Bierschwale

The Bucks can be annoying as shit, but there is no earthly reason why anyone should prefer Daniels/Kazarian.

That superkick train in the Caprice/Rave/Styles-Cross/Dazz/Iceberg match from #118 was so awesome. Loved that whole match, really, even if it's almost all just Jimmy vs. Cross/Dazz.

An Ambrose heel turn is total "fuck you" booking.

Kelly and Corino are idiots. He's a super charismatic baby face. He's supposed to be weird and fun. Kind of an Adam Rose done right. I mean, one would assume that the Silas Young feud is about alluded homophobia and that we're supposed to dislike Young because of it.

They used 2009 to screw around with the Legacy and 2008 to screw around with Jeff Hardy.

Run an Ambrose/Cesaro/Orton/Reigns/Ziggler-Harper/Owens/Rusev/Sheamus/Wyatt WarGames at HIAC. Because I don't know, why not?

I'm actually surprised that you didn't have Angle-Mysterio in your top ten. I wouldn't, either, but I think that I remember you being really, really high on it.

The finish on Lesnar-Punk bothers me too much for it to be above Bryan-Cena for the two GREAT matches from 2013. (I actually just like Bryan-Cena better on the whole, but if there had to be a deciding factor, the disparity between the finishes is it.) Plus the weird incongruity of it compared to 2014 on with Brock's match-to-match booking hurts it in the larger context of ranking it against 26 other shows' worth of matches.

Can't figure out if I liked the Cross-Styles TV taping match more than their Second Anniversary match. The latter was probably the absolute best "mirror match" that I've ever seen since it actually worked within the "Role Model"/"New Role Model" story. But Goddamn did that TV match have just straight up nuke-throwing. Caprice-Mamaluke was an awesome match though I had no doubts of that. Caprice was so great at that point (still love him, of course). How many guys from that era seem more "15 years ahead of their time" than he did in terms of being able to reach and succeed in the NXT holy Mecca? It was David Young as the fake Scottie Wrenn that Michaels pinned to win the title, right?

Yeah, that's actually much worse booking than the "Benoit/Malenko beating Adams/Horace" scenario that I had imagined, which was boring but at least logical via their stories through the year. Honma beating Ishii and Takahashi is fine, but like, doesn't that just make the Honma-Ishii match for the NEVER title in February seem even sillier? I guess if you're not working my Dylan tribute gimmick of wanting Komatsu and White to main event WK then those things aren't going to stand out as much.

Cena-Reigns is a lead balloon with a WM crowd.

All of these are valid sentiments.

Does Yano REALLY need his heat back?

Why is Ibushi having such a shitty tournament? What's the logic of that?

K-Kwik was not cooler than Triple H, but that's because he barely existed. At Ron Killings's peak in the company, though? Absolutely more over. HHH was also the fifth-coolest man on the DX New-Gen team from Survivor Series '06, of course. In that match as a whole I'd say that his peak overness as an individual was 9th of 10 (Punk, Michaels, Jeff, Matt, Edge, Helms, Nitro, Orton, HHH, Knox). Kelly and Melina were also more over so 11 out of 12 for people at the ring. Take Team HHH from 2007 as an extension of Team DX and add Rey to push Trips to #6. Kane definitely was more over at his peak, too. You can keep working this jag with HHH-led SS teams. Add the heel team from '04 and you get Batista. Snitsky was never REALLY more over, even if the babypunt is an all-time great moment. He wasn't the leader in 1996 but obviously Goldust and Lawler were more over. Crush and HHH are basically a push. And with Team Authority, you get Henry and Rusev without qualification. Jury's out on Harper and Rollins as singles acts (I'd say that HHH actually IS more over than post-Shield Rollins at this point in time but that's with Rollins to HHH as Rockabilly was to HTM so I don't think that it's fair to judge Rollins at this point in time). So Trips is, at best, 12th on his all-time Survivor Series teams.

He had a week of taping with both a Rockers match against La Resistance on RAW and the fairly famous match with Angle on SD in the heart of the brand split to set up the Angle-Michaels match at WM 21, which is kind of insane.

It actually was a pretty bad match. The booking of letting AJ be a mid-match sub so the fans could see him and they could use him on TV in a completely consequence-free role was nonsense. And Hanson/Rowe both looked like shit.

