NintendoLogic

I was in the middle of a long reply a while back, but I got bored in the middle of it. I'll just post the truncated one. I was under the impression that Jaguar was one of the main drivers of the style becoming more fast-paced and athletic. And I would say that completely blowing off targeted body part work is both lazier and less compelling from a dramatic standpoint. Why even bother going after a body part if it isn't going to go anywhere or lead to anything? And it's not just limb work, comebacks in general are too easy. When someone gets worked over for ten minutes and then reverses an Irish whip and becomes a house of fire, it's difficult for me to get invested.

The issue of unionization in wrestling might be worth a topic of its own, but there's a piece in The New Republic that discusses a lot of the same issues in UFC. http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazi...p-bill-culinary Of particular note is the following passage: I can only imagine how they'd react to a WWE contract, particularly the death clause.

Dylan hit the nail on the head. There is literally nobody in TNA who I would pay to see with the possible exception of Samoa Joe after extensive rehabilitation. Whenever I try to watch Impact, the only segments that hold my interest are comedy segments with Eric Young. Come to think of it, comedy is the only thing TNA does better than WWE.

Vince was leveraged up his eyeballs that first year. The WWF expansion wasn't catching on in a lot of places, and he was months behind on payments to his creditors. It was mainly payments from Antonio Inoki that kept him afloat.

I don't have the exact numbers, but Dave has said that Sting barely moved any merch at all and that it was a running joke in WCW about how the little Stingers didn't actually exist.

New Japan owned the rights to the name Big Van Vader, so he had to change it when he left. He was Super Vader in UWFi.

I wouldn't mind them stretching out the Punk/Bryan feud if they were using the time to build up someone like Cody Rhodes as the next challenger. As it is, they'll probably just have him cost Punk a match on Raw with interference, which will somehow earn him a title shot.

Now that campaign season is in full swing, it's time to fire this bad boy up again. The story of the moment is the WWE's attempts to intimidate its critics in the media into silence, which naturally has backfired hilariously. From today's Observer update:

Would it be too cynical to wonder if the Orton suspension is a preemptive strike against any criticism the Wellness Program might come under during the Senate campaign? They wanted to cast him in The Marine 3, so they obviously don't think taking him off the road for a while is that big a deal.

See, I don't get this. Additions to a match should enhance it, not serve as obstacles to be overcome.

4.30 TV rating.

I asked because your first paragraph said "Kawada shouldn't have gone over" and your second paragraph said "storytelling-wise, this is when Kawada should have gone over." They seemed disconnected from each other. Plus, the stuff about Misawa being hurt and Kawada being on a roll would apply just as much to the 7/95 match.

Are you talking about the 7/95 match here?

The problem is that triple threat matches and matches with Kane both tend to suck. Additions to a match shouldn't be things you have to creatively work around.

I view Bryan and Punk as this era's Bret and Shawn. They're the consistently brightest spots in a product that is overall rather lackluster.

Not Ivan Koloff?

I find it striking how much of the Gordy List ends up unintentionally damning Sting with faint praise. He was the biggest draw...in early 90s WCW. He was one of the best workers...among musclebound babyfaces. I'm also dumbfounded by the claim that Sting was a bigger influence on Chris Jericho than Shawn Michaels. More generally, you'd be hard-pressed to find a current American wrestler below 220 pounds who doesn't regard Shawn as an influence. Sting's influence is pretty much limited to Shelton Benjamin doing Stinger Splashes.

If one or two years as a hot act is enough to get you into the HOF, then Goldberg and Kerry Von Erich are no-brainers. On a somewhat related note, what does Sting have over Batista as a HOF candidate other than longevity? The gap between the two as workers wasn't that large, and Batista blows Sting completely out of the water as a draw.

You have to understand that HOF qualifications are determined on a sliding scale. The worse you were as a worker, the better you have to be as a draw, and vice versa. Sting wasn't really exceptional at either.

Sure. I feel like people are acting like being a Hall of Famer is the default position and not inducting someone is a huge slight. In fact, the opposite is true. You have to make an affirmative case for someone.

He was a piece of the puzzle in 1997, but he was nowhere near the biggest piece. Episodes of Nitro he wasn't advertised on did just as well as ones he was. And he didn't draw on any house shows because he wasn't on any of them.

Hey, I'm not your mom. If you think that what Dave had for breakfast this morning is a topic of great interest, knock yourself out. I just think that the current Dave/Dana brouhaha is too petty to warrant discussing in great detail.

OK, this thread sucks now. Just a bunch of bullshit navel-gazing about Dave and Dana. Seriously, who gives a fuck?

Of course size matters. Wrestling may be fake, but it's not an action film or a comic book. It's a pseudo-sport, which means that there are limits to suspension of disbelief. If basketball were worked, you wouldn't buy Chris Paul posting up Dwight Howard no matter how good his drop step was. It's not the end-all be-all, but it's not something that you can just sweep under the rug with "smart work."

And Rey beating Brock with gymnastics wouldn't?