Coffey

I dunno, I like Minoru but his match with Cody was really disappointing, so my hype for Minoru/Riddle is lower because of how average that match was. I was more excited for Low Ki, honestly.

How cool is this? In my home city, $2.00 to see Bruno Sammartino, Bobo Brazil & The Sheik!

Daniel Bryan is great but I don't consider him the greatest, so I voted no. I consider Misawa, Kobashi & Kawada (along with Stan Hansen, Ric Flair & Terry Funk) to be the greatest that ever did it & I don't think he's at that level. I had Daniel Bryan at #36 on my greatest wrestler list. Had a few wrestlers above him that I would now put him ahead of but I still don't think he's approaching my top 25. I do think he's night & day better than AJ Styles though.

Odds The Dudley Boys during their acceptance speech re-tell the Scott Hall "can't wait to kick out of it" story for the five-hundredth time?

Looking at results so not sure the episode numbers are exactly the same on the Network, episode 52 has Bret and Disco among a very underwhelming lineup of matches. Norton and Benoit had singles matches on episodes 11 and 14, depends if you are Fargo or Terre Haute. Goldberg wrestled on both episodes also. Hey, thank you for this!

Speaking of, anything we could do to get some new blood pumping into the forums? I know we attract a certain sort of wrestling fan, but having at least a little bit more activity wouldn't be a bad thing. Not saying I would ever want this place to turn into wrestlingforum or Reddit or anything but a couple new knowledgeable faces would certainly be welcome.

My fondest Thunder memory is a random match between Bret Hart Vs. Disco Inferno. I just remember when Bret slapped on the Sharpshooter it looked like he was killing Disco with it. Like the one he put on Jerry Lawler back in the day. I've wanted to see that match again since it first happened, so I could be able to get my chance now as soon as I find it. Also, there was a Thunder in my city where I was in one of the first few rows. So curious to see if I can find myself on camera. I remember Goldberg was there. And Scott Norton wrestled Chris Benoit.

I think they're clearly superior to the Headshrinkers in pretty much every measurable way. Promo, in-ring work & character work.

Exactly. I'm not a fan of The Young Bucks or Cody Rhodes but that doesn't matter because this show isn't about me.

I just really want to see the show be successful because I think that would be better for the health of the industry.

I am pretty confident in saying that Usos vs New Day is the best tag team rivalry of the modern era, maybe even more than the Smackdown Six era, and should be mentioned in the same breath as Rock N Roll vs Midnight Express. I was just thinking how not only have I never seen them have a bad match, I don't remember seeing them have one anything less than great. I remember when The Usos never made TV & were cooking chicken on YouTube and I said they should use them because they're good. I got one right! They are good & putting them on TV was a good thing.

Ehh... Am I the only one who considers Trish wildly overrated? There were at least a 5-6 other women during her era who were better than she was IMO, and that's in WWE alone. No, not at all. She was a shit worker, which I'll go to my grave saying. But she was very pretty and was a great bumper... and back then, that was enough to help her stand out. Plus she had charisma & could talk. Which also put her ahead of a lot of the other ladies. Like, what happens if you give Jackie or Lita a mic? They knew they could with Trish. Very similar to modern day Alexa Bliss. Is she a great worker? No, but she's vastly improved & has enough tools in other departments to make-up for some of the lack of ring skill. Wrestlings never been about just in-ring & it never will be. Trish is overrated but she worked in her era, like Alexa works now.

If it counts, ECW on TNN was on Friday nights.

Going back to Alberto Del Rio, I think a lot of people gloss over how integral to the whole package of presenting Del Rio that Ricardo Rodriguez was. I would argue that he is the reason Del Rio ever got over in the first place & WWE dropping him meant that Del Rio just started treading water as just another wrestler trading wins & losses with the rest of the roster. ADR also used to have a lot more showcase to him. He used to come out in the nice cars with the scarf & dressing like a rich star. Then he was just a dude coming to the ring in trunks going through the motions. The shine wore off but no one was trying to keep it polished. I think it would be a mistake for WWE to bring him back. He's 40, with a ton of baggage & is not over. It's not really worth it. But there were moments when I thought that Del Rio was going to be big. The biggest I can think of was WWE giving him the 40-man Royal Rumble win. Then him losing in the Wrestlemania opener to Edge, that's pretty much that beginning of the end for his character.

