supremebve

If there was indeed cocaine in her bag, it could be a lot worse. Seriously, if you are dating someone and they yell, "She has cocaine in her bag," in an airport, go ahead and end that relationship. That person is trying to get you arrested on federal drug trafficking charges, and get you sent to hardcore, maximum security prison. He doesn't love you. That is seriously one of the most coldhearted things I've ever heard of anyone doing to someone they are in a relationship with. That isn't anything to joke about at all.

I think a G1 would be pretty great for WWE, as it would be an event that elevates midcard guys into major players. I don't have time to fill out an entire G1, but I know it would be the perfect format to get Sami Zayn over. An underdog babyface, gets a couple of surprise wins, until eventually everyone realizes he's in the running for the finals. He gets there puts on an epic match against a bonafide main event heel, but the heel gets a skin of the teeth win. The next six months could be Sami fighting for a rematch, but the heel keeps putting roadblocks in his way. Eventually Sami gets his rematch, for the world championship by now, and wins at Wrestlemania. He'd get over huge, but we all know WWE ain't about to do anything that makes that much sense.

I don't know how this could happen, but there needs to be some definitive list of all of the strange, unbelievable things that have happened to wrestlers.

Is Lapsed Lee Marshall still with us? That would bring a whole different dimension to the broadcast.

I was thinking that Malenko was a product of perfect timing. He was in a place that valued cruiserweight wrestling in the best era of cruiserweight wrestling. He was legitimately over with the WCW fans, and WCW consistently let him wrestle 10+ minute matches on television. There just aren't many eras in wrestling where he would have been allowed to do that at his size and with his relative lack of charisma. I think Rick Martel was either a generation too late or two too early. Top regional babyface Rick Martel came around right at the time when the role of top regional babyface was diminished. He would be the perfect ROH and/or NXT guy that the internet/indy crowd would love and get behind until he got his shot at the big time.

Something I wrote about the Rockers Barbershop angle... In January of 1992 I was 10-years-old. My Saturday morning started by getting up before everyone else, eating a huge bowl of cereal, watching cartoons until 12:00 when WWF Superstars came on, then going outside to play around with my friends. In general, the first friend I’d go see was my next door neighbor Maurice. Like me, Maurice was obsessed with wrestling. He was a huge Hogan mark, like I was a huge Savage mark, but we were both huge marks for the Rockers. The breakup of Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty during Brutus Beefcake’s Barbershop segment may very well be my biggest wrestling memory as a child. For a lot of people, Hogan joining the NWO was the most impactful heel turn they can remember, but not for me. The Rockers were everything I wanted from a team. They wrestled a fast pace, had cool entrance music, and most importantly had a finishing move that came off of the top rope. As a kid that was the trifecta for me. So when Shawn Michaels super kicked Marty Jannetty and threw him through the barbershop window, I didn’t know how to react. I remember running out of the house to find my friend Maurice, only to notice that he had just ran out of his house looking for me. We didn’t get our bikes, we didn’t go see if any of our friends were outside, we just sat under a tree and tried to make sense of what we had just witnessed. I’ll never forget what happened that day, and that is the beauty of being a wrestling fan.

Can you clarify this question? I know MMA has affected how I personally watch wrestling, but I don't exactly know what you are asking specific to this conversation. I think the thing that MMA makes me look at sideways are wrestling submissions. Not so much moves like the sharpshooter or the figure four, but chokes and armbars aren't moves you can lay in for minutes at a time.

The issue isn't being stuck in the past as much as so many of the moves that are being used as transitions feel much more impactful than the finishers they are being replaced with. A regular old DDT looks much more vicious than the 300 different Complete Shot variations we see every week. Okada vs. Omega had a top rope dragon suplex, but ended with a short arm clothesline. The issue is that the hierarchy is completely out of whack when the moves that get the near falls are much more violent than the ones that get the pinfalls. That's a good point, and I intuitively want to agree but at the same time, how violent was Hogan's leg drop or Warrior's splash compared to their other moves? The people's elbow certainly wasn't a killer impactful move, and arguably the rock bottom wasn't the most violent looking Rock move either. Umm...Hogan's and Warrior's other moves were clotheslines, body slams, and the occasional atomic drop. The Rock Bottom looks like it would be pretty damned painful. The People's Elbow was...OK, you get that one. I get that not every finihser is going to look as devastating as a brainbuster, but we are getting to the point where the impact of moves is making everything beneath the finish less meaningful, while simultaneously making less impactful finishers less meaningful. The legdrop worked, because Hogan's opponent wasn't kicking out of multiple DDTs, German suplexes, and sit out powerbombs. I like Cena, but his matches are often bomb fests that end with an elevated fireman's carry. It isn't that the AA is a bad finisher, it is just not something that should finish his opponent after kicking out of 125 other big moves that are more impactful.

