Loss

I think it's worth pointing out that wrestling footage in general really hasn't been as canonized as we sometimes think. It's just that jdw did a tremendous job of it with the 90s and probably spoiled us, and some of his approach spilled over into ROH and NOAH for a while. Quick, what's your favorite New Japan match of 2004? What's your favorite Michinoku Pro match after 1999? Are there any good XPW matches? What's the best Cage of Death match? Some of you as individuals may have answers to these questions, but there's hardly a general consensus on any of them. Not that that's at all a bad thing, but I'm just saying the 90s are really the only decade of wrestling that I think comes anywhere close to being fully fleshed out, and even there, there's still a lot of Puerto Rico, garbage feds and tiny U.S. indies to wade through and figure out. I'm finding that there are entire years of CMLL TV even in the early 2000s that don't really exist in normal circles. Entire years! Forget barely scratching the surface. I'm not even sure there's a fingerprint on it yet.

He's awful, I agree. Thanks for your contributions to PWO.

Who said that GWE was more than the view of a niche at this current point in time? Grimmas seems to think that "everyone" has this random indie lucha match that even most lucha fans have never seen as a MOTY and maybe even decade, and has given me GWE rankings as a way to prove what he was saying was true. It's true. When he said everyone, he meant EVERYONE. Every single living person. Remember, he's the one being pedantic.

You do realize that in saying this you are doing exactly the same thing you are accusing everyone of doing who likes Black Terry matches, right?

The groupthink is that guys like Shawn Michaels should be at the top because everywhere else he would be at the top. He had both supporters and detractors here, by the way, and both were vocal. Do you not realize the irony in what you are saying?

My major hurdles initially were in understanding rules and crowds. The constant faint noise as opposed to loud pops for certain people, moves or actions bugged me (I later found out this was a production issue, not an actual crowd issue), and so did referees not enforcing rules when all the rudos were in the ring at the same time taking out one guy. I accept those things now and I'm fine with them, but they were big stumbling blocks for me in the beginning. It was hard for me to make sense of what I was watching beyond just appreciating it as a display. I *still* hate that there's no easy way to figure out who the team captains are.

The PWI 500 also started after Mil's peak years. The guys to watch for in those early years of the 500 are Konnan, Vampiro, Cien Caras and Perro Aguayo. Konnan and Vampiro in particular were hotter than anyone in the U.S. in the same years, and probably just as hot as anyone in the world at the time. The value of the peso was up, which led to an economic boom in Mexico, and both guys had distinct looks that made them huge stars at a time that most households had more disposable income. I should start a thread in the Military Industrial Suplex at some point to explore if NAFTA killed the lucha boom of the 90s.

I find myself kind of where I was in the late 2000s, where my fandom is hanging on by a thread. I need some type of project to rekindle my interest. Soup and I do have something in mind for 2017 that should keep me occupied for a while at least, but I think that's how I'll remember this year -- like 2007-2009 again, only without the bitterness that stemmed from Benoit murdering his family. I remember not really getting it when Dylan talked about closure surrounding GWE when it sort of ended up being that for me too in many ways, so I get that now. That has nothing to do with the quality of wrestling now, because it seems to be at a pretty high level, and much of the stuff I have watched this year I have really enjoyed. I just don't feel any emotional attachment to it, which I don't even blame on the wrestling. I blame it on being too jaded and wanting wrestling to be presented in a smarter way -- no more distraction finishes, unexplained music or cameras, more long-term continuity and a move away from patterned match sequences with a switch toward more variation. Women that if they are going to be presented as athletes have last names and don't wear makeup to the ring for their matches. I want an indy that foolishly tells WWE to go fuck themselves for no other reason than that they are The Man. I'm an idealist, and 2016 wrestling isn't idealistic at all. I'm not bitter, just sort of uninspired by it all. I still love wrestling as a form and still enjoy matches that are good, but it feels like with time, the amount of crap I have to overlook to enjoy the good stuff keeps growing bigger and bigger. And again, I don't put that on anything or anyone in wrestling. Time has just sort of passed me by, and I can accept that.

