MoS

As long as we are going back to basics, can you remove neck tats

Wait which one? The Revolution match itself was excellent I thought. The sparklers dud wasn't really Mox's fault

This theme is really perfect for Mox. Excellent match too. Mox is busted hardway. That's how you know it's a good match

WILD THING!! Tony Khan has the best music taste of any wrestling promoter in the last 25 years. Discuss

Starting with the King. I like it

Well in that case, I mean I will honestly be perfectly fine if WWE never ever produced a documentary on anything or anyone ever again. Their documentaries have never been the most accurate or the most balanced, and now, with more and more non-WWE outlets getting into making wrestling documentaries, there is simply no need to ever care about a WWE release ever again. And yeah, including Bubba The Love Sponge on a Savage show, who used to regularly shit-talk Savage along with Hogan back in the day, was certainly holding a grudge. I forgot about that repulsive dude being on it. I am not a Bischoff fan, but to quote him, "Fuck Bubba. Go Kong. I hope she drew blood."

I've always thought that Aldis rips off Flair way too much, and his shtick just doesn't work in 2021 NWA, especially when he is acting like Ric Flair circa 1982 while his promotion is booking stip matches indicating that top wrestlers are basically being held in NWA against their will. As if that wasn't bad enough on its own, now we also have a 3rd grade Horsemen ripoff stable? I don't see how any of this can be interesting.

I was thinking, with Omega-Cassidy not being a marquee main event, they might decide to have Mox/King v. YB or even Shida v. Britt go last at DoN

I hate the Acclaimed's rap gimmick, but I have to admit that the Boondocks reference got a big laugh out of me

I really don't get this logic. How was it a hatchet job? Apart from the crap about them not knowing he was going to turn up in WCW, nothing they showed was incorrect. In fact, they barely skimmed the surface with his abusive relationships. Sure, they didn't do that with Austin and Piper, but shouldn't the argument be that they should have been this honest with Austin and Piper, and not that they should have released a puff piece on Savage as well? Like, Savage is obviously a legend but he also did a lot of really shitty things. Why is talking about that a hatchet job?

I think both of us are remembering correctly, actually. The big buyrate was February 1999. By mid-1999, everything was crashing spectacularly and everyone, including Flair, was stale and had fatigued the audience

The fingerpoke of doom did not really hurt business at all; in fact, it briefly gave it a shot in the arm. If they had done a decent follow-up on it, they could have made something of it. They fucked up the follow-up and the rest unfortunately is history. Flair was a big ratings draw in 1999 and as mentioned, popped the large big buyrate WCW ever did. He obviously was not the future and should have been utilised sparingly and to get a new star over. But to say that no one really wanted to see him on TV is not entirely accurate imo. While he had been booked like shit in the previous 24 months, he had not been hogging the main event spotlight continuously, so I don't think there was a lot of fatigue about his presence. But he still was a big asset. It is one of wrestling's greatest tragedies that the promotion Flair is synonymous with had no idea how to use him for a majority of its existence.

I was actually rewatching Starrcade 1984 the other day, with the lesser-remembered Flair-Dusty main event, and it was funny because Flair got cheered more than Dusty the entire match, including after Joe Frazier stopped the match due to the cut. I am sure Dusty booked that finish to let Flair retain while giving himself a lot of sympathy, but it did not seem to work out that way because the fans loved Flair, and loved the fact that he won, and kept cheering for him. They did not boo Dusty at all, but it seemed to me that they liked Flair more. I am sure Dusty did not appreciate that at all when it happened; that was a direct challenge to him being the pre-eminent super-babyface of the promotion. It didn't help that Dusty's complaints post-match came across to me as him being a whiner and sore loser, since blood stoppages in wrestling main events had been happening for years prior to that, and Flair had opened the cut fair and square in an even fight by throwing him against the ringpost and then flipping a switch and attacking the cut like crazy. Flair's post match promo was classic "Phase 2 Flair", where he paid due respect to Dusty and put over the match, but let everyone know that he didn't care why Frazier stopped the match. As far as he was concerned, he was there only to win the match and get the $1 million check, and that's exactly what he did.

One of the best ways AEW has improved its booking of its women's division over the last several months has been making the women interact with men and have common storylines, instead of treating the division as its own alternate dimension, existing separately from everything else

I think Phase 5 wouldn't just be about his working style, but also how they booked his character. Flair was very Flair-like till 1997, but in 1998-99, he was also booked like a crazy fun literally having escaped an asylum straight into the craziest locker room in wrestling history. He still had some very good performances in main events right till 1999. IIRC, the last bug buyrate WCW drew was for Flair-Hogan in 1999. But then they turned Flair heel and that was probably the death knell of the promotion. No one wanted to boo him in 1999.

