Loss

I much prefer 80s WWF to modern WWF. At that time, WWF was in the business of selling shows based on a formula, which Hogan was a huge part of, but everyone worked hard and did their part. Now, they only seem to be in the business of selling the main event, and fuck everyone else on the card. The opening match in that era, dare I say, seemed more important than your average RAW main event now. And I think the wrestling was at about the same level for the most part, just with a lot of standard WWE-style booking that made no sense (i.e. heels pinning faces after ref bumps). Still, there are all sorts of things that don't make sense in modern WWE, and at least there was some semblance of long-term continuity then, which we don't have at all now.

Dangerous A, where did you get the idea that the F4W boards are any good? Lots of in-jokes and people who think Michaels and Angle are the best wrestlers EVAR~! That's about it.

TNA best be prepared for a major, major backlash if Jarrett doesn't do the job.

Or the bigger names will find crazy hormones and supplements that can't even be tested.

Savage was nowhere near as reckless or spot-crazy as he's made out to be, even for his time. He ran the ropes really fast and had a couple of top rope moves, but he's not really comparable at all to Kurt "Do all of your finishers from higher heights multiple times in every big match, kick out of everything that shouldn't be kicked out of, throw too many suplexes and eliminate selling because it wastes time" Angle.

I can only speak for myself when I say this, but I am definitely looking forward to watching and discussing the set. I hope others are willing to do the same.

Holy calamity! Going off the roids will shrink you in a hurry.

Funniest news item of the day, although at the rate WWE is going, they'll top themselves before midnight. From Meltzer: I guess Vince realized that WWE.com going all shooty has a downside when they start leaking things that the company would rather them not leak. Too rich.

Henry beating Rey wouldn't bother me if I thought it was to set up a post-Mania challenger for Rey. That that would be a legit main event shows how much Rey has to offer as champ -- the size difference would sell the story and it would seem like Rey was up against insurmountable odds. WWE logic usually has guys that are about to get a huge push or win a title do a bunch of jobs so they have opponents when they get to that level. Not that they ever reference the previous wins and losses or anything, but that's typically the mindset.

I actually think Savage was a great carrier and was lost when he was in the ring with someone as good as him or better than him, because he was a control freak and didn't know what to do. I will post that in that thread later.

Bob Backlund v Don Muraco - Philly 09/21/81 I don't know. This is a really good match, but it's not as great as I thought it would be based on the praise it's gotten. I'm a Backlund fan in most matches, even when he does the silly stuff, but I just can't stay with him in this one. He's out of place for Muraco's clothesline, or forearm, or whatever it was coming off the ropes early on, and sells it anyway. That's not the only spot where someone is out of place, with the other being the ref seeing Muraco's chairshot and letting the match continue. I think the idea was that he wasn't supposed to see it, but he was looking right at Muraco when it happened. I also wasn't too big of a fan of Muraco's nerve hold thing, or whatever it was, and Backlund tended to stay stationary a little too long. But with the bad out of the way, the good of this is when they take it to the mat and stay basic, which they do for much of this match, and which is why I think I'll prefer the 60-minute draw much more when I watch it. Muraco working over Backlund's stomach is top notch stuff, and Backlund, as always, is great for some pretty awe-inspiring strength spots. Still, this was missing something, but I think the 60-minute draw on 10/17 will do plenty to make up for it. ***1/2

