NotJayTabb

I agree the above match is a lot of fun, and it always made sense to me. After the flash pin on Knox, the match is pretty even until the second RKO member (Helms or Nitro) gets pinned, at which point 5-3 is a lot harder for the heels to come back from. It felt like they portrayed the second elimination was most pivotal, as the whole match would have been different if RKO had equalised. Maybe an odd choice, but I always loved the opener to SurSer 09, with Miz/Sheamus/McIntyre/Swagger/Ziggler vs Morrison/Finlay/Hardy/Bourne/Benjamin. It felt like a real drive to actually push new stars, with three members of the heel team standing tall at the end. 3/5 of the face team were guys who had been around a while and were popular, but never going to be world title contenders, so using them to put over fresh guys made sense. McIntyre and Sheamus both got two eliminations, which made them look great, whilst the only members of the face team to eliminate anyone were Morrison and Bourne, the two with the most potential on their team. Miz, Sheamus and McIntyre looked like world beaters coming out of the match, and the fact that 4 of the 5 heels went on to hold world titles and it would have been all 5 if Drew Mac hadn't married a nutter) shows they were right to give these young guys a chance.

On the above point, you can point to how postively received the Owens vs Sin Cara and vs Kalisto matches were, as opposed to facing Cesaro or Ryback again. They just felt fresher. You've got lower-carders who can actually go doing nothing, there's no reason why we can't get 6 minute a ADR vs Fandango, or Owens vs Sandow, which would feel so much more interesting.

Bella Twins on commentary Booking matches on TV that I'm expected to then get excited about on PPV a week later (done just this month for the Team Barrett vs Team Neville 6-man tag) Dolph Ziggler in any capacity A tag division that seemingly can only have two teams pushed at a time - the champions and the no. 1 contenders. Why have the PTP gone from all-conquering tag champs to being unable to win since the Dudleys return? Also, I know this can't happen anymore since Cena lost the US title, but: constantly teasing that Heath Slater will answer the US Open Challenge, which never gets paid off.

ICW have been doing a UK tour before their big sold out show in Glasgow next month, so I went to the Nottingham leg last night. It was a lot of fun, really helped by a boisterous crowd, and there were some really good matches along the way. Viper vs Kay Lee Ray was a good opening match, Trent Seven and Jack Jester was really fun, and the main event of Big Damo vs Drew Galloway was excellent, and got really exciting towards the end. If I had to make one complaint, it's that there was maybe one clean finish all night, with two matches going to non-finishes. By the second half, it was getting harder to really get into the matches, as you knew the chances of a clean finish were minimal. Possibly a show that's more fun to experience live than on video, the atmosphere was really integral to it being a good night.

Two top tips for battle royals/Royal Rumbles: 1) Never charge at an opponent who is next to the ropes. 9/10 he's going to duck and send you crashing out 2) If you've narrowly avoided elimination by landing on the ring apron, get into the ring as quickly as possible. Don't point to your head to show how smart you are or make a "Phew, that was close" gesture...that guarantees elimination.

I agree. ECIII is a better promo than Rollins, and he's been carrying himself more like a champion this year than Rollins has. You don't see ECIII constantly losing things and running round with his comedy sidekicks like Dastardly and Muttley trying to catch the pigeon. ECIII also wrestles like a heel, whereas Rollins is often guilty of wrestling more like a face (see the Cena series). Of course, this is comparing one of the best runs on TNA with the worst non-Ziggler run in the WWE, but it is a rare thing TNA have done well.

I'd love to be able to include Dave Taylor, but I'm not convinced I could justify it. More than anyone else, Taylor has always struck me as the most quintessentially British wrestler to make it to TV in the US. There are men who look like Dave Taylor in every pub in Britain, men you just look at and you know are hard as nails. I loved his brief WWE run where he turned up looking like your mate's hard dad in an ill-fitting singlet, scrapping with pretty boy teams like Londrick (men like Dave Taylor will always refer to it as "scrapping"), but I'm not going to be able to justify a placing on that. I've enjoyed some of his Reslo stuff as "Dancing" Dave Taylor (a very ill-fitting gimmick), but there've been other guys on the same shows I've prefered who wont make it either, so I can't see him making the cut.

