Woof

I actually thought he said "Velveeta Sky" in the moment (haven't gone back to re-listen), as if he was trying to say Veda Scott and confused her with Velvet Sky in-mid thought. It's become an endearing trait of Pete's across all the podcasts he does that he will occasionally fumble through words because he has such intense need to get out what he's thinking.

I was there live for the Boston one, so I might lean otherwise. I haven't seen it in ten years though. Ditto. I didn't even know who the hell they were that night and we and my buddy were fucking gobsmacked after the match they put on. Some pretty intense storytelling for a couple of kids. I'll always have a softspot for the Briscoes thanks to that live introduction.

Pete's droll "I thought this was the worst match of the tournament" after Steven's fired up review of the Hero-Evans match is one of my favorite moments of this show to date. Also, props to Pete for living the gimmick as Wrestling Fan Extraodinaire. Kicking a chick out after a one night stand to watch more wrestling is a great heel move. "Hit the bricks, toots, I gotta watch some Japanese guys kick the shit out of each other". This show is so much fun. Thanks, boys.

Nice to have the Usos back. Weird that they'd introduce them second, ahead of Ryback and Dean, who were predictable allies of Roman. Of course they were probably hedging their bets that the Usos wouldn't be seen as a big deal by the live crowd.

The problem I have with the mask bit is that we don't see how they got there. Mando is working over Demon outside the ring, but then they cut to Eddie and Santo going at on the other side. When we move back over into the ring a masked Mando is stomping Demon, so we never see how it is that they got there. It would have helped immensely if we had seen how Demon wound up back in the ring and whether or not he could have reasonably seen the masked Mando before he was attacked by him. It might have worked fine for the live audience, but for the filmed version it was very unclear, which hurts the angle.

I think the counter to that is that the most death finishers bring with them a great a deal of risk for the man delivering the move, so it's usually only something you'd want to bring out in moments of desperation and real need. Plus, in the case of something like Cena's super AA, it's not a move he could expect to deliver in the opening moments of a match. He really need to get his opponent worn down enough where he can get him up top and set up the move, because it takes time. And if the guy is any position to fight out of it, Cena himself is in a vulnerable position. I think that's one area where having somebody like Neville using the Red Arrow all the time, even in sub 3-minute matches, is deterimental to the product as a whole. They book it because it's his signature move and they fear the fans would be cheated if they didn't see it, but the way he himself preps for delivery with a great deal of visible trepidation puts the move over as risky and dangerous. He knows if the opponent moves he's more or lessed doomed. So having him hit it mere minutes into a match is counter-productive, because no opponent should be THAT dazed that they'd just lay there and take that move at that point. At least not with the offensive arsenal that Neville has at his disposal up to that point.

Just want to echo Bix on the brutally ugly and unsafe Hebner bump (my hatred of those two grows every time I watch them work) and garretta on the total lack of necessity of the double DQ. Brutus was so much higher up the pecking order coming into this match that he could have beat Genius clean, then went to work on the hair causing an irate Perfect to run-in. The double DQ didn't protect anybody. In fact, the whole ref bump thing made Beefcake look stupid because he went for the sheers even though the match was still going on at that point. What kind of babyface behavior was that? Moron. That said, I loved the Genius' shtick early in the match. His prancing and dainty showmanship always felt weird as a babyface, particularly in the 80's, so the move to turn him into a heel works well. He's just so annoying in the opening bits that I really wanted to see him get the tar pounded out of him (the completely unnecessary cartwheel on the outside being a great example). Sadly Brutus is not the guy to provide such a beating. He just has such a limited and uninteresting moveset. It's a shame they didn't have a better worker in the Barber gimmick, because it was seriously over with the audience and such a great story-driving element, but he rarely backed it up with his work. *1/2 mostly for Genius' gaga.

