Parties

After reading that email he wrote Terry Taylor, I want nothing but the best for R-Truth, and no longer mind him being in this. Plus Mark Henry.

Booker cackling, "I can't wait to see someone get hurt!" in the Chamber was something.

I was worried when it started with a headlock rather than a chop to the throat, but this was the star treatment for sure, with a UFC post-fight promo at that.

I agree that the order of entrances/exits sucked, but PTP-New Day was fun violence. Titus and Cesaro threw dudes around. Whatever Kalisto was doing looked weird and Ascension always fail, but everyone else looked good. Would have been better to let them all do more, esp. Cesaro, but I don't think him/Kidd needed to win or even be in the last two teams for it to be a good match. PTP become newly worthy contenders for New Day, and you can run Cesaro/Kidd vs. Players in two weeks for #1 contendership.

Cesaro's dropkick may surpass Harper's lariat for best move in WWE. Really liked Young sneak attack on Cesaro after the giant swing. In this week's WWE thread I said Darren Young might be sub-Sandow as a worker. Dead wrong. This match confirms he's definitely much better than Sandow, and has improved a lot since the first Prime Time Players breakup feud. Props to whoever booked this for actually elevating a team tonight. PTP looked great.

Man, I really hope that backstage promo wasn't telegraphing a Reigns heel turn. Two months later turning him seems like a terrible idea after many of us thought it the way to go at WM. To do it now by aligning with the Authority now that he's finally getting over the way they wanted him to would almost certainly suck. Unless Ambrose wins the title and Reigns attacks him afterwards, which I still wouldn't like but would at least have potential if Reigns is presented as the lone wolf out for blood.

Edit: wrong thread.

Miz dressing like 2013 Kanye West still makes him the most fashion-forward dude in wrestling history.

Yeah, this is a poignant thread for me, as one of the resident Kane haters. It was not so long ago that I was a 19 year old 'dkookypunk43', and we've all been there. We all still have a lot to learn, and I'm certainly outclassed by experts here often. One of my first posts on DVDVR was me calling Arn Anderson overrated, because I had seen too little Arn Anderson and had no idea what I was talking about. And it's not even that I actually hate Kane. As others have said, he's a totally competent worker who casual fans view as a real star. He's earned our respect, as a guy who's been relevant forever. He's been at or near the top of the card for the last 17 years. That is incredible to think about, even if it ultimately speaks poorly of WWE booking. Very few people have that kind of longevity. He's a guy who even when he was ridiculously green could be carried to decent-to-good matches with Fujiwara, Lawler, and Bret Hart. My problem with him is more that he really should not be on screen as much as he nowadays, and that his role in the Authority has been awful. He's often booked as the lazy booker's way into and out of dumb ideas, which isn't his fault at all. His role in this year's Rumble was just horrible. Doing constant in run-ins in dress pants, booking lame handicap matches, cutting dull promos, dragging down tag matches in which he's the worst wrester of four or six or ten. It isn't so much that he's a horrible worker as it is that he's horribly booked, and has been for a lot of his career. The two real bright spots of his career for me were his team with Waltman and his team with Danielson. Two really fun runs there. Maybe he was meant to be a career tag worker, and could have been one in a different era. The big guy-little guy dynamic has always worked for him, as has comedy. He's best as an Addams Family babyface chokeslamming stooges. That said, he's had more bad matches than good in his 20 year career. And when your "constant main eventer" role is both a blemish on your company's history and your best argument for HOF status, you shouldn't be in the running.

