WingedEagle

Is that the first delayed vertical suplex used as an actual delay?

This Chamber match belongs in a chamber pot. What a shitshow. Between 2 apparent shoot issues with pods and workers who can't figure out for the life of them how to improvise the situation, this is an absolute mess.

SOMEBODY GON' GET THEY ASS KICKED. FIVE MILLION STARS FOR THIS MATCH. WE HAVE A NEW MATCH OF THE NIGHT.

Cena vs. Owens -- MOTYC. No idea how I rate that versus the Rumble 3-way, Brock/Reigns or Nak/Ibushi, but its right there. -- John Cena delivered one of the best performances of his career, and one of the most selfless I can recall any star ever delivering. He gave Owens everything, was beaten throughout, let him kick out of every one of his big moves and then went down clean as can be. -- Its premature & sounds crazy, but that's the type of performance that merits Wrestler of the Year consideration for Cena, either now or perhaps retrospectively. Performances like that, versus Zayn and others that put over new stars are just so rare and special and can only be delivered by someone at his level. Just incredible.

Divas Title: - Went to the bathroom and talked to the wife. - Put away the WON from the last month or so that I hadn't stapled yet. - Got ice cream. - Saw the finish on replay. Good stuff.

Tag Title Chamber: The Good: - Everything when Cesaro/Kidd were in. - Kidd loudly calling for his elbow off the Cesaro corner spot. Got a kick out of this. - Torito's rana on Cesaro. - Best the Ascension has looked. - Cesaro's Okada turnbuckle dropkick. - Did I mention Kidd & Cesaro? The Bad: - Kalisto spot from the top. - Torito spot from the top. - Everything after Kidd & Cesaro were eliminated. PTP'ers & New Day didn't gel well.

Perro Aguayo Jr.

The All Japan crew had the distinct advantage of working with each other for all of their big matches. When did Hash ever have anyone at at level to work with? I don't want to knock him for it, but he simply doesn't have the sheer number of classics they do, even if he has just as many good or better matches. That's the one aspect of comparing them I'm not sure how to get around. Similar to Tenryu in that regard, but Tenryu has the '86 tags, Jumbo match and a few more legit classics than Hash.

What does the Torch offer that the Observer doesn't? Not trolling, just actually curious. I learned about the Torch outside of an MSG house show in February 1993 and immediately subscribed. That went on for a year or 2 until I found out about the WON and haven't looked back since.

In grad school I'd also fill the apartment with a smoke machine before putting on my Japan dvd comps. The then-gf/now-wife always knew what was going on before she came over.

El Rey puts up the complete video of the big match from each week at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLszDUngAaPFaS1RjnDnabQnGXIgFdZk4V You can google and find just about anything else on youtube or DM but I'm not sure they're all collected in one spot.

Echoing Shoe's thoughts. I've stayed on top of the last 6-8 weeks and am looking forward to starting with it on tv this week rather than downloading every Saturday. Its easy to watch and along with Lucha Underground a great change of pace to WWE that easily flies by and always gives you something entertaining.

Locks -- Flair, Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Tenryu, Daniel Bryan Danielson. 3 other spots? Akiyama, Taue, Cena, Hashimoto, Hansen, Jumbo feel like strong possibilities but we'll see who else sneaks in.

Is foreign memorabilia in any way accessible to those of us in the US today?

Very, very interesting career as you highlighted. I'd completely forgotten about the ROH title run. But yeah, far from 100 at the end of the day.

My bad.

If you're referring to the '11 Survivor Series, no one wanted to cheer for Miz. People in the house wanted any excuse to pop for Rock (and Punk that night as well, especially once Finkel was there), and because of the Rock issue were even more adamant than usual about heeling Cena. Miz & Truth were just vehicles for that.

Agree that both Mesias matches need to be there.

A very good point. Won't always produce a classic, but almost always manages to cobble *** together and rarely disappoints. Really unique wrestler with an absolute ton of diverse performances.

