Kadaveri

I can't see which 5 wrestlers arguably had a better year in 2015 than Sasha Banks. Totally knocked it out of the park literally every time she was put in a position to have a great match and had surely the most historically important run of the decade? There's no Ronda Rousey in WWE without Bayley vs. Sasha at Brooklyn.

Meiko's a little bit more than just a work candidate. Even if it's a way smaller pond than it was in previous eras, she's still possibly the biggest draw in Joshi from the last 20 years. Stardom would always do a big number whenever they brought Meiko in for a big show, I just looked at Cagematch and she's wrestled in Europe 31 times the last two years, historically remarkable for a Joshi worker to build up a foreign fanbase like she has. Plus she's trained quite a lot of wrestlers now.

This is the best match I've seen from either two this year. Takumi focuses all her offence on Nanae's neck in the first 10 minutes where she surprisingly dominates the match. Much stronger psychology than I'm used to in Joshi matches. Nanae gets a good fightback just before the halfway point. There is an unfortunate moment in the match where Nanae gets Takumi in the corner, stops selling anything and does her usual posing and chops like she's beating up some rookie. Didn't fit the context at all. But it's over within 30 seconds so only a minor complaint. Still I much prefered Takumi's performance here, she gets the level of selling just right pretty much the whole match. The best moment in the match has to be where Nanae's putting up this stubborn fightback with a strike exchange that isn't really working but she's so proud to just stay down, so Takumi absolutely clobbers her with a Misawa-style elbow. Oh my God. Takumi then hits Nanae with a running three (the finishing move Chigusa Nagayo passed onto her) where Nanae brutally lands on her already hurt neck, and she wins the title. ****1/4 MOTYC for Joshi.

Dave Meltzer is gonna get hassled for ages for reporting Vince never wants Luke Harper on TV again literally the day before he returned in a main-event angle. Becky vs. Sasha turned into a great brawl after an awkward first few minutes. Loved Becky chasing Sasha through the concession stands shooting mustard at her, and the crowd was so into it! Really looking forward to their next match (assume it's Hell In A Cell).

Interesting you said this as Meltzer reported in the Observer today that Bayley's promo was "the old bullet points style and going for it" rather than scripted word-for-word like usual.

I watched the Sasha promo. It's a good microcosm for why I cannot get into WWE nowadays. They had months to write a compelling angle for her coming back, and we get the same stale promo in the same cadence as every other WWE heel with the weird slow-talking, worked-shoot stylings and nonsensical character motivations. Didn't advance any storyline and everyone knows she didn't believe anything she said she's just reciting from a script anyway, so even the 'character' stuff doesn't achieve anything. Urgh.

Kofi is over as a babyface and has never been a good heel though. How about, it was Big E who did it acting alone. This creates tension in the New Day as we learn Big E has been secretly using 'off the books' methods to protect Kofi's spot, but his intentions were good, maybe?

Don't think this was a big deal. Triple H's biggest leap forward was when he got paired with Stephanie. She was a total heat magnet, and eventually it rubbed off onto him.

Nah Big Show beat Brock once at Survivor Series 2002, Brock won all the other matches. Kurt also beat Brock at Summerslam 2003 but lost at Wrestlemania and the iron match match on Smackdown afterwards. But if you want to be really technical, Kurt has two pinfall wins over Brock actually because he once beat him in Inoki's promotion. So there you go

I'm pretty sure it's just Seth and Goldberg who've pinned Brock more than once.

Man. Imagine if Trish was given the chance to have matches like this in 2003-06 rather than have her second match to go longer than 10 minutes be in 2019 (and the other one was against Lita).

It's alarming to me how totally dead this crowd is to anything that isn't someone hitting their finisher.

I need to know how that video has hacked YouTube's algorithm. I even had a friend who doesn't even watch wrestling say they saw that video.

