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what was the gimmick for the tag match from no mercy 2002 Being the 4th wheel in a match where the other 3 were 3 of the best in the world.

Which is extra lol since heel isn't even an original wrestling term anyway and it means the same thing in every thing else.

Is it? It's arguably more cynical that they'd only buy that angle for a guy with indie cred.

I'm pretty positive they wouldn't buy into that angle if it was a random PC guy.

As I watched the interesting looking matches from the first 7 days, I literally made a list of all the common spots that were used in almost every match. Kushida/Ospreay literally checked off every box, almost in spot by spot order. Sure, they were physically impressive most of the time, but by the time of the finals, I had already seen 15 apron bumps, every kind of dive, all types of flippy cartwheeling counters and stand offs, GTS style strikes, super finishers, move theft, finisher kick outs, guys second to last moves being far more brutal looking than their actual finisher, chained finishers, etc etc. It's interesting to me that you'd see them as not just checking off a to do list whereas I made an actual to do list 7 shows prior that they actually checked off everything from. To me, the finals was just the basic match that almost everyone had done in the whole tournament, multiple times, just turned up a notch or two. They brought nothing new for themselves or the tournament, and Gedo has ran this angle of a guy losing matches, then winning a tournament/getting a new finisher and beating the guy he couldn't beat I believe 4 times in the past 5 years. Twice with Okada. Never mind that it's 2017 and Tiger Mask vs Dynamite kid from nearly 40 years ago is still the standard basis for every junior match.

Of course. The Juniors always have only 2-3 dudes half worth watching, and the rest are either dogshit or old and busted. They also all more or less work the same fucking match. At least with G1, you know you're going to get all of the top talent in NJ and they save all the shitty matches you don't want to see during the middle of the tour when all the shows are tiny and everyone is half assing to rest up.

Kurt and Alexa said she couldn't get extreme. Bayley said she wasn't there to hurt anyone. Then she hesitated and paid for it. It was inline with the story and her character.

The irony of all the people complaining about how Raw ruined Bayley's character, so they brought her back to her NXT characterization of not having that extra gear to get mean when she needs to and it costing her the match, and now people are complaining THAT ruined her. This is straight up the angle that led her to the title in NXT. It even started with her being made fun of for being a wrestling nerd, then that she wasn't mean enough to get the job done. After weeks of struggling with it, she finally got mean and beat Charlotte, Becky, and Sasha all in a row. It was only 2 years ago and people are acting like they completely forgot what made Bayley so popular in the first place. Now they're going to it and people are bitching she's being buried or made to look like an idiot. Her character IS an idiot. It always has been. She's a dumb loser who happens to be lovable and is capable of being great but often isn't because she's too nice. The match with Alexa is PERFECTLY in line with her character, the one people have been wanting since she got called up. Bayley: Dominant champion is the complete antithesis of her character. Nevermind that all the 50/50 booking complaints apparently are just bitching to bitch, because a heel won twice (clean, which is another complaint that heels always have to cheat to win) and people are mad at that, too.

DM really loves flashy shit, but I don't know how he didn't want to shoot himself after 15 shows of every match starting with 2-3 minutes of cartwheels and pose stand offs.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with Bayley consistently regressing since being called up and consistently having bad matches and fucking up her spots, as well as being completely incapable of cutting a promo.

Vince vs Roman in one night got PHILLY to chant you deserve it for Roman. The Authority figure vs wrestler hasn't worked the same since Vince/Austin because....Vince is one of a kind. So was Austin, but it was more Vince. The follow up authority figures were Steph/HHH, Eric Bischoff, Stephanie McMahon, Paul Heyman, and eventually HHH/Steph again. Vince vs Hogan and Vince vs HBK also worked, very, very well, arguably stealing the shows and build at both of their respective WMs.

The whole tournament has been completely flat, imo. Every dude has a roster of similar spots that all the match have felt interchangeable. Everyone has: Pumphandle set up, fancy cartwheel/flip out of basic mat wrestling, specific poses after every few moves, an apron move, a move into the corner, a running strike into the corner, a Canadian Destroyer variant, a seated running strike. Plus, much like the G1, everyone blows their wad in the first or second shows and then coasts until the end. Guys capable of good matches with each other are just going through the motions to get through the tour.

