NintendoLogic

That's business casual by Texas standards.

They do sometimes. Now that I think about it, though, I can't remember seeing one in a while.

From what I can tell, it's the wrestling equivalent of Oscar bait.

I thought Punk dating Lita was something Matt Hardy made up to make Punk look bad.

So Vince isn't going to be leading the resistance to The Authority?

I watched a few pre-baldness Kurt Angle matches-specifically, the Rock matches from No Mercy and No Way Out and the Austin match from Unforgiven. It's a shame that he decided to become a poor man's Manami Toyota, because main event style brawler Kurt was a great worker. Working with Benoit ruined him. Speaking of Benoit, I also watched his world title defense against Shawn Michaels from Raw. I'm probably more favorably disposed toward Shawn than most of this board, but even I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the match. For one thing, Shawn worked stiffer than usual. It won't make anybody forget Regal/Finlay, but he was definitely laying in his chops and forearms. Between that and the Liontamer he busted out, it might actually be his best ever performance from an offensive standpoint. Also, his selling was pleasantly understated-none of the flopping around like a dying fish he liked to engage in around that time. Unfortunately, the finish is complete dogshit. After the ref bump, I figured that Shawn would hit Sweet Chin Music and get a visual pinfall to lead into the finish. What actually happened was far worse. Here's a hit: it involves HHH.

Here's a random question that popped into my head. Plenty of wrestlers have started out as technicians, broadly speaking, and reinvented themselves as brawlers. Terry Funk and Steve Austin come to mind. Has anyone ever made the transition in reverse?

Nah, I just figure that they did something so stupid even by their standards that someone had to comment on it. Kind of like the Ric Flair thread.

I had a dream the other night that Barry Windham was my uncle. I was really bummed when I woke up.

Yeah, Austin had plenty of great matches in 2001 alone. He wasn't a standout singles wrestler in WCW at all.

Cena has a history of wrapping himself in the overness of others to shield himself from the crowd's wrath. It really pissed me off when he name-dropped Eddy Guerrero in Chicago some time ago to get the crowd off his back.

At least he was properly embarrassed and apologetic when confronted with the error. Just kidding:

This sounds horrifying.

So why didn't New York experience the same decline in business that other parts of the country experienced? Was the WWWF title just that over? Or did Backlund bring something to the table? Or was it Bruno still being in the de facto main event? I'm not trying to be a smartass, I'm genuinely curious as to what people think. I wasn't talking about Dory.

Wasn't business down in a lot of areas in the late 70s?

Human nature. Which is why public ballots should be mandatory for things like this-to disincentivize that kind of behavior. If you're unwilling or unable to defend your selections (or non-selections), you have no business having a ballot.

Bad Influence did the same thing a couple of months ago. But it happened in TNA, so it didn't really happen.

I've always had it set to EST, and it's never been an issue until today. I just had to set it to Kaliningrad time.

Never.

I've decided that it's time to expand my US wrestling horizons beyond WWE. As far as WWE's biggest competition goes, TNA is a dumpster fire and ROH has been strip-mined of anything of value, so they're out of the question. Fortunately, there are plenty of indy promotions with TV that upload their shows onto Youtube or whatever. The only problem is that there are so many, I don't quite know where to begin. I've heard good things about Traditional Championship Wrestling and Championship Wrestling From Hollywood. What else is worth checking out? Again, I'm looking for complete episodes, not just clips of matches and promos.

Better than Backlund: Owen, Pillman, Austin, Bret, Jumbo, Tito, Tully, Regal Backlund is better: Angle, Race, Rude, Hall I could go either way on HHH. I will admit that I might not be giving Backlund a fair shake because I have such a visceral negative reaction to him. The way he walks with his ass sticking out and his "whoa-oa-oa" bullshit annoy the hell out of me.

People really thought Bryan was going over at HIAC?

So wrestlers voted for Angle because he won a gold medal and sucked up to the right people? Are you guys serious?

Can't it be that they genuinely think Angle is a historically great worker? Why do we have to bend over backwards to come up with alternate explanations?

Looks like it was Angle's peers who really put him over the top. How should this be interpreted?