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Stan rules. Not a "best" list, but favorites that come to mind if I had to take five Stan matches with me to an island: 09/80 Stan vs Backlund 02/93 Stan vs Kawada 05/93 Stan vs Misawa 07/93 Stan vs Kobashi 11/93 Stan & Baba vs Misawa & Kobashi The middle three are pretty much Usual Suspects matches. If you got 20 of us together to vote on 5 matches, those three would end up in the Top 10 easily, and be candidates for the Top 5. The other two are less usual suspects, and just favs of mine for years. Stan-Bob is just different from a typical Bob Match and a typical Stan Match, yet it has Stanisms and Bobisms all over the place in it. Their first MSG matches is pretty entertaining and damned ass heated. But I like the earlier one in Japan better as an all around match. Loads of fun. The tag is a match that I've pimped for years. If you want a example of how great Misawa & Kobashi were as a team, and how great Stan was in 1993, this strikes me as the definative example. All four are busting their asses all over the place to make this a great/memorable match. If you want an example of (i) how the the All Japan fans buy into the legend of Baba, and (ii) how that old fucking goat added so much crap to his game even as his body was falling apart from the mid/late 70s on, this is the prime example as well. It's not like Baba needs to add a DDT to his moveset since he has other this in the bag... but at some point he did because it's easy to do and it's cool and the fans would like it. So having added that (and other things) to the holster over the years, he's stuck in here going 30 with a pair of hot shits and has to come up with things to fill his part of the deal and pop the fans... well, fuck it... I've added that DDT... let me drop one of those punks on there head... *fan dig it*. Then he eats the moonsault... and it's not like he's scooting along on his ass laying there like Flair does (against Mutoh in the 1995 G1) thinking the dude doesn't have enough air to get out here. Baba knows that Kobashi knows what he's doing, so he just grits his teeth and looks for the 265 solid pound of Kobashi to come splatting down on him... and the fans loose their shit. Doesn't matter how many times I watch that match, I can pop it in again and get a big ass smile on my face. I love the Last Match Of The Year... it's a favorite, and if you put a gun to my head and told me I could only keep one match of 1993, I suspect it would be that one. But... I'd be more annoyed at not being able to ever watch Baba & Hansen vs Misawa & Kobashi again than any other match from that year. You need to have some fun with wrestling... I think we all have matches that strike us as "fun" before "great"... and that match is just fun as shit for me. John

Good call. That popped into my mind as a Heel vs Heel match. It's a niche within it: Monster Heel vs Super Duper Monster Heel, so not everyone could work that. But it's a well worker heel vs heel match. John

It's not really a heel-heel match. Jake was the face. It's not that the match made Jake a face: they worked the match for Jake to be the face, even before the bell rang: http://www.otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2901#2901 This is far from say the Barry vs Doc match at Starcade 1987 where Doc kinda-sorta is the "heel" because he takes advantage of Barry's mishap. In this one, Savage is the Bitch Heel Champ, and Jake works pretty much exactly like he does as a face once he fully turns. One could contrast it with Jake's just finished feud with Steamer, where he didn't work face. Whether fans thought he was cool or not, he was the heel in the Steamer feud... which just happened to end prior to this match, at the prior SNME if I'm not mistaken. John

I think people have always said that Jumbo-Barry was pretty not-so-good. John

God I'm glad that Claudio beat Ki out here to retain the PWG title. My worst nightmares of 2011: * Joey Ryan over Claudio * Low Ki over Claudio * Eddie Edwards over Claudio So far I've avoided the first two. John

