FLIK

????

Yeah I was thinking a lot about that. If it were up to me i'd have him face Bryan for the belt, storm out at the begining of Mania, challenge him to fight him in the opener saying he doesn't want to wait then beat him in like 30 secs w the brogue kick. That shit would have way more impact then having like a 8 - 12 min semi competitive match mid show like they'll probably get otherwise. Called it

Good for him. Finlay did an interview denying he got hired back. Seems an odd thing to keep underwraps given he'd only return in a backstage role so i'll take his word on this one.

WoS crowds could get quite into it, they'd cheer loudly for a really good fast exchange of high spots and boo the shit out of some of the more hated heels. Watch something like Steve Veidor vs Al Hayes whear the crowd is so pissed at Hayes they're near ready to riot. No true bloodbaths, no. Given how they sold things, if someone donned a Ric Flair lvl crimson mask the match would imediatly be stoped, multiple ambulances called, the heel who busted him open would be murdered by the angry mob of fans and the guy who got busted open would be out for months Have you watched the Breaks vs Saint matches? Those are maybe the closest thing i've seen as the over riding theme of them is "fuck you you prick i'm gonna break your fuckin nose in a really violent manner" I like Big Daddy myself, no he's not someone you're gonna recomend in a thread talking about the best of British wrestling and I don't go out of my way to track him down but when I ocasionally run across a match of his I usually think his act is fun and come away entertained. It helps that he's usually teamed up with and or facing a really absurdly weird cast of characters. One of the more amusing things i've seen in WoS is Finlay coming down to the ring with a giant picture of Big Daddy. His Indian Princess wife Paula scribbles all over Daddy's face then Finlay dropkicks a giant hole in it One example I always liked was the Mask vs Undefeated Streak match between Kung Fu vs Mick McManus I wouldn't quite say that. Early on they were pretty rare but they became pretty common place after a while with their being tons of regular tag teams by the end.

Fuck, i'd be lying if I said I wasn't bumed to hear that. Finlay's indy world tour is one of the most enjoyable things in modern wrestling today. Good for him to be back in the WWE but sucks we might not ever see him wrestle again now unless he get's a Lawler deal whear he can still do shit on the side.

Any other promotion in the world and i'd agree but I think the British sceen is the one exception to that rule. With WoS there weren't angles to follow or a ton of big feuds or really even guys making TV often enough that you could get into something like following a guy from his rookie year moving up the card. To me it's more sports like then any other style i've seen, not so much as far as the action goes but in terms of the presentation. Fuck, I hate to go all Meltzer but it's kinda similar to UFC. You get the ocasional rivalry or feud croping up but mostly it's just a bunch of matches to see who the better man is with the few guys who show the most promise & win a lot getting title shots. A lot of the psychology of the standard match is about going back & forth trying to find an opportunity to catch your opponent off guard. Given that so much of it revolves around exchanging holds, when you're able to finally get in a few big blows or a suplex/slam or a good subission or flash cradle it can be a match ender really quickly because that stuff is always sold big. Just because it's allready been brought up & is still fresh in my mind, i'll recomend giving the Marty Jones vs Terry Rudge match a watch for something more similar to traditional style that would be a good gateway match. You've got the cool matwork to start but then it builts into a more rougher style match, blows being thrown, the ref having to step in to break things up when it threatens to get out of controll, they build up to big moves/near falls (within the context of the style atleast) and they really sell the damage the match has taken on them in the later rounds with both struggling to stay in the fight.

Just watched Jones/Rudge as i've had it sitting on my hard drive for 2-3 months now and this seemed like the perfect excuse to watch it. Liked how they built up the subtle tension in the match from gentlemanly mat work to "ok now i'm just gonna head butt this fucker in the gut and slap the shit out of him" and dug how they worked up to the big boston crab spot and put it over as Rudge's best shot to win. Agree with that being one of the better WoS matches. Kent Walton "That won't get a submission but it's doing damage" Monsoon "That won't get a submission, why's he even bothering?"

