NintendoLogic

The explosion in rights fees for sports programming has boosted WWE's revenue tremendously. What happens to their bottom line if/when that bubble bursts?

I wish people wouldn't call Hart/Austin an I Quit match. It may seem like nitpicking, but it's really an important difference. It's better than an I Quit match precisely because it doesn't have the nonsense with the microphone.

This is the thread that never ends It just goes on and on my friends Some people posted in it not knowing what it was And they'll continue posting in it forever just because This is the thread that never ends

Added: 1978-Mark Rocco vs. Marty Jones, 7/26 1979-Dory Funk Jr./Terry Funk vs. Giant Baba/Jumbo Tsuruta, 11/30 Also, I changed my 2008 pick to Panther/Villano. I'm not 100% in love with it, but it's good enough for what I think is a pretty weak year overall.

How can you guys hate on a show that had Jesse Ventura as a guest star?

"Pretty fucking good" is a thumbs down by Johnny Sorrow standards, haha.

Added: 1972-Karl Gotch vs. Antonio Inoki, 3/6 1974-The Destroyer vs. Mil Mascaras, 7/25 1975-Harley Race vs. Giant Baba, 12/9 1977-Billy Robinson vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, 3/5 2008-Undertaker vs. Edge, 3/30 Also, I decided to only list matches from 1972 on. That was the year New Japan and All Japan were founded as well as the year PWI awards started, so I figured it was as good a starting point as any. Plus, the relative dearth of footage before then means that I would most likely just end up duplicating Ray's outstanding list.

Added: 1998-Kenta Kobashi vs. Jun Akiyama, 7/24 2000-Jun Akiyama vs. Mitsuharu Misawa, 2/27 2002-Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Jushin Liger/Minoru Tanaka, 8/29

I heard it from Steve Sims.

Pretty simple concept. List your personal MOTY for every year you can think of. It can be your favorite match, the match you think is objectively the best, or whatever other criteria you like. I need to do some rewatching, but here are my picks for every year I'm reasonably certain of. 1975-Antonio Inoki vs. Billy Robinson, 12/11 1976-Giant Baba vs. Billy Robinson, 7/24 1977-Billy Robinson vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, 3/5 1978-Mark Rocco vs. Marty Jones, 7/26 1979-Bob Backlund vs. Pat Patterson, 7/30 1980-Dynamite Kid vs. Tatsumi Fujinami, 2/5 1981-Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk, 3/23 1982-Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell, 3/22 1983-Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee, 6/6 1984-Sgt. Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik, 6/16 1985-Jim Duggan vs. Ted DiBiase, 3/22 1986-Jumbo Tsuruta/Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu/Yoshiaki Yatsu, 1/28 1987-Riki Choshu vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, 6/ 9 1988-Stan Hansen/Terry Gordy vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada, 12/16 1989-Jushin Liger vs. Naoki Sano, 8/10 1990-Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Masanobu Fuchi/Akira Taue, 10/19 1991-Vader vs. Keiji Mutoh, 8/10 1992-Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat, 6/20 1993-Akira Hokuto vs. Shinobu Kandori, 4/2 1994-Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, 6/3 1995-Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue, 6/9 1996-Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue, 5/23 1997-Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi, 1/20 1998-Kenta Kobashi vs. Jun Akiyama, 7/24 1999-Kenta Kobashi/Jun Akiyama vs. Stan Hansen/Akira Taue, 12/3 2000-Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jun Akiyama, 2/27 2001-Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle, 8/19 2002-Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, 9/23 2003-Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshinari Ogawa, 11/1 2004-Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, 4/25 2005-Samoa Joe vs. AJ Styles, 12/11 2006-Yoshihiro Takayama/Minoru Suzuki vs. Yuji Nagata/Naofumi Yamamoto, 10/9 2007-John Cena vs. Umaga, 1/28 2008-Kensuke Sasaki vs. KENTA, 7/18 2009-Minoru Suzuki/Taiyo Kea vs. Suwama/Shuji Kondo, 3/14 2010-LA Park vs. El Mesias, 12/5 2011-Dick Togo vs. Antonio Honda, 1/30 2012-Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus, 4/29 2013-CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar, 8/18 2014-AJ Styles vs. Minoru Suzuki, 8/1 2015-Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns, 3/29 2016-The Revival vs. #DIY, 11/19 2017-Brock Lesnar vs. AJ Styles, 11/19 2018-Katsuhiko Nakajima/Masa Kitamiya vs. Go Shiozaki/Kaito Kiyomiya, 5/29 2019-LA Park vs. Jacob Fatu, 11/2 2020-WALTER vs. Ilja Dragunov, 10/29 2021-CM Punk vs. Eddie Kingston, 11/13 2022-Adam Page vs. Bryan Danielson, 1/5 2023-Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens vs. The Usos, 4/1 2024-Iyo Sky vs. Utami Hayashishita, 7/13

