Migs

I do think this is a fair point about what has led to some of the most praised matches over the last several years. The DIY-Revival matches read to me like they sat down, watched a shit ton of the best tag wrestling ever, and just incorporated all the finishes as near falls. And I think that's going to be a bit of a trend, because now the guys that are obsessed with history have everything at their fingertips in a way that really hasn't been true until recently.

Really good match. Much like the Bucks match with Steen and Tozawa, they open on a brawl. They end up in the restrooms, like an old style ECW match. They do a nice job of keeping the intensity high once they get back to the ring. I quite liked the back and chest rakes - showed the dickishness of the Bucks and got some heat. Aries turning it around after the hot tag was fun too (spreading of - really liked the spot that led to the tag with the Bucks getting a little too cute and then crossed up). Love that they're calling Matt's leaping ace crusher the "Finisher on TV." Good finish, too, as the reversal finish came out of a series, as opposed to being a random roll up.

Finals of the tournament. The teams don't even make into the ring to start. The brawling is fairly out of the ordinary for a Bucks match. There's a really grittiness and violence that's surprising. The spells is sort of broken with the back rake spot (although the use of an actual rake is fun). There's sort of a heat segment on Steen, but not in a cliched way - more the Bucks just taking control of the ongoing brawl. Steen blades after a shot to the post. The Bucks work Steen's legs, including a Nick swanton right on them. Tozawa appears out of nowhere to break up More Bang for Your Buck, and it's really on. Man, when the Bucks show their nasty side, they can really crank up the intensity. Terrific finish, too, with the Bucks doing More Bang for Your Buck on both guys - very cool visual. Loved this - an under discussed gem, I think. Well worth seeking out.

This is right after London's return to the indies after his WWE release. The first section of the match is good but feels perfunctory - it's kinda hard to do a heat segment when what we're really waiting for is the big finishing sequence. That's one way the Bucks were smart in their less orthodox match construction in later years - they knew the expectations of the fans and used them to cut out the dead spots. I get bored enough while the heels work over London that I google what happened to Scott Lost (he retired in 2010 to become a comic book artist). There's also some spots with Ryan and Anderson falling into kisses and sexual positions that are not played for laughs and not great. The finishing sequence was good. Nice spot with Anderson putting London in a simple boston crab but the other heels cutting off the Bucks and creating some nice drama. Lost also takes a frankensteiner on the top of his head from Nick. Finish is More Bang for Your Buck topped with London's Shooting Star, which sends the crowd into a frenzy. Again, fun match that's hard to recommend above others of its type.

Going on a Bucks run as I'm sort of fascinated to see their development. At this point, the act is still developing, although the fundamentals are already there (the teamwork, the flashiness, the pose). They've apparently just gotten back from their first Japan tour. Joey Ryan has only recently cut his hair and developed what's basically his current look. Matt takes a really good shitkicking here after the Bucks get some initial offense. There's a great head scissor train spot with a Boston Crab that turns everyone over that Bucks reused in an ROH match a couple of months ago (still amusing). Nick takes a pretty good hot tag. The Dynasty use a Rocket Launcher / Ace Crusher that I'm surprised no one has swiped. The Bucks win, somewhat absurdly, with a backslide after several minutes of high spots. Pretty fun match, although nothing to recommend above a myriad of other indie matches of the time.

That feels a little bit like "put the strap on Jinder before we go to India"-type thinking. Like they are worried that American NJPW fans might not care about a Main Event with a Japanese guy in it... To be fair, this is probably the hottest match they have on the table (assuming they don't want to do Omega-Naito this quickly). It did pretty incredible business for ROH.

If you were an NWA fan in 1989, someone might have told you the best match ever happened a bunch of times over the course of the year. NJPW right now is successfully building epics within their style, so naturally - if that style really works for you - there's a lot of best match ever contenders in the recent past.

The main event was thrilling. I had woken up at 3am to watch the show, it's now close to 10am and I am still flying on adrenaline because of that match. And really the whole show worked - from the tag title match, that was as fun a three+ hours of wrestling as I can remember. A real masterpiece performance from Jericho too. He's fully becoming the slimy rock stars he idolized. Just wonderfully gross.

