Jimmy Redman

The feud was built well enough so that the match being made did mean something, Obviously not to the level of the GIF though.

And sorry Johnny but the mob is right in this case. Hunter for the most part is a really shitty heel.

OK, I posted in that other thread 5 minutes too early, because the Sheamus/Rusev headbutt exchange on the apron is the most excited I've been by something in a ring since Summerslam.

I assume Swagger is only there to be taken out on the night to get Orton in as the surprise member.

Current Favorite Wrestler to Watch Stephanie McMahon. And Lana. That's not entirely correct because neither are active wrestlers, but they're the two performers in wrestling that I have the most interest in at the moment. Not sure what that says about me. Or current wrestling. For an actual wrestler, I'll be predictable and say Rusev. Last Fun Match You Saw The Dragon Gate six man from ROH 2006. Balls to the wall fun. Wrestler You Want to See More of So, so many. Today I'll say the Destroyer. Last Live Show Attended WWE house show back in August. Had a great Sheamus/Cesaro match and a great Usos/Wyatts match, so I more than got my money's worth, even with a Reigns/Kane main event. Match You Are Looking Forward to Watching Soon the Most Cena vs Brock III, I guess. Last Fun Interview/Promo You Saw The Ryback/Axel conversation on Superstars. Last Interesting Thing You Read about Wrestling Parv going through the Brisco matches is pretty interesting. Last Worthwhile Wrestling Podcast You Heard I listened to the Wrestling Culture podcast on John Cena last night. Most Fun You've Had Watching Wrestling Lately I've been watching a fair bit of Raw from 2004 lately, since I have the tapes, and believe it or not that has been really fun. That's my childhood.

Disappointing to me personally because of wasted potential as a worker: HHH and Kurt Angle. Guys who have shown me glimpses of utter greatness, but who too often fall short due to their terrible ideas of how to be a great wrestler. For Hunter it's bloated NWA Champ cosplaying without showing ass, and for Angle its spotfu. Disappointing because they never became as big a star as I thought they should: Mr Kennedy and MVP in WWE. After the Class of 2005, those two looked like the next sure fire prospects to be elevated to main events. Kennedy was well on his way until he got injured and lost MITB, and somehow never recovered. His unpopularity/backstage issues probably did him in. MVP was done by the drug tester incident. It still annoys me when I see Kennedy in 2005-06 or MVP in 2007 and think about how far they should have gone, and how they both ended up screwed.

One of my all-time favourite spots in any match ever:

As a love letter to John Cena this was amazing and I loved it. Tiny things that the nerd in me wanted to clarify: - Cena vs Undertaker was Vengeance 2003 - The Benoit thing you were thinking of was the Paul Heyman "wash your mouth out with soap" deal. Cena beat Rhyno and so Heyman (as the loser by proxy) had to get his mouth washed out. He tried to run so Benoit caught him and put him in the Sharpshooter while Cena literally shoved bars of soap in his mouth to close SD. Fun times. This was January 2004, just before Benoit won the Rumble and jumped. He and Cena were both kind of feuding with Heyman at the time. There was this deal, then Heyman made them qualify for the Rumble, putting Benoit #1 and so on. But they were both right there at the time and were semi-buddies as the top faces. - On 2007, I feel like they were gearing up for Orton to win the belt by the end of their feud, probably actually at No Mercy in the scheduled LMS before Cena went down. I'm pretty sure that it was reported at the time that Orton was getting the belt. Take that for what it's worth. From there, I wonder if Cena gets it straight back like they did with Edge, or Orton defends against the Shawns and Jerichos for a while (like in reality) and maybe Cena wins the Rumble anyway, and they do Cena regaining against Orton at WM24. Maybe Hunter wins the Rumble and Cena does something else for Mania. 2008 was still a time where there was more than just Cena as a credible headliner, so it's conceivable that he may not have been in the title match per se. Maybe he works against a Batista or something since Batista ended up doing nothing important. But they also hadn't done Cena winning the title back at Mania yet, he'd only defended it in 2006 and 07, so they may have gone down that road.

