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Ultimately Jericho has 1 year I really really enjoy (1998 WCW), and 20 years where I'm either indifferent to him or actively dislike him and want to avoid him entirely, with a sprinkling of matches over those 20 years that I enjoy. Whereas with Barry, I'd be pretty happy to watch some of his work from really any period of his career except The Stalker/New Blackjacks/NWA run in the WWF.

The AJ and Bryan matches are almost literally the same spot for spot, beat for beat after the first however many minutes of Bryan stalling at the start.

Disagree. Bobby was paranoid that Tony or Dusty could be part of it, too. He didn't trust ANYONE. Dusty is the one that had a bad reaction, but an understandable wtf Bobby kind of one if he didn't know Brain was going to say something like that.

As we're getting into BATB 96 in our Nitro Party, I'm just imaging how fucking terrible this angle would have been in the WWF at the time. At BATB, you don't know who the third man is. Gene says the voice rang somewhere in his head, but it was muffled and he couldn't quite place it. So it's someone Gene's been associated with, which is basically everyone in WWF or WCW. Lex goes out in the first few minutes, and you're kind of on edge that he's the third man, because he's been a heel or tweener despite the partnership and friendship with Sting since he returned to WCW before the last month or two. But then you wonder, well shit, did Sting do it on purpose? Is HE the third man? BUT THEN, Randy Savage was from the WWF, too...is he the third man? The subtle paranoia just in the match itself is excellent and there's not a single bit of it played up on commentary. I can only imagine Vince and Jerry Lawler calling the WWF version of this match, where the WCW guys would be cartoony stooges who aren't a physical threat at all but just use every cheap heat tactic imaginable and within a month HBK would be lining them up and superkicking them one by one. Basically the Invasion but even worse. And Team WCW would have been like....Marc Mero, Sid, and the third man would have to be, idk, Undertaker? Boy would it have been terrible.

I think Sandow's career says otherwise. No one cared about him in a tag team with KC James. No one cared about him post Rhodes Scholars. No one cared about him post-Miz stunt double road in WWE, no one cared about him in TNA (and it was a disaster), NWA lol. Sandow has done nothing to make fans care about Damian Sandow his entire career. Literally the only two times he was over it was because of the other guy he was paired with and once separate, he tanked immediately.

Hogan belongs somewhere on the list, but god god bad Hogan is about the worst thing imaginable

All I ended up seeing was Charlotte vs Rhea and lol'd that Charlotte did multiple Andrade spots in a row and thinking about how many women in recent years have done tribute spots of their significant others or even guys they've hooked up with, and yet you never ever see any of the men doing that.

Nitro is a really fun show, though. Outside of the Hogan heavy bullshit weeks. Even at first with Hogan, it's real fun stuff. There's a real lull between January-March 1996 but then it kicks back into high gear as soon as Hogan stops being the focus and the Eddie/Benoit/Malenko group gets back from Japan. Flair/Macho is wonderful stuff, the Sting/Lex angle and partnership is great, the Steiners are back and throwing dudes around, Giant is awesome when he's not around Hogan, Regal is getting a lot of TV time, crowds are hot, production is great. Love 1992/1993 Saturday Nights. There's some occasional wonky booking stuff but not really any weirder or dumber than any other promotion.

Yeah it means they're performing really hard Anyway back to some Hogan stuff for a bit, also 100% forgot that they kept playing promo packages for him every week on Nitro the whole time he's gone. Often multiple times per episode. There's never a reason given why he just vanished off TV after saying Hulkamania was stronger than ever, but they keep playing these packages of him with celebrities or beating up Vader (and OMG and Meng), and Bischoff frequently mentions no doubt Hogan is watching, stronger than ever, etc. Then one week, Sullivan is cutting a promo about BENOIT and says Hogan is going to be coming back looking for revenge against him/Arn/Flair/Giant/Jimmy and this is why he's had to keep the alliance with Arn/Flair, and says: "I'm going to get rid of Benoit so we can get rid of Hogan!" Which is pretty baffling. Giant then cuts a promo being pissed about being the champ yet WCW keeps airing all these Hogan videos when Hogan isn't even around anymore. And both times it's played up like Hogan lost at Uncensored or something. My memory (which god how fucking bad is my memory when I went through all of this shit TWICE for a blog in the past 5-7 years and still don't remember most of it) was Hogan just kind of vanished until the NWO turn for no reason given and no mention of him. Instead, they're airing double promos for him the whole time and it's clearly being built around him returning and taking the belt off of Giant. Which does happen in a roundabout way, just not the way it seemed planned at this point.

