joeg

So Steve Austin recently said on his podcast that Ricochet was the most athletic, most explosive worker he had ever seen in the ring. It must be true because Stone Cold said so! Right? Anyways since I heard that about a week ago I've been trying to come up with somebody and I've yet to come up with somebody who is positively more athletic than Ricochet. Surely shooters like Lesnar and Angle were more FAR more explosive, but they weren't near as acrobatic as Ricochet. I don't think I've seen anybody jump the RVD could, but at times it seemed he lacked coordination and therefor wasn't always the most graceful. Thoughts?

I hated everything about this match. It was 30 minutes of two guys doing cool moves without any real story. They worked the match as if Scurll was on the same level as Okada which boggles my mind and completely took me out of it. The match was just completely illogical and made no sense. Anyways, the only match on the show I didn't like everything else was 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 stars.

The thing about Reigns though is fans turned on Reigns within two months after he got a main event push. Fans turning on Hogan in the mid 90s, or Bret in 96, or Rock in 2003, or Cena in 2011, that came after they had spent years on top, had gotten stale or were on their way out, and is to be expected. A guy has a good showing at the Royal Rumble in 2014, turns face in fall 2014 and is instantly one of the hottest babyfaces and by Royal Rumble 2015 is being booed out of the building. Something is wrong there.

Great worker. Probably one of the 3 or 4 best workers in WWE right now. He can work from on top, he can fight back from underneath and gather sympathy, he's got legit elite athleticism which he translates to the ring, he's got a great look and the sort of size you want from your top guy. With that said, I don't think I've ever seen a top babyface booked as poorly as Reigns ever. I mean ever, in any promotion. He started his title chase without ever really having a proper face turn, and in the middle of Daniel Bryan's feel good first comeback. There was no way the fan's were ever getting behind that. Then he lost to Brock which in an ordinary title chase would unite the fans behind the babyface but by this time the fans just didn't give a fuck. Then they reunited the Shield which was a heel group previous but now was a babyface group for reasons which were unexplained. Then he gets pushed down the card for reasons. Then they split up the Shield reunion which never worked (maybe because they pushed them down the card?) Then he gets pushed back in the main event. Then he wins the title. Then the fans start shitting on him again. Then he loses it a month later in the Royal Rumble for reasons. Then he loses to Lesnar again. Then he finally won the title from HHH, and loses the title a month later. Then he beats the shit out of the Undertaker which makes him look like a total asshole. Then he loses to Lesnar three more times before beating him. Then another Shield reunion for reunion. Part of me thinks their goal with his booking is some sort of meta thing where they are actually trying to get heat on Reigns, but in a nonconvential way so that the fans don't realize that they are really pushing him as the top heel for the next decade. The only two answers are they know exactly what they are doing and are aiming for him being the biggest heel ever or they don't know what they are doing.

Bingo. Completely forgot about his PPV run in the Summer of 09. So I guess it could be argued that for 4 months or so he was in that top babyface spot feuding with Edge and Punk.

I don't even understand how somebody can say Hardy was a bigger star. WWE might have been a bigger pond in 08-09 when Hardy was towards the top of the card then the 9 months Bryan was on top, but Bryan was actually the top guy in the company for those 9 months. He was the top babyface. He main evented Summerslam and Wrestlemania and a half dozen other PPVs in that span. For Hardy's run on top, he only main evented Armageddon if I remember correctly. I think a closer comparison would be Hardy to Punk.

I would say Fire Pro D, Fire Pro Returns, and Showdown Legends of Wrestling as the most extensive rosters on a wrestling game I can think of.

@Beast I could never blame a guy for making a years salary in one evening.

Anybody from the DC area want to organize a road trip up to New York for Park vs PCO?

There are so many things wrong with this I can't begin. First from a child development perspective, more and more coaches and professionals are saying it is not safe to have children involved in full contact sports until 7th or 8th grade at the earliest, maybe even 9th grade. Second having her trained by somebody like Chasyn Rance or whatever that creeps name is might be tantamount to child endangerment or neglect. As somebody who works in the public school system and has coached youth and high school sports I find this whole situation very, very disturbing. I'm not even going to go into what a terrible idea it is to promote a grown man harming a little girl as a form of entertainment. It makes some of the bullshit ECW used to do seem like wholesome fun.

