Coffey

You know who is a really interesting case for me? Jushin "Thunder" Liger. He's been so good & so consistent over so many years, at least for me, it's hard to just pick one specific year. His body of work is pretty remarkable in that regard. He's obviously slowed down as he's aged but his matches haven't really regressed all that much as he adapted his style over the years. I think of his Super J Cup performances, his WCW run & feud with Brian Pillman, even his semi-recent NXT appearance, not to mention current NJPW work as he still shows up on most big shows. Kind of crazy body of work.

I just watched & live-tweeted (with pictures) the WARGAMES match from Fall Brawl 1994. What a tremendously fun match! Everyone in the match was really great. The backstory to the match was a lot of fun too. Dustin Rhodes was teaming with Arn Anderson & then Arn Anderson turned on Dustin. Dusty Rhodes stepped up & said he wanted to replace Arn because nothing is stronger than the bond of blood. Dusty Rhodes then went to a biker bar to recruit The Nasty Boys. Colonel Rob Parker had been having heart/chest issues. They find out Parker has to wrestle instead of Meng. And the finish is Parker in the Figure Four while both Nasty Boys take turns dropping elbows on his chest until he surrenders. It was a really good match. A fun brawl. Surprisingly no blood. Terry Funk before getting in the match took off his boot to use as a weapon. He then proceeded to get beaten with his own boot by every member of the babyface team. He also took a Piledriver in-between the two rings & wound up stuck in the hole between them. It was great. Bunkhouse Buck was really good too. He took a mean Piledriver. Sags gave him a running Powerslam into the cage. It was just a really fun all-around wrestling story & match & watching it made my boring Monday more enjoyable. My one complaint is that before the match they announced that Hogan/Flair at Halloween Havoc would be a cage match & then spent considerable time during the Wargames match talking about Hogan instead of the eight men in the Wargames match.

Isn't the Full Sail crowd mostly just the old TNA-mutants that people have hated forever? Isn't NXT in the same city/area that iMPACT! used to tape in? The same fans that would chant for Lance Hoyt & take him out for beers after the show? The NXT crowd has been bad pretty much from the beginning, I thought. When they don't travel.

When Shawn Michaels himself was in The Rockers no one thought he was one day going to be the first Shawn Michaels: main eventer either. Wrestling isn't about how good you are. It's about who you're friends with. Especially in WWE nowadays. Politics will always matter more than talent. Adam Cole seems to be a Triple H guy. Regardless of what you think of him as a performer, that's worth a lot in WWE land.

My favorite part of the main event was Brock kicking in the door then using the door as a ladder to get into the ring. Just as a reminder that he's an insane athletic freak of nature. Even with a worked door, that was a really cool visual.

Fans don't like being told what to cheer for.

Pretty sure Harley Race in a wheelchair at 75 could still have a good brawl.

Kevin Owens was just chokeslammed off of a cage through a table like a month ago & people didn't even talk about it at the end of the same show it was on.

Becky Vs. Charlotte will be interesting. The majority of the card leaves me cold but that's expected nowadays as I don't pay a lot of attention to the main roster anymore. I do still watch the occasional PPV, especially the big ones, but I've not really followed the TV for months. I don't even have cable anymore. Mick Foley being the special referee in the main event actually makes me want to see that match less. I'm mostly hoping for a hot crowd but honestly, I'll probably wait until tomorrow to watch it so I can fast-forward through the parts that don't interest me.

To put Hogan over who? Piper? What's the context of this.

