Dylan Waco

Didn't see a dedicated thread for the series here and I wanted to start one. Full disclosure - I work for IndependentWrestling.TV and we stream Uncharted Territory. That said, this is a less a plug and more me wanting to see if people are familar with it and more importantly what people have thought of it so far. For those who don't know the show streams live every Wednesday night at 8pm on IWTV from Worcester. The shows are right around 2 hours every week and have already featured some highly praised matches featuring both well known - and much more obscure - indie wrestling talent. The shows have week-to-week angles, backstage interviews, et. That said the bulk of the time is spent on the matches themselves which I think makes it distinct from most current episodic wrestling. To me the most interesting aspect to watch as a fan has been the organic creation of stars within an episodic universe. For so long the knock on WWE (and at times Impact and ROH as well) has been the "shoving down our throats" of certain talent. What's interesting about Uncharted Territory is that because it tapes in the same place every week fans pick their favorites and that translates in a concrete way to the viewing audience at home. This has been helped along by The Discovery Gauntlet concept which has helped make Thomas Santell a breakout act. Similarly, Bear Country came in for a seemingly one off performance, got over huge, and will now be appearing for the third time this week. It at least feels like a case where the fans have decided who will be emphasized and pushed and that is really refreshing given where corporate wrestling is at this point. I've got other thoughts, recommended matches, et but I'm curious to see what PWO posters think of it.

The whole story of AEW is crazy and weird and it's one of those things that is going to be extremely interesting to look back on in 30 years. On the one hand you could easily see this being an Eddie Einhorn/IWA 2.0 situation. But on the other hand.... For several years now we have all been talking about a technological and media paradigm shift. The people at the forefront of understanding that shift in pro wrestling have been The Bucks, Cody and Omega. I've been saying for years that The Bucks in particular were THE act of the YouTube/Meme culture generation and they've proven it in ways I never could have expected. They've also proven to be geniuses at managing the media. The new media paradigm shift is not at all unlike the shift that we saw with national television syndication and cable tv. Cody, The Bucks and Omega aren't Hogan - no one is - but they are special stars and have a real connection to fans in this era. They represent a certain zeitgeist of the times not unlike Hogan. The guy in charge has a fuck ton of money and is putting shit loads into it. Meanwhile in the WWE the company is transitioning to a new leadership. Yes I'm building a narrative here, but there are parallels to 1982/83 that aren't much of a reach. I would never in a million years bet that the WWE would be overthrown as the top dog, but this is the only time in my lifetime where all the necessary conditions for such an unlikely scenario are at least in place (yes I'm including Nitro era WCW). The big issues are execution and Khan himself. Khan is definitely invested financially. He wants to do this. He loves wrestling. But does he have the right temperment, advisers, et? Probably too soon to tell, but it'll be interesting to track. I'm far from the biggest fan of any of the key players involved in the promotion. I've never watched a second of BTE and I've no real desire to. But this is a major, major play in pro wrestling. Even if it fails it has changed the game in huge ways that will have lasting effects on the business at all levels and for now at least wrestling is no longer a unipolar world.

It's actually a good lineup for what the show is supposed to be and who they are trying to appeal to. I actually have no clue what else people could have expected from it in that regard given the political considerations that had to be made to work with multiple different promotions/contracted talent many of whom have very obviously conflicting interests. For my own tastes it's not a major hit, but then neither or most major league shows (and make no mistake - this is no meaningful sense at indie wrestling show). I haven't yet decided if I'll watch live or not, but the six man tag is interesting on paper if nothing else, and I wouldn't be stunned to see one or both of the major titles on the line change hands

There is a Florida indie match between Kahagas and Bruce Santee from a few years back that falls a part and Santee roughs him up

I know a concept along these lines is something you've thought about for years and I'm really overjoyed to see you moving forward with it.

Military Press is one that I badly miss and that is a great visual spot. You will see them very rarely still but in all the modern wrestling I watch it barely shows up. Headlock takeovers off the ropes and/or flying headlock takeovers I miss quite a bit. That stuff went the way of the dodo as MMA and lucha started to influence the style more. Back body drops are actually shockingly rare considering how much rope running there is these days. I saw one the other day in a Canadian indie match that took place in an MMA cage and it may have legitimately been my favorite highspot all year. So simple, but very effective. I love me a good TRUE bulldog headlock. There are a few guys who do the Sting style grab the guy by the head/hair and dive down with him, but the traditional bulldog is very rare. I do think I've seen one or two guys do it recently but I can't place who other than Goldust a couple years back. I was always a fan of the swinging full nelson variation that Patera and Bull Buchanan did sometimes. Looked totally brutal and was very simple. I would legit love it if someone used a knee lift as a finish or at least a nearfall spot.

