thebrainfollower

Right now these guys are at #11 for me in tag teams. I still like them a lot, but yes I have grown to understand how they aren't one of THE best teams of the video era.

This must be a glorious day for Parv. His Lex Luthor is gone

Hunter won't be making my list. I don't rate great matches as important as Jimmy and I just cannot stand the guy. Good work with NXT aside, he's just done so much to hurt WWE over the last 18 years and is the reason I nearly gave up watching wrestling. And rewatching the Gayda tag match it's pretty clear whose fault the blown spots are. And you are right there are 2 of them only.

Yeah I wasn't expecting a long list of legendary 5 star TNA matches from you guys lol. What are your thoughts on 3 variations of the stratusphere spot in the last match JR?

I kinda love the fact we have gone from one of the 5 people who kept me watching WWE for years to the person whose presence necessitated those people for me in the first place. As for Trish's rookie year, her character was a cowardly wimp, a cocky idiot who thought of herself as great but had no idea how to do anything. It would be like say Bobby Heenan going 50/50 and getting a great match out of Ricky Steamboat in 87. Great match sure but terrible idea. Trish did well her rookie year for what she was supposed to be doing, deer caught in headlights first month aside. She wasn't a wrestler she was a manager who THOUGHT she could wrestle and got her tail kicked every time to find out otherwise.

As for Lita's finale, yeah that was pretty bad. BUT it was just two months later and they could hardly run the same finish again. Plus she's a heel and the fans hated her legit for screwing Matt. Her losing would have been enough though and then maybe turning on Edge and leaving a face ala Andre at WM VI.

Okay thanks for clearing that up to me Jimmy Redman. I get it now. I don't like it but I get it. Charlotte is already not over at all with the crowds. Making her totally dependent on her dad for heat and keeping her spot is a long term career killer.

Like I said it's a 4 and a quarter star match. Give me some matches and I'll give you my opinions on them but I probably in general skew higher than most people. For instance here's a match I think is 5 stars that not many do - Savage vs. Warrior WMVII which is the all time feel good moment in wrestling for me. As to how many 5 star matches there have been this year, well keep in mind I haven't caught any Japanese stuff FROM This year as I have so much old stuff to catch up on. And I don't watch TNA. I'd say the second Bayley-Sasha match was 5 stars, the first was 4.75 as was Lesnar-Reigns, and that frankly might have been 5. Reigns-Sheamus was probably 4.25 from Raw but some of that is due to Vince. Maybe a lot actually.

So Becky Lynch is US? With Vince using her to reinforce his "all women are bitches who hate each other" philosophy by making a person who opposes his view the only real heel? I wish they'd just pull the trigger on Sasha. Sasha vs Nikki is the feud and matches I wanna see whenever Nikki comes back.

Hahahahahaha. I GUESS you could argue that it made the victory seem a touch more plausible. I am grateful he did turn heel because if he did not the next year would have been him beating the whole NWO by himself in the second version of this match.

I feel like there's GOT to be some women's attire in the last 15 years that would top the list but cannot think of any.

Steph is booked so strong it's silly. I think the writers are in terror of angering their boss and the owner's daughter they just book Stephanie as the strongest person in company history. Unless it was a "I won't do this if I have to job" I am certain she would be booked over Ronda if that had gone through. She would have beaten Ronda in a singles with Rock pinning HHH in the tag at WM had that come about.

I can't think of too many eps that don't have something good but I feel 86-early 88 eps are the best as episodes. Even the hated late 1988 one has the Ultimate Warrior - Super Ninja match which was one of my favorite laugh out loud moments as a kid when it was covered in the magazine.

Meltzer reported that WWE saw Charlotte as the face and Paige as the heel at TLC. Huh?

For me the show peaks from the fall of 86 through WM IV. That might be where I would start OJ. The first few eps are not that great.

