Jimmy Redman

The idea that there is now a dedicated thread for in-depth analysis of this match just because I threw it on my list is incredible. Love your work Loss. The finish being such a reversal of the usual tag team formula is what is particularly interesting to me. Reminds me of that Jerishow/Cryme Tyme match with the hot tag-KO Punch finish. Are there any other notable examples people can think of where there was a finish that completely went against standard tag norms?

Yeah just turned this on. Gunner/Storm was OK, good finish though.

I can believe that maybe Punk sold more t-shirts than Rey. I don't believe for a second Punk has sold more merch than Rey.

I think he meant more in terms of Punk being burnt out in 2011 and wanting to leave in the first place, and then staying on another 2 1/2 years. Helps when you get to be a top guy though.

The placements of Cesaro/Regal and Punk/Taker I figured would be the main ones. I'm going to talk about the things I wasn't wild about in Cesaro/Regal that will make it sound like I didn't like the match, but believe me, I really did. It was so great. Putting it as "low" as I did isn't really damning since I loved everything on the list. There were just a couple things that stood out to me that kind of bothered me that meant I didn't put it as high as the dozens of other matches that I just liked more. Overall the match just wasn't as complete as I wanted it to be. It felt more like a bunch of cool ideas all thrown at the wall, rather than a coherent whole. There were sections I loved (the first part) and definitely spots I loved (the snapmare thing, the stretch muffler, the stomp to the head, Jesus, too many to name) but there were also other sections and spots I felt didn't fit and it just felt a little bit less than the sum of its parts. Like they just tried to stuff too much cool stuff into one match rather than relax and tell one complete story. The leg and arm selling bothered me. You know how people criticise juniors matches or whatever and say "You could have held up a sign saying 'we will now run through highspots'"? Like they flip a switch from selling whatever to no-selling. For me, Regal getting chop blocked and immediately screaming in terror was the opposite of that, they could have held up a sign saying 'we will now proceed to the leg work portion of the evening'. Just a bit too on the nose for me. And the bicep attack I found just as hacky. He gets kicked once in each arm and suddenly he's in agony and trying to pop his shoulders back into place. I didn't buy it. The other main thing that bothered me was the overdramatics at the finish. I'm not opposed to re-creating the Shawn/Flair vibe on a smaller scale in theory, but it felt like it came out of nowhere and didn't make sense after Cesaro was such a heel going in. There was no real significant 'mentor/student' relationship established to make sense out of Cesaro completely abandoning his character and motivation going in to take pity on Regal. Regal was just the resident NXT Legend that Cesaro wanted to destroy to assert his dominance. Felt like a misguided attempt to make it more "epic". Once again, I liked the match a lot. I guess just not quite as much as I wanted to.

I'm pretty sure Hunter is going to lose to Bryan. My question/fear is how bad Hunter will make Bryan look before that happens, both in promos and then in the body of the match.

I've watched Sheamus/Barrett and Sheamus/Cesaro from ME back-to-back like three times now, trying to figure out which one I liked more. I'm still not convinced. The Barrett match was amazing. Interested to hear which ones you disagreed with though.

Orton will run in, there won't be a finish.

Because wrestling is rarely ever a fascimile of real sports. It is its own art form with established conventions and tropes. One of those is selling, that to express to the audience that you're hurt, you act like you're hurt. If you're not acting like you're hurt, you must not be hurt. It may not be what you'd do in a football game, but that's not what wrestling is trying to be. Wrestling is fake, the only way to know if someone is supposed to be hurt or not is for them to show that by selling.

If he does fight Hunter they will GUARANTEED bring it up. Punk is Punk, and you know Hunter is already salivating at the prospect of chewing him out with "you took your ball and went home" type shots. Think about the history of these two having televised conversations.

