Laz

FWIW, I moved just outside Nashville a couple months ago, and we're expecting some bad snowstorm tonight into tomorrow. Nothing that would close a school back home (Boston area), but the southern states have no real prep for winter storms and things go nutty real quick. That could be a factor.

Loving it, TTK.

Only Shawn wasn't able to pull enough strings to get Bryan a full-time gig, and Bryan was cut from developmental in 2001. Even with HBK having Vince's ear on who to look at from the TWA? HBK wasn't the top promoter of a country like Stu was, and Vince didn't owe him any favors. Bryan didn't have the safety net that Bret did, which was the obvious point being made. The other party you're thinking of is Paul London. I'm not talking Trips wanting to hire indie guys left, right, and center. I'm talking Trips even having a huge indie scene to pick from. Bryan was so integral to that happening, to the shift from indies being nothing but "cheap outlaw mud shows" (TM Cornette) to the territories of the internet age. There were a metric shitton of other factors and talents, of course, but the big indies pre-ROH were either deathmatch focused (CZW, IWA-MS) or copies of what you'd see on Monday night (UPW), and I remember one of the major drawing points in early ROH was seeing Bryan/LowKi/Daniels, Bryan/LowKi (still a 5* classic), and the Bryan/Williams series. Bret (and Shawn) may have proven to Vince that guys didn't need to be roidy magoos or giants to headline his shows, but Bryan was the brightest star in a scene that was so integral to the survival and evolution of the entire business that Vince was forced to take notice.

I won't comment on the rest of the discussion between MoS and yourself, but this is a vapid and shallow argument when weighing the strengths of a performer. It's a bad argument when discussing quality actors or musicians, so why is it acceptable when discussing pro wrestlers who, themselves, are performers? It's also highly ignorant of how much the pro wrestling landscape has changed in the last 20 years, and how much of a hand Bryan directly had in that. Indies weren't a thing outside of some washed up has-beens and never-weres during Bret's peak, nor was he ever in a position where he wasn't granted access to a larger audience. His father was the top promoter in Canada, one whose connections to Vince Sr. got his sons a look when Vince Jr. was making his national expansion and needed talent. I won't say Bret was handed anything, but he damn sure wasn't living out of his car and risking life and limb every weekend just to get gas money. Bryan's quality of work helped legitimize ROH and that, in turn, legitimized independent wrestling as a whole. From this scene we get a surplus of gaijin talent for Gedo to book in NJPW, and then we get AEW from that. Personal opinions on the product quality aside, the building blocks for AEW having an audience begins with the Elite having a huge presence in ROH, the company that Bryan put on the map. So, since we're not looking at purely the quality of work (where Bryan has shown more versatility with a wider variety of opponents of greater variation in size and style, mind you), this means we're taking the meta-narrative into account...and Bryan wins again for his direct influence on how the very business has been run for the past decade.

Something that needs to be taken into account is that Bryan rose to prominence in an era where "have a great match" was an ethos held above others. Every era had talent who wanted to have the best match of the night, sure, but was there really a company whose selling point was the actual quality of the in-ring product before ROH, specifically the years that Bryan was active in it? Bret also didn't have access to the caliber of talent that Bryan did. Bret's peak years as a performer saw him have only a handful of people who could conceivably keep up with him, whereas Bryan was one of many individuals in a talent-heavy scene. This may actually be in Bryan's favor, now that I think about it, because there were so many other people who could have taken attention away from him and yet none ever really did. Damn. I came in here ready to defend Bret against my personal pick for generational GOAT and wound up making better arguments internally for Bryan being better anyway.

Holy shit, Leyla is signed to AEW now? Good on her. She impressed me a ton from her early days in CZW, and I admittedly haven't watched a whole lot of her work.

Nick Gage going from shit deathmatch worker to convicted felon to great brawler/human being is as close to wholesome as pro wrestling gets.

I agree that most talents won't do shit, but I also think the talents most affected would do fine if they told Vince to fuck off and specified that they would not be renewing their deals, specifying this overstep as why they would be seeking income elsewhere. Xavier Woods, for example, would do great anywhere else. He has a PhD in educational psychology, has a recurring seat at one of the more popular live events for each PAX convention, and his streaming show is the reason others have followed suit. If he, especially in today's climate after the Lio Rush and ACH accusations against the company, were to tell Vince to pound sand? There isn't much that could be done. Most of the talent, as in other fields, don't understand the level of power they truly yield.