And it isn't even that Sandow's horrendous, exactly. He's well below average in the pantheon of wrestlers currently on TV, but not brutal to watch. It's more that the WWE main roster is so good right now. Aside from the Ascension and Darren Young, Sandow is the worst worker they've got. Which isn't even a diss of him as much as it's praise for the group at large. There's a certain type of internet fan who doesn't understand that not everyone gets to be a main eventer. Or in this case, that not everyone gets to be a main eventer for very long. Anyone who does anything entertaining and doesn't get a huge push becomes “wasted potential.” Sandow had a run at the top. He might even get another one if he proves to be a company man, which he may well be given his Killer Kowalski konnection to HHH. And I'm someone who thinks he definitely should have won that battle royal at Mania, and that they could have continued pushing him after that. I liked the idea of him as an unlikely sex symbol who steals the hearts of low-end Divas and frustrates low-end heels like the Miz and Adam Rose in the process. That's a good undercard character. But the point is that it's an undercard character. And that your undercard can be just as fun (or nearly as fun) as your main event. But as an in-ring worker, Sandow is exactly where he should be: below average wrestler who can talk and can ham it up with the right gimmick. I loved his promos as the Intellectual Savior. I loved “Silence!” as a catchphrase. Pompous coward who thinks he's better than you because he uses big words is an awesome gimmick, and so versatile. It can work for years, in so many different ways, at any place on the card. He can be a month-long foil for your world champ, or he can be the curtain jerker getting exasperated by R-Truth. He can be Lord Alfred Hayes, given that I think most of the guys on the current roster would be better announcers than the guys currently calling RAW and SD. Great character, and they did him a disservice by dropping it during that period where he was just a guy in purple tights. A big reason for why the Macho Man imitation sucks (and even why Mizdow ran its course) is that they took a guy who's best as a verbose talker, and gave him gimmicks where he never talks. In a different era he could have been Paul Jones feuding for years against the "Boogie Woogie Man" Curtis Axel.

They've repeatedly said that Cena/Owens is non-title (both for the US and presumably the NXT, though I don't know if they said that part, as if anyone expects John Cena: NXT Champ). A count out or double DQ sounds pretty good to me, but I don't know why they'd be so adamant about saying "this one doesn't count" if Cena was going over. Not to mention Owens being moved to the main roster and presumably dropping the NXT title to Balor or Joe ASAP.

Every Network event this year has been good, with the exception of a mediocre Extreme Rules and King of the Ring (which shouldn't count as that was basically a glorified episode of Smackdown that got thrown together at the last second). In fact in some ways I'd say that when you include NXT, the shows have in a lot of ways gotten better with each passing month after a fairly disappointing Rumble. I'm intrigued by every match on this card, which I don't think think has been true of any other show this year. Six matches in 2.5 to 3 hours is a lot of time.

Yeah, this was the line that broke me too. Fantastic episode, and the '89 edition(s) can't come soon enough. The amount of knowledge between the three of you is incredible, especially given that, if I understand what was said here correctly, Bix was about four years old when this stuff first aired, and Dylan not much older than that? Sting-Luger-Windham as a kind of missed opportunity parallel to the Three Musketeers of NJPW who were emerging at the time is interesting. If the three of them had ever been booked well as babyface brethren, you could have had something like the dynamic that you now see with the Shield, where you can split them off, have them feud, and reunite at times to the delight of the crowd. Windham's the obvious heel among them, with Sting being the hardest to turn, but any dynamic of that trio could have worked. Windham wanting to become a booker (or perhaps a "player-coach" of sorts) at 28 seems odd, but as noted, there was a lot that was odd about him at that time. He almost comes off as a Brian Kendrick guy who could sort of take or leave wrestling as needed, or had a polarized attitude towards it where at times he either passionate or completely out to lunch depending on which way the wind blew.

