Coffey

Dave Meltzer's opinion of matches or styles is not something I ever think about before, during or after a match. In fact, the only time I ever remember he even exists is when I go on forums & see people mention him. Then I get curious. Meltzer and I rarely see eye-to-eye on... well, almost anything. He seems to love shitty spotfest gimmick matches & he loves The Young Bucks, in example. It's weird to me that in this thread people are using Meltzer as like a way to knock what other fans are into.

I feel like my biggest disconnect in Lucha Libre is actually the referees. The emotion of a match is very important, especially if you are going to be drawn into a match or care about any of the participants. Even today, WWE occasionally will draw me into a match & I find myself marking out. It just happened in NXT in the match between The Revival Vs. Gargano/Ciampa. I can't get that in Lucha Libre because of the damn referees. I can't buy into any pinfall attempt or near falls or finishes because it takes the ref like ten seconds to count to three. It just kills all the drama & suspension of disbelief for me. I love the heritage & the stories behind the masks & all of that. I've tried to get into Lucha Libre but the matches just don't do it for me. Even the pimped bloody brawls - there's just a big disconnect for me. With Puroresu, even if I was not familiar with the participant, a good match could make me a fan. The first Puro I ever saw in my life was Super J Cup 1994 or 1995 (I believe) & I didn't get it. A lot of it was sloppy. The biggest thing I took away from it was the match where Great Sasuke blew the finish. Later on though, I got some Comps. from Goodhelmet & I got to watch guys like Misawa, Kawada, Akiyama, Kobashi, Taue, etc. I'm still not a fan of Taue but those other guys were doing a ton of great things. The matches, despite their length (or maybe even because of it), were entertaining the hell out of me. It was like watching a movie in one match. There was a beginning, a middle & an end. I didn't know what the finish was ever going to be, who was ever going to win or what I was going to see. I bought into the near falls & was continually saying things like "holy shit!" I've seen a lot of bad Japanese wrestling too, especially the deathmatch stuff, but I've seen great Puro. I've never seen great Lucha unless it was Americanized.

I just thought of another big one for me: Johnny Nitro/Mundo. I really loathe his offense. I don't know if I've ever seen him connect flush with his awful finisher ever.

WWE is in this weird state where whenever they do finally decide to pull the trigger on someone & push them into the main event, I completely lose interest or feel like they chose the wrong person. I think this is a problem with me though & not WWE. I wanted Roman to be a top guy & the crowds have seemingly rejected him. I thought Cena was a good top guy & the crowds treat him the same way they treat Reigns - even still on a part-time schedule. I don't feel like Owens, Ambrose, Ziggler or Rollins work at all. I like Styles but the stuff with Ambrose & Ellsworth is just confusing to me. I want to see Rusev at the top for awhile & he's pulling pre-show duty against Big Cass, whom I see literal zero potential in. Before his injury, although I like him, I felt Finn Bàlor was on top way too soon. The roster feels thinner than ever because of the brand split & the main events just feel "meh" because to me it feels like they constantly feature all the wrong people.

JoJo is currently the ring announcer. The lady on the pre/post-show and doing backstage interviews is Charly Caruso. I think she's really good at it and the best they've found since Renee Young. I hope she sticks https://www.instagram.com/p/BNHaGioBv5A/?taken-by=charlycarusowwe&hl=en I meant Bayley and JoJo. I know who is who. I feel like, because she's the ring announcer, people forget about JoJo a lot but she always looks great.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

I liked the New Day tag match. I liked that Rusev didn't lose to Big Cass. I liked that Neville was added into 205 Live/Cruiserweights stuff. I thought Sam Roberts was pretty good on the pre-show. Bayley & JoJo looked great. Looks like Reigns/Owens is going on last, not Sasha/Charlotte.

Wait, what ? Tonight ? Charlotte vs Sasha ? Yeah. Last PPV was two weeks ago. I didn't know it was tonight either. I went to WWE.com today because I don't have the Network bookmarked, so I had to go there to click the Network logo and it was the first thing on the page.

There's another WWE PPV tonight. 30-minute ironman women's match.

I just watched, on Facebook of all places, a 1988 Wrestlefest cage match between André the Giant & Hulk Hogan. André, at that point in his career, at that size, climbing up the cage was one of the biggest spectacles I have ever watched. Holy crap!

According to the Twitter machine, the tournament shows sold out in less than twenty-four hours. So that's pretty cool.

lol... passive-aggressive goc returns. We just don't "get it." You're so much smarter than the rest of us. That Virginia education.

That's easily the best looking title WWE has had in many, many years.

What is a guy like Randy Orton gonna teach a guy like A.J. Styles? How not to get fired after constantly failing wellness or getting suspended?

This is the best RAW I've watched in quite some time. Even the stuff I'm not overly interested in they have kept short or it has had a bigger purpose. I've genuinely enjoyed the show tonight. First time in a long time that RAW opened with a match too. That Sami Zayn/Mick Foley segment got me fired up!

OK. But you're familiar with his work. What's the first thing a WWE RAW fan that doesn't know who he is is going to think when they see him for the first time? Also, I never fat-shamed him or cared what his body weight was or anything of the sort. I simply asked if WWE were going to cover him up as they've been known to do such things. You, YOU GRIMMAS, have blown this WAY the fuck out of proportion.

