anarchistxx

From my local experience this is true. The turn started with The Rock coming in; people my age (20-23) began to watch as a nostalgia exercise, and those who already watched became a lot more open about discussing it. Facebook statuses on Sunday/Monday were all about Rock/Cena from a lot of people I know, and also about the Lesnar debut. These people either didn't watch from 2002-2011 and came back once they hit their early twenties and the buzz around Rock/Cena started, or watched on the quiet and the fact that they're more vocal about it now shows that WWE is possibly coming back into the mainstream. Most of these people will watch streams as well, so the trend may not necessarily show in ratings or buys. I don't they'll ever replicate the boom but they're in a very strong position now to gain momentum. To sustain it they'll need a couple of people to step up as serious breakout stars (to build the fresh, exciting matches with the old marquee names like Rock, Trips, Taker and Lesnar). CM Punk showed he possibly could last summer, yet he's stalled a little. Danielson probably won't become the mainstream star they're looking for. It's probably too late for Orton, who could do to take time off and change his character up on his return, him against Rock or Lesnar would have seemed like a huge match a few years ago.

Early reports put One Night Stand at a million buys, and I think it ended up doing less than 300,000, so I'm taking everything with a pinch of salt until the official numbers are out.

Haven't seen any of them since they aired, I just remember he was pulling out solid to good matches every week. There was a series of matches with Jimmy Yang (worked as 'Akio' that got a ton of love). Here's the first one with a crazy bump . I also remember some very entertaining matches with the likes of Chavo, Shannon Moore, Nunzio, Jamie Noble, and an awesome little trios match teaming with Kidman and Ultimo Dragon against Tajiri/Akio/???. They aren't world beaters, but they're nice little TV matches (like Henry/Punk), unless they've aged really badly. WWF in the 80s is mostly terrible anyway, so anything halfway decent stands out and gets overpraised. A sentence equally applicable to WWE in 2012. From what I've seen (admittedly little) and read (substantially more) in the last five years, WWE has increased the amount of decent television matches while decreasing the quality of the marquee matches. There's nothing really to suck you in emotionally on a WWE main event, mostly because the programs are booked so terribly. Punk/Cena from last year is probably the main exception, and you have to really put that down to the talent of the two guys. Having said that, I watched a couple of discs of 1996 TV from WWF recently (generally considered a bad year?) and the better Raw matches from that year easily beat out the ones I've seen from the last couple of years. So on both counts (regularly competent/entertaining television bouts and MOTY style main events) the quality is down. What really helps them (in my opinion) is the lack of great stuff going down in Japan and to some extent the indies. If All Japan had the amount of incredible workers and matches as it did in the 90s today, WWE would seem a lot more terrible. Ditto when Ring of Honor was on fire from 2003 to 2006, WWE stuff got judged a lot more harshly.

I know you're pretty much a WWE and Mark Henry fanboy Dylan, but no way was that Henry/Punk match anymore than good, and that's from someone who likes both workers. As has been stated, Nitro from 95 to maybe 98 and WWE ten years ago were putting on better matches than that every week that people just saw as pretty standard. It's like this whole Chris Masters/Superstars love, I went and watched a few of the recommendations since people got so high on the stuff and it was all reasonably standard fare, not even a patch on your circa-2005 Paul London Velocity match let alone up there with the best stuff of the year. Maybe I'm just a jaded cynical ex-fan but more likely it's that standards have dropped. And also that tastes have changed, no doubt, with people turning away from the superworkers with crazy high spots and huge movesets to more 'minimalist' matches that WWE style wrestling is so full of.

A summary of WWE PPVs in the UK; - Every show free to cable subscribers (with the Sky Sports package) up until 2002 - Between 1999 and 2001, four shows a year ran on terrestrial/basic television, Vengeance 2001 being the last of these - From 2002 onwards four of the events became PPV, although Royal Rumble was the only 'big four' event to make the switch the Sky Box Office - Around 2004 the free shows started getting phased out, until eventually about a couple of years later almost every show became PPV That's how I remember it anyway, I know for a fact I watched Wrestlemania XX for free and I believe Wrestlemania 21. The shows on terrestrial Chennel 4 did have adverts and thus must have been on some kind of time delay. It can't have been a huge delay though, as I recall staying up as a kid to watch Royal Rumble and I'm pretty sure it finished around 4AM which is standard time. I do remember there being some protests from kids groups that Royal Rumble 2000 was on terrestrial, what with Mae Young's tits and the brutal Triple-H/Cactus match.

