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Exactly what motivation does anyone have to pretend to have enjoyed a match? Please quit it with the bad faith bullshit, it's poisonous to actual discussion.

I wouldn't have an issue with Dave's taste if he had any aptitude for explaining why he likes what he likes. I've never seen any indication that the guy has any self-awareness about his preferences or has ever second guessed his own initial judgement. When a person's critical vocabulary is as limited as his it makes me wish they'd abstain from criticism entirely - especially when they're in a position of influence. The fact that, in spite of his occasional assertions to the contrary, he doesn't seem to really believe that match quality is a subjective affair makes this even more irritating. Dave is a fantastic journalist and analyst, but as a critic I find him pretty worthless - though interesting as a good indicator of where the mainstream hardcore fan mentality is at.

Is there a better candidate for most improved this year than Rusev, in any promotion?

I think if it just happens to be the case that no women would make your top 100 then fine, but when you start to get into weird reasoning about why it's not fair to compare them you're off in sexist territory. For any complaint raised about women workers in this thread there are plenty of exceptions. As for them being inferior athletes; well first we have to pin down what is meant by "athleticism" to begin with because, as Meltzer attested to, the 90s women worked a much faster style than their male contemporaries. If your problem is a lack of believable physicality (which is something I struggle with with someone like Toyota, so I get where the complaint is coming from), there's workers like Nakano, Kong, Toyoda, Kansai... and honestly even some of the smaller framed women were no less believable than small framed men... Chigusa is worlds apart from someone like Toyota in that regard. Taste is taste and I have absolutely no problem with anyone simply not rating women wrestlers due to stylistic preferences. But if you make your argument on the basis of physicality and believability and then turn around and rave about super choreographed Dragon Gate matches while dismissing, out of hand, workers like Aja Kong and Bull Nakano then it does make me wonder if maybe your taste is predicated on some pretty sketchy attitudes towards women.

It's funny to see this conversation given Meltzer's attitude to the Japanese women in the 90s was "they're better than even the best of the men, but that's not a fair comparison because of course 120 pound women are going to be able to go faster for longer than any man."

Really enjoyed this. I love Taue's awkward yet effective looking offense. The hundred hand slap move is a reference to him being a former sumo wrestler. He also has the Sumo Lariat, which I'm not sure you'd ever see used in a sumo match. Wait till you see his awkward tope and awkward missile dropkick! Re: Hansen, I'd actually been thinking recently about how Hansen fit in to the main event scene in All Japan. You'd have all these Japanese guys with their own personal issues having (a lot of) matches, then occasionally this larger-than-life cartoon character shows up (in a promotion with a generally down-to-earth presentation) and just destroys guys. His character doesn't really seem to have motivations and despite often being world champion he never really seems to factor into the main storyline of the promotion - he's more like a force of nature than an actual person.

Email Black Terry Jr. at [email protected] He has Hechicero v. Terry from this weekend too. Both rule! Thanks so much

Meltzer has said that Hunter has been expressing irritation backstage at how cheap the people who haven't bought the Network are.

Where can I see the ChilangaMask Hechicero/Black Terry vs. Trauma II/Negro Navarro match? I'm willing to pay if necessary. Saw it mentioned on WKO but don't have an account there.

I guess it just laid bare to me how into that kind of stuff Dave is that a pretty average example of the style is more enjoyable for him than a really good WWE style match. Evaluating both within the context of their respective styles, that match didn't touch, say, Ambrose vs. Rollins on RAW from just a couple months ago.

I think the Japanese style of everyone being in factions that include guys at all levels of the card is a tremendous aid for booking. Makes it very easy to have matches that feel meaningful and have real finishes without really giving anything away.

Yeah actually thinking about it I'm not sure Naito has been put in a position to headline since then. AJ/Tanahashi just did their first Sumo Hall sellout for a non-G1 show in over a decade though.

I completely agree. The free TV should be six mans and matches like John Cena vs lower level guy (say Cesaro or Titus O'Neill). If it's a match you might want to pay for it should be on the network or a house show. I imagine they believe three hours of six man matches would cause ratings to tank. They may be right, although since no match on the shows currently feels special anyway because we've seen them all a thousand times maybe it wouldn't make any difference.

I can only imagine he's thinking of how, in addition to Okada and AJ being legit main eventers, guys like Makabe, Goto, Naito, Shibata and Suzuki can main event shows against one of the real top drawing guys without causing the numbers to tank. I'm pretty high on New Japan booking in general because it makes sense which is a rare thing in a major promotion these days, but I definitely agree with others that their lackadaisical approach to elevating guys that are clearly more over than their push like Shibata, Honma and Ishii has been irritating. At least Shibata seems to be finally getting his chance now.

On Prince Puma vs. Johnny Mundo: "By far the best match I've seen on American TV in some time." Alright, Dave.