Again with this bullshit? Heidi gets signed. Will she be in a mask? Hero gets signed. Will he get a bodysuit? What is wrong with you people? What do you mean by you people? TRIGGERED! Are we denying that WWE doesn't have a history of hating against people for petty reasons now? Is that where we're at? I know your new kick is being anti-fat shaming now, but really? Think if you're getting upset over comments like that, it's time to turn your internet off. I must have dreamed all the Piggy James stuff. Whoops! They literally fired him for not losing weight. This is why I'm curious if they call him Kassius Ohno again because that's what they were going for the first time. He even had a KO shirt.

Can't deny he's a helluva worker. Will WWE put him in some sort of body suit? Will they try to call him Kassius Ohno again?

Stephanie McMahon is probably my most hated character. The McMahons are frequently the worst part about their own company & I find her the worst. Always hated Alex Wright. Captain New Japan is...I don't get the joke. Can't stand Kevin Owens. Loathe the Young Bucks. Rich Swann is pretty bad. Toru Yano & Takashi Iizuka are excruciatingly bad. I really hated Sonjay Dutt. Remember him? Trying to think of older guys that never interested me when watching shows: Dory Funk Jr, Carlos Colón, Junkyard Dog, Dino Bravo, Bruno Sammartino, any of the Von Erich family but especially Kevin, Baron Von Raschke, Dick the Bruiser, Mike Graham, Killer Kowalski, George "The Animal" Steele - holy shit, Abdullah the Butcher, The Sheik, The Boogie Woogie Man lol... I have disliked a lot of wrestlers over the years.

Also, I was thinking, Sean Waltman is definitely going to go into the WWE Hall of Fame, just so Shawn Michaels & Triple H can talk/brag about how all of The Kilq are hall of famers. Big Show is going in too (when he's finished) and really deserves it. I was thinking about his career so far. He won the title from Hogan in his debut match in WCW, right? He was pretty over for awhile against the nWo too. Won the WCW title, the WWE title, ECW title, tag titles. Had that match with Mayweather. Going to have the match with Shaq. He's done a lot, really. Won the Andre Battle Royal. The fact he's done all he has, for as long as he has, with that size of a body is pretty incredible. Only thing he's not really done is win the Royal Rumble.

This back-to-back sequence of posts made me crack up. I love this forum. I'm not entirely sure what the goal of bringing in the Cruiserweights has been. The CWC was pretty good & we got some petty good matches from it. But the majority of the Cruisers, even the ones they try to push, are dreadful. The matches on RAW and PPV have been pretty bad and the 205 Live is just like, "why?" They don't even feel like Cruiserweights. They don't feel different from normal WWE wrestlers the way, in example, the Cruiserweights on Nitro did. They feel really toned down and often, very boring. Like, you have a six-minute Cruiserweight match to try to impress people that aren't familiar with you and you're slapping on multiple headlocks? Fuck outta here.

The weekly show is basically unwatchable at this point. It feels like nothing happens. You can skip an entire month, even avoiding reading the summary of the spoilers and you're caught up in like five minutes on the Takeover preshow. It's a bunch of squashes and jobbers and then like a 2-minute angle for each hour. NXT used to be my favorite WWE show & it was a big reason to have the WWE Network. Now it feels like it's lower than WCW Worldwide. There's still people on NXT that I care about, like Asuka, Nakamura & The Revival but for the most part, it's just skippable.

I'm not sure what the actual reality of the situation would be if it did play out but as a fan, I feel like I would rather WWE was owned/ran by Shane McMahon instead of Stephanie McMahon & Triple H. Anything that could potentially get Stephanie McMahon off of TV indefinitely has to be a positive. We don't know everything about the behind the scenes stuff but I'm fairly confident in my assessment that a pro-wrestling company should not be publicly traded & should not have a team of soap opera writers coming up with the storylines and promos. I also believe that Kevin Dunn and Michaels Hayes should have been gone a long time ago & RAW, starting at 9PM on a weeknight, should not be TV-PG. I just feel like they make a lot of odd decisions & show loyalty to weird people... but they're making a ton of money, so what do I know?

He just doesn't work smart. He needs to learn the age old adage that less is more. Every match he has, whether it's on TV or WWE Network, he's throwing out a ton of stuff like the Top Rope Snowplow spot or the fat man Senton, and there's a ton of kickouts & finisher trading. Basically, regardless of whomever his opponent is, they keep throwing bombs & kicking out of shit until the marks start chanting "this is awesome!" This is a problem in a lot of WWE main events, not just those with Kevin Owens, but Owens to me embodies the ROH style that I loathe. The same shit that Davey Richards used to get killed online for. I don't buy him as a main eventer anyway, even with the brand split, and this run he's having with the belt feels like someone wanted to push him and someone wanted to sabotage him. Very reminiscent of how I felt when Chris Benoit finally had the belt but wasn't the focal point of the show. Sloppy look, overrated worker, pretty good promo. That's not a top guy. I agree with KawadaSmile. Owens in 2016 is the drizzling shits.

but it's all based about jobber Ellsworth wrestling matches. Who cares to watch that? It's ridiculous.