I'm so torn on this match because I think if you took the stipulation away and had the exact same match it becomes an all-time classic. The stiffness was just unheard of for the WWF at that time and if you put counts to those aborted pin attempts you would have had some tremendous drama. Work the early bits around the heartbreaker and the hammer jammer (which I loved as a gimmick/counter gimmick), have them both removed as was done which leads to Garvin selling the shit out of the regular figure-four when it was applied and finish with the scorpion deathlock as a way for Garvin to show to Valentine that he has a submission move of his own that can work just as well. That works damn fine as a match structure without the "submission match" stip being tacked on to it. As it is, even rewatching it last night I grew frustrated by all the pin attempts. The first one each was fine to me, because WWF in that era didn't really do "stip" matches outside of cages (where it's hard to forget the rules since the cage itself is a constant reminder) and lumberjack matches (which don't really affect the method of victory) so it made sense that both the wrestlers and the audience wouldn't be super prepped for the no-pinfall thing. But to keep going back to it bothered me quite a bit. On top of that, they didn't really work the submission aspect outside of four moments: the original figure-four with the braces in tact, Valentine's torture rack attempt, the figure-four sans braces, and the deathlock finish. There wasn't really an effort made by either guy to set up submissions during the body of the match. In a straight match, I don't think it's always necessary to work an area to set up a submission, since the move itself can often be painful enough. But if that is the only way to win, why would you waste so much energy with such vicious chops and punches when those aren't going to lead directly to the desired outcome? Yes, you could argue that they're wearing each other down to make them susceptible to a submission later, but that can be said of ANY match. Its the reason things like headlocks and chinlocks are acceptable in the early stages of the match. But if you're going to add a specific stip (especially at a time when that wasn't a major part of your booking), shouldn't the guys go all out on that aspect of the match? So in the end, I love this match because of the brutality of it and the gaga surrounding the braces working for me, but I'm disappointed a bit in the manner the approached telling the story of the stipulation. ***1/2 that would have been over **** if they'd dumped the stip and worked it as a regular match where each guy was determined to win by submission as opposed to being required to.

"then I watch something like the Hart Foundation-Rockers 2/3 falls match where the ring ropes broke. In that match, the lack of the usual saccharine WWF production/announcing meant that the action inside the ring was more audible and thus came across more physical." I got the same feeling when I watched the DiBiase vs Bret match from Odessa. On the Bret DVD it is without commentary, and it is just such a visceral watch, because DiBiase in particular is just grunting and breathing heavy through the whole thing and for an essentially meaningless match it comes across as an epic battle. I've since seen the commentary version that appeared on Prime Time Wrestling and it totally loses something. I love good commentary because it can add so much context to a match, but there are times where the total lack of it is helpful for me appreciating the actual effort the wrestlers are putting in. It's for that reason I've found myself watching a lot of Premier Wrestling out of California, because they put their matches up on YouTube without commentary and they are presenting their product very much like a competetive sport. There's zero sports entertainment to what they do (save for post-match interviews with the victors which are still more real sports inspired than wrestling promos). I haven't seen a ton of live wrestling, but I've seen enough, be it WWE/WCW or indies like ROH and a couple of stray New England Championship Wrestling shows. I think the live experience enhanced my view of certain matches in particular, but I can't say as though it has skewed my take on any individual performers in regards to the GWE project. Anybody who impressed me in a live setting previously was always somebody who was already a big deal or went on to bigger things anyway, so my opinion of them is shaped almost exclusively by the other stuff I've seen as opposed to that exceptional live viewing.

Reading your analysis of a match is sometimes more entertaining than watching the match itself.

This Lou Thesz match versus Antonino Rocca is clipped, but at 10 mins it's a nice primer for Lou's basic heel schtick and bullying. The second Rikidozan match is a better look at him long-form. This was the first Thesz match I watched and it made me want to seek out more. (FYI, the first 5 mins of the video is background fluff. The match starts at about 5:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeujxM289JY Outside of that you really can't go wrong with any of the Chicago Film footage over on YouTube. Some nice long matches against the likes of Vern Gagne, Buddy Rogers, Eduoard Carpentier, and Hans Schmidt.

I'd love to see more jobber matchs. Or specifically, more matches where the main event guys are up against the lower card guys like Slater, Ryder, et al. We very rarely get guys interacting with others outside of their level. I'd rather see Orton go 6 minutes with a guy like Adam Rose than 12 with Sheamus for the 20th time in a month. I'd also like to see more tag team fueds that don't involve the title. I can't remember the last time a pair of regular tag teams had a PPV match that wasn't for the title. Shield vs Wyatts is more of a stable fued than a tag fued. Having the Prime Time Players have a PPV match against The Ascension would give the division more credibility.