Sure but what Dave Meltzer thinks doesn't mean shit to anyone that isn't a subscriber to the Observer. Dave Meltzer's star rating for a match doesn't mean anything for TV ratings.

"69 me, Don" was actually probably the funniest little thing they've ever done, imo.

It's fascinating how many people and entire genres of wrestling took directly from Lou. Be it the standard NWA Champion touring match, the basics of puro, backdrops, powerbombs, STFs, the dropdown/leapfrog/dropkick spot, Thesz Press. His influence is still very, very directly active even in 2021. And it turns out he was fucking awesome. I've only seen probably 15 matches of Lou Thesz and this dude was fucking great. As great as his reputation would suggest.

I was actually thinking New Japan more than WWE, but that's definitely been a staple of big WWE main events going back at least to Austin/Rock. I really hate it.

All the PWG comparisons are dead on to me. It's like PWG with a WCW budget, but I also would rarely ever want to watch a PWG show more than once a month even if I usually enjoy it.

Not that it's new by any means as I've seen it in matches in the 60s and 70s, but dual finisher attempts and counters into a stand off in the first few minutes is a staple of every match trying to be a classic in Japan and America in the past 1 years or so and I hate it.

Nah Bryan was crazy over in 2013 and doing special work.

How do you feel about the commentary in AEW? Jim Ross & Excalibur specifically. JR is terrible, has been terrible the entire AEW run, but was also very bad for probably the last decade+ of his WWE run as well. He not only clearly doesn't give a shit or like most of the stuff he's seeing, but actively distracts and detracts by his complete lack of enthusiasm, low key burying guys and spots, or just finding the negatives and pointing out flaws in everything. Excalibur is fun, from time to time gets a little too obvious "get this point/phrase/story point over" but that's hardly a complaint. Tony Schiavone is really the glue holding the team together and tbh, Tony being able to enjoy calling wrestling shows again is my favorite part of AEW. How do you feel about the ring style or the look of the show/arena? Pre-COVID, I liked the ring and look. I was hoping for more of an early Nitro look, but really it was dead on for 2002-2004 WWE PPVs, which is a pretty good look to have. Daily's Place was real cool the first time they ran it, but after a year I never want to see that venue or have them run outdoor shows again. What are your thoughts about the talent that AEW has been bringing in like Jake Hager, Shawn Spears or more recently, Mark Henry & Paul Wight? Hager/Spears, dogshit. Just wastes of space. Big Show and Mark Henry? Well, I'm sure they have a lot of wisdom to give to a locker room, but I'm not sure if AEW is the right locker room to accept that wisdom. The biggest guy on their roster does suicide dives and rope walking moonsaults every match, so I don't know that anyone cares or wants to work like a traditional big man/monsters outside of Miro. I don't know think they should make big deals out of signing guys mostly for backstage roles. Do you think that AEW relies too heavily on comedy? I think certain talents do. I don't think the promotion as a whole does, however the certain talents that do are pretty prominently featured so I guess that's a toss up for me. What about their abundance of factions/stables? Too many stables filled with nobodies and used as a crutch for booking and clearly trying to take inspiration from New Japan's factions that really only exist just to have excuses to fill up the cards with tags and nothing matches without having to do any storylines for them beyond that. No one gives a fuck about the The Nightmare Family or The Factory. No one knows half the guys in the Dark Order and they do nothing but run ins for brawls. The Elite barely feels like a stable. Inner Circle ran out of steam AGES ago. Matt Hardy's group is just random teams that weren't doing shit and still aren't. They're using them as a booking crutch and not even doing that right. Managers/Valets? Taz and Tully have been great in their roles. Everyone else feels like they add absolutely nothing (Arn, Vicki Guerrero, Jake, etc). Actually, Tully might be the best overall performer any given week he's on the show, and the week he wrestled this mf made Jericho look so bad by looking so good and in shape despite being 20 years older and having not worked in about 20 years. How do you feel about the decisions Tony Khan has taken, or how Dave Meltzer seems to give AEW the constant benefit of the doubt where as Jim Cornette will barely acknowledge when something is good? I think TK needs someone to help with writing a show. Every feud is essentially one angle and one promo repeated for 8-12 weeks. And god forbid a feud goes on multiple PPVs. You can tune in at any point during the progression of a feud and 9 times out of 10, you're going to get the same angle or promo from either or both sides. This is both convenient and annoying. Because of how repetitive the storyline booking is, I only tune in for a really interesting match but then get caught up on everything I need to know in one viewing. I don't give a shit what Meltzer or Cornette have to think about AEW (or anything, really) but I do get a chuckle about how much Dave strains himself to criticize as lightly as possible and give AEW the benefit of the doubt in every situation. It feels to me that TK's biggest issue is not telling some guys no. Specifically Jericho, the Bucks, and Cody. Are AEW presenting the women well? How about the tag team division? While the women's division and presentation has improved a lot in the past 6 months or so, it still has a long way to go. Even pre-COVID, the booking of the joshi girls being THEY'RE FROM JAPAN THEY'RE GREAT BECAUSE THEY'RE FROM JAPAN, JOSHI IS GREAT SO THEY'RE GREAT and then the domestic women feeling like completely separate divisions felt so outdated and incongruent. And then the multiple very long title reigns in a row without any storylines to go with them. The two best in ring women they have aren't even on their real roster. Britt Baker's turn to one of the best parts of the show after being one of if not the worst part of the shows when they were pushing her so hard as a face is a triumph, but I don't have high hopes for them to keep interest in the division without an influx of a lot of outside talent. The tag division is also very haphazard and random, essentially just booked like PWG of fuck it what's a cool match this week/month. You'd think the Bucks would make sure their division is better, but despite the great teams, the best team in the company has been a thrown together team, and so far all these great teams just get a short feud with the Bucks and then do nothing. Even when the Bucks weren't champs, they were the main event of the tag division despite not doing anything but being the Young Bucks. Is AEW relying too much on gimmick/stipulation matches? I don't know if they're over relying, but it does seem like they jump into the gimmick or stipulations way too fast. Overall, AEW is a fun show to watch every 3-5 weeks for me, and I always enjoy it more than a WWE show due to the excitement in the roster and crowd when there was/is one. I think ultimately it really has most of the same issues WWE does as a weekly wrestling show, but there's some joy and excitement in the product so it's easier to deal with once a month or so.

