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The topic title is wrong. Womens wrestling is already very successful in the US if you just look at a typical Raw quarterly breakdown and see divas segments are typically among the highest rated.

Not seeing how any of these come close to Taker/Brock. It really puts it in perspective to realize that it would take at least 20 years for WWE to replicate that moment with another streak, and even then it probably wouldn't be as shocking because it would have been done before.

So basically he's come out and said he can't have a good match without a bunch of hardcore shit?

2007-2009 (13-15): Start watching with literally a week before Benoit kills himself. Really dig it but watch a bit sporadically because school and not sure about going all the way into this carny shit. 2009-2010 (15-16): Find out about puro and decide to go all the way into this carny shit. Pretty much drop everything to watch 24/7. 2010-2011 (16-17): Concussion shit comes and I rethink going all the way into this carny shit. Get other interests and barely watch. 2011-2014(17-20): Find 90s AJPW and it is just the fucking greatest thing I've ever seen. I kind of put away the guilt and start watching again, though it's again very sporadic with me going through periods watching tons or barely any. Haven't followed WWE much during this period (though they've recently got me interested by pushing the shield and signing KENTA), but love seeing both old and recent matches from all the puro promotions. I think I enjoy wrestling now more than I ever have, even though me having other things to do kind of stops me from watching as much as before. I think there's something to the claim that a points where a demographic seems to quit watching have as much to do with what's going on elsewhere as it does with the product itself.

I think it's pretty reasonable for Punk to be pissed as he came across if they were as shitty as he claims about his medical issues before they suspended/fired while burying him as a quitter. Though I also think a lot of it was him putting on a show to get listeners considering Colt is a friend and he knew how big a deal the show was. I doubt he doesn't have at least some appreciation underneath the bitterness if you compare him waiting this long to address the situation to how a guy who clearly was legit pissed (Del Rio) handled their release.

Problem with looking at the Suwana match as evidence how well he could work a long match is that like 10 minutes got clipped, which leaves some room to be cynical on if the full version would drag more. Otherwise, I agree that's a great match with Nishimura hanging really well in delivering an epic, and I'm honestly surprised that it didn't seem to get on the best of 2000s Japan thing.

Don't know what you are getting at here. Because this was not be a good idea at all. The male dominated WWE audience would boo a woman out of the building for such a promo, if she started talking about equal pay and how women are treated as sex objects to be gaped at for their tits rather than admired for their wrestling ability. It would be pretty embarrassing to WWE that their fans are exposed as sexist misogynists with archaic attitudes, and probably damaging in terms of advertisers. So basically it would be reaffirm how idiotic feminists (and their sympathizers) are for trying to guilt trip men for enjoying what men enjoy. Sounds like a great angle idea to me.

I agree on the main being a MOTYC. As a Ziggler fan, I had it in the ****1/2-****3/4 range just for Ziggler's performance. I couldn't get into the first half since Ryback/Cena/Show don't really scream anti-authority to me with how hard the company has pushed them, but in a way that helped the match since it made it even more unexpected that they would give Ziggler a chance. I also thought it served as a really cool bit of revenge for the DX burying the spirit squad back in 2006.

I seriously think Undertaker was working the sad old man in the Brock match as an intentional role to add to the statement he was making about how far wrestling had gone from its sportive roots that people thought a UFC champ had no chance against a beat up 49 year old. I think if you watch the match and you view it as him simply doing an amazing job working as a guy who stuck around too long rather than as him legit having stuck around for too long it goes from something sad to a piece of dramatic brilliance.

I think my problem with people using the "sterile shills" point as evidence of WWE commentary having gone to hell at some point is that such a claim implies things were significantly better at some point, when it's been pretty extensively argued that the prior era of Gorilla Monsoon with the commentator being all about getting themselves over was just as bad, if not worse. I mean how many wrestlers have gone and complained to Meltzer about Cole intentionally undermining the drama of their matches in the same way they would with Monsoon always burying pin attempts?

