WingedEagle

This is correct. Because it was a top 3 WWE world (including NXT) MOTY, at worst, in this guy's eyes.

I'd really like to be on board, but Evolve is not a must-watch promotion for me at this point but rather something wholly dependent on the card. The other promotions aren't something I'd pay for at this point. PS4 app would help as well.

I really want to go back to an ROH show. But absolutely zero about their lineups and programs looks appealing these days. Very flat promotion overall. I don't even quite understand why. There's enough talent on the roster that things should be interesting, but it seems to be in a perpetual funk.

I'm watching Puerto Rico and 1995. Also trying to go through Danielson's ROH career (one match a week at my current rate). Starting Portland soon. Have a stack of Jack Brisco and Dusty Rhodes to work through, as well as some Terry Funk. Oh, and mixing in watching the Horsemen and 1980s New Japan. So yeah, I barely dent anything during a given week. But love it all. Variety and whatnot, to paraphrase the great George Wallace! The great one -- not the bad one. Always keeping it fresh is fun.

Its not all that farfetched. Reigns was incredible earlier in the year but I haven't loved the Rusev feud and he certainly doesn't deliver on the mic like Charlotte. Would still have her quite comfortably behind Styles, but she's been the best act on Raw for quite some time.

I don't make this show a priority because its not time sensitive so am always a bit late to the party, but its always a terrific listen. Insightful and refreshing look back at a lot that I remember vividly -- fondly or otherwise, and the WON recaps are great as this was the period I first started subscribing to the Observer.

I don't think there's much of a chance he's being serious. That's not how he deals with silly questions.

Awesome to hear you enjoyed it. Not to temper it, but I'm not sure a ton of credit is to be given for their thoughts putting this match together. Kobashi was, and bad been for quite a while, virtually of doing much else by this stage of career. Injuries and illness had taken away many of his physical tools and thus all of his matches at the end of his career were done in this fashion, built around the chop, because it was all that could be done.

That's like my dog needing put down and me not letting the vet do it though. Perhaps, but dude is still kicking. Even if he's shitting all over the house and himself.

So freaking cool. Love what I've seen of your uncle thus far!

This is EXACTLY the point! Most of the classics come before this time with the four corners, as you're only talking 3/1/03 as part of the GHC reign. But the diversity of opponents and range of performances during this run and then even afterwards, from the Tenryu & Sasaki tags to the return tag in '07, his post-prime run is what will swing how you look at his overall career. Much like Case, I've got the Misawa, Takayama and Akiyama matches as classics, and that's without even touching the Suzuki, Sasaki, Ogawa, KENTA and other singles matches making up this run. The comparison with Flair in '85-86 is interesting, although I'm not sure terribly fair to either because of where they were in their respective careers.

Devils advocate here. They're still around. Pretty amazing. Basically solely due to the willingness of a few folks of lose money. But alive.

Pretty much the only time I ever see it come up is when someone tries to discredit John Cena (who probably calls as much or more in the ring than anyone in WWE) by saying all his matches are laid out by Arn Anderson anyway so he's really not all that great. In the interest of fairness, do you think the women's NXT matches were criticized on that basis as they were happening? If so, that's some bullshit. My recollection was this became a talking point when they were called up and the matches on Raw & PPV didn't meet the high expectations set in NXT. If the latter is the case, hopefully that's leveled against all NXT call-ups where applicable. On the other hand, I find it silly to consider whether the match is intricately laid out, practiced once or a dozen times beforehand or called on the fly. I care about what happens on the show I'm watching. How they get there before the curtain goes up just isn't important.

Nice, so far it seems like a great balance of head & heart. Much respect for the dedication to go back and watch everything, even if you spaced it out. Did you find the list skewed heavily to any particular years(s)? Earlier/later in the decade?

205 Live? http://www.wwe.com/article/205-live-premieres-nov-29-on-wwe-network?sf40786623=1 Hopefully the last couple months on Raw haven't totally let the air of the concept.