Wasn't that when Tully was fired by WWF over cocaine or something?

You still haven't explained what you didn't like the match.

Ok too late on the harping thing. I like Mark Henry when he actually delivers. Just the Raw match was a terrible Mark Henry match. That's it. That's fine, take no issue at all with what you just said. However, other people will feel differently, and that's okay too. Cool. I just think the wait until Show or Henry are just referred to as old and broken down rather than cerebral masters of graps game is going to curious and long one in some (not generalising about all of PWO here) quarters. I am more than open to completely changing my opinion of them if they offer a heated and spirited physical confrontation. Or if either has another "Indian Summer" career wise but at the moment nah. uh I stand corrected. But you are just isolating a word here rather than looking at what I actually wrote/crux of my point. If my point was just people are pretending I would have just said people are pretending and let that be that be. If that was just point I would have remembered even using the point. If you want to harp on one word reaching would be a better one. As liking the Henry/Show match requires all the bad points about the match and labelling them as good. They weren't smartly working around their limitations they were trying and failing to have a good match that the crowd could care about. Bad points...to you. What did you think were the bad things about the match (other than the crowd wasn't engaged)? I liked the opening where Show was hurt and out for revenge and was just tossing Henry into anything and everything. That made sense based off the angle so far and Show's promo beforehand. I like that they take big bumps with each other like being tossed off the top and the spear on the floor. Guys that big should just throw bombs at each other. I'm not even saying it was that great or anything, but I enjoyed it and thought it was perfectly fine, and not terrible or something that people have to reach or pretend or whatever to like.

"Pretending" to like Mark Henry is still a thing? What is this, 2006? Their Raw match was fine. Nothing special, but it was a fun, smaller version of their match. I liked Show really railing on Henry at the start like he threatened to do in his promo. Not sure what "their matches kill feuds" means when their last feud (2011) was really good and the matches delivered above and beyond. They had the great MITB match and Vengeance broken ring match. I thought Survivor Series was really good too. Their Chairs match was just kind of short, but Chairs matches are generally handicapped. This was just the first Raw match with a bullshit finish to set up the feud for later, since they're presumably going to be in the SS match. Not sure what was supposed to be so terrible about it. I think Henry is awesome. Not "awesome if we devalue the term", not "awesome in reaction to people thinking he sucks". Just awesome. I love this man. I thought Henry/Punk from Raw was a genuine MOTYC and I put it in my end-of-year Top 10 article. I've enjoyed all of the Henry/Show matches. I don't care if anyone disagrees, but assigning motives and getting into "you're just pretending to" and "standards must have dropped" territory is a really arrogant, douchey way of saying "The way I like wrestling is the right and only way", and if anyone likes other stuff, they're not only wrong about what wrestling they should like, but they're willfully lying about it for some unclear ulterior motive. Fuck off with that shit.

That's what I mean. As it is, only the few thousands of people in the arena saw it happen. If it were televised, the hundreds of thousands who watched the PPV would have as well, and there would be actual footage of the incident that would have been exploited.

It sure did.

The plan for WM22 before Eddie died was him vs Shawn. I assume the planned title match for SD was Batista vs Orton. Moving Angle over was a result of Dave going down. So Angle may have even stayed on Raw through that time. I don't think there's any way Rey gets his run if those two things don't happen. So there wouldn't be too much changing. The top of the card would have probably looked like this. WWE Title: Cena vs Hunter World Title: Batista vs Orton Guerrero vs Shawn Edge vs Foley Undertaker vs Henry Since both Angle and Rey have nothing to do in this scenario, maybe they match up? Although they'd have been on different brands. Maybe they do Taker vs Angle at WM instead. Rey does something in the midcard because croozerweightslol. You also wonder if Shawn works with Eddie, and Vince still wants to wrestle at WM, who does he work?

