Timbo Slice

That's the thing. She doesn't really have the stuff to get over with the bigger crowds. It just never took off.

Emma has been released per Naylor on Facebook.

Current Favorite Wrestler To Watch: Dean Ambrose. Just on another level entirely. Really seems like the guy WWE doesn't want to break out out of The Shield, but is going to anyway just because he has a personality that is as magnetic as anyone has seen come through in a long time. Last Fun Match You Saw: GAB '88 had the awesome Midnights/Fantastics US Tag Team Title match. Also had a really fun Tully/Arn vs. Sting/Nikita World Tag team title match, as well. Wrestler You Want To See More Of: I want to go back and revisit some of Moxley's stuff now, actually. Last Live Show Attended: A local APW show in San Francisco featuring Chris Hero, Matt Striker and Matt Hardy. Reby Sky was there, too, I guess. Match You Are Looking Forward To Watching Soon The Most: Whenever they finally run Cesaro/Lesnar. Cesaro throwing around Lesnar is going to be incredible. Also, if Taker ever got healthy enough to go up against Bray Wyatt, I'm all about it. Last Fun Interview/Promo You Saw: Anything Ambrose has done in a while. Last Interesting Thing You Read About Wrestling: That WWE has to cut back on production costs. Also, anything Shoemaker has written over the last six months. (I have to say that's sarcasm lest someone actually believes me.) Last Worthwhile Wrestling Podcast You Heard: SC return call/Wrestling Culture return show. Most Fun You've Had Watching Wrestling Lately: Going through the Best of ECW set. Just burning through it right now. 1996 ECW has become one of my favorite eras of wrestling ever because of it and made me do a complete 180 on Shane Douglas as a worker. Absolutely top notch during this time.

DIPSET DIPSET.

Hero didn't look that soggy when I saw him a couple weeks ago. Not that noticeably so, actually.

I know people love the Wyatt's normal music, but I think the new theme is fucking kickass.

Baba never saw himself as a special attraction wrestler, but rather the ace of his promotion, which made it kind of weird when you see him and he's working straight-up matches with Beyer and Billy and what have you. In his heyday, though, Baba was truly one of the best workers of his era. Andre was always the special attraction type and was rarely in a straight up match where his wrestling skill was front and center, and his match style to me was limited in that standpoint. That being said? Can't think of a better attraction-style match guy than him, bar none. Absolutely exceptional. When he was in a big match, he knew how to make it seem like a big-time spectacle. What made Vader great was that he'd have matches with these big guys where he'd go 50/50, but then against the smaller guys, he'd be willing to give them a lot to show he was fallible. He's an underrated seller and knew his times for control and cutoffs. His unique offense definitely stood out, but I just remember him making guys like Sting and Dustin look absolutely king-sized by playing to their strengths and letting them look like a million bucks.

I actually really liked this in spite of Misawa doing his weird NOAH "Is he actually selling or does he not care" shtick. Taue's sense of urgency was there and the stretch run was fun. It was tough to do this type of match with Taue getting the call a month later against Kobashi, and Misawa couldn't exactly put him over clean, but Taue was really good here and this was as fun a performance as you'll see from him in NOAH.

He sure picked a good week to go on vacation. Hansen hadn't even had his best match yet, which is saying something at that point.

For such a good motivator and not much more, he sure figured it out with some of his best going down. What a win.

Yeah, them going that route at the end really made you feel something real for those guys. Something you rarely see with other reality shows, actually. And him singing "My Way" was the icing on the cake. Really good stuff.

Shoutouts to Waka Flocka KrisZ. In all fairness, WWE has a lot of mid card talent at this point and they're looking for people to position at the top. Paige has floundered because she didn't know how to connect with the fans. Rose has failed due to Dunn, sure, but he's been doing the same shtick to a bigger audience that doesn't know how to treat him. Plus, he almost always speaks in catchphrases that aren't getting over. His work isn't worthwhile in the ring at this point, either. I've talked about how I've been souring on NXT for the last few months and it mainly has to do with the fact that there are a lot of characters getting pushed because they feel they need those as opposed to guys who can work while working on their presentation stuff. You're not gonna find much out of NXT if they don't know how to work longer matches considering guys like The Shield, Cesaro and Bryan are setting the pace right now. To give you the best idea possible of how Trips sees things going forward, the match he had with Bryan was much more the type of match Bryan would work as opposed to what HHH would work. He knows what can happen going forward.

