NotJayTabb

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.

Only had time to check out Asuka/Dana before work today, but that was a really fun competitive squash. I'm pleased they didn't just totally job Dana out, instead presenting it as "Dana is good, but Asuka is simply better". Wasn't a huge fan of Dana doing a handstand moments after Asuka had worked over her arm, but that's nitpicking. The match also featured my favourite ever use of a "You F*cked Up!" chant

The Table For 3 with Owens, Cesaro and Ambrose is pretty fun, enjoyed some of their travel stories from the indie days. Not sure how much of this was him trying to stay in character, but Ambrose eats like a pig.

Well, Red has a nomination thread in the GWE folder, so he's got his supporters. There is a parallel with Mysterio, in that both were super-dynamic high-fliers who suffered knee injuries that caused them to slow down and become smarter workers. That said, much as I like Red, he's no Mysterio. Rey is a guy who could have good TV matches with anyone, and generally did over a 10yr+ WWE career. I mean, Red once got something watchable out of Petey Williams which is a feat in itself, but it's not a close comparison.

Stupidly, I underestimated train times, and elected to go and watch Coventry lose to Bury on Saturday, thinking I'd be home in time for kick-off. When it became clear I wouldn't be, I got my girlfriend to record it and went through a Likely Lads-esque mission to avoid hearing anyone talking about the game and ignoring the buzzing of my phone (which thankfully ran out of battery on my tram ride home). Such an incredible match, probably the best game I can remember watching.

I'd love it if the WWE decided to make both Rotunda brothers into cult leaders of very different sorts of stables. I can see that being the kind of inside joke Vince loved. Giving Bo a stable of white-clad failed lower mid-carders as his Bolievers would be the perfect ying to Bray Wyatt's yang. You've got guys like Axel, Fandango, Sandow, Slater all as talented guys doing nothing at all....heck, you could even labour the joke by making a returning Rowan into a Boliever.

Given that the Rugby World Cup is Pro Wrestling, I'd book the upcoming Bayley/Sasha iron-woman match exactly like Wales/England. Valiant, likable face vs smug, over-confident heel. In the first half of the match, which has been close, the heel suddenly takes the lead. Despite this, she's not able to put her opponent away for another fall to kill the match off, with the face still going toe-to-toe with her. Early in the second half of the match (about 15-16 mins in), the face suddenly suffers a nasty injury, but fights on with guts and determination, winning the hearts of all-remaining neutrals. From out of nowhere, the face lands one big blow to level things up, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Even more amazingly, with 7 minutes left the face takes the lead! Despite this, with 4 mins left,the twists aren't over, as the heel gets the face in a prone situation. She could lock in a submission for a quick fall to level things up, but instead goes for a high-risk move that backfires, as the sheer will-to-win of the face causes her to get back up one more time and drive the heel out of the ring. The bell goes to show the end of the match, as the face stands tall. Match of the year! Match of the year!

For me, Regal. I love both in the ring, but Regal's got more range as an all-round performer. Not only is he the better promo, but he's able to portray so many different roles whilst still being the same character. He's as believable as the fired-up face defending a helpless Eugene as he is as the megalomaniacal GM/King of the Ring, yet still authentic stooging about in disgust dressed as Paul Birchall's pirate wench. No matter what he's doing, he's an entertaining presence on TV. Finlay just isn't as magnetic, despite being a surprisingly effective face in the role of Hornswoggle's protector.