Loss

Jerry Lawler v Bill Dundee - Memphis 12/30/85 This isn't the best match I've ever seen. However, this is the best heel performance I've ever seen in my life. Dundee is beyond spectacular -- he's on another planet from any heel ever. Notice how this match features some pretty dangerous-seeming bumps, but they're used to get heat and advance the match at hand, not just used for show. When Lawler takes the bump in the cheap seats, you'd think he had died from the crowd reaction, and I was actually concerned for him. Dundee toying with Lawler and moving in and out when he can is pretty breathtaking in its simplicity. When Lawler comes back bloodied and pissed from nowhere, it's an awesome visual and you find yourself rooting for him to win at any costs. His opponent doesn't care about the rules, so why should he? I don't think, in the future, I can take the opinion of anyone who watches wrestling seriously if they've never seen this match. This is the kind of match that will redefine what good and bad is in your mind, that will make you question everything you think you might know about what good wrestling is, because you're seeing thinking man's work on a level you've never quite seen before. This is the best match based around an injury I've ever seen by far. Don't get me wrong, Lawler is awesome here, but Dundee -- and this is a strong statement -- outperforms the best performances I've ever seen from any American heel. Destroyer's performance against Baba is the only better one I've come across anywhere in the world -- ever -- actually. Yes, a match that features nothing but punches and some brawling on the outside can be this amazing. ****3/4

In fairness to Angle, if you blame him for what happened to Holly, Jericho deserves blame for breaking Stevie Richards' ankle under the same logic.

How sad is it that they're doing the RAW vs Smackdown feud that is nearly four years in the making and it's not even getting over? That was the one advantage to keeping the brands separate, and even that isn't working. I think the big reason is that it SD looks far too second rate when their world champ is involved in all of this, while HHH, Flair, Michaels, Angle and Cena -- the five top stars on RAW -- can't be bothered.

Bret can not ever come back. He suffered a zillion concussions in a two week period, he's suffered a stroke and he's 48 years old, not having worked a match in almost six years, and not having worked a match at the level people would expect in even longer. It's best for Bret to just let people remember him the way he was instead of the way he is now.

I'm trying to think of how Bret can help TNA and I'm drawing blanks. Well, as a regular on-air character anyway. As a booker, I think he could make them competitive with WWE in 18 months.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a new ***** match. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood v Sgt Slaughter & Don Kernodle - Mid Atlantic 03/12/83 I know I said this last month with Slaughter/Sheik, but I think I'm going to go a step above it this time around, and say this is the best American match I've absolutely ever seen. Just unbelievable, and maybe the best blowoff to a feud I've ever seen. Everything was at stake here, as it was the titles against the livelihood of Steamboat and Youngblood as a team, inside a cage. The match is structured to near-perfection with all four doing the best work I've ever seen from them, especially the headlock stuff at the beginning and the AJPW-style partner saves in the final stretch. Lots of awesome bumping from the heels as well, with Slaughter doing the Snuka-style dive off the cage, which looked far more impressive here as a highspot. I want to do this match full justice sometime, and I'm not at the moment, so I will do a full review in the near future, just so you guys understand what you need to see. Speaking of the list, I'm not adding this in for now, because I looked over my list and want to reorganize things. There are some matches I think I've been high talking about, because I either didn't give them the credit they deserved initially or I gave them way too much credit. So here's a list of revised snowflakes in chronological order. I'm going to re-do the list later, and also do a year-by-year view. When I say "later" on redoing the list, I mean far later, just because I'm finding that my views are changing so quickly on what I'm seeing that I want to allow myself more footage viewing before committing to saying certain matches are better than others. So the first post in this thread is now a chronological look at things with revised star ratings and such. I'm eventually going to write some more stuff on most of these as well.

Jericho can be pretty ugly when he doesn't care, but to his credit, he stayed pretty motivated for most of late 2001 forward in the ring, even if his matches sometimes seemed stale. While I do think Jericho is better at connecting with a crowd, selling, bumping and conveying emotion than Angle, it's also worth noting that Angle is pretty consistently Angle ... his performance quality doesn't vary nearly as dramatically from night to night as Jericho's did, even at his peak. He has also never had a Rhyno at Summerslam 2001-level bad performance. Angle is more athletic and has better offense than Jericho, but that's about where his superiority to him ends.

It is. I don't think it'll happen soon. I'm just not sure that Jericho will end up in WWE if he ever does make a return to wrestling.

If Jericho doesn't ever show up in TNA, I'll be very surprised. I think it's just a matter of time, unless Vince gets wind of it and offers him a big money deal to resign with them to essentially work part-time, which I don't see happening.

Jericho is much better than Angle. Always has been.

I wonder if there are even enough guys to fill an EC main event on Smackdown. Batista Guerrero Orton JBL Hardy Misterio I guess that would be the best collection of guys to put out there, but they'd probably do something silly like put Booker T in there ahead of Hardy or something.

We've had this discussion before, but Rey is over than 99% of the roster, including those two or three times his size. He's been successfully pushed as a heavyweight for a while now.

Cornette and Jerry Jarrett are good friends, which means he's probably friendly with Jeff as well. Cornette booking would lead to a better TNA with better presentation, but Jarrett would probably still have his spot. Cornette has often defended bookers for pushing themselves in the past, claiming that what people overlook is that a lot of people put themselves in that position because they know that they aren't leaving the company, they'll do the angle or match the way it's wanted to be done and they can trust themselves. Cornette is not the solution to Problem Jarrett.