He was good up until the knee injury in 1993. There's a lot of Barry in the 1992 set, thought that hasn't been walked through by Loss yet. Looking at Loss' rankings of Barry's stuff in 1993: Ricky Steamboat & Dustin Rhodes vs. Barry Windham & Brian Pillman (WWW 1/2/93) ***1/2 Barry Windham vs. Ricky Steamboat (WCWSN 1/9/93) ***3/4 Barry Windham vs. Steven Regal (WWW 4/18/93) **** Barry Windham vs. 2 Cold Scorpio (Clash 6/16/93) **** Ric Flair & Arn Anderson & Paul Roma vs. Steve Austin & Brian Pillman & Barry Windham (WCWSN 7/3/93) **** You can take a look in the Yearbooks section to see the comments Loss had on the matches. He did have some stinkers. The match with Muta was terrible, but that *seemed* to be because Watts had them go out working an NWA Title Match, going on forever and boring as all shit. The match with Arn that was on Slambore didn't make the cut, and I don't recall hearing what Will or Loss thought of it when working on the list of matches. I also seem to recall that there was another Regal match that didn't come off as well? Anyway, that's an interesting mix of singles opponents with different styles: Steamer, Regal and 2 Cold. A couple of tags, and Barry was a pretty good tag worker. There are at least three matches in 1992 that have often been highly rated: the tags at SuperBrawl and Starcade along with Wargames at WrestleWar. Despite being tags where a lot of people can get credit for making it good, Barry's performance in all had tended to be given a fair amount of praise. Suspect that some of the other matches that made the 1992 cut was also well liked. I think overall, Barry's work from his mid-1990 return to WCW until his June 1993 knee injury has gotten props over the years. People probably point to stuff in the 80s as his peak, but a lot of people have tried to get across that he didn't fall off the cliff after that. 6/90 - 6/93 had a pretty fair amount of good stuff. Looking at Will's old BW set, there was 30 matches in that period that made it. Doesn't seem like a ton in the current era of 12 PPVs a year and all those Raws and SD. But 10 matches a year isn't bad, especially considering Will did comps a little less exhaustive in 2006 than now. Just looking at the 1992 Yearbook, there are another 7 matches with Barry that weren't on the old comp, though some of the stuff from the comp (like Barry-Arn the next year) didn't make the Yearbook level. I'm guessing there could be a list of at least 40+ matches in 6/90 - 6/93 that are "worth watching" or above, with at least 5 of them reaching the "Hot Damn This Is A Helluva Match" level with Barry's working being a big part of it. Given the two Wargames, SuperBrawl '92 and Starcade '92... someone just needs to toss out a 5th one. John

That's vastly more accurate. John

What % of the fans are marks? Most everyone knows it's fake. John

FWIW: the above rant wasn't aimed at anyone in the thread, or anything specifically said in the thread. Just at the general sense that after all these years we can't get to a simple level: "I'm a wrestling fan. A pretty big one." And that somehow now being enough. John

