NotJayTabb

Probably a dull answer, but the stars in 5 years time probably aren't under contract yet or, if they are, they're the untrained guys learning in the Performance Centre. If you look at the top guys today, 5 years ago Sheamus was just debuting, Rollins and Ambrose were still on the indies and guys like Reigns and Rusev weren't even wrestling. In 5 years time, you'll have a couple of current names on top and a load of guys we've not heard of.

I only decided I was going to do this in July, and it's been a real eye-opener (in a fun way) realising how many wrestlers I've never really seen before. I mean, amongst my friends I'm THE wrestling guy - I'm the one who watches old footage, footage from Japan or Mexico, who'll happily watch local indies on my own - and yet every time I check out footage of someone for this project, I find myself having to add 3 or 4 more guys to do due dilligence on. Heck, the other night I watched a Baba/Funk vs Hansen/Blackwell match linked on Segunda Caida just for fun, and now I've added Blackwell, a guy I'd not even considered, onto my "watch" list. I've got massive blind spots still - Bockwinkel, WoS, 90's AJPW - simply because I'm daunted at discovering another 20 odd names for my "watch" list. Don't get me wrong, I'm thoroughly enjoying it (after all, it'd just watching more wrestling, which is no great chore), but just wanted to explain the major omissions and why some of these names are likely to fall off upon final submission. Adrian Street AJ Styles Arn Anderson Barry Windham Bobby Eaton Bret Hart Bryan Danielson Curt Hennig Davey Boy Smith DDP Dick Togo Dustin Rhodes Dusty Rhodes Eddie Guerrero El Hijo De Santo Ernie Ladd Finlay Fritz von Erich Genichiro Tenryu Greg Valentine Hulk Hogan Ikuto Hidaka James Mason Jeff Jarrett Jerry Lawler Jim Breaks Jim Duggan John Cena Johnny Saint Jumbo Tsuruta Jushin Liger Juventud Guerrera Kerry Von Erich Kevin Von Erich LA Park Mark Henry Necro Butcher Negro Casas Owen Hart Psychosis Randy Orton Randy Savage Rey Mysterio Ric Flair Rick Rude Ricky Steamboat Roddy Piper Scott Steiner Sean Waltman Sgt Slaughter Shinya Hashimoto Stan Hansen Steve Austin Super Delfin Tajiri Terry Funk Terry Gordy Tito Santana Toshiaki Kawada Tracy Smothers Vader William Regal Zack Sabre Jr

The Dudleys coming back provides a bit more depth to what has become a pretty decent tag division, one that has more than two teams in it (unlike in years gone by). The PTP's have quietly become a really good team, boasting a great FIP and a great hot tag guy, and having them, the Dudleys and the New Day on top of the division sounds pretty good to me. Los Matadores and the Lucha Dragons are perfectly good second-tier teams, and even the Ascension are ok. Add to this the return of the Usos, the rumoured Adam Rose/Brad Maddox team and the number of decent units in NXT, and tag team wrestling is looking really fun at the moment.

The most ham-fisted thing about the "revolution" is that they've managed to make their most popular face in the division less over. Paige was getting some good reactions as the lone wrestler up against Fox and the Bellas, but that seems to have gone out of the window.

It's been touched on above, but this 3-way faction war has caused the Bellas's face/heel positioning to be all over the place. It's hard to build heat on characters who're face when facing Team BAD and heel when facing anyone else. The Bellas should always be heels in this "war" - not only is Nikki the Divas champion, but the Bellas are blessed with the most annoying voices on the planet. Give Nikki some mic time (but not on commentary....awful) and you could stick any Divas out there against her for a face pop. Has there actually been a Divas title match since this "revolution" started? Winning a 3-way tag match at Summerslam doesn't mean much if no-one seems interested in becoming champion. No-one has even hinted at wanting a title match, they just want to "save the division from the Bellas", which doesn't seem to really mean anything. As regards Tamina, I don't think she's as bad as people say. She's got great presence, throws a mean superkick and has been in some good matches. I remember a PPV match vs Beth Phoenix that was booked as a hoss match, and was really fun. She should be booked as the female gatekeeper, like Meng in WCW, but I can't remember the last time I saw her win a singles match.

