Migs

He's John the Baptist, Daniel Bryan is Jesus, and they have a lot of disciples. I think his run, when put in perspective, will look very impressive. He basically fought the system and paved the way for a lot of the current big stars to get their shot. That will gain in traction as those guys become TOP GUYS and discuss their influences.

It'll probably be when he headlines with one last match v. Cena in 2020.

Early 90's WCW is so much fun. Some great stuff there. Even the bad stuff is part of the charm of WCW for me. Love that era! 1992 into very early 1993 WCW is probably the greatest year from a wrestling quality standpoint ever produced from a US stand point. Dangerous Alliance, peak Vader, arguably peak Sting (ring wise), peak Cactus, the Steiners, Gordy/Doc, Steamboat, Dustin coming into his own. It's a magical time. Superbrawl III seems like the marker. And I wonder from the declining business if Sting beating Vader would've been the right call. It's sort of blasphemous because Vader's 1993 is so great and I love Vader vs. Flair (I know your opinion differs stro, at least on the match). I think I'd still take 1989, but I've got to see more of the overall TV of both periods, especially since WCW had so many different shows in both periods. The B-shows are definitely better in 1992. Just tons of Dangerous Alliance matches tossed off - pretty much every episode of TV has something in the *** range. 1989 has better big show matches, on the whole.

Part of me wonders if they are waiting for Bilington to pass so they can induct the tag team, without Dynamite Kid going off the rails in an induction speech. Yeah, I was thinking the Bulldogs were a possibility because Dynamite is alive, and then I imagined Kid's speech and... no.

The interesting thing is that they seem to lack an obvious headliner. DDP doesn't quite feel big enough. Goldberg?

With the DVD on him coming out, DDP seems like a lock.

Or they could just make the entire TV show Total Nonstop Deletion style.

The matches they seem to be building to based on TV would be: Cole v. Castle Cole v. Fish Cole v. the winner of Decades of Excellence tournament I don't see Fish as a guy they're going to as a long-term main eventer. I haven't checked out spoilers for the tournament, but it looks to me like they're moving to push Daniels in a "one last run" deal. I actually could see him winning the belt, turning heel again, and being champ for a bit.

To add to this, I think there is perhaps more of a reluctance among many fans these days to be a detractor of something well-loved, and less people interested in engaging those detractors. A lot of Wrestling Twitter folks are more into shared enjoyment than debating and dissecting. Those kind of fans have really always been the majority in real life, but the internet didn't lend itself to that kind of fandom until recently. This has been an issue in TV reviewing as well - many reviewers have talked about getting responses to negative reviews where the person feels reviews should be written by fans only, as if critiquing something others liked is a terrible thing to do. Having a different opinion right now sadly makes you a troll and someone who is up to no good. It's becoming almost impossible to have any non echo chamber discussion. And any system where you can rate one response over another just enforces this stuff. Of course, there are also real trolls out there, too! But I think it's something about the way the internet flattens influence. An excellent reviewer pointing out problems in an episode is very different from someone trolling to get noticed, but they both have the same voice on Twitter (at least in an individual's feed). Of course, I don't really have many wrestling reviewers in my Twitter feed and mostly converse about wrestling with friends or on here. Maybe I'm just a bad example of creating an internet bubble, but I'd rather read the opinions of people I think are thoughtful than get in Twitter arguments.

To add to this, I think there is perhaps more of a reluctance among many fans these days to be a detractor of something well-loved, and less people interested in engaging those detractors. A lot of Wrestling Twitter folks are more into shared enjoyment than debating and dissecting. Those kind of fans have really always been the majority in real life, but the internet didn't lend itself to that kind of fandom until recently. This has been an issue in TV reviewing as well - many reviewers have talked about getting responses to negative reviews where the person feels reviews should be written by fans only, as if critiquing something others liked is a terrible thing to do.

People care about wins and loses but in a different way. It's mostly about "this guy should win because he's not being pushed enough" and "this guy should lose because he's pushed too much/already had his chance with the title" One of my least favorite things about modern fandom is the idea that the World Title is some kind of award for good service where if you've worked for the company for X number of years and had Y number of good matches you're automatically supposed to get a run with the belt whether or not you have any hope of being able to draw with it. "You deserve this!" is a worse chant than "This is awesome!"

Part of this is simply that 1984 is basically the beginning of time from a modern wrestling / WWE perspective. Hulk Hogan is the Beatles (and Randy Savage is the Rolling Stones). Parts of that story (particularly WM3) will endure because people are still getting taught about it now.

Very interested to see where they go with Cole back on top. Based on the TV, it seems like we might not be that far from Cole v. Castle for the title, which would be pretty cool.

Oh shit, and they're going to do a followup one about Puerto Rico. That should be great.

Maybe I've just never listened to other Eric Embry stuff, but his interview with Austin is fascinating.

Seems like it's based on the competency issue. http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/lehigh-county/index.ssf/2017/01/judge_dismissed_murder_charge.html#incart_river_mobile_home

Pretty sure I did this. (And it was super fun.)

- Start the podcast I have in mind about viewers' emotional connection to wrestling. - Finish Puerto Rico. - Lead some discussion on the 2001 Indies compilations that are back in circulation. - Watch some WWE from my dead zone (2003-2007). - Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles career projects.

MSG was a solid house, but from where I was sitting the 2 sections next to the entrance were far from sold out. Oh, they don't sell the sections next to the entrance until the day of (and I don't believe they sell the whole section). Grabbing those tickets is actually a good deal - I got tickets in one of those sections for $26.

As a direct comparison - curious how the Raw house show in Brooklyn last night did. Smackdown sold out MSG on Monday.

This match had somehow slipped by me until now, but holy shit is it great. One point - I thought the use of the shaky cam was really effective in this match to get across the chaotic feel. It can be really overused by WWE, but here it felt organic and complementary to the match.

Part of this is the natural issue of a relatively small community that's been together for a long time. (I've dealt with this in running a couple of artistic communities in my life.) The posters who know each other well know each other REALLY well. And it's one of the things that's great about a longstanding community - what makes it fun for people is that they can draw on experience with each other in having a deeper conversation. That also means that people will be a bit more likely to go ad hominem in conversations, because they know the other person's views really well. But it can also make it exclusionary to newer people - if you haven't been reading this board for a while, "Ric Flair: Overrated?" can seem like an interesting topic, if you don't know people have been discussing Flair at great length for a decade here. And so people say, "Um, we've been there," but a new person hasn't been there. There's not necessarily a good way to balance it. And it's hard to stop people from using what they know in conversation - Grimmas and Parv can't have a conversation that ignores the years of posts they've made before. But I'm with fakeplastictrees - this board is still a fascinating place to read (and sometimes post).