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It was more like if someone asked Dave what he thought was a 5 star American match, he listed a Steamboat/Flair match, and then someone flew off the handle thinking Dave was declaring it the ONLY 5 star American match. Dave would never answer like that, he would say there is too many to list or just ignore the question. Looks like he did answer that way

Saw him team with Shinsuke vs Roode and Patrick Clark tonight. Thought he looked good and at least is not wearing that tight shirt he wore in the Roode title match that airs this week. I don't want to spoil it but that match was disappointing. Every Roode match is going to be disappointing. For some reason NXT picking him up and having a meme song suddenly made people think he's this 5 star talent instead of a baseline average TV match worker. Maybe 4-5 years ago he could be great with the right opponent, but he's basically the Terry Taylor of his generation if TT got taken seriously in WWE/WCW. A very solid, dependable worker, but not someone you should be expecting great matches from.

It was more like if someone asked Dave what he thought was a 5 star American match, he listed a Steamboat/Flair match, and then someone flew off the handle thinking Dave was declaring it the ONLY 5 star American match.

I assume it is kind of like video game or movie nerds who spaz when their thing gets under 90% on whatever scale it's being rated on, because obviously critical response validates what you like. You've currently got thousands of video game fans sending angry tweets and emails to some critic that made the score of a game get down to 89%, because obviously he was WRONG and what he's doing is HARMING the game, and therefore, the player/viewer personally. So really, DM not rating lucha matches high enough is a direct attack on lucha fans.

Well, he wasn't asked what is every 5 star lucha match, was he? Seems like a fundamental misreading of what he said. When you say you would debate his opinion, that implies that one of you is right and one is wrong on a subjective enjoyment of something. If he doesn't think it is 5 stars, you arguing with him that it is probably isn't going to sway him. Unless you meant discuss it with him, which I kind of don't think you did. But get at him on Twitter or the WO boards. He's usually pretty good at engaging with people asking him reasonable questions. Maybe you'll get an answer as to why he doesn't rate lucha matches as high as stuff from Japan.

It can be interrupted that way. Would anyone ask dave " in japanese wrestling, which match do you consider a five stars?"? If they did, would his response be 6/3/94 and that's it? Somehow I doubt it. Actually, probably. Or Omega/Okada. He probably said the first match that game to his head as a benchmark. Tweet him and see.

The takeway is either lucha is the problem, or DM should lie about how much he likes lucha matches so more of his readers will care about lucha.

The actual crowd responses to that emotional promo that basically sounded like Beefcake was on the verge of suicide:

You see a lot of guys looking like this walking around: Because I go to the gym 4-5 days a week and have never seen someone built like Austin from 1991-2003. Austin in 1998 especially was fucking huge. He certainly was nothing close to normal or relatable physically.

Latest Impact is a HILARIOUS train wreck. So much so that I actually watched and reviewed it, which I haven't done for an episode of Impact I think since Sting's last TNA match. https://legitshook.squarespace.com/strobogos-wrasslin-potpourri-reviews/2017/3/9/impact-wrestling-3917 Intro of only spotlighting former talent, and only actually calling out Piper/Hogan/Dusty/Flair/Sting/Nash by name, followed by brawling tag team partners, right into a worked shoot with announcers (all of whom are former WCW/WWE talent) shitting on the last few years of show and previous management. Of all the segments on a 2 hour show, all of 2 didn't include someone that wasn't formerly WWE talent, be it main roster or NXT. There were CONSTANT references to WWE, Josh Matthews calling out the crowd as being papered, Dutch Mantell starting his promo saying he couldn't be Zeb anymore and ending it with WE THE PEOPLE after naming off all the former great TNA talent they've lost over the years, and Brother Love plugging his podcast while saying that TNA was NEVER great even at it's absolute best, which was many years ago. Then the main event features an ex-WWE talent against an ex-WWE talent for the title, reffed by an ex-WWE talent, called by two ex-WWE talent and an ex-WCW talent, while another ex-WWE talent watches, and 2 ref bumps and a dirty finish by a face. Because NEW ERA, and all. I have to give it to them, it was an entertaining mess, at least. It reminded me so much of the WCW reboot that I have a hard time believing Vince Russo wasn't involved in some way.

