NintendoLogic

I thought goodhelmet told you clowns to knock it off with the soccer talk. Anyway, the important thing for me isn't whether an opinion is consensus or revisionist, it's the thought behind it. I'd much rather read a well-thought-out argument for Ric Flair than someone arbitrarily deciding to go with Fujiwara or Satanico and trying to work his way backwards (not that I'm accusing anybody here of doing that).

This should've been in the OP:

The trading of finishers came at the end of the match, and both guys sold like they'd been hit by a devastating finisher. Kurt Angle would've kicked out and gone back about his business so the match could continue for ten more minutes.

The sad thing is, "Elevating someone new won't work because they'll just screw it up anyway" isn't something I can effectively respond to.

But why feed the streak to a guy who's already reached his ceiling of overness? I get that they're trying to build up Punk/Rock and then Rock/Cena II, and I'm sure it'll pop a couple of great buyrates. But where does that leave you in a year's time? You have to create new stars at some point. And you run the risk that Ryback will have cooled off beyond repair by the time you decide to elevate him for real. I'm not saying that putting the belt on Ryback would have been an unqualified good. More that they booked themselves into a corner and all their options were suboptimal.

I'm reminded of that conversation a while back about how counterproductive it was to have main eventers sell for Shane McMahon. Isn't what happened to Ryback basically that times ten?

I really don't get this idea that being consensus and "boring" renders an idea invalid. Knee -jerk contrarianism is just as boring, if not more so.

I'm sure they get some kind of payoff, but they probably get stiffed on the percentages. That's what happened to the lower card guys at Wrestlemania.

For what it's worth, I'm on the New Japan love train, and I thought Orton/Del Rio was really good. Del Rio had some great arm work, and I liked him busting out stuff like the Minoru Suzuki rope-assisted cross armbreaker and the ghetto stomp. I also love it when guys counter their opponent's signature moves. It gives the impression that they took the time to scout their opponents and come up with a gameplan.

Question for Johnny: when was the last time the WWE did something that upset or disappointed you? But liking shitty matches doesn't equal only liking shitty matches or hating good matches. The unadvertised matches thing is a killer for me. Part of me wonders if it isn't a way to screw guys out of a PPV payday by saying they had nothing to do with attendance or buys.

I agree with the general principle that the heel ref who calls the match down the middle until the end is stupid, but I think Punk/Ryback did it about as well as it can be done. HIAC is no holds barred, so there was nothing for the ref to rule on. And I'm pretty sure there were no actual pin attempts before the finish. Not trolling. Just tired of seeing the same straw men pop up repeatedly.

It seems that Meltzer did not, in fact, shit on Show/Sheamus. Can we stop pretending that he only likes guys who wrestle like Davey Richards?

Jesus Christ, JBL, shut the fuck up about college football. Although he almost made up for it with "I was sick that day...both days."

Everybody, don't get too excited, but I saw Resident Evil reading this topic about an hour ago. Anyway, I find the notion that the WWE dropped the ball in not becoming the Cena Show to be off base, not to mention the notion that adult male fans turned on Cena because he represented morality and authority. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. They hated him because they saw him as a phony, a poser, a soulless corporate creation shoved down their throats. Even in the supposed golden age of 2007, there were dark clouds on the horizon. Look at Backlash, the very first PPV after that record-setting Wrestlemania. It did something like 194k buys, which for the time was disastrously low. What made it even more alarming was the fact that it was the first tri-branded PPV. The WWE had rebounded from its 03-04 nadir, but it wasn't on the cusp of bigger things. It wasn't failing to go all-in on the Cena Show that held them back, it was failing to offer something to people who didn't want to see the Cena Show. Man, that tomk post about the WWE brand taking precedence over individual performers has not aged well at all. You'd have to be out of your mind to watch the past few years and conclude that Cena is just an interchangeable cog in the WWE machine. The current product is more Cena-centric than ever. Counterpoint: the Austin heel turn. Sometimes the fans you've driven away never come back even after you reverse course. Oh, and Shawn did play heel against Hulk Hogan. And Bruno Sammartino sold out the Garden more than anyone else.

It has occurred to me that the current WWE product is the spiritual successor of Bischoff's Nitro more than it is of that era's Raw. I'll go into more detail once I've fleshed it out a bit more.

Daivari's nipples are pretty far down on the list of things that horrify me in that photo.

Over the long term, it's absolutely true. There are year-to-year fluctuations, but the trend for everything is downward. Overall, wrestling in America is less popular than it's been since the advent of television, possibly ever. The main thing propping up the WWE's PPV business is special attractions like The Rock and Brock Lesnar. And their only real day-to-day draw is falling apart physically. They may not be in any immediate danger, but the future looks pretty bleak.

Rise above cancer, Santito!

It's true that it's basically impossible for the WWE to lose money under its current business model, money pits like the network and the film division notwithstanding. But every single business indicator is in a steady state of decline. It's not unthinkable that Raw ratings could fall to the point where USA seriously considers pulling the plug, to say nothing of a Jamie Kellner type coming into power at NBCUniversal.

Wow, I walked right into that one.

Random question: has it ever been definitively established who invented the scorpion deathlock? I've seen it attributed to Tatsumi Fujinami, Masa Saito, and Karl Gotch.

This reminds me of the five stages of decline. I'm inclined to say that the WWE is in Stage 4, but they're not really looking for salvation. They do lots of things out of desperation, but they tend to be short-term band-aids rather than attempts to turn things around in the long term.

Part of it is that I'm an unabashed mark for both guys. But even setting that aside, the match is everything that's right with wrestling. Great action plus great psychology means it's the kind of match that's timeless. Plus, the buildup led to what is probably my favorite promo of all time.

I presented a similar question some time ago: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=14200 The consensus was that 1988 to 1997 was the best ten-year stretch in wrestling history. For best individual year, I'd say either 1993 or 1995, with 1997 not too far behind. If you look at my desert island match list in that other thread, 28 of the 44 matches, including the entire top ten, are from the 90s. So this is an easy call for me.

After some rewatching and rethinking, I dropped some matches from my list. They're not bad matches, they're just not quite desert island material. I can't think of anything to replace them with, so I'm at my 44 favorite matches for the time being. If you can't tell, my list is pretty volatile.