I'm still pissed off they did a rerun of the Wrestlemania triple threat at Backlash 2004 instead of a straight Benoit/Michaels match. Not only would it have been fantastic in ring, the heat would have been off the charts, the Canadian crowd adored Benoit and despised Michaels, I always felt HHH was such a pointless addition to the mix, especially since he;d be wrestling Benoit one on one for the belt in the next month.

I just watched a match with Razor Ramon from Raw early in 1996, and it's hard to argue HHH isn't more than competent enough to warrant a midcard push at this stage. He bumps heavily, times the transitions well, looks good albeit unvaried on offence. He was entertaining to watch, which isn't something you can say about a lot of the guys in this thread. I know they usually stepped it up for Kliq v Kliq matches but it still shows he had it in him. I think the most important point in this thread is the one about him not accepting his limitations, and going for epic intense all the time. I remember a match with HBK at Taboo Tuesday in 2004 when Michaels had injured his leg beforehand. They worked a simple, relatively short match based around dogged legwork and a desperate comeback and it's really one of the best matches they had together, far better than the 30+ minute Last Man Standing and Hell In The Cell matches. Wrestling is subjective though, and the way in which Dylan comes at it seems to be different from a lot of people (judging by stuff he really digs). or maybe it's just because he's seen more than most people. I think you'd find very few casual viewers, and indeed very few forums who'd concur with his views on most of these guys being better than Trips, for whatever that is worth. It's intriguing to read him argue these contrarian opinions even if I've not really been persuaded by most of them.

You've clearly not read the DVDVR thread where people try to argue, with all seriousness, that Rosey of Three Minute Warning fame is a better worker than Shawn Michaels. On the subject of the Eugene feud I remember thinking it was pretty good at the time. It capitalised on Eugene getting very over very quickly and certainky wasn't all one sided, Eugene got his revenge by costing Trips the world title one time leading up to the well built match at Summerslam. The bout itself was nothing too special, pretty simple and effective for the most part though, and I'm not sure I buy that Eugene should have won it, since he was never going to be at the top as any more than a short lived novelty act. Cutting Orton's push off a month in was the bigger sin around that time, no reason at all that they couldn't have given Randy a longer time with the belt even if they felt he was initially bombing. The Orton victory over Benoit was superbly done and an excellent match (with a clean finish for once).

I find it hard to rate Triple-H; it's difficult to have any kind of objectivity either way about his ring or promo work because of all the backstage stuff and arguments that have been taking place for over ten years. One thing I do know is that when I watched as an 11 year old kid in 2000/2001 he didn't seem out of place up there with Austin/Rock/Taker etc, and that Austin/HHH 2/3 falls match was my favourite match before I started going on internet forums and getting exposed to other promotions and styles. I thought it was the coolest, most epic match I'd ever seen. So as someone watching objectively at that age I definitely perceived him as an ace guy, I loved his promos and enjoyed his matches. In that way I can totally buy how he is perceived by casual fans as an all time great, especially since he's been promoted as such and put in that position for years now. It's hard to ignore the years of terrible matches (even if he has his fair share of good work as well). I get the feeling if I'd watched Raw with any regularity since 2003 I'd be a lot harder on him, I've not had to suffer him shoved down my throat and have avoided most of the long promos and matches. Still, I have no problem saying he's not in a top hundred of all time (maybe not even three hundred), even if I think arguing that the likes of Hercules, Barbarian and D'Von Dudley are better is pretty ridiculous. Sure, they've not been in such strong positions to have good matches and angles, but there is a reason for that. I refuse to believe HHH's rise is purely down to him playing politics and the company he kept. Justin Credible didn't exactly get pushed to the moon because of his Kliq connections, and Trips was extremely over in 1998-2000, and not purely because of the way he was pushed, I think the crowd genuinely dug his act. Even if his long run on top from 2002 onwards can be put down to his connections, I think its a little unfair to suggest his initial push was nothing to do with his own merit. He was a solid worker and a solid promo, coming in at a time (1996) when WWF was somewhat short of both. Plus he always seemed loyal. Combined with his size, I think it's a no brainer that he'd have got a push around that period,

