Jimmy Redman

That is another fun match too where they won them.

The AMW vs XXX feud is really good, not just for the famous cage matches but their regular matches too. It mostly takes place in 2003 as I recall.

That was the weirdest part of the whole thing. There was this awesome match, guys killing themselves, crowd going nuts, announcers getting excited...and there's Cena with his monotone robot voice. I think he was going for super serious athlete studying the match, but he came off as half asleep and unengaged.

Someone said last week that not being emotionally invested in WWE makes watching the shows easier, because you can walk in, enjoy the good matches and walk out. That's where I am now. I couldn't give a shit if Steph wants to take all the credit and take all the agency from the girls, I don't care if it all goes to shit when Vince is next distracted, don't care if they don't book it right. I just had a whole bunch of awesome girls brawling around and forearming each other in a cool segment that got awesome chants. That's good enough for me. The triple threat was amazing, I actually enjoyed it more than any single other match this year, except maybe Sasha-Becky. Fucking awesome all the way through. I kept biting on everything, I would think they had done everything and then they'd pull out something else. Plus so much cool shit every single second. Wowzers. I think my favourite moment out of a million favourite moments was when Cesaro nailed the Tornillo dive and almost fell over himself in celebration. The Cena aspect was fascinating, and another cool checkpoint in the John Cena Midlife Crisis. He couldn't even pretend to feel bad about beating the shit out of a defenseless dude who's just been through hell. He was just relieved to have an easy night in the ring for once, without having to renege on the Open Challenge. And then he STILL almost lost (the man can't win when he works heel). I love everything.

I think you can watch a guy have a bunch of great matches, and then get to the point where you're sick of him and from there on out you don't find anything else of his great or ever want to revisit the great stuff. Doesn't mean the things you thought were great weren't great, but just that you have no desire to see any more of him, and thus anything of his you watch from that point on, you probably won't find it great because you never want to see him ever again. If that makes sense.

To me the two absolute essentials from WWE are vs Sheamus (2/3 Falls) Extreme Rules 2012 vs Cena Summerslam 2013

For me the case for Taker is simply the strength of his best performances. I'm a huge fan of the Mania matches, and there are also other strong runs during recent years like 2007. But more than just matches, I feel like the things he does, he does so well in a way that nobody else could manage. We joke about him being a Zombie MMA Biker, but it's a credit to him that he is able to combine all of those disparate elements into something that not only works but has credibility, which isn't easy for a supernatural gimmick in the 21st century. Also, I think he is far better at things like selling than he's usually given credit for. I remember back in 2010 during the "Vegetative State/Kane stole my powers via urn" thing, and he had a match on SD where he looked off his game, tired and old. People were talking about how he was too old and he should retire already. Then weeks later, he got his powers back in the storyline, had a rematch with this guy and worked out his skin looking like his usual self, and I realised that all of that weak looking stuff we saw...people thought he was legit too old to work, but it was just him selling the shit out of the angle. I loved that and I came away super impressed with his ability to sell even with such a no-selling character.

Whereas I come down much more on Will's side because to me, if I like it, it must be good. But I think the disparity of philosophies about that is one of the strengths of the project. I wouldn't want everyone to think through the same lens.

How can anyone hate that Survivor Series match? Do you hate rainbows and sunshine and 'Murica and FUN?? "Mike Knox superkicked right away" is the most hilarious undersell of that whole opening gambit, Holy shit haha.

Cena won't retire retire unless he is physically forced to. I think as he does get older and this run catches up on his body for good, he'll eventually transition into an Undertaker/Shawn-style "couple months a year" veteran schedule, and maybe in the end a late Undertaker-style "big Mania match every year" schedule, BUT with a whole lot of TV appearances and General Manager stints and other tricks to keep him on TV. He'll basically be as visible as possible while limiting his actual matches, if it comes to that. But in any case, he's not going anywhere for a long, long time.

Yeah, that seems like a weird argument for rissolling the DVDVR and coming here when I'd wager there are just as many people here who would argue that Sasha is on that level. I read your review of the feud before saw this, and I was just about to say that I popped when you pointed out the same little spot with the ref's shoe that I raved about years ago. It's kind of gratifying that you see me in that light though. I rarely feel like that myself simply because I know next to nothing about so much of the wrestling that you guys regularly talk about, so I feel more like someone pressed up against the glass.

