Loss

All of this really makes me resent Eric Bischoff. Had he had a little foresight and the ability to follow through with some of his better ideas and not beat some of his more successful ones into the ground, Vince would be a footnote on the current scene.

I think there's a strategy at play here. WWE is vicious enough to take a case they know they can't win to court, just to drain the budgeted TNA in legal costs. What's that Vince used to say about predatory business practices years ago?

Could this show come across as anymore desperate and hotshotting? Anyway, if they do a six-man tag with these guys, it'll probably be better than Angle/Michaels or Edge/Hardy.

It certainly is. Often overlooked, and honestly, it's probably a far superior *wrestling match* than Savage/Warrior at Wrestlemania VII. I like Savage/Warrior more for heat, intensity, drama and emotion though.

He's still a raving lunatic, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy the hell out of reading this.

It won't let me either.

I've always felt this should be a total end of the year thing and don't know why the Observer ends it in November. Matches in December tend to get shunned the following year.

Not really. Edge's promo was really good, although he totally fucked up the big bump at the end of it. It says a lot about match quality when Trish Stratus and Victoria can outwork 90% of the roster at this point.

Rosey is a solid worker. Hardly a great one, but he's far from the worst guy on the roster. I loved his FAT GUY MOONSAULT on HHH a few months ago.

Anyone who works in wrestling is going to say what they think will either earn them favor with everyone else in the business or keep them out of the line of fire of everyone else in the business. I doubt anyone truly believes JJ is a great heel because the Internet hates him; he just knows he has to defend Jarrett somehow and chooses to do so by what seems like a good argument. Or maybe I'm underestimating the fine rose color of those glasses he's wearing -- I just don't believe he could possibly believe what he says.

Yes, we've seen the last of both shows on TV. They'll now be broadcast on WWE.com.

They should really stop acting shocked and stop bitching (they being the Dudz) and just reinvent themselves completely. They were stale as hell anyway, and they aren't exactly going to help any promotion they work for, considering how tired everyone was of them by the end of 2001 to begin with.

What the HELL is this?

My goal of keeping up with all the MOTYCs throughout the year so I'm not lost when it comes time to talk about them has NOT been reached this year at all. I've seen ZERO of the matches mentioned in this thread.

People, this is pointless if you vote in the poll and don't respond in the thread.

Thought we'd make this a weekly thing. Slim pickings this week, but I just finished watching Velocity and the Regal/Burchill v Scotty/Funaki tag definitely gets my pick. Really fun, well structured match with lots of heat and some nice submission stuff from the heels. Booker/Christian would be #2.

I think that does the thinking for everyone. I'd rather not use that format myself.

Had SD Tivo'd and watched it earlier tonight, and thought this was really nice 10-minute TV match. I was shocked that Wade Keller was unimpressed by it. They don't really expand beyond the basics, but they go down the beaten path in awesome fashion. Christian getting hiptossed early and trying to get revenge doing the same move, only to get blown off, is a great comedy spot. Another great comedy spot is Christian throwing the ref in front of himself to distract Booker so he could sneak in a thumb to the eye. Nice build to the nearfalls, and even the finish worked because the match was constructed in that direction. I didn't like it, mainly because Sharmell is supposed to be a babyface and she's really bad at it, but it was teased in smart fashion before it was finally delivered. The main issue that I think people had with this match is that Booker is stale right now and Christian is hot right now and they have Christian jobbing. It's definitely a good point, but it's a shame that the booking will make most people forget and underrate what was a nice little match. Christian has really put it all together in 2005 and become a really good performer.

This is sort of on topic, sort of off topic, but Dave Meltzer has said many times that the majority of wrestlers honestly believe that all major, televised sports are worked. I thought that was an interesting bit of trivia that could or could not relate to the discussion at hand.