The answer to your question is no there aren't many great big men around these days if people are throwing out guys who are the size of an offensive lineman in 2A high school football. Cobb is built a lot like Taz, that doesn't really make him a big man. Walter (6'5" 310), Keith Lee (6'3" 325), Lesnar (6'3" 295) and Strowman (6'8" 385) are really the only guys I can think of who have that super heavyweight/ NFL lineman type size and I think are good. There are other big dudes who I think show potential like Brody King (6'4" 285), Authors of Pain (each at 6'4" and 320 or so), Cody Hall (6'9" 275) and Moose (6'5" 310), but I wouldn't consider any of those guys a finished product

I think if were to do the GWE again I'd have Park as my top luchador. So that would put him at like #7 or #8. I had him as my like 10th luchador at like #92.

@ paul http://gweproject.freeforums.net/

Depends.... what year? I really enjoyed their Wednesday show. I feel like it an ok wrestling show from 2004 until about 2006, then a not so good show in 2007, then unwatchable for about a decade until recently. But those first 3 years or so where it was basically an NWA weekly show and featured a lot of ROH guys and had a main event scene revolving around AJ Styles, Ken Shamrock, Raven, R Truth, and Jarrett. I thought that was a fun promotion.

The whole show felt like driving by the scene of a car crash. And I mean that in a good XPW sort of way not in a 2000 WCW sort of way. The show was a clusterfuck full of missed cues, late starts, and technical problems. The English commentary was so bad that it was actually kind of enjoyable to listen to those two and there a complete lack of professionalism. What could be more unprofessional than two commentators constantly trying to get themselves over? How about a commentator that won't stay seated and actually do commentary. None of the matches were must see, but all of them were fun and had at least one or two spots where somebody seriously risked their long term health. The ladder match was a blast with a lot of dangerous, clever spots I'd never seen before. The main event was straight up AAA nuttiness. And that 6 man was the worlds greatest dumpster fire.

Right now I watch NXT every week, I'm working my way through this years G1, mostly cherry picking my way through. And I usually watch the CMLL friday night show or at least parts of it. I'll also watch anything that gets really hyped around here. I also an slowly working my way through the nominees at the Greatest Match Ever project that I haven't seen.

The stream is glitchy as fuck in both English and Spanish and its not just you its everywhere. Main card starting over a half hour late and having a broken steam is the most AAA thing AAA could do.

I don't think its too much to say a journalist shouldn't awkwardly publicly comment about a woman's fake breasts, her weight or her attractiveness (whichever weird point Meltzer was cryptically trying to make). In the scheme of things you are right its not criminal like many of the things that have on in wrestling, its just weird and inappropriate.

I honestly think the guy may be on the spectrum. He never seems to say anything bad or malicious, but he constantly says awkward things in a public forum that really should really only be said in private if at all.

Odds of a title change at the MSG show?

I'd say that I'd have NXT's weekly TV show right now in my top 5 weekly wrestling shows. I'd put NJPW on AXS and CMLL's Friday night stream in the top 10. I don't think one could argue NJPW is having its best run, 96 at the height of UWFi invasion was better. As was 83 at the height of Tiger Mask's popularity and the peak of the Choshu Fujinami feud. As while I'm not the person to ask about lucha, I'm sure CMLL at the height of Santo vs Casas in 96/97 was better than it is now. The main difference is that currently its more accessible to watch much of the great stuff from the 90s than it was in the 90s. For a large chunk of the 90s WWF and WCW were pretty dreadful. And that was all we had access to.

WWE sent out an anouncement on their app about 20 minutes ago. Any word on cause?

Just saw that on my phone after I posted.... makes it 6 deaths in as many weeks. Awful.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I feel like we are living in a golden age for wrestling fans. Thanks in large part to technology and just the way the business has gone there is more wrestling available to us as a lower price point than ever before. In a given week, I'm able to watch weekly television from WWE, NXT, NJPW, ROH, CWF, OVW, MLW, CMLL, AAA, Lucha Underground, IWRG, and Impact. We are able to follow the G1 Climax and the Rush vs Park feud in real time. That is every single week, without trading for tapes or DVDs. When I was 13 years old ECW Hardcore TV and NWA Wildside got picked up in my area, I thought I'd hit the holy grail. Back when I really got into wrestling in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was an expensive hobby that involved mailing fuzzy VHS tapes back and forth and spending a great deal of time and money to get what is now available to us for free in most cases or for $10 a month in others. Every major Japanese show back then I saw 3 to 6 months after it happened. I've talked with people a generation older than I am about being a fan in the late 70s/ early 80s. Their wrestling viewing was limited to however far the rabbit ears on their television could receive a signal. Even if you aren't a fan of the modern style, it is easier now to watch wrestling from the 70s and 80s than it was back in the 70s and 80s. Anyways thats my soapbox for the day.