Coffey

Show wise, I think I'm done with WWE weekly TV. But I'll watch NXT Takeover shows, Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania & probably SummerSlam. Definitely going to watch Wrestle Kingdom. Would like to see more Lucha Underground (I haven't finished the third season and I know a fourth season is coming) & maybe more PWG - they have some people that I like. Mostly I just don't want to burn myself out. My resolution I guess would be to watch more old stuff and less new stuff because the newer stuff tends to bum me out & the older stuff tends to hype me up. Especially if they're adding a bunch more stuff to the WWE Network. I was thinking that maybe I should start burning shows off to have/catalog too. Just to have DVDs back-ups. Like, what happens if the WWE Network goes away? I just won't have access to any of those shows anymore. Not sure about this one though.

Steve Corino had one of my favorite spots from a match in ECW. It was against Balls Mahoney, of all people. Corino grabbed a chair, like he was finally going to get hardcore and instead opened it, sat in it and applied a side headlock. It was great!

1. Hiroshi Tanahashi Vs. Tetsuya Naito; NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11 2. Tyler Bate Vs. Pete Dunne; WWE UK Tournament 3. The Authors of Pain Vs. DIY; NXT Takeover: Chicago

I'm not a big Cody Rhodes fan & I too think Dalton should have won the ROH World Title a long time ago but I have to be honest, I kind of like the whole ROH ring & "kiss the ring" shit. I don't so much like how the fans buy into it like it's some funny thing when I think it should be a heelish thing like something a Ted DiBiase would make peasants do but I like the idea of it.

I agree with this. I think this is a runaway year for Okada & would be shocked if anyone else won it this year. For me, the real question is who is number two? I expect Kenny Omega to get a lot of votes & probably AJ Styles.

Good idea. @Skelemania

What was up with the abrupt finish in the UWF World Heavyweight Title match between Dr. Death Steve Williams & Barry Windham at Starrcade 1987?

So does David Flair...

I've been blocked by Chris Jericho, Michael Elgin, The Honky Tonk Man and... Rovert (lol). Elgin blocked me after I made fun of his spelling & clowned his physical stature ("your (sic) not funny"). Jericho blocked me after I posted screenshots of him trying to defend Bill DeMott after his shit with the students. Honky Tonk Man blocked me because I said I think it'd be fun to just sit and listen to him verbally shit on people all night long since that's all his shoot interviews are. That one was kind of confusing. Surprised Dave Meltzer or Jim Ross haven't blocked me yet.

I'll say it then. Hulk Hogan was an all-time great. There's something to be said about wrestlers that do their thing & are excellent at whatever their thing is. Be it being a crazy man, a good hand, working like a big man, bumping, selling, whatever. To me that's what pro-wrestling has always been about. A wide variety of performers that all have different strengths & weaknesses. Easily identifiable characters where the fans can pick & choose whom they like & dislike based on what separates the performers from one another. It's all about emotion. Making the people have an emotional connection with the show. To a character, to an angle, to a match. The things that stick with me over the years are always moments in wrestling. Shawn Michaels turning on Marty Jannetty on the Barbershop. Earthquake squashing & killing Damien the snake. Rick Martel blinding Jake Roberts with Arrogance to his eyes. Randy Savage & Miss Elizabeth reuniting. Things like that. How many of those moments does Hulk Hogan have over the years? Andre/Hogan, Warrior/Hogan, Earthquake/Hogan, Slaughter/Hogan, Savage/Hogan, Sting/Hogan, Goldberg/Hogan, Rock/Hogan. He was the top babyface in WWF during the peak of the Rock N' Wrestling era & the top heel in WCW during the peak of the Monday Night Wars era. There's few people in wrestling history that have been able to control a crowd the way Hulk Hogan can. The way Hulk Hogan could draw in children, or teenagers. The way Hogan could make adults feel nostalgic & young again. That isn't politics. And Hogan more than held up his end of a wide array of matches. If anything, Hulk Hogan doesn't get credit for how smart he was as an in-ring worker. Where a booker shows their merit is by accentuating strengths & hiding weaknesses. That's what Paul Heyman was so great about. WWF used to be really good at it. They've lost that art over the years. Now you have guys that can't talk trying to do 10-minute in-ring promos and shit. It's painful. A few other names that come to mind for me: Buzz Sawyer, Hercules Hernandez, Adrian Adonis & The One Man Gang. So along with Hogan, that's probably my five. Underrated by who? Comparable internet wrestling fans in discussion & mainstream/casual fans by remembering who all but Hogan even were.