The stuff Bryan was doing in 2013 was legendary shit. His fire ups and hot tags, you knew you were seeing a historic run in real time and it was fucking awesome. The only thing I can compare it to is when Austin really started popping off in 1997.

Kross isn't even that big. The dudes he's been in the ring with are tiny. Dude is going to get exposed hard next to a Cesaro, Orton, Drew, or Lashley. He's probably not even taller than Seth Rollins.

I'm sure there's plenty of real atrocious Hogan stuff in the NWO run where he was allowed to ramble for 15-18 minutes every week

Due to the nature of their careers, positions, promotions, and longevity, they're difficult to really compare directly. I think Bret is certainly better at the physical and mechanic aspects of pro wrestling. His matches were structured like actual contests, his moves looked more devastating, his selling better, and there was a physical authenticity to Bret's movements that almost no wrestler ever has had in my mind, where Flair's were generally more like an amusement park ride or stunt show spectacular. Flair also probably has literally hundreds more significant matches on tape with nearly every talent imaginable than Bret has. Bret was also in a promotion where good matches were rarely ever something much thought was given to while he was in it. He also had a much worse roster of talent to wrestle with when he was in a position to have long top of the card matches. All that said to say I think Bret was a better wrestler, Flair was a better entertainer, and entertainer is not a pejorative in this sense. Flair's matches, especially mid to late 80s on when the 60 minute broadways became fewer and fewer, Flair's matches are pure entertainment matches. It's less about what makes the most sense at all times and more about what is going to excite the crowd the most in the moment. And honestly, at this stage I think his "prime" years are actually the least interesting or entertaining years of his career. Most people would probably peg those years at 1985-1989 or so, and in the past year or two, I'm finding myself enjoying his pre-1981-84 and the absolute unhinged insanity of 1994-1999 or so where he is just batshit and drunk 24/7 and his matches are 100% just the hits much more than his "peak". Flair in the early Nitro era is WILDLY entertaining at all times he's on screen. I do not believe Bret was having wrestling matches as good on Raw as Flair was being entertaining on Nitro during the same time frame. I also think Bret's matches are more unique and memorable for it, especially when he has multiple matches with the same opponent. And also rarer due to not wrestling in serious matches on TV nearly as often as Flair. We're talking about the "little touches" Bret added to his matches, but I don't think those touches were spots or anything. I think it was the way he got up off the mat. The way his legs were splayed on the mat after a bump. The way he sold exhaustion. The way he threw a punch or uppercut or kick that somehow looked so much more impactful than anyone else. I will say Flair was probably better at having fun/entertaining short TV matches against mid card/low card guys more than Bret was. I think I'd rather watch an 8 minute Flair vs American Males Bagwell match on Nitro than a 10 minute Bret vs Adam Bomb or Mantaur match on Superstars.