That's typically what one does in other forms of fandom. On the other hand, I think "casual" limiting to most people online. Those 6M who "like" the WWE's webpage are a massive chunk of the people who watch the WWE's programing around the world. Those aren't "casual" fans. They watch is most weeks. In sports, we term "casual fans" as the folks who go to Dodger Stadium 1-3 times a year, and maybe watch a few games on TV, and don't pay massive attention to the Dodgers. We hear the term used for the NFL: lots of casual fans watch the Super Bowl, but they're not watching the 10+ Packers games a year. Of course lots of non-fans watching the Super Bowl because it's an Event. But casual is a slice above that: they know the rules of football, know some of the storylines, know some of the stars, maybe have a team the know a bit more about (such as the home team). Your serious fan might be the guy who watches 10+ games a year of the home team. The hardcore watches all of them... talks to friends about them... reads and watches and listens to a fair amount of stuff on the team. Obviously there are levels of hardcore fandom: those freaking Hogs in DC are massive hardcore (and frankly crackers). But when I'm out in DC with Jeremy and Lee, Jeremy has the DirecTV package... they flip around watching a crapload of cames on a Sunday. Jeremy reads Football Insiders and can drop high end info on me like I use to be able to drop Jamesian info on Baseball back in the day. Are they hardcore NFL fans? Not as nuts as the Hogs, but Jeremy is a hardcore fan, and Lee watches a lot of NFL games during the course of the year, and not just her team (the Colts). Would I be a casual NFL fan? I'm not sure. I watch a pretty fair amount of NFL. Far more than a casual fan who might watch a few Sunday Night Football games a year, a game on Thanksgiving, the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl. I don't watch as much NFL right now as I do college football, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that I watch at least 75+ NFL games on TV a season. Is that casual in a season that if you have a "home team" that wins the Super Bowl and watch just their games you'd end up watching 19-20 games? Doesn't seem casual. So... A WWE Fan who "likes" their Facebook page and let's day watches Raw three times a month and say SmackDown onces a month (for arguments sake let's say he's a Raw fan and not an SD fan)... that's 48 WWE programs a year. 3 Raw's a month is more than enough to keep up with all the storylines. 96 hours of WWE tv a year. Is that casual? Relative to how much some of us might watch, sure. But I'd say he's more of a "regular Raw watcher/fan", and thus a Regular WWE Fan. I think most fans who go to WWE.com and the WWE's facebook page are Regular Wrestling Fans. I don't know where one crosses the line between "regular" and "hardcore". I watched every Lakers game this year. Talked a lot about them, read a lot. We had a 39 page thread on them last season which was largely just three Lakers Fans shooting the shit / arguing / going on benders about the team. A lot of hours devoted to watching and talking and bullshitting about the team. Casual? No. Regular? At least, but I use to feel like a regular one when watching 50+ regular season games and reading the box scores and recaps of the rest. All 82... that was a serious committment when there's also NFL, NCAA Football (8-11 hours every Saturday), Duke Basketball (watches all that were available) and ManU (watches all that were available which was a lot... even those pre-season exhibitions in the US ). Do you have to read the freaking WON to be a "hardcore WWE Fan"? I mean... those fuckers actually LOVE the WWE a hell of a lot more than Alverez and Meltzer and most of us. They watch the shit because they LOVE it, not because it pays the bills like it does for Dave and Bryan or because they're freaking masocists like some of us WWE watches before we eject. In the end, we're the feaking Trekies of pro wrestling. Dave and Bryan are the equiv of the editors of Soap Opera Digest, well... back when the Soaps were doing big business rather than dying (though that actually makes the analogy work even better given the state of pro wrestling). Dave and Bryan provide info above and beyond the normal hardcore fandom level, to those folks that are basically batshit crazy about pro wrestling... similar to Dave and Bryan being batshit crazy enough to devote their freaking lives to this shithole of a profession. Okay... I'm rambling here... Anyway, "casual" and "hardcore" are too narrow for what we see in wrestling fandom. The folks who watch the WWE regularly and are big enough fans of the company to "like" the facebook page (as opposed to being embarassed to admit their fandom)... they're not very casual. This is similar to an argument I use to have with that douchebag Scherer where he tried to place fans into neat little buckets the suited his Us vs Them bullshit games. The Us for him were the Real Fans... you know, those folks who'd go to the Bingo Hall and mark out. The people like me and Herb and Dave and even folks like Dean and Phil... they were the Them who Thought Too Much about pro wrestling. That wasn't the right way to being a wrestling fan. Of course it was all bullshit. Sports talk radio at the time was filled with people *thinking* about sports. Mid-90s... so stuff like: * was Griffey Jr. better than Bonds * was Farve the next great QB? * A-Rod vs Jetter: who was the better young SS * Maddux vs Clemens * where the Braves choking dogs by winning only 1 WS * was MJ maybe... kind of... could he be... the best of all-time There were literally a thousdan other things like this that Real Sports Fans thought about all the freaking time. They watched the games, read up on it, drank beers with friends while arguing it, and dialed up sports radio to argue about the shit. Real Fans just don't go to games or watch them on TV, shit back and mark out for it, and then do nothing else. They think about that shit until the next game. Of course Mr. Schemer never could cop to being utterly full of shit, and that he was just playing Us vs Them to put the people he didn't like in the Them bucket while playing to rubes who wanted to be in his Us bucket. "The IWC" meme isn't that bad. But it's equally as useless. We Are Wrestling Fans For fucks sake, stop trying to jump through hoops to put parts of us into nifty little buckets that we can kick around. John