A few favorites from what I had handy. Can highlight some choice selections if you want, but THE MAN deserves a full examination. TENRYU! Ric Flair vs. Genichiro Tenryu (2/3 Falls) (SWS 9/15/92) Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara & Masao Orihara vs. Shiro Koshinaka & Kengo Kimura & Masashi Aoyagi (WAR 10/21/92) Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara vs. Shiro Koshinaka & Kengo Kimura (WAR 10/23/92) Genichiro Tenryu, Takashi Ishikawa & Koki Kitahara vs. Shiro Koshinaka, Kengo Kimura & Masayo Aoyagi (NJ 11/23/92) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Shiro Koshinaka (NJ 12/14/92) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu (NJ 1/4/93) Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara & Takashi Ishikawa vs. Keiji Muto, Akira Nogami & Shinya Hashimoto (NJ 2/5/93) Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa vs Tatsumi Fujinami & Hiroshi Hase (WAR 2/14/1993) Riki Choshu, Tatsumi Fujinami, Osamu Kido, Hiroshi Hase & Tayayuki Iizuka vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara, Takashi Ishikawa, Ricky Fuyuki & Tatsumi Kitahara (2/3 falls) (NJ 2/16/93) Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa vs. Riki Choshu & Osamu Kido (WAR 3/3/93) Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa vs. Riki Choshu & Tatsumi Fujinami (NJ 3/23/93) Riki Choshu & Shinya Hashimoto vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa (WAR 4/2/93) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu (NJ 4/6/93) Tatsumi Fujinami & Shinya Hashimoto vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa (WAR 5/24/93) Riki Choshu, Shinya Hashimoto, Tatsumi Fujinami, Masa Chono & Hiroshi Hase vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara, Takashi Ishikawa, Tatsu Goto & Strong Machine (Elimination Match) (WAR vs. NJ 6/15/93) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Shinya Hashimoto (WAR 6/17/93) Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs. Masa Chono & Tatsumi Fujinami (NJ 7/14/93) Tatsumi Fujinami, Masahiro Chono & Shinya Hashimoto vs Tenryu, Ashura Hara & Takashi Ishikawa (NJ 8/2/1993) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJ 8/8/93) Hiroshi Hase vs. Genichiro Tenryu (NJ 9/23/93) Shinya Hashimoto & Masa Chono vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara (WAR 10/1/93) Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs. Tatsumi Fujinami & Osamu Kido (WAR 10/11/93) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Ashura Hara (WAR 11/11/93) Genichiro Tenryu & Masahito Kikahara vs. Keiji Muto & El Samurai (WAR 1/5/94) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Shiro Koshinaka (WAR 1/14/94) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJ 2/17/94) Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs. Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto (WAR 3/2/94) Genichiro Tenryu vs. Atsushi Onita (No Rope Explosive Barbed Wire Cage Death Match) (FMW 5/5/94)

What metric is a win for Kane vs. Brock other than number of matches / appearances?

A vote for Charlotte here is not even a backhanded compliment. Its a roundhouse, Ray McDonald style offense.

Don't often agree with Dylan, but I think he hit the nail on the head here, minus the Sags point (though a couple Nasty matches are probably better than any single output of Booker's career, but fewer and further between for me. Aside over). He may be better than Tenzan but I can't even think of a few Booker performances that top the Akiyama matches or his best vs. Kojima/Kawda during that period.

Don't have my spreadsheet handy, but you will not go wrong starting in '92 with everything in the Match Discussion Archive. NJPW/WAR stuff is the clear highlight, but the Onita match is good, he's paired with Flair on a WWF tour, and that's even before getting to the later decade run with NJPW and his matches in the G1. Then you have his turn of the century stints in AJPW and NOAH. His body of work reads like a top 10 GOATer.

It doesn't matter if the women drew in NXT, because NXT is the draw not the wrestlers. The fact they can run a house show with women on top, or have the women as the semi-main on every show proves that it can work. If NXT is a success than women can be featured in prominent roles and it be successful. If NXT is the draw as you initially stated, how are the women -- or anything other than the NXT brand -- successful? Can't have it both ways.