Mad Dog

Lesnar was the only post 2000's WWF-only produced guy I really enjoy from the matches I've seen. The only legit really good worker that came from the WWF manufactury to me. I think Shelton Benjamin was at one point but they really beat him down until he completely sucked by the end of that run.

Oh. Opps... I thought that was in 1988 for some reason.

To respond to whoever was comparing it to cartoonish violence like Wile E. Coyote. I didn't talk about Hogan messing with Sherri, Lawler punching out a different valet every Monday night, the Dudleys putting Mae Young through a table or Tommy Dreamer piledriving Francine. I mean not agree with those but I tend to agree with you, it's cartoon violence and in no way real. The Austin Stunner was different from all of those over examples I just mentioned. Why? Because a month or two before he laid Keibler out with that Stunner he was in fucking handcuffs for smacking around his real life wife Debra. That's why it goes beyond being a cartoon. It was offensive because they were glorifying him laying her out when he was having very real legal problems because he was abusing his wife. Had he not been beating the shit out of his wife, I wouldn't have given a crap about it.

I remember really liking that Flair/Windham television time limit draw and loving Luger/Windham vs. Anderson/Tully from that time period. Maybe I'm remembering the Flair/Windham draw through rose colored glasses.

Lesnar, I feel, was probably the best worker on the WWE roster by the time he had left the company. He was everything that Angle was supposed to be and more. Sure, he wasn't a great talker which is ironic because he's a great talker in the UFC and sells PPVs by just shit talking his opponents. Back to the Angle comparison. Lesnar got it. He understood he had to sell, he understood keeping it in his pants and he just had a good grasp of the psychology to wrestling. He was a great heel, he was a good face. Angle always worked his smartest matches when he was working Lesnar. That's just my opinion on his 2 or 3 years in the WWE though. He's very similar to Magnum TA. He was in the business for a few years but he made a huge impact and was performing at a high level in a relative short period of time.

Benoit was my absolute favorite from about 1999 till his World Title reign ended. He had gotten really painful to watch towards the last couple years of his career though. I've changed my minds on a lot of guys the last couple of years but I haven't been able to bring myself to actually watch a Benoit match since he murdered his family. A little off topic, my biggest flip flops recently have been Bret Hart and the Ultimate Warrior. I've found Hart to be predictable and overrated to a degree and I've found that Ultimate Warrior has a little more merit as a worker than he gets credit for.

This match is just so bizarre. You have 4 guys that were all kind of in this transitional phase thrown together in a match. I have the episode where Savage picked Perfect as his tag team partner. There was some really great build up for it. I haven't watched the actual match in awhile but I remember it kind of sucking.

I'll throw it out there: I would rather watch Undertaker have shitty matches with generic fat asses during the early to mid 90s than anything he's done in the last decade.

Interesting that you list Dynamite and then state your preference for New Japan. Care to elaborate a bit? I had a really good reply to this and then the board flipped out. So here's round two at trying to answer. I like the Tiger Mask matches with DK. Well, two of them at least, I remember hating one. I've enjoyed a couple of Stampede matches that I've dug up here and there. But mostly, I find him a little predictable but good. By the time the British Bulldogs rolled around... I kind of feel Davey Boy was carrying that team the entire time. I just don't see why he gets all of the hype and devotion heaped upon him that he does. Sure, he's good, but lots of guys are really good. New Japan vs. All Japan. I find that, outside of the All Japan main events, that the shows tend to be dull and forgettable. I feel that New Japan shows feature a greater variety of match types and personalities while All Japan can be a little tedious. I tend to watch entire shows and New Japan, to me, does better top to bottom cards while All Japan is top heavy. I personally, dislike hour long matches. I dislike how head droppy that All Japan gets as the 90s wore on. Generally, I like Mutoh, Chono, Hashimoto and Tenzan more than I like Misawa, Kobashi, Taue, Kawada, etc. I feel like more of my needs as a fan were met coming out of New Japan shows than I do All Japan. I also got into New Japan in the early 2000s because of all the guys working WCW. I watched a ton of WCW through the later 90s and I really enjoyed the Chono/Muta vs. Steiners feud in 97, I enjoyed Chono and Tenzan through their various appearances in 98 and I was always excited to see Liger pop up on shows throughout. I was also fascinated when Scott Norton returned in 1998 with the IWGP Title and the announcers were hyping it up as a big deal. So I started with New Japan, really liked it, then I branched out to All Japan and really didn't care for it as much.

Honestly, the best Mil Mascaras work I've seen is in the WWWF in the 70s. He's fairly good at working the headlock and then brawling. His Mask 10 match with the Destroyer was pretty good. He had a really good match with Superstar Billy Graham for the WWWF Title. But it's more popular to blindly hate on everything Mil Mascaras than to like him. For me: Dynamite Kid Riki Chosu All Japan in general, I just like New Japan more the Miz - he'll always be that annoying twat from Tough Enough to me Randy Orton Batista Also every big time indy worker out there. Honestly, if I watch indy work, I watch NWA Anarchy or more southern based indies. They don't do the wankfest crap that RoH and more northern and western indies fall in to.

The Austin situation was far worse because he had just recently been arrested for beating his wife Debra. Take that context into the Stacy Stunner and it's one of the most disgusting things the WWE has ever done.

If you check out the Wrestling Gold set, Bockwinkel's matches on there are all pretty good and they all fall in the 45-49 age range for him. Bockwinkel also had a fairly good UWFi match with Billy Robinson when he was pushing 60 and was still moving pretty well.

Smothers works some local Ohio promotions and he's washed up.

Bockwinkel was probably a better worked at 45 than he was at 30. He was having consistently good matches well into his 50s.

Bischoff treated Halloween Havoc as the second biggest show and Starcade as the biggest show. The two biggest payoffs Bischoff ran were at Starcade with Hogan/Piper and Hogan/Sting. If you go a little past his reign, Goldberg lost his first match at Starcade.

I would argue it was worse. I think Hogan skirted that line and gray area with how he treated Sherri while I feel that Lawler was way over the line. I tried to get on the Online service for the WWE and of course they got rid of pretty much every episode of Superstars on the site. So I can't find the clip of HTM and McMahon/Piper. I think it had to do with the Orient Express and they were being very anti-Japanese and HTM kept saying "come on guys, we're in a global society, leave them alone."

Starcade followed by Halloween Havoc. Those shows have longer history and in the case of Starcade it was the first big show.

In fairness to Hogan, I've seen Lawler punch out several female valets before Hogan ever dreamed of doing it.

I'll look it up when I get home from work.

Every babyface was a dick to some extent. I was watching an episode of Superstar recently and HTM was at one point playing the heel by going against the racist sentiments of McMahon and Piper.

How can you say that about the Skyscrapers after watching Bash 89? The fans were booing Sid for tagging out, chanting for him and going crazy every time he did something.

St. Louis did that with Wrestling at the Chase. They did a lot of shows at the Chase Park Plaze Hotel, hence the name. There is a book titled Wrestling At the Chase which is an excellent read but it only discusses this aspect briefly from what I remember.

Cornette throws a ridiculously good worked punch too.

Since the Briscoes were brought up. They have to be without a doubt, my least favorite tag team that gets massive hype on the internet. Jay and Mark are the embodiment to me of everything that is wrong with indy wrestling in the United States today. They lack flexibility, they can't keep it in their pants during a match, they don't sell well, etc. I've never seen the big deal with them even back to their CZW days.

In MMA, Genki Sudo tapped Butterbean in a match. Sudo weighs 155 lbs. when he fights. Butterbean weighs around 400 lbs.