Looking at the rest of the schedule, Honma has Nakamura, Ishii, and Takahashi. So the logical booking there is L/L/W, right? Honma finally proving that he's better than the Bullet Club b-team by beating Yujiro. So is there a better analogue to that match than the Vanilla Midgets beating Brian Adams and Horace Hogan in the cage match to make the tag title tourney final in '99? Even complete with a diving headbutt to win it. I can't even...

There was a Meltzer quote that came up a while back about him talking two different guys out of getting into a fistfight with Michaels because they'd have gotten fired on the spot.

Kenzo Suzuki might have the most "modern puro" career of anyone going. -Gets signed off of a rugby career and gets a huge initial push, debuting on a Tokyo Dome show. Wrestles a former/future IWGP HW champ in all of his first five matches. Wins the Young Lion Cup and has a young star tag team with Tanahashi. Jobs a whole lot to Giant Silva, which is just funny. -Eventually jumps ship to Choshu's version of the "I can't fucking deal with Inoki anymore" upstart early 2000s promotion. Gets booked for oneoffs in MLW and TNA, which really isn't remarkable at all, but is funny. Accidentally kills a guy in the dojo and gets fired from World Japan. -Almost immediately gets hired by WWE. Doesn't actually wrestle for the next six months (in fact goes almost a full year between his SmackDown debut and his OVW debut at a Six Flags show, appropriately everything about this would seem to be Johnny Ace's doing), gets the Hirohito gimmick that somehow gets a preview vignette before someone realizes how monumentally stupid of an idea it was. Those first few post-9/11 years for WWE, my God. -Makes his debut with his wife working a wonderfully racist geisha gimmick as his valet, though what should you expect from Paul Heyman writing a female character? Gets a "these people are making money, do something with them" tag title reign with Rene Dupree in a Sheik/Volkoff-style "these guys both hate America for varying reasons" pairing. Eventually jobs his way out (his last WWE-affiliated match sees him teaming with GANGREL in OVW, love it) but makes friends with Ultimo Dragon and gets some CMLL bookings and then a stint as a foreign trios heavy later in the year. Works HUSTLE in between. -Stays in Mexico but jumps to AAA to do dumb mid-2000s AAA things for a while. Works a Dragon Gate tour, which, again, just funny. That DG purity! -Becomes friends with Mutoh and finds a home in AJPW surviving the regime changes of Shirashi and Akiyama to become a freelancer just last week. Select matches between 3/12/06 and 3/18/07, which is a nice little encapsulation of his career: Razor Ramon Hard Gay & TAJIRI defeat Kenzo Suzuki & Toshiaki Kawada (HUSTLE). Abdullah Kobayashi & Kenzo Suzuki defeat 2 Tuff Tony & Mad Man Pondo (Big Japan). Dos Caras Jr., Heavy Metal & Lizmark Jr. defeat Johnny Stamboli, Kenzo Suzuki & Marco Corleone (CMLL). Charly Manson, Chessman & Cibernetico defeat El Mesias, Kenzo Suzuki & Scott Steiner (AAA).

The LU crowd annoys me because of how wildly incongruous their reactions are with what the rest of the show is supposed to be. If it was the same workers having the same matches in PWG, it wouldn't be an issue but they've absolutely taken me out of matches.

I've really grown to hate the Full Sail crowds. Not as much as the Boyle Heights crowds on LU, but they're just awful and definitely go into business for themselves even during big matches, like Becky-Sasha.

It's been a true b-show for a while, but it was after the Shield breakup that they went down from at least one genuinely excellent match a week to one every other month.

Yeah, I think that the June match was the tighter match and that this was meant to be more of a spectacle, especially with the crowd stuff, and it had kind of a mixed metaphor with Hojo being both reckless enough to go for the balcony dive but canny enough to work Satomura's back, while Satomura just knocked Kairi's lights out. I liked it a good amount, but I just think that the first go was one of the best matches of the year.

Jeff G. Bailey's promo from Wildside #107 when he becomes owner of the company: "I know some people are gonna say, 'Well, Jeff, what do you know about wrestling?' Well, when you've done what I've done, which is winning acquittals for rapists, murderers, and child-molesting drug dealers, you've come into contact with all the same kind of people you're gonna see in professional wrestling." & "I've been studying other owners in professional wrestling and I know to be great that I've got to follow in their footsteps. I know that I have to be kind and caring and considerate to all my wrestlers, just like Cowboy Bill Watts. I understand that there is no sacrifice too great for this business, just like Fritz Von Erich. And just like Herb Abrams, I know that there's nobody more important than the owner, and that's me."