There is that. There once *may* have been an "Internet Wrestling Community": rsp-w in the extremely early 90s. But by the time Prodigy and AOL Grandstand kicked up, there was little community. Just a bunch of fans. Anyone among us who was the old Federation Forums (i.e. WWF, WCW and ECW) back on AOL Grandstand can attest: they were just fans. Perhaps more hardcore than your average fan watching the WWF in MSG, but vastly less hardcore than WON readers who *were not* "The IWC". By the time I got online in 1996, there was little community on rsp-w. You had your fans like Dean. You had some massive WCW or WWF fanboys who just ripped the shit out of the other promotion as the Monday Night Wars took off. You had your trolls. You even had non-wrestling fans like Zoggs just fucking around. And you had your people who were hardcore WON readers like Herb Kunze. In turn, rsp-w was an entirely different beast from AOL GS (and one would assume Prodigy where RYDER ruled the roost). Once websites popped up? There was no singular "IWC". That's the reason why there is no IWC: the way in which people use the term doesn't accurately describe _anything_ other than the one (or handful) of websites they read/post to. Exactly how many of us have a clue of what folks on WWE.com have written over the years? Go to youtube, but in a PPV name and you'll pull up a *ton* of people doing videos of them simply reviewing the PPV. He'll, put in the name of a PWG card and the same thing will pop up. I know this because I've tried to find some of the DVD pimpage that PWG puts out only to pull up a crapload of people talking into their fucking webcam about the show and uploading it to youtube. That's barely scratching the surface. Some of you are massive torrents users, and you know that there are wrestling torrents "communities" (i.e. boards) that service those interests. Do you think that Alverez or Bruce or Burgan mean those things when they talk about the "IWC"? The CM boards? Do they mean all those videos that are up on DM? What about stuff that's uploaded to MU and RS and a host of other file sharing cites? The people who toss around the term are probably in touch with 1% of the totality of online wrestling fandom/activity. The wrestling internet isn't a "community" anymore than the United States is a "community". It's a fucking country. We passed out of "community" before the terms IWC was even created. Here's an uncomfortable analogy: The folks who use "IWC" are the wrestling fan equiv of those older whites who still use the term "Coloreds". It simply dates the user of the term and reflects how completely out of touch they are. For anyone who thinks 1% is off base: 6,138,623 people like this facebook page... probably best not to look at the #1 wrestler linked to on that page, since he has a million more Community? Out of fucking touch. Train left the stay long ago, folks. John

You're right. Thought there was something wrong with Tommy Lane, but was too lazy to google it up. Corrected. John

Tenryu would whiff a lot, or would tap the upper back a lot. He wasn't making folks see stars all that often, unless grumpy old Tenryu in the late 90s and 00's started actually connecting to the skull a lot more than "prime" Tenryu did. John

