Reel

I recently finished my GWWE ballot for PTBN. I had Cena ten spots higher than Bret. I love Bret, I grew up in the middle of his WWF Champion run, in a lot of ways Bret is the idealized version of a great wrestler that I grew up on, but Cena just has so much more good stuff over a longer period of time. I love Bret's two year run from Survivor Series 95 to 97, but everything before and after that is not this stellar all-time run, most of it is just kind of good. Stack that up against Cena's decade on top working good matches with literally everybody, and there are clunkers in there and times where the booking did him no favors, but there is just so much more.

I got the first issue of the Namor book and liked it, and have the new Dr. Strange and haven't gotten to it yet, but it seems great. Also, Ram V's run on Carnage has been very good.

Faces having the advantage does build the entire match around Roman coming in last, and it should build on the 'whose side is Sami on' stuff, but they're over thinking it by not going with the traditional order.

I recently finished Dick Foreman's Black Orchid run, I think the Gaiman/McKean run of Black Orchid might be my favorite Gaiman comic series, so I took the dive, and I think the Foreman run was really underrated. Foreman never got another series, which means it was probably a dud, but I think the Black Orchid comics are really interesting and creatively done. It intersects with Swamp Thing at some point, and you can tell there's a lot of influence there, and obviously there was some idea to build out that world, and I think that maybe in an effort to be like Swamp Thing it ended up being too similar. That being said, It starts well, ends well, meanders a bit in the middle, but was otherwise very enjoyable.

I think the ship has sailed on post-induction conduct being a strike against people in the HOF.

I don't see myself ever being a Felino voter, but: a) I think his post-prime has been much better than one would expect. I thought he had a pretty good last year in the absolute vacuum of interest that was CMLL and b) if you're a 'on their best night' person, which I think is a bad way to make a list but to each their own, the cibernetico is a very high peak.

Dandy is a stock up for me. If you're watching Lucha on youtube and just let the autoplay go, you'll end up on some grainy-ass trios match, and somebody will do something awesome, and 90% of the time, its El Dandy.

I don't know if WWE wants to bring back Jericho, but I'm absolutely positive Chris Jericho wants everyone to think WWE wants him back.

A thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere, and who knows how much this affects things with this situation, but BT Sport, WWE's rights holder in the UK, sold 50% equity to Warner/Discovery and is going to be a part of the bigger Eurosport package. It could mean a lot of things, or nothing, but it seems like it could be a real complicating factor going forward.

Any plans for what's going to happen to the shows after the feed dies next year? I'd hate to see them disappear. Upload them to YouTube maybe?

So Invader 1 made a comeback this year, and I just watched him hit a tope suicida at the spry young age of 76.

I love this match. It was absurdly high on my PTBN Top 100 WWE matches ballot, but I'm a sucker for great finishing stretches. They have a very good rematch a couple of weeks later on Smackdown.

I know that everyone hates his current New Japan run, but it seems to be mostly how he is booked and what his arrival has meant to how the promotion looks. That's my read on it anyway. I don't really follow the discourse and I've only watched the tournament matches this year. Is he actually bad now? Is there anything I should check out? Is what he's doing now actively hurting his case?

He has a match with Oney Lorcan early in his NXT run that might fit this description. For me, it might be Eddie Kingston. I know everybody loves him now, but I still don't think he's ever had a truly great match that was him firing on all cylinders.

Obviously, you can rank guys however you want, but I think if you're only considering wrestlers at their very best you're gonna come up with something other than a list of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever. Rusher Kimura is a big part of one of my favorite matches of all time, I nominated him almost entirely because of it, but he mostly kinda stinks. So is he better than say, Tajiri, who has a ton of really good matches but nothing as good as the '89 old man tag? I say, no. You can think whatever you want, but I just don't see it the same way.

looking forward to your ultimate warrior vote

I'm probably not going to go back and watch any of it, but having watched it contemporaneously, I can honestly say outside of the stuff with Seth against Drew/Dolph and The Bar, and the triple threat with Brock and Roman, literally none of the stuff you mentioned stands out to me in the least. Obviously, it's all subjective and your mileage may vary, but I think him leaving WWE has made a lot of people look back on his time there more fondly than they would otherwise.

I don't think it matters if he was lazy, battling addiction, or sad because his dog ran away, he has a litany of boring to bad matches and comparatively few bright spots.

I've been slowly working my way through the Cornette Garbage Tapes, and '78-80 high-flying babyface Paul Orndorff rules, I don't think there's enough to make my top 100, but if we had more of that stuff, combined with his peak 80s stuff and his late WCW run, I think he'd have a solid case.

I'll cop to minimalizing it, but only because everyone else seems to be maximalizing it. I'm sure a ton of people have 'seen' Sasha Banks, and I'm sure a ton of people will 'see' all sorts of people in very popular things, and this doesn't have anything to do with the popularity or lack thereof, of the WWE, it has to do with simply appearing on a popular show does not make you a successful working actor.

Wait!!!! There are actors who aren't huge movie stars?????? NO. I'm sure she could parlay her success into some sort of acting gig, but you've watched Sasha Banks, you've heard her cut a promo? You watched the build to the Belair match at Mania last year, do you think that she's a good actress? Do you think that she really could make a ton of money acting? She might, I don't know, all I'm saying is let's pump the brakes on this idea that she can make a great living in Hollywood tomorrow, it's not exactly the easiest business. Ok, this is just silly. There are no background extras more famous or relevant than people who are on national network TV every week. Name one.

She had like 2 lines on the Mandalorian, this idea that she has a burgeoning Hollywood career is a bit of an exaggeration.

Wait, Naomi was booked to win and walked out? That's gotta be a first.

In your somewhat regular reminder that NXT:UK is still a thing that exists, they had their 200th episode this week. Smith & Carter/Gallus and Devlin/Dragunov were both worth checking out.

There are people better equipped to answer this, but not a ton as far as I know. There are about a half-dozen clips, ranging somewhere between 2 to 5 minutes floating around from American TV and then some stuff with Giant Baba, including a match from 67 that I like quite a bit. I will say that young Bruno is pretty similar to any other Bruno, more athletic, and not quite the finished product, but he's always Bruno.