Petey

I wonder if it was an edit from the network or if the tape they have either doesn't have those matches or doesn't have them in acceptable quality. I forgot what event it was, but I know one of the WCW PPV's has a graphic on the screen about how certain parts of it are un-watchable due to the master tape quality.

Maybe, but probably not for a while. I don't recall any of those shows ever being on Classics on Demand. I don't even know how many of those tapes WWE owns. RF Video still sells a lot of those tapes (on DVD), so it makes me wonder who's in possession of the master tapes.

What is HGH face?

Do we know for a fact that they're training everyone the same exact style and that they're not playing into the individual wrestlers' strengths? I know that had been a criticism for years, but I don't know if it's still the case since the Performance Center opened.

If WWE leaves NBCU, I wonder if A) Raw will remain three hours and Smackdown stays on Friday nights or gets moved to a larger TV audience night

I don't resent the deal and I don't think any fan should. It'd be like resenting Robinson Cano or Alex Rodriguez for getting bloated contracts. Ultimately, who cares? As long as they produce, or in Lesnar's case, are entertaining, I don't care about the contract. You could argue that WWE hasn't done the best job at getting the most out of Lesnar, but that's a WWE problem. It doesn't affect me. I'd prefer them to book him better (although being the guy to break the streak will probably do more for his aura than anything else they could have done leading up to it), but that's irregardless of how much money he's making.

They may have had a lot of brilliant wrestling minds, but no amount of wrestling brilliance could overcome Jim Herd, especially when he was the one with the most power.

From today's update: I'm guessing Dave saying that not all of the Clashes are archived and he actually meant to say that they're all up? Also, Saturday Night's Main Events!

I would say working with Ross was why Lawler was better. Was Lord Alfred really cheering the heels though? I know he was clearly a heel by like 93 or so, but I always just thought he called it pretty much straight up back in the 80's. Lawler's been stale for a while. I remember tuning out from some point in late 05 until probably Punk's promo in 2011 and when I watched the first stretch of shows in nearly six years, I couldn't believe how much worse Lawler had become, which is amazing because he wasn't great in 2005.

Anarchist nailed it. I remember back in early 04 when TNA first pulled their talent and everyone was all doom and gloom. But that directly led to the Generation Next debut and mega push of Alex Shelley, Austin Aries, Roderick Strong and Jack Evans. It also led to guys like Jimmy Jacobs, Delirious and Matt Sydal getting a greater presence on shows (down the line), especially as ROH expanded into the midwest. Where as everyone initially was mad and disappointed about the AJ Styles' and Chris Daniels' being puleld from ROH, their replacements were arguably even better and ROH got better because of it. When ROH started losing its talent in 07 and 08, the replacements weren't at the same level as the 04/05 crop and the company suffered.

It has nothing to do with lightening up. We're watching wrestling, by its very nature its in the light realm the majority of the time. I don't think the forklift spot worked, nor did I think it was fun or cool. It was a bad moment and a call back to an era of the WWF that was plain awful most of the time. Something that was cool and a lot of fun in that match was Ricardo begging them to use the American announce table for their spot. That's an organic moment, and a small one, that worked within the match and added to the fun of the match. I'm with you. Granted, I was in middle school for the heart of the Attitude Era, so a lot of the juvenile stuff they did was appealing directly to me. And I'll also admit that a lot of it hasn't aged well, namely 1999 WWF, but it was really fun in the moment. I know an increasing amount of people like to talk about how overrated it was or how terrible it was, but they were doing 5's and 6's every week for well over a year, so it couldn't have been THAT BAD.

Tremendous! What year was that (if you don't mind me me asking)? I'm curious if the teacher's reaction would have been different depending on the time period. EDIT, just realized it was probably 93-94 because of Gorilla and Yokozuna. I wonder what would have happened if someone had written that, for the same reasoning, but 20 years later.

It's also listed in the Vault section on the website.

The issue surrounding the lack of wrestling dream matches as described by the OP is similar to the issue with UFC super fights now that PRIDE has been gone for a few years. Cena/Batista was kind of a dream match although instead of holding off and doing it proper at a WrestleMania, they did it at a SummerSlam and it didn't quite have the big match feel.

The last show I've ever attended/seen was Final Battle 08. Some of it was because my personal life was changing at the time and I couldn't dedicate as much time to indy wrestling as I had, but a lot of it was because I was quickly losing interest in ROH. The roster wasn't as deep as it had been and I just wasn't into it. I also soured a lot on the head drops/high impact spots due to a combination of Benoit, Misawa and the NFL concussion stuff. When I was in HS and the beginning of college, I loved the flippy spotfests, unprotected chair shots and head drops galore, but that all changed once I got into my early 20's.