Loving the list and notes on it, but definitely with Sleeze in preferring everything housed here! How much rewatching did you do in throwing this together? Dribs & drabs over time, concentrated focus on certain matches, or just took your original notes / lists for each year and put things together on the fly?

Part of my personal frustration with mid-late 90s AJPW is just how good and smart they are, with an attention to detail to very small things that can have huge emotional impacts within a match and over matches. There are so many specific elements that are completely down my alley and better and more layered than any other attempt at them I've come across. Then, they just go on too far with too much and lose me and it's much worse than if the match was terrible to begin with. It's, in part, why I gravitate towards Taue, because his physical limitations meant that he could only go so far and he was still awash in the general style and everything else. It doesn't mean his input is better necessarily but that I am more comfortable with his output. It's not a very good argument for him as a better wrestler (he probably wasn't), but it's the argument for him having matches that I'm happier watching. I also recognize my lack of breadth of watching, so I'm not a particularly loud voice on this topic. I should check out mid-2000s Kobashi at some point. Someone suggest me a few specific matches I'd probably be high on? A very interesting side-topic that came out of Chad's discussion with Quentin on Psychology is Dead is the possible uses of "excess" in storytelling. That excess is in someway not only an intrinsic part of Kobashi's character but also one of his fatal flaws like Icarus trying to fly to the sun and having his wings melted every time. It's also a lesson that he (the kayfabe character) consistently fails to learn from charging into Stan Hansen in the early 90s and getting himself near killed, to his battles with Misawa and others. All heart, all guts, all the time, and so "winding it back" isn't part of his role or who he is meant to be portraying. I've said this before but Nick Bockwinkel's character was "smart guy", "wily vet", "sneaky champ", when THAT's your character then of course a lot of stuff you do is going to "smart". But Kobashi didn't have that character. Ric didn't either, but I don't think there are four faces of Bock like there are four faces of Flair ... from a certain perspective Bock is more one dimensional in his actual character work than Flair is. I'm not picking on Bock per se, I mean I had him in my top 10 for GWE, but he's the flag bearer for "psychology", and Flair and Kobashi are the routine whipping boys, but I think the analysis isn't really deep enough in any of the three cases. Bock does MICRO psychology very well, Flair and Kobashi, both I think, excel at layered match-on-match stuff and what I'm going to call "deep character". And hubristic excess is a part of both of those characters for different reasons. You've talked a lot about "purpose" and "meaning", what about cases where the correct artistic choice is something that is over the top or excessive to get a certain idea across? I just think the talking point is completely overplayed as criticism, to the point where I think venerating Taue out of the four pillars for doing more with less has become an eye-rolling cliche. Not a shot at Matt or anyone in particular, but I don't see the talk around that as being particularly enlightening at this point. Found myself nodding along with much of this. It also strikes me as a more fair and objective way to evaluate it, as we don't know much about the intentions behind what takes place in a match. All we know is what we see in the ring. We can choose to give workers credit or blame for thinking about and planning it in great detail beforehand, but that requires a whole lot of conjecture and speculation. I voted Kobashi #1 in GWE, but fully acknowledge its possible he only knew one way to approach matches before his body was wrecked, and another way thereafter. Not sure I buy it as there is enough nuance and variation across the career to suggest he gave a lot of thought to his performances, but that could be dead wrong. He may have been a bumbling fool who went out to wrestle the only way he knew how given certain time & card placement constraints.

Context does always matter. The Hog Wild reference above is a great example of it. There are different ways to explain it and the related nuances, but everything from build, crowd, place on the card, commentary, what preceded it and a host of other factors beyond purely what the wrestlers in the ring did from bell to bell can impact the viewing experience.

