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Goodear

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Everything posted by Goodear

  1. I don't know Matt, Johnny was making sense to me. This seemed to me like a failure on the agents' part on making the story compelling mechanically from an in ring perspective for the most part with the majority of the eliminations being afterthoughts. I think the overarching plot makes more sense than it is getting credit for, but it was executed poorly from a physical sense. From a larger macro view, I think the booking was designed in a way that makes sense if you look it as Mission: Roman Reigns Doesn't get Backlash. You knock Bryan out early so the hate doesn't poison the finish and you have Roman end up against Kane and Big Show because no one in the audience is going to want to cheer them over Reigns. If instead, Ziggler or Ambrose are there you are going to get a much more immediate bad reaction. This is the idea. The idea didn't work. But I can see the theory behind why they were doing what they were doing. The execution left a lot to be desired.
  2. I think doing the commentary while watching the feed for the first time allows Parv to give more life to his commentary and makes it feel fresher. However it also causes him to come off as confused as to what is going on which, to be fair, in this instance is very easy to do as the stuff going on is so completely bat shit. I think if Parv is going to do this stuff "live" he needs to lay off on the historical blurbs as it sets a different tone he can't really keep up doing commentary.
  3. The last thing WWE needs right now is another title belt when they can't make the tag team, IC or US categories seem important. The European Title would simply compound an existing problem where they think a program has interest because hardware gets moved back and forth.
  4. This whole argument is confusing to me. I don't think its completely crazy to say Wrestler A does a better job of fitting his role as a midcarder than Wrestler B did as his role as a main eventer. Certainly more main eventers are going to be in a top 100 of all time but I don't see why you wouldn't include some of the best "supporting actors" as well. I don't know why you would make the opposite argument other than to have an argument. Best Lower Card Guys I Can Think of Off the Top of My Head since I don't have a running list... Tito Santana (post Strike Force) Chris Masters Haku (WWF) Little Guido Tom Zenk Terry Taylor Greg Valentine (post Dream Team) The Berzerker Scott Norton (WCW) Ernest Miller
  5. Goodear

    AJ Styles

    Styles to me is 'fun to watch' the same way a blockbuster summer movie with no emotional core would be. He draws zero feeling from me other than a 'hey, that was neat' from his athletic ability. He seems like one of those guys who gets the physicality of wrestling but none of the intangibles that make someone truly great. His choice of finisher that he's going to cripple someone with one day is another negative.
  6. I'm trying to picture Warrior working heel effectively or with a manager and cannot imagine how it would work. You would have to strip away a whole lot of the things that made him work like his energy level, his explosiveness and 3/4s of his offense which was all pop inducing. Having him walk out with Bobby Heenan and work a chinlock on top for 6 minutes seems like a recipe for disaster.
  7. Stud Stable vs. The Rhodes merits some inclusion as a really good mid card angle with some great action with the Buck vs. Dustin singles matches, the memorable Anderson turn and the War Games finale which came to a head with an awesome emotional promo from Dusty that brought the whole thing home.
  8. Goodear

    Demolition

    I grew up watching Dino Bravo too and I won't be championing him anywhere. Demolition works a very particular style predicated on ring positioning and frequent tags in and out of the ring. I personally love the internal logic their matches are based on since it rings truthfully in a wrestling context. They are somewhat big guys with lots of power that slowly grind people into dust over the course of a match. El-P intonated that they didn't really demolish opponents up thread but I would suggest they took things and broke them down over time as opposed to all at once. The obvious parrallel would be The Road Warriors who were wrecking balls that drove through people. Demolition was instead a slow grinding break down like the tide hitting a rock over and over again until it erroded. The interesting thing about Demolition is you can even see this structure upset during the Collosal Connection title loss as they got crushed because they weren't allowed to use their common tactics, Ax literally never managed to make a tag and they lost because of it. Its an effective narrative choice you don't see other places. There are arguments against Demolition obviously. They don't do a lot of the things people look for in epic matches like have near falls or do a lot of high spots. I just don't think that makes them boring.
  9. Goodear

    Bobby Eaton

    I would suggest that he was such a fixture in WCW at the time that it allowed the crowd to get behind him based on tenure. I don't think he could have just been introduced to the company and get the same results.
  10. Goodear