Not sure what you mean here. Care to expand? "There is no Cabal" John

That sort of side steps my point: It doesn't matter a great deal whether you or I, now or at the time, think that Lane's kicks look god awful. *At the time*, the fans bought them. Dusty's Flip-Flop&Fly punches & elbow looked like shit as well. But the fans Really Bought them, at least as long as the fans bought into Dusty. I suspect the reason why Crockett/Turner fans bought Stan's kicks is because no one else (i.e. hardly anyone else) in the US in the Big 2 was doing kicks along the lines that Stan was. We had plenty of Stomp A Mudhole kicks, but not much like Stan. Even Steamboat's shitty Kung Fu Steamer gimmick avoided the kicks. So people weren't comparing Stan's kicks to say... Akira Fucking Meada. And they bought them. It's not like they were goaning. It's not like a heat vaccum hit the arena when Stan starting "kicking the shit" out of a babyface. They got about as much heat as Bobby Eatons great looking Memphis-style punches. I think the last part it the one relavant to Stan: people accepted sloppy/shitty enzuigiris. Tenryu's might have been sloppier and shittier than most, which is why we used to bust on them... but did the crowd buy them? Usually... unless he missed them a little bit too much. People who have watched a lot of Fabs would be the ones who could jump in here: how well did Stan know Tag Team Conventions while in the Fabs? What I mean by this is: are we going to totally give Bobby and Jimbo credit for teaching Stan how to really, really, really know how to work all the strong Tag Team Spots that the MX rolled out? I'm not talking about shit like the Double Goozle or other high spots. I mean all that shit of working over the face in peril, how to work distraction spots, out to fake out the ref, how to perfectly play to pissing the shit off of the fans, etc? Because Stan flat out fit into the MX from pretty much day one. In the sense of it not looking like Bobby and Jimbo had to take him aside an tell him: "When I do this to get Ricky's attention, and then Bobby wanders over there to get Tommy Young's attention, you slip in and put the boots to Robert... then slip back out when you notice Bobby & Tommy have gone as far at the can and Tommy is about ready to turn around... but then look for Ricky jumping in the ring, because Tommy is then going to be forced to drag him back into the corner, which is when you can slip back in and together work a double team... which will send Ricky batshit and force Tommy even more to drag him back into the corner... if you work it just right, Robert will be right across the bottom apron so the I can do a racket thrust into his throat as I wander on back..." Okay, so some of that is planned out (like figuring out where to put Robert to eat the racket thrust). But most of the rest of it... That's just basic old school smart Tag Team Bullshit. Obviously the MX & Jimmy were fucking masters of it. We can debate of they are the best, but we'd probably agree that they were Really, Really, Really fucking good at it. They had a PhD in Tag Team Conventions. What strikes me when I watch the Eaton-Lane-Jimmy version of it is that Lane knows what the hell to do. We can complain about some of the stuff we don't really like of his, similar to how we can complain about some of the stuff Fulton does with the Fans. But... Lane & Fulton know their shit. Rogers & Bobby (and of course Jimmy and no doubt Tommy Young) are fucking great in some of the stuff they do. But when you watching something like Clash I, it's pretty freaking clear that Lane and Fulton really know their shit as well. That was one of the things I tried to get across in the old Table For Six post: even if Fulton isn't one of my favs, that s.o.b. really knew his role and did a lot of small basic Tag Team Bullshit that helped make it a match. Lane strikes me the same way. There's some stuff in there that I, as a Wrestling Snob, might turn my nose up as not really having a Fine Wrestling Bouquet to it. But if you eyeball the fans, they're swilling it down... and it's not exactly like they're all Sportitorium Wino Fans belting back: So... maybe we need to cut Stan a little slack on those kicks: Fans at the time bought the shit. They weren't the dumbest fans in pro wrestling. We need to admit that this shit worked. John

I think more racism from inside the business than from the fans. Promoters/bookers/wrestlers play to the racism of the fans. They also play to their own racism looking for reasons to avoid developing/pushing black wrestlers. If it wasn't proven before, Rock pretty much ended the myth that wrestling fans all of the country wouldn't get behind a black wrestler. But I think long before that the myth should have been dead. Blacks in other forms of entertainment have been wildly "cross over" popular for decades. In turn, taking the fake-sport to real-sport comp, black athletes have done big business in sports through the years. Wrestling has always been like the mafia: a closed business where the "us" is protected. John

I always thought the concept of "The IWC" was pretty laughable. John

After a decade of saying the Spurs *weren't* boring, this is the reward I get? John

I know we all have spent years shitting on Lane's kicks in the MX, but... They actually were bought by the fans. It's a bit like us thinking The People's Elbow sucks donkey dick. In reality, the move was over like shit with the fans. Hell, I don't even think Stan's kicks in the MX were "blown" akin to the Tenryu-zigiri which often was the Neighborhood Play of pro wrestling. Yet for whatever reason, in Tenryu Luv over the past few years, do the shitty enzugiris get as much run as the unending "Stan's Kicks Sux" meme? John