This is easy in the sense that I think Charlotte is better and more effective in her role, and as Parv said, the first true heel they've had in years. She's not just a proper heel, she's fantastic at it. On the other hand, I haven't seen anything yet to suggest another woman on the roster can take a beating like Sasha and make Charlotte look so strong in that role. Her charisma, music, slender build and fearlessness create a dynamic in their matches that I haven't seen anyone else bring to the table yet. Becky Lynch? Perhaps, but remains to be seen. Bayley? Dead in the water since being called up so she'd really need to be rehabbed to work as well, even if I thought she'd be tremendous on the main roster.

Dave seems to value a crowd and the presentation elements quite a bit. No inside info here but I wouldn't be shocked if that's what he was alluding to in making such a comment. He's also always noted how junior matches don't play well at the Dome so perhaps he's referring to the big, expressive matches of recent years like Tanahashi/Okada, Styles/Nak, Nak/Ibushi etc. that were indeed well received at such a setting.

Haven't been a fan for the duration of their babyface run. Just not my humor. It seems like they sold a lot of tshirts and perhaps cereal boxes. Good for them if so, but the entire routine is not funny or entertaining. This is exactly the point. It works because its not what we're accustomed to and expect so throwing variance into what's become a routine spot makes it special.

Sounds like I need to rewatch the EVOLVE tag. I had it at about ***3/4 on first viewing but am open to checking it out again. On the other hand, I am not at all a fan of Sabre Jr. and actively dislike most of his matches. But happy to approach it with an open mind.

At the time this felt like one of those rare instances where WWE actually presented a dream match. These two had been kept apart from the time they both ascended to the top of Raw & Smackdown during the build to Mania 21 which made for a truly fresh match. Even with Taker/Edge in a Cell, this still seemed like the real draw at the show. They didn't disappoint, working an oddly compact match in under 14 minutes that's a virtual sprint compared with some main event matches today. They work a basic power match with lariats, powerbombs and slams for Batista while Cena is constantly looking for the FU. A neat wrinkle along the way is Batista borrowing a page from Flair's book as he clips the knee, goes to a kneebreaker and then actually breaks out the Figure-Four. What I loved here is how simple this was. Basic transitions borrowed from the Horsemen like a kick to the gut. Yeah, we had finishers teased throughout but they weren't spammed. They maintained a solid pace as there were no real rest spots or killing clock for anyone to regain their wind, but at the same time they let everything sink in. Every shot and offensive maneuver was allowed to breathe so that its impact registered. One legit false finish at the end on the powerbomb where Batista caught Cena coming off the top for his legdrop that absolute absolutely popped the crowd, and made the finish that followed thereafter all the more satisfying. Still amazing that this was a 100% clean job, although Cena didn't look at all the worse for wear coming out of a match that felt like stage 1 in a prolonged feud. Perhaps Cena's injury had something to do with that but they wouldn't return to it until 2010 when Batista was a true heel. Great, simple match with no real waste. ****

Very much agree with that. On Goc's point -- if a majority of fans who pay for and watch the programming preferred Owens/Rollins they should absolutely run with it. I'd find that hard to believe, but far be it from me to suggest they cater to anything but the largest possible segment of the audience. If that feud and its developments post-HIAC move ratings and crowds go crazy for it then perhaps they hit something. Haven't seen anything since they crowned Owens or throughout this feud suggesting that's the case though.

Of course we all want it entertaining. I just don't think the difference between something like Kane-Wyatt and Billie Kay-Emma is big. I think a company should strive to represent reality. Having more females can only help the company not look like just for men to watch. Also, saying women aren't as good as wrestlers is silly when we saw Joshi in the 80s/90s, we saw NXT last year. Agree with you about more females. But disagree if you think they have enough right now. When there are enough to stack cards like 80s AJW across 3 brands your point will be dead on. I don't think we're there. NXT last year, and this year, is a 1 hour TV show with with sporadic big shows. How does making that work that translate to 6 hours of weekly TV across all 3 brands plus all the PPVs/Takeovers?