peachchaos

I like his '93 run a good deal, the stuff with Razor and Perfect is really solid.

Really enjoying this so I'll echo the support. Finally had a chance to binge the first three episodes. Sean's a very likable host with an ability to steer the conversation in the right direction, so we actually get a lot out of Jerry and it always seems focused. Also really nice is the format of the show rotating around a bit. I'm excited to check out the new one and keep it up!

Never in great detail. He hints at past "demons" and things to that nature and cracks open a beer on every episode, though.

Taz returns to ECW and debuts his new shoot fighter gimmick at November to Remember 1995. I'd imagine the tap out debuts soon after.

Paul Varleans taps out to Taz in their "shoot fight" at Hardcore Heaven, the June 1996 ECW Arena show. Or at least Joey Styles says he tapped out, you don't really see it visually. Either way it's interesting since Jericho worked "shoots" with Taz a few months earlier but they didn't use the tap gimmick. I don't think it's far off to think Taylor suggested they use it in WCW around the same time WWF started doing it with Shamrock.

It was also on the WWE History of the World Heavyweight Championship DVD.

Now we're talking. A nice variety here and I'm interested in nearly every clip. More Piper-Valentine is always a good thing. I have to laugh at them putting up the build to that Funk-Dustin match after we got it up on YouTube last week.

I really have nothing to add other than this is gonna be extremely cool for fans of Memphis wrestling and I can't wait to listen!

My life changed forever when I went to a friend's birthday party for Royal Rumble 1992. There were about 20 kids there and I had never seen much pro wrestling before but it was clear to me that Ric Flair was something special. I instantly made 19 enemies when I cheered for Flair throughout the night and amazingly he won the WWF Championship. After WM8 I begged and pleaded for my dad to take me to a TV taping at Rupp Arena. By then my tastes had devolved to align more with my 10 year old mind and I made an Ultimate Warrior sign and cheered for Macho Man to beat Flair. Little did my dad know it was a near 6 hour event with voodoo and green vomit. I became a WWF fan for life. And then a few years later another light bulb went off at about 3am one morning when I stumbled on Joey Styles going through the history of ECW Champions and talking about a "Barbed-Wire Match" between a guy named "Raven" and a guy named "The Sandman". What the fuck is this? I ended up being able to see three of the best ECW PPVs and for a long time it felt like ECW was a big part of my life.

Agreed about Spike Dudley and I think there's even a case for him as the top worker in ECW history. He's certainly the most well-rounded in terms of card placement. Main event, opener, mid-card tag. He can get tossed around by Taz or dive off balconies with New Jack. Put him in a three way dance with Tajiri and Crazy and he looks like a top junior. Ridiculous giant killer or gorilla-press crowd surfer? The list just goes on and on. At the very least he's a Top 5 ECW worker.

Is there an instance of a missed opportunity for a promotion to coronate Luger as the top guy in almost every single year of the 1990's?

One of the hottest crowds in history.

Hulk Hogan - 23 years vs. Bob Backlund (1980) vs. Vince McMahon (2003)

Slaughter's face turn after turning on his country and going to war with Hulkamania was pretty pathetic.

Was he not planning to retire? I don't remember but I doubt it would have lasted. Owen is painted in interviews by Bret and others as someone who was not long for the business, even before the Montreal experience. When you view his work from 98-on, it really shows. Seems likely he would have left wrestling before the Monday Night War even wrapped up.

How about Chris Candido? There's a guy who - perhaps since he is no longer with us - is always rated as a top notch worker among his peers, drawing comparisons to high level American workers of the time such as Michaels and Benoit. He is usually referenced by fellow members of the ECW crew as the best worker in that particular locker room. However, for certain students who have done their homework and watched all the available footage, I'm not sure he even cracks the top 5 all-time workers for ECW on most lists. While most everyone agrees his best stuff was in SMW, claiming he was a top tier US worker at the time seems a bit much. Does he fit in here? In terms of career trajectory it's about as middle-of-the-road as it gets but Candido never ceases to entertain me.

gotta get his win back on Lesnar

Cesaro was well on his way to WOTD contention before he joined WWE. It took Sheamus a few years to get cooking really.

I would say you'd have some ground to stand on if the stipulation didn't directly factor into the finish. But it did, so you don't.

Saying that any match has to constrict itself to some narrow-minded view of a completely worked stipulation because that's how you would like the stipulation to be worked is totally ignoring the characters and context. That's just not how wrestling should be viewed because it's not how it is created or presented, especially in America but it is certainly like this in Japan as well. All those AJPW classics would be almost inconsequential if they weren't part of a larger story. You're doing this all wrong, especially when it comes to a master like Bret Hart, whose entire career was to build nuance on top of his previous masterpiece. The submission stipulation here is so much more important than any mat work could ever be. Bret beat Austin by pinfall by countering Austin's submission finisher and Hart himself was known for the sharpshooter. Austin antagonized Hart for months and the two had a heated feud. They had no interest in seeing who the better mat wrestler was, that time had passed. The submission stip allowed for a situation where there were no disqualifications with a special referee a legit submission specialist. Austin couldn't lose by pinfall this time and there would be no excuses in Hart's mind and Shamrock wouldn't stop it until there was a winner. Austin, totally in character, didn't care and just wanted to beat Hart into submission. They had a helluva fight, which is exactly what needed to happen, and go home with the greatest finish in the history of the business. WWE presents itself as a weekly episodic TV series and viewing it in any other context is just completely irrelevant. You're missing out. You're cherry-picking episodes of prestige TV when you should be binging the entire season. There are a million Volk Han matches I love that almost no one will ever care about because there is nothing there beyond the work. And they're all amazing in the way a lot of world art house cinema is in terms of technique and delivery. But Austin-Hart is Pulp Fiction and it absolutely changed the game on every level. It's like calling Pulp Fiction a bad movie since it's not really a noir crime drama as much as it is a dark comedy. Who cares?

Sure, but you'd have to actually be in Japan to find it.

My ultimate defense of the "Submission Match" stip is that WWF had never marketed or presented a "Submission Match" in resent history. So if you came in with your own expectations, that's exactly what they were. Hart had the sharpshooter, Austin had the Million Dollar Dream and "submission expert" Ken Shamrock was the special guest ref. Those are the perimeters of the match, but working the match as anything other than a complete brawl would have been a detriment to the entire feud. Austin became a made man and Hart was reborn as the lead heel. It's the single greatest finish in wrestling history. Survivor Series is slightly better maybe from a purist standpoint, but they're way different beasts anyhow. Surivor Series merely sets the stage for the feud. I would certainly argue that no one should watch one without watching the other. If you don't watch wrestling in terms of feuds and how they build, you are absolutely doing it wrong anyway. The entire Austin-Hart saga is some of my favorite filmmaking, period.

The first "This is Awful" chant I've ever heard. They earned it. After a shitty match with Botch Lesnar seemingly out of shape and way too many finisher kick-outs, we finally get copious amounts of blood on WWE television and then Brock just wins. Whatever. I think ** sounds about right because after all there were some decent moments scattered throughout and I honestly can't blame the workers for having to piss through a seemingly decent game plan at the last second. And there is something to be said for the element of surprise when the entire world was expecting Brock to lose steadily. In terms of WrestleMania closing moments, however, this was not quite "Wait a minute...that's the Warrior's music!"