Loss

I always enjoyed the way Piper took his shirt off. Someone must have really messed up his shit once when he was taking his shirt off before a match, because he was terrified of a sneak attack for years.

Kakihara transitioned pretty well to pro-style. I enjoyed him in All Japan, even if he falls just shy of elite status during that time. I don't think he has enough for a list like this, but he's a wrestler I really enjoy all the same.

She has always struck me as one of the best wrestlers of post-boom Joshi. My instinct is that she doesn't have enough high end stuff to have a strong case, but I'm not sure that instinct is correct. Really terrific at doing complex finishing stretches and a pretty versatile worker to boot. Everyone should check out the singles match with Satomura from GAEA in January 1999, where she looks like the second coming of Mariko Yoshida.

That's about the extent of it. When Dave did his walk-through of the WWF-WCW feud a decade or so ago, he mentioned it there. It never got off the ground, really, because Turner Broadcasting wanted WCW to be both a wrestling company run on the cheap and a competitor to the WWF. One or the other could have been possible, but not both. The Savage story was something else. WCW started showing interest. Savage said they weren't going anywhere out of loyalty. Liz was like no, we're going where the money is. Then Herd offered Savage less money than he was already making to jump. Savage thought they wasted his time and stopped talking to them.

The absolute worst ref offense was Terry Taylor taking a regular ref bump during the Flair-Rude match at Halloween Havoc '93. This was even in a match where he was billed as a special second referee who wouldn't succumb to that.

Stephanie travels home before they tape the show, so WWE sort of loses their will to live until she's back on Monday.

Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka vs Yukihiro Kanemura & Kodo Fuyuki (05/27/98) Hayabusa, Daisuke Ikeda, Hisakatsu Oya & Ricky Fuji vs Kodo Fuyuki, Koji Nakagawa, Kintaro Kanemura & Gedo (06/19/98) Hayabusa vs Kodo Fuyuki (11/20/98) Hayabusa vs Mr. Gannosuke (08/25/99) * Masato Tanaka vs Kodo Fuyuki (11/23/99, Loser Leaves FMW Electric Cage Match) * While Fuyuki is not actually in the match proper, he is the centerpiece of the surrounding hoopla. In the same way Kudo-Toyoda from '96 is a case for Onita as a big show performer, this is a case for Fuyuki. I know it seems odd that he's not even involved in the match that makes his spectacle case better than any other on the list, but just trust me on this one. You will be blown away.

- What if it's 1987 and a tape comes out of Hulk Hogan making the exact same comments? - What if Flair's 1989 idea for WCW to raid all of the WWF's good workers -- DiBiase, Bret, the Rockers and Hennig -- had been successful? What if talks with Savage and Piper that year had gone well and the two jumped ship? What if Herd was able to keep Steamboat in the fold? How badly does all of that hurt the WWF? How greatly does all of that benefit WCW?

Speaking of Mid South, what if they are the ones with the long-running TBS presence instead of Jim Crockett Promotions? That almost happened.

Barry Windham was the quintessential TV match wrestler for me in the late 80s and early 90s in terms of hidden gems.

Fuyuki is a good sleeper pick. While the Foot Loose run is what he tends to be most remembered for, he was an excellent poor man's Tenryu type at late as 1999 in FMW. Others I would mention that haven't been brought up yet in this thread are Akira Maeda, Giant Baba and Kenta Kobashi.

Whoa, Naomi's boots! I think they are now the GOAT wrestling boots.

I'm here to actually say good things! - Miz has really become awesome in his role, even if he remains damaged goods - I'll be damned if Cesaro getting in an impromptu fight while wearing street clothes doesn't make him come across as a superstar

What four months are you using? Are you basing that on the weird WCW TV taping cycle at the time? They were *presented* as a tag team for twice that long, so just curious.

Little known fact: When WWE finishes television tapings each week, Vince turns Michael Cole off, disassembles him and places him in his briefcase until the following week's show.