I'd probably take Maldini as well, though it depends on the team I'd have. The thing is... while Maldini got all the praise, Cafu often got overshadowed by his Brasil left back: Bobby Carlos. And that's where I think Cafu was massively underrated. Roberto got all the hype for flash, while I thought Cafu was much better defensively and *overall* better offensively because his runs forward fit more into a team concept while Bobby at times went into selfish/masturbatory mode. Smart offensively as well, in the sense that he didn't seem to make the errors running foward that Bobby did, whereas you'd always have a few times in a game where Bobby turned the ball over stupidly with there being miles of space down the right wing behind him and several Real players running furiously to try to shut someone down. I thought Brasil in 2002 has the perfect solution for Bobby's flakeyness: three centerbacks allowing Bobby and Cafu much more freedom to move forward. In turn, the two not only could support the back line defensively but also support what was essentially a two man midfield behind Ronaldo/Rivaldo/Ronaldinho. A strange, interesting mix: three center backs, two wingbacks who typically played left/right backs in four man back lines, and a pair of defensively midfielders. 7 "defensive" players behind that wild front three. Yet the width coming almost entirely from two of those defenders, who inturn helped flood the midfield and firm up the back. Bobby and Cafu each were almost three players in one. Anyway... give me a Maldini+Cafu in their prime on either wing along with a pair of rocks in centerback, and I'd be happy. To me they were the best left and right backs of the 90s. John

Kawada. Beats the heck out of me who would be #2 of all-time. John

Despite playing for the Gunners, he as a favorite of mine since he plays forward in a way I like: lots of movement, and very giving to teammates rather than just a ball hog. I'm more a Roberto Baggio / Dennis Bergkamp fanboy than a Ronaldo / Ronaldo fan. So when Henry seemed to lose it in Barca, I thought it was an injury or the improvement of Pedro that was the cause. Instead, no one wanted him other than the MLS looking for a "name". Real strange. If it were the 80s, we'd say it was due to coke. I'd say this is true for 2008/2009 and the second half of this season. In 2009/2010 there were times when it looked like he was hitting the wall, and then early in this season it looked like the wall had been hit. Then... it just clicked back in. Long injury to Valencia, that combo of Park going to the Asia Championship then getting hurt when coming back, and some of those typical Nani injuries seemed to inspire him to pick up his game. There was one game, I wish I could remember it, where he came in as a sub in the second half in a game where we were flat and seemed certain to lose. He had a near reckless attitude of "refuse to lose", was all over the damn place, turned the game around, and then looked to inspire everyone else to get off their arses and pick up their play. My dad called me later in the day and couldn't stop raving about him. And after that up to the final, Giggs was pretty damn strong. I think if there's any negative now relative to the mid-90s is that he can't sustain it as long now as he use to: both in terms of a game where he now needs to pick his spots more, and in terms of a season where he (i) takes a lot of little knocks, (ii) takes a while to find his form, and (iii) will go out of form a little sooner than when young. That is just part of getting older. My guess is that his overall peak might have been, when healthy, in the early/middle of the 00's. He was smarter than in the 90s and better able to positionally move across the pitch than when he'd been just a pure left winger as kid. In turn, his health and conditioning were better than they are now. He was probably a bit ahead of the rest of the team in terms of where Sir Alex wanted it to go as he transitioned from the style of the 1999 team to that of the 2008 team. Becks, even at his peak, wouldn't have fit in well with the 2008 team because he was so positionally (and frankly defensively as well) limited. 2001-2003 Giggs would have fit perfectly in with Rooney/Tevaz/Ronaldo... we know this because 2007/2008 & 2008/2009 Giggsy fit in perfectly with them despite being half a decade older. I think part of the problem in 2005 is that he had issues sustaining those runs up and down like he had in the 90s. Cafu was pretty much Alves before Alves, and could do that damn near until his last season with Milan, and he was about as old as Maldini. I think Maldini the heart was there, but eventually it got to him. The goal in the CL Final was a minute in off a set piece and semi-flukey at that, not off run down the wing. John

