tomk

Huh? How were either on paper good ideas? Both really felt like the kind of Konnan bringing in Shima Xion and Danielson to AAA type foolishness. Helmsley takes the role of Konan: guy who watches tape and reads sheets but with little to no understanding of whats taking place on those tapes, no sense of what the pimped people are that he's bringing in and what the actual product that he has that he's bringing that talent into. It's the WWE, so Pena isn't dead yet but everything I've read about HHH's post retirement approach is super Konan-esque. My point was that they normally sign people based on size/physical appearance who have no track record. Mistico at least had a track record. You can make whatever argument you want about how he has been booked, but signing a guy because he was WOTY in the WON is a departure from how Vince normally does business. I'm not sure how bringing in Kharma didn't seem like a great idea. I still think it was, as I'm sure when she comes back, she'll be a star. Yeah neither is how the WWE normally does buisness. Which was my point. Signing well regarded US indy talent like Danielson and Shima Xion and not regimmicking them is not how Antonio Pena did buisness either. Doesn't neccesarily make it smart. I like Danielson, Xion, Mistico and Kharma but I don't think the first two neccesarily looked like good ideas "on paper" in AAA, and don't think the last two looked good on paper for the WWE. 1) Mistico: I don't have a ton of problems with how Mistico is doing in WWE, I think he is doing well in role of replacemnt for "What Up?" dancing face Killings. And he's been protected alot better than Killings. I don't have a ton of problems with the way he's being booked. They've invested alot in him and are putting a ton of booking effort to get behind him. No problem with that. Perhaps while I'm laid up I can do a long Mistico/Sin Cara thread. He is a super interesting story. According to Meltzer 20 % of Raw audience is of Mexican American descent (I don't know if he meant RAW or the WWE as whole) and they've been talking forever about needing a replacement in line for when Rey retires. On some level we always treat it as dumb when people bring in Luger to recreate Hogan. It's built on not understanding the uniqueness of Hogan or the skills that Luger actually brings to table. I've said this a bunch of times before but: Mistico was the WON WOTY, for being a giant fucking draw. Not for being the most spectacular highflyer on a lucha show, not for being the most spectacular highflyer when he travels to work Japanese shows, not for being a great underdog worker (he for the most part works from above not from below), but for being a giant fucking draw. Rocky Maivia was the biggest drawing US brawler of the last two decades, if someone looked at that and decided they wanted to bring him brought him in to replace a retiring Stan Hansen----would you say "that makes sense on paper".? Signing Maivia and being surprised when he isnt Hansen doesn't make you look smart. Signing Maivia to replace Hansen doesn't "look good on paper" Maivia like Mistico is a pro and I imagine he could adjust. That said bringing a guy in with no understanding of who he is and then being dissapointed is the opposite of "makes sense on paper". 2) Kharma The WWE diva's division is built around underwear models who are hired to create a more pleasant backstage enviroment. That's its purpose. When one of them gets too uppity, the promotion can amuse themselves by booking he as Dump (evil fat girl) and driving her into an eating disorder. To actually use Kharma, I imagine means that you have to radically change the division to meet her needs. Does the fed have any intention of doing that? When someone says a signing "looks good on paper" my asssumption is that they mean the person signed is talented guy who you can easily slip into the mix, not a guy who you have to change your booking to accomodate.

So read through this and a couple of thoughts 1) Huh? How were either on paper good ideas? Both really felt like the kind of Konnan bringing in Shima Xion and Danielson to AAA type foolishness. Helmsley takes the role of Konan: guy who watches tape and reads sheets but with little to no understanding of whats taking place on those tapes, no sense of what the pimped people are that he's bringing in and what the actual product that he has that he's bringing that talent into. It's the WWE, so Pena isn't dead yet but everything I've read about HHH's post retirement approach is super Konan-esque. 2) He should be credited a bunch for Batista. But it should be pointed out that the secret to the long Batista program was that Batista and HHH didn't face off in the ring. I don't know if it's a wives tale or not but there used to be a story that if a heel failed to mention Dusty in their promo they would be punished by being put into a series opposite Jimmy Valiant---with the idea being working a series with Valiant kills your heat. The best punishment for failing to put HHH over in promos would be being forced to work a series of matches with HHH. Batista and HHH had two matches opposite each other where HHH jobbed in both. No tags, no six mans, no non-title stuff on the way to those matches. Batista got over by not having to work HHH. Also worth pointing out that at point when the audience was super hungry for Batista to be new guy to take over RAW. The audience was super prepared for Batista to be Magnificent Mimi to replace HHH's Moolah (in a way that the RAW audience was super unprepared for how to deal with Cena's Jaguar Yakota). Batista was instead shipped over to Smackdown, and HHH returned to being top dog on RAW. I think the situation where Batista wins and still nothing changes, hurt Batista. 3) So I've read that issue and yeah the Barend obit is better than the Steve Williams one, and the long line by line response to HHH is really odd And I understand deciding to re-brand the term "technical wrestling" as refering to timing and ring positioning. But HHH is a guy who can't string two moves together. He has to irish whip opponent's into ropes between moves. He's never really figured out a setup to his finisher, at one point he had Chyna low blow opponents to get them in position for Pedigree but after she left...the set up became opponent has to get in front of him and bend over. There are things you can use to compliment HHH, and I wouldn't criticize his timing. But his matches are built on his opponents having to run ropes and be in position for him. Positioning seems like a weird compliment. Dusty was always standing in the right place to bionic elbow the heels who lined up and came running at him? 4) Yeah, I really enjoyed the Sesame Street muppets on Top Chef, and any time they brought out additional footage from that episode it was super great. The Muppet pupeteers are really well trained in how to improvise with non professional actors. The question becomes how much will they be allowed to improv ( have any of the other hosts with improv background done any?), and well the Muppets work pretty blue. I don't expect them to do Beeker and Honydew in Mason Ryan's lockerroom, have Lew Zealand search for his boomerang fish in the divas lockeroom, or script any awesome Scooter and Laurinitis interactions. It's possible that even if they don't work blue, aren't allowed to improv and are stuck using WWE writers scripts thay still might pull something off. Bella twins discover Danielson was a vegan was horribly written comedy but it could see it working if they have Gonzo reading Danielson's lines.