Trish Stratus vs. Lita - Unforgiven 2006 So the two had stayed away from each other when Trish returned as a face. Lita was a really good heel but she definitely had a tendency to chew and spit out her opponents, particularly the Torrie Wilson types. I feel that's definitely part of Trish's case as the NA female GOAT, no matter how untrained her opponents she tried to give them something and make them look decent. Lita didn't do it that way honestly. Indeed her beating Mickie James for the title was a glorified squash and meant that the Trish-Mickie feud never really got a blow off except for Trish's last Raw match. Lita announced Trish's retirement early to humiliate her to set this up and Trish challenged her to be her last match, and for the title. In her home town of Toronto. LIta beat Trish in a tag match before this, with Edge spearing her several times during the build up but this one on one. Given Vince's preference for having people, particularly Canadians, job out in their hometowns and the policy of putting someone over as you leave I saw this one as going either way. Video package to set this up really lays out the story, Trish wanting to retire on top and facing her arch rival one last time for the championship that meant her whole career to her. Also Trish has never really beaten Lita cleanly (at least without help or Lita too hurt to continue) but that's not really brought up. Lita's heel work is certainly good but she was much better suited as a babyface. After the Edge-Matt Hardy situation that was NOT going to happen however. Trish's energy is first rate and JR does put over that Trish can break Moolah's record tonight with a win. Nice thank you Trish chant to start. Lockup to start and Lita with some physical shoving and a vicious slap to start. She played a bully well. Whip to the corner and Trish rebound with a solid clothesline for 2. Trish with her handspring whirlybird move and Lita bails. Lita won't come back in so Trish charges and hits a flying Thesz press to the floor. Given that's the SAME move that took Lita out for 18 months that's pretty risky but Lita being taller makes it work fine. Get a big pop as Trish hammers away. Lita goes to the eyes to take over as the replay shows what a great job Trish did with that move. Lita goes top ram Trish's head into the steps, Trish elbows to block, leaps up and uses the stratusphere to flip Lita over and to the floor in a great bump. How many people invent better ways to do their trademark stuff in their last match on this continent? Back in and Lita uses the ropes to force the ref to back Trish off. Trish comes back and Lita kicks, hammers and drills her face into the mat to take over. Knee over the ropes to choke and Trish has actually toned down her selling a bit from how she usually sells a choke. Think it still works given the fact that she's playing the ACE and not the underdog at this point in her career. Good leaping knee to the back and Trish sure sells that. Snapmare and chinlock and Trish powers up with elbows then tries to run and gets dropped with a nasty hair pull. Lita actually has some of Trish's hair that she tosses away after that one. Lita hammers in the corner but stops to talk trash to the referee and Trish reverses her. Trish hammers away Austin style and add the corner foot choke, her face showing fire. Chops follow. Insane hand licking on the last one. Mini stinger splash but Lita elbows a second one and goes up top. Yup blocked for the Stratusphere but Lita's ready for that and they trade punches on the top rope and they fall to the apron and the floor in a heap. Lita climbs to the top rope so Trish leaps to the apron and leaps on her as they keep brawling. Lita falls to the apron again but grabs Trish's hair and VICIOUSLY beals her back to the center of the ring. This is a 120 lb woman taking these bumps. Lita goes for the moonsault to finish, something that she abandoned once her turned heel but it makes total sense given the stakes and the fact that it's probably beaten Trish like 50 times counting house shows. Trish rolls out of the way and Lita splats. Trish goes for the stratusfaction so Lita lifts and as they run tosses her casually over the top rope to the floor. Trish rolls with it but this is is some seriously insane bumping for someone her size in her last match. Cover gets 2 and Lita pounds away. Ref checks on Trish with her legit selling she's out of it. Lita arrogantly lifts her up, her smug body language here shows how totally the roles have been reversed. Good snap suplex follows. Soccer kick and Lita puts Trish's throat on the bottom rope then leaps up and hammer with a series of knees. Lita slaps her down and talks trash mocking her with a come on and hit me as Trish is out of it. Trish looks up and turns from KO'D to total rage and clobbers Lita. Trish with some forearms and a whip countered with a Russian leg sweep. Took a little bit but I've never had a problem with wrestlers not being as crisp late in a match. Lita hammers away again with more nasty punches and an arrogant cover gets 2. Lita with the sleeper, Trish powers and counters a clothesline with her neckbreaker. They trade hard serious forearms and punches, Trish wins and they do the whip into the corner stratusphere spot. Not sure they should have gone for that one again to be honest. I guess it makes sense that Lita is a top rope user, that's one of Trish's best moves and Lita is more tired now. Anyone care to comment? Trish gives a great get the F up to Lita and knocks her head off with the chick kick for 2. Eye rake from Lita and she goes for the DDT but Trish blocks and sets for the stratusfaction bulldog. Lita uses the ropes to block and lays down on Trish to cover using the ropes. Ref catches it and Trish sunset flips her to reverse. Instead of going for the pin Trish stands and says something to either Lita or the crowd as a parting farewell. Dunn's expert camera work leaves me clueless as to what it is. Trish then bust out the sharpshooter to a crazy pop. They give it an awesome struggle with Lita crawling and coming inches from the ropes and Trish pulling her back in. Lita taps and Trish releases it right away and drops, showing she had nothing left. Crowd pops big on that and Trish getting the title and just totally falling apart emotionally at what she's accomplished and done after six years of trying is such amazing feel good moment. And getting a great ovation as she does her farewell with a four corner lift of the title to say goodbye. Seriously who ELSE ever won their title in their home town against their arch rival their entire career in the WWF in their last match? Bruno Sammartino cannot say that. Hulk Hogan cannot say that. Bret Hart cannot say that. Ric Flair cannot say that. Shawn Michaels cannot say that. Steve Austin cannot say that. I seriously doubt Rock or Taker will get that finish. I could see them doing that with Cena and Boston booing him out of the building. It is the ULTIMATE storybook ending and one of the best feel good moments WWE ever did. This is one of my ten favorite matches to watch on an emotional level. Nobody ever overcame the odds Trish did to produce the quality work Trish did in WWF/E that I can think of at this time and Vince gave her a reward ending he's never given any of his top stars. And if anyone argues that was because she was a bathroom break worker and nobody even cared...........well I respectfully disagree. 4 and a quarter stars. Trish went out with her best match. Little things mentioned above and the fact that it's only about 12 minutes prevent a full monty but as a moment and a finish, IF you care about the people involved it's a 5 star moment for sure.

