Jesse Ewiak

I think there's a point about the homogenization of wrestling being tied to the larger homogenization of America in general. Through the mid to late 80's, each region of the country had their own department stores, gas stations, fast food places, and the like. Sure, there was a few national chains, but they were part of a larger range of companies. Now, I'm stealing this joke, but if you kidnapped me and dropped me off in a very large percentage of the country in the exurban big box shopping areas, the only way I'd be able to instantly figure out where I was would be the weather and the accent of the people. Because the stores would all be the same - Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Home Depot, Outback, etc. It's the same thing with wrestling. But, the more odd thing is that even the "counterculture" of wrestling is like the "counterculture/hipsterism" of today. After all, thanks to the Internet, the same 20-30 guys are the 'hot' indy guys that PWG, EVOLVE, AAW, and all the other big indies want on their show. After all, before LU was a think, Fenix was not getting booking on PWG shows. So, just like every 'hip' area has the same types of restaurants and shops, even if the names are different, most indie companies are shooting for the same audience. With few exceptions, there isn't even the differences of the early oughts, where you had the Northeastern indies, the West Coast indies the Midwestern indies of IWA-MS et all, and the Southern indies with Wildside and everything else. If you get good, everybody wants to book you because you're getting Youtube hits. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing for the wrestlers, but it's odd that for all the talk about "WWE all looking the same", everybody wants the same, but different thing on the independent circuit.

Now, there's a multitude of other reasons, but listen to me for a second. Along with good booking, another part of the reason why WCW finally gained some steam is frankly, people in college or in their early 20's flipped channels or stumbled upon wrestling with all their favorites from childhood on TV - Hogan! Savage! Gene Okerlund! Jim Duggan! A guy who kinda looks like Andre! Meanwhile, on the other channel, there were the two people who were in tag teams when they were kids and a bunch of dudes they don't know. Now, assume you're some billionaire with money to burn and a network with some coverage. Who are you going to hire that has name value and is available? I mean, John Morrison has been great on Lucha Underground and all, but he's not Randy Savage in 1995. I mean, maybe you drop a dump truck full of money in front of Batista & Punk, with a slightly smaller dump truck for Rey Jr., but I doubt any of them would move the needle that much. So, I guess my argument is, even if somebody wanted to create a WCW, are there the available draws to do so? And if not, isn't it a net positive for WWE to continue 50/50 booking even if it hurts their ceiling?

Both LU and the Dusk 'til Dawn show runs on Robert Rodriguez's El Rey cable channel, so they were probably sold as a block.

So, I'm bored and it's late, so let me write this up as I'm kind of amused by it. Also this might be Pro Wrestling Mostly. For those of you don't know, for whatever reason (probably the fact they're 20 to 30-ish year old dorks), a lot of video game jounalists and developers are fans of the pro wrestling. As a result of this, at PAX East, a video game convention, two years ago, there was a panel where 30 of them had a PAX Rumble to crown the inagural PAX Video Game Wrestling Champion, using the Wrestlemania 2000 N64 game. Now, that'd be just a silly panel to watch on the Internet, except people actually shot promo videos and there were angles at panels before the show including people being hit with (faux) glass bottles and attempted powerbombs through tables. Since then, there have been basically an event at every PAX (of which, there's two or three a year) with even more wacky angles and promos and as it goes, less and less actual video game wrestling as people realize that WM 2000 isn't all that great a game and it's all built up to this years PAX-A-Mania II which was an hour long panel where only about four minutes was spent on actual video game wrestling and the rest was on weird promos, special appearances by Ophidian & Amasis of CHIKARA, folks from Kaiju Big Battle, the President of Sony Playstation and Xavier Woods. Also, everybody is a heel and there are sweves of plenty Oh, and it also drew about 1,000 people to the PAX Main Stage (True, people had already bought passes), meaning it might be the #2 or #3 company in United States wrestling as far as getting people to show up to its events. Here's a link to the actual show/panel/etc. - it's about an hour long. - Some of the best "promos" leading up to the event - Or just go to paxamania.com and read about the silliness.

I'm likely missing somebody obvious, but the only two workers I saw on the tape were Heyman and Gilbert, who were both already well known to be fans turned wrestlers plus Hyatt who was Gilbert's gf at the time. Plus, Lance Russell, but ya' know, it's Lance Russell in Memphis. What the hell are you going to do to him even if you are upset at him for being in the same room with Dave? Also, seeing Dave kind of jacked at this time, I have a possibly odd question - is possibly part of the reason why wrestlers got closer to Dave than other insiders of the time was because well, he kind of looked like them, especially compared to his competition?

Just a reminder that for all of our complaining about whether 'Taker needs to be on the list or that random awesome lucha guy is too low at #133 - your average "smart" fan thinks Jericho is a top 10 of all time guy - https://www.reddit.com/r/WredditCountryClub/comments/4fjj4u/does_chris_jericho_have_a_legit_claim_to_being/ so even if all of us have terrible opinions, we still don't have the worst opinions.

Agreed, I definitely wanna watch it. Spoilers, but evidently other WWE people are only involved in the first half hour or so.

According to the recent scandal, Deangelo Russel is Shawn Statsiak.