To be fair, putting in the Bret quote at the end the way he did greatly lessened the chances of his argument being taken seriously.

The sad fact is that most people who don't follow lucha only know Dandy as a jobber in WCW. It's kind of like people who only know Buddy Rose for the Blow Away Diet.

So I've gone on one of my periodic lucha kicks. Rather than try to wrap my head around the title matches, I've decided to focus on lucha brawls, which I figured would be more up my alley. MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana remains the gold standard, but I also found the following matches worthy of note: Sangre Chicana vs. Perro Aguayo (2/28/86)-Based on what I've seen of him, I think Sangre Chicana might be the greatest brawler I've ever seen. He's certainly the greatest tecnico brawler. His left hook could be the greatest punch of all time. And his selling, both of immediate impact and of exhaustion and cumulative damage, is some of the best I've seen. El Dandy vs. Pirata Morgan (9/23/88)-One of the all-time great rudo performances from Morgan. I lost count of how many times he had Dandy pinned and then picked him up to inflict more damage. The first time he does it, you think he's kind of a jerk. By the fourth or fifth time, you're practically begging Dandy to come back and kick his ass. Also, Dandy busts out the greatest no-hands plancha of all time. Santo/Espanto could be up there as well, but it isn't on Youtube anymore.

The Hansen/Colon bullrope match got me thinking about matches that are awesome despite featuring a gimmick that tends to inhibit match quality. Other than the aforementioned, the best example I can think of is the Texas death match between Terry Gordy and Killer Khan? What others?

Wrestling may be a form of creative expression, but I don't think it rises to the level of art. Wrestling matches and the storylines that build them up are devoid of content, which is an essential element of art.

Seconded. I've had the fucking Happy Days theme song stuck in my head for the past week because of this stupid thread.

No, I don't think there's much that would have diminished the heat for a Hogan match of that era. Do you really think that Hogan/Andre would have suffered one iota if it had directly followed Savage/Steamboat? As long as we're talking Manias, look at WM17. Rock/Austin had no problem directly following Taker/HHH, and they sure as hell weren't sitting in hammerlocks in the opening minutes.

Even if Kharma's first few months had gone according to plan, what was she supposed to do after murdering all the Barbie dolls? You can only run Kharma/Beth so many times.

No, because such a thing can never exist.

I'm a bit confused as to what Jerry's argument is. If matches have peaks and troughs built into them, why the need for filler matches? It's not like Hogan/Warrior was 23 minutes of wall-to-wall action.

It always comes back to Demolition, doesn't it? Anyway, cool and calm are not the the terms I'd use to describe Reigns promos. Of the three, he's the one most likely to scream for emphasis.

It's my impression that the vast majority of people who accuse others of having Asperger's are themselves aspies.

If you click on a tweet, it'll expand to show the entire conversation.

I tend to view cooling off the crowd between big matches as a crutch for wrestlers who aren't good enough or over enough to win the crowd over. The idea that you need breaks to keep the crowd from burning out strikes me as a self-serving canard along the lines of "the wrestling business is cyclical."

Oh, and I finally finished watching the Colon matches. Great, great stuff. The bullrope match is the best match of that style I've ever seen, and the cage match is almost certainly the best escape-the-cage match I've ever seen. More than anything, it solidifies Hansen as someone who wasn't only great in Japan.