Dylan Waco

For years hockey was promoted almost entirely to a big segment of society based around fights and the guarantee of them occuring during games. Bob Probert became one of the most well known players of his generation because of this. If the standard is "promoted matches with the intention of people paying to see them", I have trouble seeing how hockey fights aren't pro wrestling. Should shit stirring Claude Lemioux have been heel of the year?

Wait, Hogan/Orton was a top five match for you this year, but Dibase/Duggan was hurt cause of lowend offense?

Jesus, are they getting rid of Mid South? I thougt DeMott was well regarded in the company?

I agree with your basic point Loss and have had this argument with Meltzer on Classics before, but Ken Shamrock is not the best guy to point to for an example..Shamrock was actually pretty good in the wrestling ring.

Fuck Tatanka v. Jimmy Yang has been the best thing on SD

Another one of my all time favorites gone. Bigelow is a sad case of a guy who jumped out of the gate, but never really got enough momentum behind him to reach his full potential. Great look, great worker, and solid on the mic, but he never really got to the point where a guy with those attributes should have been. Sadly by the time people really started to realize how good he was, with the Triad run in WCW, he was already winding down. One of the five best workers in the history of ECW, easily one of the best big men ever, really good at hiding guys weaknesses in the ring (see the ECW "classic" with Van Dam, where Bammer does a better job feeding RVD his contrived spots, without making them look contrived than any other person has ever managed to do), very good tag wrestler, and in my expierence a very nice guy. It took alot to reivent himself after the LT thing, but he turned it around become a star in ECW, and really the buildup to him and Goldberg was one of the last truly great things WCW did. He got out of the business relatively early, but I guess it was too late. It's shame. RIP.

ROH - Well I guess Danielson is on hiatus, so he's out which makes Homicide and the pending NOAH "feud" if you can call it that my favorite things. TNA - LAX is pretty much the only thing I don't hate at this point. Well that and Don West who is pretty much my favorite thing about North American pro wrestling. FWIW if they brought back Jarrett I'd likely add him to the list. RAW - Umaga and Jeff Hardy. I still mark for Flair at times. SD! - Pretty much the whole show, but lately I've been a huge fan of London/Kendrick as tag champs and I hope they go far with it. ECW - Brad Armstrong on commentary is seriously more exciting and intersting to me than most things they do on the brand at this point. I think Burke has potential but I'm not totally sold yet. A part of me wants to like some of the other guys (Striker, Thorn, et.) but everything on the show just seems unimportant.

I've enjoyed reading your stuff on the WWF matches btw JDW.

I actually think Starrcade 95 should go in, just because in some ways the craziness with Harts megaphone and Savage getting jobbed and Flair bleeding to death and still winning due to the Horseman, was sort of the last "true" Horseman moment.

Actually I was glad to see someone do a write up of sorts about that match. For a long time it was a 'safe" net favorite, but it's dipped out of favor in recent months for some reason. I agree with almost everything you wrote.

Actually, I think WP missed the best part of the whole match in his review. For years Warrior's gimmick was that he was ssome batshit crazy psycho dude who talked to "the Gods" and spirits during his promos as if they were really feeding him his power. As a kid I always hated Warrior because of this, but looking back it's pretty clear that they were just playing off the guys real life psychological problems to create a wierd grey area where you were either dealing with a schizophrenic or someone who was dealing with supernatural or maybe both. Anyhow, after Savage kicks out of the unkickoutable press slam, there is a great moment where Warrior stops and holds out his hands and starts talking to them and looking up at the sky and talking to the Gods or spirits or the voices in his head and he has this look about him as if the whole thing was a lie. It's almost a play off of the famous, Christ on the Cross "My God Why Have you Forsaken Me?" line as Warrior is ready to give up because he knows that if that can't beat Savage, the Gods aren't with him and he's got no chance. Honestly to me that's the best part of the match. It puts Savage over as someone that is literally stopping a non-human force and it sort of is the culmination of Warriors whole gimmick all at the same time.