I'm with you on Taker/HHH. I thought most of the match was garbage until the last few nearfalls. I actually enjoyed their HIAC match more even though it was pretty over the top with the acting. Their Mania 17 match is still my favorite.

I had a decent vocabulary for a younger thanks to listening to Jim Ross announce.

The ROH vs. CZW feud was incredible. They had an awesome six man at the 100th show and then a great Cage of Death at the 2006 Death Before Dishonor. In my opinion, 2005 was when ROH's roster was deepest and the year things really started to click. 2006 still had a really good roster and arguably the company's two best storylines: ROH vs. CZW and Homicide's quest for the ROH Title. Also, 2004 Samoa Joe was probably the best wrestler in North America that year and if he wasn't, he's definitely in the conversation. Ditto for 2006 Bryan Danielson. The first Manhattan Mayhem (2005) is a very good show, top to bottom, even though it doesn't have any blowaway matches. Everything just flowed really well and it was a really good show to watch. Honestly, ROH had a really good stretch of shows in 2005 from MM through Punk: The Final Chapter which concluded the first Summer of Punk angle, also possibly ROH's best story. Depending on how much you want to invest in this, the stretch in 2005 from MM-Punk: The Final Chapter, then in 2006 from Dragon Gate Challenge through Death Before Dishonor 4 encompasses the ROH vs. CZW feud, plants the seeds for Homicide's quest for the title and in general just has some great shows, is another good stretch. Actually looking back on it, 2006 is just really good in general. They were in a slight holding pattern until Homicide finally got his title shot, but there was so many good shows that year. Unified was really good and so was Glory By Honor V: Night Two. Looking back makes me miss ROH's "prime". I had a lot of fun going to those shows and dropped so much $$ on DVD's from 2004-2008 I'd probably be ashamed if I calculated the total amount.

I don't know if I'd call Gabe's 2007/2008 booking "toxic". I was a pretty big ROH fan from 04-08 and went to just about all the NY shows. I think the company took some gambles, both in terms of booking and in distribution, and they just about all failed. The faction wars failed because ROH lost Aries to TNA right when it began and he was probably the top name in the angle. He came back a few months later to resume the story but it was already dead. They tried PPV (which IIRC, Gabe was against) and it hurt the product because the PPV's didn't air until months after they were taped, so ROH was basically running with two sets of stories, one for the live events/DVD's and one for the PPV's. It was stupid. Morishima won the ROH Title even though he only worked some shows. They waited too long to pull the trigger on Nigel and by the time they did, he wasn't hot anymore. Gabe's last big angle was the Age of the Fall which had months upon months worth of build but just never got over as a main event angle with the fans. Regardless of their lack of overness, they got pushed hard. I think ROH's declining popularity was a combination of bad booking, lack of talent and bad big picture decisions, all of which were connected with each other.

I'd be interested in yearly anthologies, but not necessarily for stuff from 91-96 since they're digitally archived on the site and they put up a new issue every week. But pre-91, since it seems like those will only ever be available by purchasing single issues, would be awesome.

Maybe Vince convinced HHH to help Austin out (assuming Vince and HHH were still on good terms on-air). The whole thing sounded way better in theory than it was actually executed. But when Austin had beaten Rock, that was before Austin had major neck surgery and before Rock had really hit his prime. By the time they had their match at Mania 17, Rock was now at his zenith while Austin was older and unsure if he'd break down.

The problem with Raven doing a Timeline is that his memory is admittedly terrible, especially for that time period. I started watching his Guest Booker where Hall and Nash went to ECW instead of WCW and Raven basically said he didn't remember much of 1996 at all. I love Raven shoot interviews but I'm not sure how good a Timeline would be with him.

I don't think the ROH/ECW comparison is 100% apples to apples. ECW, even in 2000 when they were simply trying to avoid dying, were still drawing 2,000/3,000+ at a lot of shows. I think the only time ROH has drawn in that range has been their shows at Hammerstein. That didn't happen until over five years into their existence. I would imagine that 2000 ECW's gates have almost always been larger than ROH's. Whether or not the combination of ECW's larger gates and internet distribution would have allowed ECW to keep things going is debatable, but I'm not sure ROH's "success" is a totally accurate forecast for what ECW would have done.

RVD is horrible. Unwatchable a lot of times. And this is coming from someone who loves Van Dam more than most. I don't understand how anyone could defend RVD as anything other than terrible unless they prefer the taste of asparagus over pizza or something.

I'm surprised they haven't put up a lot of the World Championship Wrestling episodes from 85-87 or 88 since a lot those ran on Classics on Demand.