Not much I can add to the preceding pages about the show and how good it was, but the three matches I was really looking forward to (the three title matches) delivered in spades. One little detail in the ladder match I loved was in the ending: I always hate those "Jeff Hardy has the match won, but he's going to hit a 15ft high Swanton onto Edge instead of escaping the cage" moments, so I liked the fact the big match ending spot (Coup de Grace from the ladder) actually made sense (Balor can't reach the belt from the ladder, so his quickest way down to fix it also involves hitting his finisher on Owens)

I'd bet good money on that happening next month. Rusev wins at Sslam due to Summer interference, mixed tag next month

You could make the argument for the Undertaker, who, following his massive push and brief title reign in 1991, didn't win the world title for another 6 years and instead spent time in the midcard fighting IRS, Kama, Bundy, Mabel and a fake version of himself.

Mark Henry circa 2011? He was an upper-midcarder who'd get the odd title match, got dropped to the C-show in ECW (admittedly as their champion), became MVP's midcard face tag-partner then got a monster push to the world title with the "Hall of Pain" resulting in improved ratings.

I agree that Enzo has more main roster potential than Cass. He's like a ratty little chihuahua that wont stop yapping. He's so naturally a heel, and I think he'd be really effective as a heel manager, hiding behind a bigger client with the payoff being him getting his clock cleaned at the PPV. As a face, I think his schtick will quickly wear thin on a week by week basis. Big Cass is terrible, and he's so lucky he got paired with Enzo early. He's the least intimidating 7 footer I've ever seen, and nothing he does looks like it would hurt. On the mic, he's way too forced and it really shows when he's partnered with a guy who probably is that irritating in real life. Honestly, the only time I've enjoyed Cass is on his debut, where he got squashed by Mason Ryan.

The other issue is that Balor is a guy they've clearly got big plans for, and having him lose his title one month into his reign in order to hot shot his belt to an upper-midcarder who loses more than he wins would damage his aura.

Part of me suspects that Enzo and Cass are headed for the main roster shortly. They've been downplayed a little bit in NXT recently - they're the only team I've seen lose to Dawson and Wilder on the show - and you'd think they'd be getting the title match in Brooklyn if they were going to be in NXT for a while. Personally, I find Enzo/Cass horrific on every level, in-ring and out, but I can imagine them getting a great reaction if they were to debut on Raw on Monday and challenged a title-holding New Day. The only issue is how they'd deal with Carmella. I can see her being fun as an outside equalizer against Xavier, but she's nowhere near good enough to wrestle on the main roster, and she'd be lost on her own in NXT.

I always thought Del Rio/Christan from SS13 smoked the Punk/Lesnar match. You had the perfect combination of a guy who is excellent at working body parts in fun ways vs a guy who was great at selling bodypart damage. Whereas even at the time (ie - after the dreadful HHH series threatened to ruin Lesnar's aura) I couldn't buy Punk as any sort of threat to Lesnar, and it felt ridiculous that Heyman had to interfere to save Brock. My favourite SS match has always been Davey Boy vs Bret from 92. Not only is it a great match, but I think for a lot of people in the UK, it represents the pinacle of our childhood wrestling watching. I was 10 years old at the time, and wrestling was incredibly popular at the time: everyone in my school was talking about it and I remember a load of us gathered at my friend's house to watch the show. Davey Boy was so popular in our group, and I don't think they've ever had a British wrestler since that has resonated with so many people over here. Well, except maybe DJ Gabriel :-)

Butch, did you ever see the documentry S4C did a few years back on Orig? It was really good, had some great stories about his early football career and his poor disciplinary record. It was hosted by his daughter, and they even flew her to America for a couple of minutes chat with Mason Ryan. At work so can't check if it's online, and it's all in Welsh (I had to make do with subtitles), but it's really worth watching.