Wrestlemania: Piper/Orndorf Vs. Hogan/Mr. T Wrestlemania 2: Hogan/ King Kong Bundy Wrestlemania 3: Hogan/Andre Wrestlemania 4: Tournament with DiBiase/Savage main Wrestlemania 5: Hogan/Savage Wrestlemania 6: Hogan/Warrior Wrestlemania 7: Hogan/Slaughter So if you remove Hulk Hogan from the equation, from all of the early Wrestlemania main events, you have Roddy Piper, Paul Orndorf, Mr. T., Andre the Giant, Ted DiBiase, Randy Savage, The Ultimate Warrior & Sgt. Slaughter all in the Hall of Fame & only King Kong Bundy not. They should remedy that.

In professional wrestling, is there a better first name of talent than Ric(k)? Ric Flair Rick Rude Ricky Steamboat Ricky Morton Rick Martel Rick Steiner There's been good Steves but I can't think of enough to compete with Ricks. Maybe Chris? This is the definition of a comment that doesn't warrant a thread.

First thing that came to mind was when Hulk Hogan "Hulked Up" against The Rock at Wrestlemania 18. The crowd lost their minds.

Well, I mean, it's the Dave Meltzer thread. Who should I zero-in on in this thread if not Dave Meltzer? Constantly defending Mike Elgin or skirting the issues (or linking to fucking Tumblr) is a terrible thing to do, especially for someone with his platform. But, you know, I guess he's a morally upstanding guy! Or we can talk about his defending of the n-word because it was just an insider term...

The more you learn/read about Meltzer, the more you realize he's kind of a piece of shit. So him getting involved in pro-wrestling makes sense, because it's bottom-of-the-barrel carney boys club trash. The more you dig on wrestling, the behind-the-scenes of wrestling, the worse it gets.

They need to film some new Legends of Wrestling Roundtable discussions with a new panel & new topics - excluding the Monday Night Wars. Don't put Ric Flair or Michael Hayes on there, get some newer WWE Hall of Fame inductees or something.

Jeff Jarrett's TNA MMA Challenge was gold. Making those little kids tap out. He was definitely over pushed in WCW (so was Booker T.) but that's not his fault. He had a pretty good career but I always thought of him as someone other wrestlers would look back on & say "he was a solid hand." I'm kind of glad he's going in because maybe it will help people forget the Mike Graham quote.

There's actually a lot of really talented pro-wrestlers outside of WWE in pro-wrestling right now. Especially if you look at the rosters in Japan & Mexico, or even U.S. Indies. A lot of the more recent WWE signings kind of confuse me. Of course, I don't know the status of various contracts or interest from outside parties to come to WWE. Maybe some of it is a case of not wanting to come to WWE for less money than they can make outside of it. But how many wrestlers are making money like Cody Rhodes or the Young Bucks? Maybe some of it is a language barrier too. An example, I can't believe WWE haven't snatched up Jeff Cobb or Matt Riddle.

I really wish they would put Fire Pro Wrestling World on sale on Steam. I don't want to pay $30 for that.

To hell with the brand split, I don't want them to have two shows. Get rid of Smackdown entirely. It's WWE's Thunder.

The current landscape of pro-wrestling is pretty cool & fun, admittedly, but I find myself just working through 1989 WCW anyway. Everything I really need, I get from WWE Network nowadays. Even Lucha Underground is on Netflix & I've seen TNA & AAA on Twitch. It's a crazy time to be a wrestling fan but I can't help but have that nostalgia for stuff from yesteryear. When I was growing up & watching wrestling, mostly WWF at the time, I could name the card from each of the major PPVs for each year. Ever since 1998 or so, every year has blended together. I can't tell you what the main event of the last three Wrestlemanias were. There's just so much stuff nowadays & it doesn't ever feel fresh anymore. It all feels recycled or like we've already seen it a dozen times. I guess that's just due to over-saturation, mostly because of all the TV time. Someone earlier in the thread asked where they thought wrestling would be in five years... I think it'll be over-saturated. Everyone now wants their version of WWE Network. Just like everyone wants their version of Netflix. You got YouTube Red, Hulu, Amazon Prime or whatever it's called, I heard Disney wants to do one of their own... just so much streaming stuff, and they all cost money. These new streaming sites are the new television channels. Instead of paying your cable provider to package ESPN, TBS and TNT together, you're signing up for a website to stream the wrestling/movies you prefer. Before too long, they'll probably start packaging them together too. My biggest issue with pro-wrestling nowadays I feel like Jetlag sort of touched upon. Or maybe I took it that way. But wrestling today isn't about getting sucked into the show or the story anymore. The wrestlers don't have gimmicks or characters. It's just a bunch of guys trading moves until the crowd chants for them. It doesn't feel organic. It feels overly-choreographed. And I think Jetlag hit the nail on the head when he said it's a bunch of wrestlers vying for approval from Meltzer. What's really missing is charisma. It's a bunch of average looking guys that can't promo wrestling like a video game. And there's a lot of it.