Marty fucking sucks. His matches against everyone have been basically the same: Bad comedy spots, doing that bird thing like an asshole, and sucking at bumping and catching dives, two things pretty necessary for a junior tournament. I have no idea what anyone sees in him. The nicest thing I can say about him is at least he cut his manbun. For all the shit Ospreay gets, at least he's athletic and impressive and looks like he works out. Scurll looks like he hits up Planet Fitness twice a week to sit on yoga mats and go tan. He's so uncoordinated and so unconvincing as an athlete.

Going in either direction, it's hard to pin the blame on Russo. It had operated at a loss for years and years and stayed on the air because Ted Turner wanted it to be and had the stroke to make it so. Even if it was turning a big profit in 2001, it would have been shut down because Ted Turner no longer had the stroke to make it so. If you want to pretend it was bad booking and money loss that caused WCW to get shut down (it wasn't, WCW would still be open if Ted Turner could still make it so), WCW was in a freefall well before Russo came in, and had a (very slight) uptick during Russo's first run before resuming its freefalling it had already been engaged in for nearly a year at that point. Corporate politics killed WCW, not Vince Russo, or any other shitty booker.

Don't air any bigoted comments if he says them during a talking head segment. Problem solved. My point was both are obnoxious, loud mouthed assholes who have very little place in wrestling today, but people didn't seem to mind the idea of Cornette being a talking head in a heavily edited segment.

They're more alike than they are different, which I'm sure is part of why Cornette hates Russo so much.

Cornette doesn't have a rep for destroying every company he touches like Vinny Ru does either. It's not just the bullshit with him, it's the bullshit plus the inability to admit (20 goddamn years later) that maybe some of his ideas were less than great, and the gross racism and misogyny that pervades everything he's involved in. Cornette as a booker: Failure in WCW in 1990, ran his own company out of business, was only successful in WWF (ironically) alongside Russo, completely killed ROH for the next 5+ years. Arguably, ROH's hype still hasn't recovered from Cornette's run, successful run in OVW on the backs of having 4 surefire superstar talents that barely spent much time with him before getting called up. I'd say Russo and Cornette are basically two sides of the same boisterous, annoying coin. Russo had nothing to do with WCW getting shuttered, TNA is still alive, and WWE is still alive. Yet Cornette's promotion couldn't last more than a few years.

Marty Scurll is fucking dog shit. For all the heat Ospreay gets for his dumb flippy shit, at least he's athletic, looks in shape, can bump, and can catch people on dives.

Cornette spouts as much bullshit as Russo and no one seemed to bristle at the idea of having him record talking head stuff.

WWE's Youtube enforcement is completely and utterly random. If something gets popped or a whole channel goes down, it's just the luck of the draw.

I didn't say there have been examples, but I believe it SHOULD be that way. If I were booking a promotion, I'd work my hardest to make the title more important than the individual wrestlers holding it, so the title can make someone if need be.

If the wrestler makes the title, then you might as well not have a title. The reality is that it's a mixture of both, but to me the title meaning you're legit should be how it works as opposed to you're legit and then make the title mean something. You can't make jobbers win the title on a regular basis, but in a perfect world it would make their career if you spend years making the title important regardless of who is holding it. I've never liked the idea that the title is important because important people have it, because it makes the possibilities of who can even sniff the title very low, which is why you have no surprise Rumble winners for the past 15 years. The title has to be important on its own regardless of who holds it, but obviously the person holding it can make it more important. I don't think it should be the wrestler inherently giving the title value.

I disagree completely. The title makes the wrestler. If a lower ranked guy can win the top title, he should be treated as a top talent. If the wrestler makes the title, then the title is inherently meaningless.

In his first week, Jinder was more interesting as champion than anything done with Orton/Bray for the past 4 months, or the entirety of Kevin Owens' reign.

Also the video quality is not very good. Even currently shot things are not uploaded in full HD.