. Last year's Mania main event ended with a DCO-restart-run in-interference-Heel Wins!, which is something that should be unthinkable from a booking standpoint (unless Rock/Cena does a MONSTER buyrate, like best-of-all-time numbers).

I just rewatched Bret/Sting from Havoc '98, and oh boy is that a piece of crap. Probably worse than any TNA Sting match. It starts with some pointless Zybysko stalling. Both men look slow and lethargic, like they just don't give a damn and don't wanna be there. Sting's shine period is incredibly boring, in no way does he look like a fired-up babyface who wants to kick his opponent's ass. Bret's offense is as crisp and snappy as ever, but in between moves he's just kind of strolling around the ring for no reason, not looking remotely like he's in any kind of fight and projecting little other than petulant boredom. The dreaded rear chinlock makes an extended cameo. There's no flow or psychology, they're just doing random moves and not selling anything other than "man, I'm so tired" kind of selling when they're on defense, especially Sting. There's a little bit of weak Attitude floor brawling as a concession to the times. Dull dull DULL. And then there's the referee shit; jesus, I don't think I've seen two professionals of this caliber do SUCH bad work with the ref. First of all, they awkwardly structure a brass knux spot where the ref is clearly looking right at the weapon several times before he's supposed to notice it. (The knux get thrown away and nobody gets hit with them, which Anton Chekov could tell you is a bad idea.) Then he's looking right down at Sting's torso when Bret hits a supposedly-invisible low blow from behind when the ref can obviously see Bret's fist. Then they have a lame ref bump, where Sting swings his elbow kinda somewhere not really near the official's head and the dude drops to the mat like he's been shot. Bret provides the only worthwhile highlight of this fiasco by immediately dropping a leg on the back of the ref's head, just to be a dick. Then, an amazing thing happens. The ref is stretched out in the center of the ring... but Sting and Bret have Stuff To Do and apparently don't think that getting the unconscious dude out of the way is important. They leave him laying there and run spots right over him! First they do an irish whip/attempted stinger splash spot where they both have to leap over the guy's body, which is bad enough. And then, Sting just stops selling for a moment (right after he'd just gotten kicked in the face) to visibly check on the referee. What?! At this point, Bret and Sting do maybe the least professional thing I've ever seen either man attempt: they do a fucking superplex when the ref is still laying in the middle of the ring! You can see Bret kinda scrunch his body up to try and avoid contact, but his ass still lands right on the ref's feet. An astonishingly stupid spot. No idea what the HELL anyone involved was thinking. If some idiot kid in training class did that, he'd be on the receiving end of a furious lecture and then be viciously stretched for the rest of the day. You expect more from BRET FUCKING HART than some garbage yardtard shit like this, that could've EASILY dealt serious injuries to both him and the referee. And Bret even gets up first, when he was the guy on the receiving end of the move! After that idiocy, Sting does a stinger splash and "hits his head on the turnbuckle" to knock himself out; this splash looked nearly identical to every other one he's ever done, and it made no sense why he dropped down selling it. In fact, the whole spot makes no sense; why would Sting knock himself out while doing one of his own patented maneuvers? It's not like Bret dodged or anything, he just remained motionless and took the move. And then Bret gingerly "beats" Sting with a baseball bat (why not go back to the previously-established brass knuckles, which Bret could work a hell of a lot easier than a fuckin' bat?) and puts him in the sharpshooter. This is the first time this hold has even been attempted in this match; why the hell didn't they play up the fact that both guys use the same finsiher and do some spots based on that fact? The ref wakes back up and checks Sting in a really awkward manner, raising and dropping the arm in one way on the first check and then differently on the other two, which was confusing enough that a friend watching with me thought the ref had only checked twice. Christ almighty, no, that was not good. Not in any way, except for Botchamania footage.

What? Where? When? HOW? ...I must remind myself that nowadays Vader is a slow, old, morbidly obese fellow who only seems to wrestle when he's tagging with his son (and he usually lets the kid do most of the work), so I must not get my hopes up. But still. BIG VAN VADER versus THE NECRO BUTCHER. Holy fucking shit. What wondrous times we live in.

Uh. When? Because I don't think I've ever seen such a dramatic before/after contrast in ring skills as there was with Sting after his gimmick change. Most of the time he looked like he'd completely given up and was just running through the motions. (Especially memorable was his godawful performance at Halloween Havoc '98, when he dragged the worst match I've ever seen from Bret Hart.) Every once in a while he'd seem to wake up and have a better-than-expected match with random folks like DDP or Sid, but mostly it's like it wasn't even the same guy. Oddly, it seems like he tries harder in TNA than he did in late-90s WCW, but by then his body was shot and you could tell that he couldn't do the stuff he wanted to anymore. ...that's actually a damn good point. I'm not nearly as high on Luger as many here are, but yeah, those matches with 'Berg were way better than I expected.

On one hand, I'm fairly certain that move was invented before Santo was born, so it's a ludicrous claim. On the other, we live in a world where Paris Hilton somehow managed to legally trademark such an incredibly common phrase as "That's hot", so who the fuck knows.

Not just lucha, various Southern promotions have a long tradition of evil masked medics and whatnot.

Look at it this way. When's the last time that a big tough wrestler beat up a helpless non-wrestler, in the backstage area of a big corporate promotion? I'm trying to think of any other recent examples, and failing. Take out the "Bubba is a dickfaced douchebag who deserves to be nailed to a cross" factor, and we're left with a big scary behemoth who sucked-punched and assaulted a short fat old guy who clearly wasn't remotely capable of defending himself. That sort of thing just isn't done in modern bigtime television wrestling.