You're a better man than I. I quickly get desensitized to what I'm watching, and really, about 2-3 "great" matches in a day is about all I can handle where I feel like I'm being fair to them. I know when I finally watch the Joe/Punk matches, for example, that there's no way I'll have the patience to watch both of them back to back. I wish I did, but once you've been mindfucked, some recovery time is in order. We live in an era of instant gratification, but I try not to go overboard being a product of that. I think this works for a wrestling fan who's seen God knows how many hours of bad wrestling and knows what the standard is and knows what "good" and "bad" are. But if I hadn't watched a show since 1989 and started watching again in 2002, I think I'd need to watch some surrounding footage, good and bad, to put what I'm seeing in context. Matches are often far more easy to appreciate in the context of their time. Yes, a great match will withstand the test of time, but knowing the context can only help the case. And personally speaking, I want to appreciate everything I watch as much as it's possible to appreciate it, not just enough to like it. Of course not. But just a few years ago, had we been talking then, I could have easily said, "Did you see what Rock and Jericho said to each other?" or "Did you see that Hogan/Rock interview? Can you believe that?". Yeah, I knew what I was watching was entertainment, but because it was well done, it was still possible to be lost in the moment. Are you saying you're no longer capable of marking out over *anything*? True. But I'm not the type of fan wrestling companies should be catering to. They should be catering to that 13-year old kid who buys action figures, who subscribes to the mags, who has the 619 t-shirt and that thinks Eddy Guerrero is an asshole. The same kid who thinks that somehow, in a world where his voice isn't often credited, John Cena is speaking for him. Guys like you and me have already established that we're sticking around through thick and thin ... I can safely say it would be virtually impossible to totally run me off. Companies that book for their hardcore audiences don't typically do well in the long run because they're catering to an audience that isn't going anywhere. I enjoy watching the way I watch, but I try to keep in perspective that the way I watch, at least if I'm going to do a review, is not the way wrestling is supposed to be watched. Critical acclaim isn't going to sell a ticket. You'd think ROH would learn that lesson and stop pimping Meltzer's star ratings to sell their DVDs. Not just if they're using transitions, if the transitions are good and make sense and build to the next spot in good fashion. I could care less about how moves look, as long as they're sold the way they're executed. If Matt Hardy punches Edge in the face and misses by six inches and Edge sells it anyway, I take issue with it. If Kurt Angle goes for an overhead belly-to-belly suplex and drops the guy on his head, sell it like a death spot and keep going. That's why Misawa and Kawada are in a class by themselves -- they were able to improvise when a botched spot created the Ganso bomb. That spot being blown isn't something that should detract from that match. And I'm not even a fan of that match, but it has nothing to do with how the moves look. An Irish whip, a dropkick, a powerbomb ... any high impact moves that aren't on the mat aren't going to look real. And I'm fine with that. The cool thing about wrestling is that it has its own mythology and its own universe. As long as everything is internally logical within that universe and makes sense according to the mythology surrounding it, it's not the type of thing that deserves criticism most of the time. You'd say the same about a comic book or a film. I think there's nothing more important in a wrestling match than the selling. I can't think of a Sid match off the top of my head that had the audience going bonkers unless he was in with someone like Michaels or Bret or Benoit and they were actually having a good match. I'm sure there are some, but I'm struggling to think of a bad match with great heat. Heat doesn't just mean "noise" though. It means the wrestlers did something to prompt the reaction they got. It's not WM 3-way main event noise where the crowd was just so sick of Michaels and HHH that they would have given you or me the pop of the century if we were going for the title. There's a difference. Dude, you're 30. You're five years older than me. Besides, they say 50 is the new 30, so 30 must be the new 10. So is it the shitty moves or the schtick? Or both? Well, I'm sure it's both, but which is it more of? And how is it different from Baba or Inoki having matches with great aura and atmosphere where some of their strikes look weak or the action is a little slow? I think both Baba and Inoki (who I'd put only slightly ahead of Hogan as a worker) are smarter workers than Hogan, which is my answer, but I'm curious your answer. The act redefines old. That's why I'm not so much of a fan of his at this stage. But it apparently still works, shockingly enough, because he knows how to work a crowd. Hogan is even more inconsistent than Inoki, but he's a great dramatist and a great worker, despite not being much of a wrestler. On the flip side, Kurt Angle is a great wrestler and not much of a worker. No argument there, although I still think Hogan/Rock from WM 18 is an excellent match. I've seen enough Styles on here, and from what most people say at DVDVR, he's the same guy he was then. That may or may not be correct. I'm not a fan of his at all. He's a total spotmonkey who's pretty good when he's wrestling someone like Joe or Danielson who can reign him in. Maybe we should do a "construct your all-time dream card" with eight matches where we have everyone here pick any 8 matches that have ever happened from any promotion and put them all together as one supershow. I'd be interested in seeing your answers, and I'd be interested in coming up with my own. WCW alienated everyone -- hardcores and casual fans alike. They alienated the casual fans first, which is when the product really started to suffer. The treatment of Ric Flair probably drove of all the longtime fans after that. I'm in the same boat. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Internet for "saving my marriage" with wrestling, so to speak. It's made everything old new again in many ways, and it's also helped me branch out and see things I would have only read about in PWI otherwise. I also know, again, that I'm not the type of fan promoters should be looking to attract. They already have me, and they aren't losing me. Cornette said the same thing in his Secrets of the Ring. Any reason? Bret Hart has said many times he viewed his matches as short films. You'd judge a movie on the same criteria you would a wrestling match, would you not?

In terms of kayfabe, I don't know that you have to go completely back in the closet with wrestling and make people truly believe that what they're watching is real. I think fans just need believable situations in which they can reasonably play along. Everyone knows the movies are fake, but I don't see it affecting their popularity. Wrestling, with the right booking, should provoke the same emotions in the viewer as any other storytelling medium.

Will, you'd risk breaking a hip if the Spurs won an NBA championship, no? Wrestling should strive for the same emotional attachment. It shouldn't matter that it's worked -- the fact that it *is* worked and wrestling is all about making the audience forget that, even if it's just for a moment, makes it great. Watching Eddy/Rey from Halloween Havoc '97 the other day, I thought about how awesome Eddy was as he was making his way to the ring, but as the match progressed, I started genuinely wanting Rey to win and even rooting against Eddy because both were playing their roles so well. Wrestling without kayfabe is wrestling without roles. Wrestling without good and wrestling without evil. Punk and Joe can wrestle a great 60-minute match. Why should I really care? I'm not saying I don't, or that they don't give me reason to, but on that statement alone, why should I care? I think part of it is that society has generally become more cynical and has a darker undertone itself, and that's played out in wrestling. Pretty much all the protagonists on hit shows anymore are more antihero than hero. Hulk Hogan was the face of wrestling in the Reagan era and it was a radically different time socially and in pop culture. At this point, winners, regardless of the ways in which they do so, are revered and losers are frowned upon. When the moral norms change, wrestling, which is a morality play in itself, has to change as well.