Trish Stratus vs. Lita - NYR 2005 Rematch time. Trish had crossed over into sociopath mode, basically telling the world Lita won ONCE using everything she had and Trish was gonna end her career in the rematch. Scarily she darn near kept that promise. She also showed the gloves were off as she SQUASHED Victoria the Raw before. I mean beat her pillar to post (and Trish not letting her opponent take more than half a match was unheard of) and cut a promo right after saying that's what she did and was going to do to Lita. They shoot each other looks of pure hatred as a big Lita chant starts right away. Man Lita was so over. They lockup and Trish wins that but lets go. The little looks they give each after that are nice. They lockup again and Lita casually dumps Trish to the floor and goes for a Thesz press off the apron to the floor. And she lands right on her knee and it gives out. She was out for 18 months in the ring from that injury. Yeah that's not good. Trish rolls her back in and pins her for 2. Match is OVER but they are trying to see if Lita can continue obviously. Trish hammers away, keeping her character which has got to be tough with her real life best friend in horrible pain right in front of her but she's a pro. Trish with an ankle lock to the good knee for 2 and Lita punches back but can't even stand up. She's done. Trish chokes and kicks the good leg as they try and buy Lita time to recover. They do a GINGER Irish whip spot (with Lita not actually moving) and Lita goes for the DDT but Trish kicks the leg and then hits a chick kick to regain the title. 1 and a quarter stars mostly for the professionalism, Lita trying to get herself back together and Trish's post match gloating which has to be seen. And that was it for the that feud as they moved on to LIta training Christy. I have heard Trish was booked to go over here and the blow off would be a ladder match at WM FWIW. They would stay out of each other's way when Trish came back in 2005 as a face and Lita was a heel for a while until the feud started up again when Lita beat Mickie James for the title and announced Trish's retirement to mess with her. Leading to their last and best match which I will cover tomorrow.

