NintendoLogic

I don't know if that's necessarily true. Dr. Wagner's son turning on him at Guerra de Titanes got over pretty well even without Wagner getting pinned.

Interestingly, this has always been Vince McMahon's greatest weakness.

Even I would put Misawa comfortably ahead of Bret.

She refused to put over Su Yung.

I thought the story behind that was that Quack's wife co-owned the promotion and the shutdown was due to her filing for divorce after he got caught fooling around.

The last straw for me was Seth Rollins cashing in at Wrestlemania. I'm pretty sure I haven't watched a single episode of Raw since.

Reviewed the CZW six-man and Nomura/Abe.

Jmare007 picked this match for me for Secret Santo. Abe is invading BJW from Pro Wrestling BASARA (which is apparently a DDT spinoff), and his work is appropriately heelish. He takes cheap shots, refuses to observe rope breaks, even throws punches with a closed fist. The bulk of the match is a bit too mat-based for my tastes, although Abe keeps things interesting with his dickishness. His double foot stomp onto Nomura's face is a genuine holy-shit spot that unfortunately is pretty much no-sold. Things pick up for me once they start focusing on stand-up strike exchanges. Both guys have no problem really laying it in, and they do a fine job of selling damage and exhaustion. Abe gets the win with a combination octopus hold/kimura that I expect Zack Sabre Jr. to bust out at some point in the future if he hasn't already. Fun match overall. Someone whose tolerance for shoot-style matwork is greater than my own would probably get more out of it.

CZW has never been on my radar screen as something worth checking out, but Jetlag picked this match for me as part of the Secret Santo project. From a presentation standpoint, pretty much everything about this screams "poor man's ECW." Even the play-by-play guy is a dollar store version of Joey Styles. I will say that the venue is appropriately seedy. There's a chain-link fence in the background that makes it seem like they're competing in the Andore cage fight level in Final Fight. The match itself can be broken up into three sections. The opening minutes consist of lucha-esque exchanges where the goal is flashy oneupmanship rather than seriously working for a pin or submission. From there, we get a couple minutes of SAT working over XL and Storm. Even Fuchi would have cringed at some of the triple-team offense they busted out. The combination surfboard/springboard double foot stomp looked especially brutal. About seven minutes in, any semblance of psychology is thrown out the window and the match becomes a deluge of flips, dives, and head drops with a few chair shots thrown in. You as the viewer barely have time to catch your breath, let alone process what's happening. This is pretty much the epitome of Michael Bay wrestling. Deep and nuanced storytelling this is not, but I can't help but be impressed by their willingness to go all out. If you're going to have a spotfest, have a spotfest.

Wasn't Loss the Boss the original guitarist for Manowar?

The latest Observer contains a rather bizarre assertion. Dave claims that ALS is so closely identified with Lou Gehrig that virtually nobody knows the disease's technical name. I find that rather unlikely. After all, it's not called the Lou Gehrig's Disease Ice Bucket Challenge. It can't even be attributed to Dave being too deep in the wrestling bubble to be aware of it because he participated in it.

Sorry for the delay in my review of the match Jetlag gave me. I'm in one of my "don't really give a shit about wrestling" moods and it's hard for me to find get motivated. But I'll get to it soon, I promise. In the meantime, here's my match for Jmare007. It's Ricky Steamboat vs. Lord Steven Regal from a WCW house show.

Bill Apter is not, in fact, in the WON HOF.

I think most people who are passionate about a particular subject are snobbish about it to a degree. If you spend a ton of time and effort trying to develop your views and expand your knowledge base, it's easy to fall into the trap that your way of viewing things is not merely correct but obviously so and that differences of opinion are rooted in ignorance or bad faith. It's something Meltzer and his critics have both been guilty of. As for shodate, I haven't been able to detect much of a chip on his shoulder. His views may be pretty off-the-wall, but I haven't seen him come across as excessively combative or disruptive.

The problem with Flair/Lynch was that it was presented as a comedy spot rather than an unambiguously reprehensible act.

The Bucks are Phil Collins. Their best-known work is largely crap, but a lot of their under-the-radar stuff is pretty brilliant. Even if you like them, you don't want to admit it because you're afraid someone will get you whatever their equivalent of the Tarzan soundtrack is for your birthday.

Which ones? Keep in mind that Awesome Kong trained in Japan.

Are there any pre-Women's Revolution matches involving only North America-trained women's wrestlers anywhere near as good as Trish/Mickie at WM22?

It kind of bothers me that Stephanie's interview is the one everyone remembers when you had Bradshaw calling for genocide on the very same show.

I don't have much interest in revisiting these matches, but my recollection was that 8/5/82 was clearly their best match together. As for the series as a whole, I agree with a lot of the criticisms about them not really holding up that well, but I also think that some of them miss the mark. It wasn't just the highspots that made the series revolutionary. It was also the pacing and structure. People can point to something like Hamada/Babyface and say that the spots were cleaner and more impressive, but it's mostly a conventional mat-based match with the spots serving mainly to break up the matwork. With TM/DK, the reverse is true. The spots are the meat of the match with the matwork serving mainly to set up the next series of spots. You'd be hard-pressed to find matches prior to this series worked in that vein.

I didn't think Robinson was stooging or going into business for himself. It felt to me like he was lying back and trying to bait Inoki into making a mistake because he was up a fall and had the luxury of turtling. The way the match was worked, I figured Robinson would get the win if it went to a time-limit draw because he was up 1-0. In that case, Inoki evening things up with 30 seconds remaining was the perfect finish.

I always get confused when people here call Observer subscribers a niche or an isolated subset. Compared to what? More people probably voted on the Observer awards this year than have ever posted on this board in its entire history. Anyway, my biggest problem with the results was Marty Scurll's finger break making the Best Wrestling Maneuver top ten. It might actually be my least favorite maneuver in wrestling history. Also, I'm mildly surprised that Orton/Wyatt at Mania beat out House of Horrors for Worst Match.

It recently occurred to me that TNA's most lasting legacy will almost certainly be the "this is awesome" chant.

Which Inoki/Choshu match was that? The short, heated one? If so, Phil and I dug it. Will, not so much. Most likely their 8/2 match. I only discovered it because it was so highly rated at Cagematch of all places.

My pick for Jetlag is Chigusa Nagayo vs. Akira Hokuto (3/19/89). Also, I'm curious. Is there any effort to keep the matchups fresh? Because this is the second time I've been paired with someone I've already traded matches with. It doesn't matter to me either way, I was just wondering.