Coffey

40 minute self-aware "epics" with the killing of both near falls and moves has more to do with ROH being a bucket of suck than the faux MMA does, IMO. I don't wanna see Steen doing Suplerplexes onto guard rails either.

TNA is so good right now, it's scary. It's not perfect by any means but by comparison to, say, WWE or ROH, it's ridiculous. The PPV last night was real good to me. A.J. Styles, Austin Aries & Samoa Joe all had good showings. Now I wake up and hear WWE have signed both PAC and Sara Del Rey. Plus they're ready to call up Dean Ambrose and they still have Claudio & Hero. Meanwhile C.M. Punk & American Dragon are floating around the upper card. Old School ROH is taking over the wrestling world!

An example:

This is exactly what I was talking about!!!

He always had the Arm Drag! :-)

I would definitely disagree with Dave Meltzer saying "the product is good." I think the biggest problem with Ring of Honor is that the product is bad. If the product was good, people would pay to go and see it. I read they're drawing crowds of like 500? That's not a coincidence. The number of vocal ROH fans, even on the internet, has certainly dwindled over the last few years. I agree with what Kenny King said in the YouTube shoot clip: ROH is deferring too far away from what pro-wrestling should be. It's not about kickpads and Super Dragonplexes for 2-counts. A friend of mine asked me to explain what was wrong with Ring of Honor to him in layman's terms. I told him to imagine The Undertaker in a match and in the first five minutes, he hits the Walk-the-Ropes arm-wringer spot, his flying plancha spot, a Chokeslam, a Tombstone and the Hell's Gate and then has to go another 20 minutes. I have purchased Ring of Honor DVDs in the past. For example, I own Joe Vs. Kobashi. I bought those DVDs because the wrestling was good. I bought tickets and traveled to shows with my friends too. In Dayton, OH & Chicago, IL. It wasn't flawless from top-to-bottom, but it was a good in-ring product. In made up for a lot of the flaws, like the bad production and the audio. But nowadays, ROH still has all of those problems with production and audio and they're still trying to get by on just having great wrestling, but to me, the wrestling isn't good anymore so it no longer masks the flaws. I don't want to see moves killed and the business basically exposed. Even if I know it's a work, how far can you raise the bar? It's like the hardcore bar only without the hardcore. Instead of going from tables to light tubes to fire we go from Package Piledrivers, to apron Half-Nelson suplexes to rolling Super Brainbusters. And like Mark Madden said, there's no one in the company that can cut a promo to save their life, sans maybe Kevin Steen. Even the Briscoes, whom I like, get over in promos because of cussing and they're still really sloppy in the ring. So why buy into that? I want a pro-wrestling show that makes sense from a continuity standpoint that doesn't insult my intelligence. I want matches that have a beginning, middle and end that build to the finish and give you a payoff. Not just guys seeing who can one-up the other with the most absurd shit. I used to like ROH and I want to still like it but they pretty much do the exact opposite of what I want. Which this is the same company that used to do exactly what I wanted, so I don't understand the 180 and I certainly don't understand doing a 180 and then people trying to act like it's the same as it used to be. What the fuck show is Meltzer watching? Just the hour TV? Because the iPPVs have been fucking trainwrecks. I watched a mother-fucker do a superplex onto a guard rail that was propped up on two steel chairs and it was a 2-count. That's not what I want from wrestling... And let's not even get into the fans that DO attend the shows still. My goodness. Even if the product was good, I would just order DVDs and not buy tickets just to avoid those dudes and their "me first" mentality.

It made sense if he was going for the Double-Chickenwing.

So there is a lot of drama surrounding Ring of Honor lately, so I wanted to make this thread because I don't think we should clog up the "Comments" thread with it. Plus, honestly, I just find it all fascinating. So, Kenny King, 1/2 of the ROH Tag Team Champions (with Rhett Titus) showed up on Impact Live on Thursday night. His ROH contract ran out but he had a "verbal and handshake" agreement with ROH to not work elsewhere (or some shit like that). So ROH is mad and released a statement (which they have since pulled down): There is also this video from two months ago, with Kenny King expressing frustrations, so this wasn't out of the blue: He seems to express a lot of disdain for the wrestling style and Sinclair as an owner. On the PWTorchcast with Kyle O'Reilly he stated that Sinclair won't run ads during RAW in ROH markets because "Sinclair doesn't think any ROH fans watch RAW." Mark Madden has written a few articles about ROH, one of which stirred up quite some shit (and got him lambasted on Twitter by ROH roster members): http://www.wrestlezone.com/editorials/2571...ecline-and-fall Dave Meltzer said this: Kevin Kelly responded to the Mark Madden article: http://www.wrestlezone.com/editorials/2574...onor-need-to-do So that's where we're at. Sorry if I forgot anything. If a mod wants to move the discussion from the comments thread to here, that would be cool too.

Making it now. Will take a couple.

Should we have a Ring of Honor impending drama bomb megathread maybe? I'm not sure if we have enough activity for it around these parts. But between the Mark Madden columns, the Kenny King situation, the linked video, the iPPV problems, the Sinclair statement and rumored Jim Cornette animosity the writing seems to be on the wall.

