Jingus

When were the Appreciation Night thingies first planned or announced? I think that bit's important. Because one of two odd things must have happened: either 1.they booked a bunch of appearances without asking him if he even wanted to do them, or 2.at some point after agreeing to these appearances, Bryan changed his mind.

Authorial intent... eh, I'm ambivalent on that one. On the one hand, almost any artistic work should be able to stand alone on its own merits. But it can sometimes really heighten my appreciation for something if I find out some interesting stuff about the artist's intentions in making the story. Of course, that can go BOTH ways, sometimes it backfires. James Cameron mentioning that Aliens was partially a Vietnam War parable was something which I thought added to my overall appreciation for that great film. In comparison, Ridley Scott's insistence that the main character in Blade Runner is actually a robot (despite zero effort from the movie towards such an interpretation) is something that muddles the overall story and makes it worse if you take it into consideration. So in that case I basically say "nah, Deckard's just a human" in order to enjoy things more. I think this is a good point that got overlooked: Cesaro, by WWE standards, should have never gotten as over as he did. A generic foreign heel, with no promo ability, with a very average look, with no gimmick beyond Wrestley McStrongman? There's no fucking way that guy should become popular with the crowd. It's a testament to Cesaro's talent, effort, and intelligence that he still conceived and executed a method to get over anyway.

No, I never did think that the steroid controversy was a newsworthy issue for public consumption. They're private citizens, it's not a real sport, it's nobody's business. No, different idea, because the Cosby deal is about accusations of criminal activity in which he attacked other people. It affects much more than just Bill himself.

How's that relevant? I'm talking about one particular match with one particular opponent, those are reviews of other matches with another opponent. Have you not seen the Summerslam match? Austin and Angle had a whole series of bouts which were all awesome, but that one was the best of 'em.

Sure, if he was a politician. But he's not. Public officials and people in positions of great power are the only group of people whose private lives and opinions should be fair game for scrutiny like this, because of the power they wield over everyday citizens. Not just some wrestler/actor/reality TV star/aging has-been. The public has zero right to know anything about his personal life that he doesn't specifically choose to disclose.

Angle's best singles matches are so much better than any Steiner singles match ever that it's a ludicrous comparison. Neither Rick nor Scott ever had a singles match in their entire life that was as great as the Stone Cold masterpiece from Summerslam 2001. Just contrast both Kurt and Scott's overlapping opponents: from Steve Austin to Booker T to Samoa Joe, Angle got better matches out of them than Steiner did. Hell, I'd argue that shockingly great Flair/Angle match on Raw from 2005 was better than Flair/Steiner at Clash 14.

I remember liking this a lot, more than the rather dry Danielson/Liger singles match from the night before. It's one of the few times I've seen Low-Ki not trying to act like an invincible monster, he was actually really fun as a can't-get-it-together goofball in his mismatched team with AmDrag.

My only real problem with Owens is that I don't think his look works. I usually hate the phrasing of "too indy" used as a complaint about people working in the WWE, but for once I think it fits. He looks exactly like someone from the crowd got in the ring, especially in his "gear" which is just normal clothing. His physical shape doesn't help, but he could get around that with good gear; instead, his shit looks terrible. And that "he's one of the people" thing CAN work, the Sandman is one example; but Owens is a heel. It sends a subtle signal to all the guys in the audience who look like him that they're wrong to look like that.

The lack of money is irrelevant. If someone hands you a stolen diamond necklace, and you don't pay them for it, you still have no legal right to possess that necklace. "I didn't steal it" and "I didn't ask for it" and "I didn't pay for it" and even "I didn't know it was stolen" absolutely do not matter, it's still stolen goods and you have zero right to even hold onto it, let alone pass it along to others.

Showing any excerpts from such a tape shouldn't be considered legal; and any judge who rules it is should be disbarred. And how in the world could Gawker's method of obtaining a tape made without the party's knowledge or consent, violating their privacy in the most invasive manner possible, be considered legal?

"Well, your honor, that woman publicly talked about having sex with other men, so I was totally justified in raping her."

The simple fact is that "stealing private footage and releasing it yourself" is incredibly illegal, period, no matter what. And it doesn't matter that Gawker didn't technically steal it themselves, it was still stolen goods and they admittedly knew it. And it doesn't matter if Hogan knew the camera was filming or not, that still doesn't give Gawker or anyone else permission to do anything with that footage. Gawker had ZERO right to even legally possess a copy of that tape, let alone show any part of it to anyone else.

Absolutely none of the above bothers me. The "news" media needs to stay much further out of the private lives of any celebrity who isn't a public official, period.

Honestly, I don't care if this limits the press's ability to gossip about the private lives of celebrities in the entertainment media. I think that the freedom of the press in that area has become a tyranny which tramples over those people's basic right to privacy.

I'm more in the "why even bother hiring her?" camp. I've never understood why you'd ever have a manager at ringside who can't take ordinary bumps, and it's not like Liz was any damn good at talking.

He (she?) could've at least told us who these "people" were, since countless famous wrestlers have gone on public record with first-hand stories about Haku's toughness.

Yeah, in a perfect world, sure. But our legal system in this country is notoriously inefficient, biased, and inconsistent. So I'd much rather worry about all the innocent people railroaded by the system before we get around to caring about the obviously-guilty ones.

