Woof

"I'll put that lazy eye right back to work." Tremendous! Weekly Enzo is gonna be so much fun.

Enzo & Cass. Finally.

Tremendous. Well played, sir.

The joy Parv must be feeling in his heart at the inclusion of Chief Jay on the above list makes me feel like all of the time spent on this project by everyone involved has been totally worth it.

Ironically, that's why I can't watch NBA basketball.

The idea that a WWE sponsored series is going to use legit "indy" workers like ZSJ and Dar is so mind-blowing to someone who has watched their product for over 30 years that I can't even put it into words. What a deliciously weird wrestling world we're entering.

Based on his nominee thread I'd be willing to bet I wind up high man on Samoa Joe (he climbed into my top 20 at the last minute) and I can't imagine anybody going higher on Roddy Strong (top 25). That said from what I've seen of lists that are already posted I have absoluely ZERO confidence on truly predicting a given ballot. People's opions are so completely all over the map. It's glorious, really.

Yup, you just nailed my two my favorite parts of that show. The Virgil line KILLED me. And that video was the cats pajamas. Also gotta ask if anybody else got the same "holy shit!" reaction I did from the camera angle of Joe hurling Balor into the announcers. Graves was in mid-sentence when all of the sudden Balor was in his lap and the angle they caught it from was GOLD. If Graves new it was coming he didn't let on, because he looked legit shocked to suddenly have Balor coming his way like that. Just a great little hidden gem of a moment.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I relied on reputation when forming my list, but I also can't say I ignored it. It was a necessary evil in order to make sure certain wrestlers were given proper due, because if I ranked based entirely on what I've seen too many major names wouldn't get a sniff because there wasn't enough time to view a reasonable amount of footage for each of them. I used a worker's reputation (or at least what I could best conceive their rep to be based on the comments on this site and other sources) as a starting point. I did my best to hit the bigger names I was unfamiliar with and see if what I saw was in line with what I'd heard. If it was, then I'd do my best to rank with that rep in mind, allowing myself to make the assumption that the stuff I hadn't seen would also fall in line. I was only able to scratch the surface with lucha, and as a result only a couple of guys made my list. When I started spot checking the highly valued guys, Negro Casas really jumped out at me as meeting the expectation I had going in, so I ranked him. Not as highly as he might have got if I had a chance to view more, but making the list is certainly more valuable than not. Someone like Mocho Cota, who I had not even heard of until this project began, also jumped out at me, so after some viewing I went and sought out what people were saying about him to make sure I wasn't overblowing a couple of select viewings. Conversely no matter how many El Dandy matches I watch I can't seem to see what others find so praise worthy about him, so I left him off my list. I did my best to be objective by giving guys a chance who I didn't really know. I also recognize that I may have over-ranked some guys from ROH and WWE because those are the two companies I am most familiar with and I am a unabashed fan of the "epic match" style they both offer up. In those cases I didn't let reputation factor in because I figured I'd seen more than enough of each guy to form my own clear opinion. Whether or not it lined up with general consensus didn't matter to me. I mean, I tried to be reasonable about separating what I viewed as legit greatness versus personal enjoyment, which is why someone like Tony Atlas didn't rank for me even though he was my first wrestling hero. But it's also why I have no problem rating Michaels and Angle high, because while I've heard the arguments against them I just don't agree with those arguments. And for what it's worth, JerryvonKramer, the fact that I love Angle and Michaels as much I do is probably best explained by the fact that I fucking love The Who.

Steven's pitch for Larry Z had me rethinking leaving him off my ballot. I tend to remember too much of the lazy Larry stuff whenever his name comes up and I forget the great Bock fued in AWA. Not sure I would necessarily run out to change my ballot, but these shows have been great for reminding my about certain guys' upsides. Looking forward to more listening.

So I guess I'll be "that guy" who points out that Gino Hernandez' death is not what ended his teaming with Tully in Texas. Tully was already a member of the Horsemen by then and Gino was just coming out of his break-up with Chris Adams' when he passed. I'd of let it go, but Tim tripping all over himself to apologize for "forgetting" cracked me up. You know you've watched/talked too much wrestling lately when you start apologizing for forgetting things that didn't actually happen.

One blight on the Aztec Warfare match was the commentary. The two of them kept hammering home the fact that the title was on the line in Aztec Warfare "FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!". Except this is only the second AW match ever and BOTH OF THEM have had the title on the line. The first AW determined the first champion. It'd be one thing if one of them just happened to mention it in passing and been wrong, but they kept bringing it up. Know your own history, guys.

Ayup.

Everything about that match was fantastic. From the way they let Rey have his moment, to touching on all the major fueds during the course of the match, to the way Mantanza just DESTROYED the field. I mean, if you're gonna debut a new monster, do it. Hell of a show.

Well this is terribly unprofessional. I DEMAND A REFUND!

Is it me or did you guys just skip over the main event of Lucha Underground on this episode? Feels like there was a weird edit there where you went right from discussing backstage LU politics right into the PWG show.

*slaps money on the table* I'M OUT!

Steven's comment about how Christian managed to make people interested in a Randy Orton feud at a time when they were extremely burned out on Randy Orton was one of those mini eye-opening things that I love from these type of podcasts. Every now and then somebody will make a point that you've been vaguely feeling and never been able to articulate until they do. So thanks for that. Made me feel a little better about including Christian on my list.

