Ricky Jackson

Completely agree with Asuka. She's my favorite performer under the WWE umbrella. Classic character already

The Cow Palace show was also promoted heavily around nostalgia, being the first California based promotion to run the arena since Roy Shire closed down in 1981. They even ran a battle royal, which was the main attraction on the biggest show of the year back in the golden days. So that accounted for a good deal of the interest I would think

Isn't that how it usually goes, a flurry of uploads then nothing for a few months?

Midnight Rockers vs Somers and Rose feud has been one of my favorite things in pro wrestling since I was a kid reading the mags and watching AWA on TSN. So great. RIP

I know Cody isn't popular around here, and I haven't seen any of his indy work or know anything about his drawing power, but kudos to him for walking out on the WWE and doing things on his own terms. Seems to have worked out wonderfully for him

A potential problem with a women's show is what has helped make 205 Live a flop, that they will shoehorn typical WWE personalities and angles onto the wrestlers and nobody will care. Hopefully they will at least avoid the second big problem with 205 Live and tape at Full Sail instead of in front of dead Smackdown crowds

Really enjoyed this. I love to hear first hand accounts of the WWWF from this time and John was great recounting his memories of the roster, angles, etc. Would love to hear a companion piece about MSG or the Spectrum someday if possible

Io Shirai finally signed today, joining the previously signed Kairi Hojo as two big time women talents from Japan coming over. They join an impressive amount of indy/international talent being stockpiled since the year began, with Black, Galloway, and Ohno already in and Cole and O'Reilly impending. Things could really be interesting around Brooklyn time

That should be awesome

Orton is so boring there are now two threads to debate it

The chances of this still happening do not sound good. Or at least with Impact involved

Oh and the show stinks. Worst Mania ever

Unless you were a hardcore Bret Hart fan from Calgary watching in a room full of fellow Bret Hart supporters, who were so excited that their favorite wrestler was headlining Wrestlefuckingmania, only two years removed from being just another tag team wrestler and in a spot really only Hulk Hogan had before, the finish really, really, really, really fucking sucked with the Fury of a Million Burning Suns and always will

Welcome to wrestling fandom

I agree. The show devolved into self parody in record time. Also all the subjects winning the Twitter polls don't really interest me

It's just semantics. Asuka has clearly gone from being presented as a dominant, but noble, champion, a la Jack Brisco, to a cocky jerk, a la Ric Flair, over the course of a year

The slow burn booking of Asuka towards full on heel and her eventual first defeat is maybe my favorite thing in wrestling

Meltzer rates based on his favorites, which I guess we all do. So Owens and Rollins are always higher. Reigns he doesn't really like, so he's always lower. He flat out blamed Sheamus for ending Bryan's career in his review of the tag, so that match wasn't rated high, etc, etc

Whoa Mr.69, calm down. I'm not mad or bent out of shape. I just think that anyone who watched that show and came out thinking those were the top two matches has horrible horrible taste in wrestling and I needed to point that out. That's all

Poll results in the latest WON for Payback provide a disappointing snapshot for a section of fans Thumbs up 33.4% Worse: Two best matches 1.Owens vs Jericho and 2.Rollins vs Joe. Come on

Substitute Hogan with early 80s Andre in that statement and it's a fair comparison, but if you're comparing early 90s Taker to first reign Hogan I really don't see it. He actually faced a who's who of great performers during that time, more than held up his end of things, and was in several awesome matches

That's a good point about Hogan. I would almost point to the Harley Race series as being the delineation point between "classic" Hogan (or Earth 2 Hogan as I like to call him) and "cartoon" (Earth 1) Hogan. He even wore the white trunks vs Harley for their TDM at MSG in the summer of 87, perhaps for the last time on TV

Backlund's 78-83 run with the WWF strap (let's ignore the brief Inoki swap like the mags and WWF did for years) had longevity, great matches and drawing power. There is tons of footage available, unlike with Sammartino's epic 7 1/2 year run or 3 1/2 year encore (several MSG bouts during reign #2 but nowhere near the amount of Bob)

Having a blast doing these shows with the boys. This card is full of greatness and crap side by side with an all time nuclear hot MSG crowd