Migs

I am consistently surprised that no one has adapted the online TV review style (popularized by people like Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz) to reviewing wrestling TV. Wrestling TV reviews tend to focus far too much on the matches and too little on the overall effect of the show. Of course, a lot of wrestling TV would not hold up well to this analysis, but it would be worthwhile and make reviews of shows a lot easier to read. And it would also allow us to better grasp why certain promotions that actually did produce good "TV episodes" (i.e. ECW, Memphis) excelled beyond the basic quality of the matches and the promos.

Especially with the brand split, absolutely. Sasha-Charlotte had the most heat of any Raw match at Summerslam.

We all want new stars, but Cena still has the most heat. If that match is for a World title, it's a killer main event, with a similar feel to Cena-Bryan (although a step down in quality).

I really need to go back and see why people didn't like Cena-Styles, but I was in the building and for what it's worth, the match had easily the most heat of the night. Crowd was very into the near falls, and AJ's win got the biggest reaction of the night. Masterful performance by Cena, too - he had a real sense of the room and played everything perfectly, did everything he could to build up the moment for AJ. Hindsight possibly, but that should have been the main event. The crowd was fried after that and nothing got back up to that level. The biggest chants in the latter part of the show were about how ugly the Universal Title is.

What's weird is that wrestling gave up on kayfabe only a few years before the rise of reality television would have made kayfabe (in the sense of the show presenting itself as totally real) completely acceptable.

I really liked the finish actually, with Ayala flipping the hide the chain psychology on Savage. Good match up until that point too. ***

I really liked the opening bit where they need to hold Brody down to get the chain on him - really gets him over as a wild man and the importance of the stipulation. I didn't like the screwy, standard chain finish to an otherwise strong brawl. ***

Again a slow brawl (I may be saying this a lot in Abby matches), but very solid and I liked Andre. **

Shit finish, and a lot of chinlocks before. Not much here. *1/2

I thought Apollo had some good fire. Stein born was solid. **1/4

This was a really fun brawl. The brawling by the fence in particular was great. I also really liked the finish, even if it was a bit messy. ***3/4 This and Flair match has me really into seeing Colon against stronger workers - he really meshes well with them.

Eh, this felt like a WWF TV taping tag match from the time period. Felt too compressed to really rise above being okay. **

I loved this too, but I'm with shoe - some of the selling was a little off. Still, the atmosphere was amazing and the energy was terrific. ****1/4

Classic Flair studio match. Good pace, fun work from both. ***

I liked the intensity a lot, but the slowness of the brawl after the initial rush by Colon hurt it for me. Also, the finish was awful. **1/2

If you have the Network, the 1985 episodes of World Championship Wrestling they have provide at least the immediate context in the weeks leading up to the match.

Everyone talks about how you can "feel the hatred" - but the last time I watched it, all I saw was a wrestling brawl with a great finish. They work it in a way that looks less cooperative, and I get that that adds to the atmosphere a bit. But that bit of atmosphere doesn't push it to five star all-time classic for me. Maybe it's a "you had to be there" kind of thing? I watched the build up before the last time I saw it, so I had more context, but it still didn't register the way it seems to for most. EDIT to add my most recent watch of the match was a few months ago.

That was amazing.

Van Dam got to be really difficult to watch in 1999-2000 in TV matches with guys who he was definitely going to beat. There's no drama, and the matches all seem to last forever. When I watched all of the ECW TV a while ago, I was hitting the fast forward button a lot with RVD at that time if he wasn't wrestling Lynn or Sabu.

Possible that they are shifting their place of business to Florida. It's a state registration, so it might just mean they are inactive in Tennessee.

There are definitely people who were the "right age" for ECW (mostly between 14 and 22) when they were first exposed to it that will always have a fonder appreciation for it than those older or younger. I was also 13 when I first saw ECW in 1996, and it was basically a synthesis of everything racing through my adolescent brain.

He would be an announcing improvement for a lot of companies.