I would also point out that fans don't seem to value transitional moves like leapfrogs, armdrags, reversals, pinning combos, etc., that used to be a staple of the American style. We have switched more to a style where most of the moves and exchanges culminate in something high-impact. I think that's what American fans now like. Lucha libre tends to have a lot of the former, at least in its classic form, and I think that plays a role in some fans dismissing it. Some people like lots of suplex variations, powerbombs, DDTs, press slams and such, which is funny, because in the 80s, those were considered "power moves" by hardcore fans, and power wrestlers were seen as the guys who couldn't work. As for modern lucha, I don't really get someone who likes WWE and NJPW dismissing it. CMLL in particular has more in common with American and Japanese wrestling than at any time I can recall -- too much for my tastes, honestly.

I would say yes simply because they have no serious competition.

I think it's bothersome in the sense that if I love lucha and someone doesn't like me, and decides they will criticize lucha because they know it will get under my skin, as an example (that's not happening with me exactly that way, I'm just saying that as an example scenario), then it drags everything down and points become less earnest. And I do think there's at least some of that going on.

I suspect that a lot of this is not even about the wrestling, but instead about its fans, which is bothersome. Is it the actual wrestling style we don't like, or is it that fans of said style annoy us so we don't like it because it's an easy way to give them some sort of affront? I know that sounds ridiculous, but I do think that's at play here, and it's crazy to completely ignore it. Goc, for example, spends far more time talking about how people react to developments in wrestling than wrestling itself. I don't think he's alone in that, as I also hear lots of critiques about "New Japan fans" or "Dragon Gate fans" or "PWO types" or whatever other label someone wants to assign, and I think people often then extend that to the wrestling style. So how much of this is about taking the opposite position of those who we find the most annoying? It seems like we've come to a point where too much attention is given to the politics of fan tribalism and not enough to the actual wrestling itself.

That would be a ballsy Wrestlemania main event choice. The match doesn't even excite me *that* much, but I could get into that idea with good build-up. It's something different, and it's a big Wrestlemania match that doesn't involve HHH, Undertaker, Brock Lesnar or John Cena, so bring it on.

I feel like I've heard this argument a lot, and I don't really understand it. In what way would Raw be worse off, and less serving of its many masters, if it was booked as a traditional pro wrestling show? Wouldn't the show be much more appealing if it weren't built around feuding GMs, endless horrible comedy skits, impotent babyfaces, etc? If the current formula was working you could shrug and say it is what it is, but their ratings are hitting historic lows every week. If the pressure is on them to grow and deliver bottom lines, they're failing awfully. The Network is nowhere near the numbers they promised their investors, and they may never be. They also failed to deliver a big new TV deal, and I wonder, given the ratings trend, what their next contract with USA is going to look like. I had the same question when Vince was on the Austin podcast, and he explained that they simply need a massive team of writers, because the business has changed. But why? Who changed it? Has it changed for the better? If the many new masters they now serve includes stuff like, "We must let Stephanie emasculate every wrestler in the company to establish to the world how powerful she is," that seems like a self-inflicted wound. They aren't succeeding in drawing a bigger audience much these days. But they are trying. The attempt is there to appeal to casual fans, children, women ... that's why it's booked differently from NXT, at least in theory. I hear what you are saying, but the general belief is that booking good wrestling shows for wrestling fans means they'll never expand their audience. I don't necessarily believe that, but to be fair, NXT isn't meant for everyone. That's the intent of main roster WWE, even though that's not the end result.

