Dylan Waco

Down here the common talking point was that the great majority of it was fake, but some of it was real. I remember kids in middle school being livid at me for insisting it was all fake, because Bret Hart matches were "obviously" real.

Heyman being back would suck and make the angle shitty (or shittier) depending on your perspective. I thought the Brock stuff on Raw was the only good part of an unbelievably terrible show

Cena got a pretty big reaction at the house show I saw in Dec, but nowhere near the fact reaction Sheamus got a week before in Chattanooga at the house show I went to there.

Carbon based life forms - innovation!

Most sites actually ask you to provide a "bio" so it's not something you add. In fact I've had pieces of mine held up for publication because I forgot to send one in

Vince would be an idiot to not use Lesnar right now and as much as possible. There is NO benefit to building to a match, if one of the guys could get sick, decided to go hunt, or get bored and take up table tennis on a moments notice. You have to get the value out of Brock immediately or as close to immediately as possible.

This is pretty much the way the debate is breaking down over at Classics. I'd be interested to see if you or anyone else here has anything of note to add on the matter: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimate...ic;f=7;t=000531

Nice post John. I think Patera is actually a much different candidate than Rose, Blackwell or even JYD all of whom have been guys I have pimped at Classics pretty heavily over the last few months. With Rose I almost feel obligated to "help" him out as much as I can since I have pretty good reason to believe that it was my pimping of him that helped get him on the ballot. To be frank I don't think he has a shot in hell and I'm nearly certain he will fall off the ballot right away. He suffers immensely because he's the worst combination of a variety of things - Great Worker who has probably been seen less than any other widely touted Great Worker. Hugely successful regional star and draw who had no true "second" hand to help him out whose success came in one of the smallest and least seen territories. Other successes on top during dying dies of promotion (San Fran) or as a middling place holder v. superstar (Backlund). Most "iconic" matches were tag team affairs during the death throes of the AWA. It's just not a candidacy that is easily absorbable. Even if there weren't legitimate arguments against him (and there are even if I don't agree with them), he's never going to be a "sexy" candidate. Blackwell is a project that grew out of the AWA Set. I think it is interesting that those who know the AWA find him to at least be a discussion worthy candidate. I've sort of waffled on him some, as I do think the brevity of his run hurts him. But I do not think he is nearly as easily dismissable as some people say and if you were on the ballot and I had a vote I'd vote for him to keep him around if nothing else. JYD is someone I haven't explored in great detail, but I do enjoy watching people contort themselves into pretzel's trying to come up with a reason why he shouldn't even get a crack at the ballot. Record setting draw of the most beloved smart territory in history can't even get a sniff? Really? But Patera is different than all of those guys. He checks off as a quality worker (at least during his peak). He checks off as a guy who was a star in multiple territories and had feuds against a huge variety of "name" opponents. He checks off as a guy who had a lengthy run on or near the top (12.5 years, his entire career before prison, twice as long as Blackwell for a sense of perspective). He checks off as a guy who has numbers you can point to showing he was a draw. He checks off as a guy that was brought in as an "attraction" the big towns (Fla, Toronto, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis, et). He checks off as a guy who had meaningful and important title runs. He checks off as a guy who played a very important role in hot, money making runs for what are generally thought of as the three "biggest" territories of the era in which he worked, WWWF, AWA and Mid-Atlantic. Frankly Patera strikes me as a guy who would already be in if his name wasn't Ken Patera and he wasn't remembered for his worst period. Hart is a guy who should have gone in by fiat in my view and I could hardly even conceive of a good argument against him

Paul Lee runs an indy fed in North Georgia. His son went to school with my brothers. Needless to say he's as carny as they come

Over at Classics McAdam has come out as a fierce opponent of Buddy Rose which is not surprising. What surprises me a bit his how easily he dismisses Jimmy Hart for the same reasons ("Big Fish, Little Pond!"). He touts Albano as a definite Hall of Famer at the same time which I find odd. It's an interesting thread for those interested in taking a look

Most of the best tags on that set have some sort of FIP structure, including the finals of the 89 tag league and the old man tag that proceeds it which will be my 2 and 3 respectively (though I'm not certain of the order).

Personally with the exception of wild brawls I have no interest in ever watching a tag match that has a non-FIP structure.

Tajiri and Guido had so many awesome matches I actually think it is really hard to pick just one. I would lean toward the 4/30/99 match, but it really is tough

I think it's one of the three or four best matches in the history of the company and easily the best of the WWE "bioepics."

I know the prospect of looking for Puerto Rico is unpleasant, but that Tajiri v. El Lobo match is from Dec. is really, really, really good

I don't think either of these matches were bad.

Yeah Sandow is a really great heel live. Really came across like a star and a guy who was ready to take that gimmick to prime time when I saw him in Dec

Was thinking about this someone more and the coolest thing I've ever seen at a house show was Chris Hamrick taking "his" bump through the ropes to the hardwood, basketball court, floor and then proceeding to slide on impact wiping out the first three or four rows of ringside fans in the process. The same show featured a brawl in the stands with George South and Terry Austin and a local wrestling high school wrestling coach piledriving a heel manager to take the fall in the main event. This was also one of the last indy matches (PWF to be exact) that Charles Robinson reffed before going to WCW.

