Loss

You can see Cornette's fingerprints on most of 1997 WWF just as much as Russo's, and we know that things like Hell in a Cell were specifically his ideas. Russo won the power struggle eventually, but they were a tandem at first.

Cornette also was every bit as much part of the writing team that began the WWF's turnaround as Vince Russo, for what it's worth. He just doesn't go around taking sole credit for it or downplaying every other contributing factor, so it doesn't get mentioned as much. His time has passed now, but to say he's never had success just isn't true.

Hahaha, I love the idea of Bayley as WWE's Andrea Zuckerman.

Early ROH worked in smaller buildings because they owned their underground status as part of their presentation. They weren't trying to be anything they weren't, so it was a breath of fresh air. I think Evolve works today for similar reasons. Now ROH tries to be major league and it's just lame because they can't be and aren't. It's the difference between watching wrestling where you feel like you're being let in on this exclusive secret and watching wrestling that wants to be like the big boys and can't get there. That grey area where companies are too big to be small and too small to be big is death. JCP often held TV tapings in buildings that weren't bigger (and were sometimes smaller) than ROH buildings, but the crowds were rabid and even though they were losing, they were trying to be as big as the WWF without copying their philosophy.

Yes. I think that's consistently true. For me, it's not about wrestling being mainstream. It's about the ability to have matches that are presented in a way more in line with traditional pro wrestling that happen in semi-big buildings. I'd take a company that was as big as early 90s WCW even.

The matches are good. What I feel is missing is the style diversity, the sense of importance around the outcome, the booking, the cultural relevance, the crowd reactions and the sense that I'm watching something that will be remembered. It's hard to call this the best period ever for wrestling when there is no wrestling company in the U.S. that can sell out a big arena other than WWE. I don't say that to bring up the business value of that as much as I do to bring up the aesthetic value of that.

It would be very WWE for them to do a storyline where Ambrose or Rollins drugged Roman to set him up for failure or something like that. I think fans would vomit all over that if they tried it, but remember how they made Jeff Hardy's house burning down into a storyline.

He's not saying anything he hasn't said about men. He's said multiple times the Von Erichs would have never gotten over if they were in their late 20s during the height of World Class. He used to also make the point that when Kidman tried to look more like an adult, he completely lost what got him over in WCW initially. It's not a new point, and it's not unique to Bayley.

That would depend entirely on what the comment is.

Man having other people's opinions influence you to that level must be extremely boring. On the contrary, I'd imagine that having impenetrable views on wrestling would be even more boring. It's not so much about parroting the opinions of others as it is reading something that makes me think about a match in a different way. That has happened for me many times around here.

Do we know yet what he tested positive for? If it's pot or something and not PEDs, I think that makes a difference in how he's perceived in the future.

WWE often thinks that and they are right much of the time. I suspect that most TNA contracts have been breached at this point since they are behind on pay.

Kurt Angle is never going to be rehired. Why do so many people still not know about "I don't want an Olympic gold medalist dying on my watch"? Why do people have such a hard time accepting that?

I don't really see how they need all these new people.

It's hard to imagine watching anything wrestling-related more unappealing than that. Wow.

thank you very much, this is the sort of thing i was worried about with the OP! it just seems to me like if you're putting yourself out there publicly as much, across multiple formats, as someone like you or Dylan does, that shows some desire to be heard and to be taken seriously. speaking as someone who's done something similar (live streaming) for years, it always seemed to me that influencing others & gaining popularity are inherent motivations for broadcasting yourself. otherwise it would be a lot less stressful just to shoot the breeze with your pals off-air, no? if there's some other perk here i'm missing, i am genuinely curious and would like to hear more thoughts! Great wrestling is exciting and awesome. When I love something, I want to talk about it, because I want others who are like-minded ("like-minded" meaning people who enjoy critical viewing of wrestling of all styles from all time periods) to watch it, and I hope they enjoy it as much as I do. But that's about where it ends. I don't know any wrestling fans that I haven't met through this medium, and if I did, I'm not sure I'd want to talk about wrestling with them -- not because I think I'm better than them, but because I'd rather not invade their comfort zone. I'd hear a few crazy things that would bewilder me (like the time a co-worker 15 years ago told me that a "shoot" is a wrestling match that is real, like when The Rock and HHH had their ladder match at Summerslam '98), and then I'd become That Guy in how I responded. And I really don't want to be That Guy. I'm thrilled to be in a bubble.

There has almost (almost) always been less in-depth discussion of current wrestling from a critical point of view, and I think the reason is that it's harder to separate oneself from the moment. I often make a fool of myself when I talk about current wrestling, because my contextual frame of reference is usually not the same as it is when I'm viewing something from 20 years ago that's over and done, where I don't have an investment in the outcome. I'm a firm believer that hindsight is 20-20.

The one thing that I do think is most regrettable about this project is the tribalism that has spun out of it around here. I appreciate how soup watches and enjoys very different kinds of wrestling, but it seems like most others are separating into camps where they primarily like a specific style of wrestling and that's how others judge them. So you're part of the Southern indy crowd or the Dragon Gate crowd, as examples, but there isn't enough crossover because there is too much identity politics at play. And when people talk about matches, it often seems like little more than a collection of cliched buzzword-style thoughts about control segments, my-turn-your-turn, selling the arm/leg, etc.

There was no goal to create or reshape or take back any type of narrative about what makes a good worker. This was just meant to be fun. There was no power struggle over the accepted truth that was attempted, and if there was, we would have failed miserably in that regard anyway. So what? I don't really care for the tone of the first post because it suggests a type of calculation that was never in play. That is never what this project was supposed to be. If someone sees a high number next to someone's name and decides to check that wrestler out for the first time, that is the most anyone can hope for.

They were piping the chants in.

He's clearly made the calculation that keeping this talk going is good for his career. It's funny that he's still bummed about it, though. I really thought this was over. It seems like he's decided keeping it alive is in his best interests.

Yeah, the match hasn't really had anyone up in arms. It's the double flip. It's entirely the double flip. Every time the double flip is mentioned, it seems like there is a pivot to the match as a whole. Double. Flip.

When Hogan received similar treatment in WCW, you could at least say it was a mutually beneficial relationship and list what WCW got out of it. I still don't see what WWE is getting out of having Brock.

Amazing how Vince lets this guy steamroll him so much by paying him far more than he's worth, booking him so strong that he becomes less valuable because they don't book anyone else that strong so he has no obvious opponents and acquiescing to pretty much all of his demands. I guess we don't know the details of how they got to this point so it's unfair to paint it as Brock doing his usual self-entitled thing, but on a personal level, I get really annoyed with the level of privilege he gets that doesn't seem to go to anyone else. I admit that may not be a case of what this is. It's more frustration that they can't book anyone else so strong, and that the number of cool options on the table if they were this flexible with everyone would be amazing.

There's also the issue that if someone has this other supposed occupation, especially if it's one that occurs in a public setting, why do we never see them doing their other job? Even when MNM was supposedly famous, it was never established exactly why paparazzi followed them around when they weren't famous. The answer is because wrestling.