funkdoc

The impression i get is they're trying to make her above the whole face/heel dynamic, sorta like Flair originally was in his first few title reigns. Realistically i'm not sure you could have kept her full heel too long anyway so that might be best?

This is on the money with the Youtube generation. Some of yall here might be surprised how many fans nowadays don't even know Scott had a team with his brother. It's like how they only know Luger for the Lex Express & SUPERBRAWL SATURDAY?!? As to the actual question: another vote for the Nasties match here!

It's interesting to me to see people bring up dorkiness as a negative quality when in my circles & younger that's a defining trait in a lot of the entertainment that's caught fire as of late. Honestly i think the idea that "nerd" and "badass" are mutually exclusive qualities is one of the biggest cultural divides between this board and p. much everywhere else i talk about wrestling. We live in a world where NFL & NBA players are appearing next to a pro Street Fighter player in ads, and one of MMA's biggest draws ever used to be a Pokemon forum moderator. And that's to say nothing of how much the MCU & Star Wars dominate the box office anymore, of course. idk, i just feel like a lot of yall ain't the target audience for wres anymore

An interesting point some of the old posters brought up here back in the days before the first GWE project was that "draws" in the traditional sense had become a thing in the indies while disappearing from WWE. In that brief period when AJ Styles was in between TNA & NJPW, he'd guarantee a 1k+ crowd for ROH when they were never hitting that number otherwise. You also had a lot of posters looking at merchandise numbers in WWE to try to tease out some sort of "drawing" metric from that environment. idk, i feel like it's kind of a dead concept there at this point?

eh, Final Countdown's firmly on the Mt. Rushmore of meme songs alongside Never Gonna Give You Up & Africa - i bet it's more than you think EDIT: someone made an interesting point on how AEW having such a large roster can help keep the talent fresh. regarding this episode of Dynamite: "No Cody No Malakai Black No Jungle Boy (not really) No Sammy No Miro No Matt Hardy (say what you will, but him and Christian did numbers last week) No Young Bucks" And they still managed a show that people enjoyed & built intrigue. Tells me you can afford to rotate a lot of the talent...

An underrated performer and personal favorite, managed to deliver even in some dire situations (e.g. Abrams UWF, mid-90s WCW). The height of his drawing power also tends to be overlooked in a lot of modern retrospectives since the Hogan feud was never featured on a PPV and that's all they cover. The man deserved better, RIP

Cognitive dissonance is strong, man That and sometimes he could make excuses for his shit that people might buy. e.g. "Rick Rubin made me do it" wrt the mummy in SMW

For me it was private Discord watch parties that got me started with all this. We really enjoy Maki Itoh and figure, hey let's start watching her home promotion! Also Miyu rules, clearly their best from a purely in-ring standpoint i'd say. Others have made this point but it's interesting how she comes off sorta like Bret Hart in the New Generation (albeit a not shitty version of the New Gen) - a real person in a cartoon world.

TJPW got me to watch women's wrestling regularly again. Most of this forum would hate it but it hits a sweet spot for me - i think in part because of how i'd been following vtubers and there are cultural similarities there. After being in that world for a while, wrestling in a maid outfit doesn't seem ridiculous at all! If nothing else, yall need to check out Sakisama. From my limited sampling she'd be my pick for Most Improved in the Observer awards this year - she's got TREMENDOUS facials/body language and stepped up her in-ring work more recently (basically by laying her shit in more). Her gimmick is also one of my favorites at the moment: an aristocrat from "France by way of Kyoto". That gimmick also has the added bonus of providing a logical explanation for a maid wrestling, as that's her personal maid and they're tag-team champs. i could go on forever but for now i'll just say one more bit: HYPER MISAO is the best possible version of '99 Blue Blazer