Rockers v Powers of Pain - MSG 01/15/90 This was a surprising match. I haven't been sure really what to make of the nouveau Barbarian love online, but watching this match certainly helped me understand it. The Rockers were considered a good-great tag team in their era, but if they debuted today, they'd be considered the best tag team in wrestling. Just awesome chemistry and a pretty endless series of fun doubleteam spots, my favorite of which was Michaels nailing Warlord with one good punch and Jannetty getting behind him and tripping him to throw him off his feet. Barbarian is also pretty insistent on flying here and taking major bumps for face in peril Jannetty. If Jannetty was as good all the time as he was in this match at playing FIP, he'd be talked about on the same level as Ricky Morton and Tommy Rogers. There's this really amazing 30 seconds or so where he's trying so hard to shake off the pain and fight back and just can't. This match is much more NWA than WWF in feel, with the heel manager assisting them in getting a win and then participating in a long, post-match beatdown while the ring feels with referees before Shawn Michaels comes back in the ring with a chair to make the save. If in the NWA in 1988, the Fantastics had faced the Road Warriors, this is what I would imagine the match would have been like. Very good, even better than the more famous Harts/Rockers tag from the SNME a few months later. ***1/2

Thing is, if Vince knows Matt wants to be fired, he'll just bury him like hell and make him stay around. Matt Hardy may end up as Orlando Jordan's female love interest or something.

My problem with this is that just because someone is a good writer doesn't mean a match is great, and just because someone can't explain why they like a match doesn't mean the match should not be included. The approach you're suggesting plays more into the personalities at the board instead of the actual Best Match Talk. I'm willing to revisit ECW. I haven't seen every match they've ever had that's ever taken place, so I don't feel like I can say they don't have any Best Match Ever candidates. I can say that of the stuff that's highly pimped, I'm not too high on most of it, but that's totally different than saying ECW never had any great matches. You know as well as I do how often good matches get swept under the rug, which is sort of the purpose of this project. I think the solution to this is not require every single match on the set to be ranked in order and instead only ask for the top 20 or 30 or whatever number is determined in advance. I must say I'm puzzled why someone who has no desire to see more wrestling trades so much, but that's your prerogative. Anyway, the responses this is getting tells me that this isn't worth it and that this entire folder needs to be deleted. Too many people coming up with every reason why it can't be done isn't a good sign. Project is off.

If Vince's lawyers have any brains, they will insist in Stephanie not appearing on TV while pregnant at all so it would at least appear they are consistent.

Yes. The planned ending of the Batista/Melina rape angle was to reveal Melina as a transvestite, but Stephanie McMahon shot it down, thinking it would ruin Melina's career.

Matt Hardy's officially RVD'd himself, where he can say whatever he wants negative about the company and they won't fire him because they know he'll be valuable elsewhere.

This seems to be the starting point. What age group are we targeting first and foremost? What TV stations, time slots and length of programming are we wanting? Let's brainstorm.

I'm going to close this topic for now and start a new thread for just target audience and television programming. We have lots of seeds planted, but we'll try to discuss this in a little more orderly fashion.

This category will be for all WCW and NWA matches that took place between May of 1985 and March of 2001. Pay-per-view nominations aren't necessary for this thread. What we're needing for this thread is the following: Handheld recommendations -- VERY IMPORTANT TV recommendations - 1985-1988 TV recommendations - 1991, 2000-2001 TV recommendations (NOT Nitro) 1995-1999 Please do not post any recommendations that do not fit one of these categories, as those matches are already taken care of. I will post those in this thread soon. Thanks.

ECW got its own category because it really doesn't mesh well with any of the other categories. It's nothing like SMW, WCW or WWE, really at all. I know you can compare any match to any match, but I'd like for these categories to have something uniting them. The only way I could see ECW being combined with anything else is to maybe create a category for ECW/FMW/IWA/W*ING that's all to itself. I'm not opposed to that at all, actually. Consider this both, also, to answer your question. I'd like to get a move on this or this will never get it done. Top priority right now is finding as much WCW/NWA footage as possible. I'm going to go ahead and start a new thread for just WCW/NWA recommendations. I have about 50 discs of WCW TV from 1992-1994 on its way that I'll go through and pick out the best stuff, and I want to try to divide the rest of it into teams that can focus on specific parts of it. I'll explain in the other thread.

