BigBadMick

Will you be dressing up for the occasion?

He has discussed taking a personality test in WWE and being told that with his low scoring in ambition etc it's amazing that he has gotten as far as he has. That saying - if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life - seems apt.

Yeah, I think it's getting to the stage were people are angry that Bryan's not angry.

I dressed as 1992 Shawn Michaels at a Halloween party and got laid after. Then I sold the costume on eBay for 400 dollars. It was awesome. That's totally different. That's wearing a costume to a costume party. Being a grown adult and dressing up like a wrestler when you are going to a live event, especially when you know the event is going to be televised, is basically just trying to bring attention to yourself - it's the equivilent of standing on your chair and screaming "hey everybody, look at me!" In other words, quite lame, in my opinion. Rumor has it that it was Kevin Dunn who ordered the costumed fans removed. From everything I have heard/read about Kevin Dunn, he is a jerk and I have little to no use for his decisions and opinions on pro wrestling. However, in his capacity as a television producer, he made the right decision in this case. When you are broadcasting a live event, you remove anything from the shot that is distracting the viewer from focusing on the action at hand. What those costumed fans were doing was the same as somebody walking up behing a reporter who is doing a live remote, and making faces at the camera, or jumping up and down. They were taking away from the shot, so they were stopped from doing so. Dunn wanted people at home watching the ring, not trying to figure who the guys in the outfits were, what they were doing there, and if they were part of the show. So you wouldn't object if they were seated further back?

So, Vince was getting pissy because someone left for a better offer, and distanced himself from wrestling in order to advance his career. Sounds like a re-do of the billionaire Ted skits a decade earlier. I think Vince is very lucky that he found someone like Cena - a capable enough company ace who has no ambitions beyond that.

'The issues that developed with Bruno, Hogan, Warrior (short-term ace for the sake of argument), Bret, Austin, and Rock seem unlikely to occur with Cena' It's a generational thing too. The first 5 there would have had 'don't trust promoters' beaten into them from early in their careers. What Rock issues are we talking about here? Not renewing his contract in 2005? I think if Cena had that type of career waiting for him he would get testy with Vince's overly controlling ways.

'Does the lack of competition as a leverage tool for Cena play a role?' I think that it does, even subconsciously. Cena's been treated great by his employers, and seems to have no interest in anything except being a wwe ace/spokesman/cheerleader. Still, it's human nature to look around, and see if opportunities exist elsewhere - grass is always greener on the other side and all that. IF competition existed, Cena would be the strongest-willed person in the world not to at least take a look....

'they also generally want their hobby to be cool, which partially explains the fixation on the business side of things.' They get the same inferiority complex as promoters.

Yeah, that's true Parv. Three years ago, I started reading through Observers from what I consider golden periods (NWA 1989, 1992) and wondered what everyone was complaining about. Similarly, I was on-line by 2000 and wondered why people were complaining. I knew I was living through what I considered a golden period (and still do now). 1998 is a different matter. At the time, I preferred WCW purely for depth of talent and quality of good to great tv matches. Even though I could see that WWF was doing far more with less talent, as long as WCW would throw out strong matches (even if they ultimately felt like they were in a vacuum) I was happier with that.

I've been watching some WWF from summer 1998 lately. It's stuff I really haven't looked at that much since it happened live. What's jumping out at me is remembering me and my friends being quite happy watching it. We weren't on-line at the time, and most of our news came from Power Slam. It was a completely different experience, but I'm not going to try to recreate it now. It's just that sometimes it feels like there's so much bullsh*t to wade through if you want to get to something worth reading/listening to. This applies to everything in 2015, not just wrestling. EDIT - I'm not saying there's loads of bullsh*t in PWO. Just everywhere else.

When you mention Dave, he came up with an interesting hypothesis a few weeks ago. If Bryan had stayed fired in 2010, he could have been in Styles' position now in NJPW.

Bit of a buzzkill there mate. You might actually kill this thread.

What's this? Essentially a New Japan World, WWE Network type service. No idea what type of footage will be on it although most think a lot of 70's/80's Houston.