It's funny, my breaking point was not due to any embarrassing angle or scandal but due to simply saturation. I had these hundreds of unwatched DVDs in 2006/2007 that I'd be so excited to get, as well as the plethora of stuff appearing online with torrents and YouTube, and suddenly I didn't feel like watching any of it. When there's that much volume of stuff you always tend to go for the 'Best of all Time' type matches, angles and they invariably disappoint because of high expectations. When I was watching 06/03/94 and thinking how overrated it was was when I decided to give up the ghost for a while. If you can't get into the Best Match Ever then what hope is there? Plus it detracts from what got you in to wrestling in the first place, the weekly TV and varied promotions and characters. If every match you watch is a good match, it ceases to become a good match. You get complacent. I found I was more interested in the character than the wrestler, and the things that I dug were getting less and less. Plus, with WWE I'd been watching on and off for eight years since I was a kid and had the feeling I'd seen it all before. The breaking point I suppose was the number of boring stereotype characters (anti-USA foreigners like Renee Dupree or Kenzo Suzuki), the paint by numbers wrestling style and just general lack of innovation. The two champions meant I had to put up with title reigns from the likes of JBL and Booker-T and I wasn't even really a fan of Cena or Batista on top in terms of weekly television, even if they often brought out reasonable matches on PPV. At the same time, ROH had lost most stars, and with every match becoming an epic intense fest of a million kickouts I just got bored. Japan had declined, and I found that I was only interested in seeing guys like KENTA, Nakajima and various flippy juniors, with the heavyweight scene in AJPW, NJ and even NOAH becoming so boring and lacking in quality matches and interesting challengers. Individual angles were never a 'breaking point' for me as I just skipped past them. I'm pretty desensitized to the point where nothing ever shocked or disgusted me into giving wrestling up for life. A boring, characterless product is more offensive to me than one filled with moments of cringe.

You say that, but I don't think eleven year old me would dig John Cena in the way I dug Steve Austin at the time. It's not simply that we've all grown up and grown out of wrestling, if it was simply that then Cena and Orton would be getting the same pops as Rock, Austin and Mankind. I still enjoy Attitude Era stuff, I went back and watched a couple of Raw episodes in 2000 and it was exciting, unpredictable and almost entirely entertaining, even if the matches weren't always up to much. Almost everyone on the roster was over. And it's not simply nostalgia, that period of 96-01 was lighting in a bottle for mainstream US wrestling, especially for someone like me who enjoys a fast paced, character and angle driven show with a hot crowd.

The thing Heyman had going for him is that almost all of his wrestlers were colourful and with an identifiable gimmick. The wrestling style of ECW is clearly polarising, but the angles and characters made the promotion interesting. ROH doesn't have any of that, it's almost entirely made of landfill indie guys without charisma. Even the ring attire is so boring, hardly anyone can cut a promo, the storylines are featureless and by the book most of the time. So it relies entirely on the wrestling aspect to suck in the viewer, whereas ECW could appeal on a few levels. To be fair, I only ever watch their matches at a friend's house. He's a massive PWG nut. You tend to overlook the no selling and overuse of nearfalls if you're also socialising during the match, and just dig the cool moves and counters and innovative spots. I actually think the Bucks could make it quite big in WWE if they toned down their spots and were able to work within confinements. They;re relatively charismatic, and have a kind of Hardy Boyz vibe to them where girls will dig their looks and the guys will love the risk taking and impressive movesets. It's refreshing to me to see two teams like them and the Briscoes who are known predominantly as tag team wrestlers and have a ton of tandem offence etc, far more interesting than the trend these days towards throwing unconnected guys together and seeing if it sticks. If I was WWE I'd be reinventing a lot of these ex-main event guys into tag teams and rebuilding a division where teams stay together for a while and build a dynamic. I get the feeling dudes like Jack Swagger, Dolph Ziggler, Drew McIntyre, Del Rio, Wade Barrett and others would be much better in tag teams with a manager, they simply don't have the star power or uniqueness to make it as main event singles wrestlers, and there's no real midcard division anymore that you can hang around in for years. You don't seem to get guys like Greg Valentine or IRS anymore, solid hands who never have a shot at the world title but are content being in the middle of the card for years. These days people come in, get a big push, challenge for or win the World Title, lose it swiftly then are booked terribly to the point where they can't recover.

