Laz

Joe Legend eventually replaces the other half of Red Shirt Security and gels well with Northcutt. They have a few good matches with AMW and then disappear into the ether. I blocked the end of 2003 out of my memory. Everything is a blur from Ultimate X 1 to Ultimate X 2, and then I tapped out HARD after the third World X-Cup.

The dots are inherent due to the nature of the medium. If a botched spot is just a botched spot then it deserves scorn, true, similar to how a bad play in a legitimate sport deserves scorn.

The comparison to sport is appropriate since pro wrestling is a scripted pantomime of sport. If the story of the match is "so-and-so had to change strategy," which is often the case for more technically-themed matches, then the comparison to sport is at play since "so-and-so" is portraying somebody that wants to win the match.

Of course it's relativism. The entire discussion is about execution and how it relates to character. Should Nick Bockwinkel have been a luchadore? Should Bruiser Brody have talked like a Shakespearean character?

THIS. ROH has been floundering for a number of reasons, but one of the major ones is that the roster is mostly filled with talent that would, in 2002-2007, been used as curtain jerkers. Not in the sense of star power, because Jay Lethal fits that criteria perfectly, but in how they work. Spot-spot-spot is fine for an exhibition and for an unknown to show what they can do, but so few on the current roster really understand how to do more than that. Even worse, the booking is so abhorrently lazy, making even matches that sound interesting on paper turn out to be WWE midcard level (the ones where capable talents are told to not outshine the ME players). I wouldn't say Evolve is much better. I've yet to be able to sit through an entire Evolve show and, if we're being honest, the partnership with WWE leaves a sour taste in my mouth. It's pretty sad that the skeleton for a great ROH product is there but nobody wants, or is capable of, putting the meat where it needs to be. There's very little coherence in this post, so I'll just end with three simple words: fuck corporate wrestling.

The relation between character and execution is everything. If Roddy Piper, who was supposed to be a wild scrapper type, worked a scientific hold-for-hold style then he wouldn't have gotten over the way he did. He needed to throw those wild haymakers, to take the shortcuts, because he was supposed to be a slightly deranged street fighter. In relation to your Sabu mention, would RVD have gotten the "Whole Fucking Show" schtick as over as he did were he to not add superfluous twists and tumbles to his moves as a means of saying "I'm so good that I can good off and STILL beat you"?

Fuck the Stroke. Worse finish I've ever seen.

It's following the same principle as a Boston Crab, pulling back on the legs to add pressure. It changes the angle of the pull on the targeted leg, effectively enhancing the amount of pain it produces.

Kevin Northcutt be and quite the guilty pleasure toward the end of his run in TNA. He was there, getting a push, turning into a pretty damn solid talent when he just disappeared.

The second Ultimate X is the perfection of the match. It, get this, actually uses some psychology, and having Daniels/Ki involved is a major reason it worked so well. You have probably 4-5 shows to it, iirc.

EDIT: double post

Yeah, the best way to sell a DDT is that your head hits and you just kind of go limp. All the flip overs, implants, and anything else takes away from the impact of the move. I'd prefer if the guy had to struggle to roll the victim's lifeless body over to pin them.It depends to me. Selling it like death when it's being used as a transition move is silly, and I think it helps differentiate the DDT from a normal move and a (potential) finish based solely on how it's sold. There was a while where anybody taking the Evenflow would do the "face plant -> DEAD" sell that helped separate it from other DDTs on the same show, not unlike how Rhino was able to get the piledriver over as a believable finish in an era where it was as common as a lock up by merely doing it that much better.

ICW is my favorite overall UK company because of how little care is given to crafting great matches rather than compelling storylines. As a testament to Mark Dallas and his booking abilities, Chris Renfrew might be one of the worst wrestlers I've ever seen, but the booking overcomes it and makes his involvement worthwhile. Progress is right behind it in terms of my favorability. Great matches, really solid long term storytelling, and that two of its focal points since opening (ZSJ and Ospreay) are now gaining such incredible international momentum speaks to the average level of quality that the company puts out.

A good DDT is the greatest move I've ever seen. Jake, Arn, Raven, and Zayn's through-the-ropes tornado DDT are things of beauty.