The dream build is rare. I meant the general motivation of the characters. They are mostly presented as childhood fans turned superstars who are living the dream. And when I say that, I'm referring to the totality of the WWE experience -- not just what's on Raw or Smackdown, but their "out of character" appearances on Tough Enough and in documentaries on the Network where they are supposedly shooting straight. When fans started rejecting Batista, Vince's ideas for turning it around were for Batista to talk about how much he really wanted to be there. Cena-Rock was built on the idea that Rock didn't love wrestling enough. And remember those arguments between the Bellas and AJ earlier this year? It's a bunch of Kitty Farmers questioning each other's commitment to Sparkle Motion. I just don't buy the number of hours of TV argument as having anything to do with the malaise. History shows that when wrestling is good, fans can't seem to get enough of it. During the last popularity boom, there was way more wrestling on television than there is now, and a healthy part of the combined audience followed both companies. In fact, WCW alone had three hours of Nitro, two hours of Thunder, two hours of Saturday Night and their syndication. Granted, they picked up Thunder and the third hour of Nitro right as it was becoming clear they were eventually going to pay for some bad booking decisions, but that's a case of correlation more than causation.

I watched everything consistently and faithfully until 2005. I've had stretches since then where I've started watching weekly again, usually during stuff like the Jericho-Shawn feud, Bret coming back to set up the Vince match, Nexus, summer of Punk, Brock's return, and most of the stretch from Summerslam to Wrestlemania 30. And I usually catch at least some WWE TV every week even now, but I don't make it a point to watch all of it. There have been other moments where I've tried it out again, but those are the ones that stand out the most thinking about them now. I'm familiar enough with this company to read something and know if there's an improvement or even the possibility of one. But aside from a rotating cast of players and less tasteless angles, it's pretty much the same stuff they were doing a decade ago. They would never have Randy Orton cut a promo about Eddy Guerrero burning in hell now (although Miz made similar comments about Jerry Lawler's mom as late as 2011), but they at least wrote with the idea ten years ago that storylines should hold up week-to-week, which they don't care about now. They didn't always succeed at that, but that was the idea. Plus, they were building up Cena and Batista, so there was a fresh feeling there that is missing now. Still, overall, WWE now is the same WWE it was then -- opportunities to create fresh matchups and run with things that seem to be catching on left and right squandered constantly because of preconceived notions about what works and what doesn't. In fact, that has been the same song and dance much longer than that. I'll respond to the rest of your points in a separate post a little later.

I think the post you quoted had some awkward wording, but I believe he was talking about RAW when it was 2 hours long when listing all those tropes, not saying that NXT has all those tropes. The point seemed to be that RAW wasn't automatically better at 2 hours just because it was shorter (since it had a lot of the same problems it has now at 3 hours long) and was comparing to NXT which is better not because it's shorter but because it's just better executed. Every episode of NXT I have decided to check out has started with an in-ring dueling promo. The most recent involved Neville and Kevin Owens the week after KO turned on Zayn to end the special. So I was actually referring to NXT. I did like Sasha-Becky a lot and that wasn't worked in style, but I was not referring to the finisher kickouts of Cena-Owens as much as I was guys like Zayn doing all these wow spots that never get victories for him, so they mean far less than they should.

I wonder if the top living stars of that era aren't Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura and Gene Okerlund.