I know there's been a lot of debate in this project about post-peak work, and how much of a feather in the cap that is. Well, yesterday I watched a Lawler/Funk match from 2003 that was glorious, and a real sign of how effective King working smart could be. It happened in Philly in 3PW, the Blue Meanie's wretched early 00's promotion, and this meant WWE employee Lawler was the heel against ECW alumni Funk. From the start, you can see Lawler is in better shape than Funk, and he just wears down Funk with a series of perfect punches to the face. The crowd get right behind the beaten-down old Funker, which only causes Lawler to grow in confidence and get right in the face of the finger-flipping crowd. There's a beautiful moment where Funk is face down, bleeding onto the mat and convulsing, and Lawler drops the 2nd rope diving fist into the back of Funk's head, who stops moving straight away. Like using a bolt-gun on a cow in an abbatoir. Funk kicks out of 4 pildrivers (my only complaint with the match), so Lawler gets on the mic and says one of his WWE friends taught him a move...followed by his indy stunner and a loud cackle to troll the fans. Ultimately, he loses, but Lawler and Funk have this crowd in the palm of their hands and rather than just coast it, they put on something special. On a card where Nosawa and Balls Mahoney have a shitfest that is the epitome of working stupid, this is so impressive.

The 5 tag-team match from the second Series is a long time favourite. I watched it at a friend's house in early 92, when wrestling was at it's peak in the UK, and I was just fascinated by it. There were a few guys I knew (national hero Davey Boy, Arn Anderson from WCW on ITV), but so many strange characters I didn't. I became a huge Powers of Pain fan from that match, they looked so badass especially compared to the Demos, who just looked like pudgy guys in silly pants to my 10yr old self. When it boiled down to PoP vs the Conquistadors, it felt like the biggest mismatch in the world. I still love the Barbarian and the Warlord to this day, even if I have to accept one of them is actually a bit crap at wrestling. It's a really great match too, so many little bits I love. Tully tagging in, deciding he didn't fancy fighting the face who had just tagged in, and doing a sneaky walk to tag straight out to the Demos is awesome. It's still my go-to sickday comfort match.

By the time you got to the "cat in the microwave" line from Butch's Shane Douglas post, I could barely breath for laughing. Absolutely phenomenal

Do you really think ending the streak helped him that much? The match itself might have been the worst of his comeback. But I guess WWE pushing it as a huge moment mitigated that for non-hardcores. Not arguing the point; I just hadn't thought of it as key to his aura. I think ending the streak helped, but blitzing Cena in the SSlam match tipped it over the edge for me. Going into Summerslam, I thought Brock would win, but not in that manner. It turned the tide from "Brock is one of the top guys getting a big push" to "Who on earth are they going to be able to book to beat Brock?" As for Raw, I totally get sticking with it week in-week out, but I couldn't cope with having to watch it live. The nice thing about the time difference is that I can record it live overnight, get up in the morning and pretty much blitz it whilst having breakfast. By fast-forwarding the opening promo, the ad breaks that seem to pop up every 5 minutes and the stuff that doesn't interest me (Ziggler, Stardust), I can get through the show in an hour. If I read on-line that I FF'd through a great segment, I check it out when I get home.

Being airdropped into the worst storyline in the WWE feels like a cruel way to debut Breeze.

Collins is still pretty good in ring nowadays. There's a full All-Star show from last year on YouTube (headlined by Robbie Dynamite vs Jushin Liger), and the second match is Collins having a decent match with a pretty green David Finlay Jr. Collins also cuts this great pre-match promo where he tells young Finlay that he's going to be taking his revenge for every broken bone and every drop of blood he spilt at that hands of Finlay Sr.

I think unfortunately Trish's impact was that the WWE spent years thinking you could just hire any model and teach them to become a wrestler. That the likes of Candice Michelle and Kelly Kelly came nowhere near to her is a testament to how good Trish was.

Is it too soon to mention this current Rollins reign? Everything about it has been terrible. It started with his MITB cash-in providing a damp squib ending to what had been a fantastic match. His first title feud with Orton is ultimately forgettable, with the main focus being Rollins’ relationship with Kane and the semantics of who is allowed to use a banned RKO in a steel cage. His feud with Ambrose sees him get cleanly pinned in a title match, only to retain the title via a cheap DQ. Doesn’t matter, because Ambrose takes the title anyway, resulting in the world champion and his hapless comedy sidekicks running around for a month trying to get the belt back. He literally vanishes at the end of his Lesnar match, totally forgotten about as Undertaker and Lesnar face off. He retains his world title against 56-yr old Sting…but only after losing the US title to real star John Cena….it just goes on. This would be fine if he was a cowardly IC or US champion, but he’s holding the biggest prize in the company whilst looking like an inept goof. He loses on regular TV to guys like Kane and Ryback, he’s had three supposedly valuable items stolen from him in the past 12 months (MITB case, the title and a bloody statue of himself) which sends him running about like a moron….and there’s no end in sight. Honestly, Kane isn’t taking the belt off him, so this nightmare of horrific promos and shitty DQ finishes will just keep on going. The most damning part of this is that for most of the year, TNA have had a more believable world champion than the WWE.