NXT has a lot less masters to serve than Raw or Smackdown. When your only goal is to appeal to one type of fan, it's not hard to do that well. When your goal is to appeal to a wide audience that sometimes responds to conflicting things and you have to make choices that are going to alienate some people no matter which way you go, it gets complicated. NXT does a better job of appealing to its audience, but its audience is also more monolithic and an easier one to understand. There is less pressure to grow or to deliver a bottom line. The main pressure is artistic. Raw and Smackdown have a lot of commitments to a lot of people outside the wrestling bubble that NXT simply doesn't. This is not to excuse some of the awful stuff we see on Raw or Smackdown, but just to point out that the task before WWE in producing those shows is far more daunting and complex than in producing NXT. NXT is the better show, but there is no reason it shouldn't be with all the built-in advantages it has. If all of WWE existed with so few masters and so much freedom, it would quite possibly all look exactly like that. But that's not reality. If NXT as we know it collapsed tomorrow, WWE would go on and would not be drastically hurt. If Raw collapsed, WWE would be in serious trouble.

I don't know if Hunter hates Shane personally, or if he is just protective of his turf. Dude has been laying the groundwork for over 20 years.

I thought that was outstanding. Yeah, Charlotte is the best heel in wrestling, at least that I've caught in my admittedly spotty viewing this year. That was some inspired stuff. The material was solid, but what made it great was how committed she was. The stiffness of the slap made the moment resonate, that she was wearing all black street clothes instead of her ring attire made the moment a little more real and I loved the line about the pressures of being Ric Flair's daughter in wrestling because that's most likely pretty genuine. Add in that Sasha's run-in and demolishing at the end was nice and violent, and that they used the angle to close the show, and the end result was a home run. You can absolutely see how delusional as it may be, Charlotte's character has convinced herself she is entitled to feel the way she does. And those are the best heels.

I don't think the measure of a promoter's racism is the degree to which he does or does not push minority wrestlers. It's how he speaks privately to an extent, but more what he believes in his heart, whether that plays out in his business decisions or not. Watts isn't a racist because he pushed JYD or tried to replace him with other black wrestlers, nor is he a racist in spite of that. His racism has nothing to do with that. Now, his racism may manifest itself in other ways through Mid South's presentation, as we've seen through the years with Vince McMahon's 70s funk obsession with black wrestlers for example, but the idea that the degree of capitalist exploitation of an African-American is something we point to as proof of him as being racist or not being racist is something I don't get. And yes, they were all racist. The n-word was an insider term. There you go. Doesn't that sort of end that debate?

I don't really know what this means. He debuted in the company at the end of January and now he's THE top guy on Smackdown and has been pretty much since the brand split. If people were expecting him to suddenly become a Rock or Austin I don't know what to tell them because that was really never in the cards. He's not that good of a promo or that charismatic. It's also a bit silly to compare the pops he was getting earlier in the year to his reactions now because he's a heel now and he was a babyface then. If you want to compare heels, does he get as strong of a reaction as Charlotte or Reigns? Styles is a star. His run has been a success. It hasn't been transformative. Maybe it wasn't going to be. But he was more over the night he debuted than he is right this second. That was my primary point.

I think the litmus test is for "gigantic success story" is, "Can he do a match with Brock Lesnar where the outcome is in doubt?"

It does say a lot, for example, that despite giving him two wins over John Cena and making him champion, AJ Styles is not as over as he was when he first came in. There are some things, sure, but it's not like there's a mountain of things I could point to in the way he's used and say this is why that's the case. And he's still very much a star and very much over, so he's far from a failure. But he's not quite a gigantic success story either.

Sasha followed the same pattern, as did Becky Lynch before going to Smackdown. They don't really have a creative infrastructure yet to support multiple women's feuds getting over at the same time on the same show, which is unfortunate, because the talent is there.

So that closing segment was pretty phenomenal.

Tried to have patience, but I felt a mercy banning was necessary in this case. Carry on.

Following the newz sites is basically playing a game of telephone. It almost always gets re-reported in a way that loses at least part of the original meaning, sometimes all of it. I subscribe because I respect his historical take and because you never know when he's going to say something profound at a moment's notice. Admittedly, some weeks are better and more interesting than others, but the same rings true for the industry he covers.