I think Punk post-pipebomb promo could've been the start of something big. So could Daniel Bryan in the the lead up to, during and after Mania. Both of those saw a level of mainstream popcultural buzz far beyond what wrestling usually sees these days. Both fizzled when WWE dropped the ball. I think Dean Ambrose could be one hot angle away from the same thing. I'm not talking Attitude Era-esque boom in any of these cases, but a significant increase in interest. It's worth bearing in mind that WWE's problem hasn't so much been attracting people to the Network - it's been retaining them.

I think saying "here's what they need to do to make the Network succeed..." followed by every single smart fan talking point of the last 5-10 years short of "turn Cena heel" is a pretty amusingly pat/convenient outlook on things. No doubt putting on a better product would help business (duh), but, again, they've been doing good financially for years with pretty much the same quality of product, on average, that they have now. It's the Network that's the problem, not the product, unless the Network model somehow demands a higher quality of product than the PPV model to succeed.

It's worth noting that since these numbers only extend till September 30th, they don't include people who subscribed in the days immediately leading up to Mania. Since their figures only indicate a domestic gain of 3000, they must have actually had a fairly significant net domestic loss.

I do think the "it's all creative's fault!" attitude is probably somewhat hardcore fan wishful thinking tho. As far as I know most other business indicators (ratings, attendance,merch) have held steady or dipped only slightly since last year, when they were doing fine financially. The problem is just that the Network isn't an appealing proposition for many people for whatever reason, but it's not necessarily tied to creative. I guess there's an argument to be made that the Network business model requires a more consistently high quality product to succeed than the PPV model, but I'm not sure about that.

I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I feel like the connection between the quality of the current product and the success of the Network barely even occurs to them. The company has become gradually embroiled in so much bureaucracy since going public and now make so much of their money from nontraditional (i.e anything but live attendance and PPV) revenue streams that creative is the last thing on the mind of those making business decisions. I don't know if they even see themselves as a wrestling company so much as a TV/licensing empire that just happens to be built on wrestling.

Can anyone explain the storyline circumstances of Kawada leaving Misawa's stable to team with Taue in 1993? From what I've seen, Kawada and Taue go to a 30 minute draw in the Carny, shaking hands at the end to end their feud. Then during Kawada/Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Taue/Fuchi/Ogawa, Kikuchi tags in Kawada to go against Taue eliciting a big reaction from the crowd. Later, Kawada gives Taue a look and then hits the Nodowa Otoshi on Ogawa. At the end of the match, Kawada is crying as he raises his partners' hands. From then on he's teaming with Taue. The full TVs for '93 aren't online (and I understand very little Japanese anyway), so I'm having a hard time filling in the gaps here.

I think 'guy most out of his depth in a single match' is a fun question. I submit Hansen/RVD vs. Kawada/Kobashi from '93.

My take on the fighting spirit spot is that if the idea is supposed to be clenching your fists and gutting it through the pain, then SELL IT LIKE THAT. I think it can be a fantastic spot when done well, but in current New Japan it's way overused, used at the wrong times, and not done well. The vast majority of the time it just looks like someone decided to arbitrarily pop up after a move, and reminds me that, oh yeah, the rest of the times they were selling moves by actually looking hurt, and so exhausted they couldn't get up? Well, they were just faking it. The one fighting spirit spot I remember liking in New Japan this year was Ishii standing up after Naito's missile dropkick in their February match, because it he sold it like he'd been knocked the fuck out and had stood up on pure instinct. Since I fortunately just happened to watch this match after reading this thread, here's what I'd consider good execution of a fighting spirit spot (at least in terms of the mechanics of it; its placement within the match leaves something to be desired IMO).

This is getting wildly off topic, but... the same reason people get invested in TV serials, movies, books... just about any other work of fiction. Kayfabe is dead and isn't coming back, so I think the best approach is to demand the same level of logic and consistency that we'd demand from other genres of fiction, not to demand the genie be put back in the bottle. Meltzer has said several times that the WWE doesn't care about telling consistent, logical stories because "it's just wrestling, everyone knows it's fake so why bother" which is so completely ass-backwards. Instead of just giving up on logic and consistency and doing this weird cognitive dissonance thing where they openly acknowledge what wrestling is but on TV still present it like it's always been presented, they should start presenting it as a work of fiction and hold themselves to the standards of quality fiction. You don't necessarily have to get into CHIKARA silliness; you could easily produce a realistic TV serial about a fictional sport. Roll credits at the end of RAW. Have wrestlers appear on talk shows out of character under their real names. It sure didn't seem to hurt people's investment in the Walter White character that Bryan Cranston would appear on talk shows. I know there's an argument that wrestling is fundamentally different from other forms of fiction and that the fanbase doesn't look at it like they do other forms of fiction even though they absolutely know it's worked, but maybe that needs to change since the old way of presenting wrestling doesn't seem to be doing so hot any more.

I wouldn't dispute that the Ambrose/Rollins finish was bad storytelling, I'm just not convinced it hurts Ambrose. I'd say it is more likely to hurt the fans' investment in the product as a whole before it hurts Ambrose.