    Brian Pillman

    Pillman always struck me as a guy who did his best character work as a heel but has physically made to be a face. So when I think of his great performances, they are tied to a character that I'm not invested in and when I think about when he was a great character, the matches aren't there. The only time he could really align was in the run with the Hollwood Blondes and he didn't seem to have the heel work down at that point.
  11. Goodear

    Bobby Eaton

    Eaton may be the best wrestler I know with the lowest amount of personal charisma. I don't know what becomes of him if he doesn't link up with Cornette and other managers to provide a way of building a career. I can't imagine a guy with Bobby's deficits coming up today and getting major play in a larger company. From a character perspective, he comes off as an instrument of Cornette's will rather than an independent actor. That being said, what a physical talent who could do so much, so well and with impeccable timing. A really good flyer in terms of landing with impact and force, he also had an underrated ground game with one of the most beautiful swinging neckbreakers you will ever see. The Lane version of the Midnight Express was especially ahead of its time in terms of double teams, several of which could be used as finishes today with no alteration.
  12. Goodear

    Christian

    Christian seemed to mature kind of late and needed that TNA main event run to learn how to put his character together. He really came alive the higher he got on the card, I think his ECW title run was his best work with good stuff against a variety of people including Swagger and Ryder if memory serves. I really liked his face character that went to the top rope about 7 times a match which wouldn't be my normal pattern but I think it worked for him as he didn't have the stuff to go toe-to-toe with really anyone and wasn't so quick he could out-speed guys.
  13. Goodear

    Chris Masters

    I don't know who flipped the switch on Masters but I can't recall a more drastic and unexpected turnaround. I also can't recall someone who was a more dynamic limb seller who made sure every bit of work mattered in what he would do in a match. One armed powerslams, selling the knee after atomic drops, the guy got really good at making damage matter. That being said, I could see how someone could say he went over the top with it if they decided to take that tact. But man, he scratches my particular itches.
  14. Goodear

    Vader

    I never felt Vader bumped too much until he had to put Flair over at Starrcade since I never felt as though Flair could realistically win in that setting with Vader selling his chops being the largest oddity. I decided to take a somewhat random sample of TV matches to see if the bumping is as rampant as some are stating here. Vader vs. Barbarian Commentary is in German so trying to place this in a time lime might be difficult but it looks to me after the Ron Simmons title reign based on Barbarian's gear. Race gets banned from ringside for reasons ... before anyone even locks up. Vader does bump for Barbarian cleanly in that he takes one hit and goes down a couple of times. I have to say that the middle rope catch powerslam spot rears its head here and I wonder if Vader didn't go to that on transition too often. I wonder if Vader was bumping as much as he was because he was matched up against big strong guys so much in WCW like Sting and Simmons who could realistically bump him around? Vader vs. Cactus Jack 03/16/94 The ear match according to the Tube, which I've never seen. Vader is much less bump happy hear which may be due to the match going short due to a 25% loss in the ear market. He really only takes two bumps off things Jack does twice and off missed splashes. It still doesn't feel like big man monster bumps with a lot of wobble before the pay off but I don't think anything here was especially over-the-top in terms of making Vader look like a pinball. Vader vs. Pat Rose Vader does a sunset flip. I just saw it going through a match list and wanted to share. Either something awesome because Vader is doing a sunset flip or completely inappropriate because Vader is doing a sunset flip. Vader vs. Hulk Hogan - SuperBrawl V If anyone knows how to work big guys into wobble sells, it should be Hogan. And he shows that off in the first moments as Hogan sets Vader up to absorb punches and some bitching slaps to the face. Hogan goes as far to take Vader down to the mat with a cross armbreaker before Vader escapes by stepping on his face. Vader gets nothing in the first 3 minutes of the match but gets more over by absorbing everything. Hogan finally gets Vader to take a momentary break by tossing him into the crowd over the guardrail but because Vader tosses the railing away after, he doesn't look out of place. Hogan catches Vader coming though and gets a clothesline out of a corner. Boot to the face and Hogan dumps him over the top with a clothesline. Again Hogan stays on Vader as he gets back in with a number of punches and stands on Vader's head. Eye rake from Hogan but Vader falls on top when Hulk goes for the slam. Vader barge knocks Hogan back down before hitting some short shots to the face. Short arm clothesline and Hogan sort of flops down before saying audibly that Vader is too strong which is an awesome way to get his opponent over. Vaderbomb gets two off a lateral press but a moonsault misses. Hogan pulls Vader out and goes for a chair twice which gets Vader down to a knee. Vader ducks a clothesline and chokeslams Hulkster with a throttle. Elbow drop. Corner beating sets up a vertical suplex for 2 and... Hulk Up. Stuff stuff stuff. Legdrop gets one. One? Referee gets bumped and Vader gets a visual fall off the powerbomb which brings Ric Flair into the ring. Hogan knocks Vader over the top and Flair manages to get Vader disqualified by having Hulk bounce him around. As predicted, Hogan gets a lot out of Vader in terms of pacing and making his bumps matter more than the average. Really smart performance here by both guys as Vader looks good in defeat while eating a lot of stuff from Hogan and selling it properly in terms of ... not selling it?
  15. Chris Masters http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/18957-chris-masters/ Alex Wright http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15267-alex-wright-appreciation-thread/
  16. Goodear