Looking at everything listed here, I thought we may want to put some thoughts into recategorizing the way we have this list. Here is how we'll do it. I'm all for further breaking down categories and then overlapping them by doing yet another set of countdowns. I'll explain what I mean. Category #1 - WCW and NWA This would be the category for all matches from 1985-2001, from the time Crockett started on TBS until the final Monday Nitro. May 1985-March 2001 Category #2 - WWF Pre-1990 All 60s, 70s & 80s WW(W)F would go in this category. 1963-1989 Category #3 - WWF Post-1990 All January 1990-Present WWF/E footage goes here. Category #4 - ECW All ECW matches would go in this category. Category #5 - US & Canada Territories Pre-1995 Every American or Canadian wrestling territory's footage prior to 1995 would go in this category, excluding WCW, WWF and ECW. I'm extending this to 1995 because I think SMW matches make better comparison to classic territory footage than modern-day US indies, and 1995 is when SMW died. Category #6 - US Indies 1996-present Self explanatory. Everyone who received a set of DVDs from all of the above categories would then be eligible to participate in the following four categories as well. Category #7 - US & Canada Best Pre-1990 Category #8 - US & Canada Best 1990s Category #9 - US Best 2000-Present Category #10 - Best WW/W/F/E Matches Of All Time Category #11 - AJPW Pre-1980 Self explanatory. Category #12 - AJPW 1980-1989 Category #13 - AJPW 1990-Present Anyone who participate in categories #11-#13 would be eligible to vote in the following. Category #14 - Best AJPW Matches Of All Time Repeat the process with New Japan. Category #15 - NJPW Pre-1980 Category #16 - NJPW 1980-1989 Category #17 - NJPW 1990-Present Category #18 - Best NJPW Matches Of All Time Category #19 - Joshi Pre-1990 Category #20 - Joshi 1990-Present Category #21 - Best Joshi Matches Of All Time Category #22 - Other Japan Pre-1990 Category #23 - Other Japan 1990-Present Everyone who voted in all of the Japanese categories thus far would be eligible to vote in the following: Category #24 - Japan Pre-1980 Category #25 - Japan 1980-1989 Category #26 - Japan 1990-Present Category #27 - Best Lucha Matches Of All Time Category #28 - Best MMA Matches Of All Time* Category #29 - Best European Matches Of All Time** * - would not be compared to worked wrestling ** - would also include odd spot shows in places like Australia if such matches were nominated Everyone who participated in every category up until this point would then be eligible to participate in the following: Category #30 - Best Matches Anywhere Pre-1980 Category #31 - Best Matches Anywhere 1980-1989 Category #32 - Best Matches Anywhere 1990-Present And finally ... Category #33 - Best Matches Ever We'll base the top "x" number of matches on how many nominees are in each category. There will always be more nominated matches than listed matches, so if you receive a set of 100 matches, you may only be asked for your Top 50. That will be decided as we go along. Obviously a long, multi-year project, but I really think that's the only way to do this the justice it deserves. We don't have to do these in the order specified here, although it would admittedly make things easier if we did. Does anyone have a problem starting out with all WCW/NWA?

He could get work even more on getting his persona over. That would probably piss McMahon off more than anything else he could do.

Let's look at this in phases then. I like the team idea approach. The conversation has gravitated toward commentators initially. Maybe we can make this a group of threads or something instead of just a time killer like I originally envisioned. Before we decide what announcers we want, however, we need to decide how much TV we want. How often are PPVs, how many hours of weekly TV are there and how many shows are there? Do we want a different announce crew for each? I think a two-hour primetime show on Monday nights, a one hour primetime show on Saturday nights and a one hour afternoon show on Sunday nights is ideal, but we'll see what others think.

I wonder what would have happened if instead of Muhammad Hassan, they pushed an openly gay wrestler with the same angle -- claiming to be discriminated against, stuff like that. I wonder if it would get over if done right, and if the crowd would cheer or boo, and how much mainstream pub it would get.