Loss

The falls coming so easy in Texas Death Matches always bugs me, because it makes me wonder why pins don't come so easily in a regular match.

Yeah, it's been messed up in recent years but 2/3 falls would be my answer.

I don't think that was a good Charlotte performance or anything, but I'm puzzled by how it's uniquely bad in terms of delivery. Is Seth Rollins delivering scripted lines that much better at it than she is?

I'd rather them reveal their true colors, if only because it's actually genuine.

Who knows what's true and what isn't, but it seemed like the tearing up was coached, like she was told to pause for effect and show some emotion.

They did start off with a Paris tribute. The moment was actually perfectly pleasant, but I think it's interesting that they have a Tragedy Template that they just plug whatever into, be it a wrestler death or national/global tragedy. And as expected, Undertaker didn't participate in that because he was protecting the gimmick. So I guess I thought the Paige line was the second most offensive thing on the show at best.

Lots of outrage about Paige's line on Twitter. I won't call it misplaced, because it was tasteless. But on a spectrum, I think it's less offensive than exploiting a dead kid to build their brand or treating the Paris attack like the Ultimate Warrior died. The show is much easier to watch when they are open about who they are.

It actually did happen at the 1994 and 1995 Tokyo Dome shows, but yeah, your point is still correct. I wouldn't say the Steiners were washed up by 1994, but I would say that they were never the same after Scott's '91 injury as they were before it in terms of being over and their matches carrying so much excitement over what new moves they were about to debut.

What is it about Ronda's attitude that people don't like? I only ask because I don't follow this stuff too closely. All that I really know about her is an article I saw where she claimed she is supporting Bernie Sanders for President.

I don't get that. I do agree that Parv (I wish we could call him by his board name -- calling a poster by their shoot name in a contentious thread makes everything feel uncomfortably personal for me) is a lightning rod for some people, but there are times when I think he brings it on himself (although I honestly think that's rare these days) and there are times where I think people remember the last time he brought it on himself and drag that into an unrelated topic. The whole reason this board was started was so we could discuss Pro Wrestling ONLY. People knew each other too well and knowing how someone felt about gay people (because of a Current Events forum), as one of many examples, was leaving a stink on everything else. With podcasting as it relates to the board, that's happening again in a different way, where the personalities are overtaking the subject matter. What you're describing isn't so much a double standard in moderation as it is a board where I honestly think the discussion has become too driven by the messenger. It's at its best when we are about the message.

I don't know that it's the case here, but the biggest criticism people who worked with Dusty Rhodes as a booker always had was that he would set things up and then forget to follow up on them because his attention would go elsewhere. Bill Watts even set up a team right below him to remind him of his own ideas near the end of his time in WCW. I don't know that that's what happened here, but I wouldn't be surprised.

The thought of those promos ...

I'll just add that as a teenager, I thought my dream job would be to work for Pro Wrestling Illustrated. That might have been cool if I was 20 years older, but print media would have been a dead end in the long run. I'm glad life took me in a very different direction, and as much as I love wrestling, having to make a career working in it seems yucky.

I don't know, I probably did. But in the end, all wrestlers are just working to get a desired reaction from a specific audience. Two matches can be wildly different, and the match that does that in a better and more interesting way is usually (not always) the better match. I don't expect the same moves and holds from Toyota or Kawada that I do Tamura, but I expect them all to be equally in tune with their setting. So I guess we aren't that far apart.

The big issue is that fans want to feel like they are choosing who the top guys are instead of the company choosing for them. There's a way for the company to choose their own guys while fans think it was all their idea, but it requires careful booking. I'll also note that Batista was cheered heavily on house shows.

He's not really advocating something all that radical. If you've ever declared a match a MOTYC, you've already compared it to all wrestling in all weight classes all over the world and made a judgment that it's better than most.

Cena-Reigns feels to me like Orton-Batista where the fans would reject the match outright.

WWE was planning to do Cena-Reigns at WM, which shows how little they care about crowd reaction.

I think the visceral impact of watching wrestling matters. If a match can be delivered with effective visuals, that counts for something, even if it's not enough to carry a match on its own.

I could easily see Watts thinking it devalues the World Title to have it defended in a gimmick match. If the goal of a championship match is to determine the best wrestler, the goal of a falls-count-anywhere match is to determine the wildest brawler. There was even a time people thought cage matches for the title were too much of a stretch.

I remember looking for this based on you saying it before when I watched the match and not finding it. Can you pinpoint what he did, exactly, because I didn't see it.

I wasn't watching much when Maryse was around, but I remember Dave raving about her having a great persona.

He hit his stride as a top heel star in an era where scripted promos were just getting started, which suggests to me that he's one of the bigger proponents of doing them.

It's worth noting that wrestling is an American form. I don't disagree with your overall point, but I don't necessarily think it's "wrong" to look at the American style as the default for this reason.

I think the point is that PWO is a bubble within a bubble within a bubble, and while we've formed some ideas that run counter to the long-running narrative about good wrestling, outside of this bubble, thoughts are pretty much what they always were. I don't frequent other boards enough to know if that is true or not.