Trish Stratus vs. Lita - Raw December 6 2004 There's an absurdly complex amount of backstory to this but it basically amounts to this, Trish has been making Lita's life a living hell for months. Lita attempted revenge at Survivor Series but was so out of control she was DQ'D almost right away. She did break Trish's nose, necessitating a face mask. This was pretty much booked as Lita's last title shot and Trish had run through every other opponent at this point. It was also the first time the women main evented a Raw. And it wasn't an average main event either they built it up with video packages tracking the 4 and a half year rivalry/friendship the two women had. In ring storyline has always been that Lita is just a better wrestler but Trish being a nasty vicious sneaky heel who's turning borderline sociopath (and gets worse after this result) will DO anything to win and Lita's not been able to find a way to truly counter this and defeat her in the most personal way possible, taking away her championship. This almost reminds me of a women's version of Savage-Steamboat to be honest, but the finish is booked smarter IMO. Lita clearly wants to take Trish's head off but has cooled off enough to get that the title is the best way for revenge, you can see in the looks they exchange pre match. Yup WM III. Lockup and the hate is so great they actually tumble to the floor together rather than give an inch. Trish attacks to start and Lita goes for the turnbuckle smash, blocked by Trish who returns the favor, being a methodical striker at this point. Trish with the chop and backdrop but Lita kicks to counter. Clothesline is countered by the Ma Trish and Lita looks at it and simply kicks the leg away to cover for 2. Building the theme Lita is better and smarter when she is focused. Nice Russian leg sweep from Lita for 2 but Trish rakes the eyes. Trish charges but gets backdropped right to the floor. she broke her fall just a tiny bit or that would have been serious. Lita with an absolutely sweet running suicide dive through the ropes to nail Trish. That one bit her a month later. The way Lita landed on the replay looks like she hit Trish square in the face. And as a hurt LIta crawls back into the ring Trish removes her face mask and grins pointing to it, revealing the injury was a work designed to take out one of Lita's best offensive weapons. Her taunting and look of just pure evil as she does this is awesome. A star for that alone given it had a month buildup. Then when Lita comes over Trish drops her with it beyond the ref's view. This is great great heel stuff. Trish pats herself on the back as she enters and then has Lita struggle to crawl up her body to get up with Trish just looking down in total contempt. Trish hammers away and NOW her punches look good, showing hatred with each blow. Trish pounds her and uses her corner hangman's choke. LOOK at Trish's face. This is an all time top ten look of pure hatred from a heel in wrestling history. Lita snapmares Trish off with a nasty back bump off the top and goes for the sleeper but Trish rams her back into the corner. Trish snapmares and locks in a full nelson. Lita escapes and hammer back whipping Trish into the corner. Trish goes for the handspring to counter so Lita tosses her to the apron where Trish lands and they brawl some more. Lita gets the better of that and hits a top rope superplex for a huge pop and kudos to both for doing that at all, let alone so well. That gets 2. Lita goes for a clothesline as they stand, Trish ducks and hits a vicious chick kick for 2. Half the people in the front row are standing. Piss break match indeed. Trish hammers away with force and goes for the ten punches in the corner countered with a powebomb from Lita for 2. Moonsault is countered with a shot to the back, Trish puts Lita on her shoulders, Lita counters with a victory roll for 2 And darn close. They get up and Lita goes for her snap DDT which was her finish then but Trish holds the ropes to block and Lita eats mat. Trish puts her feet on the ropes to try and get a cheap win but Lita powers out. Trish hammers away fast and goes for the stratusfaction but Lita toss her back. Disoriented Trish is easy prey to Lita's twist of fate. Exhausted Lita climbs to the top rope and hits her moonsault for a 3 count. She had literally nothing left there storyline wise but the last move worked. This wasn't as technically complex as say Savage-Steamboat (to name a match I THINK influenced it) but it was amazing and told a great story. Lita won by using absolutely everything she had and was totally spent at the victory. She overcame the most nasty cheating heel she had ever faced and beat her clean with her best moves. For some odd reason this reminds me of the best Memphis matches in its heat. Lita's victory pop is just amazing too. One of the best 8 minute matches I have ever seen, if not THE best. 4 stars all the way.

Okay fair enough. I saw it too from first to last match and liked it a lot more than most. Nothing wrong there.