Trying to keep this to matches I saw relatively recently 1988: Jumbo vs Tenryu 1989: Tenryu/Hansen vs Baba/Kimura 1990: Jumbo vs Misawa I 1991: Jumbo/Fuchi/Taue vs Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada 1992: Misawa vs Kawada 1993: Misawa/Kobashi vs Kawada/Taue RWTL Final 1994: Misawa vs Kawada TC 1995: Misawa/Kobashi vs Kawada/Taue 6/9 1996: Misawa/Akiyama vs Kawada/Taue 12/6 1997: Misawa vs Kobashi 1/20 1998: Misawa/Kobashi 10/31 1999: Kobashi/Vader CC Final 2000: Kawada/Fuchi vs Nagata/Iizuka 2001: Misawa vs Takayama GHC Final 2002: Kawada/Mutoh TC 2003: Misawa vs Kobashi 2004: Kobashi vs Akiyama 2005: Kobashi/Shiozaki vs Sasaki/Nakajima 2006 KENTA vs Marufuji GHC Title 2007: KENTA/Ishimori vs Marufuji/Ibushi 2008: BattlArts 8-man 2009: Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels 2010: Sugiura vs Takayama GHC 2011: Sugiura vs Shiozaki GHC 2012: Kota Ibushi vs Kenny Omega 2013: Kobashi retirement tag Haven't seen enough from 2014 to feel comfortable listing a MOTY, though I really loved the Okada/Nakamura G1 final.

I don't understand where the hate for modern WWE commentary is coming from. Yeah, it's sterile and tropey, but that's par for the course for the product WWE tries to present. If anything, Cole and co deserve credit for keeping their undying conviction to unironically presenting whatever bullshit the company needs them to while dealing with the constant screaming, which Foley showed is not an easy thing to do.

I'm hoping talent will at least have more leverage on the indy thing now that they've seen guys become way more successful by quitting the promotion and touring the indies. The exposure won't really even work anymore since regardless of how the quoted story tries to spin it, this is clearly a big step down from Spike. At least that's what I hope, since I see no way to live off TNA's wages at 20 appearances a year.

I actually thought you were pretty comprehensive in your AJ watching when you got to the second half of the decade and basically started reviewing everything on Ditch's site. Do you mean you're planning on going through full TV blocks/comms?

I think an argument could be made that was the nastiest spot of Kobashi's career. As crazy as they look at times, at least we know there are nuances to protect yourself during head drops while maintaining the visual impact. How do you protect yourself while getting your spine crushed against the apron? It's not a ***** classic like some of Kobashi's other defenses but I still think this is right below that level. I took it as Kobashi basically doing his take on Misawa's old formula of spending most of match trying to get over the challenger by selling before making a big comeback at the end. With how amazing he is at getting sympathy and with how willing both guys were at brutalizing themselves, I have this as better than most actual prime Misawa formula matches, let alone stuff like the Misawa/Sano 2007 match getting more attention.

Who are the 4 better Russian shoot style guys?

I think your view of the heel dynamic is far too idealistic to be applicable. I'd like to believe it but, really, morality is a constantly changing biological/cultural construct so you can't really say it's the actions that make a person but reaction to those actions. To use a heel dynamic is less about using actions to make the audience think a certain way so much as it is to take advantage of how they already think to draw in emotional investment. The main reason I prefer a neutral sportive presentation and why I'm not a fan of having every match revolve around clear-cut heels is that it makes it come down to you either having some personal investment in the moral dynamic presented or you don't. And if you don't, like you mention with current WWE, it's really hard to care beyond that cold analytical perspective. I'm not sure if that WCW review quoted is a good example of the, though. Like soup mentioned, the mentality on display in that review is in itself basically an extension of some face/heel narrative with the bad main event geezers holding down the good cruiser weights. In other words, he is still invested in some sort of inside narrative in the product, it's just at a slightly more abstract level than what's presented on the surface. It's basically what you see today in Cena matches, where fans react as if he were a heel and the company promotes him fully conscious of that, so you definitely have some deep investment with a face/heel dynamic but with an untraditional method in its creation.

