dawho5

I loved this match. Owens was spot with the early stalling leading into the violent, brutal beatdown. Sami is a ridiculously good babyface and it does get uncomfortable to watch near the end. The hope spots and comeback nearfalls are great as well. Owens makes Sami's offense look really good like a heel is supposed to do. Sami comes off great, eating the early beatdown and coming back strong before banging his head on the dive. Owens deciding to powerbomb Zayn until the ref stops the match is a brilliant bit of booking. Sami can say he never lost his title and Owens can say he destroyed Zayn without either being a liar. From the moment Owens powerbombed Zayn at R-Evolution I was impressed by how the WWE turned Owens into a heel and Owens played it. Stabbing the most over babyface in the back right after his big moment and never looking back will always get a heel reaction. It's really simple, but for whatever reason there seems to be a need to make things more complex in the WWE's booking. Great match and great work throughout the feud so far by everyone involved.

I get why they did the 4-way match. Bayley gets her new attitude, Becky gets separated from Sasha and Charlotte doesn't look weak losing in a 4-way with all the double teaming. I'm still not a fan of these kind of matches and I thnk they would have been better served putting Sasha over in singles after the explosion of the alliances. Match is fine for a 4-way match. Those are usually sloppy and hard to get right in my opinion so it's not something I was looking forward to in the first place.

I'm fairly sure I'm not alone on this. But there is one very big reason I think this is the case. It's not the women's division or the fact that guys like Neville, Zayn, Breeze and Balor get a push. Those are certainly wonderful things. What I think makes NXT better than the main show is the overall presentation as a wrestling program. From week to week the stories and matches are presented in a way that builds on what was done before. The characters evolve as time goes on in a (usually) logical way. On the main show it seems like the direction things are moving is constantly changing and impossible to follow. The reason I think this is a huge advantage for NXT is because the matches they build to on their big shows mean something. They seem to have at least three or four matches on each special that have been building since their last special. It makes such a huge difference in that the specials actually FEEL like a special show. All the things that have been happening are coming to a head. I won't say I love all of the booking in January of 2015, but I think what they are doing is far, far better than the majority of the 2014 Raw/SD I watched from a booking standpoint. And I stopped after Mania, cherry picking stuff I wanted to see after that. Another thing I have noticed is that NXT layers their matches pretty well. It's not always done in an optimal way for me, but there is a difference between midcard matches, main event matches and live special matches. It makes the live events feel more like a special show than the once a month show where the wrestlers get a little more time to go. Another huge advantage for NXT. As much as I dislike Triple H for many, many reasons, if he is in charge of the NXT booking it really does bode well for how the WWE will be presented after Vince is no longer in charge. I understand that once Vince steps down/is removed from power/(I know it sounds callous, but it seems most likely) dies the WWE will lose a lot of it's influence and have to build itself back up. I do think that based on the current way NXT is being booked that there is a good chance it will regain every bit of it's dominance if the reaction to new management isn't too jarring. But that also means that we will get Triple H and Steph as heel authority figures with their face all over the TV. I think I can deal with that if it means the rest of the show is coherently booked week to week and the PPV matches get the same amount of added oomph compared to TV matches that NXT has.

I really liked Neville's early offense after the Balor shine. He was playing the subtle heel very well. I agree that it had a lot of WCW cruiserweight match to it. The end got a lot more spotty and was a departure from the early match despite the fact that it built well within itself. But if you're going to do a spotfest ending that was a Hell of a way to do it. I don't hate either part of the match, but I can't say put together they make a great match. It is a very enjoyable watch and something I will go back to from time to time, but it's not what it could have been. I suppose it's a part of the nature of NXT that they are aping several different styles as well as adding in elements of their own and that makes for an odd mish-mash at times. There are definite elements of midcard WCW from the mid-90s with some modern new Japan and American indies thrown into the mix. One thing I am noticing about their big shows is they do a good job of separating the style from TV matches. They tend to go into more indy mode for the finishing runs with a lot more big spots and kickouts where TV matches are a few nearfalls, maybe some finisher teases and a finisher for the win. It does give a more big match feel to the big matches, but in a really superficial way. I have no problem with watching the NXT big show matches because for me they blow away straight indy matches because the big spots stand out more in a WWE controlled environment where the workers have to pick and choose their big spots instead of just having a million big spots to throw out. And they work a lot better for me than Raw/SD matches between good workers that are thrown out there with little to no meaning or story behind them. I love Tyson Kidd and Cesaro both in singles and from what I have seen of their tag work. But if you put them in NXT and give them an actual program that means something in the grand scheme of things with a 20 minute match every three months I would love them more. A smattering of really good to great TV matches that mean nothing can't compete for me. I'll live with the weaknesses of the wrestling style if they keep things moving the way they do so far.