I loved NJPW Wrestle Kingdom, NXT TakeOver: Chicago & the WWE UK Title Tournament on WWE Network. If I just have to pick one show it's easily Wrestle Kingdom for me though.

I'd rather listen to Cornette talk about that nostalgic stuff than watch the newest Young Bucks trend of things that Meltzer puts over. Which is what says a lot to me, personally. The continual diminishing of psychology, killing moves, making everything look fake/silly, doing shit just for a cheap pop, etc. Which isn't just a Young Bucks thing & has been going on for a long time. It's the same reason I hate Kevin Steen/Owens. But you're right, Cornette doesn't know what modern fans want either. His ROH run wasn't great. He's very old school - too old school I'd argue - but I don't think this is a case of one or the other. I think the best bet is the middle ground between the two of Cornette/Bucks. The Young Bucks are too far in one direction & Jim Cornette is too far in the other. I think we need to meet in the middle somewhere. Sometimes I feel like the Young Bucks blow things out of proportion - and maybe that's the entire point. That might be exactly what they're trying to do because it gets people talking about them & gets them more attention. They're a niche team in a niche industry. A rip-off Rockers in a rip-off nWo stable that sell t-shirts in a dated store. They're getting paid bank outside of WWE & more power to them, but some of the things they're doing or saying are lunacy. Saying they're going to go down as one of the greatest tag teams of all-time? C'mon, man. That's some LaVar Ball levels of delusional embellishment. But they're working it for all they can & it's hard to hate on them for that. Get that money.

I find the Young Bucks overall pretty weak and don't get the love that guys like Meltzer give them. Dave has vastly different tastes than me. But I can't hate on them for getting paid & making a living in pro-wrestling outside of WWE. More power to them. I hope they continue to make a ton of money & get more & more people to take notice of them. I've always preferred the slower, bruiser style of wrestling though. So I'm not the demographic the Young Bucks are targeting. I'd rather watch a One Man Gang match than a Young Bucks match. That's not a shot against them, just my personal tastes. I like what The Revival do more than what most others on the Indies are trying to do. On the whole #FTR thing, I'm team Revival.

Looking for two cage matches. Not sure if they're on tape. I know people here would know. I assume the Savage/Steamboat happened a few times. Ric Flair Vs. Ricky Steamboat - US Title Vs. Steamboat's hair. Randy Savage Vs. Ricky Steamboat - IC Title post-Wrestlemania III (1987)

Dave isn't going to come out of this looking good. It's a bad look for the top wrestling reporter to come off like this. Let's not forget his entire spiel about how the n-word was an insider term either. At this point, every time he opens his mouth he says some dumb shit, so maybe it's time he stopped talking for awhile. Not that the world of professional wrestling has ever been anything other than shady, carny characters but it would be nice to see it, along with the rest of society & the world, moving in a better, more progressive direction. This is pretty inexcusable for Meltz.

He quit before, yes. In fact, the Debra incident happened the same night the Confidential hit piece on Austin aired. Speaking of, I really liked Confidential. They had their own version of MTV Cribs/Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. I remember goofy Al Snow's collection of hockey jerseys!

That defense sounds just like when Trump defenders bring up Hillary nowadays. "Michael Elgin? But what about Vince!?"

I live in Indiana. When the local Hot Topic opened in our mall, it was met with protests from bible-thumpers that deemed it satanic. They also have deemed Marilyn Manson satanic, Magic: The Gathering the card game, we still can't buy alcohol on Sundays, have well over 100 churches in a 60k population city & had plans for a Casino river boat shot down multiple times due to "potential sin." Yeah. I can't wait to go back to Michigan. This state is backwards fucking garbage.

