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The matwork in the Dick Shikat match is pretty strong.

Biden is running the most progressive campaign of a main party nominee in recent history, support for progressive ideas is at an all-time high, and Trump's approval/poll numbers are very poor. It definitely seems the pendulum is swinging to the left. I'd also argue the Republican party under Trump hasn't actually gone further to the right so much as it has embraced corporate cronyism and science denial. It's now about socialism for the rich.

I'm not really seeing why fans who complain about promotions classifying wrestlers as independent contractors would get on Tessa for exercising her natural right as an independent contractor. I guess treating independent contractors as employees is only bad until someone actually goes against it, and it leads to those same independent contractors not allowing themselves to be pressured into wrestling hyped matches.

The Thesz/Silverstein match was uploaded before but got blocked by WWE because some indy dude named Ruffy Silverstein had a WWE tryout once. Well worth a watch for anyone that hasn't seen it before. Steve Yohe did an excellent write-up on it.

There have been countless matches edited for Smackdown and whatnot over the years, and I'm pretty confident some of those involved the wrestlers redoing moves after botches that got edited out. I can't get onboard with the idea that a match being edited before it airs disqualifies it from being a wrestling match.

I definitely don't think Bryan and Tanahashi are the runaway winners here. I'm not as high on 2000's ROH and 2010's NJPW as others seem to be, but Akiyama seems to have every bit as prolific a run of great matches as people say those guys have and I'm much more into the style he works. When doing watching for GME last year, I came away thinking the 2/27/00 Misawa was still the best match of the new millennium. Other names deserving of a shout-out would be KENTA, Daisuke Ikeda, Minoru Suzuki, Yoshihiro Takayama, Kana/Asuka and Negro Navarro.

Absolutely tragic. My heart is really with Kyoko Kimura and her husband right now. So horrible losing your daughter like that.

In addition to the matches already mentioned, I'd add these Miz vs. Daniel Bryan (Night of Champions) 2010 Miz vs. Lawler TLC (Raw) 2010 Undertaker vs. Triple H (Wrestlemania 27) Orton vs. Christian (Over the Limit) 2011 Mark Henry vs. Randy Orton (Night of Champions) 2011 Mark Henry vs. Daniel Bryan Cage (Smackdown) 2011 Undertaker vs. Triple H HIAC (Wrestlemania 28) Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus (Extreme Rules) 2012 CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan (Over the Limit) 2012 Regal vs. Ambrose (FCW) 2012 Hell No vs. Shield (TLC) 2012 Undertaker vs. CM Punk (Wrestlemania 29) Sheamus vs. Cesaro (Main Event) 6/2013 Regal vs. Ohno (NXT) 2013 Goldust/Cody vs. Shield (Battleground) 2013 Regal vs. Cesaro (NXT) 2013 Cena vs. Cesaro (Raw) 2/2014 Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H (Wrestlemania 30) Brock Lesnar vs. Cena (Summerslam) 2014 Team Cena vs. Authority (Survivor Series) 2014 Neville vs. Sami Zayn (NXT) 12/2014 Roman Reigns vs. Big Show (Extreme Rules) 2015 Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch (NXT) 5/2015 Undertaker vs. Lesnar (SummerSlam) 2015 Sasha Banks vs. Bayley (NXT) 10/2015 Undertaker vs. Lesnar (HIAC) 2015 Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte (HIAC) 2016 Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte Falls Count Anywhere (Raw) 11/2016 DIY vs. The Revival (NXT) 11/2016 Goldberg vs. Lesnar (Wrestlemania 33) Undertaker vs. Roman Reigns (Wrestlemania 33) Asuka vs. Ember Moon (NXT) 8/2017 Usos vs. New Day (HIAC) 2017 Gargano vs. Almas (NXT) 1/2018 Ronda Rousey/Kurt Angle vs. H/Steph (Wrestlemania 34) Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch (Evolution) 2018 Ronda Rousey vs. Sasha Banks (Royal Rumble) 2019 Bryan vs. Kofi (Wrestlemania 35) Undertaker vs. Goldberg (Super Showdown) 2019 Low-key pretty sweet decade in terms of top matches. Despite the stereotype of WWE's formulaic/repetitive nature, there's a really good variety in workers and styles represented. I'd call it the best promotion of the decade in terms of great matches, since I'm not a fan of NJPW Okada main events.

I'd say the pre-96 choice has actually been made easier over time. It's going to hurt a lot losing late-90's AJPW, RINGS, BattlArts, and 2000's WWE, but not nearly as much as it hurts losing the rest of Baba's AJPW, 80's NJPW, UWF, WoS, 50's US, French catch, etc. I understand some people here dig AEW and NJPW, but I consistently find myself far more excited about the prospect of newer matches pre-96 being discovered than I do by any wrestling taking place in current day. I find older matches to be both far more in line with my tastes and much more rewarding to revisit than most new shit. That Bert Royal vs. Tony Oliver French match that just showed up, for example, blows away anything from the 2010's for me.

Pretty damn sad JvK can't make a point without people bringing up unrelated political bullshit and lobbing insults at him. And I agree it's ridiculous for WWE to structure their contracts as those of employees while treating their wrestlers as independent contractors.