GCW, Mid-South and Stampede would be my picks for promotion.

My first choice would be Georgia.

I feel like the Shield run was booked with Ambrose as the weakest of the three on purpose. And I haven't watched much of his run after the Shield but I imagine that he falls victim to the midcard curse that cuts the legs out from under anyone that doesn't have the backing of the front office. The clothesline spot is annoying after about four times seeing it despite how good of a clothesline it usually ends up being. But if you really think about it, there are probably dozens of guys who have spots that are incredibly awkward/require a lot of setup/can be seen from a mile away that they do every match. That's WWE style for you. As for Ambrose as a worker I like the energy he can bring to a match and I think he's capable of being a very good worker on any given night. I thought he did really well as the crazy guy in the Shield who had to be rescued by Reigns (and occasionally Rollins) when he bit off more than he could chew. He was always the Shield guy left at the mercy of the other team save a few occasions Rollins took that role. And he actually is a pretty good FIP. Could be that he needs a solid tag partner to really shine.

So have him wrestle heel when it makes sense and face when it makes sense. Why is that not an option if that's already the reaction he gets?

In.

Oh, my plan was to book backwards as much as possible. Whatever it was, 6 months or a year between re-drafts, start at the end and figure out major plot points backwards. Seems like the best way to be sure that the lead-in to the big finale fits the actual results. But yeah, an outline of how to handle TV on a monthly basis seems like a good idea as well.

I understand why you are concerned with it, but I mentioned the names I did because all of them seem like they are the type to take this very seriously. One of the reasons I am on the fence is I know that I go in phases sometimes and can be unreliable. And I don't want to do that if other people are going to be giving it their all. Right now I'm trying to figure how much time it would take and how much I would be willing to give.

I don't know if I gauged this right or not. I looked at it as a long-term deal with a commitment to weekly TV write-ups with house show wraps included. There was an example earlier that I thought was pretty good as far as what the write-up would need to be. I'm sure it could be done in greater detail, but why do you need more than this? Flair did a studio interview talking about his upcoming match with Dusty Rhodes for the NWA Heavyweight Title. He focused on how he would be a far better champion than Dusty because he lived the life of a champion while Dusty was not what a champion should be. The Rock'n'Roll Express wrestled the Midnight Express in the main event with the Midnights going over in 17:38 after Cornette hit Gibson with the tennis racket behind the ref's back, allowing Eaton to get the pin. Given that most people reading that will know exactly how that Flair interview looks and sounds and that tag match would unfold, there's really not that much need for more. So basically you'd be writing a few paragraph's worth per week to cover it unless you wanted to do more. I don't see where that would be a huge chore. I also get the feeling that folks like KrisZ, Dylan, goc, Parv and Grimmas are in this for the long haul and where it goes based on what happens. So maybe it should be clarified what exactly it entails a bit more clearly.

Seems like that is more for keeping things fresh rather than having certain wrestlers stay in the same territory for 5-6 years straight. I would agree that only 5-6 seems like a small number as holdovers. I listened to the Exile 6 podcast today and all the talk of losing the big regional names seems to ring true. You'd have to be able to hang on to the guys you have built up as your big name faces and heels for the regular crowd if you ask me. And you're not booking your show entirely on 5-6 guys. You've got your midcard attractions, tag division and guys like Arn who can either be a low end main event guy or a high end midcarder. If you couldn't protect a core of 10-12 guys you'd have a hard time keeping an audience engaged the way you needed to. Yeah you would want to make new stars as you went, but making new stars every year because most of your roster left seems a bit over the top. You'd think the guys being let go would be the expendable midcard types and jobbers. The jobbers can do that anywhere and midcarders that are expendable in one place are often great in others. It all depends on how "fresh" you're looking to keep things.

I'm curious as to how the smaller promotions are being handled. Do they have smaller rosters, more local TV than regional? I don't know how functional I'd be in a project like this so I'd rather not be overly ambitious if I did it.

I don't in any way disagree with comments that were made above. But I love this podcast for a reason it's kind of hard to describe in a few words. There are times where the level of detail gone into on the nuts and bolts and how the moving parts affected the outcomes is tremendous. And there are other times where nostalgia, disappointment and personal recollections dominate the discussion. The parts of the show where things are discussed from a fan vs. business standpoint combine both to a point. I love how all of these flow back and forth as the discussion goes and all three panelists are at home in each environment. It makes for a fun journey through a lot of interesting facts and anecdotes that could very easily have come off as dry and overly long if done wrong. Keep up the great work.