I wonder how much this is a generational thing, if it is at all? I grew up watching the entire evolution of Shawn Michaels. From the Rockers, to the Marty heel turn on The Barbershop to the IC title days to becoming a main eventer & I think HBK wins this. For me, a lot of it was watching the progression of a wrestler over time. Same with Bret Hart. As a fan growing up watching pro-wrestling, it felt like we were on the journey with the wrestlers as they grew over time. We got to watch them develop, bloom & prosper under one roof. A lot of it might be nostalgia on my part too, admittedly. I generally tend to favor wrestlers of yesteryear over modern era wrestlers. It's for sure a bias I have. I remember wrestling from the late 80's & early 90's just more fondly than anything that I've seen since 2002ish. Shawn Michaels had flaws & faults certainly, and I would always choose Bret Hart over him but I just like Shawn's body of work more than Styles. That's not to say that A.J. Styles doesn't have a good résumé of work, I just prefer things like Shawn's Wrestlemania/Summerslam ladder matches with Razor, his Hell in a Cell & all his other great matches. He's more memorable to me. He has more big moments. A lot of the A.J. Styles matches to me suffer the same thing in my head as most modern work: nothing stands out, they all blend together. I refer to this as Ring of Honor syndrome (which nowadays is a dated phrase & I should probably re-think that one). When every match is good, none of them stand out. They all sort of just exist but I can't differentiate one from the next. That pertains to both wrestling cards & wrestlers. That's not a knock on A.J. Styles, that's a knock on me as a fan. Maybe that's just part of getting older or maybe it's just due to wrestling being in a different place & in a different time. I don't know. It can be exhausting though. Shawn Michaels definitely has some points in his career that I think negatively reflect on him. I could go the rest of my life without ever seeing or hearing a DeGeneration-X reference again & it's not like people think of Shawn as some upstanding human being either. I also think there's some blow back from specific fans due to WWE constantly referring to Shawn as this mythical wrestling icon & putting him on a pedestal. Like some sort of in-ring golden goose. The whole Mr. Wrestlemania & all that. Pro-wrestling to me has always & will always be so much more than just comparing wrestling matches. It doesn't matter to me how good of an in-ring worker a particular wrestler is if they do nothing to make me care about the story or wanting to see the matches outside of "well, it'll be a good match." Pro-wrestling to me is about being memorable. That's memorable as a character, as a personality & as an overall performer, not just, in example, comparing side-by-side which entertainer has more highly rated Dave Meltzer snowflakes or whatever. I want to be able to suspend my disbelief & buy into the match; to care about the outcome & why the match is happening. To have an emotional investment in the story being told. It's also harder to compare a guy that's still going to a guy that has already finished. At the end of the day, for me, it comes down to this: Is A.J. Styles a better in-ring worker than Shawn Michaels? I don't care. Is A.J. Styles a better all around pro-wrestler & entertainer than Shawn Michaels? No.

I have no problem admitting that I would wear wrestling shirts in public. I might look a bit out of place shopping in a Hot Topic but then again, who is going to see me? No one goes to the mall anymore & I could just shop online anyway. My biggest issue is finding shirts that I like. Wrestling shirts usually have some big, gaudy crap on the back or only come in black. WWE shirts have that giant super annoying tag on the front bottom & are overpriced. Plus last time I ordered from Shopzone it took almost three and a half months for the damn shirts to arrive. I like nostalgic shirts a lot, especially wrestlers from my childhood but those are even more rare to find ones that I dig. Even on websites like ProWrestlingTees.

If this show is anywhere close, I'll grab a buddy or my GF & hit it up. Ya know they're gonna try to go all out on the card and I don't wanna miss out on the live experience. That's going to be an electric crowd. I would love to be able to see Pentagon live. Maybe they could grab him. That'd be cool. There's very few wrestlers that I wanted to see live that I never got the opportunity. Only André the Giant comes to mind. I've seen Cody live, from back in his WWE days but I've not seen the Young Bucks yet. EDIT : "Chicago, London, San Francisco and Ontario (CA) being the location front-runners." - I could do Chicago only from those options.

Has anyone read the new Jim Ross book? Is it any good/worth the read?

There's no way Ruby Riot is ready for the main roster. She was bad in developmental even. What the fuck, WWE?

I second this. In terms of consistent in-ring performance, I think only Roman gives him any competition. Don't try to mention that anywhere outside of PWO though, lawdy.

Mauro has always sucked. He sucked when he was on the main roster too. I think quite a bit of internet fans rallied behind him due to his getting bullied by JBL, whom a lot of people seem to detest. And maybe some of those people might have overlooked his play-by-play because of it, I don't know. But I have never understood people trying to champion that dude. He's awful. The Velveteen Dreams gets it. He's going to be a big star. Character work matters and he has all the mannerisms down. Now he has a good match under his belt too. He'll only continue to improve. I think he'll be a success on the main roster. Disappointed that they decided to go with Ember Moon but eh, whatever. Wargames PPV with a Wargames main event didn't feel very much like Wargames to me.