    Dory Funk Jr.

    I decided to look at Dory as "Hoss" Funk in the WWF just because ... well giggles. JYD & George Steele vs. Hoss and Jimmy Jack Funk - September 14, 1986 I'm pretty sure at this point everyone else in this match sucks at this point in history. Sorry Dory! Oh lord am I sorry. Sorry, I wasted 6 minutes watching this thing. No one looked good and I know this isn't fair to Dory as a fair indictment of his talent but he didn't distinguish himself here anymore than anyone else did. British Bulldogs vs. Hoss and Jimmy Jack Funk - August 25, 1986 DK and Dory start out with Dynamite running through Dory with a series of shoulder blocks but it really doesn't go anywhere before Davey comes in and starts slamming guys. This is two minutes in and it feels so disjointed and awkward before Dory gets Kid in a corner and lays in some uppercuts. The Funks start a brawl and whip the Bulldogs together but Jack hits Dory with a clothesline by mistake. Jimmy does come back on Kid to get the advantage for his team as Dory hits a nice butterfly suplex to get two. DK fires back but gets caught with a belly-to-back suplex which oddly allows him to tag out (?) just a bad transition to a lukewarm tag. Smith gets his suplex and powerslam before we have a hullabaloo and Smith throws DK on Jimmy Jack for the pin. This never really felt like it got a chance to settle in as any segment would have been improved with some length. Hulk Hogan & JYD vs. Hoss and Terry Funk - March, 3, 1986 Terry might have been made to sell Hogan punches, I'm just saying. Dory is more floppy in his back bumping and seems less authentic as a result even though Terry is more theatrical. The Dog and Dory do a criss cross and its... something all right. JYD stops running, Dory keeps running, then Terry comes in and runs the ropes with Dory. I don't even know. Terry takes a moment to threaten Super Mario (with Fire Flower) on the outside and then trips on electrical cords. Terry be on the drugs. But is all is right with the world as he grabs a section of seating and bops Hogan with it. The Funks go to work on what I surmise would be the King Kong Bundy injured ribs at this point. But Hogan hulks up way quickly and tags the Dog. Who immediately gets in trouble as Hoss rips his face off with a boot scrape. Dog is embarrassingly bad here, just so bad. The 2nd heat segment lasts as long as the first (not long) and Hogan pin balls the Funks around until Dory hits him from behind and Terry chokes him with tape. Dog breaks that up but gets hanged, hung, choked with a rope before Hogan runs Terry down with the AX BOMBAAAAAAH for the finish. Better than the first two matches which was pretty much a given as Terry is world's better than Jimmy Jack (like how many worlds is up for debate, I'm thinking like 23) and Hogan was way more dynamic than any other opponent I've seen Dory against thus far. Dory didn't really stand out here either though as Terry tends to hog the spotlight.
  17. He may have felt unpredictable at the time, but looking back it seems like Abby was locked into a serious rut of stab, stab, stab followed with a meaty elbow and then getting into a disqualification. Don't get me wrong, Abdullah for all of the repetition never seemed boring to me as his character transcended blow-by-blow description as the matches were presented as more of a descent into madness rather than an athletic competition. I don't think he will work his way into my top 100 based on a couple of different factors (my general distaste for blood for the sake of blood) but it wasn't a watch completely devoid of enjoyment.
  18. None of the kids are screaming at the moment. Biff Busick vs. Timothy Thatcher - Beyond Wrestling 4/13 I have no previous experience with either guy and honestly that leads to an interesting two-fold dynamic. On one hand I don't know what to expect in terms of character work and if they are holding to theirs so, for example, it may be appropriate for Biff to focus on the rear naked choke so exclusively if being stubborn is a key part of who he is. On the other, anything that these guys do every match could happen without me knowing it. So if Thatcher European uppercuts a guy off the middle rope every time out, it may not seem as organic as it does here. That being said, nothing here seems especially contrived in terms of setting stuff up. Thatcher seems very polished in terms of transitioning from hold-to-hold and spot to spot from a first watch which I would come to expect from a British guy. He's smooth but not too smooth in that he makes it look easy without it looking like Biff is cooperating with him which can hamper my enjoyment of Lucha