His tags in NOAH vs. Kobashi are the highlights of his time there.

My feeling is that he stopped caring unless he was across from somebody he felt was worthwhile. Even then he wasn't the same Kawada. Most of his post 2000 matches I have seen are really disappointing. There are bright spots where he flips the switch back on, but for the most part he's like a shadow of his former self.

*points at Grahm Crackers' post* That. I did like their one tag in the 2000s project but seriously. How many opportunities did both get to do something worthwhile and not take advantage of? I would take NOAH Kobashi on his most overbearingly bad day over both.

Here's a question I had while reading through this. What is the difference between "they need to use the talented women wrestlers more" and "they need to use their talented midcarders more" arguments at all? Yeah, they give guys who can work maybe 10 minutes or a bit more to put on good matches on TV. But do they do anything worthwhile about them to make the fans care in any way about them? Or do those guys have to get themselves over with whatever crap they are give? I will agree that there is a huge increase in scale as far as how little respect the women are given in the WWE. But the reality is that both situations aren't going to change as long as certain people are in charge of how the TV works. So arguing about whether it would draw as vehemently as has been going on the last few pages seems a bit much. If it is ever tried it will be done incrementally. The women management has faith in will get a chance at enough ten minutes matches to see if it gets a better reaction. If it does then maybe they get a semi-main on a show after a long while. If that works then maybe you start to see fifteen minutes on a PPV. Same kind of deal for pushing talented midcard guys. I would argue that Bayley is heavily marketed towards young girls as an inspiration. It's pretty heavily put over by the announce team on NXT that way as well as by Bayley herself. I also feel like she plays the underdog role really well and Badlittlekitten is selling her well short of how good she is. But I will leave it at a respectful disagreement on that point. It is rather odd that they talk about how Bayley can inspire young girls to want to be wrestlers given the WWE's historical treatment of women.

I was actually wondering about that today. It would essentially be the same thing as what was done at the time. It would also be pretty interesting to see how different promoters looked at it. is it a boon or a bane? Is it great because you get the prestige of your guy being the champ? Is it bad because your #1 draw is off around the territories while you are running shows? With the prospect of national expansion that creates just another wrinkle. Also with regards to that aspect. How do the people playing promoters handle the idea of national expansion? The same way the promoters did at the time or with an eye to correcting their mistakes regarding talent and television? Also, I've been wondering how it is decided if/when a new act to a territory gets over. Obviously in the mind of the booker what they are doing will work. How is it actually decided?

I have two lists. Taue Kawada Misawa Kobashi That's where my heart lies. I love Taue so very much for the work he did as the guy nobody appreciated. If I have a spirit wrestler it is Akira Taue. I love how he puts matches together, I love the way he carries himself and how he does everything with an understated quality. The other three are the flashier, easier to love for the big stuff guys. Taue has far more limitations and knows it, but manages to be just a step behind all the way through. I would argue that once the new millennium hits he is the best of the four because he simply continues to work around his own limitations rather than having them imposed on him by time and finding the need to adapt. If we're going by purely by how much I love the character and the approach it is Taue by miles. A big part of this is that I tend to be very quiet and understated, don't care so much about how something looks as opposed to what it accomplishes and constantly battle with my own awkwardness and limitations. So yeah, my spirit wrestler. And here's the one that my brain imposes itself on. Kawada Misawa Kobashi Taue Kawada as a character is just up the street from Taue. I had a cranky, tough, never-back-down great uncle when I was younger that didn't give any part of a shit what anyone thought of what he said or did. But he also had such pride in everything he did that it came out looking pristine. And my understanding is that he was a straight ahead boxer who could take a punch with the best in his younger days. For a long time I wondered why I love Kawada so much and I finally figured it out. Oh, and Kawada was one Hell of an incredible pro wrestler. Misawa was and always will be the quintessential ace of a promotion. When he was on nobody could touch him and that came through in every big match. Kobashi in 1990-1994 was one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. I know he gets out of hand a lot after that, but damn when he was coming up through the ranks he was the best fired-up underdog babyface of all time. As much as I HATE some of his later performances I can't take that away from him. Taue is simply a great wrestler who can play babyface pretty well and heel to a T. In most companies during most time periods that makes you a #1 or 2 guy with a career downside of being the gatekeeper for the next generation. In 90s All Japan that means you end up being the guy to do a quick job to Akiyama to help put the young guy over and get him ready for Misawa while always being undervalued by the majority of fans. And since I mentioned Akiyama, he's probably got Taue beat on this one too as much as I hate to admit it.

