Dylan Waco

God I hope it isn't HHH v. Taker. Really the only Taker Mania match I would find compelling at this point would be v. Cena. Taker v. Sheamus is something that could have worked great if they hadn't spent the last five months shitting on the build they gave Sheamus for the previous year.

Interesting. I thought this was easily the best of their 96 matches last time I watched them.

To be fair the book is a Strict on Sale and actually should not be shipping out early.

Somewhat shocked they are running the South again even if Miami is a different "South" than Atlanta or even Orlando. Also I may go again next year as I've got tons of friends in Miami

Terry is the best wrestler of all time. He is also old and clearly "slipping" to a degree. The "too many big spots," "ROH style is what we need" contradiction is common among old timers. See Cornette, Jim for the most obvious example.

Yeah I saw that but I find it hard to believe because if they do that they have NOTHING for Show. It's hard to fathom them leaving Show off Mania or throwing him into MITB. He's already feuding with Corre. My guess is Slater and Gabriel will have the tag titles by that point and may defend against McGullicutty/Otunga at Mania

The ONLY guy on the roster I would buy Taker losing to is Cena. That's it. No one else seems like a credible opponent of the streak at this point. Personally I will be shocked if they run Taker v. Barrett straight up. I think it is far more likely that the match will be Taker/Show v. Zeke/Barrett if they don't do the Sting deal. And honestly the tag match is far more interesting to me than a singles match with Taker v. Barrett even if the "streak" likely wouldn't be as big a part of the Mania build as normal.

I am happy that they're going with fresh matches and pushing new guys. That's great. But I feel like we've seen Cena-Miz a million times on RAW. I'm glad that Punk is in a big spot, but I don't know if there has been an Orton match as a face that I've really enjoyed yet. I'm also pretty played out on Edge, so nothing he does at this point really excites me even though I like Del Rio. Taker and Barrett just sounds like it'll suck considering UT's physical condition and that Barrett isn't a guy that can bounce around like a pinball to compensate. HHH-Sheamus doesn't excite me. Whatever they do with Lawler and Cole may be the most ineresting thing on the show for me. They give away so many singles matches on TV nowadays, it's tough for them to come up with something that really feels big like even Batista-Taker at Mania 23, Batista-HHH at WM21, Lesnar-Goldberg, HBK-Taker at WM25, or Cena-Batista last year (only done once before and on a major PPV). I think it's possible they would have done Cena v. Taker had Taker not been hurt. To be honest that is the only "big" match I feel the WWE has left that hasn't been overexposed. Personally I am extremely happy we are getting a meaningful Cena v. Miz match on ppv. Edge sucks but I would rather him work Del Rio than one of the same old main event guys. Honestly aside from Christian there really is no one else on the roster I would rather see him work. I agree that Orton sucks as a face but again he is going to have a big match on the show regardless and I would prefer it be against the best heel in the company, who can also work, than against one of the usual suspects. I guess my point is that this card seems less "samey" than normal for WM. Whether that will prove to be a good or bad thing I don't know but in terms of me being excited about going to the show it has definitely raised my enthusiasm.

To each their own. I for one am excited that Mania is not Edge v. Orton v. Cena v. Taker v. HHH v. Batista or some variation there of.

I bought my Mania tickets months ago but I've got to say the disappointment in some quarters with the theoretical line up puzzles me. I personally am extremely happy that the show up until this point at least looks to be almost entirely fresh match ups. Rather than a myriad of three ways and variations of the same old characters on top we have an entirely fresh Punk v. Orton match, a Cena v. Miz match that is essentially fresh given the way the dynamics have changed since their last bouts, a Del Rio v. Edge mach (assuming that holds up) that at least gives Edge something different to do, et. Include the Lawler match and I am about as excited to be going to this Mania as I could possibly be.

Watching 92 SMW TV now and it is pretty evident that at least up until the Ron Wright/DWB angle got up off the ground Orndorff was the best guy in the company. Consistently had the most entertaining matches with jobbers/undercard guys. Was good on the mic and good at getting over the angles he was involved with. Generally did more entertaining "stuff" in his matches than anyone else that was given any sort of push. Watching him from that period you really wish he would have hung around long enough to work a feud with Smothers.

Working my way through the Texas Set and I think Killer Khan belongs here. I absolutely loved Khan's work on the NJPW Set as well. I would say he is one of the all time best with facial expressions in wrestling history as he has a wide gamut of stuff he can convey with just simple looks. Thinking about it more Sakaguchi is another person I would rate here. I know the committee involved said he benefitted big time from the selection process but he was a guy that I had always assumed was pretty awful. On that set at least he was very good and at times great especially in tags and when called upon to play big man v. little man with guys like Yamazaki.

Mooneyham is Flair's best friend. He is also exactly the opposite of Flair in attitude and how he carries himself (Mike never drinks, his kid is in seminary, he's very responsible with his money, et.). Mike always sounds calm and sincere and is not a bombastic guy. Still when it comes to Flair you have to remember that Mike is talking about his best friend.

Mikey was Shane's best opponent.

I remember liking Souled Out 98 a lot the last time I liked it too. Don't remember thinking anything on the show was great, but it was a "solid" show from top to bottom even if I thought Bret v. Flair was merely "good." Also I agree on Booker T. To me he aged really poorly. One thing I always did like about him was the multitude of finishing moves, but other than that he does not impress much in the rear view. Though the implication that Saturn of all people carried him amuses me.