Couple of issues here. 1. WWE talent are not employees, but independent contractors. Their payment by the company is akin to an actor on a television show. If Bryan Cranston signed a deal with Disney to play a role? Disney has no say in what he does professionally when not working the agreed upon dates and has no right to money earned beyond their program. 2. WWE talent, as independent contractors, are not receiving healthcare benefits, nor pension plans, through WWE. 3. This mandate is another in a long line of attempts by Vince to restrict the income of contracted talents, which is why many of his top stars in the past have left before. Piper left because he wanted to work with John Carpenter, Rock left because he wasn't going to give Vince a cut of his Hollywood money, Jericho left because he felt Vince didn't have a say in what he did whenever he wasn't scheduled to appear, etc. This is a blatant overstep by Vince and WWE that, just like their attempts to prevent Rey Mysterio from leaving years back, will fold against a halfway decent court case.

Which is one reason why Twitch is a joke, among others. "Play all the ultraviolent video games that you want, but don't you DARE show any female skin that isn't made of polygons!"

"Hailing from Death Valley, the CORRRRPSE VALEEEEEET"

It was called that on the indies, too.

Guys...his finisher was the Acid Drop...

From what I can gather, it was a move that happened literally once in a match between Jinsei Shinzaki and Misawa. Possibly this one?

Fun bit of the day: chatting with Blade Braxton about the pros and cons of a big budget Toxic Avenger remake.

The original MLW suffered from the same things the current MLW suffers from, though not to the same extent: the inability to create stars or highlight names better than other companies. MLW gave us Raven and Punk...at the same time as ROH and TNA, with ROH doing it the best and TNA having greater exposure. MLW tried so, so hard to capture the ECW audience, but didn't have the same "let's break the mold" attitude that Heyman-protege Gabe Sabolsky had. The shows where Gary Hart were involved, though, are great. I remember there being a really killer LowKi/Homicide program made even better by Hart's involvement.

Ever? No. Of his generation, at least as far as known western talents? I'd actually say yes, although I'm not high on the Bar and think the Kings of Wrestling weren't even a top 5 team when they were active.

I'm still very, very disappointed in all of these games that allow you to have a promoter/GM mode but don't allow you to script out the matches, if even just the result.

Surprisingly, a viable option for #3 in the 2001-2002 period before TNA and ROH were established was ICP's company, JCW. The handful of tapes they had sold very well, and they ran shows coinciding with their tour dates and gatherings.

It's a case where the subversion of the trope becomes the trope, but the next generation thinks of the subversion as the norm. You see it in music, movies, television, etc.

OT, does anybody else find it hilarious that Nick Gage, of all people, comes across as a legitimately decent person? It seems like his worst was when he got popped for armed robbery and there's gotta be a few skeletons in his closet, but I haven't seen/heard any chatter about him being a scumbag since he did his time.

Without getting into too much of a political debate, we got to this point because both major US parties pulled right, and now one keeps going further right with a kind of bravado reserved for winners (via tons of gerrymandering and voter suppression) and the other follows behind because they think they're losing because they aren't enough like the other assholes. Think of it as when TNA/Impact copied WWE, they did poorly and people stopped giving a damn. When they did their own thing and stopped caring, people paid attention.

@El-P I concur. It was eye opening the first time I saw the original Irish whip and how much it resembled a legitimate push into the ropes. There's always going to be a level of silliness involved in working a match, but I wish we'd get something more akin to a Raid or John Wick sequence instead of the MCU flavor we typically get. It's clearly something that can be done, but I just think most talent don't even want to try because it's easier to meet expectations than it is to challenge them. Even if challenging them can be as simple as "selling a headlock."

I dunno, I've seen way more examples of major matches having that super scripted feel in the last 6-7 years than I did in the early/mid 00s indies. The undercard with, like, SAT and their ilk? Yeah, but the ME was usually filled with folks trying to struggle and "compete."

Ace Austin reminds me of early AJ Styles, but a bit rougher around the edges. I hope he gets paired with a great veteran talent to really blossom, like AJ was with Jerry Lynn, because the upsides outweigh the downsides.