I don't think you saw guys looking like Austin out on the street. Dude was huge. I don't think he was nor was the point of his character being relatable. Austin was a character you could live vicariously through because he was doing things you wanted to do but never could. You couldn't be as jacked as him, you couldn't flip everyone off, you couldn't beat everyone's ass, and you couldn't fuck with your boss constantly. With Punk, he did look like an average schlub on the street in a hoodie, and if he could do it, then maybe you could, too, but that was never really part of his character. The majority of his career was as a character that was explicitly not relatable and thought he was better than you. Punk and Austin both were constantly decked in WWE merchandise.

You're paying for the privilege of seeing Bubba Ray Dudley in 2017, though.

New Day have done the skeet skeet thing in the past, but in general they get a lot of stuff past the radar I assume because the 50-70 year old white guys in charge of the show have no idea what the fuck they're talking about most of the time. They've made references to dildos and Kanye West apparently liking women to put things in his ass. New Day have basically had free reign since Summerslam 2015 and have taken advantage of it frequently.

Well, claiming 3 hours of Raw is Steph brow beating talent is an absurd exaggeration. Times are different. Austin vs McMahon tapped into something in the zeitgeist that isn't around anymore. The economy of 1998 and 2017 are so different (not even taking into consideration the wrestling industry specifically) that of course talent aren't going to get in their boss' ass. To me the issue is less that Steph never shows her ass or gets beaten up and more that the formula is so old and tired that even if she was getting embarrassed on the reg like Vince did, it'd still be so god damn old hat. The authority figure as a rule has been dated for well over a decade at this point, but this hasn't stopped WWE/TNA/LU/ROH from sticking with it anyway. I don't think WWE knows how to book SD/Raw without them anymore, and since the rest of the industry follows in WWE's wake (in America), even random local indies will have a GM figure to book the show in front of the audience. Shit is unseemly. But Dana White pushing himself as just as big of a star as any of the fighters to the point where he's going to end up with $400M from the WME buyout is just as gross and as dumb as what Steph/HHH do. Actually worse, since there is never a chance that Dana is going to get a beat down. So when he genuinely shits on fighters because he isn't getting along with them at the moment, he's intentionally trying to damage their careers legitimately just because he's in the position to do so.

Dying at this 10/18/93 Raw that starts with this: is followed with this Which is followed by the first Double J vignette that sees Jeff complaining about country music politics at the country music hall of fame while flubbing multiple lines and at one point a plane flies overhead and nearly drowns him out. And this is in a pre-taped promo that easily could have been reshot, which leads me to believe this was actually the best take they got out of Jeff. And THAT is followed by Randy Savage having this to say about Hulk Hogan: "I think Hogan's a prima-dona, a backstabber, and he's a liar, and he thinks he's the messiah walking around the face of the earth and there's only one power, and that's up above, brother, and that's the way that it is."

Well, one is not real, and the other is mostly real. The only fight that matters in MMA is the last fight you had. A promo that shits on a guy hard enough in wrestling can ruin the rest of their career. MMA is inherently more about macho bravado, but guys who talk mad shit and then lose tend to lose face with the audience until their next fight, and shit talkers who routinely lose turn into jokes with the audience the same way that a guy who constantly gets shit on and then loses does in wrestling. In the specific case of HHH/Steph, it's really confusing from a character standpoint that they would go out of their way to make their talent look bad in front of paying audiences on a weekly basis. MMA fans shit on Dana White all the time for him getting a bug up his ass and shitting on fighters he has a personal issue with.

That GSP/Bisping conference was hilarious. GSP is like "Oooh, maybe you should sleep since you drank last night" and "I will going to kick yer butt" And Bisping just calls him a fucking lizard.

It sure looks to me that Charlotte was in place when Bayley went to jump, but Bayley got no spring at all on her jump and had to do it again. Then Charlotte tried to sit up to get out of the tree of woe, but Bayley came back in and missed as Charlotte was trying to get back into position. Regardless, even if Charlotte had been in perfect position, Bayley would have missed completely because she jumped from too far away.