Tank had an incredible connection to the crowd in the Chattanooga area thats hard to fully explain if you arent from here. He was treated as a local Brock, the heir to Terry Gordy, the vanguard of southern wrestling AND the importer of non-Southern tropes. Very hard to fully grasp. Biggest pops would be Sting coming down from the rafters at Uncensored 97, AJ debuting at the Rumble, Hardyz return at Mania, and a couple of RnRs matches when I was a kid. Maybe my favorite reaction was AJ kicking out of the Cena super AA at Summerslam 16 with people literally running up and down the aisles in mass and dancing in my section

The guy in the HHH thread is unhinged

That may have been the worst agented show in the history of the promotion.

Oh there is certainly a cultish/religious mindset to a lot of consumers of various wrestling talking heads. It's weird to me that Russo has credibility with anyone and I worry about him least in part because he discredits himself so easily and often.

I don't take much anything he says super seriously, but I also don't like his show at all. I don't particularly trust Dave for a variety of reasons either. To me if I cared enough it would probably worth combing through what Dave says vs what Bruce says on certain issues, seeing where the Venn Diagram is and then kind of thinking about new historical narratives based on that.

I'm far from his biggest fan but Sabre Jr probably deserves a mention in this thread as he's probably churned out as much volume this decade as nearly anyone in terms of above average matches. If you want an extremely Dylan Hales answer for someone who should be a top tier contender (say top 20ish) if not the actual tip top guy, Kyle Matthews is as consistently good as anyone in wrestling over the last 8 years and has had good to great matches with a massive swath of people over the decade ranging from no name, zero talent, southern indie scrubs to some of the absolute top names in independent wrestling.

Weighing in on the Meltzer MSG/Bruno tweet because I have a bit of a nuanced opinion on it. I wasn't offended by it, and really don't see much reason why anyone would be. That said it felt like a transparently dumb way to communicate that point precisely because it was on a social media forum that only allows for 280 characters per message. Naturally people who just saw that tweet pop in their feed and not the other stuff Dave was saying and/or had it out for Dave pounced on it, and because there was no additional context surrounding his point it very much came off to a lot of people (myself included) as "Hey Dave here with a fact you might not know!" rather than "as a friend of Bruno's and the most well known wrestling historian, here is something to note about Bruno..." From my perspective the tweet probably shouldn't have been made at all or should have been part of a bigger tweet string that would have presented context that was important. Yes the number is a huge exaggeration and a myth, but it's a myth grown out of generally accepted truths, namely that Bruno was the rock upon which the WWWF was built, and he was very likely the biggest wrestling star in the history of New York City. On a day when people are celebrating the huge accomplishments and legend of Bruno, I think that kind of context is needed both to honor the man, to accurately report, and to avoid people thinking you are just trying to be the smartest guy in the room. At this point discussing Meltzer is really a waste because people have largely made up their minds on him and tend to view him through whatever longview perspective they have, rather than a micro analysis of existing issues. We all get sucked into even when we complain about it and it just is what it is. I quit following him a long time ago though because I find his Twitter act so tiresome and you can bet that act also contributed to the way many people felt about that tweet.

Per usual Reigns is in a no win situation. If he wins it will be the biggest consolation prize imaginable. If he loses hes been fully chumped again. The belt badly needs to come off of Brock, but Roman needs to be off tv. What a shit show

Thatcher and Garrini was cut short because Tim got busted open

On Ishii v Cobb I liked the match fine, but it didn't really hit with me because I'd already seen PCO v WALTER. Cobb v Ishii was the "cleaner" match but I also prefer a match like that to have some build to the bombs which the PCO/WALTER match had. In general I'm kind of over Ishii at this point

After watching all the WC venue shows I think the closest thing we can find to a breakout star of the weekend is Bandido. Really only one great match but he was good every time he turned up and has a cool Hayabusa-ish look. Juice Robinson probably had the best weekend that isn't being talked about at all. He really only had one good match, but I thought Willie Mack looked good in everything for a guy who really isn't thought or talked about much anymore

Fair point. Back to ignoring you.

Yeah, but you also love Spike Dudley. (best booked I dunno, maybe, but it was pretty fucking poor in term of in-ring work with only the main event being quite good) Yeah I don't agree with that at all. Of the tournament matches there was nothing that was less than good and/or fitting the narrative of the tourney. If that's a bad show in your eyes our aesthetics have drifted so far apart that there is basically no common ground

I'm not reading all of this at the moment but I have always been bothered by the fact that Austin didn't have a true submission hold coming into that match. That's a long standing criticism of mine going back 20 years and I don't think it is needlessly pedantic. .

