Jimmy Redman

It has only just occurred to me that as an Australian, I know absolutely zero about Kiwi history.

Every time I read this thread I try to come up with a post, and I can never do it. I can talk about something in a specific match I did or didn't like, and why, but trying to put it into the abstract and detail general tropes or concepts that I think are better than others is almost impossible. Wrestling is too broad. Whenever I consider something, it just makes me think of all the matches I liked that didn't have it and all the matches that had it that I didn't really like. I don't like spotfests with no rhyme or reason or selling...except all of those mindless spotfests that I really love. I like matches to tell a specific story...except all of those matches that don't have a cohesive story that I still like. I don't like stiffness for stiffnesses sake...except those times when I think it's awesome. I love intricate counter sequences and "learned counters"...except when I think those spots are contrived and eschew selling. Consistent selling is super important to me...unless I can justify its absence to myself anyway. I want to be able to suspend my disbelief...but I love the shit out of ridiculous comedy that burns kayfabe to the ground. I hate finisher kickout overkill...except when it happens in matches that I like. I can't get a handle on my own preferences, because there are too many exceptions to every rule. It's unhelpful, and not in the spirit of PWO to say "I like what I like", but that is as far as I can boil it down to. Good wrestling: I know it when I see it.

The UK gets two TV tapings a year from WWE. Most cities in America except the major markets are lucky to get one.

I feel the same way. The only people I know in real life who watch wrestling are the kind of super casual fan you'd never be able to have a wrestling discussion with. When it comes up they tell me how much they love Randy Orton, love Triple H, when's Undertaker coming back, I hate Brock Lesnar because he hurts people for real, calling Bryan "goatface" non-ironically, etc. I never know what to say to that. In July 2011 me and my friends went to Melbourne for a holiday. I had accepted that I was going to miss MITB live and just watch a replay when we got back...and then Punk's promo happened. At that point there was no way I was missing that shit, so when the day came (PPVs air morning/lunchtime Monday in Australia) I left them in the middle of shopping or whatever and went to an internet cafe to watch the PPV live. One of my friends who was with me on the trip is a big wrestling fan, and had NO IDEA why I did this, what the big deal was about Punk or his promo or why I wanted to watch the show. No idea. Experiences like these are why I never, ever underestimate that there are the dreaded "casual fans" out there who are completely unlike us in every way. Like in the Bryan thread, this is why I was so adamant when people were skeptically asking if fans would actually believe Hunter when he calls Bryan a goatfaced troll and a B+ player. Yes, yes they would. I know they would because I am friends with them and they happily tell me! I don't hide my fandom. I try not to shout it from the rooftops, but my friends know. My family knows. I wouldn't bring it up really, but I wouldn't deny it either. Being a girl it's not really likely to come up in conversation randomly.

Well they worked together every day for another 18 months after that, and as far as can be ascertained they are still on friendly terms, so I doubt it would really be an issue.

Jeff is still around, and looks to be debuting his Willow the Wisp character in TNA. There's a vignette floating around that I can't be bothered to find, but it's on Youtube.

I think what has changed with the merch talk, if anything, is that now with the dominance of the "WWE brand" in terms of the traditional measures of drawing (houses, PPV buys, etc.), a guy selling merch is one of the only ways left to demonstrate being a draw and making the company money as an individual. Hogan, Austin and etc. sold merch, and it was talked about, but it wasn't basically the major measure of their popularity, because they also drew monster houses and PPV buys and ratings.

Dolph and Kofi had a 2/3 Falls match on Raw where the first fall happened during the break.

I'm a Mark Henry guy but I'll disagree that he moved the needle with the Money in the Bank show. Similar to the Rumble, people buy in for the gimmick match(es) here - two ladder matches and potential surprise cash-ins. It was a GREAT angle but I don't think we see a bounce if this was before, say, the Payback show. Which Ryback match is he referring to - the Hell in a Cell from 2012 or one of his matches with Cena from 2013? HIAC 2012. And I disagree that Henry couldn't have moved numbers on MITB, because if it is purely the gimmick that sells, you wouldn't be able to have an increase of like 40% domestic buys or whatever it was. The ladders don't change year-by-year, certainly not to that degree. The Rumble sells itself, but that doesn't mean Jeff Hardy didn't draw that big number for his 2008 match.

Because they're all related anyway.

I remember how cool and special a Hunter vs Taker main event on Smackdown was (this was in 2008) when they ran the entire 15-20 minute match with no commercial breaks. It's one of those things that, like the rest of you, I'm completely desensitised to. But if you step back and think about it, in a perfect world, they wouldn't happen. Random cheap plug, but for my Rebooking NXT thread, I'm sure it doesn't come across in the writing because I don't think I've mentioned it, but the way I picture it the matches don't have any ad breaks in the middle of them. Mainly just as another way to differentiate it from the rest of WWE programming.

Years ago on my board someone made the same point and we ended up making a thread listing all of the non-surnamed male wrestlers we could think of. There were more than you'd expect at first glance (and more girls with surnames as well) but still. It's such a weird trope.

