Dylan Waco

Good ending to a show that sucked ass. Punk heel turn could make things fun going forward.

I usually agree with Loss, but if this is a "fine" show I'd be scared to think what he would consider a bad show at this point. I am usually a mark for nostalgia stuff especially when I am watching with a group like I am tonight. But this show has been dogshit

My guess is they are trying to mooch off of Chikara which has notoriously loyal fans

I don't want to nitpick the book, because overall I think it was excellent and includes the most readable account of the early history of wrestling that I've seen so far. Some of it is just stuff I disagreed with. For example I don't agree with your take that PWFG didn't take off because Fujiwara wasn't charismatic enough..or rather I don't think Fujiwara lacks charisma. Others were minor things where I thought the language could have been slightly different. For example when discussing Dr. Death and Gordy there was a reference to AJPW being an ultra violent, stunt heavy promotion or something very close to that. I get that the head dropping was going on then, but when people see something talking about super violent wrestling from Japan involving stunts they are thinking of guys rolling in barbed wire, not guys taking a bunch of backdrop suplexes. But overall this is a great book. Again the early history was incredibly well put together and I think did a good job balancing accounts. It's actually currently one of my staff recommendations at work.

Best parts of the show were Slick and Mae Young's son. The rest of the show has been fucking terrible, with all the old hands burying the current guys and Brock having to sell for HHH in a way he didn't sell for Cena at all in their entire match.

How can Rey be the best in the World when he has had two or three matches in the last year?

Put in a ballot. We don't want unanimity for the sake of unanimity. To be honest I get the distinct feeling that this set is going to have VERY FEW consensus picks.

The best wrestler in the world right now is a guy that just quit active wrestling again to be a road agent for the WWE. The second best is a fifty-something Lucha legend who has made tape a lot less than I had hoped this year.

Maybe..but three of the matches in the Meltzer "top ten" I don't like at all.

Other Cena matches I would add v. Orton Summerslam 07 v. Michaels at Mania v. Michaels from Raw v. Edge TLC Match Elimination Chamber New Years Revolution 06 (seriously Cena was awesome in that match as I remember) v. Punk MITB 11 v. Punk Summerslam 11 v. Rey Raw 2011 There a shit load of others I could rattle off, but there is a start. I think Cena is easily better. Angle had maybe two years where I thought he was really good, then a period of three or four years where I thought he was good at times and iffy at others and has been pretty bad for almost his entire TNA run. Even if I were to grant that Cena wasn't any good in 03 - and I'm not sure of that at all - he was certainly pretty good no later than the middle of 04 and has been good more often than not since. I would put the best series of Cena v. the best series of Angle every day of the week. I would put Cena's best matches v. Angle's any day of the week. I would put Cena's peak years v. Angle's any day of the week. I would put Cena's best carry jobs over Angle's any day of the week. Cena all day long

Trying to find the thread where Jerry asked some questions about Bravo. We covered him generally on the show and Pat noted that Bravo was one of the top handful of draws in the history of the Montreal territory. Tons of other interesting stuff covered. I thought it had a good 57Gold feel to it, I just hope I didn't sound as vapid as Cubeta.

The biggest criticism of Gabe is that he is a guy who owes his entire career in the business to his role in a massive "piracy" ring and yet he not only goes after them but more importantly blames them for his failings as a promoter. Edit: "them" being modern day "pirates."

I am really looking forward to reading your thoughts about this set Loss. I'll eventually drag my comments over here as well and/or argue the merits of stuff I like way better or less than others

Day is a shit ton better as a tag wrestler than as a singles guy

I'm too lazy to do a huge write up of this now and may never get around to it, but this was a really good book. There were things I didn't necessarily agree with and certain verbiage that I thought was slightly misleading despite being basically accurate. But over all this is probably one of my favorite wrestling books ever just for the first third alone which focuses on the origins and early history of the wrestling business. Really enjoyed a lot of the stuff on Japan as well.

When Punk was allowed to be Punk he was a ratings draw. Then HHH got involved in the storyline and shortly thereafter Punk became a poor man's Ricky Morton style babyface. It's not surprising that he's failed as a ratings draw since he's working a character that is the antithesis of everything that made him a star in the first place.

