WingedEagle

I haven't been a fan of anything Omega's done since coming to New Japan other than teasing his loyalties during the AJ-Ibushi match. For a few minutes I'll really enjoy what he's doing and then its bad comedy time. Hoping that with this move to heavyweight and push comes a new approach.

Last night felt like a very, very strong tease for Brock/Roman 2 at Mania. Am I way off base there?

Just started going through the 80s set in depth and Fujinami stands out even more than he did in the bits & pieces I'd caught in touted multi-man matches from the decade. Have a lot more to watch and hope to get to it before ballots are due. Would love to see a detailed comparison of his and Jumbo's 80s from someone that's been through both already. Extrapolating from the limited sample I've seen suggest he could very well blow Jumbo out of the water for diversity of performances and sheer volume, but am wondering if he'll come close in classics. Not comfortable putting an 8 or 10 man match on any one guy's record, whereas Jumbo has the Choshu/Yatsu tags, Flair, the Tenryu series, etc.

Wouldn't rank him based on SMW work and not enough Southern Boys to make my list.

Easily. Probably top half but no longer a lock there.

Ishii-Shibata is a match you'll see at least once on every big New Japan show. I absolutely cannot stand the spots where they take turns letting each other whack them, but depending on what surrounds it can overlook it. I didn't enjoy the Shibata-Goto feud a couple years back that Meltzer & others lauded with snowflakes, or more recent iterations (often featuring Goto. Hmm...), but thought this iteration was much more satisfying. One could certainly say there was rampant no-selling throughout, but I thought both guys did a great job staggering their spots and putting on delayed selling performances that demonstrated the cumulative effects of their attacks. They're tough dudes pounding on each other. At its care that's all that happens here. Just don't scream at me that nothing hurts at all and I'll be with you the entire way. They didn't do that here and simply pounded on each other as their video game health bars dissipated. Some people don't like that, but I'm a fan and think its often very logical. Once they left the exhibition sequence behind them I was completely hooked and if I recall correctly, even made great use of the one count kickout, a trope which NJ can often overuse, but where used sparingly is absolutely tremendous. I had this as the second best match on the show behind the main event and ahead of Styles-Nakamura, which while very good, had many more flaws which I hope to talk about later today. Felt like a really fun 4.5 stars in the moment.

Damn you. I thought the Sabu matches were some of the very worst I saw in '94. May have to pop those discs out today and look them over again.

This is going to be so much harder than I thought. Started cutting names from the list last night and have something over 200 locks. Very comfortable with my top 10-15 but after that, finalizing the 100, nevermind actually ranking them, is going to be much harder than planned. Combine that with generally preferring to watch more matches rather than work on the spreadsheet, and this will be an old school WingedEagle Cram JobTM. Can't wait!

Considering how much has been written on why some don't think he's that good that one's on you. Angle is a guy that has suffered due to how much of his work I've seen, don't think he has a lot of great matches and I have no problem thinking of hundreds of others wrestlers whose work and presence I enjoy that have also had a lot of good matches and don't have nearly as many flaws as Angle does. I also think he's pretty terrible at his worst (think 40 minute TNA 2010-11 main event with a 20 minute finishing stretch.) Which TNA matches have gone 40 minutes?

Haven't thought much about my list past the top 10-20, but can't imagine how Angle wouldn't make the bottom quarter. Way too many terrific matches with a variety of opponents as touched on in the post above. I see the points many make in their criticism as at times he could become very robotic, but absolutely cannot see how some people seem to paint him as everything wrong with wrestling. There were just too many great and varied matches.

Is this like TNM? Used to love that back in the day.

Warms the heart to hear you found Ozaki the standout there. Either she or Bull Nakano is my favorite personality in joshi, but Oz is much more subtle about everything she does and never does anything without meaning. She's the best supporting actress who often steals the show.

He was really solid in the Shield, but upon turning face and the split he developed that twitchy persona which is incredibly hard to take seriously. His offense has also become incredibly routine, with the plancha and rebound clothesline and a lot of weak punching in between. The character is really terrible though.

Absolutely. Just confident we can say a firm no with respect to Mania 32. There will come a day when that call isn't meant with laughing or a hang up. Not sure how the conversation is resolved, but am sure it will happen.

Fully confident a day will come when they offer Punk big money for a return. He may laugh it off then, but definitely will until he gets the MMA thing out of his system and loses whatever heat he had with wrestling at the end.Will make for a fun story at that time.

What was the trouble in pinning down a date on this one? Seems unusual for that period.

Of course not. But speaking or documenting those words at a company are different from approaching creative with that mindset.

Implied is much looser than an attempt to frame it as an outright quote, much less without attribution. Would believe almost any implication.

Call me crazy but it feels like New Day lost all their steam the past few weeks with the Nickelodeon humor. Cringeworthy now.

It actually is a bit of a big deal when you factor in that the show also doesn't have Orton, Rollins, Bryan and perhaps another couple names that would round out the top half of the card. Forces quite a bit of reshuffling

Cena reportedly out 6-9 months for shoulder surgery. This show is absolutely snakebitten. Really curious what direction things go now, and whether this contributed to a last minute push for the NJ crew. There'd been talk about Styles & Nak going back a bit so I can't imagine they all of a sudden upped the ante, but it is coincidental.

Not buying it.

It's not hard, they just haven't been doing this at all lately. Just eliminate them in a way that teases a big Mania feud that people would be excited for. Remember when Micheals eliminated Angle in 2005 to setup their Mania program? Or Brock/Goldberg in the 2004 Rumble? They never do that anymore... Agree you can absolutely set up a marquee match that way, but no one there was debuting in the Rumble. Just not sure how you don't blunt the momentum of the debut by having the segment close with that person coming up short.

How would you book an impressive Rumble debut without having the eventual elimination bring things down? Pretty crazy to see talent & the company tweeting about the NJ crew today.

This is really incredible to see. http://www.wwe.com/inside/are-aj-styles-shinsuke-nakamura-karl-anderson-doc-gallows-coming-to-wwe