I didn't think the announcers ever got quite to the place they should have while talking up Sasha's performance. She was essentially channeling the spirit of Ric Flair in the heat. Against Flair's daughter. As for the end I think they had another idea in mind besides finishing the story of the match. Look everyone, the girls can do fun spotfests just as well as the guys can! I just wish they had done that in a different setting because Sasha's heel work was again excellent. Instead of a blistering Charlotte comeback we get the forced "NXT women's division has arrived!" finish. What needed to happen if Charlotte was going to win is Sasha escaping a few predicaments during Char's comeback and using the outside escape/corner tactics again to get the upper hand before losing. Edit: I got this now. Charlotte puts on the Figure 4 after a big comeback to defend the family honor against Sasha. Sasha makes the ropes and manages a cheap shot as they untangle. A few big nearfalls later she throws the same tantrum and gives Charlotte time to recover. Charlotte reverses the next thing Sasha tries and gets a big nearfall before finishing her off. Sasha still out-Flairs Charlotte in the end despite losing, which keeps her heat.

In keeping with the current trends I thought it might be good to take a look at two other guys who will almost certainly finish high in the voting. This one interests me quite a bit because there are both direct and indirect comparisons to be made. They both worked as the ace of All Japan for an extended period of time. They worked against one another during the transitional period and that can come into play for comparison as well. I feel like an interesting comparison here would also be how Misawa worked with Kobashi during the years Kobashi overtook Kawada as the #2. It would be a very direct comparison to Jumbo vs. Misawa in my mind. On the flip side, one worked a very athletic, cutting edge style punctuated with stiff elbows. As well of having a long list of finisher level moves that dwarfs a listing of every move used by the majority of his contemporaries and wresters who came before him. While the other was a very simple, traditional wrestler with good athleticism for his size, but his calling cards were doing the little things exceptionally well, adapting to the moment, working pitch perfect across from whoever he was up against and using a limited amount of simple tools (in comparison to Misawa) to great effect. Another great contrast is their style as the ace. Jumbo was emotional, went with the flow and worked to his opponent to an incredible degree. Misawa was stoic, dictated the way the promotion was going and had a formula he plugged his opponents into with small variations. I'm not saying Misawa was always really formulaic, but when he was working somebody much lower on the card he didn't seem to make all that much seem different. I personally lean towards Jumbo for several reasons. I feel like he had a deeper grasp of the dynamics of a main event vs. midcarder match and that's a pretty big thing when you are the ace of a traditional Japanese wrestling company. I also think he adapted far better than Misawa did as time went on in his career. It doesn't hurt that I also felt like Kawada was the better wrestler than Misawa and should have been in Kobashi's spot.

I agree that Charlotte's run as champ has been the best female wrestling presented under the WWE banner that I've ever seen. And it's not just Charlotte. Bayley and Sasha are really really good at their roles with Becky Lynch coming in at least strong on the in-ring side of things. She needs some work on what exactly her character is, but she's definitely delivered during matches. I don't necessarily agree that female wrestling is going to bring in more female viewers. I do think that if done right it can do just as well with male viewers as the men's matches, but we can probably all agree that won't be happening on the main shows any time soon. That being said, I'm a huge fan of the women's division on NXT and how well the major players work in their face/heel roles. Sasha is an incredible heel, Charlotte is the strong face and Bayley is great as the female Sami Zayn. She doesn't quite have the level of charisma or in-ring panache Zayn does, but she's the lovable underdog with the right kind of charisma to keep the fans on her side through all the losses. Once Becky Lynch decides to be something besides Lita version 2.0 and finds a character of her own she will also be the complete package. Carmella and Alexa Bliss need quite a bit of work before they catch up. Edit: I kind of wish they had left Paige and Emma in NXT right now. They would have a really strong women's division with some very interesting rivalries instead of turning Emma into a glorified jobber.

One thing I really identified with was the discussion of neck/spine injuries. It's something I have thought for quite a while. If this current Bryan stuff is head/neck related I'm all for him retiring before things get too bad. As unfortunate as it seems there's no way around how fragile the human body can be and it's best to be safe about serious injuries. Great listen and I have to agree with Tim about the future of wrestling. Nothing is going to change much. I'll catch up on NXT and watch that weekly until too much WWE nonsense ends up moving it's way over there. Beyond that I don't have much hope for anything except highly pimped PPV/TV matches available on the Network. So I guess I agree with Will that it's a good thing there is all kinds of wrestling out there from the past and smaller companies that I can look to when the WWE isn't delivering.