It's kind of amazing the luck, like it's not really luck but to put it morbidly, that befell Vince and the company that they happened to be showing a vignette on TV when Owen died. Airing a guy's death on live TV like that would have made it a lot worse.

Wait, it's weird to love that match?? Because I totally love that match. I'm with you completely, King makes Bundy look great, at the same time finding a way to outsmart Hart and work the gimmick. It's one of those ideas that are long overdue to be stolen by someone today.

Yeah, Joe's position strikes me as weird because he admits to loving impressive athleticism, faster pace and spots, and joshi is basically Dragon Gate on speed. He's the last guy I'd expect to dismiss the girls on account of athleticism, since they tend to work a style, or at least a pace, that he should prefer. But there you go.

If you'd said that in the first place instead of "I can only rank women against other women", I'd have no problem. That's all I take issue with. But let's leave it.

I get looking at the nominated female wrestlers and not ranking them in your 100. I get that for the kind of wrestling you prefer you can't get next to joshi or other female wrestling. What I don't get is the, for lack of a better word, segregation. Like, with placing a premium on athleticism there must be other types of wrestlers that don't fit what you think good wrestling is and wouldn't rank them. Fat guys? Memphis guys? I'm sure you've gone into this, but I dunno. But say, for the sake of argument, that you think all fat man wrestlers are terrible because they're fat and they can't compete athletically with your guys. Would you just look at Bigelow, Henry, Blackwell individually and say "Nope, he's a fat guy, won't make my list." Or would you say "Fat wrestlers can't compete athletically so therefore I can't even compare them to the rest of the wrestling population and they need their own sub-group where I only rank them against each other, and not other kinds of wrestlers, because they're too clearly inferior to even be in the same conversation."

Yeah, that. I'm not sure what makes female wrestlers so far out there when we're comparing luchadors to garbage workers to WWE main eventers to British workers to 50s stars to puro guys to minis to...to... I've never understood why some guys seem to have this hang up about female wrestling. In this and in the other "you must be grading on a pretty big curve!" thread. They're just wrestlers. Smaller, skinnier wrestlers with longer hair (but not always) and bigger tits (again not always). So, just smaller, skinnier wrestlers. Don't overthink it.

Jenna Morasca is surely disqualified for being a celebrity. Or a "celebrity". That Nathan Jones debut wasn't that bad. It was pretty short and he didn't screw anything up. There have been plenty of worse debuts than that, even in recent company history. Kizarny, for example. Vladimir Kozlov. Unless that particular match wasn't supposed to be evidence against him. Not that Jones was any good either.

In the sense that I just don't like it very much. I'm so new to so many of these styles and periods of time and companies and workers that I'm trying to give everyone and everything a decent shot to win me over, even if they didn't at first glance. But that stuff, nope, I can't do it. My problem with the style is mainly that it's just...too shooty. They work too stiff. And I mean I get that that's what they're going for, but it doesn't appeal to me. I'm certainly not against stiffness altogether, but they cross the line where I start thinking "Wrestling is supposed to be a work...please stop killing each other." And that just takes me out of it. Plus I don't find the matwork they do compelling at all (matwork in itself isn't one of my favourite things) so all I got left is striking which makes me cringe. And add in the presentation of this stuff where they're in a dimly lit gym somewhere, tiny crowds, no announcing so all you get is the guys grunting and huffing and screaming, while Ikeda throws multiple vicious punt kicks to the head of a downed, defenseless Ishikawa, and it all starts to get a bit...snuff film-y for me. I don't really want to be watching this. It's the same way in which I don't like ultraviolent and crazy death match stuff as a style either. I stop enjoying the violence as a spectacle and start cringing and thinking "Ugh, why would you do that to yourself??" And that's the point at which they lose me.

To get this back on point, it's unlikely that I'll rate Ikeda, Ishikawa, or any of those modern, Battlarts era shoot-style guys. I'm keeping as open a mind as possible, but those guys are a bridge too far.