I hate how most programs are about WWE itself (its history and the thrill of performing on the stage of such a successful company) instead of some universal theme with a semi-relatable issue there at the core. Everyone on Tough Enough is cutting terrible promos about how they're so passionate and how much they want to be there. Well, no shit. We're creatures of free will, and as far as I know, WWE isn't putting hoods on people, throwing them in the trunk and dropping them off at gunpoint at Full Sail University. I mean, I get having to clarify that since we see televised moments multiple times a week where Michael Cole bathes himself in the holy water of WWE buzzwords while Lawler and JBL smile with every bit the sincerity of a prisoner of war in a propaganda video. But I still don't think that clarification is necessary. Most entrance music lyrics seem to be some variant on the idea that it's that wrestler's specific chance to shine, it's their time and they cannot be stopped. Seriously, if you applied the lyrics to the Perfect Strangers sitcom theme or Starship's "Nothin's Gonna Stop Us Now" against a nu-metal track, would anyone even notice? It's fucking postmodernism on steroids, and if you find three words that more accurately describe WWE than *that*, come to Chicago and I will you buy you a dinner and drinks. I won't even expect you to put out. Anyway, there are exceptions to that, obviously. The company is run by a sheltered 70-year-old billionaire who lusts after his daughter and has a drug problem, and as a result, he has a great rapport with the devil, to the point that he knows his favorite demon. Randy Orton is called a "Viper" not by fans who think he resembles a Viper or even by the wrestler himself who envisions his character that way, but instead by the same megalomaniac CEO. He even does what the voices in his head tell him to do, according to his entrance music. It has all the substance of a Hot Topic t-shirt. Motivations that don't involve having one's time or accomplishing dreams are all too rare. I suppose that is because WWE is so busy praying at the altar of their own bloated sense of self-importance, giving little time to create feuds centered around guys who hate each other (and are even allowed to use that word!) fighting for money, championships and women. Winning wouldn't mean accomplishing some overbearing, xeroxed-from-Shawn-Michaels childhood dream, and the journey may not play as a Lifetime movie of the week or WWE Network feel-good documentary. You used to have the guys that were there to make money, those who just liked hurting people where this gave them a legal outlet and those who wanted to win a title simply because they hated the current champion and know how much it would crush him to be dethroned. There's a place for all of it, of course, and the desire to have one's time and accomplish dreams is a noble goal. But it doesn't have to be the only one. I remember when I first really started going online regularly in 1998. There were two successful wrestling companies at the time, although WCW was on the brink of an inevitable decline. And people just ripped WCW booking to shreds, unapologetically and without pulling punches. WCW deserved it. Keep in mind that we didn't know the consequences of their stupidity yet. We only knew that it made for a shitty wrestling show. Somewhere along the way, fans were beaten into such a point of submission that a teleporting cult leader who cuts promos with lines that would embarrass Jewel doesn't draw nearly the same levels of vitriol. But now, conventional wisdom is that it doesn't matter so much, because WWE will still be successful. We didn't know WCW's bad decisions were going to be so catastrophic in 1998, but we still had a call to arms because it made for a shitty wrestling show. Now, fans are so numb that they can't even muster enough passion to make a huge issue out of this crap, so they just point to WWE's continued existence as proof that it's not that bad. They either watch with blinders on or have switched the focus of their fandom to obsessing over the business side. Fans don't care enough to hold WWE's feet to the fire every week, even when it's proven that in rare cases where they do, Daniel Bryan ends up the WWE World Champion after beating all of Evolution by himself in one night at Wrestlemania. We need a heel like we need water, someone to fire us up by pointing out how lame we are. But WWE has a pay structure where it's financial suicide to really go all out being a heel, since so much income is derived from merchandise, and who wants to wear t-shirts of someone they don't like? And even if they didn't have that set-up, they have become the most risk averse company perhaps in modern times. Their ideal heel is someone who doesn't make anyone mad. The sad part is that they wouldn't have to placate sponsors and Wall Street to the ridiculous degree they do if they would simply focus on making their creative great and get people excited about what they show us every week. But they've lost so many fans that they'd be in the red big time if they were left to only rely on live gates and Network subs to make money. I don't think they should avoid other revenue streams, and I don't even fault them for it. But the more revenue streams a company has, the less what its fans want actually has to matter. We've always gotten Vince's moral vision to a degree, but now we're getting a McMahonifesto. There are no checks and balances in the WWE Universe and sadly, I'm not sure how that changes. Oh yeah, but RAW is three hours now. How could I forget? It's a three hour show. A THREE HOUR SHOW. They have so much television time to fill. I like how this assumes that when RAW was two hours, WWE Creative was clicking on all cylinders and that these problems are something new, just like it somehow tricks people into thinking NXT is good because it's short, even though it's filled with the same opening dueling promo crap, characters without a strong hook and matches where people just kick out of stuff over and over. These problems have been there for 15 years. I don't root for WWE's demise. But I do root for them to be forced out of their comfort zone through some type of major challenge, one that requires them to re-think every aspect of their presentation from the bottom-up. But as I type that, I know some apologist wants to tell me WWE is going to be fine because of their TV rights deals, not realizing they're only proving my point.

Oh God. How much time do you have? Give me some time to come back to this and make the post this thread deserves.

The anger should not be directed toward Hero if that's true. It should be directed at Vince and/or HHH and/or fans who prop up that type of value system. He didn't quit, he was released.

Yes, it happens in other lines of work and people bitch about it there, so we should do so here too. goc, "they" meaning WWE. If Cesaro or Daniel Bryan was the champion right now, they'd be taking blame for the decline and would be dropping the title soon. I realize I'm on kind of an ideological tear today. Just especially annoyed with WWE being WWE.

Nor has Rollins taken any blame for declining ratings. Nor do I hear much about his merchandise sales, positive or negative. Those things only matter when they want them to matter.