GREAT call. Whatta fuckin' douchebag. I particularly loved that one part where some poor casting director is suggesting various trendy-but-talented actors to star in the upcoming Boondock Saints, and Duffy keeps arrogantly burying every single person she names in an awesomely condescending fashion, like some Youtube commenter who insists that everyone sucks and nothing is ever any good.

I don't feel sorry for Hogan, but I feel way less sorry for Gawker. And frankly I don't care how they lost the case or if the judge was too hard on them, they had it coming anyway. We've long needed stronger regulation on the paparazzi portion of the media in this country.

Ditto. I like Sheamus, nothing wrong with his work, but he suffers from some stuff that too many modern WWE stars suffer from. Their matches are so micromanaged by the promotion, with the script and the agents and the timing of the segments and the commercial breaks always happening the same way and the general in-ring rules of WWE Main Event Style and the requirements to hit so many signature moves to make the crowd pop and also a LONG list of various moves they aren't allowed to do for various reasons... with all this shit to worry about, way too many of the matches end up blurring together and looking like the exact same goddamn match every single night. Sometimes you'll have an exception, but Sheamus isn't a Daniel Bryan who is so brilliant that he can routinely find ways to work around the WWE's strict insistence on making the in-ring action as prefab and cookie-cutter as they possibly can.

Akiyama does have precisely one advantage over most of his AJPW-vet brethren: he's not always afraid to do some really goofy stuff by their standards. Like, I just saw the Misawa/Akiyama vs Hayabusa/Shinzaki from the RWTL '97. Shinzaki grabs Misawa for his "praying rope-walk" version of Undertaker's Old School where he walks two entire sides of the ring; but for some damn reason, he climbs up the wrong side and starts out walking practically right on top of Jun who's standing on the apron waiting for a tag. It's clearly a fuckup on Jinsei's part, like whipping a guy into his own corner during the heat, it's something that just makes no sense and you should never do. But in the half-second he has to react to this, Jun very quickly comes up with an interesting way to cover for Shinzaki's dumbassery. Rather than 1.disrupt the match with an uncalled audible by attacking the helpless idiot who randomly decided to stroll right past him, or 2.look like an idiot himself by going "well, the script says I'm not supposed to hit him now!" and standing there and doing nothing, Akiyama makes the inspired choice to 3.act freaked out by Shinzaki's move, looking startled and scampering down to the floor like he was surprised by a psych-out from an unpredictable madman of an opponent. "Holy shit, that guy almost stepped on my head when I was standing up, did you SEE that?!" is the general tone of his facial expression and body language. I don't think it was a planned spot, Shinzaki seemed like he simply wasn't paying attention and made a boo-boo, but Akiyama was generous enough to fix everything with a reaction of fright which I don't think you would've ever seen from your Misawas or Kawadas of the world.

I just went and watched it again and checked the timer myself: yep, 26 minutes, give or take a few seconds. I also thought it was less than 20, until I saw your comment and went "wait... how long WAS it?" and checked Wikipedia for the exact number.

You're right, it wasn't 30 minutes... it was 26 minutes. While I agree it didn't feel remotely like your standard HHH self-conscious epic, they put in the time. In terms of length, it ranked #4 out of 18 with Hunter's matches at Mania. Only the four-way at Mania 2000 and the back to back Undertaker matches went longer. Which I think is overall a glowing testament to Bryan's ability when he can make a longer-than-average Triple H match feel like a shorter-than-average Triple H match.

Watching this now for the first time in long years, I'd forgotten a bit that happens in the first five minutes. They totally go all RVD/Lynn by trading a bunch of low-level offensive moves in quick succession, sell practically none of them, and then hit the INDY POSE STANCE~! while the crowd applauds for their honor. I literally burst out laughing, you just don't expect to see that kind of nonsense in a main event Triple Crown title match from the 90s. EDIT: and just watching it in general, oh man, they clearly scripted SO many of these spots in the back, and probably rehearsed them in the ring before the show as well. The stuff they're doing and the speed with which they do it are blatant giveaways that these are cooperative, preplanned spots which don't even vaguely resemble a real fight. This is a night-and-day difference from the same guys' matches even just a few years beforehand, when they were much more spontaneous, improvisational, and generally just looked much less fake. EDIT2: maaaaaaan, if you're going to do THAT much work on the arm, then why have they completely forgotten about it by the end of the match? Towards the end, Misawa just stops selling it and is all like "hey, it's not like I'm NOT gonna repeatedly elbow him in the face with zero consequences, amirite?". Boo! Which is the same because the rest of the match, while feeling a bit contrived and self-conscious-epicy, is still very damn good. Misawa and Kobashi have a level of talent, skill, effort, and chemistry which makes it pretty impossible for them to have any singles match together which is less than three stars. And it was kinda cool to see them doing something different and more spotty than their traditional strike-fest. But GEEZ, that selling completely fucking disappeared by the end of the match as if Kenta had never once touched Mitsuharu's arm.

He suffers from being the young boy in perhaps the single greatest generation of talent that the industry has ever seen. I love Akiyama and he was in the top half of my list, but I'm not sure if I'd even rank him in a Top Ten AJPW Veterans list, the competition is just SO stiff in that particular category of wrestling. And it also doesn't help his general perception among us that he seemingly aged from "plucky underdog rookie" to "grumpy old fucker who beats up the plucky rookies" within the blink of an eye, with practically no transitional period of The Top Guy In His Prime in between. Over and over again, the booking kept going back to Misawa & Co. as the top stars whenever they felt like Jun just wasn't ready.