On the other hand, Riddle and Orton are really the perfect oddball comedy pair

I feel so bad for Shayna. I am sure there are already 10 YouTube videos about how this adds to the Lore of the Bliss and how all the clues were right there the whole time

This man was put on this planet to cut pro wrestling promos

Loss, in terms of larger trends in the 2nd phase of his career, are there any angles or matches which you think he wouldn't have been able to do in the 3rd phase, on account of being a full-blown heel? I have thought for a bit that I am not sure that the legendary Flair-Lawler angle wouldn't have happened if Flair was what he became in 1987-89. The premise of that angle was a cocky but calm and dignified world champ, arrogantly thinking the city of Memphis was beneath him, being really patronising to its top guy, and slowly losing his shit as the local hick shows him up. It was a legendary angle and was even copied by AEW when Jericho was world champ, although Scorpio Sky is no Jerry Lawler. I am not sure if this angle would have been possible in 1987, cuz Flair would have been hyper and screaming since possibly the first second of the interview. There would be no escalating sense of the world champ losing his shit, cuz the world champ basically was always losing his shit on interviews.

A friend of mine here who is a Chelsea fan is absolutely convinced about it. To the point he has asked all of us to be free for the entire day, cuz the match will get over by 5 PM here and he wants to go crazy in celebration

I know no one really wants to talk about him, but I had been thinking about Flair for a few days and wanted to jot down some thoughts. Principally, I don't know how many people here share my evolution as a fan of liking him a lot more in 2021 than I did in 2016, but I am guessing not too many. I have been pondering over why that is, and I think it might be precisely due to his working style being the subject of criticism here. Flair is all about instinct, about thinking on his feet to pop the crowd, about not thinking, just understanding. It is a style that has become completely obsolete these days. People talk about Flair not thinking too much, and not trying to be logical about his matches. What we see in modern wrestling today is a lot of wrestlers who think a lot about their matches, going all out on using wrestling matches a medium of expression. Sometimes too much. It becomes very over-wrought and inorganic. An example would be the Young Bucks-FTR match from AEW Revolution last year. It received tremendous praise, I think Meltzer gave it 5+ stars. It was so incredibly thought out. Every move was supposed to have some consequence or a deep symbolic meaning. Except...none of it really made for great watching for me. I sat there as the two teams "paid tribute" to classic tag matches and tag teams like The Rockers, Hart Foundation, Midnights, etc, listened to Meltzer and Alvarez lose their shit at all the references and the "clever symbolism" of the finish, and it never felt appealing to me. Sometimes, putting too much thought into a medium as spontaneous as wrestling is counter-productive. Sometimes the right thing to do is go with your instinct, even if it does not make much sense. Flair understood that. That is not to say that you cannot do a thinking match that is not organic or exciting, or that pure instinct will always lead to illogical wrestling. But with wrestling becoming more and more epic and "lore-based", for lack of a better term, it is refreshing to go back to the 1980s and seeing that the only motivation or "reference" for what Flair is doing in the ring is just to insult the fat guy sitting in the third row and get him booing.

To be fair, I think they were countering my points. I don't see any inconsistency in not giving Shawn credit for Finn Balor while blaming him for how NXT main events are booked. From all accounts, Shawn isn't the booker there; he is a trainer who agents and lays down the format for the main event. It also cannot be denied that NXT main events have become more and more melodramatic in the past few years, right when Shawn started agenting. It's why I don't think the comparisons to Kawada and his influence or Kobashi and modern chopfests are entirely fair. I am not penalizing Shawn for indie geeks trying to emulate him and his famous gimmick matches without understanding what made them work. I am penalizing him for something in which he has a clear, direct input, which illustrates and showcases how he understands wrestling, what he values in main events, etc

Also, in defence of Shawn, as much as we might hate WWE main event melodrama, the fact is that Shawn was EXCELLENT in such settings. He himself was a great performer in that regard. It is just that that particular style of wrestling is not sustainable, and most of the time, it leads to cringe eye-roll worthy moments

I totally get that, but I think you can draw a direct line from "I'm sorry; I love you" to Gargano, Ciampa and Adam Cole having emotional insufferably melodramatic dialogues in the middle of a match, the kind of shit that makes Indian Bollywood movies subtle and understated. Think of the ground that covers. I'm not saying that is Michaels's enduring legacy, but it really is a part of it. And I don't even dislike that line from the WM 24 Flair match. I know a lot of people here do, but I thought it was a great moment personally, cuz it really fit both the context as well as the gimmick of the wrestlers participating in the match. But it was definitely an epoch-marking moment for treating wrestling as a medium for shitty middle school theatre, instead of letting the action and psychology in the ring organically describe the emotional weight of the moment. Like the exact opposite of "Show not tell." If we credit wrestlers for rising above the house style and delivering greatness in spite of that, should we also penalise wrestlers who eventually contribute in making the house style worse? I honestly don't know, and I don't even know how much of this is Shawn, and how much of it is Triple H, who has always had the same emotional overreaches as Shawn, except he was about 1/100th as good at Shawn in actually executing what he wanted. But still. This is GWE after all, which means it is an argument where there will be nitpicking, so I feel it is only fair if we have a discussion on this.

I wonder if his agenting for the interminably long 3-hour insufferably cringe melodramatic NXT main events will hurt him this time around. And if does, wonder how much.