Childs

I don't think the booking is bad, but I don't get the sense they have a consistent audience, which hurts the heat when they try to run angles. At the height of Gabe's ROH, you always got the sense fans were locked into the product, whether through live attendance or buying DVDs. So if they started an angle in Philly, they could pick it up two weeks later in Chicago without a massive disconnect. Evolve doesn't run as often, and the fans in Florida don't necessarily seem to pick up where the fans in New York left off. There's a band of hardcores like us, watching a bunch of the shows VOD, but that audience isn't necessarily represented at the live events. I'm thinking about something like the Caleb Konley challenge to Thatcher, which they built to for months but which seemed to go over like a wet fart in the building. There wasn't anything wrong with the storyline. Something like that probably would have generated real heat in Gabe's ROH. But with Evolve, if fans aren't into the match in front of them, the storyline doesn't seem to matter much.

Go back to setting up your work camps.

Why would you conflate the issue of awful out of ring actions with people talking about what a shitty wrestler Joey Ryan is? No one is upset on a world travesty scale. So why cast it as if it's any more than a wrestling argument?

Silver King and Cruz beat Andre the Giant, Greg Valentine, Tito Santana, Yuki Ishikawa, Ron Garvin and Buddy Rose among others in 2006.

It's not like you wipe out the vote by disagreeing with it. Arguing merits is part of the fun of this thing.

It was Tim Noel. He talked about it in one of these threads.

I also don't have any problem with the Kana matches. She's just a badass throwing down with other badasses--a Kill Bill fight scene come to life or something.

Agree completely. I was annoyed that he ranked ahead of anyone. In November, Phil and I watched him tease unwanted groping as, you guessed it, a babyface spot. Bleh.

I found Baba much more graceful in stepping back to his secondary legend role. He wasn't as good an athlete as Inoki, but he accepted his limitations and remained effective in modest doses. To be fair, Inoki's 2/6/86 match with Fujiwara was better than anything Baba did in the decade.

I'm generally a fan of his '70s work as well, but for me, the '80s Inoki vs. '90s Fujinami comparison doesn't quite work because Inoki remained the dominant figure in the promotion for so much of his decline phase. And aging ace was not a role he wore well, especially if viewed week to week. I take your point, and it's something I might think about in more detail when/if we do this again. But I'm not comfortable dismissing the '80s as a minor part of his biography. The '90s? Sure. But not the '80s.

Did you go to Evolve 59, Dylan? Feel like I've seen the least chatter about that one, and it's not On Demand yet.

KENTA is a good guess but will probably go a fair bit higher than 325.

After all this Jericho crap, it's sort of shocking to see AJ in there with someone who can go.

I'm stunned at the 151. I have no idea what that means for the results, but I'm certainly intrigued to find out.

Well, thanks for making this fun, gents.

Did they flat turn off the crowd noise?

They should go Broadway.

At least someone has achieved enlightenment.

Surprised they just called Bruno the greatest champ ever.

Trips has an army of gimps?

You're a sick puppy.

God no.

Aw damn, I thought he was done.

It's a popular opinion to me.

Johnny vanished. I wonder if his roommate just kept vacuuming to ward off the show?