5/30: Briscoes seem like the best promos in America right now. Totally credible, you buy them as both cartoon characters and genuinely scary threats in a way that recalls early Randy Savage. Bray Wyatt needs to start watching them on the mic. Will Ferrara-Kushida may be the worst possible NJ/ROH match, but you can't fault them for not giving away the bigger stuff. Or for trying to build Ferrara, though he did nothing to impress here. I never like Kushida in overwrought NJ junior tags, but he was decent here and the crowd liked his signature spots. Pretty abrupt, lame finish: Ferrara came away looking lousy. Kazarian actually cut a good promo to build to next week's tag title match with reDragon, and gets props for shaving his head and ditching the horrible receding wet new-wave wisps he had previously. Silas-Watanabe was mediocre. I like Silas' airplane spin. Match went nowhere. Watanabe is bland as hell, but to be fair, he hit a good neckbreaker, and the German on the floor was crazy. Whitmer's current character appears to be chatty, closeted Dad with a good job in finance who'll talk your ear off at the BBQ in hopes you'll come to his basement dungeon after the kids have gone to bed. I actually like the Whitmer-Corinos corruption angle. Moose gets a badass squash, and Colby deserves props for that beating. He's good for 18 years old. Steve was a little detached for a guy watching his son get destroyed, but this was a solid five minute segment. Briscoes-Dijak/Diesel was another good build to Jay vs. Jay. Lethal deserves credit for being so good on commentary: his line about how it wasn't he who was challenging for the world title, but Briscoe who was challenging for his TV belt was really on point heel stuff. Ditto getting furious about Papa Briscoe watching chickens all day. J. Diesel officially marks one too many guys in this feud named "Jay". Match was solid. Heels didn't impress me at all, so much so that I wanted to fast forward though their control segment. But the Briscoes are on fire right now, and it was a lot of fun to see them run roughshod with the clubberin'. Strong finish to end the show. Looking forward to Dalton Castle vs. Liger next week.

The Choshu-Austin comparison is a really interesting, in that I sometimes think Choshu is basically the Hogan of Japan. Or perhaps more accurately, he's an '80s Japan version of Stone Cold. His in-ring talent has been overstated, or kind of cross-pollinated with his far greater ability to draw heat and be the right character for his time. His best matches tend to be things where his partners and opponents totally outclass him. I'm not a moves guy, but I would argue that his moveset is too limited, and that even his best matches can feel repetitive as a result. That said, I don't think Austin's ever had matches as good as Choshu's best, and I'm always hard-pressed to name the great Austin performances outside of his 3-5 best known outings (SS '96, WM 13, Angle at Summerslam, etc.)

Enjoyed Superstars this week, even though on paper it's unspectacular. One hour wrestling shows tend to be entertaining, with several good ones going right now (ROH, NXT, Lucha Underground, Superstars, Main Event, all the indies online). What I wrote about it is long enough that it should probably be spoiler tagged. I can understand the writers preferring two-week builds, but that “relief” seems to be a symptom of RAW being way too long, SD being a two hour rehash of RAW, and the company repeating PPV-worthy matches over and over. A “feud” should not be Barrett and Neville having the exact same match six times in three weeks. Reigns vs. Rollins should not be main eventing RAW with nothing on the line when they could main event Mania next year. There are a hundred examples of it right now, but the problem comes from an insistence on burning viable matches too quickly and too often. So much of why people love NXT is that the booking is slowed down, and guys are by design cycled in and out of the main event picture. In other words: a territory.

One question on this I have is: who watches Total Divas, and why? I've heard Meltzer say that the show did well on E!, but that it drew a different crowd than wrestling fans, and that it wasn't necessarily bringing new fans to WWE programming. All of which sounds pretty speculative, but if accurate, makes me wonder if there are just tons of E! superfans who will watch any reality show? Or who liked the women and the real-life relationship storylines, but didn't like actual wrestling? Plus didn't Total Divas have some amazing lead-in like the Kardashians or something?

Tenryu is benefiting from a real renaissance rediscovery of his work. Jumbo's been kind of uncool for a while now: we know what he is, and it's harder to find hidden gems. I'm not saying the people voting for Tenryu are wrong (I might be one of them), but in terms of timing, Tenryu is coming off of the All Japan set (which should benefit Jumbo too, really) and the Segunda Caida coverage of WAR that really opened a lot of people's eyes to how good 90s Tenryu was. If I went back and watched the best early 90s Jumbo when he was teaming with Fuchi as a borderline heel, I might swing towards him. But Tenryu as a persona is pretty hot right now in our circle, and rightfully so.