WWE/NXT/205 had shows on AXXESS using all sorts of indie talent like Keith Lee, WALTER, and other folks from WWN and Progress. Hero challenged Keith Lee for the WWN title on Thursday, and also had a banger with WALTER on Saturday. They did let Hero do an ICW show a few months ago. His run has been so different from anyone else in NXT. They let Danny Burch and Lorcan do some indie stuff as well. Lorcan has never wrestled a match for an indie promotion. He made an untaped appearance at a single Beyond event. Hero, Noam Dar, Jack Gallagher, Cedric Alexander and Apollo Crews have all worked at least once for indie promotions since being signed to full time WWE deals

Love Gage for what he is and Style Battle was the best booked WWN branded show of the weekend which is a massive indictment really.

The Riddle of Mania weekend was absolute incredible. I've seen 9 of his 11 matches and all of them were worked differently and really tailored to his opponent, setting the card, et. There are still little things I don't love (the upkick v Sekimoto was BAD) but it was a tremendous run that should put to bed any notions of him being one note.

4 matches on that show could be in a current top ten for the year globally and I wouldn't think it was odd. 3 of them could be in a top 5 for the year globally and I wouldn't think it was odd. 2 of them I could honestly see as someone's current MOTY....at minimum. That was an all time great show in ring. Weirdly I am less interested in NXT than before though because of some of the angles/booking decisions. Wrestling is weird some times

This deserves a longer form response than I have in me right this second, but as someone who had Riddle number one I really think this is off and I've gotten the point where I think a lot of the Riddle criticism is a response to micro traits people dislike (myself included in at least some cases to varying degrees) rather than macro traits, or wanting him to be a wrestler he's not and never was, or not fully getting what he's supposed to be. I think he's by far the most consistently heavily critiqued indie star at his level and some of that he brings on himself (all of it is fair imo), but a lot of it strikes me as people upset because they want to project Volk Han on to a guy who decided he wanted to wrestle because of WWE era Daniel Bryan. I recognize I am sort of strawmaning you here Chad because you haven't made an argument and I actually agree that some of his flaws and habits I don't care for got more pronounced in 2017 but in terms of output? No way. I doubt very seriously there were 5 wrestlers in 2017 who even came close to having as many good matches as Riddle. It's possible and perhaps fair to say that his great match total was down, but i'm not sure I buy it and I feel to the extent that that is true a part of that is a byproduct of the booking in Evolve. In any case part of the reason I ended up putting him number one on my ballot was because he had the most matches I was fairly sure I would have in a top 100 for the year if I were to do that sort of thing. On the Sabre comparison, I'm kind of at a loss because try as I might I didn't think really think Sabre had this all timer year last year like a lot of people did. Like Riddle he does have the volume of good matches and also like Riddle Sabre is a guy who almost never has truly bad matches. On the other hand I have so little investment in Sabre so often, that I almost never remember good matches of ZSJ. Every year it's a thing with him where I look at CageMatch and go "oh yeah that was good!" but have no deep thoughts about it. On the flipside I can tell you all about Riddle v WALTER series or Riddle v. Cobb from SS16 or Riddle v Lee from La Boom or Riddle's performance at the SCI or Riddle doing death match v Gage and Tremont or Riddle's Mania weekend and all of those things feel different and special to me. Sabre beating Thatcher certainly fits for last year. After that I can't think of a single match offhand I had a strong feeling about from Sabre for the entire year, even though there were some I thought were great (including a very late to tape match with Janela that virtually no one else saw before voting). Sabre also suffers for me because his formula is such that if I am not feeling a match I know I'm going to have sit through 10-15 minutes of often wholly irrelevant but flashy matwork just so we can all be shown that he's really good at it. It's incredibly masturbatory to me, and it's often inevitable with Zack even if it is mitigated some when he's working heelish (Sabre is effectively cosplaying as Hero at this point too at times which I really don't buy). With Riddle I might get some dumb destroyer spot, or the upkick no one likes, or a German no sell (which I have grown to tolerate and even enjoy at times when he does it, but certainly not as a rule) but they are momentary, not time eating segments that suck my soul. Anyway I think even if you disagree with all of that one thing Riddle does have that Zack doesn't is a certain aura to him that makes you excited and want to see him in freak show settings or out of his element. That goes along way with me in the modern indie landscape where so much has been done to death. I was really torn on my number one vote between him, Reigns, and WALTER, but I don't regret voting for Riddle even if I kind of think it's a wash with those three. Speaking of WALTER he's the most rubber stamped, non-critically examined indie guy on the planet which is why i couldn't bring myself to vote him number one. He's someone I'll be looking at closely this year.