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Laz

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Everything posted by Laz

  1. I enjoyed Contra, overall, but they never truly felt like the "invading army" they were presented to be, regardless of their ~2 year dominance. Samael was a fine promo guy, doing a take on the Iron Man 3 version of the Mandarin with a hint of Kevin Sullivan added in, but the only viable worker they had was Fatu...who felt more like an afterthought unless he was actively defending the title. Their roster woes are excusable, given what happened to the talent pool between AEW's launch and WWE signing any and all, but I think most of their issues in regards to stories just sorta ending because of talent being signed away could have been prevented (and could STILL be avoided) by running more than one show a month. I get that Court wants to keep the budget as low as possible, having learned his lesson the hard way way back when, but the landscape now requires content flow, and it's hard to invest in a company when the only talent worth paying attention to keep disappearing.
  2. Bocchini is very, very solid. He does a good job calling the action and leading the stories. MLW, as a whole, always seems to take one step forward and two steps back. There's usually some damn fine booking decisions, but then the execution detracts from it. Take the Los Parks/5150 Street Fight as an example: the right team went over (5150, hottest act in the company), there were some real fun spots that called back to earlier matches, and 5150 looked strong by winning clean...but the match was just your average middling plunder brawl. Even more, I love the idea of Tankman going out of his way to assault Alex Kane so much that he was arrested for it, followed up with a phone interview from jail, but then I know we'll get a Tankman/Alex Kane match that will just expose both of their shortcomings as in-ring workers. The booking is willing, but the roster (for the most part) is not.
  3. Major love for including the CZW/ROH Cage of Death there. My personal favorite match in ROH history. Though I'll argue that the best Danielson/Morishima match is the blowoff at Final Battle.
  4. Aye to this, but it kinda made sense, in a roundabout way. Joey Styles would often clarify that the katahajime was "illegal in judo, but legal in ECW."
  5. Hook, at the very least, has the idea behind "big badass in a small frame" down. His complete blowing off of Fuego during the introductions, his body language during the bout, and his sneer all scream "little shit that can't wait to prove you wrong." Fuego made him look incredible, true, but Hook more than carried his end of the match and made things count. I can't wait to see him with more seasoning. One thing that irked me, and it is a personal thing, is that he wasn't wearing knee pads. I know his dad didn't, either, but I think Taz is one of the only workers after the Thesz era that didn't wear knee pads and it didn't bother me. And maybe scrap the white boots. Keep the fight shorts, though, because that's an immediate way to differentiate him.
  6. Fusion ALPHA #1, C&P'd from elsewhere (my post).
  7. See the "absolute anti-draw for me" part. Nothing he's done, outside of a few of the Homicide matches forever and a day ago, have had me interested.
  8. Yeah, but Miz was able to get some knowledge after the Bryan feud and stop embarrassing himself each time out.
  9. Perfect usage for him on-air, because there's enough good in him to make him a fun watch but he's pretty weak bell-to-bell unless he's bumping and dying. Great modern job guy, @C.S. has the right idea about keeping him around for Dark. And probably try to utilize him as an agent and/or talent scout.
  10. Janela is one of the low-key most important figures in modern wrestling, and it's weird to think of that.
  11. There's a strong argument to be made, the more I think on it, but it depends on your personal preferences above all. Ibushi rose to prominence doing comedy and was taken seriously because HE WAS INCREDIBLE doing it, to the point where you wanted to see him work a serious show. When he did? He was just as incredible, and he's been delivering high quality work his entire career. But when I think of everything I love about pro wrestling? It's Danielson. And not even close. He was putting on technical wrestling clinics with only a couple years under his belt, connected with an international audience through both personality AND work, and was able to overcome the myriad of garbage booking that WWE tossed his way for years. He was the focal point of ROH during its peak years of importance and delivered with any and all, drew high quality matches out of mediocre talents, and has only gotten better since returning from a once-thought career ending series of injuries. Ibushi is great. Danielson is one of the absolute greatest.
  12. Oddly, I think the production and formatting are the strong points of MLW. The camera guys follow the action (there's a spot during TJP/Tankman where the camera follows a suplex up and down that felt like classic ECW), the pacing is brisk, and the segments between matches fit the "this is an outlaw sport" feeling they've been going for. Main event was a very, very fun ladder match. Myron Reed keeps getting better and better, Zenshi takes some fun bumps (including a VERY fun one involving his hand that I want to see done a little more in ladder matches), Shelley looks like he hasn't a single step, and Alex Kane delivers on some solid power spots. A deflating finish kinda ruins it, though, as it just...happens. That's MLW's biggest detriment, IMO. I can overlook the green-as-shit talent and the mediocre promos, but some great finishes would elevate the shows in ways that I don't think Court or MSL realize. Building heat is one thing, but leaving a lasting positive impression is more important. I'm hoping that the announcement that they'll take on more talents looking for work in a post-ROH scene will bump up the match quality a bit. And that they use Gnarls Garvin the best they can before he inevitably moves on to Impact.