The issue isn't being stuck in the past as much as so many of the moves that are being used as transitions feel much more impactful than the finishers they are being replaced with. A regular old DDT looks much more vicious than the 300 different Complete Shot variations we see every week. Okada vs. Omega had a top rope dragon suplex, but ended with a short arm clothesline. The issue is that the hierarchy is completely out of whack when the moves that get the near falls are much more violent than the ones that get the pinfalls.

Not only that, it became very clear to me that the only two moves that could possibly finish the match were The Rainmaker or the One WInged Angel. All of the other stuff they did, which ranged from kind of cool, to absolutely absurd, was just decoration. I liked the match, but I kind of felt like it should be the last match I watch before giving up wrestling for good. If I ask myself, "where does wrestling go from here?" I honestly don't know what the answer would be. Trying to outdo that match is like building a bigger atomic bomb. Sure you could build a bigger bomb, but do you really need a bigger bomb?

Another thing that needs to happen is that some of those signature spots need to be used as finishers from time to time. Every once in a while that rope DDT, Blue Thunder Bomb, top rope fishermans suples, etc., need to finish a TV match. On 205 Live, Neville has been finishing matches with a top rope superplex instead of the Red Arrow, and it is going to mean a lot once someone kicks out of it. It is a move that we've been seeing as a transitional spot for over 20 years, but at least on that show it is a credible finisher. He's won two straight matches with it, including a win over the former cruiserweight champion. I don't know when it's going to pay off, but the investment in the superplex as a finisher is going to matter to the limited 205 Live audience once it does.

They certainly don't have to be used for near falls, but rather building towards bigger, more devastating moves that should produce near falls or finishes. All about the escalation. That is kind of what I was saying, but not quite exactly. My point is that any move should be able to be a nearfall based on the story of a match. The problem is that matches aren't worked in a way that makes moves that aren't signature spots valuable. A worker should be able to target his opponent's back so that a simple body slam could be a nearfall, but since people kick out of Michinoku Drivers and Blue Thunder Bombs on a regular basis, no one takes a simple move like a body slam seriously. The problem isn't that a body slam isn't effective, the problem is that a Michinoku Driver is routinely ineffective. My point isn't that we should think a body slam is worthy of a 2-count, my point is that almost every single move is devalued based on the fact that no one buys into anything that isn't one of a workers two or three biggest spots. I don't think those moves are negative on their own, but we see them so often that we know nothing else matters but those spots. Does anyone buy into the finish of a John Cena match before we see an attempt at an AA? When was the last time Randy Orton worked a match without hitting that second rope DDT? Has Sami Zayn ever finished someone with his awesome looking Blue Thunder Bomb? What could any of those dudes possibly do before hitting one of those moves to make you feel like the match was in jeopardy? Randy Orton's entire gimmick is based on being able to finish his opponent with one RKO out of nowhere, but that never happens. It is always after hitting that DDT, The Garvin Stomp, that snap power slam and sometimes after attempting a punt. My point is that all of those moves should be like the punt. We know all of those moves are in his arsenal, but the fact that everyone shoots every bullet in their gun in every match devalues those moves and every other move in between.

I agree with a whole lot of this. I think the biggest problem with modern wrestling is that almost every match is just everyone fitting in signature spots. I don't think too many fancy spots is the problem. The fact that they put every single fancy spot into every single match that creates the problem. It makes those fancy spots the only spots that mean anything, while simultaneously making them less meaningful. If Kevin Owens were to only use that top rope fisherman suplex at Wrestlemania and Summerslam it would mean so much more. At the same time, how do you buy into a 2-count on a body slam or a clothesline when you know he hasn't hit his top rope fisherman suplex yet? The style is great for putting on 3+ star matches every single week on television, but it is terrible for making anything meaningful, and/or memorable.