No one but Cena impacts live events, not even Brock, so I don't see what that has to do with turning him or not. Why would turning him heel make people go to see him at house shows, which typically skew much more towards families and kids than TV? Those are the people that like Roman. If you turn him, why would anyone expect those houses to go up with him headlining?

What's best creatively and what's best financially don't always intersect. Roman is the 3rd biggest merch mover in the company. A significant section of the audience had made up their minds they will never like him. Why would you turn him heel and risk alienating the section of the audience that does love him (kids) to hope that the section that doesn't like him really do like him deep down and are just waiting for him to turn so they can run out and buy gauntlets and vests and dog tags and shirts and etc etc? They have a formula that works. It worked with Cena and it works with Roman. Roman can be the underdog face against a guy like Strowman, or he can be the cocky douche against guys like AJ. Is he more suited to be a heel? Maybe. I think he's best suited to be a more of a Goldberg type ass kicker of few words, but he's very good at bumping and selling. Would it creatively be interesting if he went full heel? Maybe. Is it worth the financial risk of possibly poisoning the well of Roman's fanbase for another section of the fanbase that claims to vehemently hate him? Probably not.

WWE doesn't do THE TOP GUY or the top babyface anymore. That dynamic is gone. What WWE does for main events now is a number of mostly interchangeable guys at the top who rotate out every couple of months. WWE isn't trying to get audiences to 100% cheer Roman, just like they don't try to get audiences to 100% cheer John Cena. The dynamic keeps the crowds engaged and, get this, having fun yelling shit at shows. You see a dad booing Roman/Cena and his son cheering Roman/Cena and they're having fun with each other. The paradigm has changed and for some reason it's the smartest of fans that can't figure it out. This also goes the other way, as guys like AJ and Bray Wyatt have huge followings that are acknowledged and encouraged every week. AJ can't get sustained heel heat to save his life, but no one is claiming he's terribly booked or is doing a bad job. Essentially, the main event of current WWE is presented as tweeners of varying degrees, with crowd reaction changing based on which two guys are paired up. Yes, they are nominally heels and faces, but come match time, people are going to cheer and boo who they like more than what booking tells them to do. WWE recognizes this and has played with it for years. It's the guys that go to shows by themselves and try to tell kid's their favorite dude actually sucks and is booked terribly that take all the fun out of it.

According to Hero himself he was let go because after some nagging injuries, he kind of lost his way as a performer and didn't have enough/any allies in the office to convince people to give him more time to get back to where he was. He said they had asked him to tighten up his physique at one point, but that was months before they cut him, and he got in the best shape he probably possibly could by the end of the run. At the time of his release, he said that it had nothing to do with his weight and the door was left open for a return down the road.

Lol. They were chanting holy shit because Undertaker showed up unannounced. They were booing Roman as a heel in the angle, not the idea of Roman vs Taker. If you watched that segment and thought it was the fans rejecting the idea of Roman having a match with Taker, WWE might have passed you by. Holy shit chants had absolutely nothing to do with Braun in that segment. Anyone that thinks Taker/Roman hasn't been intentionally set for Roman to get booed since the Rumble is blinded by Roman hatred from two years ago. You were supposed to boo when Roman eliminated Taker. You were supposed to boo when Roman talked about his yard for the past month. You were supposed to boo when he got in Taker's face. And you were supposed to cheer when Taker chokeslammed him. All the reactions the crowds have given. Right before Roman came out, they had the monster heel on Raw come out and say the local Chicago crowd hates him, which obviously was going to get pops for Braun and extra boos for Roman. This is so basic that anyone that posts on a wrestling message board not seeing it is bordering on inconceivable in 2017.

It does. As does Raven/Benoit/DDP. Kidman vs Rey vs Juvi was also a great triple threat. The pinnacle in WWE to me is still probably Benoit/HBK/HHH at WM 20, which seems to have set the template for all WWE triple threats ever since.