Childs

"Great man" versions of history are always flawed. Vince didn't invent shit. He pulled elements from a lot of places and had the will to build it into something huge. I suppose he saw the potential for a national brand earlier than most of his competitors, but the idea of him as some creative visionary has always seemed silly.

I'll be interested to see whether they interview him at any length or treat him more as a hostile subject.

My guess is that it's scenario No. 2, because there's no great indication of cost cutting. I was surprised when, after all the post-Gabe gloom-and-doom, they announced they're going to Houston for Wrestlemania weekend. They also seem to be returning to most of the new markets they tested in 2008. That suggests to me that the losses haven't been catastrophic and that Cary can afford to keep the company going as long as it amuses him.

You're obviously more of an expert on PWG than I, but my impression is that Danielson has never had as clear a role in the company as the others you mentioned. He more just drops in for a few big matches a year, and those matches tend to draw quite a lot of praise. Can't comment on BOLA yet, but I thought his Necro/Generico doubleshot last year was pretty great, and the Ki title change was good. A lot of PWG fans seemed to love the CIMA matches as well, though CIMA isn't my cup of tea. I guess I'm just saying that he does the indy superstar drop-in role as well as anyone could. But I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts, as I enjoy PWG but don't catch all or even most of the shows.

Because they do it in a dopey way. They don't do a coherent job of presenting themselves as an alternative. Instead, they come off as wistful for the last boom era of a rival company. And they show over and over that they have no idea how to recreate it. They're just really terrible at branding where as Paul E., for all his flaws, was damn sharp about that aspect of the business.

I know it's not very imaginative to say so, but I think Danielson actually is the answer. When I think back over the last three years, no one has come close to producing as many matches that are really impressive and/or really enjoyable. Guys like Cena and Orton have tossed off some great runs of matches, and among the indy guys, Nigel is certainly in Danielson's league. But I always look forward to a Danielson match and rarely go away disappointed. I don't think that's hype.

I don't think it's a "thank god" thing, even though Gabe was far from perfect. Anytime a small company loses the guy who has always been its creative center, there's a danger. I'm not saying they're screwed; just that they seem to be on unsteady ground, between this and the terrible economy. I wonder if it had anything to do with the news about TV negotiations in the latest Observer. It always sounded like Gabe was more conservative on that and PPV whereas Cary Silkin wanted to push more.

As an aside to that debate, I've noticed in watching lots of New Japan from the 80s that it wasn't hugely atypical for guys to use the piledriver on the floor as a mid-match transition spot. The move was built up as a killer in the U.S., but it really wasn't treated with the same reverence in Japan. Maybe Harley did it in the wrong context while working some U.S. promotions, but he wasn't the only one doing it.

I'm with SLL on the greatness of the Lawler-Bock series. All three matches could end up in my top 20, and I wouldn't feel bad about it, because they're three very different matches. People seem to be rating the middle one lowest, but I loved Lawler's rapid-fire punchfest so much. I'm not sure he ever showed more handspeed. The No DQ was the most "like a fight." The first one was just a great wrestling match that built into something more heated. Great, great series. Will, I'm surprised none of them cracked the top of your list.

Was Dundee ever regarded as a masterful worker until recently? I just watched his run of matches from Disc 1 and it's amazing the range of skills encompassed in those performances. Great puncher and brawler, smooth as anybody on the mat, flashy moves for his era, excellent bumper and seller, incredibly creative in gimmick matches, master of the little nuances that distinguish a performance, good on the stick, top-notch tag wrestler, equally comfortable as a face or heel. I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but his versatility is just staggering. And yet I've never gotten any sense that he's widely viewed as an all-time great. I'm just curious from veterans of internet wrestling discussion how his rep has stood over the years? Was he just sort of forgotten because he never had a big run in WWF, Crockett or Japan?

Do people say that he was a poor draw or that, when the chips were down, Choshu usually turned to Hash as his headliner? It could be true that Mutoh garnered more mainstream popularity but that Hash was the ace of New Japan. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Anyway, they were both massive stars and one shouldn't have to pause when asked if either should be remembered as such.