A fart gimmick just completely crosses the line in terms of being intelligence insulting and embarrassing. It's not funny, witty, leading to anything or even entertaining. The audience cringes, except maybe the preteen boys (and even that's not a given, think I'd have hated such an angle at that age). I haven't seen the full thing, only the segment at Elimination Chamber, but if anyone came in the room while I was watching such a scene I'd be fucking mortified. I think it goes way beyond the Attitude Era stuff (except maybe the Mae Young 'hand' incident), that was risque and often silly but not blatantly disgusting, demeaning, embarrassing etc etc. WWE and basement humour are the worst combination ever, and it's stuff like this (combined with the boring, formulaic nature of most of the 'serious' stuff) that stops people like me from ever watching anything apart from the pimped matches and stacked PPVs.

Wonder if things like the Samoa Joe matches are going to find their way on there? They're obviously some of his best matches, but with Joe in TNA and ROH presumably owning the rights you wouldn't think they'd make it. Benoit's DVD was the only one I can remember that had a lot of stuff not already in the WWE tape library. The ***** hour draw won't be on there for time reasons, would be nice to see the All Star Extravaganza match included at least (although a lot of the cool stuff in that requires you to have seen the first two matches). It's funny because at the time of the Joe v Punk series, I remember a lot of people saying "Samoa Joe might better this, but no way will CM Punk ever have a better match", and actually since 2005 or so its gone completely the other way. It was Joe we were seeing peaking in those bouts rather than Punk. Should be a fun set anyway, worth a DL at least. Be interesting to see if he really does have full creative control over it or whether that's just the PR line to stay in gimmick.

The lack of star power in ROH now compared to 2003-2006 is stunning. A lack of exciting/interesting talent as well. Back then there were a ton of guys who even if they divided opinions seemed like big names in the context of the scene they were in. Maybe I'm out the loop, but the only people I'd be interested in seeing off thos card are The Briscoes (because they're a brilliant promo, fun gimmick and a 'real' tag team not just two guys thrown together) and the Young Bucks (I'm sure they get a lot of stick for being flippy floppy spot monkeys but I've found them really innovative and exciting everytime I've come across them). I turned on Ring of Honor in 2006/2007 or so, as I couldn't stand how every match on the show was worked like an epic main event, with schmucks like charisma vacuums like BJ Whitmer busting out crazy headrops with a million near falls in the second match on the show. After an hour of it you become desensitized and it really ruins any chance of the big main event matches meaning something.

Probably my favourite Bret match. Feels very intense and heated, it's a great example of how blood can really help a match, as it steps up a notch after Bret gets busted, and he brings out an aggressive side that you don't often see. Both guys bring out pretty much everything in their movesets, it all fits together beautifully and is paced perfectly. Has the feeling of a champion desperately battling through the pain to win, matches like this give the belt so much more value. Incredibly compelling match, believable near falls, has everything you can want from a mainstream US style main event.

Surprised how much I enjoyed this, especially given that I hate a lot of mid 90’s WWF stuff. Efficient pace throughout, everyone gets a reasonable showcase and it was less of a shabby clusterfuck than it could have been. Agree that the commentary got annoying quick though. On a more bizarre note I found it helped a lot that the ring was a brighter colour, most of the aesthetics in WWF around this time were so dull and colourless that it seemed to take away from the match quality. I always felt ROH suffered from their black ring, it made everything too dark, and not in a cool, underground type of way.

