bradhindsight

What? Cena and Mysterio were two of the biggest stars in the company and had not faced each other on PPV. That match would've been huge The money was in Punk/Cena II and with their second biggest show of the year the following month, it was a no-brainer. Mysterio/Cena was a great RAW main event, but after all that buzz, you can't leave Punk off that card in my opinion.

I think NXT is doing great things around conditioning the fans to enjoy women's matches. All their specials have had the women's title co-advertised with the main event. I could certainly see a women's title match being a top 4 mania match in future years. The groundwork is there, as well as the new eyes on the product from Total Divas.

I'd argue that they deliberately didn't leave money on the table (for better or worse) with CM Punk in 2011. SummerSlam is their second biggest show of the year - he had to be a part of it. There is no way that show is drawing with Cena/Mysterio.

Reaction show with Will, Kris, Phil, Pete and Johnny P posted in the publications and podcasts sub-forum! Loaded group for this one.

I have Graham's first WWF book and the NWA one. They are just the results in paperback form from his site. Via Amazon you should get to see a bit of a demo on what is included. Not sure what was added to MSG.

I'll echo soup's last sentence. Track your stuff by contributing to the match discussion forums here. They are a fantastic resource.

Yamazaki is Super Tiger's protege (thanks wikipedia!) and Snuka was sometimes referred to as Cocoa Samoa. This one is pretty heatless, with an early highlight being Snuka having Yamazaki bent over with his hands pinned while Snuka would catapult himself up and bump crotches (twice!). There's one flurry where the guys start punching and kicking at each other, with Snuka firing off some headbutts. Otherwise this is pretty forgettable. Yamazaki wins with the german + bridge. This match was ranked 72/75 in the Other Japan 80s poll.

This match is the answer to the burning question: "What happens when you try to have a bloody, heated lucha brawl in front of a Japanese audience?" Via la Mexico! Before the bell Aguayo sucker attacks Hamada and throws him to the outside. Aguayo has a crew of four guys with him, and they are all over Hamada, in a good attempt to draw some killer heat. Doesn't really happen though as the crowd just sits there. These guys have a great, stiff match with some nice lucha sequences and very few holds. Hamada's second (masked guy) tries to fire up the crowd, often pointing out when Aguayo is cheating. Hamada hits a big dive to a nice pop and then things spiral out of control. Aguayo's guys try to introduce a chair, eventually doing so and Aguayo cracks Hamada with it (opened no less, right on his skull) and Hamada blades. Masked guy is freaking out because there's a foreign object now introduced, and (at least the crowd that is lit) people are kind of "meh" to this. Aguayo starts working the cut HARD, blatantly giving no shits about the ref or rules. He doesn't stop and the ref waves the match off. All his guys are in to kick at Hamada while Perro still works the cut. We finally get some babyface reinforcements but they don't get the upperhand and the onslaught continues. Things start to slow down, guys just meandering around while sometimes punching and kicking at each other. Hamada gets the object and starts to clear house and then both teams hold their guy back. We get a pull-apart brawl now with Hamada and Aguayo going at it with Hamada hitting a staunch headbutt to kind of end the whole post match stuff. Aguayo actually hangs around on the ropes while they pick Hamada up and the crowd cheers. Almost thought he was going to run back in again. This was really interesting to watch in the environment where it took place. This match was ranked 26/75 in the Other Japan 80s poll.

Now we'e talking with the mid 80s shoot style stuff. This is the finals of a mini tournament (Super Tiger over Fujiwara, Maeda over Mark Lewin). Good kicks from both with a slight edge to Super Tiger. The stand-up sequences that led to take-downs got pretty good as this went on. Lot of armbars and rope breaks, as is expected. Both guys do a reversal into a single crab off that submission. Crowd is hot for these big submission take-downs. Super Tiger is the first to break out some wrestling, hitting a somersault senton onto Maeda's back while doing some arm work. Pele kick from Tiger and he goes up for a knee drop but Maeda avoids. Everybody pretty much no-sells anything but the submission work. Things look bleak for Super Tiger but he keeps fighting for the ropes. Finally he just goes "fuck it" and elbows Maeda in the back of the head, works him up for a tombstone and then hits a moonsault (he also works in a beautiful back spin kick to Maeda's head, which was impressive given how tall Maeda is comparably). That'd be your pro-wrestling finish but Super Tiger just goes right back to the arm, which goes nowhere and Maeda is in the ropes. Both guys start throwing some more suplexes but we're only talking one counts here, followed by more rope breaks. Finally Super Tiger works Maeda into the crossface chickenwing and he taps. This match was ranked 20/75 in the Other Japan 80s poll.

I probably fit your hypothesis pretty well Parv: 35 years old Ages 19-23 - hardcore into the product, the video games, everything. Was in college for most of this (with my buddy Rob Naylor). Stopped watching after Mania in 2002. Ages 26-27 - end of 2004 into summer of 2006 (left after the ECW split off fizzled after RVD's bust) - waxed nostalgic, desperately wanted to get back into the product. Ordered a lot of PPVs, didn't converse online though. Bought my first DVDs Met my wife during that summer also - fast forward two years later - married in summer of 2008: Ages 29-today - have free time again late in 2008, hugely back into the product. Re-find SK's old blog, which leads me to PTB and PWO. Go to a couple Wrestlemanias (having local friends into the product is nice), start hardcore collecting DVDs, and exploring other territories.

