Reel

I think the idea of WWE not signing indie guys is overblown, if you look at the video from the recent tryouts, there are for sure indie wrestlers there, Josh Bishop sticks out to me, but these NIL programs and the recent classes at the PC, are full of NCAA athletes who they want to turn into wrestlers, and whether the athletes actually want to be wrestlers or are there just to take the money, I don't know. But, WWE is signing them because they want them to be wrestlers, and if you've seen the sort of facilities NCAA sports teams have, they'll have no chance of recruiting anyone from those programs with a ring and some free weights in the warehouse and some territory wrestler pontificating at them.

There's no way, under the current vision, they get rid of the PC. How are you going to recruit NCAA athletes and non-wrestling fans to sign with WWE without a facility like the PC. Setting up a ring in Stanford or some warehouse with Norman Smiley isn't gonna get people in the door.

I'm sure somebody else can buy the PWG DVDs from highspots and write a memo for Nick Khan.

That Big E promo and him not winning the 4-Way seems like he's winning the Rumble.

I like Black Terry, but he's not one of my GUYS. That being said, when the third beer bottle of the match gets broken to be used as a weapon during the match, you know shit is real. And then an almost 70 year old dude gets a car windshield smashed over his head, and somehow that's not the end, and it builds to a fuck finish. Its not an all-timer for me, but it is totally worth going out of your way to watch.

I had Go Shiozaki as my number 1 at the time, and think its a fine pick. He was consistently great everywhere: NOAH, DDT, a weird match with Nanae in Seadlinnng. But, that was a cowardly pick, I should have had Shinya Aoki at #1. The best MMA fighter in pro wrestling run ever. Tapping guys in seconds, slick transitions, guys selling his submissions like death. Now, he's completely lost all of that, but in 2018 he was awesome.

Was just thinking about this. The indies were really great in 2016 and especially the Evolve guys were on fire. Hero, ZSJ, Matt Riddle, Tim Thatcher. Hero especially was everywhere and killed it everywhere, except for his tag matches which are always at least 5 minutes too long, but his run as elder statesman of the indies ruled.

His run in Evolve around 2015-2016 is maybe his best run. Great stuff with Drew that leads to a feud in maybe the most indie looking cage of all time, an all-time with Zack Sabre at Evolve 45, and some strong stuff with Thatcher. I remember thinking he was the maybe the best wrestler in the world around that time.

Since I've been enjoying Ram V's run on Swamp Thing, I checked out Paradiso, a comic he did for Image. It only goes 8 issues, and Ram seemed to indicate that he didn't feel like it was successful on a financial or creative level, but I really dug it, and it has me interested to check out some of his other stuff, including a run on Carnage, a character I don't recall care about, starting soon.

i dont know, the crowd in the building seemed to be fine with it

I thought that ruled, totally surprised Brock won.

I'm not sure that shootstyle Sakuraba is better than Billy Scott, and I love Billy Scott, but I'm not voting for him GWE, and excluding Sakuraba's post-prime run in NJPW and NOAH, which I think is mostly meh, their output is similar.

thats kind of his deal, its grown on me. I'm a fan.

during the match? Pat McAfee, the Smackdown commentator.

Ridge Holland is cursed

They don't test asymptomatic vaccinated people, it's what all the other sports leagues are doing. Their protocol is almost exactly what the NFL is doing.

The 2016 version of this discussion pretty much sums up my thoughts on Sakuraba. He's one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, before, and after, that he was a pro wrestler. But outside of being a compelling wrestling character because of his MMA bonafides, his in-ring output isn't anything of note. Like he's what the 7th best guy in UWFi, the 5th best guy in Kngdom, and then he's MMA superstar Kazushi Sakuraba in New Japan after that. I know people have liked his NOAH run, but I don't really see it. He's old, broken down, and way too often does dumb stuff like turning hs back to Kenoh and letting him kick him a bunch for no reason, not to mention some truly awful strike exchanges.

I think he's one of the least self-aware wrestlers ever. Portrays himself as this Robinson/Gotch shootstyle purist guy, and then in his recent stuff he goes out and has a match with ref bumps and weapons against Minoru Suzuki, or stands in the ring and allows himself to be elbowed in the neck by Moxley. His stuff before that is mostly just kind of boring. I don't think his grappling is all that compelling, and sure the Tamura match is good, but there are no bad Tamura matches.

not that i know of, the world cast thread has the dates of the shows and episode numbers, so episode 24 should be june 4, 1982.

nothing could possibly be worse than this

I think there's room for something like a recurring version of the Yohe list, but I think it should be its own thing and not a GWE appendix.

I don't think muddling GWE26 with other side lists is a good idea. I get the idea here, and I'm partially to blame, because of my Johnny Valentine boosterism, but I think that the list of people who are actually considering voting for Valentine/Londos/Buddy Rogers/etc for GWE proper is rather small and creating a whole other list to placate that small group at the expense of a cohesive and unified GWE isn't worth it.

He had good TV matches with Ali in 2018 that I liked a lot. I don't know if I'd vote for him, but he's gonna have a ton of good to great matches by the time he retires.

3, I think. Bull Curry, the tag against Baba/Inoki, and the tag with Kroffat. I don't think any of the Florida stuff is full matches.

I think there's a similar thing with Ray Stevens, who has a reputation amongst people who saw him in his prime as one of the best to ever do it, but little to no real footage to support that particular thesis. I don't really have a clue what to do with guys like that, like imagine if you had only heard about Randy Orton from his contemporaries, would that depiction match with how you feel having watched his entire career.