If I were submitting now: Top 5 (in no order) Bret Hart Stan Hansen Rey Mysterio Jr El Hijo Del Santo Jushin Liger 6-10 Contenders William Regal Terry Funk Toshiaki Kawada Randy Savage Ric Flair Bryan Danielson Negro Casas

A few months back, I'd have thought it strange including Dana as a potentially great Bayley opponent (which is why I wanted to check), but if she can keep up her rate of improvement since debuting, I wouldn't be opposed to Brooke being the one to dethrone Bayley somewhere along the line. People talk about Eva Marie taking the title, but as fun as the reactions would be, she's a long way, if ever, off being ready to hold the title. Dana is certainly better in the ring and more believably obnoxious - her cheating to rob the title from Bayley would get huge heat.

Along those lines, then: In an interview with PowerSlam, William Regal stated that one of the reasons that he's good friends with Randy Orton is that both share a passion for keeping lizards as pets.

Watching NXT this week. Bayley has Emma, Alexis Bliss, Donna Blake, Nia Jax and Asuka all as future matches that could be from entertaining to great. Jax vs Bayley is a match I can't wait for! Is this meant to be Dana Brooke, or is this someone new that's about to debut?

After enjoying the way he's been used by both goc and Beast in the 1983 Project, I watched a Scott Casey match that I'd added to my Youtube list. This was from World Class against John Tatum, and was a steel cage match with Missy Hyatt (for Tatum) and Sunshine (for Casey) also in the cage (though not as competitiors). Fun match, Casey seemed like a solid brawler and I enjoyed him focusing on Tatum's shoulder by ramming him into the corner following a shoulderbreaker. Obviously, with two managers being in there, we didn't get a clean finish, but this was a decent way to spend 15 minutes.

First name to pop into my head was Dustin Rhodes. You've got the Windham team from WCW, the BookerDust run (which featured one of my favourite redemption stories, with the "weak link" of the team finally winning them the tag titles) and the Rhodes Brothers team, who put on my WWE MOTY in 2013 vs Reigns/Rollins. I also think he's a guy you can slot into a team with anyone, and he's aware enough of tag psychology to make it work. He even had a short-lived duo with Snitsky that was better than you'd expect. He's also good at working tag as heel or face. Great FIP in both BookerDust and the Brothers, but also able to cut off the ring and work heel doubleteams. In the opener of Survivor Series last year, him and Cody are in a 4-way tag match, and they don't just cut the ring in half, they work over a matador in their quarter of the ring, doing their best to keep him from tagging out to anyone. Love that kind of stuff.

Want to throw out a mention for Kevin von Erich. Was almost always the smallest man in the Von Erich/Freebird matches, but you wouldn't know it from the way he fights. Everything feels natural, like in the Badstreet match vs Gordy/Roberts, where he rolls away from some offence, whilst simulataneously removing his boot so he can leap back into battle using his boot on his fist as a weapon. Really great brawler.

I actually would have kept the tag titles as a Raw exclusive belt. With the cruiser title staying on Smackdown, it means each brand would have a world title, a secondary title and a style of wrestling unique to that brand. Given that Smackdown would be the "workrate" brand in 2002, the cruiser title felt like a natural fit there. Meanwhile, the tag titles on Raw would let you make the most of the Outsiders whilst still healthy/useable. A Dudleys/Outsiders match could have been built to as a big deal (I'd still have split the Hardys btw), then you'd have a decent tag roster of Dudleys, APA, Billy & Chuck, Outsiders etc, who wouldn't necessarily put on the great matches that the Smackdown workers would, but would get decent reactions whilst you built up new teams (the soon-to-debut 3 Minute Warning, Jindrak & Cade and my EWR staple that never actually happened, Stevie Richards & Val Venis)

Difference is that Cena's whole reign with the title has revolved around what a fighting champion he is, and how he'll defend the belt on a weekly basis. If he suddenly ups and leaves for a few months with the belt, it negates all that he's said.

As a long time browser who only signed up in the first half of this year, I've actually been feeling more confident about submitting a ballot as the process has gone on. Plenty of people have been admitting their blind spots or styles that they just don't get, so it's stopped me feeling so concerned about the gaps in mine. The important thing for me is submitting a list that actually reflects my thoughts, rather than making sure I've got the "right" wrestlers high up. So I'm no longer concerned that Bret is still my working number 1, that I'm going to have Orton, Jarrett and Sabre Jr on my list, or that I'm going to have 3 Von Erich's in the top 50. As Grimmas said in the initial post, the fun part of this is the journey, and discovering guys like Jim Breaks, Crusher Blackwell and Steve Veidor, who I hadn't watched previously, is the big takeaway from the project for me.