matwork (as a broad generalization). I would have to somewhat admit that, like Matt, I would have liked to see the arm work pay off somewhere which it really didn't and think it could have made for more interesting work rather than the strike exchange. Speaking of which, this did not seem like the match that warranted an exchange where they stood there and wailed on each other with Thatcher at least having the sense to cover up. I would also question why Thatcher won the strike exchange when he already won the mat exchanges, it would have set a clearer narrative for him to lose when things got rougher so Biff could build around that rather than getting the choke out of nowhere for the finish. As it stands, the striking stands out as a thing they decided to do because it was a thing to do. If there was some jawing or some aggression there to lead to the strikes, it would make more sense.
  19. I think a lot of the difference now is that everyone (obvious exaggeration is obvious) works a main event style where everyone works 20 minute minimum matches with all these high spots and near falls because that is how you have 'great matches' and get noticed. Matt has raised the point in other threads about how we pick and chose matches to watch now rather than whole shows. As such, the sub-ten minute undercard match with shine, heat, rally, finish has vanished in favor of several changes in momentum and near falls. So, yeah, there isn't an Arn Anderson out there right now because his role has vanished from everywhere but WWE and if you haven't been IC champion there at least twice, what have you done?
  20. Says the guy into "Natureboy" Rick Flare
  21. I never got the enthusiasm some have for Jannetty. He certainly has athletic talents but has never connected to me as a performer. He just seemed so hollow in terms of character after the Rockers broke up and never moved past that phase in his career. I find he lacks range in that he has the one Jannetty Gear and never seems to pick things up or slow things down when appropriate. I just watched one of the matches with Matt Borne as Doink and Marty just couldn't escalate his game to match Borne's fire. I don't find him compelling in any way and certainly can't endorse his placement in my top 100.
  22. Work rate always seemed to me to be an attempt to add some sort of statistical analysis to something that defies quantification. Sports people love to use all sorts of stats to represent who is or isn't a good player and wrestling doesn't lend itself to the same sort of analysis unless you want to talk about financials. Work rate is the only 'measurable' which has come up to gather performance metrics and its extremely flawed at the core. As a performance and not a sport, you can't just measure how much stuff is packed into a match to tell if its any good. Even if you are looking at a sprint, rate doesn't measure quality on any level and basically punishes core wrestling mechanics like selling and ring psychology. Consider that Ric Flair slapping on a single figure four in the same amount of time it takes Kurt Angle to trade ankle lock reversals four times and it illustrates a giant problem in the count. This is of course if people can agree to separate 'stuff' in the same way, which they won't. To go to the movie analogy grave site of 'we hate movie analogies', Unforgiven would most likely be seen as a better movie than Con Air but it throws a lot less 'stuff' on screen but its stuff is executed with a lot more meaning and is world's less shallow.
  23. Goodear

    Ric Flair

    I wonder how much of this is based on Ric's post peak being so long with him being on television the entire time and it warping people's perspective of his ability. If we figure he was wrestling ten years after aging out of his best stuff, that is a whole generation of fans growing up looking at a guy performing at less than his best. Its not hard to understand why those fans would have a hard time putting that aside mentally to assess him.
  24. Goodear

    Jimmy Jacobs

    I find wrestlers using piercing weapons like scissors, knives and swords to be completely emmersion breaking myself and feel the inclusion of such items hurts matches more than they help on virtually every occasion. If you have gone so far as to break those out, it is too close to actual attempted murder for me to be entertained by their inclusion.
  25. Goodear

    Jim Duggan

    Hacksaw has his faults as a worker and they are legion. On the other hand, the guy has the personal charisma of 10 charismatic men and as Enzo Amore might say you can't teach that.
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