He's a great worker, not just good, one of the better workers going in WWE right now. His promos aren't strong but they have improved. He does better when he's an ass-kicker, not trying to be funny or make witty remarks. He would have been a better top guy had WWE not been so weird in their booking & finally pulling the trigger on him. I agree with Sek in that they broke up the Shield the first time too soon & tried to rocket Roman a bit before he was ready. That being said, he has a physical charisma about him that you can't teach. The fans turning on Roman, well, I genuinely believe the fans eventually turn on everyone when they're on top, regardless of who they are. Even more so if they're babyface. They would have turned on Daniel Bryan too, eventually. His next feud before getting hurt was against Kane, so it's not like after his big Wrestlemania crowning they had great plans for him. Roman is better than Cena. Crowd shit on Cena too but Cena is fine. So, it's whatever. Fans wanna seem smart so they boo the guy on top. I genuinely believe that. WWE will pretty much always be a top babyface promotion though. Remember the pop when Cena got drafted to RAW on Jericho's in-ring show? Crowd turned on Cena. Remember the pop when Dolph cashed in MITB? Fans turned on Dolph. Remember the pop when Batista turned on HHH/Flair? Fans turned on Batista. If you're a top babyface, the crowd loses interest. WWE is poorly written & doesn't have great television direction but it's not the fault of the wrestling talent. None of the problems with Roman are really faults of his. Look at Becky Lynch. Great babyface that is super over that the crowd is begging to win. So she loses and turns heel. That's what WWE does.

Who was the first person you can remember using the reverse DDT as a Finish? Jake the Snake & Adrian Adonis are the first I can remember using the normal DDT. But there might have been more before them that I'm unaware of. But the reverse DDT, I can remember Sting's Scorpion Death Drop during the Monday Night Wars, Henry Goddwinn using the "Slop Drop" & Skinner. Was there someone before Skinner or H.O.G.?

I plan on checking it out. I had actually forgotten that it was this weekend. Twitter reminded me. So now at least I have something to watch this weekend. For me, it's not so much about the card as it is about the relevancy of the event. It feels like it's going to be a really big deal... and I anticipate the crowd being super hype. Whether the crowd is good or bad will be up for debate though, I'm sure. Hopefully it's not the worst of the worst of the smarkiest smarks but it will probably have forty different versions of every annoying cliché chant throughout the evening. But I still want to be able to say that I watched the show because I think it will be a big deal.

I think it's being obtuse. The reason why Dave Meltzer's ratings have weight is because of his audience. If you or me say a match is good or bad, no one gives a fuck. When Dave says it, even people within the industry hear it & sometimes it can alter performances. You have commentators on the biggest New Japan pro-wrestling Pay-Per-View shows mentioning Dave Meltzer by name & talking about his reviews live on the air. That's an entirely different sort of animal than someone on a message forum expressing an opinion. It's going to impact & influence opinion, which all one has to do is going read SquaredCircle on Reddit to see. You & I might be able to just dismiss his opinion as a difference in personal tastes but how many people read his opinion in a different way? He's a big influencer.

Mauro sucks. The love he gets in a lot of the corners of the internet baffles me. He's a worse version of Matt Striker. Just trying to constantly shoehorn in references that are never relevant at the expense of calling the damn match. I was happy when he left WWE the first time around & was disappointed when he came back. He's hard to just tune out because he's so over-the-top too, so it's not like you can just ignore him. Of course, I've been hating Michael Cole for like fifteen years & he's never went anywhere, so whatever.

They should bring back The Dangerous Alliance & give him a whole stable. He could really help some guys.

I loved the ending, after watching it on Hulu. Everything from Roman Reigns in the corner setting up the Spear while Balor was down until RAW went off the air was good shit. The Braun theme & entrance causing the distraction. Thinking Finn was going to win because of it. Roman hitting the Spear & still winning. Braun actually getting into the ring & becoming physical with Roman. Them announcing the cash-in over the mic. The SHIELD theme hitting. Wondering if The SHIELD were actually going to attack Braun. Getting the big man off his feet with the Superman Punch, knee clip & Superkick. Setting up the first Triple Powerbomb attempt with THE MONSTER AMONG MEN fighting off all three of them to get out of it. Then getting Speared & triple powerbombed through the table anyway. And going off the air with The SHIELD doing their fist pose. That was just good shit & good pro-wrestling. Crowd was losing their minds. And it makes you curious about what's going to happen next week.