Then I can't think of anything, because pretty much all the major examples were from devastating real-life injuries. It's more common for them to have weaknesses in psychology or tactics; i.e., a spot that rarely works or an attempt at something which frequently gets reversed. I'm up for identifying some of those too. Flair is the obvious one, what with his attempts to climb the top rope usually ending with him getting tossed off. And his finisher was a weakness all by itself; half the time his figure-four attempt would end with him kicked off or rolled up. And whenever he was a heel, having the babyface turn over in the hold and reverse the pressure was almost inevitable. Really, it was an incredibly poorly-protected finisher, considering how rarely he ever beat anyone except jobbers with it. Anyone ever wrestling Hogan seemed to have a weakness of going completely retarded whenever he started hulking up. WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO PUNCH HIM NOW. Kick him in the nuts, or run away, or anything besides punching him. I guess Hogan usually called the whole match, because I can't remember the hulk-up sequence ever varying from the standard model. Sometimes guys with high-risk offense will sell the risk, but unfortunately not many guys try. Jeff Hardy is the primary example, where often in character he'll go for a stupid spot because he thinks it'll be really cool and then ends up crashing and burning. Like in the Hardys/E&C cage match from 2000, where he could escape the cage but can't resist the temptation to hit a swanton on Edge instead. Occasionally, Mick Foley's masochism becomes part of the psychology. He'll either just sit there and take a beating which he should really try to avoid, or he'll do some dumb painful garbage spot despite the fact that it often hurts him just as bad as the other guy. Does Terry Funk ever sell his eye whenever he was wrestling anyone besides Lawler? Because anytime those two wrestled in the last thirty years, they usually did a spot referencing it; but I don't remember many others. ...does George Steele's tendency to get distracted from his opponents by the tasty enticing turnbuckle pad technically count for this?

Then I can't think of anything, because pretty much all the major examples were from devastating real-life injuries. It's more common for them to have weaknesses in psychology or tactics; i.e., a spot that rarely works or an attempt at something which frequently gets reversed.

Nash's knees had become so infamously bad that their weakness was made into a storyline, multiple times in the past few years. And didn't Kawada sometimes sell German suplexes a bit harder than everything else?

Wasn't there a report of a suicide attempt at some point as well, after she left TNA? Between that and this and occasional other stuff (beating up Bubba the Love Sponge backstage) it's looking like she's got some rather serious psychological issues which need a lot of treatment.

I thought it made sense from a booking standpoint. Benoit won the belt off HHH, so it would be weird to follow that up with a Benoit/HBK match instead of HHH getting the traditional rematch at the next PPV. And since it was in Montreal, the obvious perfect finish was having Michaels tap out to Benoit's sharpshooter (with the hilarious addition of a ref bump, causing Earl Hebner to run in and make the call). So a triple threat rematch was the most logical thing to book there.

Ditto. Also: Briscos/WGTT again? Plus the millionth Davey/Eddie match. Why does ROH always do this, running a feud into the ground long past the point where practically anyone wants to see it?

I thought they started off as perfectly tolerable gimmick brawls, like Shawn's comeback match at Summerslam '02. But as time went on, they kept making the matches longer and more EPIC~! and shit like that. Those got pretty hard to watch, not just the length but also because Trips is nowhere near the sort of big bruising monster it takes to justify one of HBK's patented Fighting Spirit~! underdog performances. But they did improve about a thousand percent when they threw in Benoit as a third dance partner, those three-way matches have held up much better than the HHH/Michaels singles bouts. Oh god yes. 52 FUCKING MINUTES, half of it spent with them motionless on the mat. I call that one "lay down and sell in a cell". It's easily the worst HIAC match that either man has ever had; heck, it might be the worst Cell match period, if 1.you don't count Kennel From Hell and 2.you don't hate Bossman/Taker as much as most people.

I've never understood all the hate for Santino out there. Well, if you don't find him funny, I guess that's just the subjective nature of humor and there's not much to be said about that. But he "plays his role" pretty perfectly as the goofy underdog who can trip up even the best heels if they're not on their game. He's a great seller, able to be convincing as both a total pussy whom anyone can beat up and a tough little bastard whose comedic attitude hides some legit threat. Basically he's the world's best Disco Inferno. His weird offense is a highlight, sticking out as unique and different in a company where far too many guys tend to wrestle like identical clones. Hell, he even got me to enjoy goddamned Kozlov when the big doofus was acting as Santino's Linderman-style bodyguard.

Actually, I thought the Eugene program was one of his very worst examples of HHH's real-life dickishness. Dinsmore got amazingly over with that gimmick in an incredibly short amount of time, but he was never quite the same again once Trips quickly stepped in to leech his heat away by beating the shit out of the poor retarded kid over and over again. Hunter's amazingly one-sided feuds are a staple of his career (Jericho, Booker, Kane, Flair, RVD, etc) but there was absolutely no reason for him to step way down into the undercard just to kill off Eugene's popularity before it ever properly got started. Especially since it was promptly forgotten by the very next night when Trips got the title back and then spent the next year in-fighting with various members of his own stable.

How so? There's various ones I don't agree with (Rick Steiner, Balls Mahoney, Billy Gunn, etc) but the only one that seems outright laughable is putting Nash on the same level with Trips. HHH has been in at least a few matches that I'd call downright great, and countless more which were at least perfectly watchable; and has had a solid (though not spectacular) track record as a reasonably consistent draw. Nash has repeatedly proven to be a money-losing wonder who actively drives away the fans when he's on top, somehow manages to do fewer clean jobs than even Trips does, and I can pretty much count his good matches on my fingers. Other than that, Dylan's done a good job of at least explaining his reasoning behind his opinions.