So I wrote a little* piece for Wrestling101 about my Top 100 matches of 2013 for WWE. TV was so great last year I couldn't limit myself to anything less. Since a lot of you folks are closely following WWE and there's been a lot of talk about the quality of WWE TV lately, I'd love to hear your thoughts and disagreements. http://www.wrestling101.com/home/2014/03/the-redman-report-top-100-wwe-matches-of-2013/ * Not little

The problem with figuring out the "work" or not aspect is that the minute that Punk comes back, it will definitely turn into a work. So you get people (not you, I'm just saying generally) going "See I told you it was a work all along!" when in reality that doesn't mean it was always a work and doesn't tell us when things turned from shoot to work or whatever.

Because it eliminates the possibility of doing what people actually want, which is inserting Bryan into the match.

Tell me you didn't skip the 2005 Rumble match itself. It's one of my favourites. I agree with you about the 2005 Chamber too, I love it and think it's the most underrated one, since nobody seems to mention it when the subject comes up.

Heel Dave is already a vast improvement.

Sorry, I read your post as you presenting your own opinion. I see it better now. I completely understand why it mattered to Steamer.

I disagree with this as well. You can plan out the best match in the world move by move, but you still have to go out there and execute it, and have the charisma and ability to project and sell whatever it is to make it work.

The Undertaker matches. The Hunter HIAC match. The 2010 heel run and matches with Cena and Rey. Those would be the main highlights. And on your second question, I actually thought before he came back that he'd be massively over and easily play the big babyface star in marquee Mania match role. Batista just felt to me like the kind of big star that the "casuals" would say "I wish so-and-so would come back, he was awesome" about. Like Goldberg or Rock or Austin or whoever. And I mean the ratings for his return were through the roof, so there was clearly interest there in seeing him. BUT Daniel Bryan and the Rumble happened. I think in an alternate universe where Bryan hadn't had the last 6 months he had and wasn't "supposed" to win the Rumble and the title to complete the story WWE seemingly didn't realise they were telling, Dave wouldn't have been shitted on to this degree. Maybe a little if people cottoned onto him blowing up or not changing anything, and because crowds are so smarky and he's not a workrate guy, but there wouldn't be this overwhelming sense of "Fuck this guy for taking Bryan's spot" if it wasn't Bryan's spot to take. He wouldn't be getting Alberto babyface heat. But things are the way they are, and everyone and their dog realise that Batista was not the man for this spot.

I don't think there would be a less likely way for Batista to turn face to the people who are booing him than by having him squash Dolph Ziggler, short of squashing Bryan or Punk. EDIT: Reading the spoilers, it sounds more like deliberately booking him as the heel, rather than trying to make him John Cena Mk II:

To demonstrate: 2007: 2009 2014 In 2006-07 he was swollen as hell. Barely even had abs he was so bloated. Dat fat face. Then when he became the Viper and feuded with Cena he became super skinny and shredded. He's gradually bulked back up since then, but he's still toned and not a bloated fuck like he was before.

Numbers aside, he is smaller though. Bigger now than he was at his leanest (2009 bald, alien-looking era) but look at him from around 2006-07 and he is one puffed up beach ball. Even if you say the difference is between 250 and 220 or something, the point remains.

Masters of the ladder match would seem to be more guys like Edge, Christian or Jeff Hardy. Not sure which one, if any, I'd argue for though. Cena is always good for a Last Man Standing. That's a match WWE does really well though so that may not just be him. Shelton Benjamin was always the highlight of any early MITB match, in fact it seemed to be his only reason for employment towards the end.

Also, Goldberg.

I think it's exactly that. Guys know about their entry and elimination, and if they are doing any significant spots - Kofi's antics, a big face off, if they're involved in the finish, etc. They wouldn't go into much more detail than that because, as you say, it's too much detail to plan out every single minute. You can pretty easily tell the parts of the Rumble that aren't scripted, because the vast majority of it is punch/kick and attempting to throw someone over/save yourself.

Bryan actually got hurt from bumping in the ring after the dropkick off the top, not the crash into the barricade. The crash he was just selling, after he hits the dropkick you can see that something is wrong because he doesn't move, the ref swoops and they immediately go into time-killing mode. Not that Bryan doesn't do stupid stuff, but in this case he was hurt from a pretty straightforward dive off the top.