Me and a few buddies are keeping a spreadsheet with weighted ranks for matches, promos, interviews, hype segments, commercials for Nitros/Clashes/PPVs probably up to the end of 1997 but we'll see if/when Thunder gets uploaded to Peacock if that's something we really want to continue. In 1996, Hogan's segments/promos/matches are consistently the lowest ranked of anything by the whole group and usually when he doesn't appear, the overall show ranking will go up an entire point on the scale (or more) because not only was the Hogan shit always bad in 1996, but I'm pretty sure the shows he was on were also booked so as to make sure nothing would out shine him, which meant everything sucked when he was in a match on a show. Over a four month span in 1996: The entire Four Horsemen group are literally on their knees begging off from Hogan in the ring Squashes the OMG on Nitro while Gang is US Champion and there were 4-5 other members of the DoD he could have squashed on Nitro that weren't holding a title. He loses the title in October, his name plate is still on the belt into March. When Flair starts storming the booth and going nuts and people are into it, he starts doing it, at least once actually chasing Flair off so he could do it there instead, despite Gene already being in the ring trying to do an interview with Hogan. He gets a good reaction using a chair one week, so he has to beat multiple people up with a chair every week for the next 5 weeks. During a lumberjack match, he beats up 5 lumberjacks on the floor by himself. Hogan beats up the entire Dungeon of Doom multiple times on his own, including one time after an atrocious cage match with The Giant that he decisively won and then went on to beat up every single member of the DoD with a chair also inside the cage immediately after Beats up Giant with a chair probably 4 different times, slams him multiple times not even in matches. He does this even as WCW is building Giant up for a title win and the difference in how Giant is presented and looks in matches with Hogan vs matches with Flair/Sting/Savage in the same time frame is night and day. In fact, the same night that Hogan goes away until the NWO turn is the night Hogan routes Sullivan/Arn in a handicap match and then slams Giant in a scuffle all to cut a promo about how Hulkamania is stronger than ever (then vanishing for months), Giant lays out Sting, Lex, and Flair in the main event and the skirmish with Hogan is literally never mentioned again. Two weeks later, Giant very decisively beats Flair for the title. Of course, Hogan is the guy to take the title off Giant when the time comes in a few months. Spends roughly 2 months stealing every thing cool Randy Savage says in their promos, including OHHH YEAAAHH sometimes even saying it instead of Savage in promos. After LOSING to Arn Anderson, he declares himself the Enforcer of WCW. 2-3 weeks later, he wants to be called the Dirtiest Player In The Game. One week he has Arn giving up in a figure four while pinning Flair with a small package. Flair wasn't in the match and was also champion and it was like a 10 count. Hogan (and Savage, mostly Savage, actually, as he did most of the heavy lifting in that match) wins the dogshit Doomsday Cage Match defeating The Horsemen, the Dungeon of Doom, and Zeus and Jeep Swanson all at the same time. When Liz turns and joins up with Flair, it's not Flair, Liz, or even Savage that cuts a promo about how she took all of Macho's money/house/land/etc. It's Hogan. Who does it while standing beside Randy who looks like he legit can't believe what this fucking guy is saying right now on camera. When Savage wins the title again, he immediately tries to outshine him, which seems like an angle because Savage then brings it up in a promo and the next week Hogan demands a title shot for HIS title (he also did this after Savage won at WW3 but nothing came of it then, either) that never happens as Flair wins the title shortly after. While champion, Randy always comes out to Hogan's music and is usually wearing red and yellow for any of their matches or segments. Then there's the ancillary things, like Sting/Lex being completely removed from the title scene and angle that was so great and interesting in the first couple months of Nitro and continuing their thing as a full time team and Lex goes after the TV Championship. Flair was getting the best reactions every show for months with insane promos while Hogan was generally getting booed most weeks, so Flair wins the title and doesn't cut a promo on TV for a MONTH. As champion. I'm convinced that if Pillman was a main eventer, Hogan would have been calling himself the Loose Cannon at this time. Even with the bad Hogan stuff, Nitro is SO much better than Raw. Much in the same way that Saturday Night in 1993 blew Raw out of the water on every front.

ECW fucking sucks, brehs

It's kind of interesting that WWE gets titled eras whereas WCW's eras are named after whoever was in charge at the time

He's been the King of Kings. He's been The Creator. All that's left is some version of The Holy Spirit, which would complete the trinity. Triple H. It's all making sense. New merch with various Jesus art scenes but he's a skeleton and wearing a leather jacket.