This is my #1 biggest pet peeve in the last few WWE games. It would be one thing if the option was never available, but they gave it to us and took it away. That shit pisses me off.

Exactly Not really, tone means something. If your girlfriend cooked something for you and you didn't like it, would you look at her and tell her it sucked? Or would you say something like, "It's OK, but I don't really like mushrooms?" Telling someone something they care about sucks is different than saying it's not for you. I get if you choose not to be civil, but don't pretend like you didn't make a choice not to be civil. It's like the dude from Duke last night tripping an opposing player, but then acting like he was wronged when the ref called a technical foul. You did something that you know was kind of rude, and tried to act like you were innocent when someone called you out on it.

I wouldn't accuse someone of racism for not liking some kind of wrestling. Japanese culture in almost all shapes is usually treated as more important than Mexican culture, simple as that. Maybe it just captures the imagination more. I don't know why it would surprise anybody that the same holds true in professional wrestling. I wouldn't claim that any of this is untrue, but I also don't think it matters much at all in this discussion. I for one am someone who has much more of an affinity for Mexican culture, and Latin cultures as a whole, based purely on the personal relationships I have with people of Hispanic descent. I generally don't have any personal ties to Japan or any Japanese people. I've been to Mexico, I know some Spanish, and some of my closest friends are Hispanic. If cultural bias was involved, I'd probably like lucha far more than puro, but I don't. I don't believe it has any bearing at all on my opinion of any particular brand of wrestling. It is a style of wrestling that isn't for everybody, and that is probably as deep as it gets.

OK, so I'm someone who generally loves puro, but have never been able to understand lucha. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm much more familiar/comfortable with Mexican/Spanish language presentations than I am with Japanese. I can count to five in Japanese, say hello and good bye, and pretty much nothing else. My Spanish isn't fluent, but if you were to drop me off anywhere in the Spanish speaking world, I'd probably be able to bet by comfortably. My understanding of puro is based purely on what is going on in the ring. I follow the stories they are trying to tell, the characters they are trying to convey and the matches flow in a way that makes total sense to me. The thing I don't get about lucha is that nothing seems to have any rhyme or reason. I don't understand any of the transitional elements. If one guy is kicking the shit out of the other, sometimes the other guy just takes over on offense without any discernible reason. Too often, I feel like I watch an entire match where nothing feels impactful. There is a lot of rope running, some cool arm drags and head scissors, some mat work that doesn't seem to go anywhere, and then the match ends with a complicated roll up or a move that I don't buy as a finish. I never feel that sense of drama that I get from puro, or even well done American wrestling. I've watched some lucha that I really liked, and tend to really enjoy when people bring lucha elements to puro or American wrestling. I'm willing to give lucha matches a chance, but more often than not I just don't get why a lot of highly regarded lucha matches are enjoyed as much as they are.

