Childs

I don't think that came across. If that had been the case, the announcers should have talked about confusion and Cena and Ambrose should have sold it. It felt like they were all legitimately confused rather than telling a story of confusion. Also, Cena was lousy in that match.

But the announcers talked like Styles was eliminated. That added to the clusterfuck feel.

That made no sense. Just a terribly booked match.

Triple threats suck.

Trauma I-Canis Lupus was a beast of a match. I always worry that we've seen the last of the really great, gritty apuestas matches but man, these guys tapped into the spirit of the golden age. I'm sorry, those recent big Atlantis matches from Arena Mexico can't compare. This had the classic structure, but Canis Lupus, whom I don't think I'd ever seen, really put some teeth into his opening attack. And both guys sold the hell out of the accrued damage, which gave weight to every nearfall in the tercera. In a pretty good year for high-end matches, this was the completely unexpected pinnacle.

I went back and watched this and sad to say, I wasn't blown away by it. I dug the early stuff with Inoue going after Hash and Yasuda doing the sumo vs. amateur showdown against Honda. But I thought it lost steam as it went on, and the finish really fell flat. If you're going to have an angry Hash beat Inoue into a stoppage, great. Instead, the ref called the match with Yasuda lying on top of Inoue, and the crowd didn't seem to get it at all. Still thought it was a good match because Hash and Honda are awesome, but I wasn't feeling it as a MOTYC. Hash must have 100 better matches in his career, including every single tag from the WAR feud.

I agree you can reach a good understanding of what a wrestler could do without watching everything. If you see how a guy handles a decent range of situations (especially if, as Parv said, you understand the context), it becomes less important to watch him handle those situations over and over. But I'm not comfortable completely ignoring volume as a factor in comparing workers. If worker A and worker B are roughly similar in quality but worker B wrestled near his peak for three times as long, I'm going to favor worker B. I'm not sure you're even arguing against that. But for me, there is a limit to saying peak transcends volume.

I think the feeling is that others--Benoit, Eddy, etc.--have gotten in almost entirely on work and given that Bryan was on the same level or better, he should also be in that group. He was also enough of a star for it not to feel ludicrous. I'm not making that case myself, necessarily, but that's my reading of it.

I don't like the fact he puts people on the ballot or back on the ballot immediately after they die. That's often the worst time for a clear-eyed assessment of someone's legacy (says the man who just finished writing an obituary).

Perkins is right at the top of the list of guys I don't get. He puts me to sleep time after time, no matter what role he's playing. I turned off the show after the semis because I could not have given less of a fuck about the final match-up. CWC was a cool thing overall but peaked with Kendrick-Ibushi.

As great a run as AJ is on, this is wildly premature. You're talking eight months of work vs. more than four years. And I'd say your critiques of Bryan apply more to his work as a hot tag (granted, a role he played often) than to his high-end singles stuff. I'm not dismissing the idea that AJ could build a stronger WWE resume than Bryan. But he needs to endure. And when you look at the last 15 years, I still don't see it as a particularly close call. Bryan was so good against such a wide variety of opponents while AJ was stuck in fucking TNA. If we're talking skills vs. skills, I can see a case for them being very close. But on body of work? AJ has a ways to go. I hope he gets there, because that would be great for all of us.

Styles is unreal. Can't remember the last time I gave a shit about an Ambrose match but I'm all in on this one.

I don't know that I give a match extra points for being famous. I'm sure I have at times. What I care about a lot is how well it pays off whatever led up to it or how well it sets up whatever is coming next. In that sense, context is immensely important. I've enjoyed plenty of matches without really grasping their context. But those are rarely the richest viewing experiences.

Amen.

I don't need a clean finish, but I usually need to feel satisfied with the finish for a match to hit me as a true classic. For example, I didn't have a problem with the Rich-Sawyer finish, but it didn't send me out on a high. Magnum stabbing Tully with a stake, on the other hand, paid off everything about that match in such a visceral way. That might be the difference between a really good match that I enjoyed once and something I'll feel compelled to revisit in 15 years.

On first viewing, this did not strike me as anything close to an all-time classic. It featured a pair of epic blade jobs and I loved the sequence with them slugging it out from their knees. But the heat and the violence were pretty pedestrian for the blow off to a blood feud, and they tried to sell total exhaustion before they earned it. I particularly expected more from Buzz, who was neither particularly nutty nor particularly dynamic on offense by his standards. The whole thing just didn't sweep me up the way I hoped, even though it was a very good match.

I'm catching up on the G1 and got to Omega-Naito yesterday. I have to agree with Chad and Shoe that it was a genuinely great match. I've had major reservations about Omega ever since he emerged as a touted wrestler. But his performance here was absolutely convincing; felt like he'd give everything in his body and soul to win the tournament and make his name. It was a consciously "big" match, but that felt right for the setting, and the fans took the ride with them.

I don't know about top five in the world, but Kendrick made me care about a Tony Nese match, so that's some shit right there.

I'm not a fan of the "epic" formula Cena has relied on the last few years, but this was really good in spite of that. They executed superbly, hooked the crowd and succeeded in creating a big moment for AJ. I went in with modest expectations based on what I'd read but thought it was the clear highlight of Summerslam.

The mistake people make in assessing ESPN is that they view it as one, unified thing. It's actually a sprawling, messy beast of a company. So you have some arms, like Outside The Lines and the Magazine, doing quality, nuanced journalism on the leagues ESPN broadcasts. And you have other arms taking a more compromised approach. But reducing it to "ESPN has no journalistic integrity" is bullshit. Dave is absolutely right to say they have not lived up to their standards with other sports in covering wrestling.

Did ESPN Classics carry Herb's UWF at one point or am imagining that? Yes, I want to say they also briefly ran that weird AWF group that had rounds like World of Sport. Also the worst part of this will be endless Dave Meltzer rants on how ESPN isn't treating wrestling like a sport and how that's such a black eye to their journalistic cred (when in reality that ship sailed when they became official PR departments for the sports they cover). ESPN does plenty of good journalism on the sports they broadcast. On the other hand, they've demonstrated neither the ability nor the inclination to do good journalism on wrestling. I'm not even sure they know what that would look like.

Am I misunderstanding the WON then? I read that as meaning WWE is not interested in him after observing him in Evolve. But maybe that's a total misinterpretation on my part. I hope so.

I was surprised to read in the WON that WWE has apparently passed on Riddle. Has that been widely known? And what the fuck? How could that dude have been any better in his first year?