This was set up by an empty arena "match" (it doesn't have a finish) that I really loved - surprisingly violent and gritty for these two teams, shot and lit in a really cool way, and evidencing that the Bucks were bringing something unique out of the Guns. The match continues the violent, hateful feel (within the context that these are junior tag teams that operate in a certain way). Matt's chairshot on Shelley's leg looked great. I like the amount of simple ladder violence. The Codebreaker with a chair spot was contrived, though. There's a lot of lost momentum as they set up the contraption. I liked the idea of the chair fight on top better than the execution. Good first half, but the second part of the match kinda ruined it for me - the spots weren't impressive enough to justify all the setup.

From PWG As the Worm Turns. Bucks are defending the PWG Tag Team titles. The Bucks jump their opponents to start. Shit, may as well get this started. After some back and forth, the Bucks do slow things down and take control on Generico. This is fun. Hot tag to Taylor, and since this is PWG, this is where we really get started. The Bucks bust out an assisted ace crusher that I had not seen them use before. Generico and Taylor lacking a real double team moveset is sort of bringing this down a bit, I think. I always like Nick using the moonsault dive to get away from a charging opponent (here, Taylor). Nick is also great at saving a pin at the absolute last second (a particularly useful skill in PWG). Loved the fighting around the finishers before the Bucks finally get More Bang for Your Buck for the win. Enjoyable but not a must see or anything.

This is from the PWG DDT 4 tournament. Bucks are the PWG tag champs and the titles are on the line. The Bucks are doing a "we're in TNA and thus cool" gimmick - love Nick's TNA fringe shirt. I've only seen the Cutlers wrestle the Bucks in PWG - no idea what happened to them after. A pushup challenge and jawing with ringside drunk guy to start. Nick is great taunting the drunk dude. Really, their whole heel act is fun, and we're still at a point where it gets heat and not cheers. The Cutlers have a press slam / double axehandle combination that I haven't seen before. On the whole, though, they seem like kinda generic power guys. Surprised they never got a developmental run (although googling tells me they got out of the business pretty early). The heat segment by the Bucks is good, but the fans know a big finish is coming, so it's hard to get much built out of it. And it is indeed a finishing sequence - the bigger Cutler is a darn fine hot tag. The Cutlers have a cool looking double team splash mountain. There's a great tombstone reversal spot that's just begging for the Meltzer Driver, but it hasn't been invented yet. Really cool run of moves on the apron. The crowd is losing its shit. Bucks finally finish with More Bang for Your Buck. The actual structured tag match part here is pretty whatever, but holy shit what a final five minutes.

Rematch from the prior month. The Bucks are now clearly heels, and it's nice to see a crowd actually boo their heel act. This one has a somewhat more traditional tag structure. I like Sabin breaking up a pin and sprinting out with his hands up, playing on the trope of the ref always being distracted by putting out that member of the face team. This one has a longer and really fun finishing sequence (probably too long from a "logical refereeing" perspective, but oh well). The step up super German suplex in the middle of More Bang for Your Buck from Sabin on Matt is insane. Fun match, about on par with the last one (I'd have both slightly under 4*).

Happy to give it a whirl.

I think people have been told the general story, but I don't think we've gotten a really deep dive on what went on behind the scenes. I also think the story is always told about Lawler and Kaufman putting this together, but obviously Jarrett was very involved as well, and I'd be curious to know about his role. To that end, a few questions: - The story has always been that the first phone call was Kaufman and Lawler (brokered by Bill Apter). When did Jerry get involved? Who laid out the angle? What were the negotiations with Kaufman like past the first conversation where there was mutual interest? - Were Lawler and Jarrett giving him any direction on the promos? If so, what? - What was the vibe in the dressing room like? Did Kaufman interact with everybody? - What did Jarrett know about the Letterman incident beforehand? - How much does he credit Kaufman with building business? How long did the bump last? Does he feel it had a lasting positive impact on the promotion from all the publicity? I'd also be into any stray untold Andy Kaufman stories. Endlessly fascinating guy.

I've been enjoying the show, but I feel like I don't have a lot to say about it. Maybe because they don't have a big show that requires them to push matches with a bigger payoff. It looks like the NYC show will have a 40 man Rumble / Aztec Warfare type thing.

The pop here for the Rock is pretty insane, bigger than the one Austin gets. Triple H and the Rock start, and of course they have a nice sequence because they've done this literally hundreds of times by this point. Austin and Benoit go pretty hard, busting out a superplex five minutes into a house show match, in case you're wondering why these guys had neck problems. Trips is avoiding and antagonizing Austin here, which is fun. Nice pop when Austin finally gets some shots in. They take things out to the crowd for some brawling, although it's not a very long stretch. Otherwise, this is a relatively tame No DQ match. Longish heat segment on Austin. Hot tag to the Rock, and they go pretty quickly to the finish, which is the Rock Bottom on Benoit. Solid match. If you're curious about what a WWF house show felt like at the time, this match of the three from January is probably the one to check out.