Ya know, all things considered, how different is top heel no-selling suplexing motherfuckers Scott Steiner from late era WCW from Brock Lesnar since his return, when it only comes to the in-ring. I mean, I think Lesnar has been slightly better, but outside of some small things, I don't see anything 2015 Brock Lesnar is doing that 1998 Scott Steiner couldn't do. Now, maybe he _wouldn't_ take certain bumps Brock does because Brock is a madman, but since a lot of people believe Brock's latest run has been awesome, Scotty's late WCW run is almost at the same level.

Alan naming Mochizuki his #4 wrestler of all time is the most Alan thing I can think of when it comes to this list and say that in a positive way.

I think it depends on your definition of 'hardcore fan.' Folks like Mike Sempervive and Adam Summers who stayed through the dark Inokism eras along with a younger Alan4L were beginning to pimp that "hey, New Japan is actually really good again and booking well" really beginning in late '08 / early '09.

I think Dave's point was that being given the I-C title for a one day reign for no other reason than they didn't want Owens to job the belt to The Miz isn't exactly a career highlight, even if you won the belt at Mania. If he was going to be given a six month I-C title reign to build up the belt or frankly, something like a World Title win or the end of one of the NXT Women's matches, that's at least being given the ball by the company. This is being handed the ball for three seconds because the other guy has to go to the bathroom and then listing it on your resume as a career highlight.

I wonder much higher would Mistico be if he'd just stayed in CMLL, been on top, probably drew a ton of money, and been in awesome lucha matches we had easier access too?

I mean, you can not like him and all. God knows I don't care about him, but being upset at Joey Ryan for being creepy in his wrestling matches and getting votes for this list seems kind of silly when we're likely to see a domestic abuser, a murderer, a serial statutory rapist, and several hardcore racists likely all fare pretty well. It's wrestling. It's full of scumbags. Ryan's just worse at the wrestling part.

It seems oddly...fitting for Kofi to be the low man on the totem pole in a list from this board.

There's a Lisa Lewis and a Lauren McKell listed, who may or may not be women.

Something interesting from the latest Observer - I saw the results of a marketability study regarding the top WWE characters and it's probably one of the reasons they are strong on Reigns. And this was a current fan-based study and not a general public study, which saw Reigns as the fourth highest ranking wrestler on the roster, trailing Cena (who scored much higher than anyone else), Undertaker and Lesnar. Others faring strongly among the active wrestlers were Orton, HHH and Styles, the latter of which probably surprised people. Ambrose also did well, but was far behind the guys mentioned and Owens didn't fare well at all. That may be why they are reluctant to listen to crowd reactions and think they should push someone else. ... One major retailer noted that, in order, the top five selling T-shirts at their national chain for 2015 were Cena, Bryan, Reigns, Rollins and Ambrose, in that order.

Outside of DVDVR/PWO bubble, the IWC largely didn't want Cena as the top guy before the last few years either because he was a "shitty" wrestler and "won all the time."

This is kind an out of the box pick, especially for this board but...Kane. Think of how many dumb angles he's happily been apart of. Think of how many over flowery promos he's been able to get through despite the stupidity of them. Think of how every guy in the back loves working with him. He's been massively over as a face and heel, done 'serious' angles and comedy angles, and so on and so forth. For his size, he's a perfectly able worker and obviously has the size and ability to be a monster heel in 70's WWWF, Japan, or most territories. I'd also add he's been perfectly willing to job to people in the midcard, be in tag teams, or part of the main event scene, sometimes all in the same year.

Because the public reaction doesn't line up with the sold out crowds at those RAW's and PPV's. If Roman was truly hated, people wouldn't come to the show anymore. The RAW and PPV shows will always be more hardcore, especially now wrestling has become a 'nerd' thing. I think the WWE has largely accepted that. As long as people keep on buying overpriced tickets and experiences to those events, they can boo Roman all they want because the money still goes into Vince's pocket.

I think in one measure it is true. At a house show in Green Bay or Amarillo, Reigns is fine. Hell, even at these smarky RAW shows, I'm sure Reigns is still one of the best selling merch guys. Now, of course, his booking has sucked, but this is literally the worst possible cities for the road to WM when it comes to Reigns. #politicalhit

The ironic thing is that if you're the prototypical WWE-centric smart fan in 2015 - want long matches on PPV, indie guys pushed, don't care about the "look", believe in the Diva's Revolution, and so on and so forth, the WWE's current popularity is what you want. Because, the type of people you have to pull in to get wrestling "mainstream" again and drawing 5's or 6's on Monday Night and selling out every RAW are the exact type of people who will want the girls in bra 'n' panties matches, get bored at "good" wrestling, and think Kevin Owens looks like a fat geek.

I actually think one big difference isn't so much the nerdery, even though there is a chunk of that, is that most of us remember the mid to late 90's, where the cruiserweights were stuck in the midcard, various great wrestlers in the WWF weren't pushed due to a lack of charisma, and so on, and so forth. So, the fact that frankly, that the top 10 pushed full time guys in the WWE are all pretty good wrestlers and that we're getting *** matches almost weekly on TV is kind of great. But, a newer fan doesn't only want that, they want 30 minute ***** matches weekly, awesome storylines, and every indy guy they've ever heard of in the mix for the World title. It's a matter of expectations.

I think even our resident curmudgeons will like this bit from the E&C show - 'Stuff WWE fans say' https://twitter.com/WWE/status/709581910163390464

I think Slasher is trying to say that in RL Shane perhaps tried to talk the Board into voting no confidence on Vince, but it failed and there was blowback on Shane.