Gary looked washed up earlier than this season. The pace was gone several years back, and that's when he started taking less risks busting down the right wing and played much more carefully. There was talent around him that covered for it. This year simply indicated that he was beyond washed up: he was unplayable. Scholes is a better example of what you're talking about. He looked "great" early in the season in the deep holding spot, but it didn't take long for coaches to figure it out. They started press him more, give him less time on the ball to make his nice passes. In addition, since holding has defensive responsibilities and Paul never really was a strong defensive player who has only gotten slower, teams attacked into his area more. Overload on the centerbacks, a few too many times you'd see Paul trailing behind the play as he didn't have the speed to get back. It was jarring to watch, as he looked *terrific* in the Charity Shield against the Blues. Sure, it's an "exhibition" on some level. But both the Blues and ManU wanted to make a statement against what looked to be (and ended up being) their top rival from the Premiership in the coming season. Chelsea let Paul have all sorts of time on the ball, and he was knocking the ball all of the pitch with some bautiful long passes. That stopped as the season went on. Typical Sir Alex: he noticed Paul was slipping and that especially the defensive liability was a problem. Even when Scholes was back from injury, the amount of playing time he got was drastically reduced. Ironically it was reduced to the point that Giggsy took over part of the role that Scholes was going to fill this year, moving off the wing, playing deeper with Carrick centrally. The "favored" midfield late in the year was a pair out of Park/Valencia/Nani on the wings with Giggs and Carrick central and deeper. Park and Valencia were the pair favored against teams with wingbacks that were very offensively minded (Cole or an Alves type), while Nani would get starts against less attacking teams and rotating with the other two based on how congested the fixture list was (i.e. resting folks). Maldini was a player who really changed in the 00's, which helped hide the fact that he was clearly past his mid-90s prime. Milan often moved him into the left centerback position. When he played left wingback, he was far less adventurous going down the wing than he had been in the 90s... or like the insane athletic Cafu was over on Milan's right back role in the 00's. Giggsy is comfortably past his peak, but has adjusted his game well. Watched a few 90s ManU games in the past few week, and am reminded just how insanely pacey (for the era) he was. He's obviously gotten smarter on the pitch over the years than he was in the 90s. I do wonder if teams will learn from how Barca just made him a moot player in Wembley, or if that simply is Barca and there's no other team that can quite make Giggsy disapear like that. Still, I don't expect him next year to play at the level he did in the second half of this season when he was quite inspired for much of it. The most interesting example of "washed up" in recent years was Thierry Henry. Very much still quality contributor on Barca's 2009 treble team, completely washed up the next season at the a 32. It wasn't just an injury or not fitting in with Barca anymore: he fell so far that no major team wanted to take a flyer on him, and instead he ended up in the land of washed up Euro Stars a/k/a MLS. John

That's kind of what Bret evolved into: Sharp Shooter. If one takes away the schoolboys, conferences and other rollups/counters, I don't know if there's a lot there in terms of finishers once he went singles. I know Chono won in ways other than the STF, but confess to drawing a blank at the moment. Yakuza Kick perhaps, though it struck me more as setting up other things, such as the STF. John

He's actually positioning his head and body and even arm upward expecting to catch Sasuke hitting the move. Of course he follows all of it downward as Sasuke blows the spot. There's also a beat where he looks down at Sasuke: "well, WTF...", then he goes into the clap. Then frankly Sasauke blows the revised finish: horrible hurrcanrana. Liger is literally stomach (his) to back (Sasuke's) while Sasuke is flat on his stomach on the mat. It's not even that Liger took the spot on the top of his head: he took it on his *face*. After watching it live a few times, pause (or drag) it to 9:10 on the clip above. Liger has to roll himself over akwardly, without his shoulder even being down when the count starts... then is a master enough to start "struggling". I'd forgotten how bad the actual redo was... Pretty much the genius of Yamada covering for a pair of extremely shitty executons by Sasuke. All of it washes away because Sasuke won. It was a massive upset, and Liger sold the shit out if it meaning something to him to lose. John