Migs

I was out of the loop for a lot of Edge's main event run, but coming back in 2008 - I thought he was excellent. Great promo, great character, and he was consistently delivering in the main events with Undertaker, HHH, and Hardy. Seriously - which of his 2008 main events weren't good to great?

The Rockers v. The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers (London, 10/10/89) This made the original DVDVR top 100 of the 80s list... and I have no idea why. Long, slow, plodding. They open with a long segment with Shawn and Jacques comparing athleticism (Shawn can moonsault, Jacque can't). Almost no high spots to speak of. The more I watch the heel Rougeaus, the more I love the characters they play while turning but the less I enjoy the matches. Their offense just doesn't suggest that they're a real threat - it's a couple of neat double teams and a lot of chinlocks. Shawn takes a nice bump over the top rope on a superkick. I feel like the Rockers were a bit prone to matches like this - if they didn't get the big high spots, they end up being not very memorable.

It's interesting how casually Shawn drops that line in - its easy to miss if you're not looking for it, but obviously they became quite the fighting words.

As usual, it's a bit of a mess, but I think he's right in the main point about why the McMahon-Helmsley-Orton regime is getting such great heat. There's a real alignment of "smart" fans and less so, and it's giving the shows really good energy. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/960903...mad-cheer-about

I always think people overstate how much animosity Lawler had for ECW. Remember, this is the guy who was involved in the greatest worked shoot of all time with Andy Kaufman. The man knows how to make you feel like its a shoot when its not, and he revels in it.

I watched this live and I've watched it a number of times since... it still just does not work at the level they wanted it to, which is unfortunate, but became a bit of a running theme for ECW that year.

Segments like this are why people remember the Monday Night Wars fondly. Just that feeling that anything could happen... the way the angle breaks the normal structure of the show. Really helps make the angle feel like something special.

It was an edited down 2/3 falls match. The whole thing was shown on Primetime not long after.

I had a similar experience. When I was getting into wrestling in 1988 as a 4 year old... Savage was THE coolest. Such an aura about him. Even more so than Hogan in my eyes. I really wish they'd given him a little more variety of opponents in his title run. I want to watch that stuff back and live in my nostalgia for that particular era, but you can only watch so many Savage-Dibiase matches. Then there's Akeem, very finished Andre and Bad News and that's about it. Of course, the heel roster at that time was not particularly strong, so that might have been the bigger issue. Would I really be sitting here 25 years later enjoying Savage-Haku and Savage-Bravo? Probably not.

An interesting interview with Triple H. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/958836...fficer-triple-h

I think it might be a bit unfair to use sheer number of good big matches to compare Cena to WWE guys from earlier eras. The sheer number of PPVs, combined with his length of time at the top, has given him far more opportunities to have big matches than most guys. You really can't compare Cena's body of work to anyone's before the In Your House era. I think we can agree Randy Savage would have done an insane number of awesome main event matches had there been more PPVs to main event. As pointed out above, Austin and Rock had shorter runs at the top. I would argue those guys had pretty good batting averages in the big matches, though. Bret was also only a true main eventer for 4-5 years in WWE, and I think most would put him on a similar level to Austin/Rock. So, who can Cena really be compared to? Undertaker - had way too many stretches in which he was terrible HHH - a ton of great ones, but probably more stinkers than Cena Shawn Michaels Edge Chris Jericho I think eventually we'll be able to have this conversation about Punk and Cena, if they can stay at the main event level for a while.

vs RVD in the ECW Arena. Agreed, although that was a very different scenario. That was more about what Cena represented to a very specific, small part of the fan base. Last night was a broader cross-section of fans. And its not like LA is a smark crowd.

The timing was the most brilliant part. We were all expecting a turn and a cash in, but they held it for so long that the viewer relaxed... and then, BAM. I'm not worried about Bryan... he was so, so over last night. Never seen the crowd so overwhelmingly for Cena's opponent. A beautiful moment, really.

Schatz is much, much better than Barnwell at couching his arguments in the limits of football stats. Barnwell comes off as full of himself.

I definitely think they peaked, program-wise, with the Busters. (I think you covered all of them save for an okay run of matches with Power and Glory.) The Orient Express stuff was sometimes very good, other times a bit flat. I'd argue the variation in the matches is part of what makes Rockers-Busters fun - some of the matches, like the SNME one, are completely different, and even the house show matches would go in different directions (they had 2 in the same day at Boston and MSG with different FIP sections and with one being 5 minutes longer). I'd have to rewatch the Harts-Bulldogs matches to really go deep, but I think what set them apart from other 80s WWF tags was the quality of the offense, and the way the structure tended to be a bit more free form. 80s WWF tag wrestling was VERY formulaic, so even slight deviations feel pretty good. They were just so far ahead of the other teams at the time that it's sort of stunning to watch. I do like the matches with the Dream Team too, though, as Valentine was one of the only other guys on the roster who could keep up with the Bulldogs. Has anyone ever done a Dream Team comp? I'd be curious to see more of them... there's an amazing match they had with Santana and Steamboat that made me wonder if they're a bit of a lost great team.

I watched 11 discs worth of Rockers matches a while back, and came away thinking that they are a bit underrated. I think they had good matches consistently and also were better at keeping matchups fresh than, say the Hart Foundation. Love the Harts but they would legit go out and do the same match, move for move, on a nightly basis (see their Rougeau matches from 88). The Rockers were really good at varying things. The matches with the Brainbusters are probably my favorite WWF tag matches of the 80s, maybe even better than Harts-Bulldogs in 85, which are incredible.

Oh, I loved Fast Break Pro Basketball. Spent way too much time on that in law school. Very deep game, although it had some AI flaws that got very easy to exploit (like how a good PG could always be had for the mid level exception).

Thought this was just a really fun brawl, with a great pace. The over the top or pinfalls rule was a bit goofy, but it gave the match a certain uniqueness that was effective (and perhaps worked well for the unsettled nature of the promotion at the time). I believe it has been stated that Austin legit hurt his knee in this match, and was supposed to be the winner, with the booking being changed to Bret winning mid-match.

I felt the same way watching a match recently where Benoit nails Stephanie McMahon. Seeing him hit a woman just felt really... dark.

Always liked the beginning of this angel, with Rude under a mask but it obviously being Rude, almost like it was a goof on mystery man angles. The convoluted payoff with the Bigelow turn wasn't so great, though.