NintendoLogic

Have they ever explained why Balor doesn't wrestle as the Demon all the time?

I don't know, I think it'd be hilarious if HHH had to placate his ego by beating the Undertaker, even if it was at a house show.

Good match, but it never felt like it hit the heights it was capable of reaching. I'm not even sure it was as good as their 2010 match.

MMA elbows!

I now want to see Miz pin Bryan with a Tiger Driver 91.

LOL @ Bryan with the Seahawks colors

That won't make anybody forget Turning Point, but it ended being a heck of a match. In fact, I'd say it's my WWE main roster MOTY at this point.

There are few things in wrestling I hate more than matches that are built around personal issues but begin with them locking up and working holds.

Is this seriously Charlotte's seventh title reign? Jesus.

Carmella doing chinlocks in a triple threat match. A match where the whole point is having no downtime because you've got two fresh wrestlers in while the third one is selling. Disgraceful.

I'd say that "KO in the Bank" shirt is a pretty strong indicator of the outcome.

Big E damn near killed Harper with that belly-to-belly.

Nikki/Rousey according to WOR.

How much of that is a reflection of crowds being educated that only big spots matter?

Oh boy, another "Rollins getting his leg worked over for ten minutes which will have nothing to do with the finish" match.

I just think that when Dave is really excited about a company's product, he inflates ratings for them across the board and gives matches bonus points they wouldn't receive in a lean period. He did the same for All Japan in the 90s. Look at all the random six-mans he gave five stars to that were largely forgotten by the end of the decade. Hell, jdw once bemoaned the fact that seemingly any MOTYC-level match automatically got five stars. I can only imagine what he'd say today.

Baszler really is a fantastic worker in the classic sense of the term. She gets more of a reaction for stomping on limbs and manipulating joints than most of the roster does for killing themselves with car-crash spots. Other wrestlers should take notes. Count me among those who has no real desire to see Gargano wrestle Ciampa again. But if the feud must continue, I'd like to see a rehash of Savage/Steamboat. Have Gargano realize that the way to truly hurt Ciampa is to take his title and the best way to do that is to beat him in a straight wrestling match.

No, fuck them. If they can take collective action to try to earn brownie points from their boss, then they deserve to be called out when they stand idly by while their boss does shitty things. Anyway, I think Alvarez deserves more criticism for his role as the host of the show. Once Dave started talking about Royce's transformation, he should have realized that the conversation had the potential to go in an unfortunate direction and shut it down. Instead, he fanned the flames.

Just to be clear, it wasn't a tweet that got him in hot water. It was something he said on Observer Radio. Making an ill-advised throwaway comment while speaking extemporaneously should not be a hanging offense, especially when so much of the expressed outrage is clearly in bad faith. Also, I thought Aja Kong not working out in the WWF was more due to her having no one to feud with after Madusa jumped to WCW.

Dave also posted the following on the F4W board: Of course, none of this will placate the Twitter outrage mob, but what can you do.

Can we all move along now?

In terms of accessibility, no question. In terms of match quality, it's more of a mixed bag. Truly atrocious matches are almost certainly rarer than they've ever been, at least in main events, and if you're a fan of the workrate style, this truly is a golden age. As with others in this thread, my biggest issue with the current scene is the increasing move toward a stylistic monoculture. Back in the 90s, you could be certain that regardless of quality, a Misawa match, a Hashimoto match, and a Bret Hart match would all provide a completely different experience. Traditional strong style may have been more hit-or-miss quality-wise than King's Road, but when it worked, it was great in a way that All Japan never could be. These days, it seems like all the top guys are drawing from the same crop of influences and have the same general idea of what a "great" match should look like. Maybe there's no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube and get 10-minute matches that are 90% punches over to modern fans. But nobody seems to want to try.

He'd been battling Alzheimer's for a while, so it might be related to that.

Added Tanahashi/Ibushi to the 2018 list. I'm counting on Park/Rush to live up to its potential, because it's shaping up to be the only thing standing between New Japan and a clean sweep of the top three.

Now there's this: Naturally, people are up in arms over CMLL bringing in Okada (even billing him as the best wrestler in the world) and sticking him in a throwaway semifinal trios match while Bestia del Ring is in the main event. CMLL gonna CMLL, I guess.