Bret is a guy that I have no idea what to do with. I'm probably rare for the kind of wrestling fan that we are in that I didn't grow up with Bret Hart nor live through his era. I have zero personal attachment to him. I haven't even seen a lot of his major work, to be honest, and I'd appreciate someone letting me know what gaps I should fill to get a fuller picture of him. I've seen the Austin feud, the Owen feud, KOTR '93 and a bunch of Hart Foundation stuff. Bret is a guy who just doesn't grab me in any way. He's sort of...too serious, in a way that makes him bland and not engaging. I love the Austin matches, but that's mainly because Austin brought something out of him. I love the Owen matches, but mainly for the brother dynamic. When Bret is the main force driving the match, I come away cold, because I find Bret so uninteresting. His super earnest, super serious, super logical approach isn't for me. Like, I can see that he clearly puts a lot of thought and effort into how his matches look, how they're structured and presented and worked. But maybe it's like...he thinks about it too much. It's like someone writing fantasy wrestling where they have so much time to think about every single word in the promos they're writing, every single little detail in angles, every single move in a match, and want to construct it all within an inch of its life so everything is perfect...and it ends up being too much. WWE can overproduce certain modern wrestlers and matches, but Bret overproduces himself. There's a lot of thought put into minor details and into keeping everything perfectly smooth and logical, and the big picture suffers. Sometimes the illogical move is the best move. Sometimes things need to be messy, or illogical. That is what gives you that human element, that connection. I don't get that from Bret. He seems like he's trying too hard to be a great wrestler. But maybe it's just me. And like I said I am open to suggestions for essential Bret viewing.

Yes.

To be honest I don't think it becomes watchable as a good show until late 2008 when you have a core roster of Matt, Henry, Finlay and Miz & Morrison. 2007 has good points like that 8-man tag and Punk's rise to the title, but it's still not particularly good as a week to week show. Especially coming in cold in hindsight like ElP is.

I will say, the man did have fabulous hair. Shame about the boat race.

I don't find either guy particularly attractive, but with a gun to my head...Rusev. If you look past all the wrestling scowling he has a nice kind of boyish face.

For a second I read "Halloween" and got all excited for you to review the MONSTER MASH BATTLE ROYAL, then I remembered that wasn't until 2007. Only 52 more weeks to go!

Yeah I'd say Hunter did the most individual damage in that period. On Hogan's selling, I feel like just because it may not be realistic selling, doesn't necessarily make it bad or ineffective selling. There's Terry Funk's goofy selling, for one example. Hogan himself is a cartoon. Cartoonish, OTT selling fits the character, and it was effective at gaining sympathy and peaking crowds for his comeback. I think a lot of it has to with Being Hulk Hogan, but not all of it, because there are guys who have charisma and who are over to a crowd who then lose them during the match, or can't get that timing right.

To be fair to those, the OP also said Which means worst, so the question wasn't exactly clear.

Yeah by the time Edge and Lita became a pair on TV they'd already broken up, but I don't think it was because of sinister Vince home-wrecking aspirations as much as that's how long it took for them to give up on Lita as a babyface, reach out to Matt and do something with the story.

He had the Jeff Hardy feud in 2009, which had a lot to do with out of the ring stuff but also delivered in the big matches. The Punk vs Morrison series of TV matches in 2009 was also very good. Mid-2009 was that 'New Smackdown Six' period of the show and Punk was a part of that, albeit probably the most minor contributor in terms of solely matches, but between those two big feuds there's some volume there that he had lacked in WWE up until that point. I agree that his 2010 is awfully empty of matches save for the Rey feud. He was stuck in a dead-end Big Show feud for ages though.

Yeah, "valid" is entirely the wrong word to use I think. They're both valid perspectives, just different ones.

Yeah actually, I think too many people are going to not rank Lawler for him to challenge Flair in the final voting.

Does Hansen count? Him, King and possibly Terry Funk are the only ones I'd imagine.

It's not just that brand new eyes will be on the project, but even regular posters are more involved with wrestling around that time. Anyone who runs a wrestling site will tell you that Mania time is when they get the most traffic, most members viewing the board and posting, as well as the most new members. It's "wrestling season". Whether that is a good enough reason to make it the deadline if a majority of people want a few extra months, I don't know. I don't mind either way. But it's about more than the theoretical risk of having wwefan4eva come in and deciding to submit a surface-level ballot that we all won't like very much.