pol

On Reigns, I wouldn't be surprised if he's now consigned to the same "kids love him, adults hate him" slot that Cena is in, and the company continues to do good business based on that but also continues to be unable to convert much of the adult male demographic that makes up the vast majority of their TV audience into paying customers.

Fair point, I just remembered all the talk being that he needed a second surgery but was looking at natural solutions. If all it was was a pinched nerve I guess that is something a naturopath could be equipped to deal with.

If it were true that people always come back RAW would still be doing 4.0-5.0 ratings.

Bryan's neck issues were "cured" by a fucking naturopath. He is not fine and probably closer to a ticking time bomb.

I'm not much of a fan of that "I'm going to keep doing all my normal offense but clutch at my knee after everything I do" approach to body part selling. To me if you're going to have a match built around body part work it should affect the way the guy on the receiving end of it wrestles the match - otherwise, why bother? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall them even doing the "guy hits his finish but the body part is too hurt to capitalize" deal.

Is that the match where Nakamura refuses to deviate from his knee-based offense despite Tanahashi's constant focus on working the leg? That kinda killed the match for me.

Variety reports that WWE today announced the Network had passed the 1 million subscriber mark. This seems very dubious to me. They have to mean that there's been 1 million people that have subscribed including people that have since cancelled, right? edit: Apparently not.

They've already beaten him every way they could other than actually having him get pinned or submitted, I doubt they're going to keep it up much longer. The urge to fuck up every good thing they have going is just too strong.

Is Vince likely to change direction on Reigns if the negative reactions continue, or is it going to be chalked up to being just like Cena (ignoring that it took time for Cena to start getting booed) and plough full speed ahead? I guess ultimately it will come down to how much merch he sells and how much he moves the needle on house shows, but I wonder if they give him time to prove himself on that front or if they pull the plug early because of how bad it's looking.

Hah, just came in this thread to post - even ignoring how the crowd reacted to the outcome, was there a single thing in this match layout that was done well? - Reigns didn't look good in winning at all - manages to beat Kane and Show because they start fighting among themselves. - Not a single interesting elimination. Several babyfaces got dominated and tossed out by heels. - #2 babyface and most over guy on the roster does absolutely nothing in the match. - Kofi's big spot was totally shitty. - Mizdow deal was done in pretty much the worst way possible. - What the fuck was the point of that Rusev thing? I'm sure there's more bad decisions I'm forgetting...

Reminded me of one of those Fantasticamania singles matches where they just go straight to the third fall bomb throwing. Great spots, tons of fun but don't know if I can see a match that felt so disjointed for much of its duration as a MOTYC.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada, NJPW 01/04 I guess I'll bite the bullet and be the first one to mention this I thought it was a really great match in the Orton/Cena vein, in that it's two guys who you know you aren't going to see many - if any - great 'little things' from, and whose execution of the more mechanical aspects of wrestling can range from solid to pretty bad, but that ultimately use their limited micro-level tools to put together a match that tells a great macro-level story. I haven't rewatched either, but right now I'm leaning just a little towards this over Nakamura/Ibushi for current MOTY. Shockercito/Astral/Último Dragóncito/Fantasy/Eléctrico vs. Demus 3:16/Mercurio/Pequeño Nitro/Pequeño Olímpico/Pierrothito (Pequeños Reyes del Aire Cibernético), CMLL 01/06 A match that was all about the nutty spots, but that was also paced well and built to the spots in a way that made them feel meaningful. Loved the character work from the big bullies Pierrothito, Mercurio and Demus and a great underdog babyface performance from Shockercito. I really hope I don't see a sicker bump this year than Astral's missed tope. The most fun I've had watching wrestling in 2015.

Did you know that the only reason Atlantis/Guerrero, Shield/Wyatts and Bryan/Triple H made it into the top 10 matches of the year is because New Japan put on so many awesome matches that people forgot to vote for a bunch of them?

Definitely true that CMLL has more bad matches than NJPW. It's easy to forget that since I pick and choose what I watch from them, whereas I often watch the NJPW shows live. edit: The more I think about it the more I have to go with New Japan. The big thing for me is that NJPW feels like an exciting product whereas CMLL doesn't. NJPW's production is better, they run more big shows, the crowds come across as much hotter (ties into better production), the booking has a clear direction that allows you to get invested, etc. If you make it a pure workrate vs. workrate discussion I think there's more room for debate, but with all the other factors taken into account NJPW takes it pretty easily for me.

I tried reading Death of WCW and - more fool me I guess, knowing who the authors are - I really expected a higher caliber of writing that you'd see on a random fan page for an actual published book. The information contained within may be good, but it's very, very poorly written.

CMLL sure pumps out those fun "names out of a hat" trios matches on a weekly basis, whereas the NJPW equivalents on the minor shows and the undercards of the big shows tend to be lacking. In 2014 I would put the best CMLL stuff a little below the best of NJPW overall, but it's close enough that I wouldn't think someone was crazy for going the other way. NJPW gives its talent many more opportunities to showcase themselves going all-out, and as a result produces more "better than good, worse than great"-type matches. And the booking makes much more sense. I could see someone going either way depending on what they're looking for in a promotion.

I also enjoyed Vampiro much more as an interviewer than as an announcer. It's really refreshing to see a more engaged, adversarial interviewing style after the vanilla crap we get from the WWE guys. Vamp has enough of a tough guy aura that it doesn't come off as ridiculous like it would with, say, Byron Saxton.

dave He really needs to watch more CMLL. I don't even mind if the top 10 should be all NJPW according to his personal taste, what bothers me is this ridiculous, arrogant, fanboyish notion that the only possible reason any non-NJPW match could make it into the top 10 is because NJPW just had so many good matches that people forgot a bunch of them. Rather than, you know, that people have different tastes and not everyone loves absolutely everything that NJPW puts out.

dave

One nice thing about AJPW is that the house style seems pretty distinct from the NJPW style, at least in the main events (I don't really bother with the undercards). You can't really say the same for NOAH.

While I do wish guys would show off more than the 'crazy flying spots' aspect of the Mexican style in their singles matches on these shows, I can't deny that those were really top-rate matches of that style. Really really fun show.

Good recital of the Atlantis/UG match. Kinda whatever show overall, I thought the SamuraiTV one from earlier this week was much better. Hopefully Cavernario/Cometa gets a good amount of time and delivers tomorrow. I guess I have to agree with Matt D in that I think a number of the matches on this show would've been helped by being 2/3 falls. It's especially strange to see them work the standard Mexican trios match but without the falls dividing things up.

Fun show so far up until that last match. I liked the Cavernario tag, though it was sloppy in places. Gran Guerrero got gassed minutes in and Volador Jr. doesn't seem to understand anything about wrestling other than doing cool moves.

Doering has always been a dollar store Hansen (to quote Joe Lanza) and Shiozaki did a bunch of chops and teased a Burning Hammer... that's enough for me

Speaking of that Go Shiozaki vs. Joe Doering match... I thought the first two thirds were pretty dull and the Kobashi/Hansen role-playing was eye-roll inducing, but they really turned it on for the last 10 minutes and actually managed to come close to hitting the heights of the classic matches they were aping. Really remarkable stuff, and one of the hottest crowds I've heard in some time. Just a shame the whole match wasn't that good.