This is an interesting topic bc in the fitness world in general, it feels like the powerlifting sort of body has been making a comeback in recent years. People are realizing bodybuilding isn't really useful for actual athleticism on top of being ridiculously hard to maintain. In particular i see a lot more athletic women nowadays embrace some degree of thickness, often talking about how it was their way out of eating disorders and such. idk, just hit me since i've been in the process of rehabbing my back to get into powerlifting myself

Part of this, i think, is that joshi was largely an afterthought in 2016 so some people who were around then didn't do the deep dives that the tape traders had done in the 90s-2000s. We have people on this board saying they hadn't seen Dump Matsumoto's prime until this started - what's old is new again, in some cases. We also have joshi making a noticeable comeback business-wise right now, the biggest it's been since the interpromotional era. So we might be seeing some altogether new fans come in as this goes on.

Someone on Youtube has comps of WWF TV by month, and the January '96 one was especially interesting to me for how many of the goofiest gimmicks from '95 were still around. I mean, Isaac Yankem & Rad Radford... What really stood out was how some of those gimmicks got completely buried as part of the transition to new talent. Makin' a Difference Fatu got beaten in like 10 seconds by goddamn Justin Hawk Bradshaw! The best example of this was King Mabel. People usually point to the casket match with Taker as the end of his push, but i'd actually argue it was a Jan '96 RAW where he got matched up vs. Diesel. He ate a big boot or something lame like that and, again, got pinned in less than 10 seconds. The true final nail in the coffin, imo

i think the point is more that the overall list can be a useful tool to share with your friends and such - it's a way of letting them know "these are the wrestlers worth going back to watch". When people have limited time and need to pick & choose, that counts for a lot.

eh, classic-rockism is a real thing that i'd be glad to take down a peg if i get the chance, though i do agree i'd be a bit more on board if he put something like guyville at #1

i stand by ‘98 Jericho as the best year either of these guys ever had, but obviously a lot of that case rests on stuff outside the ring. aside from that you can count me as another one left wanting by him

i think it's more about buy-in - i could see someone being so put off by WWE's presentation/house style/etc. that they can't enjoy anything that comes out of that company. Look at how little people cared about AJ Styles when he was stuck in TNA, compared to the immediate buzz he got after he left for the indies -> NJPW; his work wasn't any worse in TNA, but it's hard to get emotionally invested there when you can only think "LOLTNA"

We have to keep in mind that Dave is pro wrestling's most influential news reporter, critic, and historian. Can't think of any other fandom where one person holds that much power

Seconding the love for WWECW once it stopped trying to be like the original ECW and became proto-NXT i'd argue a lot of '97 Raw holds up well though, not just early in the year. It does get dire after Montreal but i'd still point to that as the best year ever for the show overall

i'd argue someone like Darby Allin is a good example of a legitimately cool wrestler nowadays - he represents music/aesthetic that's always carried respect among tastemakers. i would agree that the New Generation period was def a low point for this tho. Even a top guy like Vader whom everyone loves nowadays, normies then would look at him and go "haha a fat guy wearing a jockstrap over his face"

tbh i'm OK with Tony giving the talent a little too much free reign compared to the alternative of "corporate decides what your character is and if your ideas don't go along with that we'll just complain about the talent not having any ideas". Cody is the one who concerns me the most atm, he's bigger channel-changing material for me than Jericho at this point and he exists entirely in his own universe story-wise. As long as they keep anyone from going Full HHH i can deal tho

They have to have something special up their sleeve to draw that kind of crowd, right? Maybe NJPW guys, that would certainly get over with the hardcore audience in NY

i do still see people sometimes argue that WWE is better in-ring than AEW, but nobody besides the True Believers seems to say that about the booking/commentary/presentation

Cardona's working the heel gimmick for this absolutely perfectly, too. Calling himself an "ECW Original" and shouting out "the GCW Universe" lmao

So how the hell did nobody post here yet Mark Henry introduced ANDRADE to AEW~

helluva show Figured Inner Circle would get this one so they could build to one more blowoff match