Halfway through this. Marty - interesting points about match structure/face shine on the Piper tag. When do you think the 'heels must not be completely overpowered' mentality came in? First thing I noticed was complaints about the Horsemen stooging too much for Dusty in '87. Also, and it's funny because I was just reading this last week - Raven completely disagrees with you in a Torch talk in 2003. He says if something has to be cut from a match it's the shine, and the heat is vital to get the finish over.

You're in the UK, aren't you Sidebottom? I had similar experiences with tape trading, starting in 1994 with Rob Butcher. A very positive review of The Night The Line Was Crossed in Power Slam convinced me to take the plunge. Butcher himself noted in his newsletter that 1994 was a breakthrough year for tape trading in the UK.

That's a hell of a read, Loss.

This is coming from a slightly different perspective but as a new fan at the age of 13, I know I watched every match on SummerSlam 1991 at least a dozen times. Obviously I didn't learn everything doing this, but that opportunity to rewatch helped me appreciate wrestling.

I wonder if this is a problem that any wrestling show could overcome now? It feels as though fans are as guilty of micomanaging and overanalysing everything as promoters now - nothing gets a chance to breathe. With the social media explosion, is there just too much data to draw any conclusions on whether something's working?

One thing that annoyed me in rewatching Cena/Rock at 28 was that I felt it was at least 5 minutes too long. Rock was having a tough time moving around and I was actually willing it towards a conclusion.

Same for me, a lot of times, but I think there's something to be said for creating what the WWE calls a "Mania moment". They tell us that Mania is a blockbuster, and all about the big moments, and even though that's partially propaganda from the WWE, I think there's some truth to it, and am willing to rank the Manias who successfully pull off those big moments higher. The Triple H vs. Batista Hell in a Cell match from Vengeance 2005 is almost certainly a better match than their Mania 21 match (it's probably my favorite Cell match), but the Mania 21 match gets points in my book for culminating in an iconic moment. Batista at the end show, celebrating with the Big Gold Belt and getting showered by cheers and confetti is a moment that I will never forget. Moments like that are what WrestleMania was made for. What I mean is, if it makes sense, that I look at WrestleMania kinda differently than pretty much every other wrestling show, because I think sometimes it can get away with lower in ring quality matches if it can naturally create those "big match feel WrestleMania moments" that the WWE loves to go on about. It's the same reason why I view Mania 30 as one of my favorites even though it had several match that weren't really up to snuff, because it made up for it by being totally iconic. Sorry if that doesn't make sense, I feel like this was kinda rambling. Makes perfect sense. And, thinking about it, I probably shouldn't deduct points just because WM isn't always the highlight of a feud. It's impossible to hold that against recent events while also complaining that they don't build to anything outside of a stand alone moment.

When big 'Mania matches are rematched to better effect in the following months that can hurt my opinion of the show. 2005 had better rematches of Cena-JBL and HHH-Batista, 2009 had better use of Steamboat, Jericho, Cena, Edge, HHH and Orton at Backlash, 2010 had better Mysterio-Punk and HHH-Sheamus matches, 2012 completely squandered Bryan-Sheamus but it was used effectively in April. It's partly a consequence of having to give part-timers so much time and attention on the big show too. Suppose it makes sense to hold off a better rematch of full-timers for April and May.

19 is completely over-rated in my view. Brock-Angle is a good match, but not great. Michaels-Jericho is in the same boat. I like Austin-Rock and McMahon-Hogan a lot and the rest was alright I guess. Off the top of my head I would take 17, 23, 7 and 30 over it easily and maybe some more. Fair enough Steven but that's to be expected after hearing you trash Angle-Michaels at 21 For me, it's the uninterrupted run of 5 (or you could count the tag triple threat and say 6) good-to-great matches, with none of them suffering from time constraints that really make this baby soar.

I think the argument between 17 and 19 for one and two is really close. Could go with 19 on another day.

Shane Douglas, 21st February 1995, ECW TV. He cuts a half hour pre-recorded promo. Startling stuff - completely unheard of at the time. Tears into Flair, talks about having to dig deep into his fundamentals from his training days to compete in ECW.

I'm a 17 at no1 and 19 at no2 guy. Possibly 30 at 3, then 23 as my top 4.