My biggest issue with the star ratings as a whole is it makes people ignore massive parts of pro-wrestling that matter. It's never been about JUST the in-ring, especially in WWE. When a new generation of fans, and even wrestlers themselves, are going out there with the impression of "what will the rating for this match be?" I think it hurts professional wrestling. I think part of the reason why it sprouted up in the first place was because of the language barrier with foreign wrestling to English-speaking fans. There's a universal pro-wrestling language, so even if you don't understand the speaking language you can follow what happens in the ring from the bell-to-bell parts but we can't just ignore character work, promos, drawing ability, crowd reactions, the storyline of a feud & everything else. Even the theme song & Titantron matter a ton - it's the whole look & feel & production of it all. Dave Meltzer can praise Kenny Omega & Okada as much as he wants but at the end of the day, I'm still always going to care more about a 1992 Rick Rude match. Because these new wrestlers don't have any star power to me. They're just dudes doing a bunch of moves. It's the same reason why I'll never give a shit about Kevin Owens or Sami Zayn. Personally, I enjoy wrestling more when it lets me suspend my disbelief and buy into what I'm watching. I don't like overly choreographed wrestling - I like when it looks like a real fight. But a lot of the wrestlers nowadays grew up watching the likes of Shawn Michaels & Rob Van Dam, listening to crowds at ECW shows & reading Dave Meltzer newsletters. So this is where we're at. No one is trying to work like Stan Hansen or Terry Funk, they all want to be Jeff Hardy or Rey Mysterio, Jr. It reminds me of ROH several years ago where every match on the show was trying to be Match of the Night. And you would have 3-4 very good to great matches on the show each night. Then the next week you would have it again. Then the week after have it again. By the end of the month, no one remembered or could differentiate one match from the next & none of it mattered long-term. Sort of like the Smackdown Six era. There was a lot of good work there but how many people still mention it or talk about it nowadays? Being good in the moment and standing the test of time are two different things & it doesn't matter how good your matches are if you, yourself as a wrestler/character, are not personally memorable. Maybe modern pro-wrestling has passed me by though. I've been disenfranchised with modern wrestling for quite some time. Even the big shows like Royal Rumble, WrestleMania or Wrestle Kingdom don't get my excited like they used to. I have more fun watching & discussing old wrestling. When I have a friend come over to watch a show, 9/10 times, we put on an old show from pre-Attitude era on WWE Network. I knew I was starting to get passed by when online I would read nothing but praise for The Young Bucks. I've never seen a match from them that I thought was good. That's the antithesis of what I enjoy in wrestling. I don't wanna see 450 spike Tombstone Piledrivers for a two count, I want someone to get punched in the fucking mouth. Now even in WWE you have guys like Jeff Hardy doing a Swanton Bomb to the ring apron. The bar is too high, it's insane.

I still want them to go all-in on Big E & Rusev. *shrug*

...but it's still just a DQ finish in a title match on the second biggest show of the year...

I really like Adam Cole. I think he's a future main roster world champion. I don't get EC3 though. To me, he's just a worse version of Texano.

There's been a lot of wrestlers that "kind of suck" over the years that WWE still used & at least tried to get some money out of. Like The Ultimate Warrior for example. Bray Wyatt could have been a lot bigger deal, even if he's not a great worker. The pomp & circumstance of his theatrical entrances alone should have made him a big deal. The Wyatt Family as a whole should have been a bigger threat but I just don't think WWE ever wanted them to actually be credible. Instead of being like The Family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre they were more like the Dungeon of Doom with Kevin Sullivan running around the woods in his wrestling trunks.

Fuck, Hogan... you can't be this fuckin' dense man, right? Good Lord... It's like he WANTS to never have a career again.

A Twitter user to Dave after his apology: "An apology is not enough! You should be fired." I laughed... but then thought it was a good way to summarize how I feel about it all. Not saying that what Dave Meltzer said was acceptable - regardless of if he's talking about her tits or weight - but people on Twitter will get outraged about things even when they know nothing about the people involved. Twitter is weird. It's basically just a social media mob roaming around from one issue to the next & then everyone piling on that until the new shiny thing pops up.