You people are so silly. This match is great and one of my favourites from this era of the WWF. I can see it doesn't get as over with the live crowd as it did with me at home in 2019, but whatever I was loving it. I guess the style was not what they were expecting. It's slow to start and Austin fought from underneath way more than usual, but that's fine, he's up against The Undertaker who "outweights him about 70 pounds" according to JR and is way taller. I popped for Austin doing that drop toehold on Taker. He's trying to avoid getting into a strikefest with Taker if he can help it and take away that leverage advantage. See how for example when they get into an arm-tanking battle Austin seems to hurt Taker a little bit with it, whereas Taker is able to knock Austin to the ground almost with each yank. The size/strength disparity is constantly apparent. Taker really controls the vast majority of the match after that opening segment. Austin only really gets significant offence in after Taker makes an error. For example he goes for Old School too early and Austin hurls him back into the ring like a slam. That moment near the beginning of the match ends up being significant as the finish is Taker going for that move again, like it's a pride thing that he can't let Austin get away with not taking it, but in his hubris he just repeats the mistake and this time Austin manages to hit him on the way down and then takes him out with a Stunner. Boom. Austin's comebacks in this are so good in that they barely ever work. This isn't the usual WWF match where they just go back and forth exchanging who's on offence. Austin's been taking such a beating that even when he manages to hit Taker back he's not capable of capitalising and turning the tide, he's just weathering the storm. See for example when he's in the corner and boots Taker in the head to counter his charging attack, but then just falls back into the corner unable to get up in the meanwhile Taker gathers himself and goes back on offence again. Lots of little moments like this. Austin truly had to fight for and really EARNED that comeback by the end. I was cheering "COME ON AUSTIN!" by the final minutes as I watched him finally managing to get together a string of moves. And yeah that leg drop off the top turnrope to the announce table was awesome. Surprised that spot isn't more famous, how many times have we seen a guy Taker's size pull off something like that? ****1/4

What a lovely match this is. The pace and intensity at which the run the ropes is astounding to me, it just looks so forceful even if this isn't meant to be a particularly violent match it still makes more modern stuff look soft in comparison. Also what a spectacular bump out of the ring this is. ****1/4

Of course Bryan's WWE run is part of his GWE case. He's had some of his greatest ever matches there and became the most universally over babyface since Steve Austin with not even half the booking advantages. It's only fair to rank Bryan higher for succeeding/adapting where Hero stagnated.

WWE doesn't cover the expenses either, wrestlers just pay for their travel costs out of their salaries. It's pretty standard in TV for the company to cover the travel of their stars. Bayley was interviewed on Fox recently and the host was astonished to find out that she has to cover her own travel between shows

Other than "they came after" what evidence is there that Richards/Rollins are offshoots of Bryan like the Pillars were of Jumbo? Rollins always talks about Shawn Michaels being his influence, never heard him ever mention Bryan like that. Plus at least the Pillars are a logical sequel to Jumbo, whereas Bryan's "successors" really don't have the same style as his at all. Richards and Rollins are all about athleticism and workrate above everything else, something that was already becoming a trend independently of anything Bryan was doing. Bryan's not even a particularly great athlete, his greatness comes from his psychology and phenomenal ability to structure matches, something Richards/Rollins are both useless at. When have you ever seen them do a 4 minute waistlock segment like Bryan did at Mania this year and get super heat out of it?

Anyway I voted Flair > Hart. I love Bret but come on. Flair was great in Jim Crockett, Mid-South, WCW, WWF, Japan etc... over at least a decade (probably closer to 15 years of being one of the best wrestlers in the world). Bret was great for about 5 years in WWF and didn't really succeed anywhere else. Kawada > Okada. Both have a lot of great matches but Kawada's are better, but he also has so much more personality and I feel adds more to making them memorable on a personal level. Kobashi > Misawa. This is extremely close, maybe should have voted 'draw'. I went for Kobashi because he just has that extra bit of adaptability and is more charismatic/likeable to me personally. Danielson > Tsuruta. They've both had amazing, lengthy careers and succeeded in a variety of roles. Bryan wins this though for being a lot more consistent, and he was also legitimately great imo already by 2001. Jumbo has a lot of years early in his career where although he's being very strongly pushed, he's clearly not at the level of his top opponents. Taue > Tanahashi. Tanahashi has a big flaw to me in that his offence just isn't good at all, and that's especially a problem when you're the Ace of a "strong style" promotion where everyone else looks like they're murdering each other. I have to fault him for it even I think he's at least very good at everything else.Taue doesn't have a big flaw like that (his offence is awesome) so he wins this.