Good callback, I thought that happened later in the summer. I stand corrected. I agree re: the Vince apology. And while at first I thought it was surely just a clerical error, after hearing Punk's rebuttal, maybe that was a bit more deliberate than I wanted to think.

Great match. I liked a lot of things from this tag, with the highlights being: - Super Tiger's kicks were fantastic. He and Maeda trading them created quite the buzz - Super Tiger aborting a knee drop when Maeda moved and firing off a back spin kick, sending him into the corner - Super Tiger hits a tombstone on Fujiwara, followed by a diving head butt across the ring (complete with replay) - Later in the match when he's tagged back in, Fujiwara fires off a bunch of pissed-off headbutts on Super Tiger - Fujiwara and Takada trading bridges four consecutive times I thought Fujiwara really made Takada and Super Tiger look great. He took most of the damage here, although each match-up brought a lot of energy, which is great when you have big stars like this. The only disappointment here, for me, was the ending stetch with Takada working a headlock over Fujiwara in the middle of the ring for quite some time. Seemed odd that the heel (or more heelish maybe) wouldn't be doing that. Flat ending with Fujiwara hitting an out of nowhere, somewhat pedestrian German suplex on him and using a bridge for the win. I did like that little callback with the bridge to their previous reversals but I'm always a little sour on endings where the guy just kind of takes the move and watches the ref count three without any kind of struggle. This match was ranked 12/75 in the Other Japan 80s poll.

Not mentioned with the video game cover talk is that Punk had just turned heel. I can see why the company tried to steer it away from him, but am glad 2K stuck with their guns.

Schiavone (or Bischoff really) never got heat for spoiling it, just for alerting and sending their viewers to the other product (not to mention sounding like a dick re: Foley). The internet in 1999 wasn't as big (naturally) as today also>

They also promoted Foley's first title win off the taped Raw on their site. I remember that pretty clearly.

Really strong storytelling here as Fujiwara comes across as the stronger, more-seasoned wrestler, who is content on grinding Super Tiger down at all times. It's a great dynamic for the entire match. He starts the match by grabbing Super Tiger and giving him a huge atomic drop, and then catches his first kick and just releases his grasp. Good dickhead type stuff there. Fujiwara grabs a triangle choke and, while it appeared Super Tiger tapped, the ref breaks the hold and the match continues. I'm not sure what happened there, he didn't seem to be under the ropes. Fujiwara catches a second kick, and turns it into a dragon screw takedown and we're back to the mat. Any time Super Tiger can get a break from having a limb worked over, he fires off exciting kicks which really gets the crowd going. Twice he lands these and goes up for a big move (knee drop was one of them) but Fujiwara moves out of the way. While nothing from the top is executed, there is a payoff later in the match when Super Tiger drops a vicious knee on Fujiwara's skull. Fujiwara hits the first piledriver but Super Tiger's follow-up tombstone later is fantastic, with Fujiwara selling it like death and staying balanced on the top of his head for a slow fall. When Fujiwara fights for another later, there's a great subtle touch of him locking the leg with his arms to be able to lift Super Tiger up for the move. The finish sees another kick caught and we get the big payoff with a huge back spinning kick from Super Tiger. A couple other kill shots are laid in and he locks in an arm and neck submission and Fujiwara gives up. We get a handshake and show of respect post match. This match really resonated with me when I reflected back on it. Lot of connected pieces here that told a good story. This match was ranked 7/75 in the Other Japan 80s poll.

Yeah but I thought Vince made it clear Undertaker was done and he had to work off what was best for 2014 given what they had. It did seem like he was stretching that someone like Brock needed this rub and that now he could always make this claim. That would be applicable for any wrestler.

Austin whiffed on this one giving Vince the easy way out. He ALWAYS puts Cesaro over on his podcast but Austin didn't really put over how over Cesaro was doing the Swing and after winning the Battle Royal and how it was creative's fault for not pushing him as a babyface. I think he let Vince off the hook on this one with bad phrasing and not making a strong argument out of the gate. Agreed - he mentioned pairing him up with a heel Heyman to force fans to boo him, but as you said - this was a little choppy (bad phrasing is spot on). Not mentioning the Swing was glaring.

I was pretty impressed that 69 year old Vince McMahon was rattling off conversations and incidents he had with Verne Gagne and Bill Watts way back in the day. Loved his bit about only challenging Watts once and that Crockett didn't know the business.

I don't think he was fed softballs - the Savage question, Punk topic, what happened to Shane, etc. I thought Austin was pretty solid in pressing further when he thought something was there, otherwise he was going to move to the next thing. Took Vince a couple minutes to really warm up, and I liked how sincere he came across (right off the bat) about the termination papers showing up on Punk's wedding day.

What award did he win in 2008 for Wrestler of the Year (or something along those lines)? From looking, it wasn't the Observer - PWI maybe?

Yeah but you have to remember this self-delusion you're talking about was without the benefit of hindsight. I would like to know how they pitched that story originally ending.

He contradicted himself here as he noted Brock's WWE deal was negotiated with the understanding Brock already had those endorsement contracts in place. The WWE's hands were tied there.

I think it was made very clear that it wasn't one incident that led to this. This is pointed out numerous times in the thread already.