NintendoLogic

Whenever people mention matches that were hurt by crowd burnout, it's always the same matches that come up: HHH/Jericho at WM18 HHH/Orton at WM25 HHH/Lesnar at WM29 All those matches seem to have something in common. I can't quite put my finger on it, though.

I thought this deserved a topic. Say what you want about the guy, but he knew how to get over. Talk about nuclear heel heat. He even managed to turn the Klan babyface: Unfortunately, he won't be having a funeral of his own for people to picket. Pretty unprofessional of him to refuse to do the job on the way out.

The social views of Rockwell and his ilk are pretty clearly reactionary. They may oppose using the power of the federal government to impose such views, but they also oppose federal intervention to prevent individual states from imposing those views. In their view, if a state wants to ban abortion or impose segregation, let them have at it. Back on topic, I'm pretty sure Shawn Michaels is a Republican. He also bears an uncanny resemblance to Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Speaking of which, Kevin Von Erich is/was a Ron Paul supporter.

Yeah, Bryan is a pretty hardcore left-winger. Recall his "down with capitalism" speech on NXT. I don't really think Inoki qualifies as a neocon. His Sports Peace Party was at least nominally left-wing and formed an alliance in the Diet with the Democratic Socialist Party. Of course, he's currently affiliated with the far-right Japan Restoration Party. The impression I get is that he's basically an opportunist with no deep-seated principles beyond his own advancement. It should be noted that the real-life John Layfield isn't nearly as conservative as the JBL character. I remember seeing an interview with him from the 90s where he said he was a centrist who voted for Clinton. And after the 2012 election, he said on Twitter that Obama and Romney both sucked and that his ideal candidate was someone like Bloomberg. Some of you may be surprised to know that Kevin Nash is an Obama supporter.

I believe Meltzer has said that promos in the WWF weren't scripted until 2001.

All this talk about how unprofessional Punk is being reminds me of those old-timers who were pissed at The Rock for disrespecting the business by getting out with his physical and financial well-being intact.

Flair/Funk at the Bash wasn't an I Quit match. That was Clash IX. Also, if you're going to include Vader matches, I'd start with the 1992 Sting matches. Plus, I think it might be interesting to see how someone who knows Sting mainly from his Crow persona reacts to surfer Sting.

Fuck realism in wrestling. Real fights are boring. Wrestling is great precisely because it's fake.

There's plenty of precedent for HHH going over at the big PPV and returning the job at the next PPV where it means far less. It's happened to his last three non-Undertaker Mania opponents. It also happened to Goldberg in 2003.

Is it just me, or has Meltzer been whiffing a lot on the big stories lately? The Bryan push, the Batista heel turn, and now Punk at Raw.

funkdoc, don't you post on SRK (or used to) as Josh the Funkdoc? I'm BarrelO over there. I haven't been a regular poster in forever, though.

I'm probably as much of a body part work zealot as anyone, so I guess I'll explain where I'm coming from. Wrestling is a form of narrative fiction, and leaving major plot points unresolved is bad storytelling. A wrestler doesn't have to be wedded to a single strategy for the entire match, but there should be clearly defined reasons for any shift in strategy. Everything doesn't have to lead to the finish, but everything should lead to something.

I think there is a lot of overlap between Bryan fans and Punk fans, but I don't think fans are going to really get behind Punk if they feel that he's being offered up as a consolation prize. He'll probably get a "at least it wasn't Orton or Batista" pop when he wins, but I doubt it'll last.

Trying to give Big Show the Yes chant has to be one of the more comical booking decisions in recent memory.

I thought the slapfight was stupid as shit even after seeing the go-home segment.

I also like Suzuki as a pick. When I first saw him in 2007, I remember thinking that if WWE let him do his thing, he'd be the most over heel in the company in a month's time even if he never cut a single promo.

At the risk of completely derailing this thread, how could they tell the difference? Aren't, um, tools blurred out in Japanese porn?

This is the first I've heard of Hogan being upset over Savage/Steamboat. It's not true, is it?

Bret was clearly the best worker in the US in the 90s. I don't even see how that's arguable.

I returned from my post-Benoit sabbatical in 2010, and WWE didn't seem to be anything special from an in-ring standpoint that year. If it was, it was confined to the undercard and B-shows. Then again, my tastes have shifted pretty significantly since then, so maybe I'd view it more fondly if I revisited it. Anyway, 2010 was a transition year for WWE. In a year's time, HBK, HHH, Batista, Jericho, Taker, and Edge would all be done as full-time performers, and WWE seemed to be scrambling to fill the gap left by their absence. This would culminate in WM27, the worst Mania in recent memory. It seems to me that the real turning point in terms of consistent quality in featured matches was 2011. That was when Punk and Bryan were elevated to being tippy-top guys and Henry got his monster push. As for the question posed in the OP, Foley was the master of the falls count anywhere match.

Right, which is why I compared the Chamber match to a high-end Rumble match. I guess my broader point is that I don't really like gimmick matches, at least not in terms of viewing them as GOAT contenders.

That's actually when I started getting seriously into wrestling. I rented the WWF Royal Rumble Super NES game from Blockbuster, which got me into watching Raw. My stepdad still forbade me from watching wrestling at that point, so I had to do it on the down low. I turned the volume all the way down and sat real close to the TV so I could quickly change the channel whenever my parents entered the room. Anwyay, I'm pretty much in the same boat as a lot of you guys. I don't shout the fact that I'm a fan from the rooftops, but I don't hide or deny it either. If it comes up in the course of a conversation, I'll cop to it. I do, however, make an effort to censor the extent of my fandom. Unless I know that the person I'm talking to is a huge fan, I'll restrict my discussion to WWF/E and maybe WCW. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet anyone in person who comes close to my level of fandom. Of the people I interact with regularly, the only one who follows wrestling is my brother, and he's a dilettante compared to me. Then again, I'm a dilettante compared to a lot of people here. As for how it affects one's chances with the opposite sex (or same sex, as the case may be), my interest in wrestling has come up on a few dates. It's usually been in a roundabout manner, like "What TV shows do you watch?" "To be honest, the only show I watch regularly is Monday Night Raw." This revelation has never led to a bonding moment over our shared love of wrestling, but it's never brought the date to a screeching halt either. Or maybe they were mortified and I just didn't pick up on it, who knows. Anyway, during one of these dates, I got to mentioning Misawa and how he died in the ring. My date said something to the effect of "Well, at least he died doing what he loved." I guess that's one way of looking at it.

I don't remember ever seeing a commercial for a show that wasn't under the Raw or Smackdown brand.

They just showed a commercial for an upcoming house show. It wasn't billed as Raw or Smackdown, just WWE Live. How long has this been going on?