Gonna cover one of the 3 short Trish-Lita matches earlier mentioned Trish vs. Lita - Smackdown 2001 Both are faces but Trish had made out with both Hardy Boys for saving her from Big Show earlier. Lita is mad about this. Both women have to team up to face Stacy and Torrie at Invasion and this is to "settle their differences". Trish has gotten better but is still being booked as decent but not on Lita's level so i am expecting a semi comp squash. This is before Trish took 3 months off and got better as well. Trish comes off as trying to be nice and Lita comes across as pretty jealous in the pre match stuff but Lita is still more the face clearly. Lita talks trash and shoves Lita who's kinda coming off as a bully here to be honest. Odd dynamic. Trish slaps back and Lita knocks her silly with one punch establishing again, Trish has no real shot here. Flying clothesline by Lita which Trish sells like death. Corner whip and a hair pull with Trish doing a lot of work selling this. Trish baiils and does the UT necksnap (badly due to one of them) to come back. Trish with a kick and a good snap suplex. Stomp and a vicious soccer kick to the ribs from Trish who's now playing heel clearly. Trish hammers away to big Lita chants from the girls in the audience. Trish with her hangman's choke and a top rope bulldog for 2. Lita punches back and Trish rakes the eyes. Lita hammers back, hits a 2nd flying clothesline, twist of fate and moonsault for the pin. Lita does her stuff well and gets huge pops but she doesn't really cooperate with what her opponents have done. At some point she goes into superwoman mode hits all her stuff and wins. It's a lot like 96 Shawn Michaels actually. Credit to Cole for trying to get over how much Trish has improved. A 2 star match. Technically better than the Stacy match but Lita's psych was not there at all.

Really really sad. Done at a time when nobody even cared about WWE too. I wonder why NBC even went along with this.

Oh and Trish was a good tag wrestler as well. I will show some of her regular and mixed tags as I go on.

Trish, Test and Albert vs. Lita and the Hardy Boys - Fully Loaded 2000 The story here is that Trish cost the Hardys a match with her team and Lita attacked and knocked her out in revenge. So they had a six man on Smackdown where Trish made her in ring debut. She played a totally inept clueless cocky heel manager who had literally no chance to even hurt Lita let alone beat her. So T and A took Lita out and Trish pinned her. The feud escalated for months with Lita beating Trish like a drum every chance she got but never getting her full revenge. Instead Trish pushed our off a table through a ladder from the top tope, then cost her a title match against Stephanie then whipped her multiple times to set this up. I'm going to focus on Trish in this match as the vast majority of it is the men. I will say this T and A were great opponents for the Hardy Boys, being able to bump them around great for their bombs and sell the stuff when needed. The whole feud actually worked really well for teenage girls. Lita was their role model, being the cool girl who's an outsider and hangs out with the teen heart throbs but clearly is also reasonably wholesome and decent. Trish is the uber hot busty total blitch in high school who happens to have a few jock friends who act as bullies for her cause of her killer body. Said body makes every teen girl uncomfortable and envious and they can relate on several levels as to why Lita hates Trish. And the crowd is INSANE for this match, it is the opener in a hot period for WWE in general but everyone brings their A game and makes it a forgotten great PPV opener. Trish's outfit here is insanely hot, pink sports bra and shorts with black boots. She'd never wear it again sadly. She's also pretty oiled up as well. I guess I can live with all this as she's a sex symbol and a heel and not a worker at this point at all. Her strutting and flaunting are good, but nowhere near what they would be 4 years later. This is about 4 matches into her career and she's never done a single offensive move at this point but can bump really well for Lita. Lita charges Trish to start, blocked by Trish who casually struts to Lita over that fact. Little heel manager stuff. That's another factor in Trish's case. Unlike most of the heel managers who were hot women she added a lot and was not afraid to constantly play a cowardly wimp and get hers. She did some even better stuff with Christian and Tomko years later as a manager. Crowd starts a Lita chant man was she over in 2000. Jobbing her out to the insanely not over RTC Ivory was such a big mistake. Trish does a great little heel taunt when Test boots Matt, her cocky heel stuff is great for this, you really want to see Lita knock the smug look off her face. Trish tags in to a big pop and slaps Matt silly but misses a second one and hits Test. Matt tags Lita and Trish runs faster than a speeding bullet to avoid getting her butt kicked. Cornette and Heenan would be proud. Hardys and Lita hit a triple suplex on Test and Trish to an insane pop. Crowd is just eating this up. Eventually Lita faces Test doing well using Rey Mysterio vs Nash tactics until she gets powerbombed. Trish's jumping up and down and yelling tag me tag me has to be seen as it is awesome. Trish gets 2 then debut her great bulldog. Irish whip gets reversed and Trish goes up but gets blocked. They do a superplex and Lita hits the moonsault for 3 to a HUGE pop. Afterwards Trish attacks Lita with a belt whipping her down and strutting away, with Lawler commenting on how insanely hot she looks as she is sweating bullets. Lita got her revenge later that night whipping Trish during Val Venis/Rikishi. She cleaned Trish's clock in a strap match the next night but lost due to Stephanie interfering to transition to that feud. 3 and a half stars mostly for the guys performance. But Trish and Lita did everything they did well, the heat was nuclear and Trish played her cowardly wimp heel role who's learning a LITTLE bit how to wrestle well. They next moved Trish on to Chyna who squashed her so bad the Trish-Lita stuff looks like 50/50. This was the match that made me see something in Trish and I followed her career, actually watching WWE past 2002 mainly for about 5 people of which she was one. They'd have a mini feud in October of that year with Lita winning and again feuded in the summer of 2001 with both as babyfaces over Trish kissing the Hardys. Lita won that as well. They had another match in November of 2001 the night after Trish's first title victory, won by Trish with Matt's help (with Trish unaware of it) as they were building Matt to turn heel. They fought again the night after WM XVIII as relative equals for the first time with Lita winning clean there. Then Lita had her neck injury, was out 17 months and Trish took her spot as the top babyface of the division. That was it for any issues until 2004 when Lita came to rescue Jericho from Trish and Christian. They feuded off and on for the rest of the spring and summer with Lita taking time off with the pregnancy angle. I'll cover the Raw match next and the PPV rematch and then finish with Unforgiven 2006 for that feud. Those are 2 of Trish's 4 star matches IMO. Keep in mind that as this feud goes on there's a theme. Face or heel Trish CANNOT beat Lita 1 on 1 fairly without any help. That's important to the final payoff.