No way was Ligers/Owens a "carry job." I've seen Owens wrestle for my local promotion and he's clearly a talented guy who's worked really hard to get the opportunity for that match. Agreed on it being a really good match, though.

I've never understood how most of the folks who slam Tanahashi for not being stiff enough seem to have no problem praising even more loosely worked US matches.

This was actually the match that got me into 90s AJ after some of the pimped 6-mans didn't do much for me (I was stupid). The way this builds is just incredible to watch and even though the matwork has never lit me on fire, I appreciate how uncooperative they make it look and how starting out slow makes what they do later feel even more brutal. I've been meaning to do a long write up explaining how life-changing this match is for me (along with the 20 other 90s AJ matches I'm a huge mark for) but the magic is kind of gone from the many times I've rewatched it.

I think the worst Misawa/Kawada match would easily go to their CC 1997 final, which is just total bullshit booking. 7/05 is actually my pick for their most underrated match and a serious singles MOTYC for 2005. I think it's pretty amazing that they were able to recapture their pre-split magic given how beat up they were and long it had been since their match before that.

The "relative skill" argument strikes me as shit because, unlike sports where you have different weight classes muddying things, the metric of personal enjoyment that we rate matches off is a universal measurement. Sports are a horrible comparison in this case because, even if you have a difficult thinking of wrestling as an art form, I don't see how you can deny that our focus on critiquing the artistic qualities of matches is far more in line with how someone would talk about an art form than a sport. Arguing that women are inherently at some huge disadvantage to men in wrestling talent would be less like saying the same for sports talent as it would be in saying the same for writing or acting talent.

I'd have a much easier time taking the anti-joshi arguments seriously if the guys would actually analyze pimped matches and point out how men do things so much better instead of hiding behind bad sports analogies. I mean I really don't see right now how you can watch Hokuto/Kandori from Dreamslam with Hokuto getting busted from eating a pile driver on a real table and come away thinking people rating it as a brutal and dramatic match are only doing so on some weird sliding scale.

Kind of surprised this didn't go on in full. It's as good of a WWE formula tag as any other I've seen with everyone working hard and showing very good chemistry in their spots. Having seen this as my introduction to them, I thought Kane and X Pac looked like a really good team, which is kind of frustrating as this seems like their only match that wasn't a quick TV bout.

I watched this 2 nights ago after reading you guys comments and was completely blown by, thinking it was one of the greatest, if not the greatest match I've ever seen. This was completely unexpected as I had already seen this 4 or 5 times over the past several years and had it at "only" ****1/2. I've since tried to articulate in detail why that change in opinion happened and I just can't. The gist of it is that I think if you come in with a cold analytical mind that guys should sell certain moves certain ways or that there's a point where things can irrecoverably cross into "overkill" there's going to be a huge section of this match you'll miss out on. I don't think I've seen a better realization of wrestling's symbolic nature or more masterful usage of the "big match feel" than this epic. This was more than just Misawa/Kobashi IV, it was the meeting point between the old lineage of technical aces and Kobashi fantasy of starting a new era through heart alone. A lot has been about Misawa reaching into his Tiger Mask play book out of desperation, but I think even more important than that is how it degenerates into sloppiness as the match progresses, with Kobashi forcing him into fighting an ugly war that eschewed the cinematic finishes that Misawa's matches always seemed to have. The ending with much of the crowd greeting the pin with stunned silence rather than the usual celebratory role is a brilliant representation of that.That, more than any particular move he kicked out of, was Kobashi's great victory. This match wasn't about 2 superhuman so match as it was a human desperately trying to overcome a superhuman, in the process dragging him to the level of a human and, even in defeat, finding a way to carve out his own niche as a superhuman through sheer will. The post match is such an amazing climax.