Hmm, been meaning to watch more WoS as that's one of my fave styles as well but I haven't watched any in a while. As a general rule, i've found 60's & 70's > 80's by a good deal as the further you get into the 80's the more it becomes about showy/entertainement style stuff and less about the pure sport style which is what drew me in. I'll check out some of the stuff listed above tho sometime All those things are what I love about the style or atleast don't have a problem with. Once you learn to understand or atleast accept that things are sold a LOT diffrently to the point whear even a body slam can be a match ender I think the finishes are fine most of the time. The very best stuff i've seen 3/22/1972 Zoltan Boscik vs Jon Cortez 1/6/1973 John Naylor vs Jacky Ricard 3/14/1973 Johnny Saint vs Jim Breaks 5/5/1973 (British Lightweight Title) Jim Breaks © vs Johnny Saint 5/8/1974 Zoltan Boscik vs Robby Baron 8/15/1974 John Naylor vs Zoltan Boscik 11/2/1974 Abe Ginsberg vs Pete Curry 3/8/1975 Jim Breaks vs Zoltan Boscik 4/26/1975 Alan Serjeant vs Robby Baron 11/8/1975 Steve Veidor vs Al Hayes 5/21/1977 (World Lightweight Title) Johnny Saint © vs Kader Hassouni 10/8/1977 Pete Roberts & KungFu vs Johnny Kincaid & Butcher Bond 3/22/1980 Mick McMichael vs Vic Faulkner 2/2/1980 Johnny Saint vs Steve Grey - Assuming this is the same match OJ has listed as 1/28 above 3/15/1986 (World Mid Heavyweight Title) Marty Jones © vs Johnny Kincaid 1987 Steven Regal vs Tiger Dalibir Singh (took place in South Africa but both worked a ton in England so i'll include it anyways) Date unknown - sometime in the 80's (The Rockers) Peter Lapaque & Tommy Lorne vs (The Fabulous Royals) Bert Royal & Vic Faulkner Germany All Star Wrestling 11/2/1991 (World Middleweight Title) Owen Hart © vs Danny Collins

TNT as in Savio Vega???? That's odd and unexspected.....

For a more recent example, WTF was the deal w Johnny Curtis?

Bumping to add how great the post match was too, loved Hokuto just casually steping on Yamada as she's exiting after laying her out on the floor. Wish we'd have gotten the singles between them 8 months earlier but it was worth the wait.

Bows on the Blues, Ribbons on the Silvers Best Christmas EVER

Lawler's a heel, he hates Bret Hart, he lied to fuck with him.

Yeah more of a shoot style match is what they were aiming for

I look at it as a formality, something done because they have to not because they want to. Like you said it's rarely exploited and comes across as a "well, it's always been like this and we're too lazy to change" sort of thing to me. Really 99% of modern CMLL would be better off if they just dumped the 2/3 falls format period as even in singles matches they rush to get the first 2 falls over with more times then not.

Any info on Brits? I tried looking but couldn't find much other then 2 matches on youtube, one from 1990 & one from 2006 neither of which really gives you a good idea of how good he may have been. His wikipedia & a few other mentions I saw elsewhear don't say much other then a giving a short career run down and talking about how he's considered one of the biggest stars of the South African wrestlin sceen.

That's all true but on top of that the family's mainly rich from other outside ventures (Dr Lucha's mentioned it a bunch on his F4W shows but i'm blanking on what they are atm) to the point whear it doesn't matter much to their pocket books either way how well CMLL does which is more my overall point. Most major companies now aren't run/owned by ppl who NEED them to do well financially.

Thinking about this, it sure has been a long time since there was a major promotion that was actually capable of funding itself besides WWE. WCW, TNA, ROH, even a lot of the major ones outside of the US like New Japan & CMLL are all pretty much proped up based on money the owners made/make from non wrestling ventures.

I immediatly thought it was Austin myself. Fits his previous history of refusing to job when he thought it wasn't good for his character or wasn't the right time.

Ditch: what's the logo on it? Sammy? The one used on NTV Select? Funny coincidence, I was just watching this last night I don't recognize the logo myself but here you go

TNA's almost the perfect compilation fed in a way whear you don't really want to watch large batches of it but if you cherry pick the best things you can come up with a lot worth taking a look at. Currently their roster is at maybe the worst it's been since the early days of the company but at certain points in their history i'd rate the match quality very high myself. Watching the rest of the 09 Lockdown show a few days ago i'd call the Beer Money vs 3D tag & Wargames both great matches. The Sting vs Foley main event was surprisingly damn good as well. Understandably not a lot of crazy bumps or anything but they made up for it with some really good selling & psychology building the match around dualing leg work to prevent each other from climbing out to win. Bit of a bummer in a way that if the company goes out of business most will just point and laugh when looking back and their ocasional good moments will largely be forgotten.

Thought this was pretty average thanks to Shiga, an easy cut i'd say.

I forget the details but he's done interviews more or less admiting he was never properly trained and he's fully aware how much he sucks and got over purely on look/gimmick/charisma.

From that standpoint yeah, it makes sense when it was Vince McMahn who owned the company or one of his friends or family members working the evil gm gimmick but yeah, then they introduced the "board of directors" who could over rule even Vince and the whole premise falls apart.

They've had a few singles matches, there's a JIP fancam of one on youtube