pol

Striker was generally quite good, but the handful of times he made some insider reference or said dorky shit like "fighting spirit" or "lariato" (fucking shoot me) were enough to ruin it for me. The guy calls wrestling as a work and it sucks.

I do think we can possibly lay some of the blame for the confusion at the feet of Dave's lack of ability to understand how people are going to interpret what he says. Remember "my source says with 100% certainty that CM Punk will be at Raw"? It's possible that when he talks about the incredible advance they're doing compared to last year and neglects to mention that the capacity is only 1000 more than they did last year he doesn't even see how the vast majority of people are going to interpret that. I guess you can argue that in both cases Dave is covering his ass, but given the amount of mildly autistic traits the guy exhibits in general I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this is just another instance of that.

I'll just paste what I said in the podcast forum here... The word now is that 36k was a sellout for the setup they had in the building. I don't see that there's any reason to believe that Dave got worked on the advance ticket sales. I do think you can argue that his enthusiasm for the product caused him to make more positive extrapolations from the available information than he otherwise would have, and maybe in that sense the NJPW front office managed to work him by withholding the one crucial detail about the max capacity of their setup. That said, to play devil's advocate, is it really so hard to imagine the same thing happening with a non-guaranteed-sellout Wrestlemania?

The word now is that 36k was a sellout for the setup they had in the building. I don't see that there's any reason to believe that Dave got worked on the advance ticket sales. I do think you can argue that his enthusiasm for the product caused him to make more positive extrapolations from the available information than he otherwise would have, and maybe in that sense the NJPW front office managed to work him by withholding the one crucial detail about the max capacity of their setup. That said, to play devil's advocate, is it really so hard to imagine the same thing happening with a non-guaranteed-sellout Wrestlemania?

I'm reserving judgement on the whole attendance deal until we get numbers from a reliable source (if that's happened already I missed it). If the rumors are accurate it does seem like Meltz deserves the mockery though.

Okada got pinned by Fale in a tag at Korakuen today, so for those of you questioning where they're going after the Dome loss, there you go. I like the idea so long as they actually have the guts to do without him in a drawing position for the time being and see the angle through to next year's Dome show.

I don't sweat people's contextless star ratings too much. There's a ton of variation in what those mean to people.

Let's not go crazy here, they had some nasty stuff, but go rewatch Ikeda v. Ishikawa, this wasn't that. Hyperbole And I pretty much agree with you about Tanahashi/Okada, despite liking it much more than you did. I actually thought to myself a little after watching "that was like the best possible Orton/Cena match". Tanahashi is a very "macro" guy; all about the structure and drama and average to weak at the moment-to-moment execution. If you need the latter in your wrestling it makes sense that you won't get much out of his matches unless he's in there with a micro-wrestling specialist like Suzuki or a killer who will bring the violence like Shibata.

I thought Omega/Taguchi pretty much sucked, yeah. I guess the love it's getting in some quarters is a testament to how much a few cool moves can improve a match for some people.

Who'd've thought Ibushi/Nakamura would've been loaded with Ishikawa/Ikeda-esque potato shots? The brutality in that match was such a refreshing change from the usual forearm exchange stuff. I thought Ibushi showed a hundred times more charisma there than he ever has as a junior - the way he condescendingly laid into Nakamura was fantastic. I'm really excited to see him work as a heavyweight now. Thought Okada/Tanahashi was up there with Ibushi/Nakamura and I'm not usually particularly high on either guy. The video package before the match did a great job of establishing the story. My main complaint with these guys has been that they never really bring the hate and intensity you'd expect from a dynastic feud, and much of the matches often feels like rote running through moves. Neither of those complaints applied here. You know going in that even the best Tanahashi matches (that aren't against Minoru Suzuki) aren't going to feature a ton of individually interesting moments or good 'little things' work, but the story will be well-told, the big spots built to well and the match will build to a dramatic climax. I thought he delivered a great performance. I didn't even realise it went so long, and as someone who has little love for the excess-laden style of New Japan main events that may be the highest praise I can give it.

I think people should evaluate matches however they want. If you need to make an effort to consciously exclude certain factors I'd question the merit of doing so, though.

There was an immediate, noticeable drop in quality when Bix stopped writing for the place. I stopped reading them at that point and thinking about it that may have led to me finding this place. Geno Mrosko is awful.

So have they postponed Reigns's coronation for the time being? I can't believe they're dumb enough to have Bryan in the Rumble if they're planning on having Reigns win it.

Here's hoping Liger and Desperado knock it out of the park. I enjoyed what I've seen of Desperado in CMLL and it seems like he hasn't reached those heights again since returning from excursion. Hopefully they keep the inference to a minimum.

Luger submitted him with the rack in '97. Hogan submitted verbally though, so technically he's still right

At the risk of sounding like I have some very weird issues, I have to admit that I find it pretty uncomfortable to watch someone with Charlotte's tall skinny frame doing wrestling. Her lack of physical poise probably doesn't help matters either. She's obviously super athletic, but comes off as very awkward when it comes to actually acting like she's in a fight.

I wonder how much the Observer is valued by guys in the business now. I get the impression that back in the day a lot of the value of it to guys in the top two companies was to find out what was going on in the other company, and obviously that need doesn't exist any more. On the other hand, I'd imagine a lot of the younger guys now probably grew up reading the thing before they ever got into the business.

Having made it up to mid-94 in my '90s All Japan viewing, one thing that strikes me about Misawa is that for a guy regarded as top 10 all-time, the opening third or so of his major singles matches is often awfully uncompelling. After the typical big opening spot to pop the crowd, there's a lot of methodically paced running through of low-end offense, with little of the stuff that tends to carry the early portion of a match for me such as matwork, wild brawling, charismatic selling or just cutting a decent pace. I think you can blame a lot of this on the '90s AJPW style that deemphasized matwork and required big matches to always go 30+ minutes meaning they had to take it really slow in the beginning, but given the role Misawa played in shaping that style I think it's fair to view this as a knock on him to some extent.

I'm pretty sure the not re-evaluating matches thing is in deference to the fact that pro wrestling is ultimately a business of selling matches and pleasing the crowd in the building/watching live on TV. He thinks going back and re-evaluating stuff from a distance is missing the point of wrestling. You can make analogies to other media that make this attitude sound ridiculous (e.g. "it's unfair to go back and re-evaluate that was hugely successful upon release!") but to do so is to miss the point because he doesn't view wrestling as analogous to those other media; he doesn't see it as an art form. Of course then you have to ask why he bothers rating matches at all rather than just looking at how they drew and how hot the crowd was for it. Seems like a weird half-measure.

Because in certain posts there is an implication of "well if was/is so good, why was/is he/she stuck working in the lower midcard?" Which is a logic that 1) seems ridiculous to me because I don't need the approval of a booker to think a guy is at a certain level when it's all opinion anyway, and 2) between this and the Vince thread, implies a paternalism that offends me on a level beyond the context of wrestling.

Apologies if I'm inferring the wrong context here since I don't know where this thing originated, but I don't understand why this matters. Why would I defer to the wisdom of a booker over my own personal taste?

If everyone only talked about what they liked there'd be no discussion at all. Such a weird attitude.

You want to try explaining that to Vince?

Good god this is overbooked garbage

I'm sure that match is going to get shit on most places but I thought it was okay. That said, I can appreciate a methodically-paced match but a lot of the time Show was just standing around doing nothing. I thought Rowan's selling was very good. Commentators trying to make us believe that the stairs weigh 500 pounds is so ridiculous I can't believe they're actually doing it. That pin for the finish was very dumb.