I won't try to discredit Punk and can appreciate the fact that he actually went through with it, but he didn't do that well. He tried throwing a wild looping right hand and got taken down easily by Gall who then proceeded to dominate him on the ground. Punk showed no hip movement and just looked like a fish out of water on the ground. I'm not sure what Punk's belt ranking is in BJJ right now, but he looked like a novice white belt on the ground. I doubt he's a white belt as he's been doing BJJ for a couple of years, but he didn't look like he had been doing BJJ before. If he's still a white belt after the amount of years he's been doing BJJ, then he's a very slow learner or didn't train 4-5 days a week. Gall is a brown belt, so that fight went exactly as it was expected to go. There's a reason why white belts and brown belts shouldn't be rolling competitively and it was visible there. Gall is a brown belt, but from what I understand he's kind of a grappling savant. He has won multiple high level jiu-jitsu tournaments and held his own against Gordon Ryan, who a lot of people think is the best grappler in the world. Gall is a legit MMA prospect who is really smart about how to market himself. Honestly, he was only in that fight because he is so young, and only had two pro fights. He called out CM Punk after his first pro fight, if he had 5 or 6 fights there is no way they would have put Punk in the cage with him. His next fight is against Sage Northcutt, who is a guy who the UFC has been pushing as a blue chip prospect. I would not be surprised if Gall beats him. The problem with Gall is that he lacks experience and he's never fought anyone on Sage's level yet. He's only beat virtual unknowns in MMA, so it's hard to say how good he currently is. Gall has a ton of potential, but I don't see him beating guys as experience as Sage yet. Sage isn't exactly a polished MMA fighter though. He's a phenomenal athlete, and that allows him to run through a lot of less talented fighters. He's not going to be able to do that with Gall, who is also a great athlete and is the naturally larger fighter. I honestly think it is the best fight for both of these guys' careers at this point. Both guys are too well known to fight a scrub, but neither guy should be fighting anyone ranked above the top 40-50 guys in their very tough weight divisions. Northcutt is a guy who can do a lot of things really well, but I don't think he's great at anything. His biggest problem is that he doesn't seem to have any idea how to fight tactically. Gall is a guy who has shown that he knows exactly what he's good at, and how to fight in a way that takes advantage of his skill set. He's had 3 pro fights and they are essentially identical. Give me the guy who has what could grow into an elite skill who fights tactically over the guy who depends on his athleticism who doesn't fight tactically. I don't know who will win that fight, but Gall is who I would favor.

I won't try to discredit Punk and can appreciate the fact that he actually went through with it, but he didn't do that well. He tried throwing a wild looping right hand and got taken down easily by Gall who then proceeded to dominate him on the ground. Punk showed no hip movement and just looked like a fish out of water on the ground. I'm not sure what Punk's belt ranking is in BJJ right now, but he looked like a novice white belt on the ground. I doubt he's a white belt as he's been doing BJJ for a couple of years, but he didn't look like he had been doing BJJ before. If he's still a white belt after the amount of years he's been doing BJJ, then he's a very slow learner or didn't train 4-5 days a week. Gall is a brown belt, so that fight went exactly as it was expected to go. There's a reason why white belts and brown belts shouldn't be rolling competitively and it was visible there. Gall is a brown belt, but from what I understand he's kind of a grappling savant. He has won multiple high level jiu-jitsu tournaments and held his own against Gordon Ryan, who a lot of people think is the best grappler in the world. Gall is a legit MMA prospect who is really smart about how to market himself. Honestly, he was only in that fight because he is so young, and only had two pro fights. He called out CM Punk after his first pro fight, if he had 5 or 6 fights there is no way they would have put Punk in the cage with him. His next fight is against Sage Northcutt, who is a guy who the UFC has been pushing as a blue chip prospect. I would not be surprised if Gall beats him.

I thought Dawn Marie was pretty sporty at her peak too, but Kimona Wannalea was probably the best of the ECW women.

If you need to make a choice between paying your bookie or your drug dealer, pay your drug dealer. The dope man can't afford to let people slide on his money. When your clientele is as unreliable as dope fiends tend to be, there has to be some sort of incentive structure in place to keep your customers in line. Their incentive structure is called murder. If you don't pay your drug dealer, your drug dealer or one of his associates will kill you. Your bookie will try to recoup his money, your drug dealer will kill you so everyone understands that he will kill you. Dope fiends don't want to die, they want to get high. If they think they can live to get high again, they will do damn near anything. The drug dealer's job is to make sure they understand that they won't live to get high again if they don't pay him his money. Don't do drugs, but if you do pay...for them, in full, up front.

Good call, that woman... Kimberly is also a really good call. She was unbelievably good looking in her prime. Her marrying a troll like DDP also gave us the misguided notion that we all had a chance, which made her even more attractive.

THe reason I don't understand why anyone would want to see this is pretty simple. We've seen it before, and we didn't like it. It was terrible, they lost the crowd, and I can't think of a single reason that it would be better now than it was then. Both guys are older, one guy is almost 50 and hasn't wrestled a match in over a decade. The other guy's entire offense is based on two moves, and I don't know if repeatedly suplexing a 50 year old who hasn't been taking bumps is a good idea. I honestly don't see how this won't be worse than their first match, which was horrendous.

Does anyone remember this one...

I can't believe that people spend their time and/or money in a way that I don't personally spend my time or money. Anyone who does anything I don't do is an idiot.