How likely are the shows to be VOD? I've been hearing a lot of good things, but not sure I could justify the likely cost of DVD shipping to the UK

I had a dream a while back that the tag team of the Attitude Enforcers, John Cena and Arn Anderson, were getting inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. I only remember this as I thought it was a cynical way of being able to refer to Cena as a HOF member on TV without having to give him an individual induction whilst still active. I also had a dream this week where I was on the WWE creative team. In my dream, Naomi got injured, so I suggested to Vince that Sasha be paired with a reunited Laycool, who would later turn on her and turn out to be in cahoots with Naomi (I accept in the cold light of day this makes no sense). Maybe wisely, Vince rejected it and I woke up.

He was always Bulgarian. They never tried to play him up as FROM Russia. He debuted with the nickname 'the Bulgarian Brute' One of my favourite things about the Lana/Rusev storyline is the fact that Lana said that Rusev was controlling her and making her say bad things about America, when he was the one who had to adopt her nationality for a year and has made no reference to Russia since the split.

Didn't John Morrison reportedly see an acting coach during his WWE tenure, and he was forever terrible. I remember seeing one of the Performance Centre acting clips featuring Adrian Neville and Mason Ryan. It involved Neville as a customer complaining that his burger wasn't made properly, which sent Ryan off on a strangling spree. It was surreal.

Always hated DX, even as a 16yr old I could tell they were grown adults acting like idiot teenagers. They were largely responsible for my switching back to watching WCW in 1998

Said it on Twitter, but wanted to repeat how much I dug the review. I agreed with pretty much all of it. It's not a MOTYC or anything, but it's just a fun, well-worked tag match that goes just about the right length.

Hall of Pain-era Mark Henry?

Especially when it's Nick Patrick and the wrestlers are smaller than him. The other day I caught him hesitating to intervene on Morton post-belling Pillman. He was literally a head taller than both. Especially since Patrick is a former wrestler. To follow on from this discussion, I've seen matches where active wrestlers have been special guest referees and STILL get taken out by the same bumps that take out normal refs. You just think "All it'd take is to crush this guy in the corner during a match, and you could pin him easily"

Something that struck me as unusual on NXT last week: Kevin Owens came out for a squash match against former NXT signee Martin Stone (FKA Danny Burch), who I think lives in Florida now. The ring announcer called him "Martin Stone", so I was curious to see what name the announcers would give him...and they didn't. Not once did they refer to him by name, which must've been a deliberate choice. They didn't even refer to him as Danny Burch, which is a name they own. Felt really odd that the jobbers don't even get a name now, which in a way took the emphasis away from the ring apron powerbomb by taking than human element away from them. Also of note: former TNA X-division wrestler Jessy Sorenson (he of the horrific neck break) getting squashed by Baron Corbin.

On The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior DVD, they claim that Warrior turned around on the night of the show and demanded more money otherwise he wouldn't do the show, which Vince reluctantly agreed to before firing Warrior straight after the match. They even have other wrestlers like Hogan backing up this lie. The truth was that Warrior wrote a letter to Vince in July, saying he didn't believe his payoff for Wrestlemania VII was fair, and saying he'd rather stay at home until his demands were met. Still not great behaviour, but better than the mis-truths portrayed on the DVD. In the real world, Vince wrote Warrior a friendly letter agreeing to everything, before suspending him after Summerslam. I'm pretty sure he didn't even get fired, and was kept under contract without using him.

Was watching Judgement Day 2006, and had forgotten all about firey face Jillian Hall feuding with Melina. It also reminded me of Beth Phoenix's debut as a face, where she was a mysterious figure from Mickie James' past, before (I believe) Victoria broke her jaw and put her out of action for a year.