To give you a rounded view of Bryan: 1. Bryan Danielson vs. Low Ki - RoH Round Robin Challenge 03/30/02. The Bryan vs. Low Ki series was very influential on the burgeoning US indie scene. Everyone wanted to wrestle like this. 2. Bryan Danielson vs. KENTA - RoH Glory By Honor 06/09/06. For some of Bryan's best technical limbwork. 3. Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness - RoH Unified 08/12/06. Another very influential feud, but here in a bloody fight for supremacy with his top rival. 4. Bryan Danielson vs. Homicide - RoH Final Battle 12/23/06. Bryan in the NWA heel champ role. 5. Bryan Danielson vs. Takeshi Morishima - RoH Manhattan Mayhem 08/25/07. Babyface Underdog Bryan vs. Monster Heel. 6. Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus - WWE Extreme Rules 04/29/12. 2/3 Falls match, Bryan's first classic in WWE I think. 7. Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena - WWE Summerslam 08/18/13. One of the best babyface challenges The Ace matches ever, I'd say the best WWE has ever pulled off this format. Worth watching their promo segment on Miz TV on the Raw before to really get it. 8. Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H - WWE Wrestlemania 04/06/14. Daniel Bryan managed to have an epic match with Triple H in 2014 that was actually a legit epic classic and felt shorter than what it was. 9. Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns - WWE Fastlane 02/22/15. Excellent technical wrestler vs. powerhouse match. 10. Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston - WWE Wrestlemania 04/07/19. This year Bryan has finally got to work as a main event heel in WWE, and what do you know he's amazing at that too.

My favourite thing is he thought this clip was real.

Yeah was just gonna say that about the lack of blood. It spoils immersion a bit that these huge strong guys are brawling all over the place and not a drop of blood is spilt. Still, this was a great match. My favourite moments were Braun getting speared into the announce table, which doesn't break, so Bobby just tips the table on top of him. Then soon after Bobby runs at the barricade and attempts to jump and leap off it, but loses his footing so Braun catches him and throws him across the floor. I'm not sure if these were planned or fantastic improvisations from botches, but either way they felt an authentic part of the chaos. Braun breaking through that wall to emerge victorious was badass. ****

So I got round to seeing that guy and making some subtitles for 1993-94 Joshi. I've uploaded the result here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5K9W_SQvmc 00:00 - Pre-Match interviews for Aja Kong & Bull Nakano vs. Eagle Sawai & Harley Saito - Dreamslam 1 04/02/93 01:55 - Pre-Match interviews for Akira Hokuto vs. Shinobu Kandori - Dreamslam 1 03:19 - Akira Hokuto's in-match promo - Dreamslam 1 03:36 - Akira Hokuto's post-match promo & interview -Dreamslam 1 05:37 - Pre-Match interviews for Aja Kong vs. Yumiko Hotta - 01/24/94 07:26 - Post-Match promos between Aja Kong & Akira Hokuto - 01/24/94 09:43 - Post-Match promo & interview from Bull Nakano from Bull Nakano vs. Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 07/14/94 11:55 - Pre-Match Interviews for Akira Hokuto & Shinobu Kandori vs. Aja Kong & Bull Nakano - Queendom 03/27/94 13:37 - Post-Match promos from Akira Hokuto & Shinobu Kandori vs. Aja Kong & Bull Nakano - Queendom 03/27/94

Taker also spiked Aiden English at least year's Saudi show in the same way. Seems a big coincidence for the same fuck-up to happen twice with the same wrestler but be the other guy's fault.

 Basically the story is when she was a teenager Mayu rejected a guy's advances, and the police having to get involved tells you how well he took it.