sek69

Well WWE didn't want him when he was a TNA guy, it was only after he was a top star in NJPW that they had interest. He's just lucky they didn't feel he needed to spend two years in NXT learning where the hard camera is like other guys from that "indy" (Balor, Nak).

It sounds like "get off my lawn" old man complaining, but it's hard to look at the varied opponents he had as NWA champ in the early-mid 80s and think he's overrated. He made complete lumps look like a million bucks more than anyone I can think of. Now he did have his flaws, of course, but the whole idea that he's overrated is just lunacy. It just comes off as the pro wrestling version of a HAWT SPORTZ TAEK you'd hear on talk radio or an ESPN shouty head show.

It's hardly boogeyman shit when you see people get called up to the main roster and everything that made them over in NXT was forgotten about.

I assume that he actually does understand the difference, and if he doesn't he probably isn't fit to run the company from a fiscal perspective after Vince is gone. You can read this in two ways IMO: either he knows Vince would have no clue what to do with Nakamura and have him doing some "choppy choppy your pee pee" 2.0 gimmick on the main roster, or he's trying to keep some of the top name talent for his brand. I half jokingly suggested that when Vince is gone you might see H/Steph and Shane/Dunn running separate companies, and the conspiracy theorist part of my brain keeps thinking that the constant branding of NXT as not developmental is setting up the foundation for that.

Went back and watched the Big Event show from 1986, which was the largest show pre WM 3 they've done. The main event vs Orndorff might be the best WWF Hogan match I've ever seen. It deviates from the usual "Hulk vs monster" format and has a fired up Hulkster looking to get revenge for being wronged. Having Johnny V on commentary was a bit distracting at times, but it was a pretty good show if you're looking for something to check out.

Well yes, she's not going to be as awesome as Aja but she's the blueprint for how to book a female monster.

All I could think if watching that is how that's how Nia Jax should be booked. None of this "try to make the monster look pretty" stuff, just straight up destruction. Also, I'm amazed broken noses didn't happen more often, considering the person doing a spinning backfist is kind of just hoping the person is close enough to make it look legit without smashing their face.

IMO Byron tries too hard too much of the time. That might be due to overproduction, but he comes off to me too much as an announcer version of a wrestler who has to get his shit in no matter what.

Bryan is way more subdued when on with Dave unless they're reviewing an especially bad Raw or something like that. Say what you will about him, but at least he knows to keep his gimmick in check there since he has to know Dave is the reason 99% of people sub to them.

I noticed during the backstage promo on last week's NXT that Billie Kay reminds me of Flo the Progressive Lady and now I can't unsee it.

Hell, that get-up she was wearing might have been from Bob's collection too.

Right. Which is why I said WWE isn't a monopoly in a previous post.

Even if TNA had a clue, WWE would have raided their talent of anyone worth a damn the moment they posed any semblance of a threat to them.

If someone tries a different style and decides for whatever reason it's not their cup of tea, I have no issue with that. It does kind of bother me to see someone dismiss something using criteria that makes it clear they either never gave it a chance or used the worst possible example to do so.

Lucha tends to be built on long feuds leading to mask/hair matches, maybe watching individual matches years later without most of the context hurts it more than other styles? I know that's treading close to Dave's "matches are worked for their time and nothing else" edict, but maybe that's not entirely wrong?

I always found it odd that hardcore fans by and large tend to gravitate more towards Japanese wrestling than lucha. I would have thought that lucha would have been easier to get into from an English speaking standpoint since you can at least usually get the gist of what's being said even if you aren't fluent in Spanish as opposed to Japanese. Also it would be easier for someone North America based to actually travel to Mexico to see it live as opposed to making the trip to the Tokyo Dome. Then again, maybe that was part of the mystique. Watching wrestling from the other side of the world in a completely inaccessable (to most) language.

Technically no, since as Loss noted there are other places for people to work and some make as much or more than they would working for WWE. They are more of a defacto monopoly in the sense that no one can really compete with them on a national level, and any other company is only one talent raid away from being wiped out if WWE feels the need to do so. To be fair, it's not a recent development. The only reason there's ever been any actual competition to Vince is because Ted Turner showed loyalty to the company that helped build his empire.

CMLL especially has some old ass refs that make Bronco Lubich look like Tommy Young, but what I hate most of all is when the rudo ref spots get overused. Actually, to be more precise I hate when Tirantes Jr goes overboard and gloms all the heat on himself. It's like the wrestling version of an Ump Show in baseball.

Someone a few pages back made a point that seems to have been glossed over. There's a fairly big difference between CMLL style lucha and AAA/indy style lucha. CMLL is more or less trying to stay the exact same style that Mr. Lutteroth started in 1933. They have acrobatics and six mans, sure, but I'm not sure I've seen anyone anywhere put on a better professional wrestling performance than Atlantis did in his two Anniversary matches with UG. AAA on the other hand is more like if ECW faked its death and moved to Mexico to hide from creditors. A handful of occasional good matches between tons of garbage that sometimes gets unnecessarily violent. You can't really complain about AAA looking too fakey when Psycho Clown almost burned his arm off at Triplemania this year.

The Raw writers seem stuck in the mindset that you can only have one women's feud at a time and are just now trying to break out of that. SD's women have been running circles around Raw's since the split began.

In the 90s when the internet started to boom, it also happened to coincide with a time when Japanese wrestling was really fucking good. Anyone who had any kind of following at the time was raving about the amazing matches they were seeing and it got everyone interested. Combine that with the fact that we're just now starting to get footage of lucha from before 2000 (the good stuff at least), it's no wonder it never got as popular.

Seems like it would be a waste to build up a monster like Braun just to feed to the guy who's failed at being top babyface for the last 3 years.

He's not heel Michael Cole bad, but he's been largely a useless third wheel. Perhaps in the era of lowered expectations of wrestling commentators he's okay then. No one's saying he's not suited because he's black, that's ridiculous and honestly just insultingly lazy trolling.

Not sure why Dave's the bad guy for pointing out that WWE puts people in positions they clearly aren't suited for to fill an imaginary quota.

How many of the promoter's kids do you actually think this applied to? As far as I can remember it's pretty much just Mike Von Erich that got pushed way harder and faster than he should have. Erik Watts? Gulas's kid? I can't imagine guys were eager to put over Jeff Jarrett back in Memphis.