One other quick comment because someone asked on another board where I occasionally post. I thought this PPV absolutely destroyed Destination X. It's not that I didn't like Destination X - in fact I thought it was a pretty good show - but this was a better beginning to end show to my eyes.

I liked the "Rosa can't dance! Titus show her how!" but mainly because of Titus' dancing

Why would you ignore AW? He's fucking great. He's doing a modern day Jimmy Hart w/ the megaphone deal and it's fantastic. Because he's not good? I liked him during ring introductions and I think the headset is a good idea in theory...I just found it really annoying in practice. And not annoying in the "god I want that guy to get his ass beat way." Annoying in the "god I don't want to watch this when he is on" way. I think Nell's review is interesting because I thought the opening ladder match was pretty easily the "worst" of the big matches on the show. Tons of botched, awkward shit in that match. I enjoyed it nonetheless, but I think it's strange that he has that as the highest rated match on the show.

I liked the show a lot. The opening MITB was a total clusterfuck, with multiple botched spots, but was still entertaining due to the lunatic bumps throughout. Ziggler looked like he was actively trying to end his own career. Sheamus v. Del Rio had some dead spots, but over all was a fun match. Sort of a Sheamus formula match, but I'm a guy who thinks Sheamus is pretty fucking good. Loved the teased Del Rio bumps and some of the other clever spots were well worked too. Prime Time Players v. Colons was a lot of fun, especially if you could ignore AW which I did by listening to something on tv. The Colons were spot machiney as fuck but in a good way. Finish was well done too. Ryback match was odd because he really got little offense in. Felt like a test to see how he could handle working a real match. It was hardly bad, but just seemed strange. Loved Bryan v. Punk. Totally sick match that was very similar to WWE house show "street fights" which are built around importance of well built to weapon spots. Really an extremely stiff match that was ramped up dramatically from what I was expecting. AJ involvement did not overshadow the match and the finish was fucking insane. Diva's tag was actually very fun. Main event delivered. Another awesome performance from Show and Cena. Loved the sleeper spot with Jericho on the ladder, Show being buried in the ladders, the knockout punches and the finish - while obviously a bit "off" script in some way - was a very organic moment. Over all a very good show

I think about half the people on the board wouldn't admit to the first half of what you said. That's sort of the point of this note. I think he's boring as piss, uninteresting and no fun to watch. Has he had good matches? Absolutely. Has he had matches where he has looked good? Yes. Has he ever had a performance or even a match that I would call great or an all time moment? Certainly not that I can recall. Kane is probably in my all time top tier of guys that are channel changers/I never want to watch. There have been exceptions here or there but that is basically a hard and fast rule.

Do I dispute that a wrestler employed by the company who has had more quality wrestling week-to-week than any previous company in history has had some good matches? No.

I've never liked Kane and have no real desire to prioritize watching his matches over the Calgary, Montreal, Maple Leaf, St. Louis, AWA, Portland, older WWF, et I am currently watching but eventually I might use this thread to watch some things I would never normally watch. So someone feel free to give a top ten Kane performances list or something akin to that.

Ok that's fair, as for the write up, cut the match's you don't think that belong and if i disagree i do do a write up for it's inclusion. As there's a lot of matches on that list, and that's with out the AWA stuff. Other parameter's which need to be addressed is only matches which are available to watch, and not for example Andre mythical matches, were he was german suplexed by Danny Hodge in japan in the early 70's. Define "available to watch." Shawn has more stuff that is easily available because he's been marketed as a messianic figure by Vince and co. for years. Someone who is less negative about him than I am recently called him the most overpushed/promoted wrestler in the history of the WWE and I think that is quite possibly true. So if the standard is "match that is easily available on youtube or WWE released DVD" Shawn is going to do disproportionately well. If the standard is "matches that exist in some form on tape and can be seen" I assumed that was implied to begin with. No one here is going to push Andre based on matches they haven't seen. We are going to push Andre based on his matches with Hansen, Khan, Kobayashi, et.