Just watched this match for the first time and that's one of the rare times when a hyped matched exceeded my expectations. The pace was off the charts and pretty much everything that Marty laid out are things that I caught as I was watching it. So many fantastic little details. Absolutely loved the moment when they finish burying Kane under the rubble and are about to congratulate themselves when all of the sudden the camera swings into the ring where Bryan has the Yeslock on Rollins. Bryan's sell of that moment had me marking out, as he was DESPERATELY trying to get Rollins to tap while keeping his eyes on the other two, hoping the end would come before they could realize what was up. My adrenaline was cranking while watching this and I had been having a pretty mild night before that. And that all stemmed from the energy in the match, because I didn't really have any context going in outside of the fact that it was the Shield's first match. Everybody in this thing played their role to perfection. I was more or less out on the WWE from late '11 up until I got the Network in April '14, and this match makes me want to totally go back and watch the Shield's progression. Tremendous stuff.

Such a hard team to judge, because their time came during a period when WWE cared even less about tag teams than they usually do. They had a surprisingly long reign as champs, but it was on the blue brand and nobody paid much attention to it. Plus they never really got any real angles or mic time. Basically they just had fun X-division style tag matches against the challengers of the month with little long-term consequence. I enjoyed their work, and if they existed in a different time they might have been more, but as it is they were a really good team with zero historical significance.

Locking Austin Aries in a headscissor and then just laying there while he bounces his way out of it is a surefire way to get yourself kicked in the face.

Cracked me up when the commentary said "he's been in the indies for the last 15 years". I mean, who ever thinks of James Storm as an "indy wrestler"? Too funny. Also, a sign of my impending old age: I *knew* Storm had debuted on that set of TV tapings and yet when his music came up last night and there was a pause because the Full Sail audience didn't knew who was coming out, I was legit like "hmmm... wonder who this is". Kayfabe apparently returns once your memory starts to go, so thumbs up for that.

This is the internet. We specialize in beating dead horses here.

So I'm one of the many who has been flip-flopping over the last few months since I discovered the board about whether I would try and cobble a list together to submit. I've been following a lot of suggestions and checking out a tons of stuff that I had never watched before, but I haven't been really vigilant about tracking what I've seen for the purpose of my list. So I took a few minutes just now to pull the current nominee list and see just where I stood for an opener. There are currently 472 nominees on the list. I just scrolled down and ranked each name based on my kneejerk reaction to whether the were A) in consideration for my top 100, out of consideration, or C) not familiar enough to me to consider. The results: In consideration - 166 Out of consideration - 92 Not familiar enough - 214 I've been watching wrestling for over 30 years now, but my viewing has been mostly limited to American stuff. Those results seem to reflect that, as the vast majority of the Japanese and Lucha names were unknown to me and they make up about half the nominee list. I've seen enough of the big name Japanense wrestlers to feel like I could fairly rank them. I'll probably submit a ballot (which is more about actually getting around to it than a feeling of worthiness), even though by my own calculations I'm only familiar enough with 55% of the nominees to offer an educated opinion on them. And again, I've been a fan for three decades and I own and watch a considerable amount of wrestling. Perhaps not as much as some of you, but certainly more than your run-of-the-mill wrestling fan. All of which is a really long-winded way of saying that for this project to work it pretty much needs as many voters as possible, because the volume of wrestling that is out there makes it next to impossible for any one person to offer up a fair ranking by themselves. I think we need to encourage everyone to submit a ballot and trust that the system will force the true cream to rise to the top. And even if it doesn't, it'll give us something fun to debate for the next 10 years.

It's funny how the general public views wrestling fans as a bunch of interchangeable nerds and yet this show comes across as three guys who have absolutely zero in common outside of wrestling. The weird tension that threads through the show is one of my favorite things.

That was fucking fantastic. Agreed. That was a killer read.

"Allgood looks the ugly friend from Hardbodies if he had a son" I'm debating whether to be proud or ashamed for getting this reference.