On the 90's... I just watched virtually every ECW match committed to tape. I am in the process of watching every SMW match committed to tape. SMW has lots of solid wrestling and it is probably fair to say that the average match (even squash matches) is better structured than the average ECW match. I could also see the case for someone preferring best of Smothers in SMW to the best of Scorp in ECW (Tajiri is another matter), preferring any single year of SMW to any single year of ECW, and thinking the best few SMW matches are better than the best few ECW matches. Having said that, in terms of depth ECW destroys SMW. Part of this is the fact that it was around longer, but probably an even bigger factor is the sheer volume of stuff. Not only do we have tv, commercials and ppvs - we have a fuckload of FanCams. Reality is that ECW probably had a higher percentage of their shows taped than any other major fed in wrestling history and virtually all of those tapes is available. I know Tom was not making an argument between ECW/SMW, but my point is that ECW is a unique example of a company with a relatively brief history that has such an insane volume of available footage that lumping it in with other indy groups just doesn't seem right to me.

Forced commenting would never work for a variety of reasons not the least of which is there is no way we can "punish" these people. The worst that could be done is banishment from the board, but I'm not going to piss off people buying Will's sets just because they don't participate in these projects. Without the revenue stream Will gets from these things future projects aren't possible or worth his time. I have no problem with the voting system as is. Loss made a good point about why every match is required to be ranked, but beyond that I can't really think of a good reason NOT to rate all the matches. If the argument is "well only 86 of these matches are matches I really liked and the rest were just filler/ok/whatever" then it's not all that important what order you rate the bottom 64 anyhow. I wouldn't encourage people to just randomly toss them into slots, but I fail to see why it really matters that much ESPECIALLY if you think the lower end is filled with marginal/irrelevant stuff. The Wild Cards idea is something that is theatrically sound but the problem is it falls apart pretty quickly when you consider the problems that come with it. If these committees were consistently missing large numbers of matches it would be one thing, but the fact is that only a couple of matches can be pointed to at all outside of the WWF Set which everyone had backed away from as a mulligan. The Errata Set will fill in the gaps and Will and the others involved have all shown themselves to be open to suggestions as Ditch has pointed out. Wild Cards would complicate the simplicity of the ballot, undermine the "everyone has seen it' principle, allow for potential troll votes disguised as eccentricities, and ultimately to little effect as it is unlikely that enough "write-ins" for any one candidate would launch it into the top half of any ballot. Without an Errata Set I would consider it more reasonable - with an Errata Set it just seems like a way for folks to chip away at the integrity of the projects (not saying that is jdw's intent at all). Speaking as someone who is watching stuff for the AWA Set now, I can say that if anything I nominate too much. I error on the side of "yes" and not "no." Also I will nominate a match that I don't like that much if it strikes me as something that would have a core constituency that might like it more than I did. I get the feeling others do the same thing.

The DVDVR 90's project was not far enough removed from the decade to tell us much really. It would be like running a best of the 00's now. Not saying it had no value and as a voter I took it seriously. But look at the results. I am lazy as shit, but with the FanCams available I doubt the ECW list would be even close to the same to take an obvious example of something I know a lot about. WCW was slanted heavily toward the cruiserweights and not so heavily toward the greatness that was the pre-Hogan years of 92 and 94. WWF I don't remember a lot about the results and I honestly I feel like it probably wouldn't change as much as the other two, but even still the bias' were there and without the footage being distributed there was always a question of what was actually being watched by the voters. Even the Smarkschoice polls, which were really solid efforts by Ray and others, suffered dramatically from the fact that there were matches that not everyone could watch for one reason or another (not online, couldn't dl from a certain site, in some cases couldn't find the bout on youtube, et.). I understand that there are always matches that are going to be borderline cut from the current sets, and I will learn how tough that can be first hand when I am fighting for Steve O/Brad Rheingans v. Road Warriors over the objection of Kris and yourself in a few months time and will have to decide whether to drop a personal pick on it. But that is what the Errata sets are for (think 8/8/88 uproar that will be rectified for example), and even if there was no Errata set planned I would still rather have a contentious match cut by committee from consideration, then two or three guys vote for a great match in a fifty plus voter poll that no one else even bothers to watch.

My favorite part about that line is that it is coming from a guy who has far more contempt for the modern product, at least in it's most visible form, then the average "DVDVR type."

I honestly don't understand how anyone wouldn't find this hilarious.

That's my point. Point is not that Hogan v. Chung Lee is equivalent of Hogan v. Andre. The point is that to kids - which to a large, large degree were the target audience of the WWF at the time - ANY tv Hogan match was a "big" match. Hogan v. another WWE "name" talent felt so rare at the time that it was a big deal to me and everyone I was friends with. From the looks of this thread this was not unique to Charleston, South Carolina.

Hack Myers v. J.T. Smith is a better wrestling feud than Evans v. Rampage - and I like Evans and Rampage.

Superstars has too much actual wrestling to be considered a good wrestling show.

Yeah this has to be the biggest "WTF?" thing I've read in a while. I literally had no fucking clue a wrestlers union was possible. I kind of assume Mexican wrestlers union was probably a vehicle of the PRI at that point and there may have been some dirty politics behind all of this but it doesn't make it any less awesome.

It's a great match for what those guys were going to do and what they could bring from their bag of tricks. It holds up very well and I think it was really a "perfect place/perfect time" type of match. Having said that the one weird spot in the beginning and the awful finish slides it down my "all time WWE" match list. Compared to another highspot heavy, heavily gimmicked match, with a good finish like Edge v. Matt Hardy from Unforgiven 2005 I don't think it quite stacks up.