Childs

Really enjoyed the cruisers. Neville has found his calling in the bully heel role and Swann brought the requisite fire.

I hope the crowd doesn't take a total shit on the cruisers. It's actually a solid setup for the match.

Braun v. Roman could be really good. As we saw against Lesnar, Reigns is actually quite good at working from underneath.

He didn't derail the point of the finish. He was willing to die for his captain and die he did.

I think Kevin Owens was an interior decorator in a past life. Have never seen a wrestler who savors arranging furniture more than he.

I was surprised they didn't present Bayley as a slightly greater threat. Very good match though.

There's a separate thread for the Rumble. Let's keep stuff on tonight in there.

Reading the responses, it's clear this is a referendum on best style as much as best match. For example, Phil and I probably agree on 95 percent of matches. I'm rarely going to be cold to something he loves. But when parsing between accepted classics, he's invariably going to favor the perfect bloody apuestas match over the perfect All-Japan epic. I'm invariably going to go the other way. Same with Matt, who finds aspects of All Japan inherently distasteful. There's nothing wrong with any of that. It's just what struck me as I read the thread. Anyway, the answer is 6/9/95.

It just amazes me that anyone there would believe they need a Shane match on the show. The one last year made some sense, even if the result sucked ass. But it seems entirely unnecessary this year when they have plenty of story lines and plenty of name wrestlers to juggle. It's not like Shane-AJ would drive network subscriptions or come close to headlining the show. Why not use the Mania stage to launch someone like Nakamura in a standout 20-minute match? But Shane the wrestler is one of the things I hate most in recent WWE, so I can't pretend to think rationally about it.

Is the Lee-Wilkins match worth the commitment? Saw it did pretty well in the VOW poll, but 105 minutes? That's a high bar to leap over.

Man, I thought this absolutely owned. Blew away everything on Wrestle Kingdom because of the intensity of the grappling and the fact these guys could match each other athletically. One of my few general criticisms of Riddle is that he hasn't mastered worked strikes. He still seems afraid to knock guys out. But he laid in his shots here, even the open-hand smacks to the body that look flimsy in some of his matches. I'm surprised to read so much talk about no selling, because I thought both guys did their jobs on that front. Shibata kept the macho horseshit to an acceptable level, and the one my-turn-your-turn forearm exchange came at the right point. Meltzer wrote something about the finish coming before the crowd expected it, but I didn't get that. Thought the ending was perfect for what they had done, and the match was plenty long enough. It's an early MOTYC for me.

Nah, it's Parv's fault. Or rather the fault of the British for listing dates incorrectly.

Just for clarity's sake, the date is 8/6/00 and there's already a thread for it.

BTW, did the Hero v. Royal match from NOVA Pro make tape?

I also finished BattleCade this week and came away with positive feelings about the show and promotion (I had mostly just watched the Lee title matches as opposed to whole shows). As for picking between the final two matches, I probably liked the main event a touch more because they wrung so much out of what could have been a convoluted stip. And the announcers did such a good job explaining why the match paid off the rivalry that it almost didn't matter whether I'd followed it all year. The finish struck me as perhaps a step too clever with the ref running in to get his revenge instead of Lee just transcending Attitude's chicanery. But that may be a case where I would've enjoyed it more if I had a better grasp of the ref as a character. I also quite liked the semi-main. Very aggressive performance from Everett, and I fucking love Arik Royal. He clearly has the presence and the killer offense to stand out in the bigger indies, though I'm not sure he's interested in leaving the region. .

I haven't watched the Kobashi-Vader matches for awhile. The 2/27 one should make for an interesting direct comparison. But I liked your Akiyama-Sting comparison. They did approach Vader similarly. Part of the problem with Akiyama at this point was that as good as he was (and physically, he had pretty clearly surpassed Kobashi and Misawa), he still lacked a bit of stature. And of course that would continue to be an issue for him.

My guesses for the most would be Kobashi and Danielson. I love Hero and think his 2016 was one of the greatest years I've seen from anyone. But there were plenty of years when he was good without ringing up a lot of 4-star-plus classics. Same thing is true for Styles because of the TNA swamp. Mysterio is the emperor of the 3-1/2-star match but maybe not the 4. I have little doubt Flair would be a contender if we had footage of his house show matches throughout the '80s.

I watched this from the treadmill this morning and it didn't click with me as a great match. Good but not great. I liked the way Akiyama came out firing. But then Vader wrecked him with an absurd run of offense that included two power bombs on the outside and two Vader bombs in the ring. That forced Akiyama to sell for about 5 minutes and sucked the energy out of the match. It would have worked fine in a 25-minute match but this one went 16, and they didn't have time to build back up to a proper crescendo. Some of Akiyama's nearfalls were pretty good, but the drama of the finishing stretch just felt a little off. I did not come out of it agreeing with Chad's conclusion that Akiyama was a better Vader opponent than Misawa or Kobashi.

'60s - The French match '70s - Wanted to pick a Grey vs. Myers match but there isn't a singular standout from their series so Robinson vs. Baba it is. '80s - New Japan gauntlet 4/19/84 '90s - 6/9/95 '00s - pick 'em between Danielson-Morishima 8/25/07 or Kobashi-Ogawa 11/1/03 '10s - FUTEN tag 10/24/10

How clipped was this Chad? I have that comm tape but don't think I've ever watched it.

I ultimately voted for the '80s. The only real advantages I could think of for the '90s were the depth and variety provided by the Japanese indies and the high-end quality of All-Japan. But the strength of the U.S. territories, Britain and Puerto Rico combined with my preferences for '80s lucha and '80s New Japan, made it a fairly easy call.

There are behind the scenes technical reasons for why they have been so slow to get the back catalog up. Not sure if it's my place to say exactly what past that it's not the fault of WWN or Flo. Thanks. Good to know it's not a negligence issue.

I also feel they flat-out lied about how quickly they would throw up the entire WWN back catalog, which can't even be that difficult. That was a major reason I subscribed. I've enjoyed the live shows enough not to feel completely ripped off, but if I had to make a call on renewing right now, I might not.

My sense is that, as in most sports, modern training techniques have enhanced the general level of fitness, strength, quickness, etc. Does that mean the best in today's business are better athletes than Jumbo Tsuruta or Tatsumi Fujinami or Steve Grey or Jack Brisco? No.