I assume the Deglane push was just a response to new category Europe opening up and there being lower level of votes needed to get in there. I have no idea why the Historical candidates section is only US and Canadian. But if you're a guy who cares about the historical candidates and it turns out that Kinja Shibuya did a tour of the Bahamas and is moved to the "Pacific Island category", you vote for him.

I pretty much agree with this, but unless you have done the research or (as I have) looked at the research, numbers and strengths others have compiled Schmidt just comes across as a name to a lot of the voters. That is the problem with the pre-modern era candidates. Frankly it is astounding how close Schmidt got this year. What are your thoughts on DeGlane as a candidate John? Eventually I will work my way through this whole thread and comment on earlier stuff, but I want to suggest people read the Enrque Torres obit as I think he feels like a really strong interesting candidate to me.

Odd, I just put up three things I wrote in 02-where I described Harris as mediocre getting better while Storm was pretty great. The early Russo period of TNA (including the period where Russo was secretly booking), they ran an angle where Harris and Storm teased dissention. Harris was the cool guy who pretended to smoke cigarettes (he didn't inhale) who told Storm to dump his corny cowboy gimmick. Harris was pushed as the future star cause Russo thought cowboy gimmicks were corny and old school or something like that.

I only have three TNA workrate reports saved from the Nashville era. The rest are all lost in Dutch hacking or in toa archives. At the time my strategy to combat writers block was to pick a Steve Miller band lyric and build the whole report around it. See if you can find hidden Steve Miller. I think I was also reading alot of Jimmy Olsen in an effort to curb my cursing. Within a couple weeks of this report I learned that I was wrong about the Harris brothers. Ron is the more athletic and looks better in tags. But Ron can't work singles. Don on the other hand actually can work singles brawls well (and I'm not a guy who is big on complimenting Neo-Nazis). And the Don vs. Malice series was far better than I had anticipated.

Is that considered to be a good match? That's a match that builds to and ends with a heel turn. You were talking about the crowd dynamics hurting the booking of heel v heel. I thought at this point Warrior v Hogan is pointed to as something that hurt Warriors long term prospects and as a reason you need a transitional heel champion. The dynamics of face v face (even when it doesn't get the "boring chant" and Bobby Heenan on commentary pontificatingabout "eventually one of these guys will have to throw a punch") splits a crowd and leaves the crowd sympathetic to the defeated face. Pedro Morales v Bruno famously is something that hurt Morales, too.

At what point was Harris considered to be the worker of that team? He was taller and worked a looser WWE Edge-like style that people thought might work out for him, but he was always clearly the weaker link.

Not really sure if I understad the rationale behind using Raven's secrets of the ring as starting point for wrestling analysis. Would you use a playboy interview with Uwe Boll as starting point for analysis of cinema structure?

What are these face v face matches that were best matches ever? or have had effective booking dynamics? Monster v monster for the spectacle of mostrosity: Abby v Brodyish stuff has always worked and heel v heel with heels trying ot outheel their opponent was drivining force of EMLL booking for a while. Tiered heels has also been effective booking strategy for a while: you run Inoki/Fujinami v Zambouiee Express and run Choshu/Hamaguchi v Zambouiee Express to set up Choshu/Hamaguchi v Inoki/Fujinami.

Has this gotten a ton of "love" or been rated high enough to possibly be "overrated"?. The only people I think I've ever heard talk about it are me, Schneider and Cooke. It's a solid long heavyweight match with lots of neat transition spots, and teases of transition spots. 92 is also a year where Nikita kind of puts it together as a singles wrestler. I don't want to say it's his Luger in 89 or HHH in whatever teh 6 month period was where he looked like he understood how to fill time effectively. But Nikita is a guy who had long since figured out how to be an effective hot tag worker...but at somepoint in 92 he figured out how to be effective in a singles match.