  13. War Chamber was alright, felt like a lower rent version of the early War Games matches in that it was a bunch of meandering brawling with a few highspots and an underwhelming finish. Hammerstone is great as THE GUY, but I wish he would either lose a little bit of mass so he could move better or adapt his style to match the stiff powerhouse. Ikuro Kwon has a pot of potential, Mads Krugger is all look. Post-match finds Fatu being kicked out of Contra Unit, which can go either way. I'm about halfway through the Thanksgiving episode, and TJP is a respectable little douche heel. Calvin Tankman has a lot of promise but needs seasoning. Fun WARHORSE promo that makes me finally "get" him (bonus points for wearing a Sodom shirt). KC Navarro deserves more time to talk in segments because he was funny and natural, his line "I ACTUALLY LIKE YOU SO I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER" had me laugh. GNARLS GARVIN is bringing that angry hoss bruiser energy that I love. Wild, snug, makes his shit look good. Looking forward to the ladder match. I was indifferent to Myron Reed but thought he showed promise a year ago, and the few bits I've seen since has shown me a talent that is putting the pieces together on how to stand out from the rest of the modern flippy-doo pack. Ditto Jordan Oliver.
  14. Colt is one of the few talents that is an absolute anti-draw for me. I enjoy none of his work and don't see why a d-grade comedy wrestler going up against one of the legit GOATs deserves any hype beyond "another Danielson carry job."
  15. Welp, rest of the show is probably gonna be lame, maybe Rosa/Hayter will be fine but that's it.
  16. "PG Punk" God damn, I love MJF
  17. This is why I wish MLW would get its shit together a little more, because Fusion is the perfect antidote to that kinda stuff. There are definitely matches that go too long or have a lot of unnecessary highspots, as is the style, but then they follow those up with stuff that has a more old-school "we are building up to a bigger match" flare. A tag bout between Injustice and 5150 a month or so ago was so refreshing because Injustice got their asses handed to them at every corner, and Danny Rivera is sooooo damn good at making everything he does look good and snug. But yes, same boat. Danielson makes everything better.
  18. It's still around as a Fire Pro sim, same guys running it and a lot of the same roster. There, PWA, and the EWA were some of the best times I had doing that stupid game.
  19. PWA, actually, but I did come back to SHOOT not long after.
  20. I remember writing up a list of moves and set-ups back in 2008/2009 for an e-fed, and their kayfabe reasoning (as I understood it). Basically, the pumphandle is a means of completely disabling the opponent's usual means of escaping (as an elbow or mere flailing of the arms could dislodge them from a straightforward powerslam) in preparation for the actual impact. This is why Wrath (most notably) would drive them down almost as soon as he got them over his shoulder. This idea (locking their arms) can also apply to most double-underhook/butterfly starts of moves, particularly the piledriver or the powerbomb. Realistically speaking, butterfly suplexes are a thing, but the attacker needs to contort their own body in a greater way than a pro wrestler does for, say, a Tiger Driver. Hell, I've been doing manual labor for the bulk of the last 17 years, regularly lifting and manipulating items that weigh upwards of 250 lbs., and I don't see how one could shoot Tiger Driver somebody. @El-P is spot on with its actual reason, of pro wrestling being a dynamic visual medium. A little sauce in the setup makes the move stand out a bit more.
  21. MJF is the best part of the show.
  22. One thing I've learned about the folks who get banned from wrestling boards/communities is that they typically deserve it and then some.
  23. I hope TK gets it because we know that AEW would put plans into motion to utilize it quickly. The Gabe years are a golden era to the modern fan, where the modern style was codified. They're working on a streaming service of some sort, last I heard, and debuting it with AEW footage as well as Ring of Honor classics would be an instant buy-in for a good chunk of fans.
  24. To get away from the moral discussions (though bravo to all for handling it with much more tact than I'm used to seeing), the entire ROH library is up for sale and not just the Sinclair era. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2021/10/updates-on-ring-of-honor-contracts-possibly-bringing-in-gcw-talent/
  25. I don't think that seems silly. I regularly say that ROH in 2006 is my favorite year for a product ever, and so much of that is because the show encapsulated everything I loved about pro wrestling, and all without feeling derivative. Back then, where could you turn to see in-ring action you couldn't get anywhere else? ROH. What company had been delivering on its programs having conclusions and limiting the nonsense that plagued Monday nights? ROH. Where could you see a no-roped barbed wire deathmatch on the same card as a technical wrestling clinic? ROH. It says something that so many of the industry's biggest names over the last decade spent a good chunk of the 00s in ROH. Punk, Bryan, Joe, Styles, Rollins, Owens, Zayn... The shows were great even into the end of the Gabe era, but if I could pinpoint one specific thing that began the downfall, it would be, as @strobogo said, the HDNet era. The shows were great as bi-weekly events, allowing the core talent to go out there and bust ass each show, allowing the breathing room for stories and feuds to build and build. Swapping to a weekly presentation required a fundamental reworking of the company's approach to booking, one that never quite worked in that format. It wasn't "special" anymore, if that makes sense, and it was hammered home by the booking just getting worse and worse until I'm supposed to think of Eddie Edwards as a shooter. Again, as said, that was over a decade ago. And the shows have just never recovered. The magic was gone. If this is the end, then I'll remember those glorious early years where the company redefined what American pro wrestling could be, when a platform with a large reach was given to hungry talent looking to make their mark.
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