That's interesting as I think Hash would be the clear favorite among hardcore internet fans (who are really the only Americans debating '90s Japanese wrestling anyway.) I mean, if you did a best worker poll on this site, I suspect he'd beat his fellow Musketeers in a landslide. The "Lazy Mutoh" perception seems strong, and I've never seen anyone seriously pimp Chono as an all-time worker. Hash, by contrast, seems to have held up remarkably well since his heyday and is often cited as a master of big-match psychology. So I'd say Dave is out of step with his answer.

Dave pimped him pretty hard in the latest Observer, noting that Cena believes little Dibiase is a future Wrestlemania headliner. I've enjoyed what I've seen of his tag team with Rhodes but haven't been blown away by his work. Wondered what others think of him so far?

Yeah, his life is anything but low-stress. He cranks a ridiculous amount of copy every week, and he's constantly competing for scoops, especially on the MMA front. I write for a living and I'm sort of in awe of his production. He must be working or thinking about work almost every moment.

It wasn't a lost decade but you can't just presume that the dawn of the '90s signaled a huge change in the business. We have a tendency to manage information by segmenting it into decades and other easily digestible bites. But the events we're talking about aren't dictated by the calendar turning. This is a frustrating tendency in arguments about all kinds of sports. For example, people try to say Jack Morris should be a Hall-of-Famer because he was the winningest pitcher of the 1980s. But how is that a greater distinction than being the winningest pitcher between 1976 and 1985? He just happened to register his best performance in a way that perfectly fit a calendar decade. Using the decades as bookends can be a fun device for making lists and such. But we shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming that anything changes much when we flip from one decade to the next.

American tag team wrestling, in general, didn't make a strong transition from '80s to '90s. Early '90s WCW still featured good tag stuff, but by the middle of the decade, the import of the belts had diminished in both major feds and the top teams had all faded. Japan was a whole different story, of course.

He said it was an impressive collection of reporting that made many valid points about the destructive nature of the business. But he expressed some reservations about Randazzo's blanket harshness. He hadn't finished the book and promised a fuller review at some point. He also published a letter of response from Randazzo. Overall, he endorsed it as a worthy read.

That made me laugh out loud at my desk. Also a hoot are the orgasmic posts over at the ROH message board. In case you were wondering, WWE is real wrestling again for the first time in a decade.

Dave just wrote about this actually, suggesting that ROH has plateaued at an acceptable level but with less growth potential than some had hoped. He predicts the company will be around and in much the same state at this point next year.

I thought Dave's reaction was very fair. He made it clear that his own experience and reporting led him to different conclusions than Randazzo on some matters. But he didn't try to undermine Randazzo's credibility (except on a few very specific points) and in fact praised the depth of his research repeatedly. "I didn't agree with every frame of reference," he wrote. "But the author did know and understand the subject and certainly had the right to the conclusions he made."

That's interesting. I've encountered more people ripping that tourney over the years than loving it. I've seen most of the matches, but I'll have to check it out as a whole experience. I know I liked Sting-Vader.

And I imagine that if he were coming up today, he would not let his body go. If you watch his stuff from the early '70s, he didn't look as bad. He was a pretty good athlete. I think he could make it, though not at the level he did.

The bit about Sasaki suplexing the trainee to death is pretty awful. And Inoki's looniness really comes off as epic (Saddam Hussein and the North Koreans? Wow.) Overall, the book is a good read because he really makes an effort to put every part of Benoit's career in context. It has a bit of a weird vibe. He rebukes and dismisses the business and Benoit's devotion to it. But at the same time, he writes with smarkish appreciation about some of Benoit's greatest matches. Didn't bother me but it definitely carries a different tone than it might have if it had been written by a journalist coming from a place of total non-fandom. Overall, it's not quite like any other book I've read about wrestling. And I mean that in a good way. He did a good job of getting inside via sources but retaining some perspective on what all the stories mean.