I tend to think the over-reliance on generic hard rock has as much to do with their inability to introduce characters with specific personalities that Jim Johnston could latch on to. Even in the mid-2000's, if they gave him somebody with a clear gimmick/personality, he usually knocked the theme out of the park. JBL's "Dallas"-style knock off is tremendous. Eugene's 80's inspired theme was perfect for him. The Billy & Chuck "You Look So Good To Me" thing was a nice take on the boy band craze. But when it comes to somebody like Randy Orton, he was "just a guy" at least in terms of first-look personality, he had nothing to go on. Even today, when they get a Bo Dallas they seem to know what to do in regards to an appropriate musical style. Hard rock just tends to be a default for guys they don't know what to make of yet and too often what you get at the beginning is what you are stuck with.

Yup. They've sacrificed a lot of awesome storytelling devices in the name of "presentation" over the last decade plus. The wrestler entrance has now become a "thing", rather than being an enhancement of what might otherwise be a dull (but necessary) moment. Like anything else with the current product, they found something that worked and spot-welded it permanently to their product instead of letting it simply do the job it was meant to do. "Oh, they popped for the entrance music? Well then let's play it every time somebody does a run-in, even though there's no logical reason why the PA guy would know to play it and it also ruins any element of surprise the guy doing the run-in would have hoped to have gained". They care about pops and Tweets and brands and have completely lost touch with the subtle art of the story they are supposed to be selling us.

This is probably just excuse making, because I totally agree that his execution most of the time was far from crisp and he most definitely chose too many moves that he didn't seem capable of delivering well. Yet oddly I found a lot of that endearing, because of the fact that he WASN'T athletic and clearly not a natural. I enjoyed him as a character and as an overall storyteller, and to me part of that story was always that of an outsider trying to make it in the wrestling business as if to prove some sort of point (to himself usually). I know it wasn't necessarily intentional on his part, but his flawed execution seemed like part of his story. He was a scrawny kid who didn't care for sports and generally loathed "sport entertainment" but who was determined, come hell or high water, to become a star in the business if for no other reason than to shove it up the ass of the jocks and a-holes he hated as a kid. His kayfabe and non-kayfabe characters are very similar, which is why I found his promo work so effective. So in the ring he was prone to attempting epic shit because that's what someone who couldn't rely on natural strength or agility would resort to. Compare him to someone like Lance Storm who was pretty smooth in his execution of moves (and who by most accounts is a hell of a good guy), but who never really got me to emotionally invest in what he was doing on a consistent basis. I enjoyed watching both guys but for entirely different reasons, but at the end of the day Punk would probably rank pretty high in my top 100 (whereas Storm would be nowhere near that list) because I'm more interested in that emotional connection than I am in a display of athletic prowess. In a way it's a lot like why as a Red Sox fan I had no real love for JD Drew during his time in Boston despite the fact that he had one of the sweetest swings in the game and played the outfield with grace and elegance, whereas Dustin Pedroia became a favorite even though he had a reckless looking swing and ran the bases rather awkwardly. Some things just come naturally to some people and that works well for them, but from a dramatic standpoint I'm always going to be drawn to the guy who looks like he's fighting like the devil to overcome his own physical limitations, even if it means he looks sloppy a lot of the time.

Well, I gave a laundry list of reasons why I hate Earl earlier in the thread, so I won't repeat them here. But in a nutshell I just find him to be visually terrible. His body movements and vocal work in the ring were the shits. I want a referee to look crisp and decisive in his hand motions and commands. He's supposed to be a figure of authority in the ring, but if he looks like an ineffectual putz most of the time, it helps no one, since a heel doesn't look like a badass/slimeball putting one over on a referee who has no power. Tommy Young was guilty of a lot of the same grand-standing that I killed Earl for, and as Parv has pointed out in the early days of Where The Big Boys Play, was a terrible referee in kayfabe terms since he was always getting knocked out at crucial moments of matches. BUT... his mannerisms and positioning in the ring were always really well exectued. When he and Flair did the push-and-shove routine, Young came across like a man in a position of authority who was reminding the heel that he wasn't to be messed with because he carried power. When Hebner did it with Triple H he came across like a bratty kid who didn't want to be pushed around. Young was firm, pointing at his NWA logo'd shirt, while Earl would lose his shit and act like he wanted to fight right then and there. The boys may love him and he may do all the things they need him to do as part of the behind-the-scenes art of delivering a match, but as a visual presentation of an in-ring official, I found him awful. Sorry. Big nutshell.