I really think they may have been tentatively planning to turn Cena full blown heel between last Summer and last Fall but Rey going down with injury scared them off as they didn't want to lose both their merchandising cash cows at once. Speaking of which Rey is a guy who should never, ever, ever, ever, ever be a heel. I literally can't think of a guy who fits the bill better as a guy who should be a career face than Rey. Not even Steamboat.

Fuck I totally forgot Styles v. Bully Ray from last year. That match was one of the better non-WWE matches in the States last year and almost definitely a top five TNA match of all time

I posted this story in an old thread at DVDVR, but I thought I would drag it over to this thread. Then when I was sixteen or seventeen me and my dad and a friend of mine went on a Atlantic Coast tour following random hardcore bands and ECW. We got to an Asbury Park show about seven hours early and had nothing to do so we hung out on the shitty boardwalk, which of course the Convention Center sits on top of (quite literally for those who haven't been). Next thing I know my dad walks about to Paul E. Dangerously who is watching half the roster swim in the Ocean and asks "is there bathroom around here?" Paul responds "not unless you count the Ocean". My dad looks out at Dreamer who has spotted us talking to Paul and is now pretending to bang Beulah doggystyle and says "Is that what Dreamer is doing right now?" Paul laughs and I walk off in shame. Oddly moments later I'm standing next to Spike Dudley at the urinal and when I come out and tell my dad, he asks if I looked over to see if he was the littliest Dudley. We spend the rest of the day getting cold stares from the injured Perry Saturn and randomly shooting the shit with J.C. Ice and The Sandman, who seem to be quite entertained by my bizaare father, who keeps commenting on Ice's flip flops. When the show starts we are sitting second row and J.C. Ice spots my dad and starts cutting a promo on him calling him fat, stupid and bald. My dad responds with some crazy shit and next thing I know Bill Dundee's son and my dad are in each others face barking at each other with my dad screaming about how Ice fucks his sister and he fuck's Ice's mother. When Dundee finally turns and heads back to the ring my dad yells "nice Flip Flops bitch" and Ice bursts out laughing. On that same ECW trip we saw the show in Allentown that had a mid-show riot with fans and wrestlers brawling wildly and resulted in the lawsuit that caused the rift to develop between Francine and Shane Douglas. The show had (to my knowledge) the only ECW match between Smothers and Candido, which was really fucking good live. A FanCam was shot but was probably conveniently "lost" due to the riot (this was LITERALLY a riot by the way, as dozens of fans were getting their asses kicked by the entire ECW locker room). I have been to a shit ton of good house shows over the years because of my best friends dad who was an usher at a local arena when we were kids. One of my favorite memories was seeing a fan set a cup on fire and drop it on Larry Zbyszko's head after dousing him with soda when he first came through the tunnel (this was during the Dangerous Alliance era). We got to talk to a shit load of the wrestlers before the shows because we were there super early for set up. Saw a ton of good matches but I'd be a liar if I said that a lot of them didn't run together because I was so young. Pretty sure we saw Liger work at least one house show which was a major standout for my buddy who still says he is the best wrestler he ever saw. I'm 99.99 percent certain my first live wrestling show was the Midnights v. RnR's match Corny talks about in the Midnights yearbook where the local timekeeper refused to ring the bell at sixty minutes because he was sure the RnR's would win if they had a few more minutes, so they had to improvise with a screwjob dq. More recently I went to a really good house show a couple of years back on the front of Punk's slow heel turn. The whole show was very good (20 minute Steamboat v. Drew Mac match, really good Southern tag, Christian v. Dreamer, Finlay v. Regal as the opener), but the Punk v. Jeff Hardy main event was brilliant. I had been teasing my daughter all match about Punk winning thinking they might do some sort of Dusty finish and I wouldn't look like an asshole. Oops. Punk won in a great, great match and my daughter who NEVER curses starts dropping every four letter word known to man and starts taking off toward the ring to the point where I had to physically restrain her. Good times. I also saw a pair of very good house shows back in December with my brothers and dad.

been waiting on that forever. You got the link OJ?

There were several good tag matches with AMW, LAX and Styles/Daniel in 2006 though nothing I would call "great." Really only a handful of "great" matches I can recall from TNA and I've watched far more than I care to admit. The Storm/Harris match would probably be my number two match after Joe v. Daniels from what I THINK was the first prime time Impact?? Anyhow that match is pretty great and I fucking hate Daniels. Jarrett has had quality stuff with Angle, Styles, Jay Lethal and even sorry ass Raven. Not sure how much of that approaches the level of being truly great.

You'd think he was the World's Greatest Entertainer reading this. The trouble with Henry fans is that they go so overboard in praising him that when people go to check him out they can't get past the notion that it was supposed to be amazing. That can be true of anything that people praise, but Henry fans overcompensate for whatever bias there is against him. That's how Matt writes about wrestling in general.