We're in Philly here. Angle is being managed by Trish Stratus, which I do not remember at all. Camera work here is better than the MSG handheld from the prior evening, although that's a pretty low bar. Some mat work at the start, which feels perfunctory but is executed pretty well. Just as the match is picking up, we have people in front of the camera man getting up. I think Jericho kisses Trish against her will, which is not a great look in hindsight. This slows down quite a bit in the middle. Pretty good response for Jericho's comeback. Ref bump, of course, although oddly it's Angle that gets a visual pin (although I guess it protects the Angle Slam, which is a nice thought given how devalued that would get). Oh, now Jericho gets a visual pin after Angle has taken out the second ref. Angle gets the win with a low blow and a second Angle Slam. Pretty solid match, although nothing you need to go out of your way to see.

I've been going through the Bucks' TNA stuff and quite enjoying it for what it is (up to this point, a lot of very short TV matches, along with an Ultimate X match with the Machine Guns that was a fun spotfest). Matt is Max Buck and Nick is Jeremy. There hasn't been much build to this match, other than a non-title match on TV which the Guns won. They do a nice job early of keeping it on the ground but still cutting a nice pace. This is a babyface match, but the Bucks are slowly turning. Really enjoyed the heat segment, and unsurprisingly, there's a pretty nice finishing sequence. Love the super kick segment, obviously. The Bucks turn after the match and almost immediately get a surprising amount of heat. Good match, although it feels like it suffers from knowing the bigness of the matches these teams would have in the future (and to an extent, had before in PWG).

I have a two month old, so my thinking is I may just stay up and watch this live on the east coast. Interesting experiment for me and extra sleep for my wife.

We're at Madison Square Garden for this one. The sound is a bit muffled on this one, so it's a bit hard to hear the pops, but Rock and Austin are definitely still super over. It sounds like Rock is the one getting the bigger chant, though. This is a bit of a tough watch, as the camera keeps shifting up and away from the ring. Rock and Trips start and have their usual good sequence. Undertaker comes in and, uh, stuff happens. I sort of give up on following this too closely, as it goes from a decent shot for a minute to a blank screen the next. However, it's clear that the energy and heat are really good. Pretty long sequence of finishers and broken pins, so that the crowd gets to see all the big moves. Also, call the 2001 internet nerd police, as it's Benoit that takes the pin off the Rock Bottom. Hard to recommend this one given the picture quality, but it was interesting.

This starts with an award for Wrestler of the Year, which of course Punk thinks he deserves and does not win (it goes to Dino Bambino). Punk and Prazak's reactions to this are great, and Punk is getting pretty good heat ("Pepsi sucks!). Punk eventually wins Most Hated, and freaks out. Cabana's doing a pretty good fired up babyface act here to start. Pretty solid dive for a big guy. I like that he's using the Ted Dibiase style fist drop. Punk takes over, and I like that he takes his time to actually heel it up with the crowd. Great stun gun out of the corner. Cool reversal sequence too (that's not the overused one that had come into vogue). Bit of a botch towards the end, which gets a "you fucked up" chant. There's also a spot with a chair in the corner where its hard to tell if Punk misses the chair on purpose or not. Punk refuses to use the chair once the crowd chants for it, which is a somewhat illogical but still good bit of heeling. The ref allows the chair use, which is odd given the efforts to hide it initially. All the mess still leads to a relatively clean finish with the Pepsi Plunge. Entertaining match despite some missteps towards the end, and recommended as a sign post of their progress as we start the year. Really amazing to see how far these guys have come in a year - when we started this project they were really green, but competent. Now they're pretty high level indy guys, although their offense isn't as state of the art as some of the coastal guys.

The language clearly indicates more than one match. But even if it's two or three, it's interesting weekly content.

It doesn't look like the show it would become until August of '94. Before that, it's much closer to an old style TV show with squashes and the like.

If you don't have beIN sports, it's on Youtube.

Yeah, I've watched a couple and it's been a very pleasant way to spend 45 minutes. Good talent level, good pacing, nice variety. Going to check out the taping in NYC in July.