The Russian Daydream

Flair and Reed had a singles on one of the Clashes in late 1990. I think it might have been the one with the totally mental Black Scorpian / Tiger magic trick? The match was really just ok though I thought. Also, I seem to recall a rumour around mid-late 95 that Eric Bischoff were going to bring Simmons and Reed back as Doom, but nothing came of it in the end either. Does anyone else remember this?

Overall, I have to go with the majority and say I prefer cage matches but that's not to say that there haven't been some brilliant ladder matches or, indeed, terrible cage matches. The thing that puts me off ladder matches are the really slow climb spots and the blatant setting up of ladders for a spot. You just want to win the match, so why not just lamp the guy repeatedly with the ladder and get on with it? Is very rare that a ladder match has that 'two guys having a fight' feel that I like my wrestling to have.

I've been considering the lists a bit harder and there is one question I have for Chad. Like you, Chad, I greatly enjoyed the Vader vs Sting feud and was very pleased to hear it represented on your list. I am curious about your choice of giving the spot to the Superbrawl III strap match though. For me, as awesome a match as it is, I'd rank it third in their rivalry behind both Bash and Starrcade 92. I think, it's partly a personal thing, as I've never been a fan of the drag-the-guy-to-four-corners stipulations. I also don't really like the finish. Throughout the entire match we were told that all four corners had to be touched by dragging your opponent without the sequence being broken. Then, at the end, they end up in a tug-of-war with one corner to go. Sting kicks Vader, he lets go, staggers back and touches the last corner. In my mind Vader did not 'drag' Sting to the last corner and in any case, the sequence had been broken. The problem is, it's difficult to get a better finish to this type of stipulation match. Incidentally, this was the match that gave the game away to me about blading, where Vader rolls out after Sting whips him and Harley Race, in full view, cuts his back. I lost a bit of my innocence that day! The Bash match is my favourite. To me, it's nearly perfect. Vader looks awesome, Sting does a great job of getting beat up, making Vader look awesome but still doing enough to look strong himself. The spot where Sting slides up Vaders back on the Stinger Splash and hits the post is pure genius. It looked totally organic and gave Sting just enough of an excuse for the clean job he'd be doing minutes later. I'd say Ventura and (particularly) Ross were brilliant on commentary too. The Starrcade match was almost, but not quite, as good in my mind. I do love the finish though as its a great retribution spot. I remember it being reported at the time (I think in WCW Magazine) that it had been Vader catching Sting mid-cross-body and powerslamming him that caused Stings broken ribs months earlier. That Sting should turn the tables and beat Vader with the exact same move was very cool. So, Chad, what is your thinking behind preferring the Superbrawl match? Is it purely the heightened violence and blood, or is it something else?

I've just finished listening to both episodes. What an epic, as podcasts go, it's the equivalent of Flair vs Steamboat or Misawa vs Kobashi! I only discovered these podcasts a few months back but I am so glad I did. It is so refreshing to hear other people voice the way I feel about wrestling. As far as the lists go, there's not a lot to argue with and it was fascinating seeing the areas of symmetry within the lists as well as the areas of complete disparity. Personally I'm probably somewhere closer to Parv than Chad. Like Parv, I don't really 100% 'get' lucha (though I have tried). I've also never really gotten very far watching Joshi either. Whenever I've given it a try I feel a little uncomfortable. I think it's the very real sounding screams! I have to agree with Chad about the love for the 90s AJPW style though, and that speech he gave at the end about wrestlings place in his life really struck a chord. Well done both guys! I'm now really looking forward to the Beach Blast show to hear what you both have to say about Rude vs Steamboat. It's an all time favourite of mine and it was great to hear it get the recognition it deserves on Parv's list.

I can't find it on YouTube, but Stan Hansen's squash of Tsuyoshi Kikuchi from early 1992 is a really fun few minutes. Nobody took a kicking like Kikuchi in the early 90s, and nobody gave one out like Hansen. the boston crab in particular looks awesome, like Hansen is genuinely trying to bend Kikuchi in half.