My favorite wrestling shirt is a recent one I got off Pro Wrestling Tees (pic below). After that, those classic ECW tees are still the top tier for me, both because of nostalgia and how they looked more like concert shirts than your stock wrestling shirt.

Solid house show in RI. Scott Dawson would be a star if he could talk and I'm really wondering where he was pre-NXT. You don't get that good from the WWE system alone. The Tag title match stole the show and Dawson, much like at Takeover Dallas, was the glue to hold it all together. Alexa Bliss is even more stunning in real life. Carmella has a ton of charisma but meh mic skills, and she felt like the star of the Women's tag to me. Dana Brooke has gotten better but she's still not particularly good. Manny Andrade was La Sombra, right? He's taken to the American style very well, if his match against the bastard clone of Randy Orton and Adam Rode known as Riddick Moss is any real indication. Match was eh, but Andrade is going to get over quickly. Aries/Ciampa felt like they forgot what they were doing halfway through. Botching the finish and then redoing it not long after didn't help, but the best part of the match was the chain wrestling at the start and a few times that Ciampa was trying a comeback. ME was a tag match of Nakamura/Balor vs. Joe/Drifter. Drifter trolling with bad folk music is great but he seems green as hell. Nakamura was hailed as a god. They teased Joe not wanting Nakamura a few times before they did it, but it was too one-sided for Nakamura to me. I wasn't hoping for a "let's trade elbows " segment but something where they start hammering into each other was the best way to go (both to build to the inevitable title match and pop the live crowd), and Nakamura winning the strikes via desperation kick would've been great. Instead we get Joe playing every heel after a hot tag ever, which feels cheap when he's both the recently crowned top champion and SAMOA JOE. Balor viewed as 21st century Sting has made me enjoy his work that much more. All in all a damn good show, best live card in almost a year v

Delete this double post please.

That was the moment when TNA killed Nashville. The crowds were never as big or as interested in the product, and the BORING AS HELL shows later in the year and into 2004 didn't help matters. IIRC, Raven's loss was because he wouldn't sign a new contract. That doesn't explain how Jarrett was able to shake everything off and still win with the worst finish in the company. Around this time, we started calling him Triple J (since this coincided with HHH's reign of terror on Raw), only it was even worse since the TNA fans at the time were primarily smart fans so this was seen as the company biting the hand that feeds it while also shitting on its mother's corpse.

Two tickets available for tomorrow night's NXT show in Kingston, RI. Had two people drop out because of work schedules so I'm selling them at cost. Seats are in the L section which is the first chunk of the lower balcony. Not sure who else here is in the MA/RI/CT area, but feel free to message me if you're interested.

Halloween Havoc 2000. It's such a lame show filled with pointless bad booking and intelligence-insulting moments, but I really enjoy Vampiro/Awesome and the MULTIPLE STINGS~ part of Jarrett/Sting. XPW. I bring it up all the time, but it was practically the Asylum films of wrestling. It was terrible and lousy and a sign of everything wrong about that era, but it has its charm in the view of bad taste. What do they have in common? VAMPIRO. He may be my ultimate guilty pleasure.

Don West becomes very listenable just before he stopped doing commentary. He's tremendous at the sell job, though, and he used to shill the TNA Brown Bag Special (I think that's what it was called), which usually consisted of a pair of DVDs and a shirt. It was TNA and he was able to sell these like crazy, even when their popularity was waning bad post-Hogan. The Bart Gunn/Saturn match is a very good and stiff brawl. At least you'll have that to enjoy for PPV 39.

Spot on analogy, especially with how many of those influenced miss the point entirely and focus on the superficial layers.

Sadly, there is nothing in WWE that can make me particularly interested because I know that were it to occur in virtually any other (non-TNA) promotion it would be that much better.

Insanely, Kid Kash and Erik Watts are two of the only reasons to watch later in the year and in the first half of 2004. Watts actually worked well as a face authority figure, especial with Don Callis to work with.

I listen to extreme metal and punk. You become numb to it and learn to appreciate the "in the moment" urgency of it all.