This is one of those subjective measures that I always go back and forth on when thinking about how I value wrestlers. Even remember talking to Dylan about this exact thing about a year ago when talking about subjects he'd like to bring me on to talk about on Wrestling Culture, where we were going to try and figure out some type of metric to try and value who was the best wrestler a company had. We had an idea about in-ring work, but drawing was always difficult because the matches at the top of the card weren't necessarily the drawing matches, especially in companies like ECW. The examples Loss brought up of Trump and Punk basically tell you the story: Punk's promo was an acknowledgement of the scope today's wrestling fan can pull from, where Punk threw in every "insider" reference he could think of in a promo. It popped people for being new, and the longtime wrestling fans who were in the know dug it big time. The draw, however, came by capitalizing on it in Chicago. Because of that atmosphere, there should have been a pretty good term of drawing for Punk, but it never came to be the way WWE wanted it to, which is why he got shuffled back down a bit. It wasn't really a big draw. Trump pulled in people from outside the wrestling scope, obviously, which in turn made him the big draw even though his match wasn't that high up the card. The theory that people pay for what they're most excited about holds true somewhat. If you go back through the cards in the past, there are a lot of things down in the card that drew more than what was on top as a special attraction. The biggest thing that I've noticed is that as time moved on, it wasn't really about one draw at the top of the card. It really has become the product. Bryan is over with live crowds because as far as what WWE puts out on a week to week basis, he's considered the best guy they have at this point. But he doesn't really draw people in as much as he just excites the crowd that is already there (which is a lot like what The Shield has done, the Wyatts, etc.). He does have crossover appeal, and that's really apparent, but the only appeal that matters is the stuff that brings in more money to the company. Bryan has gotten them some mainstream attention, but that hasn't translated to dollar signs. The numbers don't match because at the end of the day, the machine has been built and it's going to run as it is. The Network is their newest revenue stream and it's going to be the foundation for their programming, but the actual process of drawing money has changed so much that I don't think drawing power is a worthwhile metric anymore due to the overexposure wrestling has at this point. The wrestlers have become less and less important in terms of drawing.

OMEGA - 4/26/14 - The Hardys vs. The Briscoes

Fantastic match and the product of two guys who would have worked this match much differently and much less effectively when they were in their "primes" on the indy scene. Styles has figured out how to make his high spots work and Hero is one of the best at transitions in the world, which made so many of Styles' spots work that much better. Styles, to his credit, had some awesome spots of his own (Phil mentioned the Pele kick in his SC review) and the finish was both out of nowhere and worked within the context of the match. I'm a big fan of matches with layers to them, where you could look at things closer on multiple viewings and see new things every time, and this is one of those matches. Surprised the hell out of me and makes me want to see what Styles is doing with New Japan.

Got a chance to re-watch 6/3/94. Some interesting things I caught this time around: -Misawa's early backdrop, which was something he would do in the Kobashi match in 2003 in a very similar spot -Just how long the control sessions were -The small semblances of no-selling (which worked here way better than anything Kobashi ever did) -Just how much they laid things in, which reminded me of the first time I went back and watched Chi-Town Rumble after many years -How awesome Misawa's transitions were (which helped with the best seller of all time) I mostly remembered the aura of the match and Kawada's incredible stretch run where you thought he would win, but how Misawa won wasn't something I remembered right off the bat. I really wish Kawada went over here and they didn't go the Misawa--->Williams--->Kawada route, but man alive this match still resonates even 20 years later. Also, please track down both the Hero/Styles ROH match from March and OMEGA tag from April between the Hardys and Briscoes. The Hardys do the best RnR routine I've seen in a long time and the finish is right out of their playbook, too. The Hero/Styles match was really well done, worked more like a big fight than a showcase match with another great finish.

Actual headline: "Who Will Be The Shield's Marty Jannetty?" http://grantland.com/features/wwe-payback-monday-raw-who-will-be-the-shields-marty-jannetty/ I'm not normally one for blind rage, but when even the TITLES of your articles make me want to punch myself to forget the stupidity of them, you've done something for the ages. Kudos.

Yeah, this PPV has REALLY over-delivered here. So many great spots.

For a PPV that was panned coming in, they sure have done a good job so far.

I hope they keep this going between the two of them. Really awesome stuff.

That was fantastic.

I'm just wondering if the proof lies within the assumption that because wrestlers are better athletes now, wrestling is better. Because that's not the case. Because if that's the case, that renders about a half-century of wrestling a moot point. Which it shouldn't.

A fantastic match and while Tenryu is the star, Sasaki is REALLY good in this role. It's weird to see him do so well here and then a year later in 2001 he's so underwhelming, but he stepped his game to another level here. Watch this match and the Kawada match 10 months later and you would totally think Sasaki is a world-class worker. Just that those other 9 months in-between get in the way.

God, I want this to happen. If WWE had an Uncle Ruckus character, I'd buy all the merchandise.

It really comes to whether or not the educated fan wants entertainment or athleticism. I'm not saying it has to be all work rate-y and moves-y or whatever. I'm saying that there has to be an understanding with those types of fans. You can't insult their intelligence. You have to give them a product that makes them want to come back. The reason why the Bryan stuff worked for a few months is because it was the best wrestling trope there is: an underdog overcoming adversity. That didn't have to do with whether an educated person with money was a wrestling fan. That's something anyone can get behind regardless. But stuff like Bryan going up against Kane like he is doesn't work. Those types of personalities just aren't appealing nowadays to those types of fans. Unfortunately, like others have alluded to, for "outside the box"-type fans to want to watch, the people making wrestling happen would have to completely change the way they do business. With Vince still around, that's not going to happen, and even when he's done, I don't think you'll see Trips stray too far away from that, either.