Childs

Yeah, it's easy to become numb to their intrinsic wickedness and forget to comment on it.

That's pretty much their ideal, isn't it?

That's a good point. May well be low-risk, low-reward.

Agreed, but PWG has always seemed content to maintain its SoCal audience and sell a little merch to hardcores scattered around the country. I think you can hum along at that level without generating a lot of buzz among the folks here. But if ROH has larger ambitions (which, maybe it doesn't), that seems more problematic.

Does their plan to return to PPV run counter to that SMW vibe? I don't know the answer; genuinely asking.

I was amused to see that in the sub-headline of his piece on Detroit wrestling, they turned the Sheik into the Iron Sheik. That's not Shoemaker's fault. It's just a funny illustration of the lack of wrestling knowledge among the people packaging his stuff.

No, we're representative of people who desperately want to see good wrestling. And if you're not exciting us, your chance of exciting a broader audience seems poor. I mean, the reviews of New Japan here are more mixed than in most places. But it at least generates some discussion. I take your point about the tastes here; I just think that if ROH were a hot product, people on PWO would talk about it more. And with that, I'll drop it.

You don't think it's bad that a company trying to sell PPV to a national audience has few devotees on a hardcore wrestling board? I agree PWO is less indy-focused than other places, but I don't think it's a good sign.

The fact that no one on this board gives a fuck about ROH is probably a bad sign for their viability. It means their product isn't even working for hardcores. I live in Baltimore and it hasn't once occurred to me to go to a taping in recent years. And I say that as someone who was a steady fan of the promotion as recently as 2008.

I certainly understand why people loved/love the idea of that match. The first few minutes were cool with the energy and big spots, but they got really ragged after that and petered out. It wasn't anywhere near the best match in the world that day -- that'd be Sano vs. Shamrock in Japan.

I loved the six-man from May with the Outsiders and Waltman against Flair, Piper and Kevin Greene. Probably my favorite surprise from going through all of 1997.

We're talking one week away for a guy who's been incredibly over for more than a year. I hope people aren't that fickle.

If you don't think Brock is freakishly huge, you've lost all sense of human proportion.

Huh, don't think I ever saw that for whatever reason.

I know some rather 'purist' Puro aficionados who despise most of the guys who came in from MMA and pan their matches for the shoot style elements... ... Seriously, there's people out there like this. They mocked me for rating it as my favorite match of the card. I love the idea of "purists" who have no understanding of New Japan's history or that of Sakuraba.

Beginning of '86. The UWF guys were re-introduced at the beginning of January and the first big NJ vs. UWF matches were in early February as I recall. Edit: There wasn't a "shot fired" in the sense of Choshu turning on Fujinami in '82. They actually started the UWF guys working against each other.

I don't think love for that match is an outsider opinion on this board, however. And Sakuraba is totally a pro wrestler.

I would say that's essentially how Bryan worked as an ace on the indies, though he went through different shadings depending on face/heel status. He's certainly capable if the powers that be aren't bothered by the size thing.

With the Warrior news on top of a historic Mania and the Network subscriber announcement, it seems the universe might be trying to kill Dave.

Yeah, I agree that's a lot of it, although he was on top after the real boom time in the '80s. He actually fell in a bit of a dead zone for me as a fan, though I was still watching pretty regularly in 1989. Was he a major figure in the UK fan boom of the early '90s?

I've been surprised at how large Warrior loomed for fans -- from the lapsed to the casual to posters here. He just never meant that much to me, and only the timing of his death seemed really striking. But I've read all kinds of things today from non-wrestling people who view him as a near-Hogan-level star. I get that the colorful gimmick and the bizarre promos cut through the fog of time for people who watched as kids. And I'm not running down the reaction to his death at all. I've just found it interesting.

My feed was impeccable throughout the actual show. So kudos to them on that.

Crowd definitely still down. Bryan's pop wasn't what it was earlier.

My guess is Taker just decided he couldn't do this anymore and wanted to go out on his shield. He looked like a guy who had nothing left, and I'm not sure they had a better match in them unless they went short and intense.