What we wrote at segundacaida:

I also liked the Malice-Sabu match. I want to say Killings is Manny Fernandez trainee/ not sure if he and Homicide were trainees at same time but I think Cide/Ki and Killings haves ome background together. I watched and wrote a bunch about tna in its early days most of which is lost in toa archives.

Bix, read the thread. Even if I give him that benefit of the doubt----the globetrotters?

I think one of the things with WCW is up till Watts period the shows seem to exist in their own seperate universes. Whith Watts everything is building toward Omni shows and so you have these focused clips from Omni followed by interviews etc. I don't know if you guys thoughtof doing the Mr Hughes/Jyd angle stuff but that is super focused booking. And yes the whole building toward what will happen on the next Omni show idea is ridiculous for a national company ( I wonder if WWE has tapes of those Omni shows) Before that my sense is that the various syndi shows worked in their own universe. In the early nineties you would see things like Ricky Morton turning on his tag partner in three different syndi shows. Maybe different tag partners, maybe different opponents but you watch three syndies where Morton turns and go "these guys are suckers to still tag with him". But the shows were done as though the audience was only watching one syndi show, and you had to work the angle infront of each "territory". My sense with Dangerous Alliance stuff was that you were supposed to go Holy shit this match up is great I want to see what happens on the houseshow not what happens on the next episode of the Tv series.

This was one of the early Dustin of the Days that I wrote about six maybe seven years ago. I have a hard time when I dig something fighting the urge to do to much play by play:

Comparing Hogan v Kidman to HHH v Jericho is a mistake, as they are completely different formulas. Mike Awesome had just come to WCW from ECW where he had a series of heavily pimped matches opposite LSD. Kidman v Hogan was Hogan does ECW with shoot mic work and table spots. Basic concept is Mike Awesome made to look tough cause he can throw Spike Dudley around, Spike Dudley made to look tough cause he can take the beating. This is the model they were working from ( an ECW take on Cactus Jack looks tough or Michaels looks tough from level of beating type match) with the face-heel structure changed (so Kidman gets a Bs win on TV) and with Hogan and Kidman doing ECWish shoot mic work (that neither Awesome or LSD did in their ECW matches). Kidman worked more evenly opposite Horace Hogan over course of angle. But really the comparison to HHH v Jericho misses the structure of the match. The comparison should be to Spike v Awesome, I'd be interested to hear how Mike thinks those two series' stack up against each other.

What we said at segundacaida: Awesome arm wrestler v wrestler match up.

What we said at segundacaida: My memory is that I felt that there was more going on in this match than the earlier one but maybe simple is better. This was basic disagreement between me and Phil when watching the PWFG, as I liked when Flyn moved back and forth between carefull defensive wrestler and aggressive kicker, Phil thought Flynn was more effective when he was more one dimensional, http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2006/12/p...mi-show-17.html

What we wrote at segundacaida: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2006/12/p...mi-show-16.html

What we wrote on Segundacaida shoe says: I don't know about that. Think he might have fit in better in WCW . People tend to forget that WCW ran multiple styles of tag wrestling. And while they did Steamer/Windham v Dangerous Alliance southern tag stuff they also ran a ton of hard hitting big moveset sprint stuff in the mode of Road Warriors--->Steiners--->High Voltage v Cobra and Craig Pittman type stuff which is a formula that I think might have suited Shamrock well.

What we wrote on segundacaida: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2006/12/p...mi-show-14.html

I wish Showtime gave a rat's ass because I imagine with some good ballyhoo you could get a pretty big audience for M1 Monson v Fedor. Anarchist v Russian military in Moscow: a history of anarchism in Russia, history of the repression of anarchism, Monson meets Voina, Fedor and the mayor of Moscow, Zahar Prilepin to write a poetic intro piece on Fedor. It shouldn't be hard to promote that on Tv and sell it as a far bigger deal than actually is.It feels like it wouldn't take alot of money for Showtime to thumb its nose at UFC and promote the M1 show.

A couple of years ago when this idea was being tossed around I said " Hey aren't we going to be moving to a la carte Cable in the next couple of years". And will it hasn't happened yet but: http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?...6&gt1=33002

Is Meltzer talking about the Globetrotters? By more popular comercially is he talking about having a cartoon show and appearing on the love boat? Or is he talking about draw? Is he talking about that one huge gate they drew in post war Germany? Is he talking about the Globetrotters when the NBA was segregated? The legit games they had against segregated college teams of the 20s, the segregated Miineapolis Lakers of the 40s? Did he miss the whole segregation thing? Is the Harlem Globetrotters point more or less insane than the WNBA argument? If Curly Neal opened a Swedish restaurant...