Watched this today for the first time in years, only the second time I've viewed it at all actually from what I can remember. It's obviously awesome, I was more involved last time I watched it (jumping out of the chair sort of stuff), but that's probably because I watched it in chronological context, working through the 90s All Japan as I was at the time. My personal favourite moment is when Kawada has Akiyama in the sleeper and Taue strolls in and stands guard, giving Misawa such a disdainful look as he stands stoic on the apron. Taue/Kawada are definitely the coolest motherfuckers ever to team together in terms of the mannerisms and the way they carry themselves. I actually struggled to get engaged for the first half (appreciating it for the art that it is without being especially involved), until the chokeslam to the floor really sucked me in. Everything after that is about as perfect as a match can be really. Not my favourite match of all time though, not sure what is now as it's been so long since I've watched most of the stuff. Is 90s All Japan still regarded as the Greatest Of All Time period these days, or has the proliferation of new footage superseded it? It certainly seems a more complex playing field for the new wrestling obsessive, when I was getting into wrestling online in a deep way it was pretty much All Japan 90s that was the go-to wrestling for the smark discovering Puroresu.

I remember watching this a few years ago and thinking what an excellently conventional match this was. They kept it simple and built most of it around the enziguiri angle; easy to understand, well executed, everything was crisp and clean and tidy. I also liked that Shawn won completely clean with a straight run through of all his signature stuff. It was comprehensive, put his arsenal over well and was the perfect way to build him for the Wrestlemania match with Bret. Strong booking overall, nobody seems to get protected that way anymore which is probably why the main event scene right now is such a jumble, and very few people feel like a legitimate threat, Even people who get built properly nowadays towards their big moment like Mark Henry soon have the rug pulled from under them and it's hard to recover from it.

I like reviewing projects like this, but is it really necessary to have three long paragraphs recapping what actually happened in the match move for move? Might be a personal preference, but I prefer to read thoughts and analysis rather than just a description of content. In film terms, that read more like a plot synopsis than a review.

I'm not really sure about Helms, he got plenty of mid-level pushes in WWE (mini feud with The Rock at one point...) and was a very over semi-novelty act. I'm think he got to exact correct level he should have done. Kidman I'll agree with, he had a real charisma and star quality about him in WCW and quickly lost that. Probably didn't help that he bulked up so become less of an athletic machine. His tag team and subsequent feud with Paul London were high points, they maybe should have kept them together as it had legs. Just a shame it took a botched SSP for them to do anything interesting with him. Raven as well, as a guy who had tons of charisma and a unique look, over everywhere he went and pretty much wasted in WWE. I know he gets a ton of stick, but for sheer entertainment he's one of my favourite guys to watch in both ECW and WCW.

This was a fantastic series as I recall. Pretty sure there was a 2/3 Falls match to end the feud at some point as well which is well worth watching. Smackdown around that period was awesome in general actually, great balance between the wrestling (Guerrero, Benoit, Lesnar, Mysterio etc) and the goofy storylines (Undertaker, Zach Gowen). Vengeance 2003 is one of the best PPVs they ever did.

Hunter Golden is 'Towney 007' on message boards, and posts at DVDVR and various other places, so it's perfectly feasible that he ripped off this thread. When I was first online I used to frequent the Wrestleview boards a lot, he joined in 2003/2004 as a mark who knew next to nothing, got turned on to Ring of Honor a bit later and writing news for the site. I've never rated him as a writer or as a person. He has form for copying as well, all over Wrestleview forums archives you could find arguments he copied word for word about Puro/Indie wrestling, knowing he wouldn't be called out since the majority of the message board only watched WWE and didn't venture onto the really hardcore boards.

Suicide? The crazy thing about the internet is you'd never know. Did anyone have the dude on Facebook or go to shows with him? Amazing that someone can just disappear like that, in this information age you can trace anything. I know Rob Edwards used to chat to Cook a lot on AIM, if anyone is that bothered he's probably the best person to shed some light. As a sidenote, is this Cook ( ) or just a coincidence? It died long before that, when nobody paid the bills and everything was lost. Shame that barely any of it was saved for posterity. Would there be any point in doing another GWE though? Even though I've not been watching a great deal it doesn't seem like anyone has really emerged since 2006, although I guess more footage has been unearthed and different styles are in vogue. Someone like Lawler would finish a lot higher now you'd have to guess, depending on who voted of course. Another reason it shouldn't be done again is that you could never replicate the atmosphere, it seemed that all the major wrestling boarders of the internet age were merging to discuss, watch footage and submit lists. The activity on the board at the time hit a ridiculous peak.