Childs

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.

I guess if I have any hope related to GWE and the outside world it's that the threads will be a resource for someone who comes along in a year or two, hoping to dig deeper. The Smarkschoice threads played that role for me before they disappeared. As for the post-project lull, it was inevitable. I know that whenever I go through an intensive wrestling analysis period, I usually need to exhale for a few months before I dive back into something else. I assume it's the same for others and that things will pick back up when the '80s sets come out or there's something particularly interesting to talk about in WWE. We can't have a board-galvanizing opus going on all the time.

Can't speak for others, but I really don't care if it meant anything to anyone else or not.

I just watched that tag this morning and thought it was a mess, despite some nice moments. Way too long and way too many momentum shifts. Every tag match doesn't need to follow classic Southern formula, but each tag to a partner should mean something. The match should have some kind of shape. I don't know, they really lost me. Hero-Thatcher and Riddle-Alexander were really good, though Thatcher needs to stop throwing slaps, especially against a striker of Hero's caliber. They make him look weaker than he is, and he has plenty of strike options between the uppercuts, the body punches and the head butts.

Awesome, thanks.

The huge 70's footage dump with a bunch of new/rare matches that just went up on YouTube might change that. Where's that?

They're 2 for 2 on great matches. I hope they have something worthwhile for AJ now that Rollins and Reigns are going to be paired. If he didn't make his bones in those two main events, not sure how he would.

These guys are a fantastic match-up.

I've never thought Ambrose was very good, but the fans did care about him for a long time. Jericho has even taken that away. What a terrible drag he's become. He wouldn't make my top 1,000 wrestlers ever.

That cage is ridiculous, and not in a good way. My expectations for this could hardly be lower.

This has been a quality wrestling show.

I understand it's 120 teams but agree there's little need to stretch it out over a whole month. If that's the pace Beast and Low Blow need to go at, it's understandable, and I appreciate their efforts. But this was never comparable to GWE, so I imagine a lot of us would be cool with a quicker roll out.

These guys had the crowd (and me) hooked despite all the bullshit. That's saying something. Great performance by both.

The wrestling in this match has been really good though.