Hi everyone. My name is Fraser, I'm 33 and I'm from Scotland. My earliest memories of wrestling are from the mid 1980s when I would watch the dying days of British wrestling on ITV with my dad and grandad on Saturday afternoons. When WCW started showing on British television around midnight in the second half of 1989, my parents must have noticed and recorded some episodes for me. It was upon seeing these that my utter fascination with professional wrestling begun. As a seven-year-old, it was the almost inhumanly massive individuals that caught my eyes the most. I have distinct memories of squash matches featuring Doom and Sid Vicous, and to that end, I'm not sure if it's nostalgia or what, but I would still rate Sid's squash of Lee Scott as one of my favourite matches of all time. While my school friends rode the WWF wave of popularity in the early 90s, i remained a firm WCW guy. As I grew older, I got to appreciate the wrestling more and more and began to gain some feeling for which matches were actually 'good'. 1992 was a fantastic year for WCW for me to be coming of age in this regard, with Rick Rude, Ricky Steamboat, Sting, Vader, The Steiners, Barry Windham and others having standout performances on TV that year, as well as on the PPVs which I collected on VHS tape. It was through Parv and Chad's reviews of the early 1992 PPVs that I found Pro Wrestling Only, and would like to applaud Parv in particular for giving the Rude vs Steamboat matches from Superbrawl and Beach Blast the credit they deserve. The Beach Blast match in particular remains one of the best worked matches I've ever seen (my only criticism being that in making it a non-title match, they telegraphed the final result). I remained loyal to WCW until its coverage on British TV started to become patchy (I had to watch on the German channel DSF), which conincided with Hulk Hogan's arrival in 1994. Thankfully around this time (actually just before Wrestlemania 10), my parents had Sky Television installed. This allowed me to get into the WWF, and became a huge fan of both Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels throughout the remainder of the 1990s. Through magazines like PowerSlam, I also became familar with other avenues of wrestling such as ECW and the Japanese scene, although I didn't see much of either until I got a decent internet connection in the second half of the 2000s! My wrestling fan-dom took a dip in 2000 when I went off to university. I kept up with key happenings via the internet, but asside from a spell over the summer when I was at home, I didn't actually watch a lot of wrestling for that four-year-period. My dad also decided to stop giving Rupert Murdoch his money around this time too, so I no longer had access to the bulk of the WWF programming on Sky. After graduation, I've remained a fan, but have struggled to get into following the current product as much. I read results and make an effort to watch important events or if I hear about an especially must-see match. In the main, however, I now spend most of my wrestling time (I don't get much of it with a job, a wife and a baby boy!) watching historical stuff. I'm trying to get through the main matches of 1990s AJPW (the Pro Wrestling Excite podcast has helped add context to this - so thanks a lot guys) as well as 1980s Crockett. I'm also re-watching as much of the 90s WCW shows as I can along with Where the Big Boys Play and the odd bit of this and that too. I'm glad to have found PWO - this seems to be the place that covers my interests in wrestling pretty well and can't believe it has taken me so long to have found it. I'm also looking forward to getting involved in the discussion throughout the board.

This really was tremendous. I really loved how frantic Kawada was getting as the time limit came close. It's particularly obvious when he does the back elbow off the ropes that he's wasting no time. The idea that they've gone at it for the 30 minutes and neither have come out on top therefor earning each other's respect is really put across brilliantly by their body language too. Has the full version ever surfaced? I like this match a lot but am cautious about rating it too highly without seeing the whole thing.

Mysterio has had a tremendous career. He's the most globally recognisable Lucha wrestler on the planet and he has a portfolio of matches worth watching with a huge variety of opponents. For me though, he simply cannot compete with the rock-solid consistency of Liger for the past three decades.

When I first saw this (when it aired free on Raw a couple of weeks later) I thought it was a fair bit better than the Summerslam match. In retrospect though, I think it was the blood which coloured (so to speak) my judgement at the time. This really is a cracking match all the same. There are some amazing spots (I've no idea how Bret took that crotching from the height he did, and Davey Boy's mad flip bump in the corner), awesome visuals (The blood splattering in the power slam spot) and the story of them being very familiar rivals and partners, all woven into a smoothly and cleverly executed wrestling match.