They've been using the phrase for years, far more than anything about challenging for the title. It's always "headlining Mania!" and "main event of Wrestlemania!" I wouldn't read anything into it.

Sometimes I just hate the internet. I'm sure I would have enjoyed Ishii/Naito a little more had I not already read people rate it from anywhere between five and ten million stars. But I did, so all I ended up thinking when it was over was "that wasn't ten million stars."

Look at that drop in the last hour! Clearly that workrate geek John Cena can't move the numbers!!! Stop wanting him to get pushed!! Or something.

Will be really interesting to see how the numbers for tonight's show compare, assuming they stick to the planned format of Orton/Cena in the main event. I expect the crowd to shit on that match, but if it manages to spike the ratings where Bryan/Orton had a drop then it will only lend more fuel to the fire. Do long main event singles matches usually have pretty steady ratings or even growth regardless of who is in them? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the 3rd hour drops sem-frequently if only because it's so hard to watch 3 hours of wrestling at a time every week. Without having any specifics, my understanding is that long main events aren't great for ratings. I just seem to remember too many times we'd be days out from some cracking main event and the ratings would come in and lead to a lot of "What is wrong with people!?" and "Yeah, remember, most people don't actually care about workrate". I could be wrong though, that's just my impression. Ever since three hours there has frequently been pretty big drop offs in the third hour, regardless of who is on screen. The show is too long.

I feel bad for Dolph to a certain extent, because he's been absolutely slaughtered by booking like only a few guys have been, and obviously face is not his best side. But at the same time, there are a lot of guys who get booking-raped who manage to keep doing work (especially those with a reputation as a worker on the level of his). And there are a lot of guys who are better heels than faces who get by and even end up thriving as faces. Dolph flailing as a jobbed-to-hell babyface doesn't mean he wasn't good before or couldn't be good again in different circumstances. But, to go back to his "shoot promo" and the lofty pedestal some people seem to place him on as a worker, I find it hard to see the argument that he's one of the best guys in the company or whatever else when he is currently being...not great, and betraying a fairly significant lack of understanding of the most basic of babyface psychology.

The Payback sell job was phenomenal in my opinion. Totally and that is a big, big exception to my general point. He was amazing at Payback.

Dolph is the best example of the difference between bumping and selling. Not that he can't sell well, he certainly does at times, such as the Payback match in particular, but on the whole it feels like he does one but not the other. He bumps, and bumps big, but he's not really great at selling, which is really the whole point of bumping big in the first place. Bourne may not even be as good a bumper as Dolph, but he's a much better seller I think. And in general he is LIGHT YEARS better at being a babyface, which Dolph is just terrible at. The funny thing about Dolph being such a ridiculously big bumper, is that he's not even the best at it in his own company. In the last year he's been surpassed as a nutty bumper by Seth Rollins, who is another guy who also brings a lot more to the table.

Dave on the subject: (WO 1/9/08)

I can't buy into this. If wrestlers are such superhuman athletes that targeted limb work doesn't faze them, why do it? You've just wasted your time (and more importantly, mine) doing something that doesn't lead to anything meaningful. It's like Chekhov's gun. I'm not coming down on either side particularly for the larger question, but on the point about time-wasting, I think you kind of have to have that to a certain extent. Not everything can be meaningful all of the time. And just because something oesn't factor into every second of a match, or just because early limb work doesn't factor into the finish, doesn't mean that it wasn't meaningful. Like, for Bryan/Orton, the fact that Bryan worked over the leg for all that time and then Orton went on offense and sold his leg less (I think saying he blew it off is exaggerating), that didn't tell me that Bryan was ineffective or that I wasted 10 minutes of my life. It told me somethng more like, Bryan was hurting Orton, but didn't hurt him enough to injure him, and now that he's had time to recover (while he was in control) he's able to continue. Bryan went back to the leg later on and Orton sold it, so it was still bothering him. Just not enough to cripple him. Does that mean he shouldn't have tried leg work at all, just because it didn't work? (And "didn't work" is way harsh since Bryan won the match.) A wrestler has to try things, but that doesn't mean it will always be super effective. Kofi Kingston has zero chance of beating Brock Lesnar, but that doesn't mean he's not going to try things anyway. He's in there, he has to. But that doesn't make it time wasting when he runs out of offense and gets squashed to buggery.

I don't know how big it is in the scheme of things, but I'd be amiss if I didn't mention my home board, talkwrestlingonline.com/forum. It's a sister to Wrestling101.com which gets lots of interviews with wrestlers and stuff.

100% yes. I'm glad it wasn't just me.

Well Miz was at the Elimination Chamber. There were others on TV I'm sure, I think they had a 2/3 Falls match on Raw around that time (late Feb/early March), not sure on the dates though. I know there was at least one well-received Cesaro/Miz house show match floating around, I never watched it though. And any exploration of Cesaro carryjobs has to include the Bo Dallas match from NXT, July sometime.

This Chicago Raw is going to be either immensely entertaining or excruciatingly annoying.