This was the first time I have seen the link but man, I think a shit storm is definitely brewing. Now I suddenly have an urge to follow a bunch of ROH guys on Twitter and read all the message forums to find out what all is going down. That's the most interest I have had in ROH in about six years... Glad to know that it isn't just the fans not at the live events noticing how ridiculous ROH has gotten.

Everything about Ring of Honor is bush league. They have regressed a lot in the last seven years. They were incredible in 2005. In 2012 they're unwatchable. It's pretty surreal. It's not just the roster either they just never move forward with ANYTHING. Wrestling, production, sound, lighting, commentating...it never improves anywhere. Just look at all the repeated iPPV mistakes that happened month after month. They're a joke.

I genuinely like the movie. It's campy fun, like UHF, Evil Dead or Toxic Avenger, all of which I also own.

And even smaller when talking about draws too. I hate when being a draw is a criteria for it. It's why I hate the Observer year-end awards so much. I do like the no answer is the same so far though, shows the diversity here.

This thread makes me curious for who everyone thinks is the actual greatest wrestler that ever lived. Just by ring work, not by promos/drawing too. Then who is the best when you factor in promos as well? As a fan, I don't really care about drawing power. I know it matters but I think that takes a lot of the opinion out of the question and turns it more into numbers.

Happy Birthday, Sek. Thanks for all the un-bannings at Dragonlair after Anvil & I clowned on Tails' mullet and Milhouses terrible drawings. You're old and busted. :-)

I had heard that those stupid things were supposed to be for advertisers/investors or some shit but I honestly don't know how mentioning you came out before Facebook would be a beneficial acknowledgement to anyone. "Well gee howdy, they did come out before that internet page! We better buy into that!"

This is pretty mind-blowing to me & something that I didn't think that I would ever say/type, but as far as U.S. wrestling goes (that has television) between the "big three" I think the order looks like TNA > WWE > ROH right now. I'm genuinely excited for Destination-X & Ring of Honor feels downright unwatchable. As far as shoot interviews go, I loved the PWDiary shoot with King Kong Bundy, but I'm a Bundy mega-mark, so maybe take that recommendation with a grain of salt?

I have been working on a list for about a week now. So far, Shawn Michaels is still on it. There's a lot of guys that are on the fence for me. As in, when comparing against Shawn, I can't really decide between one or the other. Kurt Angle, as an example, fits into this criteria. The top of the list is easy & Shawn isn't there. But when you hit the 30's or so...it becomes a game of "well, was he better than Shawn though?" and it's just really hard for me. I guess I just haven't seen as much wrestling as a lot of the other people here, but to me, right now, yes, Shawn Michaels is in my top 100. A big problem for me is that I've pretty much seen Shawn's entire career and when the majority of your career in in WWF, it's not going to be the same as those that are more worldly. Also, as was mentioned on the first page, are we taking everything into account as it pertains to the big picture, or just as it pertains to ring work? Because if it's everything that hinders a lot of foreign wrestlers to me because I can understand all of Shawn's promos but I don't speak Japanese. But I would definitely rate quite a few Japanese wrestlers as better in-ring workers than Shawn. Here's some of the (most basic) questions that I still have to answer for myself: Is King Kong Bundy better than Shawn Michaels? Why or why not? Is The One Man Gang better than Shawn Michaels? Why or why not? Is Adrian Adonis better than Shawn Michaels? Why or why not? Is Bam Bam Bigelow better than Shawn Michaels? Why or why not? There are also quite a few guys that, thus far, have been pretty universally regarded as better than Shawn, such as Vader, but I'm not seeing it. And I've seen a lot of Big Van Vader from WCW, WWF & Japan. Same with Steve Austin. Which then makes me answer all the above questions again but with Vader in place of HBK... Favoritism definitely plays a part. Maybe Shawn is better than all of them. Maybe Shawn is second to Vader but better than the others. I'm not sure. Here is a list of guys that I definitely have above Shawn Michaels: André the Giant Jumbo Tsuruta Randy Savage Stan Hansen Steve Williams Mitsuharu Misawa Toshiaki Kawada Kenta Kobashi Jushin Liger The Great Muta Ric Flair Terry Funk Curt Hennig Rick Rude Ted DiBiase Rick Martel Ricky Steamboat Ricky Morton Bobby Eaton Jerry Lawler Eddie Guerrero Rey Mysterio Jr. Bret Hart Tito Santana A few names I would like to talk about: Butch Reed, Bad News Brown, Jake Roberts, Marty Jannetty, Jim Duggan, Dynamite Kid, Owen Hart & Dean Malenko.

The ROH fans would just cheer Russo, Bagwell, etc. ironically and chant "this is wrestling."

I actually hate small package/school boy/roll-up finishes. Especially after a long match (like Savage/Steamboat). It feels like a fucking rip-off to me.

It's officially recognized, I guess. http://www.wwe.com/classics/titlehistory/worldheavyweight

I always remember the most random examples. I distinctly remember Triple H beating Jeff Hardy, I believe on a RAW, by using an old school style Sleeper Hold. Passed him out & got the submission victory. Batista's clothesline was established for awhile too. I think he even stretcher jobbed Jericho with it once.