Childs

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?

Choshu was pretty unselfish when it came to building up the next generation, a quality that set him apart from a lot of the stars who also booked.

I liked the Hero match from AAW though it struck me more as Hero looking great against a game young wrestler than as a battle between two great wrestlers. But Lee brought plenty to the table in that one.

Strong-Riddle was tremendous. Total war with a fair bit of creativity mixed in.

Sure, there's a drive to push the limits that's common across all sports. And it's an issue that's never going away. But the cultural attitudes toward doping and doping enforcement do vary from sport to sport and from era to era within each sport.

I've written a fair amount about doping and the attitudes about it are very different in different sports. In the Olympic sports, for example, it's much less about health or messages to kids than it is about the integrity of competition. In baseball, it was about the corruption of sacred records. In the NFL, it's sort of tacitly accepted as the cost of doing business.

What's your criticism of him?It's not that, really. It's more that he hasn't sparked for me and I'm curious what I'm missing. I should add that I haven't watched the match Shoe reviewed here, which I'll do at some point.

I don't get the acclaim for Trevor Lee at all.

I enjoyed the presentation and found the matches appropriately brisk as appetizers. Some of the analytical points they tried to pound home were over the top--not just jet lag but the stuff about weight cutting. But I understand they were trying to establish an overall vibe. I'll certainly keep watching. It's cool that as shitty as WWE can be on some fronts, it's become such a large tent.

They fucked up by not doing Reigns-Lesnar at Mania this year. It would have been better for everyone involved. But the moment has passed. I'd like to see him work with Joe or AJ, but I'm not holding my breath on either. They do such a terrible job in general of using their part-time superheroes.

I think the date on this is actually 1/21/97 if anyone goes searching for it.

There wasn't an American-style angle, no. But Misawa and Kawada established a more contentious tone when they met in the '93 Carnival (3/27). Then Taue and Kawada showed respect for one another at the end of their Carny match. And that was that.