There was a period while teaming with Morrison on ECW when I thought that the Miz had improved a lot. His punches looked good, his running clothesline in the corner came off as violent, and he had a bruiser attitude toward the fans in which he was the credible "tough" guy of the team. But the last six years or so have just killed him as a credible act. I've been re-listening to Observer Radio eps from late 2010/early 2011. Miz is the poster child of that era, where things occasionally got over (like Lawler's miracle run for the title) in spite of horrendous booking and terrible characters. Even the big WM run against Cena looks terrible in hindsight, and these were the highlights of his career to date. We can all easily rag on how bad RAW can be in 2015, but 2010-2011 RAW was considerably worse, including Miz at the top of the card. And I say that as someone who thinks he can be very good on the mic, and was at his best during that run. He cut that great promo where he walked from the back to the ring in a single framed shot in which he shoot-trashed JBL for mocking him in the locker room and told all of his haters to go to hell. I have some problems with Charlotte. She's got zero charisma and is still figuring out who she should be and how she should work. But I think that's totally forgivable given her lack of experience, and there's a lot more to be excited about in her right now than in the last five years of Miz. This is a pretty tough call in that as others have said, peak Miz is better than peak Charlotte. But it's almost unfair to compare them, as Miz has almost ten years of experience on her and has been given so many chances to succeed. For that reason alone I'm inclined to vote Charlotte, as a heavily pushed guy with 12 years in the business should be much better than someone with 3.

Rudge is making my Top 100, the only question being how high, which depends on how much of his stuff that I haven't already seen is out there on Youtube/DM.

I never watch this show, but Dylan's rec on the most recent Exile on Badstreet (calling it the best wrestling TV going) got me interested. Holy hell, was Lethal-O'Reilly ever impressive. I could nitpick about O'Reilly being a lousy promo, coming off like a peachfuzzed teenage dweeb. Or the superfluous "boo-yay" trading of punches. But none of it matters when a match is that fun. Really well-executed back and forth title fight, with both guys looking major league in the process. Really liked the finish and subsequent angle that came from it.

For someone like me who's only seen him in WWF: what are the greatest Savio matches? I assume all of them are in PR, aside from maybe these? Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Shinya Hashimoto, Keiji Muto & Masa Chono vs Vader, Bam Bam Bigelow, Wild Samoan, Great Kokina & TNT (NJPW Summer Crush 07/24/91, 2/3 falls) - http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/18627-tatsumi-fujinami-riki-choshu-shinya-hashimoto-keiji-muto-masa-chono-vs-vader-bam-bam-bigelow-wild-samoan-great-kokina-tnt-njpw-summer-crush-072491-23-falls/ Mr Pogo & TNT vs Iceman & Akitoshi Saito (W*ING 09/12/91, Cage Match) - http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/18746-mr-pogo-tnt-vs-iceman-akitoshi-saito-wing-091291-cage-match/

I really don't mean this as a trolling question, but were there people in the 80s who got mad at Flair for making opponents look too good?

I'm surprised no one's said the Freebirds (Hayes/Gordy/Roberts) yet. They may end up being #1 on my Top 25. Great matches as both a team and singles, incredible promos, famous angles, could carry people to make them look better than they were. Prodigies who were great immediately, especially Gordy, who I think should go down in history with Mysterio as the two ultimate prodigies in wrestling history. Notorious figures in the business. Worked everywhere. Pioneers in their videos and overall presentation. Very influential in all aspects. Truly one of the hottest acts of the 80s: aside from Hogan, Savage, Flair, Piper, Road Warriors, Von Erichs, and maybe JYD, I'd be hard pressed to name many of the era who had Freebird-level heat. I do wonder if trios in general won't get what they deserve in the Tag poll, as people often forget about them or don't classify them as "true" tag teams. But the Cerebros, Infernales, Freebirds, Misioneros, Cadetes, Brazos, Villanos, the Shield and others deserve to make lists. To say nothing of groups like the Bucaneros, Intocables, Hermanos Dinamita, and Trio Fantasia who have their own avid supporters.

I think I know what you mean, but in many ways we're still getting that now. With two overpushed heels who are married to each other, running the company IRL, and "above" working matches or bumping much. In some ways it's worse, as HHH wrestles once a year and seems intent on maintaining at least a .500 record, while turning face/heel from moment-to-moment whenever its convenient to getting himself over.