I agree that Guerrero is the best standby choice. I'd build to *one more* Eddy/Rey match to headline Wrestlemania with the caveat that the Loser Must Retire and the match is for the title. That stip ought to draw some buys, and they can bring back Eddy -- after losing -- a few months later.

Yes, but keeping Jarrett on top while Christian is right there does seem sort of silly. They probably do need to stay the course right now with their long term plans, but they should also speed up the path to Jarrett/Brown so they can quickly get Christian in a more high-profile spot.

Considering that the voting showed Matt Hardy to be quite over, it's good that they're teasing a move up the card ... if they are indeed teasing a move up the card.

Ditto Demolition Ax, aka Masked Superstar Bill Eadie.

I have that disc and plan on watching it later. Haven't watched 12/30/85 Dundee/Lawler yet. At this point, I'm watching all the non-Memphis stuff first because after watching Lawler/Dundee and highlights of the Lawler/Mantel v Dundee/Landell feud, I know I won't want to take breaks from it. Lots of obscure WCW and old territory matches to wade through, along with what I hope are some kickass Mariko Yoshida matches!

Rock & Roll Express v Ivan Koloff & Kruscher Kruschev - NWA 07/09/85 Another outstanding match! This is the closest I've seen to 6/9/95 wrestled in the US. There are probably more differences than similarities, but the similarities are striking enough that they stand out. There's a feeling out process early on that escalates and builds so effectively to the next sequence, which builds to something even better, and it continues throughout the match. Where this match succeeds is in pacing everything so well. 35 minute tag matches in this era weren't too common, but matches like this show that they could have been and it might have worked. The only glaring problem in the match were Morton coming in so quickly after getting pummeled and making the hot tag to Gibson. After such a great 10 minutes of underdog wrestling, it felt out of place. I want to talk about each guy and what he does in this match that makes him so great. Krusher Kruschev -- The worst worker in this match, but he knows how to work as a big man better than almost anyone on TV today, and he's still great. I love the Kruschev/Morton stuff, because Morton is the consummate underdog of his team, and Kruschev is a feared monster, so their interactions are perfect for fans like myself who prefer wrestling to be as melodramatic as possible. I also like the way Kruscher sets up his punches so well, just balling his fist up and telegraphing it ahead of time makes it seem far more important and also does a lot to get the girls screaming for Gibson to see what's going on. Great crowd control. Kruschev is not the leader of his team, but he's terrific. Ivan Koloff - Koloff is just awesome in this match. Check out that neckbreaker and his bumping. He's probably pushing 50 here and is still bumping like he's in Madison Square Garden as WWWF champ. I like that the heat work here is long enough to get the point across without going so long that it gets boring. I credit Koloff for that, because he seemed to be the one calling the shots. Robert Gibson - Morton and Gibson both play FIP in this match, but I actually think Gibson is better at it in this particular encounter. He's not as charismatic as Morton, but he's probably as good of a seller. Morton's saves are also great, which is where the 6/9/95 tag references come in, as Gibson comes across more like Kenta Kobashi than ... well ... Robert Gibson, and Morton looks like he's doing everything he can to help his partner out. Ricky Morton - He's on the apron more than anything here, but when he's in, he's terrific, and he's great at rallying the crowd on the outside and timing his saves at just the right moments. A few things in the presentation bothered me, namely Magnum pointing out at the 8-minute mark or so on commentary that Morton shouldn't be doing a test of strength so "early" in the match, which totally gave away that they were going long. I also think that as good as Koloff and Kruschev were, they could have stood to be even more devilish. They came across more as a machine than as ruthless assholes most of the time in this match, and the latter would have been nice. Hard to say who's carrying this, because the babyface work is probably the strongest point of the match, but without Ivan Koloff, the match wouldn't have been so well-timed, with him directing traffic as much as he appeared to be doing here, he deserves a healthy share of credit. Way cool to see fans jumping up and down, screaming and hugging each other to celebrate the first tag title win of the Rock and Rolls. Koloff, sport that he is, stays in the ring for a while after the match to show his frustration and despair. ****1/4

I have that special myself. The Superstars on the Superstation match is good, but nowhere near the best.

I'm still bothered that Booker T has never been able to cut that one awesome interview. Imagine if they pushed Booker as an angry badass.

Says he got along with Race very well, with Race has always said as well. Substantiated the story that the company once fired Race and he quit until they brought him back. He's being very careful not to blame Flair with his wording here, because he keeps saying that he had to get a new belt over after Flair left, and you know he's dying to say what he really thought of all that, but won't do it. Also says he was ribbed big once because he didn't know who Lou Thesz was.

"Shawn Michaels and I had a disagreement once. I was wrong and he was wrong. We both apologized. I like Shawn. I like Shawn a lot."

Also put Funk over huge. Said he never took Flair refusing to job to him personally because he saw it as Flair having issues with the company. This is a guy practically groveling for work, and it's kinda pathetic. Gets in a mild cheapshot at Flair leaving the company with the belt, but thinks better of it and says Flair wasn't trying to embarrass WCW at all by doing it. Luger on Montreal: "This is the first I've heard that Bret could have left with the belt!"

49 minutes in, Luger finally makes a decent observation when he says that they took advantage of the fact that he could get over as a face and as a heel by turning him too many times. He also got a spark in his eye when he was asked about Brian Pillman and put him over huge. It was the first time it seemed genuine.