Trish Stratus vs. Jackie Gayda - Raw November 2003 I think this is Vegas and was the roulette wheel thing leading to a bra and panties match. I said I'd cover every singles opponent Trish ever had so I guess I can cover this one. After this I am going to cover the Lita feud, which was certainly her most memorable opponent, in detail as it ran nearly both's entire career off and on. Their tag the year prior is legendary for bad matches and proof that in 2002 Trish was not ready to carry someone totally inept. She could get bad but not spectacularly bad stuff with Stacy and Terri at that point but Jackie Gayda was too much Jackie is with Rico doing an update for the Adrian/Linda gimmick. This was during the start of the Jericho storyline with Trish which I feel is great stuff and which they basically wrote together as much as they could to avoid the writers destroying it. Jackie attacks from behind to start. Whip and sunset flip from Jackie where she tries to pull Trish's pants down but Trish rolls through and pulls her shirt off. Jackie uses the drop toe hold into the ropes that seems to be Trish's version of Bret's chest first into the buckles spot. Jackie chokes Trish out with her shirt, usually great selling from Trish, Jackie is at least trying here. Tree of woe and Jackie kicks away. Trish is helpless so Jackie easily strips her. Well the psychology for THIS sort of match makes perfect sense I will give it that. Trish chops away but her whip into the corner is elbowed. Jackie climbs to the top rope and Trish goes for the stratusphere. Jackie blocks and tries to strip Trish's pants but Trish hooks the legs harder and flips her over with the move. Not bad really. Rico tries to interfere so Trish tosses him in and strips him. The pecking order seems to be that Trish is capable of handling the lowest of the two (Rico, Richards) on the male heel side. Jackie goes the kick, hits Rico so Trish strips her for the win with a rollup. This was a comedy match but had at least one decent spot in it. 1 and a quarter stars. Which is JG's career highlight I think.

It would be like trying to introduce Flair to someone and showing them the JYD and Evolution stuff first.