Great point that I agree with. There is a downside to it though. Wrestling formula creates an expectation that someone eventually breaks, generating the big response they want (not necessarily in-the-moment crowd pop either). Over time that same break is repeated by others, each time diminishing its effect. Eventually the break in formula becomes the norm until someone comes along and breaks that. Rinse and repeat. The issue with that is that it leads to escalation - usually in complexity and violence - that ultimately puts us in the place we are now, where every mid-card match on a super indy features multiple head drops and wild brawls into the crowd, thereby causing the main event guys to have to come up with something even bigger. Which leads to a lot of old farts on message boards pining for the old days when wrestling was simpler. The first time I saw a guy drop another with an apron DDT I lost my mind. I thought it was one of the most vicious things I'd ever seen, and coming as it did in the middle of a heated main event match between two guys with a long history of wrestling each other, it was an unexpected uping-the-ante moment that still resonates with me. Flash forward a dozen years and I see some sort of apron dropping move in nearly every match I watch. It's the new norm. The impact of it as a storytelling device is gone and it's merely a transitional move now. Yes, I blame the workers as a whole for not protecting it as something deadly that should be used judiciously, but I also blame us as fans for constantly demanding so much from the wrestlers. We stopped responding to the break in formula to the degree that the workers have to keep finding new ways to excite us. Once kayfabe died the goal of the wrestler changed from going out and making an audience believe in what they were doing to going out and putting on spectacular matches that will "entertain". I've noticed nobody on the super indies plays a real heel anymore. They don't do chickenshit acts and take shortcuts, because that doesn't lead to epic matches, and if you're not putting on epic matches, you don't get booked by the other super indies, and if you're not booked by the super indies you have little-to-no chance of getting noticed by the big companies. So instead all the modern day heels are tremendous workers who just talk shit and occasionally do dickish things in their matches. I mean when was the last time you wanted to see a match solely because you wanted to see the heel get his ass kicked? It's extremely rare. I think that's a big reason why we've come to collectively enjoy Brock Lesnar squashing main event babyfaces so much, because it's so outside of the normal formula that it feels fresh.

Yeah, that was the thing about the Attitude Era: they changed titles so often that they could afford to give every Tom, Dick & Prince Albert an IC title run because they weren't gonna keep it long anyway. So whether or not it was deserved was never really an issue, because it didn't last. Once crash TV essentially went away and they decided they could just start "making stars" without any regard for who the audience was responding to, we hit Defcon Reigns.

Why is the conclusion to all that not just "wrestling was way better then"? Speaking for myself I can only say I don't believe in the "things were better" theory in just about anything. Humanity evolves, and with each step we take in the positive, we lose something else. Music isn't better or worse today, it is merely different. There are aspects of it that I miss, but there are aspects of newer stuff that I enjoy. Its never a black-and-white issue for me. I love modern wrestling. I love old school wrestling. The best part of being a fan today is that I can have both.

Agreed. But Swagger and The Miz were never really over with the crowd in a way that suggested they should get that push. They just got it because the company decided to give it to them. Ziggler was over to the point where he earned, got a HUGE pop when he won the title, then got hurt. The company killed his push after that. Again not saying he was the answer to their main event problems, but they had something there and they refused to really go with it. A guy like Cesaro may have something so it's worth exploring. Somebody like Wade Barrett never really rose above his mid-card station in the fans' eyes, so he's fine to stay where he was. I'm not saying everybody deserves at least one main event push, but the guys who draw serious crowd reactions (see Cesaro after WMXXX) sure as shit are worth a look.

Dylan's point about presentation has me wondering just what the effect of the old territory style "weekly booking" turning into a more sporadic "super booking" style has had not only on our perception of matches, but on the approach to those matches by the workers themselves. Guys on the super indy circuit today (say Chris Hero for example) don't really get time to build to a match in the way the territory guys did. Hero on Evolve has to essentially deliver a 15-20 minute match on every show, without the benefit of weekly segments to incrimentally inch towards a match of that magnitude. He also can't go out and do a 2 minute match on a show that is purely about getting an angle over because the paying crowd for that show expects to see him in that longer match. So their goal with every match they wrestle is very different than say a Lawler, who could go out on TV and do whatever he needed with his match to get the story over, and even on occasion fuck around with his Coliseum matches, because that audience wouldn't really feel cheated knowing he'd be back in a week (and they would most likely be there too). If some fan paid explicitly to see Hero only to see him wrestle a total angle match and then deliver the payoff to a totally different audience somewhere else in the country, they'd be pretty pissed. So he wrestles accordingly. As a result what we get are a lot of really well wrestled matches that are excellent in a vacuum, but lack in the epic build that we as fans would prefer.

"He was someone I enjoyed watching who brought something different, but arguing he should be in the main event and winning titles was a massive stretch for me. His spot as an over midcard act who could work a solid match and get people over was just right." But if you're an over midcard act who can work a solid match, shouldn't you at least get an opportunity to main event in order to see what you could do? How is asking for that a "massive stretch". History is littered with guys who WEREN'T over and yet were given main event slots and titles, some of whom eventually became over through sheer force of their push. It doesn't really bother me that Zack Ryder was never a world champion, because I don't think he would have fit that role, but it DOES bother me that he worked his ass off to get massively over with the crowd and they did everything they could do to kill it because he didn't fit their vision. He earned the right to fail, not to be shoved away from the table for even daring to play a hand. I was one of the people pushing hard for Benoit to get his shot on top and I was thrilled when he did. But I also realized soon after that he wasn't meant to stay on top and I was satisfied with what became of his push afterwards. At least he had been given the chance he'd earned. I'm not convinced Cesaro is a main event guy, but I'm not convinced he can't be. Just seems to me he's earned at least an opportunity to see what he can do given his proven track record of delivering in matches and getting a decent sized portion of the crowd to get behind him.

Jeez, I gotta do HOMEWORK now? You professors are all alike. I'll try and give it a shot later when I have a chance to actually pop in an Angle match or two. I'm not trying to cop out, I just simply don't have the mental reservoir that most of you do and I need to refresh my memory a bit on why I enjoyed his early 2000's work as much as I did.