I honestly see no issues with the label of "sports entertainment" that WWE uses to describe wrestling. Yes, they are trying to entertain people through matches with predetermined outcomes, but there's an undeniably huge influence in presentation from spectator sports (and, conversely, from wrestling onto competitive sports like MMA and boxing). I can absolutely sympathise with people who want wrestling to strive towards "realism." By that, I don't mean bringing back kayfabe but instead doing so through gritty struggle over moves, displaying raw emotion, and being produced as a sports broadcast would be. It's still ridiculous for Cornette to present himself as someone leading the charge for "realism" given the cartoony shit that was all over the Memphis and Crockett he idolizes.

People are underrating the fuck out of this. The narrative even from mainstream news outlets seems to be this happened a few years too late, but I'd argue it happening so late actually enhanced it. It has a different feel even from other dream matches by the fact that it is two of the most powerful characters in wrestling history finally meeting when both are in their 50's. Awesome entrances from both guys, especially Goldberg busting himself open by headbutting the door before coming out. The beginning of this is absolutely perfect: They do an epic staredown, Goldberg mocks Taker, Taker responds by rocking him with a stiff right hand, and Goldberg uses the rebound momentum from the ropes to his a surprise spear. How cool is it to see Goldberg not only establishing he doesn't fear Taker, but actually lulling him into leaving himself open for a spear? I love the rest of Goldberg's control segment between the second spear and the sloppy old man kneebar/heel hook as him trying to turn this into another squash match. Taker coming back and doing a nasty murder death tombstone early was fitting given how deep he was in the hole and the fact that he's in there with a guy known for finishing opponents early. The rest of Taker's control was him running through his standard offense (punches, Old School, Snake Eyes, chokeslam), but between the hot crowd, Taker working snug, and Goldberg's gassed out old man selling, it works pretty damn well. Goldberg later opens up the hardway cut he created during his entrance by hitting the ringpost, further adding to the carnage. I'd agree Goldberg botching the Jackhammer into a shoot brainbuster added to the match. I think I rewound that like 5 times, as it felt surreal seeing Taker get murdered like that. The tombstone botch didn't bother me, but I'll admit the sloppy chokeslam finish was a tad disappointing. Hindsight being 20/20 it probably would have worked better for Taker to just go for a Hell's Gate. Not sure how to feel about Taker looking pissed off during the post-match. I thought this was headed for **** territory before the ending botch. Even with it, it might still be **** as it's a pretty badass combination of legit first-time-ever dream match formula with old men maiming each other.

Buried in all the hoopla about WWE’s response, here’s WWE’s lawyers themselves acknowledging in court filings that some sort of incident was reported using classic misleading lawyer speak

To be fair, the Impact/TNA name has a pretty fair amount of ill-will associated with it from the Dixie Carter years. Networks aren't entirely unjustified in being cautious about wanting to associate themselves with such a thing. Impact would probably be better served at this point by focusing on online distribution over bouncing between obscure cable networks.

That's as good an argument as any that people take this way too seriously. How much is it really worth stressing out over if Omega makes it in when the people actually going in get nothing in return, if they're even aware of it in the first place? The comparisons with the baseball and WWE HOF's end with the fact that those have actual ceremonies attended by the inductees and others besides a small niche of newsletter voters.

I agree that Dave's hot takes seem to be his main method of keeping himself relevant, but I see things a bit differently in getting there. If anything, WWE's pivot towards appealing to hardcore fans has created a larger market than ever for dirtsheet writers and the situation with social media has made it so that, reliability notwithstanding, virtually anyone with an internet connection can make a name for themselves reporting and speculating on rumors. I recall the news of John Cena and Bryan getting pulled from Crown Jewel being broken by a virtual no-name, for example. This has created a situation where Meltzer is slowly getting crowded out of the game, so playing up his status as a historian and inciting controversy is the best he can do to keep his name out there. I personally haven't been subscribed to the Observer for close to a decade, as it's made pointless by the sheer number of dirtsheets out there posting and analyzing anything Dave writes within hours of it going up.

Really interesting. I'm surprised that any sort of wrestling was popular in Japan back then. I always accepted the narrative that wrestling didn't catch on in Japan until some guys came over from America during the occupation and Rikidozan ran with it. Makes me interested in if we could find anything interesting looking through old Japanese newspapers.

Agreed. It’s impossible to argue with a statement like that since he fails to back it up with any specific examples. It’s just another Twitter Dave hot take designed to incite controversy and little else. If you’re getting triggered into going on a message board and bitching about how he only likes “CrossFit wrestling” then you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do.

Let's be real, WWE is a very small fish in the grand scheme of this situation. Yeah, it is disappointing to see them just shutting up and taking the money, but cancelling the event at this stage wouldn't have any effect beyond disappointing the fans who already bought tickets before this shit went down. Not worth getting so worked up over.

Yeah, this is definitely setting a bad precedent. Not sure if UFC can even claim to be safer than boxing anymore if they're gonna keep putting guys fighting on short notice after taking beatings.

How does one go about getting a ballot? I’d always thought you had to be some industry insider to vote, but that doesn’t seem to be the case if there’s folks here voting.

The Brie kick botch is some pretty puzzling stuff. She starts off with a regular chest kick and then suddenly changes her angle to hit Liv right in the face not once but twice for no apparent reason. Doesn’t even look like she was distracted or something. Seems possible it could have been intentional and she applied excessive force.

Unless you’re really big into the formula, CMLL weeklies are generally a black hole for great matches so I wouldn’t count that against him. Casa’s rep has always been built more on injecting little moments of fun into forgettable matches rather than putting on singularly great matches every week.

Yeah, the one at Down with the Sickness 2016.