Moonsault Marvin

I stumbled across this on youtube a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it. Tully did a good job as the overmatched heel and he had the Warrior using a more expanded offense than usual with a flying axehandle and a suplex.

This match was okay, but nothing special. I liked Hansen's selling in this match. I always appreciate when someone moves around and tries to get out of a hold instead of just sitting in it. I also liked when Hansen tagged out to Johnny Ace in the middle of the match and he just stayed on one knee in the corner for a couple of extra seconds to show how exhausted he was from the beating he had been taking. In terms of tag teamwork, it could have been better. There was a lot of interference, but the teams didn't seem to care. Kobashi would break up holds, but no one would go after him. I also didn't like Kobashi and Kikuchi just standing on the apron and watching while Misawa is being triple teamed and getting the spike piledriver. It seems like you should care if your partner is getting destroyed, but they just stand there like it doesn't matter.

I started watching wrestling in late '88 and lived in a rural area without cable. WWF had the advantage of always coming on at the same time on Saturday. NWA was hard to follow, since it never came on in the same time slot each week. I would have to look through the TV Guide listings each week to see when it was going to come on. It could range from Sunday at noon to 10:30 at night, and some weeks it wouldn't come on at all.

After years of reading about him in magazines, Lawler was such a let down when he showed up in WWF. The magazine had built up my expectations for him so much, and he was so disappointing. Years later, when I finally got to see old matches of him in Memphis that he was great in, I finally understood why they hyped him so much. It was like he had 100 times the charisma in the Memphis footage compared to him in WWF.

I wasn't comparing to Cena, but just saying I don't consider 1990 a dark age.

No its not a dark age and that is why I said maybe it is enough. I don't consider 1990 or 1991 to be a dark age, but guys like Ultimate Warrior, Curt Hennig, etc. are often deemed "not draws" on message boards since they didn't do as well as the golden age that preceded them, although they didn't have the bottom of the bucket numbers like in 1995 either.

Maybe that is enough. But lets say if the guys that take over after him cause U.S. buy rates and attendance to rise and his time on top becomes a trough in a graph, will people say that was a great run in wrestling or will they say something else? If a hall of fame is for "greats", then I think time will give us a better sense of what Cena is doing. The current one big company system in wrestling is still relatively new and it will be interesting in years to come to see how business increases or decreases with different top draws.

If Cena got hit by a bus tomorrow and ratings and attendance don't significantly drop, how much of a draw was he? It is major problem putting someone in a Hall of Fame when they're are still in the top position. We don't know what will happen when he is replaced. It is taken for granted that Cena is a good draw, but his records don't seem to be systematically examined. I don't consider him a great worker, so in a strict Hall of Fame, he would need to be a proven strong draw to balance that out. Just being on top is not enough for Sting, and it is not enough for Cena.

Wrestle America was an Apter magazine, and it had been Sports Review Wrestling before they changed the name.

Assuming Sting even makes it to Wrestlemania 6 without blowing out his knee, the Hulkamaniacs would have resented him for beating Hogan just like they did Warrior. He gets the title just in time for a recession. His title run would underperform just like the Warrior's since Hogan will sabotage him by getting the program with the Earthquake, who was the only fresh heel WWF had left at the time. Vince still jobs him to Slaughter for his silly attempt to capitalize off the war. Sting settles into the upper mid card. Vince would have either got rid him during the steroid scandal or Sting would eventually jumped to WCW as Hogan's sidekick. I don't think it would have mattered. Sting wasn't going to be a mega star either way.

Farmer's numbers of 10000, 20000, etc. are arbitrary and lead to a mathematically meaningless system. I think it would be better to find the average attendance of a building and compare the main event runs of a wrestler to the average to get a better sense of which wrestlers were draws and to what degree. Gathering all the information together to do the calculations seems like it would be a huge and time consuming job.

I think one of the worst things to come out of the Attitude Era was the death of the short promo. Prior to the Attitude Era, the most a guy would talk would be two or three minutes in an interview or on one of the talk segments like Brother Love or The Barber Shop. The shows like Superstars or Wrestling Challenge would give wrestlers from top to bottom of the roster a chance to talk in the back against the wall promos in the Event Center. The change to the long promos was okay at first when it was guys as talented as Austin or the Rock, but the lesser guys that took over after them like HHH and Cena couldn't pull it off. The lower wrestlers get little promo time to establish themselves and really only get to talk in the comedy skits. Look at guys like Dolph Ziggler who are good in the ring, but badly need to get more week to week experience talking because they don't have a chance when they are thrown out there in one of those 10 minute or longer opening promos.

They were 30 year old guys who looked like they were in their late 50s. The Rock N' Roll gimmick had passed them by, and their attempts to change, like the "Richard Morton" gimmick, were failures.

That match seems rather restrained compared to the kinds of matches Angle was doing a couple of years ago with A.J. Styles where they no sold everything. I was more surprised that Hardy actually got through a match without any major botches.

I can't even imagine putting Cena in a list of top 100 wrestlers. His selling for the beginning and middle of a match can be good at times, but the lack of any transition into his comebacks, the neverending sloppy STF's, and the constant smirking at the hard camera grate on my nerves.

I was watching the Flair-Sting Clash match on Netflix this weekend, and I noticed Jim Ross used "kip up" instead of "nip up". I don't remember the move ever being called a "nip up" until Vince started calling it that during Shawn matches in '96, so I assume Vince made Ross change what he called the move once he came to the WWF.

I certainly like Punk less after a year of terrible face promos. WWE doesn't even have confidence enough in him as a draw to put him in main events, so they needed to do something diifferent with him. The problem of course is he will never be accepted as truly heel as long as he is stuck with the divisive Cena.

How about Bart Gunn in the New Midnight Express? I don't think he ever cracked a smile during that gimmick. Bob Holly at least had a little bit of that slimy swagger needed to fit the role.

I always loved the way they relentlessly beat down their opponents with the multiple axe handles and stomps. I really miss wrestlers shouting at the camera in the corner of the ring while they pulled on a jobber's face like Smash used to do.